Happy Birthday, Blaze!

Oh, how I've loved watching and learning from this one, my first OWN puppy since I was 18 or so. Talk about ga-ga. Her little feet smelled so GooD!

Blaze is front right, trying to eat the wood edging.

Close-Up, This puppy still loves to eat:)

Her first act upon arrival at her new home was to go and hide in some bushes, necessitating a search and rescue that was epic in how long it seemed to take to find her, and how well she'd secreted herself into her creeping juniper cave.

Yes, the longe line is over-kill, but I wasn't planning on losing her again:) Blaze was the sillest lookin' puppy...

Since she's my dog, and we share a birthdate, and are somehow psychically linked, it is amazing how she mirrors me. And no, for sure, not always are those very GooD ways. Blaze is shy, and so am I.

I knew I needed to get her out and socialized more than the average dog, and I have tried my best, but I'm afraid I didn't quite do enough. The call of just going home after a long day's work was just too powerful.

How much she mirrors me, was pointed out to me today.

A gentleman came into the shop today, and although I had been expecting him, I had expected a call first. (I had been waiting for him for well over a month.) Since I was feeling a tad acerbic, my body language inspired Blaze to (stealthily, from a foot or so distance away) nip at the guys' work boots, as he was leaving. Blaze had her full evil face on, doing the same weird thing she has done to stranger dogs she doesn't know, she likes to "herd" them with the most diabolical look on her face..

MAN, we need to get out more;).

Monday, Monday....

Can't trust that day. No kidding! What was my first act of stupidity this morning, as I headed for my car to go to work? I step in a fresh pile of doggie doo doo, Flip's, and I'll tell how I know it's Flip's. Flip can put an invisibility shield around her poop. It disappears. How do I know this? I WATCHED her poop, TWICE, at Dad's, poised to do my scooping thing. It vanished. She pooped into a bush, and then she pooped beside the bush. It's not THERE. I looked, I did! 

I found the ancient family heirloom tape, made onto VHS, from a super 8 film. Yes, FILM. People used that back then, in the stone ages. The recorder person cut my 'ead off, a lot. Took me awhile to tape the whole thing, I kept trying to raise the tape UP. How crappy is this?? I yam 14 years old, and I know EVERYthing, in life. I think I do, anyway. 'specially about horses, oh, man, was I lippy. gah. Here it is. The rest of the abomination is on the YouBee channel.

Nasty, just nasty. This was a saintly mare, as most horses are..

Then there was the weird rest of this Monday. A big rush job screwed up, cost me money. Check.  Did you know you can buy organic frozen produce, from CHINA?? And it's the SAME price as Canadian regular stuff?? Give me a BREAK.

And then I heard, coming out of the grocery store, Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb", done as MUZAK. WHAT the hell are people thinking?? They did the melody all wrong, to make it Muzakier. It was sooo creeepY. It's an abomination, is what it is!

To Neil Young's "After the Goldrush".

Lookit that young rider, yank her horse, in the NINEteen seventeeeeS.

Time to Fall

It's so tragically pretty this time of year, the trees blazing away with their last bits of ATP.

The wind has been hard on many of them, this year had made most trees very happy, but some have drowned with all the rain.
We have a different look, this fall. Some of my favourite scenes are as I drive home, and pulling over and snapping is really not an option. It's just a short walk to my own scenery though.

I wish.. I wish..

The girls, as usual, keep me smiling:)

I wish.. I wish.

The HeartBroke Horse

ack, I sure hope blogger continues to behave.. I never know, with this rural connection, if all the bits and bytes are blinging or not..

I wish I knew how to download a video, and copy stills from it. Take clips from it. sigh. So much technology, so few brain cells left..
I laugh at my poky left elbow, those puppy paws, I guess you call them today.
This guy was such a neat horse. I knew next to nothing about him, other than he had an ammy owner who wanted him gone. He was either full or half Trakhener, big name breed in those years.My boss had been riding him in the preliminary jumpers, but they hadn't had a good mesh, so I was grateful for the chance to ride him. I ended up showing him at a schooling show in the green hunters, actually got a couple good ribbons, laughable when you watch how un-huntery he is. This is the horse that needed Ami dog (my neighbour at the time, Mrs. Smalls' Standard Poodle) to give him his yaya's back. Horse was so morose, so sullen, so sad when I started with him. I cajoled him along, kidded with him, tried to keep everything light and cheery and easy. He didn't really brighten until I had a few "chase the big black poodle" games in the arena, me whooping and hollering, AMi having a blast too.. He was ever so much better after that!

I don't show my long warm-up, with a cooler, at the walk, the arena grew even colder, as it was getting later in the day. He would start out close to star-gazing, so tight and defensive he was through his back. I wouldn't correct it. I'd just keep riding him forward. He'd forge for a bit, at the trot, his hind toes loudly clacking against his front heels of his  shoes. A dressage whip petrified him, and I didn't like carrying them anyway. Give me a short bat, any day:) His ammy owner always rode him with a dressage whip, so there ya go.
He was almost comatose, but he still had a spook. He'd been known to rear at the in-gate of a class. Not high, just an "eeeeek", as if he was trying to shrink, up. He spooked  in the corner where some shavings bags were stacked, through the whole ride. Going to the left was the REALLY scary way! ooooh. I've posted some more of the tape on YouBoob, tah, daH. Link over there on the right.. Scroll down.  Trust me, it's boring. Of course, I had a blast watching it, I must say:)
There were lots of paradoxes behind this horse. I found him quite light, not dead-sided, just no acceleration. I had to teach him how nicely he was capable of moving. With his ammy, he'd t.r.o.t. a.b.o.u.t. one mile an hour. It was weird to watch the ammy riding him.
This was the funniest moment. Right at the very end of the ride, I was just letting him canter out (as much as you could in that tiny arena).He actually did a tiny little buck 'n play, and did (half) a flying change, at his scary corner. That he changed behind FIRST pleased me no end. So cute.. We had been working on counter-canter, and helping him stay organized. He happily demonstrated he'd learned his lesson at the end:)
to be continued.
If anyone asks:)

I finally found

This. Part of my grumpy factor involves a basement that has developed it's very own ecosystem, one I could not venture into for oh, 10 years, I'm ashamed to say. Since we were having some rather extreme "other" issues with the landlord, we just couldn't bring ourselves to complain about anything else. Weird, pathetic rationale, but there you are.
There was one or two things I had stored in the basement, that I basically had given up on. One of them was a tape of me riding. I've video'ed it with my camera. It was taken by the father of one of my students, great people, still deeply into horses. They were sponges, always imploring more knowledge of all types. When I quit teaching, I donated all of my Practical Horseman's, & Equus's, to them. Books, you name it. I sadly found one of my favourite horse books completely ruined. I'm glad I had forgotten about it;)

This is a mare called "Jaimie", that no-one else really wanted to ride. We had a great time together, being quite kindred spirits. She was hot, and opinionated. A tad of a know-it-all. Remind you of anyone?
:)
Sorry for the terrible quality. I was just pleased as punch to find the darn thing, relatively unscathed. The tape survived! There's more, I just haven't finished watching it yet. I think another horse I was riding is also on the tape, a horse I based one of my characters on, in the fiction..