Techniques

There are a lot of techniques out there for everything, these days, especially horse training.

Everyone thinks they have the ultimate training regime, to make the best possible horse. A few people are open enough to accept new ideas, and incorporate them into their own ways of doing things.

I'm going to talk about a couple of different philosophies and how I feel about them, here. Feel free to put in your own opinions in the comments, of course.

We'll start with the most recognizable: Natural Horsemanship. Pat Parelli and Clinton Anderson are two of the more famous advocates of this philosophy.

I like Natural Horsemanship, the basis of the technique is working with your horse in a way that speaks to his natural inclinations, that he can understand. There are a lot of things that can be accomplished this way, and while they may take a little longer, I think they turn out a better understanding between horse and rider.

I use several of Parelli and Anderson's specific techniques myself, from teaching a horse to lower it's head to avoid needing a stepladder to bridle or halter them, to using the round pen to establish or re-establish my dominant position in the herd. I use other techniques that are Natural-esque that I've figured out on my own, and a couple of those are what brought Monkey to the point of showing properly at halter from not wanting to lead at all, and also brought him to the point where you can pick up his feet without him going bug nuts on you.

One thing that I feel Natural Horsemanship is lacking, for all of it's value in communicating with the horse on a level that his mind can understand easily, is the consequences side of the coin.

Yes, Anderson uses harder work as a consequence, especially for gate or barn sour horses, but a herd doesn't trot or lope a horse in circles if they do something the more dominant members don't like. That's a consequence that the horse comes to understand, but not one that speaks to his natural bent.

Horses in a herd environment punish bad behavior with nips, and kicks. So why is it wrong to slap a hip with a cupped hand to simulate a light kick, or use fingers on a neck to intimate a nip? This is how your horse's mother taught him the social niceties of living in a herd in the first place. I'm not talking about beating a horse, or even making it hurt, I'm talking about just enough to get their attention.

Again, take Monkey for example. When I was working with him on his feet, it started as a matter of trust. I had to desensitize him and let him know that I wasn't going to hurt his fragile legs when I handled them. We spent a long time after workouts just touching and rubbing and asking him to stand still when I did it.

After a while, he started letting me pick his feet up. So I started working with him when he wasn't worked. And he went right back to his old habits. He knew what I wanted from him. He simply didn't want to comply. A little patient work, with very little result, and I found myself in a conundrum. That is, until I tried a back foot and he kicked at me, and I reacted instead of thinking. I hauled off and smacked him on the hip, it made an impact and a sound, and he started a bit. Then I went to pick up the foot again, and lo and behold he didn't try kicking me again.

I had already established my dominance in his herd, and he was responding to the natural heirarchy. I didn't hurt him, but I did give a consequence that made him understand that that wasn't acceptable, in a way that he's learned and lived with all his life.

That's what I mean about consequences the horse understands.

Now, a little further down the line from Natural Horsemanship falls Alexander Nevzorov. If you haven't heard of him, and I would be surprised if very many of you have, you can search his last name and find his website.

His precept, that a horse should be trained without use of a bit, spurs, or any form of restraint, is a bit extreme for me. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the kind of communication and camaraderie that allows you to work with your horse without those things. I just don't agree with doing away with them altogether.

Frankly, I don't see how it could possibly be safe. Of course, if you're going to learn his methods, or even participate in the online school forums, he requires that you first stop riding for at least a year, and reject completely all horse "sports." Which takes out the possibility of an exited horse running off in a crowd setting, to be sure.

The thing that really rubs me the wrong way about Nevzorov is the ego, honestly. He's demanding of his "students" and that's fine, but he's also placing demands on the general public, vilifying anyone who rides with a bit at all, and maintaining a PETA-throwing-paint-on-furs-esque drive to show the cruelty of bits in general.

Oh, and the hypocrisy of demanding that students or even curious passers by swear to his ideals before even going to his online forums, and at the same time maintaining a photo gallery of the "vicious sports" and encouraging the like-minded to haunt events to get more of these pictures is astounding.

So, while he may have methods that are useful, insightful, and downright genius, I don't know them. I won't go into his forums to see if any of them are posted, and I won't purchase his video.

You can find video of his results on the internet, on Youtube, and I admit that they're rather impressive. It's a beautiful thing to see a horse playing with a person at complete liberty, jumping and kicking and never touching the man standing in front of them. It's enough to give you chills when you see the horse perform a flawless courbette without any prompting at all, just because they enjoy it.

It's too bad that the master of these techniques is more concerned about immediately solving the problem he perceives in horsemanship than in sharing the knowledge that allows him to do these things. He'd probably win more hearts freely showing people his techniques and speaking gently against the things he eschews, than by adopting his extremist moral high ground.

