Update

Dear Everyone,

I know I haven't been updating my blog recently and I am sorry. There are two reasons for this though: because I've been learning how to put on a bridal,

On a side note, I've learned that hay is, in fact, just a bunch of dried grass, and not, in fact, a distinguished variety of plant.  Thought I'd pass that along.

Anticipating the jump...

The single hallmark of riding horses is jumping high and fast.  I know there's other stuff people do like depressage and grooming, but honestly that's for people with ADHD.  It's all about showing off brute strength and aerodynamics.  This strangely fuzzy black horse I found on the Google surely knows it:

(Look at him soar through that standard!)

So I began doing some more the Google searches to study how other riders get the most out of their jumps.  What I can observe is a culmination of subtle but necessary posture developments.  It's not the kind of thing that emerges overnight [challenge accepted] but takes years of careful training.  I guess that's why horse lessons cost money?  Anyway, see if you can also find what I saw in these photos that was so illuminating about the process of jumping.  (Hint: it's subtler than you'd think.)

(Look closely...)

(This one is obscured by angles)

(This horse is probably R. Kelly)

(LOL j/k this one is a poodle)

The answer is this: they're all leaning forward!  All those riders are like way over the horse's neck.  That's the secret!  To jump high and fast, you need to lean forward.  Try it.  I'm not at the jumping stage yet, but it's never to early to get started, right?  So for your edification, and in anticipation of one day jumping myself, I tried it out:

YES PEOPLE.  This is the look you want to go for when jumping.  Make sure your trainer knows.  (You can never be too sure if they've done extensive The Google searching like I have.)  Good luck on your next jumps!

Riding in the Rain

Hey California, remember when it rained last weekend?

List of horse names

Now that I'm a blogger in the horse world, I hope to someday actually ride a horse.  Haha psych! I totally rode a horse twice.

Eventually, I will have sixteen horses.  But like many of my human friends, horses tend to already come with names.  But with baby humans, you can choose their names.  And if you adopt humans, you can trade out their names for a better one, like Kathy.  Buying a horse is like adopting a human, so I'm going to list all the names that I'm considering for my lucky future horses.  But they have to be special names, for my special horses; people should know which are my special horses.  WHICH IS WHY YOU CAN'T STEAL MY NAMES.  So everything in this post is 2016 © Me. (I got some legal advice from my... self.)  I would however be willing to license any of the names herein.  Contact my legal advisor 4 deetz.

I'm going to interject a complaint here.  I accidentally deleted this entire post so far and had to rewrite it, and I liked it all better the first time. :'( :'( :'( Has this happened to anyone else out there?  I'm mildly devastated.   Do you hear me?? MILDLY!!!



Okay here's my list of awesome horse names:

1. Cough Drops
2. Dog Food
3. Eggs
4. Toothbrush

Wait I'm so sorry, that was my shopping list.  Let me find my horse names:

1. Cough Drops
2. Saladhorse
3. Papercut
4. Buckey
5. Buddy Holly
6. Chimichanga
7. Sir Trips-a-Lot
8. Alternating Current
9. Squirrel
10. Thoreau Bread
11. Johann Sebastian Bach II
12. Bulldozer
13. Jockstrap
14. Junior the Eggplant
15. Sixteen
16. Blogger H

Quality.

Warm Bloods versus Cold Bloods

Up until quite recently I thought that all horses were mammals. Then I found out about cold blooded horses. Since I've heard so little on this topic, I did a bit of research and wanted to list some facts about cold blooded horses:

• They will kill you in the middle of the night
• They have scales
• Something about getting their body heat from an "ecto" thermas
• They like apples

These few facts really make cold blooded horses stand apart from their sisters and brothers of the other temperament.  Who knew?! Does anyone else know any good facts about cold blooded horses?

Information for Pilots Studying the Equestrian Arts

Hello Kathy.  I don't have much time, but I wanted to share some interesting diagrams I found that should help you in your piloting skills.

Notice how the arrow clearly shows that you want to go OVER the polls (like G.W. Bush), and not through them (like Bernie).  This applies for both completing your hunter/jumper test, and your piloting license test.  If you crash into the poles with your flight school's Cessna, they will not be handing you a blue ribbon.

