Happy 2014- and a rant

Happy new year and resolutions and all that jazz. I'm still proudly keeping my resolution of 3 or 4 years ago- to not make new years resolutions! Go me!

Well, kind of. I do want to do more power yoga because I miss it.

So I'm back from sunny Miami *sigh* and in cold Arkansas...  I think it's going to be around 19 degrees tonight. Gross. I hate the cold, have I mentioned that before? I know, it's a little silly since I grew up in northern Minnesota where 19 degrees in winter was toasty warm and we hung out on frozen lakes for fun.

There's a lake under there by the way. We also had dog sled races and people would park junk cars and place bets on which would fall through the ice first in the spring. (Hey, there's only so much you can do when it's winter 3/4ths of the year.) 

I don't know when I stopped liking the cold but I'm choosing to believe that I simply got enough of it when I was younger and filled up my quota... for life. 

This is how I prefer my winters now. Although that water was chilly! 

Anyhow now I'm back home and back to work. I took Blue on a trail ride and pulled off Moose's shoes. (We got a new hoof stand and nippers for christmas!) Thank god we invested in a crease nail puller because those suckers didn't want to come out. I'm eager to remeasure him and also see if he trips less without all the extra toe. 

Blue is coming along fairly well... still lazy as hell but he goes and turns better now (well except today in the round pen). Moose is coming along... slowly..  Both of them dumped me just before I left. (Blue saw a coyote I didn't and I thought Moose was going to rear again (he just had) and instead he bucked (for the first time ever) which sent me tumbling over his big head. Stinker. I secretly think he just wanted to get my nice new, clean, helmet all dirty and broken in. 

On a related note, I've decided I like short horses- falling hurts less. 

Moose is much happier and relaxed at a walk now, but trotting is another story. I have to keep remembering that he didn't used to be okay walking either.  The sad thing is that he actually has a beautiful floating trot that's very easy to post to. 

So over Christmas I actually received the insurance payout (holy shit!) which means operation Horses Abroad is a GO! I'm currently looking at going to Spain- then France- then Ireland.  And probably to the UK, although I haven't decided if I want to find a place to work with horses or just use that as a vacation since I could stay with The Boy (I've decided that's what I'm going to refer to him as from now on) while visiting. I'm looking to stay for at least a month per horse place.

I also received a copy of the dvd 'Buck' which several non-horse people have told me I needed to watch because it's amazing and magical. Which is exactly why I've tried steered clear of it- those words tend to send me in the opposite direction.  The Boy gave me a slightly sorrowful look after I unwrapped it since he knows my feelings on these magickal horse whisperers.  I think he's just happy I didn't make him watch it with me (not because he dislikes horse things but because he knows the chance of me yelling at the tv were extremely high). 

Anyway I just watched it tonight and it was not nearly as bad as it could have been. I like his words. I don't particularly like all of his actions- and whoever did the editing clearly did not know anything about horses.  I'm going to scold the narrator if they're talking about how the horse is listening and knows exactly what he wants him to do, etc while showing a scared, bucking colt that he's riding.... that clearly has no goddamn idea about what he wants.

Anyway, my main issue is that I really intensely dislike those colt starting clinics. Just because you *can* get on an untouched horse that's had no ground work done, and ride them within an hour or two doesn't mean that you should.  I think it's unfair to the horses and unnecessary. If it's not how you'd start them at your home or in your barn, why the heck do you do it in the clinics?! (Not entirely my idea- that one I picked up from Mark Rashid after he stopped doing them or participating in the Road to the Horse competition.) 

Anyhow, it was fine. The parts I would have liked to see more of the DVD largely ignored and the parts I thought were unnecessary they kept returning to. (I'm not referring to his history- that part was interesting.) But what got me pause the movie and shout at the screen angry was the woman with the aggressive champagne colored stud at the end. 

In summary- woman brought a 3 year old stud colt- very aggressive, said he's was orphaned at birth and oxygen deprived. She brought him up. Which means that she had three god-damn years to turn this horse into a completely respectable individual- more time than she would any others. She says she even brought him into the house when he was a foal.  And now he's a big hulking dangerous 3 year old stallion. To make that even better, sorry I meant worse, she mentions that she has 18 more stallions at home.

I admit, I do like Buck's 'what the fuck is wrong with you' expression and that he told her to geld him and that she probably needed to get some mental help because no one should have that many stallions. Also that she shouldn't have any. But he said it in a nicer way than I would have... or would have liked.  Anyway, the horse attacks the guy working with him and the woman decides to put him down. 

Personally I think he should have insisted he be gelded before allowing her to bring him to the clinic. That would have been helpful brain surgery. He needed to be gelded to reduce the hormones (and geld the other 18 stallions that she had no business owning) and stuck in a pasture with a bunch of well mannered older horses that wouldn't take any of his shit. He needed to learn to be a real horse and that his actions had consequences. Then, and only then, should it be time to do real work. Now some ground work is fine, but this horse is to the point where a quick fix just isn't going to happen. It's pretty damn obvious. 

 I don't understand why the fuck they were trying to saddle or ride that horse.  That horse doesn't need to be ridden right now. That horse needs to be taught how to be safe around  people on the ground. End of story. That horse needs to stop charging and stop being aggressive. He needs to be taught that it's not okay. So why the HELL would you ignore that and work on other things?! Nobody needs to be on that horses back right now. That horse is not at that mental state- not even close. 

This is a horse that you know is human aggressive and that has attacked people in the past. Your only goddamn concern should be making that horse safer to be around. That's it. 

Here's the clip- minus the scene of the guys injury (a severely bleeding face) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0so3NIta9Y

So yeah, shockingly, the horse does something dangerous and aggressive. Like the person said it would do.  I don't know why you'd take away his flight option thus leaving him with only the fight option but that's just me. I liked working with my dangerous horse safely inside of a steel pen- away from her. It took two damn years of hard work, but you could crawl under her, slide off her butt and ride her in a halter by the end of it. It wasn't quick or cheap or fun, but she's a productive member of equine society now.  

This horse gets a death sentence. Probably better than staying with that woman or getting dumped on someone else at a sale, but still. Why she was shocked to see him do something he'd tried to do multiple times in the last 5 minutes of the film, I don't know.  That horse wasn't bluffing before, so why was your reaction 'oh my god, someone got hurt (again), we'd better stop working with him, I need to put him down' when he did it with someone close enough to actually get hurt? 

You had three years to not fuck this horse up or to fix your mistake. You created this horse, you failed him in life and now you're putting him down because you don't want to deal with the problem anymore. Way to go. 

That woman made me furious.  I think partly because everything was handled badly and mainly because it reminded me of that bay gelding I went to see a few months back. (The one where the beginner bought 2 untamed stallions and then didn't understand why he couldn't turn them into amazing family horses.... and only gelded him 3 weeks before trying to dump him at an auction...) There's a yelling post on it and it still pisses me off.

There's a reaction video to this woman that's basically how I feel so I'll just link it. Skip to about minute 4, the first 4 are rambling a bit. But minutes 4-8 are the key bits.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36tb_D-xW-U

I should probably have made 'get less angry' my new years resolution after all.

I did see a quote I like today: "Anger is you punishing yourself for someone else's stupidity."

Ugh. That was the last or second to last scene and so it left a bad taste in my mouth. A taste that I'm still trying to remove with copious amounts of post Christmas chocolate.

Goddammit! My Tv is just determined to annoy me. I accidentally hit a button and the channel it went to was showing 'rodeo girls'. Why TV, WHY?!