smellshorsey

How to Measure Success at a Horse Show or Competition

How do you measure success at a horse show or competition? Everybody wants the blue ribbon. But if you didn't win it, does that mean you lost?

And if you did win it, does that mean you won?

We're trying to take the focus off of ribbons. Some reasons for this are practical. Buddy is the cutest thing on four hooves but he's not fancy. He's nice, even handsome to my eyes, but not fancy. He's extra cute, too, when you get to know him. When competing with fancy, cute doesn't win unless fancy screws up. Fancy does sometimes screw up and cute sometimes performs spectacularly, but you can't count on it. So, unless we win the lottery, Lily will be competing on cute, handsome, unpredictable and full-of-yahoo Buddy. She has won some blues on him, including at his first horse trial last December. They work hard. But so do lots of other kids and horses.

So, how do you measure success other than by ribbons? Several ways. First, set goals for the competition. What's one thing you or your child have been working on, some special challenge? For Lily and Buddy, who went to their second horse trials last weekend (and competed two levels up from what they did last December), the goal was for Buddy to have a good experience and for Lily to have fun. Translation: no refusals and no taking off bucking. And an accurate dressage test for good measure.

I was proud of Lily for her preparations. We'll only foot the bill for one riding lesson a week and she'd had her one lesson last week. She doesn't take dressage lessons, but a neighbor of ours will give her lessons if asked. Lily knew she was weak in dressage, so she arranged a lesson with the dressage-riding neighbor and paid for it herself. That took a big chunk of her available funds, but that's what she wanted. And they worked hard. (Wonderful neighbor!)

So, on Saturday at the horse trials, Lily was first after dressage, turning in a decent ride in a division where she was the youngest rider. (She had also made the extra effort and was the only one who was braided. Really bad braiding, however. Need to work on that.) Her score was 30.

She was riding in the Special Novice division, which was her first timed cross-country ride. Since Buddy gets yahooey and bold, her coach (new -- another story) told her to do lots of transitions from the canter to the trot during cross-country to remind Buddy that he needed to stay focused on his rider, not all the fun he was having. Because Buddy is basically a frat boy all about partying all the time. Cross country? Yahoo!

Lily learned how to work a digital watch with a timer. She wrote the time limits for cross-country in different colors on her bare arm. She wrote the possible time limits at the half-way point in more colors and in more places. She looked like a tattooed WWII sailor. So she seemed really focused on this new aspect of cross-country: the optimum time.

(Photo of walking around before time to go in starting box, click to enlarge.) She and Buddy left the starting box at a beautiful canter and put in a hunter-round-quality performance for the first part of cross-country, the part we could see across the big field leading to the woods. It was perfect. Then she disappeared into the woods. After a while, they came out again at another place. Now Buddy was faster. Buddy's testosterone or something was back (he's a gelding). The blood of his great-grandaddy Swaps, who won the Kentucky Derby and broke several speed records, was stirred up and Buddy was going. (After all, it was Kentucky Derby Saturday). Buddy wasn't wild, though. Buddy was just having fun. The good thing was that he was less likely to refuse in this state of mind. The bad thing was -- well, the bad thing was that he started bucking after an uphill jump. We watched. Lily stayed on, then pulled him to a halt. Whew! Good girl! That's one of the things that she feared would happen. It happened -- and she handled it beautifully.

They cantered on to the bank and other more challenging obstacles. They no longer looked like a hunter round, but bold eventers. Buddy even jumped things that would normally have scared him. Attaboy! Attagirl! And they headed on home but maintained control. Awesome!

All goals achieved. Everybody had fun. No stops. Bucking controlled. Great ride..... Except, the first place holder after dressage -- the one with all the times written in Sharpie marker all over her arms -- had not only put her watch on UPSIDE DOWN, but forgot to check it at the halfway or any other point. And though they were doing a beautiful job in the parts we could see, Lily decided to walk, with some trotting, on the path through the woods.