More pertinent diagram information:

I like how very clear this diagram is to show that you will be riding a horse through these standards, and not a Cessna 172 Skyhawk.  Also, that the horse is supposed to jump over the poles: I've been to SO MANY horse shows where that instruction is not clear.

And now I leave you with a link to some really good hunter jumper information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Jumper

How to get bitten by a horse (updated)

Small horses

I'm an all-inclusive kind of guy.  I don't like to hurt feelings, and I don't want anyone to feel left out.  Now as most of us know, horses come in all shapes and sizes. For example: an octagon is a shape, and 144 dots per inch kinda refers to a size.

Anyway, I wrote a blogpost last time about horses of a particularly large breed.  I want to pay homage to our less-endowed equestrian friends, namely... well I don't know what they're called.  But they're little horses.

Anyway anyway, I was walking around the farm late at night, trying to find myself [literally... not some existential journey; I couldn't see anything!] and I stumbled upon this little shed.  (I'll give you one guess as to what was inside!)  Who can resist entering a shed on the back corner of a pitch-black farm near midnight?! "Not I," said the human, and unlatched the gate.

Which brings me to an anecdote from my childhood.  This is a true story:  I am an early bird.  That's not the story.  These days, I tend to wake up at about 10 A.M (which is VERY early for the unemployed).  But when I still slept in a crib, I tended to wake up at about 5:00am.  After losing interest with pretending to smoke my toy gavel (which only very loosely resembled a pipe [also, what sort of judicial decisions could I possibly have pretend-made with said gavel?]), I would climb out of said crib to awaken my entertainment.  I would proceed to enter my parents' sleeping chamber and stare straight into my mom's face.  Unsatisfied with her lack of being awake, I then would pry open her eyelids (because they're supposed to be open) and tell her to "waaaaake oooooouup."  I never understood why this bothered her, nor why she would insist on me playing by myself until later in the day.  But then again, high-schoolers often don't understand their parents.

Back to today's story.  Now that you know I have a history of being insensitive toward others' not-so-apparent desire to sleep: I found, NOT ONE, NOT TWO, NOT THREE, no wait yeah it was three.  THREE LITTLE HORSES!!!  I squealed with delight, and they startled awake.  Feeling an immediate connection to them, I decided to share with them my just-woke-up every morning habit: selfies!
  

Sorry for the blurry images.  My selfie game is much better than this at 10 A.M.  But you can tell,  despite the photos' lack of Instagram-worthiness, that they were very excited to meet me too.

Thoroughbreds, my new obsession.

I recently learned that there are different kinds of horses.  I always knew there were smaller ones, like mules, but I finally met a bigger horse: this wonderful thoroughbred owned by Kathy from KEL Equestrian.  Here's a blog post all about him.

(This is the stall where Mr. Thoroughbred hangs out when I'm not there)

As I understand it, thoroughbreds were bred to run thoroughly fast so that they can excel at specific sports, most notably: barrel racing.  But ultimately, all horses are meant for eventing so here's what don't get: I know a lot of expertise goes into training a horse, but how could one cost $1.45 million?  That horse must be the most amazing ride, with air suspension and leather seats.  I bet any kid could ride him, no problem.

Anyway, I want to introduce you to Kathy's other thoroughbred.   He's probably a 1.46 million dollar horse.

I don't remember which one is him.  But he's one of them.  Isn't he cute!?

Simply because they're so big and cuddly, I wanted to share a bunch of photos I found on Instagram of other thoroughbreds that I'd love to meet.

A photo posted by Whisper Romicitas (@romicitas) on Sep 29, 2016 at 6:21am PDT

THOROUGHBRED.

A photo posted by www.equinl.com (@equinl) on Sep 28, 2016 at 11:55pm PDT

THOROUGHBRED.

A photo posted by Emma 🦄🔮💜 (@emmzi88) on Sep 29, 2016 at 2:04am PDT

ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL THOROUGHBRED.

A photo posted by One Horse Threads (@onehorsethreads) on Sep 28, 2016 at 6:05pm PDT

YES A THOROUGHBRED. CUDDLE IT NOW.

