Compostulating With The Times

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Simplification Ceremonies and HorseSticks-reprised

As we all know, I have too much space and time in my head.


HorseSticks, first in a series of 'toons about riding. or Not.


Anybody notice a correlation between this picture and the cartoon above?


I chickened out of going to the Master Clinic, drat! I just can't, okay, won't, drive late at night when the temperature is hovering around freezing, and the roads are shiny wet/frozen/maybe black ice. Call me a coward, it fits, in this instance. My energy ebbed a lot, with all the heavy snow slogging. But the cool thing is I found my notes from 1983, of the George Morris/Christilot Boylen Clinic. The notes even make some sense!

CB at 16.


GoLightly's Christilot Boylen Clinic Notes, 1983
"Shoulder-in, is the beginning of half-pass. BIG problem, is quarters leading. Travers on a diagonal = good half-pass!"
"Increasing pulling will decrease effectiveness. Horse must carry himself".


Sound familiar, anyone?? Hmmmm?

"Pirouette training - 90% of horses will do it too small, train it BIG".
"Problem in extensions - rider thinks work is accomplished in itself, should just balance, Collect, increase energy, and then let it go."
"Passage and Piaffe - Horse must be gifted, ultimate outcome of schooling. Energy is channled upward, with rhythm and cadence maintained. Easier to piaffe from rein-back, than from halt. Transitions are JUST as important".


Cool, huh.
1983. Boy, were horses even around then??

OH, re: the above oddity! I was messing around with making a Centered Riding cartoon for Union Square, even though she's abandoned me for the pleasures of wordpress. Her blog is still great, btw. Mine, not so much, apparently.

I realized something, as I was messing around. Please, people, try to think of yourselves as sticks. Try to just look at what I'm showing you up there.
Sally Swift's "Stubby legs", to me, means that you don't really need your lower leg to stay on, at all. And you don't, at all.

HorseStick Kits will be available on this site. Watch for future updates!

Don't just snort and think I've lost my mind again.
Well, maybe I have, but that's not the poinT. The point is, on a horse, you cannot fold in two. Unless you know how to make your shoulders touch, and your hips fold.

You are just that simple, though. I mean, WE are. I mean...

Random Amazing Old Horse, who's name I recall being spoken with reverence. I think an early horse owner I knew had some lovely youngsters with his name in their lineage. Princequillo I'd take HiM home:)

Oh, truly bad movie of funny Blaze and the naughty rubber chicken.
The donor, Millie dog, had never really shown an interest. Both girls, first shown it, were frankly horrified. Maybe because the chicken is wearing clothes, in very poor taste...

Anyway, Blaze is saying, EwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwWWWWWWWWWWWWWW, I don't even like TOUCHing it! That's disGUSTing! It makes great noises in it's squeaker, too. I will never understand dog logic when it comes to toys. Flip LOVES squeakies! They BOTH love floppy, squeaky things, but the things are usually fake-furrier... hmmm.



To the END of February!!!!
Seemed to take forever.

Sorry, just one teensy gloat? Hockey GOLD for Canada, Men AND Women!! The men knew they'd never survive/live down losing, after the women won. I mean, c'mon! I saw their faces in the box, after the women won. Boy, they were SERiously Serious.
Now if we could just channel all that energy for such ultimately trivial pursuits into...

Ooops, didn't mean to type that out loud.
(originally posted in March 2010. Wasn't I in a great mood?!)
Amazing how quickly times can flip, and blaze.

FurtherEvolutionsIn2Driding. Reprised

Alrighty, starting at the top, working your way down, left to right...Two HorseSticks, Mr. Left and Mr. Right, arguing over who will ride the preddy horsie. Isn't it odd how one looks bigger than the other? I love perspective. I can't really DRaW perspective, but I like it anyway:) I'm kind of 2d, too. Two Dimensional. Or maybe too dimensional. Not sure yet. I'll let ya know.

In the next frame, still on the top, moving right, like a comic, do I have to keep telling you? Gawd, I hope not. I thought about numbering.. Nah.

