Flipping Conformation&Temperament

That's my Rubik's Cube for my girls.It used to be insurmountable to Flip, and now she gleefully disassembles it, while Blaze watches in awed admiration. The variations are endless, and all are equally scary. It's a wrought iron rooster, with FrisBees hung from strange places. It took Flip about two months to get it figured out. Flip was soProuD, the first time she did it. Amazing how brave she has become, from the scaredy dog I started with.



I love my pansies.. I took this picture on a day when they didn't have their shoulders all hunched over, against the wind.

F-Words, continued.

Flip
fervently
fetches
flying
Frisbees
from
flagrantly
flinging
fellow
folk.


Flip,
finding
further
floating
Frisbees,
flirts,
fearing
frequent
flowing
forces
freely
frolicking
furiously.

Flip
flamboyantly
fields
Frisbees,
flexing
frantically,
foolish
for
fun!

I know, I KnoW. I have too much time/space in my head.

It's too cold to be outside, right now! Barely 52 degrees, unFahrenheitly speaking.
Gale force north winds. White caps on the pond. My plants are all hunkered down, awaiting consistent sunpowers. Frozen in time. Lucky plants. I'm still in sweaters/jackets and whatever. Is there a glyph for annoyed, ND_Appy?

I'm avoiding housework. Conveniently, the vacuum-cleaner is STILL broken. Oh, it's such a shame! I so look forward to housewifely duties. (aaaaagh, did I type that??) I'm just letting you all copy/paste it somewhere that needs it, like your husband's e-mail... They do like their fantasies to be justified, ya know? The TV commercials in the 50's? They were the idea for the movie "Stepford Wives"... The First one. The good one, with Katherine Ross. Not that Bette Midler wasn't hilarious in the re-make..

Blaze is blustering that nothing enough has happened today. After yesterday's blast in the park, today is shaping up blaringly dull. Hah, that word is spelled wrong, in the blogger dictionary.
Alliteration, yagottaloveit.

Okay, okay. Blaze wins, but she's going to give me ten more minutes of hair-drying time. My hair gets REALLY big, with a lot of wind. Scary big.

Be right back.

Conformation and Temperament.
(You thought I'd forgotten, hadn't you?)
It's really important to try and fit the temperament of horse and rider together. One should compliment the other, as much as possible. The two of you should get along:)

The conformation of the rider isn't as important as the temperament of the horse and rider together.
The conformation of the horse isn't as important as the temperament. The job the horse is expected to do means everything to the horse. Even if that job simply involves ground handling.

The same is true in dogs and cats and, well, you know. Everything...
Is that a big enough generalization, do ya think?

I mention all this preamble to explain, at last, why GoLightly and I were such a perfect match. It explains why that first ride was such an explosion of expanded knowledge for me.
I had read books and watched and ridden and handled other people's horses 'til I was a pretty decent rider, but I'd no focus, really.

No set direction with each horse. I was just making them more rideable for others. Safer to handle. Easier to load. Tack up, mount, whatever. Horses have to have good manners on the ground first. They are too darn big to be pets, first. Anyway, I wasn't very aware of where I was going, with each horse I'd ridden. Ride 'em, move on. Another horse to ride? Great. Move on..

GoLightly was already totally ride-able. He sure didn't need me to teach HIM anything. That's why he was so kind with me, I think. GoLightly saw a really earnest, tightly-strung student.
That's me.

Having finally been diagnosed as hyper-thyroid (Graves Disease) in my early 40's, finally let me in on my little psychic secret. GoLightly diagnosed me, back when I was almost 30.

Horses are so bloody smart.

Anyway, my fiery temperament could and did get me in trouble sometimes. I would have my troubles with the very hottest of the hot horses I rode. I could handle hot. Hottest was always a challenge. If I let even a smitchen of my own tension out, my hottest horses let me know.

Sooo, with GoLightly, his idea of hot was to throw in a little passage once in a while, just for fun. I remember once, on one of our last hacks, GoLightly begging me to let him run full-out. I had to say no. With my luck, you know.. He'd have hit that ONE gopher hole.

We'd always enjoyed galloping, oh, his giant stride, wow. But that next to last hack, I was struck again by just how plain good he was, when I said "no". A hottest horse wouldn't have accepted that "no". Instead, my GoLightly offered a little piaffe/passage, and then settled into the trot work he knew we'd planned. GoLightly was always with me, as far as plans went.

I could plan rides with him, such a revelation. Okay, today is hack around day. Tomorrow would be flat-schooling (me) day. As I mentioned, my stirrups had always been too long for jumping, but I'd started out that way. It was the first habit GoLightly helped me break. My second, being crooked, came through weeks of flat-schooling, me watching his tracks and movements in the mirrors and on the rail, and out on hacks.

It strikes me, again, how much those short months I rode GoLightly ratcheted up my 17 previous years of experience in horses. It makes me wonder, as usual, what a truly marvelous riding school could be like, if it offered only true Schoolmasters.

What incredible riders could be started properly, finally!



Here's an interesting link, probably you've already seen it. And a good discussion, about rollkur.

I never had to use "deep", as it seems to be called by some. In extreme cases of muscular stiffness in the horse's neck and back, I found simply flexing the horse's neck from side to side was all that was needed to show the horse how to relax and go forward at the same time.. And never did I do any flexions to any extreme. A rubber-necked horse is a broken horse. JMO. Bending and stretching is a tool, not to be held in one place for any extreme length of time. That way is the direction for abuse.

Oh, dear. The Canadian "Horse Sport" Magazine's editor has come out against the Grand National Steeplechase. It is abuse. So she says, anyway. So it must be true, I guess.

You all know I've long been fascinated with the 'chasers'.
Crazy lot, they are. Do I watch for the falls? Why do we love to watch horses and riders risking their necks?
Will we ever "outgrow" that fascination?
Should we?

Just askin'.

To Horses.