I have to wonder how many people out there are like me, intrigued by the concept and thirsty for knowledge, but completely turned off by the manner in which the precept is presented?

Surely I'm not the only one?

Equine Difficulties.

I hate leaving a horse by itself. It's just not good for them, mentally. They don't thrive and they get into trouble.

That's why, back at the beginning of the last semester, I moved my older mare Legs.

Well, Farmmom did the actual moving, seeing as how I had three horses to settle in at the college. And, Farmmom had a few difficulties, including not being able to get her backed out of the trailer, or turned around. She had to take this extra large mare out through the emergency door in the front of the trailer.

Today, we got her moved back, and I blithely assured Farmmom that we'd be able to get her out of the trailer just fine.

Well, we did when we brought her home from the sale...

'Course, she's put on quite a bit of weight since we brought her home...

I could not get that mare to back out of the trailer. She'd back, one step at a time with me cajoling, pushing, cussing, and sweating, all the way to the back of the trailer... and stop.

Then she'd take that one last step back, her foot would hit the ground, and she'd hit the front of the trailer like a rocket.

And she's too fat to bend enough to turn all the way around in the four horse anymore.

I tried bribes, I tried getting in front of her and waving my arms, I tried blindfolding her... nothing worked.

I opened that escape door, and walked out, and she unloaded nice and easy.

I swear that horse will follow your lead straight into Hell, as long as you don't try to get her to back up to it.

Of course, it helped that she's been on pasture for a long time, and the last two months she's had free access to the high-protein ground grain that we feed the cattle. All the grain she can eat.

Plus, the hussy is in heat. To say that she was on the muscle today would be the understatement of the century. She looked like a high strung race horse on the end of my arm, and I was wishing for a chain shank lead rope by the time we were done with the walking we needed to do.

We'll see if she continues to be this much of a handful during her estrus, or if it's due to the combination of the grain and the hormones. If it's the latter, being off the grain will help. If the former, and I'm not sure because I haven't had to handle her much during her time of the month, then I'll put her on Regiment when I take her to the college.

I don't want to deal with her being flighty and on the muscle, and I don't want to deal with the consequences if she flirts with one of the unruly little two year old stud colts hard enough to get him to come to her through/around/over fences and then kicks the valuable little sucker with those dinner plates she uses for feet.

But, she's back with the others, and she's happy to be there. When I turned her loose they met at the gate to the corrals and then took off at a high lope bucking and kicking across the pasture, with Miss Legs in the lead.

All I can say is, after wrestling with her today, I'm really glad that she's fairly laid back about doing what we want her to do... cause frankly if she was just the slightest bit rank, she'd walk all over anyone in her way.

At Long Last!

I won the battle! So finally, after much struggle and strong language used by yours truly, here's the vid of me and Monkey in the show!

Food...

One of my favorite things in the world is food. I like good old down home country cooking. Comfort food, you know, meat and potatoes.

Unfortunately cooking for one, I don't always get to eat the way I did growing up. For instance there's a venison roast sitting in my freezer waiting for an occasion where there will be more than just me to eat it.

I refuse to waste a good venison roast, even though I've been craving it, just because I can't eat it all by myself. This roast is big enough that I probably wouldn't be able to eat all the leftovers without getting tired of the same thing all the time.

As a result of things like that I wind up eating quite a bit of quick and easy junk. I've figured out how to accent some of it, for instance Totino's combination pizzas are fairly tasty if you top them off with your own olives, mushrooms, and mozzarella cheese, and they're about the right size for a small meal for me.

Lately, I've been getting chided for my junky eating habits. Cowboy Mechanic is sure that I'm so thin I'm going to wither up and blow away if I get caught up in something and miss a single meal, so he'll oh-so-subtly ask me what I'm having for dinner, or what I had for lunch, to make sure I'm not starving myself.

I don't mind that so much, he's honestly concerned about my well being, and lets face it, sometimes I do get busy and not slow down to eat, which isn't good for me. It's kind of handy to be reminded sometimes when I get caught up in writing, or reading. Other times I feel like being a smart aleck and I just tell him I had a stick of gum earlier, and I'm not hungry.

He's slowly figuring out that I'm not starving myself, and I'm not gonna get "fattened up." If a lifetime of Farmmom's cooking didn't do it, ain't nothin gonna do it.

Anyway, I tend to eat a lot of the little chicken tenders, because they come in a big ol' resealable bag. Pull out three or four, cook em up one way or another, and put the rest of them back in the freezer.

Tonight it was four of them, baked with butter, garlic powder, sea salt, and pepper, along with some broccoli alfredo flavored Lipton Pasta Sides, and corn. Mmmmm.