This may have been a good choice. Maybe Buddy would have been even bolder (and worse) when they came out of the woods. But it would have been nice if she'd at least checked her watch. She had all kinds of time faults, which we didn't know about because the scorer (almost all volunteers are moms and dads whose kids ride at this farm) made a mistake and posted Lily as still in first place after cross-country. Oh well.

Due to parental error (that would be me, speaking of checking your watch), Lily had to rush to show jumping. Her warm up consisted of a fast trot there, and she kept hurrying when they entered the ring. She had quite the cowboy show-jumping ride. No mistaking this for a hunter round. Buddy was bold, she was still hurrying from her rush to the ring, and at one point they were going so fast she had to pull him up before a jump and circle (he would have jumped it -- yahoo!) to get herself organized. The right decision in terms of living a long and happy life. The wrong decision if she didn't want to get faults for a refusal. Still hurrying, she almost came off on a monstrous leap Buddy made over a fan-spread jump, followed by a sharp turn. The crowd gasped. Was she coming off? No! She regained her stirrups and balance and galloped to the next hairpin turn and jump. Wheee! They may have walked through the woods, but they were putting on a show now. When they left the ring, the ringmaster said, "And that was our speed round."

Not pretty. Not the way we had walked it and planned it. That rush to the ring had lost Lily most of her IQ points and whatever recollection she had of walking the course, planning the turns and her approach speeds. But she handled it. And if she'd been given the chance to be there early enough to catch her breath and school, she probably would have ridden it more conservatively and not had to circle before a jump. So I learned something, too. (Wait by the ring because they're going faster than you think -- show jumping was in numerical order and there were no loudspeakers broadcasting the show's progress, so we were eating hot dogs at the trailer when Lily should have been warming up. Excuses, excuses. Lucky not to be disqualified, though Lily did arrive within the time limit. I called later to apologize to the organizer.)

Anyway. When the ribbons were handed out, Lily was in last place. She knew she'd lost points for the stop in show jumping. But she thought she was in first place after cross-country because that's what the posted score said. She didn't know about the monstrous time faults for her pleasant walk through the woods.

Oh well. Score poster error. Not a big deal. It's a friendly event and everybody is just doing their best.

So she went from first to last.  She lost after almost winning. But it was an absolutely fabulous day, filled with success after success after success in all the things that count the most for the future.

I asked her if she wished that she'd signed up for the division that jumped the same course but wasn't timed. "No, Mom. It's just a ribbon. If I hadn't been timed, I wouldn't know I needed to work on that."

Bless her. I'm resisting the urge to go out and buy her a big ribbon, because I think she's a winner.

But we don't measure success in ribbons, so I'll restrain myself. (Photo below from dressage warm up, click to enlarge.)

Some Professional Advice on "To Breed or Not to Breed?"

Thanks for all your comments on "To Breed or Not to Breed?" Breeding a nice mare to a nice stallion and wanting to keep the offspring (assuming said offspring lives, etc.) in spite of what Fugly says has many benefits, ranging from just plain fun to learning about life to, as MiKael pointed out, being allowed to follow your dream. Is there anything more important than that?

So, I called my niece, the horse vet, for professional advice on what to do next and her opinion on the whole project. If I was hoping for an endorsement, perhaps I should have called someone else.

"Oh, Anne! You DON'T want to do that," she said. Her passionate, unequivocally negative response surprised me.

"I don't?" I said, shocked and disappointed.

"Absolutely not. I've seen so many bad horses that were raised by mother-daughter owners. Some of the worst horses I deal with.  Not that you and Lily would necessarily ruin the horse, maybe if you had good professional help you wouldn't, but horses raised as pets in the yard usually don't understand that they are horses," she said. "If it's a male you could geld it and cut off some of those problems, but you'd still have to discipline yourselves to treating it like a horse."

