Wordy Wednesday

This entry comes from E-squared. I am trying to post these stories as they come in, but got really screwed up somehow. I have them all saved and am trying to get them organized, I just get distracted reading the stories...

I have a little bit of insight I would like to share before I turn you loose with Esquared and her neat little horse.
I have had requests for more photos of Sonita and recently more of my yellow mare. I also have been asked to put up some video.

I have thought about this and come to a few conclusions.

The Internet can be an extremely hurtful place. When I first started writing this blog there was a commenter who liked to come on and critique my writing style.She was quick to let me know she was a writing instructor at a good school. It was basically positive, but with an underlying sarcasm that made me uneasy.

Now I was a little confused, because I wasn't trying to come across as Ernest Hemingway, I was just writing a blog about horses and horse training. I was tickled to death to have people tuning in to read and write and share. I wasn't sure where the subtle hostility was coming from. So I checked out this commenter's blog. She was writing some really rotten things about me. I was hurt and surprised. I commented on her nasty little blog something about being excited to have been hired as a writer for a paper and looking forward to learning more about writing. Then I told her she made me a little queasy, or something like that. She disappeared.

This was my first lesson in being careful on the Internet. I have tried to be pretty up front with how I think about things and have been absolutely honest about my experiences and knowledge. I make damn sure I don't exaggerate about the level of trainer I am, because I know how even a little of the Mark Twain influence could reach up and bite me on the butt.

I'm protective of some of the people I write about and go ahead and name others, but only if there is no way to attack them. I still worry about someone getting hurt because of me. Shoot, I won't even tell you who the blogger was who was so eager to flame me.

I became even more gun shy when I wrote the piece about reining and cowhorse styles and urged you all to look at the video of Blue Allen. The reception was pretty good, except for one young kid going to school to train horses who just had to crawl all over the guy from the quality of his horse's style to the way he dressed. Besides the fact that she showed her total ignorance of the sport, I was blown away how quick this inexperienced little kid was to go after a World Champion and also somebody I had clearly said was my friend.

Then there's Fugly (Fuglyhorseoftheday.com). I have made it clear that I think that her red-headed, passionate, obsessive, radical little self is a boon to the horse world. She is crazy mad over the way some horses are treated and will really put herself out there in defense of the animals who need her most. She is braver than me. Maybe a little crazier than me, but probably not by much.

Do I always agree with her? No. Does it matter? No. Would I dream of trying to destroy all of the good work she has done because we walk a different road? No way.

There are people out there so eager to tear her apart they have made a blog dedicated to talking smack about her. I can't believe it. I guess I can because I had to check it out. I am stunned people have nothing better to do with their time. Of course I found the gal who was so determined to rip me a new one commenting on that stupid blog. Of course I did.

This makes me very careful of how much of myself I'm willing to give away. I like this blog and the people who post on it. But man oh man, there are some vipers out there. I don't want to get bit.

So forgive me if I don't show up on YouTube. I'll still post photos I think are relevant, but it would break my heart to have somebody tearing apart my over-the-knee pigeon toed little yellow mare. Because I think she's just about perfect.

So anyway, back to E-squared. I'm sorry the Sonita story is being so skittish, I've had a bunch on my plate. I'm hoping for tomorrow.

A year ago I bought a scraggly bargain three year old. He had good breeding, a splashy blaze, and splashy socks. He also had overgrown hooves with a big crack in one of the front ones and hadn’t been messed with in over half a year.

When I first went to see him it was wet and cold and no one was quite sure why we were looking at this horse. I wanted a reiner and he was butt high with a low set thick neck… my friend wanted a super safe pleasure horse… but for some reason we found ourselves there on that Saturday.

We got there, we talked a bit with his owner who I still email back and forth with, and then we played with him a bit. He was cute, but didn’t know much… neither did I when it came to ground work.

I decided to buy him, just for the heck of it, and he was home by Monday. This was late March.
I had all sorts of schedules and charts, lists and ideas of exactly how and when and what to do with this horse. The weather had other ideas. Eventually it was August and so far I had round penned him a bit (he knew his verbal’s pretty good), put a saddle on him a few times (and just about gotten trampled doing it), and had made a feeble attempt to sack him out with a tarp.

For the first time in my life I did NOT want to get on a horse. I procrastinated and contemplated
trying to just sell him unstarted and eventually I sucked it up and just got on. We walked around bareback with him in his halter and me with my helmet. I survived and found he moved off my legs and weight pretty darn well.

A few days later I walked him with a saddle on. The next day (terrified as I was) I sucked it up and we trotted. And the next day we loped because somewhere I found some iron resolve that
it had to happen now or it might never.

And as time passed my little flashy bargain gave me back all the confidence that I had lost somewhere during the last 4 years I’d been riding.

I began to ride him bareback in the arena. And then in the pasture. And then in the
fields around my house. We galloped, we scrambled, we ran and I loved it. I began to ride my other horses bareback.

I said it was because I was too lazy to saddle, or because it was too cold, there were a million reasons but really I just felt free with just me and the horse and my hackamore.

And then yesterday I fed him his hay and picked up the twine off the bale and decided to go for a ride. So with a burst of inspiration, a whole lot of trust, and a bit of poor judgment. I looped that twine around his nose, tied two ends of another piece too the ring around his nose and managed to lead him to a fence and clamber on without it slipping off. With just a bit of contact to
keep my brakes from falling off we were off and walking, and then trotting, and then loping around that big pasture.

The whole time I knew I didn’t have a helmet, and maybe I felt a bit guilty, but more than that I felt free from the world and a whole lot more connected to my bargain pony than my skimpy piece of twine could ever represent.

And for one of the first times since I got the bargain pony I realized that I had a horse, who despite being a failure at jumping (which is what I want to do) and showing promise in reining (what I’d like to someday learn to do), had more value for what he’d given me than what
I’d taught him.