smellshorsey

Am I the Only One Who's Never Heard of a "Numnah"?

We don't normally watch the National Spelling Bee, but we caught a few minutes of it last night and I'm glad to say we caught this very, very funny moment when one boy was asked to spell "numnah," which is a pad used between the saddle and the horse. I have never heard of a numnah, but after watching this, I won't forget it. (We use a variety of pads, but no numnahs.)

Watch this video -- precious!

Getting Stuck

 I haven't been posting because I've been stuck. No, not like the horse in this picture, though this is exactly how I feel. (Photo from here.)

Let me first explain what "stuck" is. It's not getting your head stuck in a chair, no matter how coy and attention getting that might be.

Stuck is much less dramatic and possibly even less useful. A local riding school has some very reliable school horses. They can be relied upon to do what you ask, or perhaps not. But they won't do anything stupid or dangerous.

Sometimes, for no apparent reason, they get stuck. Maybe they will have been standing in a group while their riders jump individually, or while their riders were getting instruction on what to do next. At any rate, when the group of horses moves off, one (or more) might decide not to. Their riders will flail away with their legs banging the horses' sides in an effort to move the horse forward, but the school horse (or horses) don't budge. They are stuck.

You've seen it. You may have experienced it. The horse is stuck, all four feet planted on the ground. It's not going anywhere. It is stuck.

The instructor has to intervene. She pulls them forward. They come unstuck and it's like it never happened. "Sometimes they just get stuck," she tells the rider.

I've got something that I just have to write and don't want to. It's not hard, but there's a lot of it. I've done all the pre-work, the research and interviews. And try as I might, I can't make myself move forward. I am as stuck as one of those school horses, and there is no one but me to get me unstuck. I'm not doing a good job of urging me forward, but I am doing a good job of at least limiting fun distractions, like blogging.

I came a little unstuck this morning, since the deadline was last week (oops!). I'm a third of the way through. So long as I don't get stuck again (this is not writer's block -- this is an inner protest) I should be finished by Wednesday.

And that will unstick the rest of my life.

I need to post about riding horses in the ocean in the Bahamas last month. I need to blog about the Pony Club Quiz Rally, and especially tell you about the shoe table. But for now, I just need to stay unstuck. Be back soon.

How to Cross Railroad Tracks

Lily went to a hunter-pace event sponsored by The Camden Hunt a few weeks ago. She rode with a neighbor I hardly know, but I couldn't go out with her because Lucy isn't quite up to it. I haven't been hunting in years, but thing I remember well is that there are train tracks you must cross to enter hunt country (and to exit).

Though accidents have been rare, they have happened. A few years ago a hunt staffer's horse got tangled up in the tracks and bled out before help could arrive. Unfortunately, there's no other way into the woods.

Since Lily doesn't have any experience crossing train tracks while riding through our subdivision or at any of the local farms, I thought to ask her before she rode off. "Do you know how to cross train tracks?"

"Do you jump them?" she asked.

No, but I liked her attitude. I explained how she needed to give Buddy his head (more or less) and let him pick his way slowly across the tracks. I told her to get in two-point so it would be easier for him to carry her (nonexistent) weight. I said to be careful and go slowly. No jumping of the tracks.

I told her another option was to get off and lead him over, but since he's big he's no fun to get on without a mounting block. Still, it's always an option.

And I didn't tell her about the time I was there on Jack, who was young and green, when a freight train came by at a high speed, blasting its horn. I backed Jack into some underbrush with his back facing the tracks and prayed. Prayer works!

Buddy didn't want to cross the tracks but he followed the other horse. Smart Buddy. And they had a wonderful time and were only ten minutes too fast.

She's going cub hunting with our Pony Club for the first time on Saturday morning, which is also the first day of NaNoWriMo. I hope I will bring my laptop or AlphaSmart and sit in a comfortable place writing my 1,700 words for that day and not go hang out with the others.

I really need to get my novel written.

How Did They Haul Horses in the 1930s?

I'm working on a fiction piece and find that I need to know how they hauled horses in the 1930s. Did they  have horse trailers? Or was it all boxes built on the back of trucks?

I probably need to check out "Seabiscuit" again. I remember he rode in his own railroad car but this is different because in my fiction this is not a valuable horse and his owners are struggling in the Depression. However, it's possible that they could still own and be using something from better times.

I asked my father, who was around then, how they hauled horses and was surprised that he not only didn't know, but he didn't make something up. Must have been tired.

Thanks!

Please Help a Writer be Accurate About Travel by Horses

You know how offended us horse people get when we read books where the information or use of horses isn't accurate and it just ruins the whole story? Well, now's our chance to help a writer get it right.

A friend sent me an e-mail requesting information about how people traveled by horseback in pre-industrial revolution America. To me, traveling with horses requires a truck, so I don't know the answers. Can y'all help by answering the following very good questions?

My characters are going to travel on horseback and with a mule across South Carolina from the coast to the mountains. The first two days they want to travel fairly quickly, (I'm thinking about 4 miles an hour) just in case they are being followed. They will travel about eight hours a day.

 

Questions:

1. How often should they stop to rest the horses?

2. How many times a day would the horses eat?

3. What could the horses eat along the way? I'm thinking that since they stick close to the river, there should be access to grasses. Should I have them pack some feed on the mule (corn, oats)?

Carnival of Christian Writers Today -- Good Stuff to Read!

Today is the Carnival of Christian Writers, and I'm honored to be included. Click here for some inspiring and helpful words from working Christian writers.

How my horses got into fiction

I keep wanting to blog about a really funny incident that happened with a Shetland pony my father bought for my nephew. The pony got his nose stuck in a box....and then....

But I've already written this episode and countless others, into my fiction. The overall story is fiction -- I made it up -- but some of the components are my real horses.

So, for today's post, I'm going to link to the story that has the pony-with-the-nose-in-the-box episode in it. The story is strange in a number of ways. First, it was supposed to be a story about a controlling grandmother who bought her granddaughter a pony so the family couldn't move away without great heartache to the granddaughter. (This I made up.) But the grandmother never made it into the story. The original concept did have a saddle in it. A western pony saddle.

And there's another unusual twist to the story. It is about a mother, daughter and father living in the country with horses. Sounds like my real life now. Except, when I wrote the story, I wasn't even pregnant.And we lived in the suburbs and I boarded my TB dressage/eventing horse elsewhere. My real horse was very much afraid of pigs and that part is real. And one thing that has always bothered me about the story, which I always intended to fix, is that the dressage exercises go in the wrong order. I tell you that so you know that I know better. I would tell more, but it would spoil the story.

If you've got a few minutes and like literary fiction, visit "Riding Past the Pigs" here or here. (Click on "Riding Past the Pigs".

Let me know what you think! I'm feeling very exposed here.