Now, she loves me and knows me. On the plus side, this reaction means she thinks that I'm basically a kind (pushover) person whose existing horses are pets but were, fortunately, raised by someone else. So I'm not insulted even if I am shocked. I do indulge my animals, husband and daughter. And myself. (I'm working on denying myself chocolate.)

But I'd never thought about this pitfall before. "You'd need to treat the foal like a horse, treat it like its mother treats it. Train it and ignore it," she said. But it's so cute! How could we do that? I guess that's her point.

So I said, "What if we got professional help and didn't ruin the horse?" So we talked about who could help us, how it should be done, the perils of pregnancy and birth and the heartbreak that can happen. We talked about the expense and the stallions under consideration.

She said, "I don't think you or Lily could handle it if something went wrong. Bad wrong." She's the one I called when the hamster needed to be euthanized. She's the one who's seen us at our crazy worst with our pets. She has a point. But we're several dead cats and hamsters under the bridge, so to speak. And isn't this part of the learning process about following your dreams? That sometimes bad things happen and you have to take a detour, redirect, redream and try again another way? So I got her to go along with that.

But then we got to the thing that's probably going to stop me. Lily is 13. If we breed Lucy tomorrow and she foals next year, Lily will be 19 before she can start jumping the foal and really using him/her.

Sure, at 19 Lily could still be riding like a fiend and could somehow win enough scholarships to afford to go to college AND take a horse. But there's so much important in life that needs attention at that age. School, college decisions, boys, a social life. Will she still be my horse-loving girl? And if not.....? I guess we could sell the horse. But this isn't part of this dream.

Lily and I discussed the timing of all this, the foal's age and development and while she believes she will be riding and competing at Rolex in the near future -- and I hope she will but think her schedule is too optimistic by a decade or more and is certainly out of our budget -- she understood that she her goals and the foal's maturation rate don't coincide. Yes, she can be riding and training the baby before it's five, but she can't really be asking for hard physical  work.

More thinking to come, but that's today's state of mind.

She hasn't done all that Buddy can do. Or Lucy, either. I think I'm going to get her to sit down with one of her former trainers who competed at Radnor with an affordable QH and understands dreams and finances. Maybe if we set goals for this year, and next year, etc. Lily is a talented, dedicated rider, but doesn't know quite as much as she thinks she does.

This is tough and I don't want her life lesson about horses to be that it's all about the money. I want it to be that if your dream is big enough, you'll find a way.

I Want to Scare the Hel(met) Onto You!

See this helmet? The 12-year-old child (not Lily) who was wearing it walked away with just scratches from a fall where her barrel-racing pony somersaulted over her. WEAR YOUR HELMET.

Lily suffered a concussion when she fell off on Monday, even though she was wearing her helmet (which split and I haven't photographed). Lily could still have bleeding on the brain. We have to continue to watch her closely. And she can't ride again for at least two weeks for fear of re-injury. The doctor told me this today, and then x-rayed her spine, which is "negative."

Thank God her 4-H leaders showed her the film, "Every Time, Every Ride." She always wears a helmet, and made me promise to wear one, too. I'd hate to think what might have happened if she hadn't been wearing one. (You can buy the "Every Time, Every Ride" video here for $15 -- you have to scroll down the page to find it.)

Monday Lily was riding just the kind of ride where you wouldn't necessarily wear a helmet. Just playing around bareback with the horse in the backyard/pasture. It was a light ride to get outside a little after violin concert practice. Then something happened -- and she got a concussion and slammed her spine into the ground.

I'm in shock. If you ride horses, you fall off. Though she seems fine, I wish I'd taken her to the ER immediately. Instead, I first made her (with her agreement) get back up and ride some more (Bad Mom but a True if Stupid Horse Mom) and then I kept an eye on her.

What was I thinking?

I know the doctor thought I was crazy (Bad Mom) when I took Lily in to see him today. He said she had a second-degree concussion. And he told me all the things to worry about, and I'm about caught up on all my worrying.

