Prancing Pony Practice (bonus!)

Official Blogger Meetup #7 - Prancing with Ponies

Did you miss my blogposts about Blogger Meetup #5 and #6?  Same here. But today we are blessed with my account of #7. (Stay tuned to miss Meetups #8-11!)

The best part was getting to meet yet another long-time Blogger! I had heard many tales, and borne witness to many hilarious groups texts, yet had not met Kathy in the flesh. I promptly arrived at her house after missing dinner and missing the first hour of FEITV due to my newfound dedication to the best equestrian sport: prancing.

Often incorrectly associated with vaulting, equestrian prancing is the most eXtreme sport that you've probably never heard of.

Here we see an awkward screenshot of Dr. Strange not doing a very good job at prancing. He doesn't look very much like a fancy pony, and he has lost his horse.

I, on the other hand, am VERY good at prancing with ponies:

So basically, I was two hours late to our meetup because I was busily prancing.

When I finally showed face, I was GREATLY OFFENDED that they had ALL been watching pony prancing WITHOUT ME (my therapist is encouraging me to talk openly about my feelings). But it was all good after Kathy brought out some delicious mint cookie ice cream. Thanks Kathy!

Kathy was also with us, visiting from "America's #1 City, 66.6 years running!" according to Satan's Digest, an elite sub-terranian publication that's been going strong for 2 mellinia. That city happens to be San Diego. It was great to see you Kathy!

Kathy, Kathy, and Kathy made up the rest of the group that evening. The centrifuge of experiences shared between so many great minds is really a privilege to be around. For example, Kathy brought up the clever practice of drugging lesson horses instead of properly training them to not buck off small children. Brilliant! A trainer she had once worked for does this every day and the results are perfection – not a single child ever thrown to the ground. Just imagine the confidence that instills in young riders! If I had ridden a doped up horse as a child, it would have taight me the confidence to persevere in my aspirations and never take the easy way out.

One confounding fact I learned from Kathy this evening is that FEI does not allow riders to enjoy performance enhancing drugs. What?! Normally that rule would make sense - Tour de France is all about the rider's performance. But with equestrian sports, the rider just flops about while their horse does all the hard work. Trust me on that, I would know. So it doesn't really matter if we riders take performance enhancing drugs because we don't actually perform! Rules are dumb.

Speaking of rules, I should take a moment to precisely explain the precarious sport of prancing. Basically, a repugnant peasant places your pony on a clothes line and pivots him or her around in a pretty prancing approximation of a parabola. You then prance into the paddock like you're a pretty pony, and pursue your pretty pony as if to proclaim that you are the prettier pony. (Get "all up" in its pretty face like you're juding its haircut - that has the propensity to please the panel of prancing judges.) This whole thing is primarily a pretty pony prance-off. The judges then assess the prettiest prancing, and place a prize ribbon on the pranciest pony, which, of course, is me.

Oh... Kathy, I forgot to ask while we were all together... can you help me assess how many dapples this horse has? Asking for a friend.

Ridin' Bareback

I went to a rated event a couple weeks ago and it was awesome.  Lots of horses doing lots of stuff.  People too.  There was Despressage, Pokèmon Stadium, and Across Country.  I took 2,037 really really good photos with my brand new RED camera.  Woodside Horse Trials was the event, according to the words I put in my calendar.  Here are some of the amazing shots I took:

What a lovely letter "E"!

Really captured the essence of the judge box on this one.

Those forested mountains are quite sensational this time of year.

I'm so good at photos, it's confounding that people haven't given me all their money already.

Anyway, the purpose of this post was to talk about bareback riding.  There were so many people at this show who were NOT riding bareback.  Like, I know a saddle helps to keep your balance and stuff.  But the TRUE art of equestrian stuff is to ride an all-natural, organic, vegetarian, non-GMO horse.  And that includes riding without saddles, which are meat products.

Take it from me, riding bareback is not that difficult.

How would I know?  First, you should read the rest of my blog.  Of course I know.  Secondly, this here video:

#eventinghorse

A post shared by Robin Whitehaus (@robinwhitehaus) on Oct 16, 2017 at 9:53pm PDT

#nailedit

I visited 12th century Britain last weekend. What did YOU do?

Camelot. "If you don't know, you don't go," IYDKYDG, to parrot Cocoa Cola's failed mid-1990's marketing campaign, which happens to have been drastically more effective than the last time I kept the leg on.

I know that a full-ton diesel truck packs a lot of power, but I was dismayed to find that we had time traveled to the historic Camelot. I was further surprised to find the castle built of plywood and paint. 

Castle in the background, not sure what's happening in the foreground.

I digest...

Since we were at King Author's Camelot, there were a fair amount of horses. (Apparently, King Author was the most prolific writer of the day, documenting his many adventures.) The thing about these historic horses is that some of them had this condition called "dapples", a proper British term.  I had never heard of this condition, and assume I never will again, now being back in the 21st century and all. But while off in a distant land and time, I was fortunate to meet an equi-alchemist named Nicoleerrraaahhhhhh... Kathy!!! (A proper British name.) She was a dapple scientist.

I'm not sure when exactly we crossed the threshold of space and time, but we arrived at Kathy's barn to pick up her noble steed Mu-Ray. They were apparently involved in the capture and improsonment of Devon the two-headed dragon. 

Devon may be a prisoner, but he's got some nice bedding!