In other food news, Farmmom told me that Farmdad made a big batch of jambalaya today, so I'll have some rich cajun goodness come Thursday night. Farmdad's jambalaya is sooo good, even with being so spicy I can only eat little bowls at a time, with lots of tortillas with butter to help my taste buds survive.

It wouldn't be the same if it didn't blow the top of my head off when I took that first bite.

Ahh Children

Today, I have all three of Cowboy Mechanic's kids. He had a truck to work on, and everyone was busy, so he asked me pretty please to watch them. We've been to two different parks, Mickey D's and my apartment, since nine thirty this morning.

Just watching the three of them run around like wild Indians wears me out! They have a ton of energy, but all in all they're good kids, and fun.

I think I actually managed to wear them out a little though, because they wanted to come inside and rest for a while. They're giving the TV their father's blank stare right now, whilst Farmmom is at Walmart getting the ingredients for cookies, so she can play with her KitchenAide one more time before she entrusts it to my loving care.

See, I got this issue of Cooking with Paula Deen, the chocolate issue. And I'm gonna be doing some baking, because the stuff looks so damned good. And Farmmom hasn't been using her nice stand mixer much lately, so I'm borrowing it.

I'll be making things like Creamy Chocolate Mousse Cake, White Chocolate Tiramisu, and White Chocolate Cherry Pie. One at a time, but still, it's so much more convenient if you don't try to mix it all by hand.

Mmmmm Chocolate..... whups, better go wipe the drool before it shorts out my keyboard!

Whew

I find myself in the unique position of having a blog that people read, and wanting to write in it to keep them happy... and not being able to.

There's a certain amount of running around with chocolate and coffee saying "Here Muse, here Muse, good Muse... please come back!"

There's also a certain amount of not spending any appreciable time in the apartment during which I can actually write. It's time to break out the notebooks and pens to carry with me everywhere. If I'm going to accomplish this whole getting paid for my writing thing, I'm gonna have to find the time to actually write.

In other news, its planting time in Farm Land, and apparently even if you're not actually on the farm you get pretty busy if you're a Farmgirl.

I've helped Mechanic Cowboy's brother and sister in law with their flower beds, and yesterday I was at the Old Homestead digging up Mamaw's new strawberry bed. Well, it's not a new bed, but nothing has been done in that bed for a couple of years. Knowing that, I voluntold myself to turn the bed with a shovel to break up the packed dirt, to make it easier on her and Farmmom when they were ready to plant.

There are fifty bare-root strawberry plants on their way. What I got done yesterday isn't going to hold all of them, but it's a start. It almost looks like you might be able to plant something there!

Things aren't likely to slow down any time soon, either. Mechanic Cowboy's eldest has another softball game tonight, and circumstances are such that his sister in law has to be elsewhere with her eldest, and Mechanic Cowboy himself has to go to a meeting for work. Farmgirl to the rescue, she'll be with me from about five fifteen until after Mechanic Cowboy gets out of his meeting around nine.

Then, sometime fairly soon, I'll be hopping back out on the road construction, to make some moolah, which will be a really good thing since my annual female check up cost me about two hundred dollars at the doctor's office yesterday. Yikes.

And, June seventh and eighth I'll be participating in the local Relay For Life Cancer Walk. We'll be walking all night of the seventh, to the morning of the eighth. I'll be wearing my knee braces.

If you want to participate in a Relay For Life event in your area, go to their website linked above. They've got a Find Event feature that will let you find out when and where the events are, and you can sign up or pledge money online.

Even if you haven't had the experience of losing someone, or nearly losing someone to cancer, its a good cause.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go strangle the neighbor's rat dog. I'll teach the damn thing "quiet" and "stay" at the same time....

Mother's Day....

Was a little belated for Farmmom this year. I couldn't get her present here in time, unfortunately. However, it arrived yesterday and I've been informed that it was well worth the wait.

See, Farmmom is allergic to coconut. So every time I've given her a box of chocolates, she's had to peruse the little diagram of what all is in there carefully to avoid the inevitable chocolate with coconut in it.

Then I stumbled across this site and I finally managed to get her an allergy free box of chocolates, that was also loaded with her favorite kinds of treats.

See, that place lets you build your own custom box of hand made chocolates. You pick what goes in it, and they put it together and ship it.

Since we're a warm state and far far away from the east coast where the shop is, I had to have it shipped with a cold pack, but it got here safe and sound yesterday, and Farmmom got her Mother's day gift when she got home last night.

I'll have to call or send an email and compliment Alethea's on their fine chocolates, although I think I'll phrase my review a bit different than Farmmom did...

"Oh My God, girl, that stuff is sex in a box!!"

I have a feeling that they'll be getting more of our money in the future, if Farmmom has anything to say about it. I haven't gotten to try them yet, but she promised to save me a couple.

I give gifts of win and awesome.