She had a concussion, doing nothing, riding her own horse in her own yard. Wear a helmet -- always!

If you need more convincing, go scare your pants off (and your helmet on) here.

Yes, we're going to hang the split helmet on the tack room wall as a reminder for when we get overconfident about our mortality. Or worried about our hair.

And if you want more reasons to put on that helmet, go visit Behind the Bit. She's serious but a lot funnier than these other links.

The Fall that Broke Lily's Helmet

I didn't see it happen, so I don't know if Lily had a concussion or not. Yesterday Lily was riding Buddy with nothing but a halter and a leadrope -- just a quick ride because she'd had to stay after school for violin concert practice. It always happens on the quick ride, doesn't it?

She remembers arguing with Buddy over which way they were going. Probably not the best decision for riding with a halter and leadrope. And he got upset and she lost the argument. She landed on her back and cracked the back of her helmet (it was a new International schooling helmet -- the Styrofoam split from the bottom to inside back).

I couldn't decipher what had happened, nor how severely she was injured. Nothing broken but lots of scratches on her back and arms. She was willing to get back on, so she rode him for a little while longer. It was then I realized she was crying.

She was confused. Was that from fright, or a concussion? She was quite upset, she said because she couldn't remember. Was that because it happened quickly, or had she blacked out? She didn't know. I didn't know. She seemed otherwise fine, so I got her into a warm bath and gave her an Advil.

And I watched her. She developed a headache. I looked up "head trauma" in my childcare book. Then I started to worry. I shouldn't have given her the Advil. She hurt -- but more than that, she was upset (this child falls off all the time and is rarely upset). She didn't want to eat, ate a little, and threw up. This was nearly four hours later. At this point, I was ready to go to the ER. (I almost called a dear friend who's a pediatrician in another city but that didn't seem fair, especially since I know her job has been very demanding lately. And I didn't call our pediatrician because they will ALWAYS tell you to go to the ER, I suspect because of potential lawsuits.)

But we didn't go to the ER. Deep down I didn't think there was anything seriously wrong and neither did Paul. But I just wanted to be sure. (When I left the room, Paul told her that if she didn't quit being so melodramatic she was going to end up in the ER because that's where I was headed. I didn't know this until later.) Lily told me she was okay, just tired. I slept with her in case she had convulsions or anything else. She didn't go to school today, and slept for 12 hours.

I'm grateful it wasn't worse. Low-key riding with a halter and leadrope has done a lot to build her confidence and trust with Buddy. Until yesterday. I think the lesson she needs to learn is to pick her battles -- to make sure she's equipped to always win. Or save the fight for another day.

What did I learn? Gratitude -- and fear. And maybe even a sense that I can trust my judgment.

Always, always wear your helmet.

Spring Cleaning

Blogging is light because I've been abducted by a 13-year-old on Spring Break who must be channeling my mother-in-law. We are cleaning and organizing the barn. She'd rather do this than go to the beach!

Stripping the stalls was easy. Now we're re-doing the tack/feed room. Too much stuff. Too little room. Complicated by having to keep my mother's cat, Dipstick, in there at night and he sprays, so we have to ... well, box stuff up and cuss a lot.

Last night we almost decided to evict him and let him find another place to sleep. I'm glad we didn't. The neighbors who were feeding the feral cats left, and it appears that the cats have moved into our hay loft. Tiger and one of them had a monstrous fight last night. I'm sure Lily and I were quite the sight chasing the squalling, tumbling cats through the pasture in our pajamas. We brought Tiger inside and he was so full of rage that he growled the whole time he was eating and we were examining him. He got some scratches. I hope they don't get infected.

Usually Tiger sleeps in the dog bed with the dog on the porch. We have an indoor cat, too.

What to do about the feral cats? If I were smart, I would set traps and haul these cats down to the animal shelter. If I were smart and didn't think I was hauling them to be euthanized. I'll ponder this for a while. It's clear we need to change how we leave the food out.

