EyesHaven't

Keep those baby pictures coming!


I don't think you've seen this angled shot of my fine stallion before. Look at that front end!! Oh, wait, I mean, look at what happens in never-terminal HYPP!

Poor Butch. His neck is strangled. Darned "European Balancing Reins"! Look what they did! "Strangler Reins" is more like it. Oh, wait, no, that's SideReins, no, Draw Reins.
Oh, screw it, tie their darned heads in place. (Um, no.) Keep that rider off that horse, if riding in Side-Reins is their preferred mode of (snork) "schooling".
Heck, I used Draw-reins once in a blue moon. Never for tucking their chins to their chests. Never. Okay, never after I got smart enough to know how bad that idea was. I guess right about the time I started teaching. I was 14.


Me and My Dad, in 2000. I'm not going to the Christilot Clinic. Oh, I would if I could, but I have a date with Dad.

Tangent A
I remember how sad and angry my Gammy became, as she lost her sight. Being born a staggering beautiful woman, that Gammy couldn't see her own self anymore, rankled her. Broke my poor Mom's heart, seeing her Mom shrivel and gnarl. Harder still, when Mom passed away before her own mother.
OH, was that a biggie. Emotionally speaking.

Tangent B
The eyes have it. For AofG, who sees with her other senses, more clearly than I ever will. Because while many of us do appreciate our sight, many more take it for granted. Everything is in our eyes. We place such heavy costs upon them! I'm one of the earlier models of human. Bright lights were just learning to be reallY bright. I remember this terrible strobe light that Dad used one year for Christmas Card pictures. I liked looking into shiny things. I probably stripped the backs of my rods right off. (Rods and cones are thingy dingy eye parts).

I darn near lost my finger, touching a shiny thing, three years old, it was the swing post of a car door, exposed. Door closed. Ow. Still have a twisty bird finger, thank goodness on my left hand. I was probably born leftie;)

I practiced being sightless, after reading Helen Keller's story, as a kid. Watching "The Miracle Worker" was an eye-opening experience. I'm sure that terrible joke has been done before.
But I did practice, know what I'm sayin'? On horseback, a lot.

Tangent F, for focused.
It helped me focus on rhythms and sensations as opposed to what I was looking at. Hard to do when all you want is to look at this horse you are riding. He/she is pretty:) They sound great, and of course, smell even better.

When I watch horses, I hear them as well as see them. I "feel" them moving. I can sense a lot with sounds. AofG's sensitivity must be frankly astounding.

Walking my fields with my dogs, I imagine a hundred different horses, but mostly GoLightly's sounds come to my ears.

I still have ridiculously sensitive hearing. I spook at thunder claps. I spook at lots of different things. Iamkindatensile. (I know, that you know that.)

You can hear a disaster about to happen, in the ring. Or not. I remember Ian Millar, one of the greats of all time in Canadian & World Show Jumping, crashing at the first fence at the Royal, last year? Nothing, no warning. Horse wasn't looking, or was half-asleep. Ian just shook his head. That's horses.

They have thoughts only they can fathom, and it's our job to watch and listen to them (okay, and smell them, true) and hear and touch them. Trying to understand them is the art of horsemanship. On the ground is just as important as in the saddle, or harness or whatever.

Horses are a prey animal. Looking the wild/unhandled ones, and the younger greener ones straight in the eye is a threat. To older, more experienced animals, it can be a challenge. Once you have a horse actually looking at you "soft", you are halfway there. It's one of the hardest things animals have to learn about us, our propensity for looking them right straight in their eyes.

Tangent Cassowary.
Best friend's sister works at Calgary Zoo. On one visit, I got to go "Backstage", and met all kinds of captive animals. I came eyeball to eyeball with a cassowary. They don't like it. Think big mean bird... Look 'em in the eye, they keeel you. With their talons on their hind legs. Rip your tummy right out, they will.
So, moral of this tangent? Look down, when meeting a cassowary.

Oh, GoLightly loved to have staring contests... His not quite big enough old eye. Kindest eye, honest, no-fear eye. A rare eye.

It's part of my "problem" with the term anthropomorphism. I think, if we really LooK, there are commonalities in animal behaviours, more than not. And humans, after all, are animals too.
jmo.

I'd like to eventually do a really boring review of my Tad Plaid's breaking process. I have most of it written down, I've kept all of my journals through my riding days. I know, you knew that already. Never did need draw reins on Tad. Ooops, sorry, once, yes I did use them. Strangled him. Not.

DogTalk
My dogs give good eye. It's been Blaze's toughest thing. If she feels she should be even slightly repentant, or even just because her Mom is so Darn Tall!, she cowers and looks away as she wiggles up to me, licking like the puppy she still is.
Flip just jumps in my lap;)


Her life is sooooooo hard.

To All Five Senses. If you have all five, treasure them. If you don't treasure the senses you do have, count yourself dumb.
All five can be focused, to an amazing degree.

Turn down that damn boomBox!!!! My ears ring at the sound of the city.

ssssssh. Listen. Hear that? Silence is precious.

To Quieter Times.

And to Horses.
Of courses.