Anyway, it happened so fast, you missed it, the Stick on the left, jumped up, kicked the RightStick flat over, knocked RightStick out cold, and hopped on. But, Left Horse Stick made one critical mistake. LeftStick assumed the chair seat, just a smitch tooo far back. Mare hasn't been rode in a while. A tad cold-backed. LeftStick has been bucked out of the frame. How innocent mare still looks!

The End?

OH, the bottom two pictures show a Giraffe on the right, and a Tapir on the left. Again, both types present challenges. The key to any saddle fitting properly is it's levelness relative to the horse's top-line, which you hope is pretty level to the ground. Notice I said hope. I kinda flattened the Giraffe's back a bit, sorry about that. It didn't hurt, promise:)

The real mare has a nice place to put a saddle. The altered ones show the crazy extremes that can happen.
It's important you feel "level" too. Feeling like you're about to go over the head, or over the butt, should be avoided. That's where padding comes in, and custom fitting, and dollars I can't spend anyway:)

Oh, and never mind looking at the last post's SaddleToon, I think this one is way easier to peer at, for me anyway.

I have a few million billion things to say about the chair seat, but they must wait. I'll start by saying the HorseSTicks on the far right, in both center frames, are what is mostly seen riding, today. I think. Sure see it a LOT, anyway. It is not a "dangerous" flaw. It can be a lazy flaw. It is a defensive posture. It is tougher on the horse, purely from a weight and simple physics point of view. Where does your weight go, in the chair? Which way is more fair? Do you dare? Laissez-faire. Okay, I'll stop.

British Equestrian Fan Tangent..
What I'm afraid many won't appreciate about watching Geoff ride, is his physical body type. But if you watch him, he's actually completely light, on the horse's back.

In ANY of those HorseStick Figures above,I could widen them considerably, and not change the balance, correctly centered over the horse.

Does anybody get what I'm trying to burble this time?
Let me know, will ya?

Feel like I'm yelling into a vacuum, here:)

And That's nothing new, neither:)
Old Crone Out.
(originally posted March 21, 2010)
At least I found it!

Monday, November 21, 2011

Sticks and Stock

Yes, just when you thought it was over....


Just when you thought it was safe.




My memory cells are insisting I've posted this before, and since I can't argue with myself very effectively, I'll just post it again. I'm trying to make a point, and it's really simple. If you've read Practical Horseman ragazine lately, you'll have seen an article by Jimmy Wofford, about studies done using jockeys and different leg-body positions. The horse's workload decreased with the shortening of the stirrups, as the speed increased. We knew this already, of course, as jockeys (both jump and flat) have stirrup lengths that dressage queens cower before. The best show jump jocks also ride with a stirrup that doesn't hinder the horse's ability to carry the rider comfortably and effectively.



The times have changed, very slowly and painfully. John Whitaker, one of Great Britain's greatest show-jump riders, and Milton's partner after Caroline Bradley's tragic death, had ridden with very long stirrups, until Milton was able to teach him to shorten them.





GoLightly was the horse that unlocked my doors about riding with shorter stirrups. Do you want the horse, or yourself to be the most comfortable, and which is the priority, in different riding disciplines? Is there a priority?

Do you notice anything about the above pictures?
There's a quiz, so be ready.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Further Jollies


I'm baby-sitting Stanley at the moment, really appreciate the way higher speeds of internet you city folk enjoy! Lookit that, I CAN load a big honkin' video!
I feel for Blaze and her hyper-ness. Hmmm, wherever did she get that from?

Friday, November 11, 2011

That kind of life

I'll bet you've been dying to know how my war with mentalpause has been going, I'm sure you've noticed a slight mood swing, from time to time? I sure have. Blimey, there I might be, listening to a song that twangs my heart, and booHooHOO. Jeepers. I guess it's not the tears that bother me, it's the suddeness of the emotion. I mean, I can get all emotional, but usually I know WHY I'm getting all emotional. Not used to this OMG I MUST SOB emotional switch.