In the meantime, we're dealing with the too much stuff, too little space dilemma. You never know when you might need something again. A blanket that doesn't fit our current horses might fit one in the future. Ditto bridles, etc.

It will be great to be done. I hope we have a chance to plant flowers and make it pretty. And I'm so thrilled that Lily wants to do this on Spring Break, though I think that she may have been abducted and replaced by an alien.

Lots of riding going on, too.

The Old Pictures Meme Part Two

There were several horses after Spot. Joe was the one I had the longest. He was too fast and too hot for the camera to capture him, so I'm not going to show any photos. He was out of a mare who won the South West championship as a polo pony. Joe was fast and agile like his mother and was being trained to be a polo pony (and had already been sold) when they got to the final stage where they actually used a mallet.

Nothing doing. No mallets for Joe. No nothing for Joe. You couldn't even move in an unexpected way while on him. So they trained him to jump and I ended up with him. My father loved him. Joe was athletic and crazy. I didn't know enough to know I should have said, "This horse isn't working." Instead, I rode him for the next 15 years. I got him when he was five and I think I was in ninth grade. Even when he was 24 he was still hot. When I was young, I would lie in bed the night before fox hunts and shows, wondering if I would be killed that day. Why I never told my father I don't know. Joe would go nuts if I had a cold and had to pull a Kleenex out of my pocket. You couldn't do anything on his back. He couldn't walk. Jig jig jiggity jig. I tried every bit known to man on him; the twisted wire snaffle bloodied his mouth but didn't slow him down. I finally settled on a plain snaffle because it seemed to upset him the least and the others didn't work. I just relaxed as much as possible, chose my battles, and realized that though he rushed like a maniac, had no brakes and might do anything at anytime, he was going to stay upright. Great athlete. Terrifying ride.

One thing that Joe taught me was that there are times when it doesn't do any good to fight. You may as well relax, realize that this is the best it's going to get, you lived through it last time and to enjoy what you can. I learned how to survive. I think that lesson about relaxing when my horse was not relaxed really helped me later, with the best horse I ever, ever had: Jack.

When Joe  got too old to hunt (but was still too hot to enjoy) I rented a yellowish, long-haired, compact "grey" horse to fox hunt. It was a random thing. You call up the hunter barn, say you want to hunt and they've got a horse for you when you get there. It was like a blind date. He was also hot and a rusher and couldn't stand still. There was some jig jig jiggity jigging going on with him, but it wasn't out of craziness -- he was out having fun. And so was I! I had the best time I'd had in years with this strange little speedy, bold jumper. I asked if he was for sale and he was. I think everything was for sale. Since I'd expressed an interest in him, the next time I rented him he was clipped and bright white. We wheeler-dealered and I bought him. I changed his name from Popcorn to Ivan. (Please notice I was back to using saddle pads.)

About that same time I became interested in dressage. Ivan didn't take to dressage. His tests were very forward, he was smallish (around 15.1 hands) and his movements were average. But here's the funny thing -- at shows and events people would ask me if there were other Lipizzaners that I knew of in the area. I almost fell over. The German  Bereiter I was riding with at the time didn't like Ivan.  He wasn't a fancy big warmblood. (He greatly offended her with his habit of pooping in his bucket and rolling in the mud. She called me one day at work to complain, "Your pony is a PIG." She wanted to charge me for daily cleaning. I told her it didn't bother me if he was dirty. It bothered her so much that she cleaned him every day for free.) Anyway, here's a photo of us in the show jumping phase of an event. Notice the duct tape. I always ended up using duct tape with those boots. I think the buckles were cursed, even when I replaced them I ended up with duct tape. (You'll notice them in Jack's photo tomorrow. I can't quite seem to get it all together. There's always something taped or jerry-rigged.)