A photo posted by Tacoma Sporthorses (@tacomastud) on Sep 28, 2016 at 3:57pm PDT

HELLO MR. THOROUGHBRED.

A photo posted by @ilovechocolate58369 on Sep 29, 2016 at 10:32am PDT

THOROUGHBRED.

A horse walks into a bar...

A horse walks into a bar.  The trainer says, "No you're supposed to jump it."  















... The arena bartender pours her another drink.

Met a "lame" horse today.

Horse people can be vicious!  I'm not accusing anyone directly, but I do think we've all got the potential in us.  When I've seen it though, it's always been directed at other horse people; you know what I'm talking about: "OMG is he actually doing that thing that I would never do?"  "Wow her ____ is such a mess, who is her trainer?" "I guess not everyone understands how many beats are in a canter" "That guy posts a trot like there's an actual post up his..." But never, in all my years, have I heard the kind of insult that I heard today.

Horses are the sweetest, calmest, most loving creatures of all time.  Could TV shows like My Little Pony [Big Macintosh for life] and Mr. Ed have become so popular if that weren't true?  Now that I've irrefutably proven the fundamental nature of horses in the universe, I'll share the slander that was dumped on a sweet horse today, RIGHT in front of me.

"That horse is lame."

DUDE. HOW DARE YOU.
He was one of the chillest horses I'd ever met, and some random buttmunch (whom I later found out to be the equestrian program manager at some far-off community college, even worse!) was insulting him TO HIS FACE.  Ugh.  How can someone say such a mean thing about a horse? Take it from me that I was writhing with indignation.

I'll tell you, I was even considering to buy this horse just to take him away from such an unsupportive environment, even in spite of the fact that he walked funny.

My First Blogger Meetup!

Since going live with my blog a few hours ago, I decided it would be a great idea to meet up with my fellow equestrian bloggers!  Great minds think alike, right?  Which is why all of us have invested so much time and experience into our blogs.  So I met up with a few other bloggers who have known about my blog since day 1.

In the pursuit of building a stronger equestrian blogging community I will be linking to their blogs.  And in a strong community, you don't just use someone's name willy-nilley.  So I will be referring to all my fellow bloggers through made-up pseudonyms.

First I met up with Blogger K, who I'll refer to as... let's go with Kathy.  Kathy is a good strong name.   Kathy and I drove to this pizza place where all the bloggers were meeting up, and we were preceded by Blogger O (whom I'll call Kathy for the purposes of my blog).  I hadn't met Kathy before, and it was nice to put a face to the blog I'd be following later that night.  Blogger M arrived not too much later.  I had met her before, at her farm.  She, er uh, Kathy, has a super cute horse named Confetti, whom I had also met.

Side note: I've been thinking a lot about horse names.  I'll probably write a future post about all the names I'm considering for when I finally decide to import and raise a foal.

After the kitchen began to wonder if I'd run them out of business with my root beer refills, Blogger A and Blogger M arrived. And it was a good thing too, because the first four of us weren't prepared to make any tough decisions about ordering communal pizzas.  In the dim lighting of this pizza bar (I think it's primarily used for mafia meet-ups) I momentarily lost track of which was Blogger A and Blogger M.  No matter though, because I'm just going to call them both Kathy.

It was a wonderful evening!  Lots of great conversation.  I have to admit that a few equestrian terminologies went over my head and into the great pit of Forgotten.  After dinner was over Kathy really wanted to get ice cream, if I remember correctly.  I ended up ordering a rather liberal portion, but only because I worried that a passerby might think I was a republican.  It had nothing to do with a childhood obsession with rainbow sherbet.  No mom, I'm fine; I'll eat all my dinner.

That's about it for this post.  Stay tuned for more exciting equestrian adventures!
And no blog post is complete without some imagery, so here's a photo of a thing I did.

Hello, WWWorld!

Welcome to the first post on my equestrian blog.  I've been involved with horses and horsey-things in many capacities for quite some time now, and I want to share these vast and in-depth experiences with the rich community of equestrian bloggers.

In lieu of words, I will write a thousand-worth [as they say] with this picture.  Let it alone speak for the demeanor and integrity of this blog.