Oh, the midnight oven scenes are really getting interesting, especially at 3am. It's like a toaster popping off, BING, I am wide awake, and I am nine million degrees! Super Nova time! Dogs think it's great. Up we get, they get to go outside, while I stand there not shivering in sub-zero weather.

Hey, it can be fun. At least the whiskers on my chin & upper lip haven't outpaced my scalp hair growth yet, maybe that's why I've let my hair become it's own planet lately. My hair is freakin' big. Huge. Farrah Fawcett (rip) suffered from alopecia, compared to this freakin thing. Sorry, who has big hair today? I am such a dinosaur..

tangent... Whilst the great dismantling of the ecosytem in the basement has been going on, I've had lots of time to admire how tough hard water really is.
I (whisper) think most of my current hair colour is from the water. I love our well water, even if it does like a darned good chiseling off of every surface it touches every once in a while. I wonder what that does to my tummy. Cast-iron guts from water? Hmmm, I rarely have issues with that end of things, since I've lived here.
The basement is completely like new, now, I'd move down there if I could. It's the cleanest part of the entire house.
However, the furnace is condemned. BUT, we have a new sump pump in, YAY!!! But, the taps are still drippilating hot money water down the drain. and the bathroom? Seriously, I've been threatening to take pictures and send them to HGTV, but they'd probably just call me a dirt hoarder or something.
I am NOT! I am a tad stubborn, is all. Let's put it this way. We have an old cast-iron tub, and I bet the hard water coating it right now is about oh, 1/64" thick. I stopped chiseling it right around the time I quit taking baths. I SHOWER, (briefly) now, and rarely. But that's another issue.

My brilliant baby sister took a few pictures of the spectacular squalor, (she actually shoots for those magazines that show you clean, nice houses), but she never did get the nerve up to show them to anyone else she actually knows. Can't say I blame her. Hard to take a picture of the smell, anyway.

The contractor guy that did the basement wanted to do everything else sort of all at once, but noooo, LL said "get another price!" LL's said that 12 YEARS ago, about the floor tiles in the kitchen. Did you know tiles used to be made with absestos? Neither did I!! ( Or I might have forgotten, always an option).

We found that out when we hired a (rip you off twice) Mould Specialist, and now I have yet another thing to kafuffle about. Asbestos. Yum! BREATHE, breathe in the airr. Don't be afraid to care..

Oh, so now there are NO tiles in the kitchen, but there is no floor either, just plywood. Real country feel, I tell ya.
OH, the bathroom. Ugh, the bathroom. i wanna new bathroom. I WANNA NEW BATHROOM!!!! whO puts carpet in their bathroom?? Well, it sure as hell wasn't me. As HusB gets older, his aim has worsened. I mean, c'mon, sit down already. But noooo. I am NOT removing the carpet, either.
NOT MY JOB.
My brief showers are a study in efficiency, cause I want outta there ASAP. The creeping fungusoids that thrive in filthy environments have entirely surrounded the shower surround, and everytime I climb in, I wonder if I'm about to fall through into the basement. Ah, well, at least it's clean down there.

My LandLords are showing odd signs of cordiality, which always makes me nervous. I think they are starting to figure out that when you own a property, if you don't MAINTAIN that property, well, hey, it falls apart. And Tenants get right cranky.
Just watch me.


In Flanders Fields
the poppies grow..

To All Our Brave Soldiers, who offered their lives so that we may have the freedom to rant.
Thank you.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Xenophon...

"For what the horse does under compulsion, as Simon also observes, is done without understanding; and there is no beauty in it either, any more than if one should whip and spur a dancer."

"The hand must neither hold so strict as to confine and make the horse uneasy, nor so loosely as not to let him feel it. The moment he obeys and answers it, yield the bridle to him; this will take off the stress and relieve his bars, and is in conformity with that maxim, which should never be forgot, which is to caress and reward him for whatever he does well. The moment that the rider perceives that the horse begins to place his head, to go lightly in the hand, and with ease and pleasure to himself; he should do nothing that is disagreeable, but flatter and coax, suffer him to rest a while, and do all he can to keep him in this happy temper. This will encourage and prepare him for greater undertakings."
Xenophon 444-365 BC.