This is one of my favorite pictures and memories of Ivan. I had worried myself into a stew over the cross-country jump before this one. Ivan didn't even notice it, we sailed over flawlessly and by the time we got to this jump, I was full of joy and relief. During these years the eventing rules only had time penalties for being too slow. That was never a problem. Ivan would jump banks, ditches, water, the moon, whatever. He just wouldn't jump them slowly. Three strides before the jump I had to give up whatever control I thought I had and let him do it. He was great fun if excessively thrilling. But I got really tired of fighting with him in dressage and we weren't going anywhere, so I sold him and found Jack.

To my credit, I never claimed he was a Lipizzaner though the temptation was there. His next owner also enjoyed him.  He died several years ago. I would not clone him for Lily, but I have fond memories. He was a great gentleman on the ground.

My Daughter and the Horses are Calling the SPCA

(Photo is not me. All my hair is pulled out.) Okay, I've got a new routine going and I'm not in the rhythm yet. Since Paul now has a gas-guzzling, horse-trailer pulling SUV and I've got a gas-sipping Prius and the price of gas is obscene, I'm taking Lily to school MWF, working out at Butterfly Life and sitting down to work at my computer all bathed and dressed, fed and disorganized by 9:00 a.m. I think it's a good routine for everyone. It's just not routine yet.

So yesterday morning I was sitting here at work, all proud of myself for being right on schedule, when I heard Buddy whinnying. Though I had fed him, I forgot to give them hay (not enough blood to my brain after my work out). I quickly corrected the problem and was grateful that I have a very vocal, demanding horse. At least I was grateful that particular time.

And now we've got this big storm system coming through today. It's still in the 60s but will be in the high 40s tonight. We blanket at 55 degrees. It's poured down rain several times. The horses are wet. More storms are coming. It's not cold yet. We could have tornadoes but I think they're going to be most likely north of here.

In the break between storms, I told Lily to feed the horses. We then had the mother-and-13-year-old girl disagreement over whether or not they need to have on blankets. "NO!" I said.

"Will you go out in the middle of the night when the storms are over and it's cold to blanket them?" she asked. Or was it a demand?

"Maybe," I said. I'm not big on going out in the mud in my PJs to blanket wet horses.

She didn't like that answer so she's going to do it now. NO! Etc.

Apparently, I'm a bad horse owner. Y'all please vouch for me when Lily and Buddy both call the SPCA.

By the way, the Trexler's were back in the news today. The authorities discovered 17 more Arabians on property the Trexlers were renting not far from here. These were in better shape and were thought to be intended for sale. Also, they've increased the charges for the son who was the assistant deputy of agriculture to felony charges, which could mean 20 years in jail instead of one.

I'm sick of this story, but it's not over. They've got forensic pathologists checking out the horse bones in one of the Trexler's fields to determine why the horses died.

How to Take a Photo of Your Horse

When you go to take a photo of your horse, you need to approach it as if you were about to take a group photo of a four-year-old kindergarten class. There are so many moving parts. Ears, eyes, head, neck, legs, tail, unmentionables. Plus you've got the problem of perspective. Take a good photo of the front and the rear looks undersized as it recedes into the distance. And the same is true for shots taken too close to the rear.

Lily got the go-ahead from Pony Club to keep her horse manual even though she's not a member so that when she joins in the fall she'll have the work to show to help her get rated to the next level. Her horse manual needs to have a photo of Buddy.

Yesterday was warm, so she gave him a bath and then I took photos when he dried. Unfortunately, a storm was coming in and the light was dying, so the best photo we got doesn't have the greatest lighting. Here it is (CLICK ON ALL PHOTOS TO ENLARGE):

You have no idea what we went through to get this. So, since today is absolutely gorgeous, Lily wanted to do it over and get a photo where life isn't greyed-over by the coming storm.

I think Buddy was less cooperative today because he's afraid these are "horse for sale" photos. Or he's just tired of the paparazzi. So, first we had to wake him up.

The next problem was that he got a little too relaxed, if you know what I mean. Note Lily's expression. Photo has been edited to keep this blog family-friendly.