Kathy had lots of informative informational info about dapples, which she carefully detailed in her Medieval blog. I'm glad she recounted it there because this vast and ancient knowledge was too much for my modern techno-dependent brain to absorb. 

After Kathy was finished explaining dapples to me, she piloted Mu-Ray over some of those telephone poles, and did so very excellently. I grabbed the Medieval equivalent to a Nikon digital SLR and snapped some interesting shots:

I also saw Kathy and Kathy there, and Kathy and I met up with them for dinner. (PSA: they have IHOP in 12th century Britain, with proper British food.) None of them had ever heard of dapples. Disturbingly, I had to jump away from dinner to rush outside right away because I was about to start puking on the carpet (even though I hadn’t started heaving or gurgling yet).

It was a wonderful weekend, and a proper Blogger Meetup #4. I even brought back some leeches.

Unofficial Blogger Meetup #3

I never wrote a post about blogger meetup #2.  It was too great for words.  You couldn’t possibly have understood, so I didn’t even try.

Anyway, I never get tired of my Kathys.  And this time, I met a new Kathy!  He has written a couple of guest blogs on Kathy’s blog, DIY Horse Ownership. 

Anyway, I had walked over to the depressage ring with Kathy and Kathy, where we found Kathy and Kathy already engaged in the activity.  It didn’t take long before I understood where this particular sport got its name.  Levels of anxiety were running high, stern faces were about to break out into tears, and that’s just the performers… we spectators had the real reason to be depressed.  If you aren’t familiar with depressage already, let me tell you everything there is to know about it.  It’s BOOOORRRRRIINNNGGG.  One time I watched a gopher dig some holes around a weed-ridden field, and that was far more entertaining just based on the fact that I didn’t know where it would pop up next.  But with depressage, there were trainers calling out what move the horses were going to do next; nothing left to the imagination!  (I’m just wondering how they knew what the horse was going to do…)  Regardless, the rider just sat around on the horse, waiting for it to migrate between letters.  I was hoping the horse would at least jump out of the ring… now THAT would have been exciting!

Speaking of jumping… I recently figured out that there are two jumping sports… Hunters and Jumpers.  Basically, you make the horse soar over horizontal telephone poles that are suspended between different structures which are reminiscent of the fond memories on the ‘ol ranch I don’t have.  If you didn’t realize that horses can fly, please read my post: Information for Pilots Studying the Equestrian Arts.

Now you’re probably wondering to yourself, “Okay, Hunters AND Jumpers.  Two different sports.  What’s the difference?”  There’s a surprising amount of confusion around this topic, and I did a surprising amount of research to figure it all out for you.  I’m going to save you butt-loads of time right now.  The difference between Hunters and Jumpers is: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.  They’re the same damn thing.

Anyway, this post wasn’t supposed to be about your ignorance.  Where were we?  Ah yes, Kathy(s).

We hung out for a few moments each time we crossed paths.  Generally, Kathy did the talking, since they were riding or dealing with riders that day, and since terminologies such as, “keep the leg on,” just go over my head.  But lots of interesting things were spoken, and I ended up taking some photographs with two of Kathy’s camera.

Another notable experience for the day was mud.  Lots of mud.  I’m glad I wore my hiking shoes because there was endless mud to be trod upon.  I really think that mud should make an appearance at every horse show.  The kids really liked the mud too.  Mud is a really nice thing to have around.  Whenever I have my own horse, I’m going to make sure I also have mud.  

Anyway, we were at JK Presents, at The Horse Park at Woodside.  If you were there, maybe you saw Kathy too.  Or maybe you saw my sunburn.

USEA officially adds a 4th discipline!

You read it here first.  USEA has officially added a fourth discipline to 3-day eventing.  However, similar to completing a teaching credential in California, they're just cramming more useless hurdles into the same time-frame.  So 3DE it remains.

This is going to be surprising to most of you, but sometimes it rains in California (and not just the tears of would-be teachers). Due to recent occurrences of precipitation, USEA has decided to refresh its roots in calvary mastery and revive this dire skill.

Which dire skill is this?
 
Boating. Horse boating. Horses and boats. Boating with horses.
Get ready for a massive surge in oar-to-saddle attachment accessories.

No official methodology has yet been published, nor photographs to depict what you'll have to soon be learning. But you can check out my breadth of research on Google Images below... it should tell you everything that you need to know.

As you can see, horses and boats/oars celebrate an ancient relationship, and it's about time that this historic practice was revived. Tell your friends.

Jimmy H and the Feral Farm Friends - an emo band

My band is better than your band.

My horse's band is better than your band.

Granted, your band probably plays fancy music that requires some sense of creativity and an above-mediocre level of musical skill.
But MY band is EMO... and so is Jimmy H's.

Look, they're just starting out so their SoundCloud doesn't have as many followers as yours.
Look, their recordings aren't that great because my barn recording studio just don't sound as good as your bedroom recording studio.
Look, you may not even respect emo music as a legitimate art form.
But don't you dare go around thinking that Jimmy H and the Feral Farm Friends are anything less than the very best, like no one ever was.

I'm gonna prove to you how emo JH and the FFF are.  Take a look at the hair on this dude from the inferior and lesser known emo band, Patrick Stump:

Now check out the TOTALLY EMO hair on Jimmy H:

Who wore it better?!?! (I mean, feel free to answer, but this is pretty much a rhetorical question, AMIRIGHT?)  Sorry for getting emotional about this.

Don't forget to follow their SoundCloud!  Like/Share/Clicker-Train/Promote their music please!