Then there's the issue with the feet not being in the right spot.

And we tried plastic bags, jumping around and waving like fools, etc., but here's the best way to get your horse to put his ears forward for a photo:

Part of the problem is he's just so very friendly that he stays in your face, which makes it hard to photograph the entire horse. I quit. She can use the photo from yesterday.

Pony Club

Lily was a member of the United States Pony Club for a couple of years when she was younger. I was also a member when I was a young teenager, though they weren't nearly as organized or picky then. I've written a little about them before here. Pony Club is why we have so many blue buckets.

Lily's 13th birthday is coming up and what she wants most of all is to re-join Pony Club. So I said yes and began the process.

I remember the people from before. They are horse moms who volunteer their time to help kids learn how to ride well and safely. They're concerned about the animal's welfare and teach the children and teenagers how to take the best care of their horses. It really is a wonderful organization filled with nice people and great kids.

But it's a little rigid. I couldn't find out if there was anyway to get Lily's application in fast enough for them to allow her to attend this coming weekend's meeting on horseback. Finally it became clear that I was the only one with a sense of urgency, which is fine because they are volunteers who have a life, too. It's not their fault that we didn't know we were going to re-join Pony Club until last week. Disappointing, though. I would have been glad to pay for FedEx or do whatever, if only somebody would answer my questions and say they'd help.

And though it's been more than two years since Lily was rated, which determines what a child can do at a meeting -- whether she's trotting over a pole over the ground or cantering a 3-foot course -- she'd have to ride with the group that has that low rating. I know, I know. They have their rules and there's a good reason for them. Lily is not too interested in riding at the level she was two years ago, and I'm not too interested in hauling her an hour-and-a-half one-way to a meeting to ride at that level, either.

And, since she's not been an active member, she can't go to the rallies.

Sigh. I can see when I'm whipped. And Lily's quite disappointed.

Maybe she can join next year and get re-rated. Trouble is, the next rating requires an extensive record-keeping history of the horse's condition, care and the money required to support this hobby. Lily's all set to do it and has started. I wonder if it will count since she's keeping the records while not a member?

I'm afraid I know the answer. They don't make it easy to meet the requirements or get the answers, which is a shame.

It's one thing to make the horses jump over fences. It's another to make the moms and kids jump through hoops.

I hope we can work it out in the future. I hate for her to miss out almost as much as I hate beating my head against a wall.

Lucy's Rehab is Messing Up My Hair

I'm supposed to ride Lucy in a straight line (she can't walk in straight lines) on solid but not hard ground at a walk everyday, building up to 20 minutes by this coming Friday.

It's messing up my hair.

Lily's 4-H group did an outstanding job of scaring the bejeebus out of all the kids (and the moms) who watched the safety video about the importance of ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS wearing your helmet. Before this, I only wore my helmet when I jumped.

But Lily made me promise NEVER to ride without a helmet. And because I made that promise, I was wearing a helmet at least twice when I wouldn't have ordinarily and had two bad falls. The second one split the helmet.

I'm still here. And I'm still wearing a helmet.

But all this fuss for a ten-minute ride at the walk? First off, I'm not bothering to put the saddle on for that. So I ride that razor-withered mare bareback. Between her vast belly and the withers, something in/on my anatomy has got to give. I may need hip replacements. But that's all right. As long as Lucy is better.

I can't quite mount her bareback, so I dragged out an old rickety ladder and was surprised and delighted that she walked right up to it, let me climb up it and then climb on her back. What a smart, sensible girl.

Then, one lap around the pasture, she spotted the ladder. And it was scary! She wouldn't walk forward. She snorted. She got all wiggly, tall and tense. She'd just seen the ladder. We'd just used the ladder. But I guess it looked.... different.

I was glad I had on my helmet. But it sure does mess up my hair. I paid Lily to ride Lucy today. It was worth $3 not to have to do a re-do of my do.