You Might be a Horsewoman If...

I have come to the conclusion that I am 100% horsewoman. How do I know? There was a time when I would make regularly scheduled visits to Macy's and browse through racks of DKNY jeans and Calvin Klein blouses. Now I get all excited when Target puts their long-sleeved t-shirts on sale, because I buy one in every color. They neatly tuck into the waistband of my Wranglers. Fortunately, I live in a town where there are lots of horse crazy women just like me. My trail riding pal, Natalie, is one of them. Ask her about the guy she's currently dating and she'll speak matter-of-factly about his good points and bad points. But ask her about either of her two grulla geldings, and she simply gushes. Like many other horsewomen, my friend Natalie will always think of her horse as the handsomest, most perfect "man" in her life.

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A true horsewoman, I believe, is like that. We can find fault in just about every human being, but we find little to complain about when it comes to our horses. Our horses don't have nasty habits, they have "idiosyncrasies." Our horses aren't spoiled, they're "pampered." Our horses aren't annoying or obnoxious, they're "characters." Lord knows I've uttered precisely these exact words and phrases when referring to Wally. My final telltale sign of Horsewomanship is this: If you were given $100 to spend frivolously-- not to pay a bill but to spend however you please-- what would you buy? If your answer includes a 50-pound bag of anything made by Purina, an item of tack or a stall cleaning implement, then you truly are a horsewoman.

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Well, it Could be Worse...

Ask my sister her vision of hell and she'll describe the same tortuous scenario as most of the horsey folk in this area: "Hell is all wind, all the time." Since Thanksgiving we've alternated between chilly cold winds (non-stop for days) and then blasts of hot winds (non-stop for days). The only horses we dare ride during these wind storms are the Extremely Good Citizens that aren't unnerved by airborne debris, or the veteran show horses that've "been there, done that" in all kinds of weather. The green or sensitive horses? Forget it. Everything in the environment is swaying and the air smells of unfamiliar scents. It's like trying to ride a kettle on the verge of boiling over. But regardless of temperament or training, I don't think any horse enjoys the wind. Like us, they simply find ways to endure it. The only thing that interrupted my self-pity party was the email I got from my old high school pal, Wendy Ward. She now lives in Idaho, and every winter she sends me a photo of her ranch, just so I can keep my weather-related rants in perspective:

Hmmm... What can we do on a wintry day? How about we shovel snow off the roof of the barn! Then we can gaze wistfully below at the round pen and pasture, and envision what it'll be like when we can actually see dirt.

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So while I moan and complain about the winds, I have to remember that we each have our version of hell during the winter months. And about all we can do to endure is to dream of spring.

Pony Power

I just got an email from the mom of one of my lesson kids. Nearly every Saturday she hauls her daughter and the family's pony out to Sue's, where I spend an hour or so helping the young girl finesse the pony's flying lead changes. She also works on properly bending him through the turns and just genereally coercing him to conform to the regimen of a structured lesson. Because he's a relatively small pony, I rarely hop aboard for a schooling session. But when I do it's a memorable occasion because then The Pony is Not Happy. Why? Because Auntie Cindy means business when she hops in the saddle.

In the email I received, the mom wrote to tell me that they wouldn't be coming for a lesson today because her daughter had taken a tumble off the pony. Fortunately, she suffered only a sprained shoulder. But she also had a pony hoofprint on her back.

Yikes!

I've always felt that ponies, perhaps due to their indomitable characters, leave indelible impressions on us. In this case, this particular pony literally left an impression.

I'm sure both kid and pony will be back under my tutelage soon. But in the meantime I got to thinking about all the other ponies I've dealt with in my life.

When I was very young, my weekly treat was taking several spins around an oval enclosure at the local pony ride near my aunt's house. My cousin Susie and I would argue over which one of us would lay claim to Donut, the fat dappled Shetland with the bushy flaxen mane. He had the fastest trot, so he made you feel like you were flying when you zipped around the pony ring. At least that's the way a pony can make you feel when you're all of five or six years old.

Then my very first horse, Honeybee, was a large sorrel pony. She was only half-tame and very wily. I'd watch the lessons given by the professionals at the equestrian center where Honeybee was boarded, and attempt to mimic just what they were doing aboard their fancy Thoroughbreds and Quarter horses. Then, at the equestrian center's monthly shows, I'd dress up in my very low-end western attire (spray-painted straw cowboy hat included) and compete in western pleasure and trail. If I had enough Honeybee left at the end of the day, when the gymkhana games started, we'd race around the barrels.

One of my friends and co-competitors at the time was a little blond girl named Debbie Ryan. She had a more stylish pony than Honeybee, a bay Welsh with splashy markings named Flannigan's Falling Star. Our moms would chat while we'd struggle through our slate of western classes. Eventually the two of us became emboldened and ventured into English riding aboard our not entirely compliant ponies.

It's amazing, sometimes, where ponies can take you. I ended up going the hunt seat equitation route. And that little blond girl's name would become Debbie McDonald, and she'd ride a Hanoverian mare named Brentina to a medal in dressage at the Olympics.

If you'd like to read more tales about ponies, and perhaps contribute one of your own, just click here: Have I got a Pony Tale for You! It's the latest offering of HI Spy that I wrote for Horse Channel. I promise you'll also have fun reading what others have written about ponies they've loved... or feared... or both.

Too Sick to Ride?

The last couple of days I've been feeling... icky. I can't quite describe my symptoms. I'm just nauseous enough to keep me on a Coke and crackers diet. My head aches just enough so that I'm constantly rubbing my forehead like I'm polishing a pair of boots. But it's nothing serious. For it to be serious-- worthy of me calling my doctor-- I'd have to be feeling too sick to ride. That would warrant a Level 4 Alert on my "How Does Cindy Feel Today?" chart. If such a chart actually existed, it would look something like this:

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Level 1: "I feel great! After I ride Wally I'll call Sue and see if she has any horses that need to be exercised. Maybe I'll even jump one of the show horses around a little course!"

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Level 2: "Ouch! Was that my neck that just cracked? Okay, I admit it. I'm not a kid anymore. I have the battle scars to prove it. But I'll feel better after breakfast and then I'm going to ride Wally all the way down to the river and back."

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Level 3: "Oh geez. It's 11:00 a.m. and I'm still in my pajamas! Focus Cindy, focus! Ignore the sore throat. Shake off the head ache, splash some cold water on your face and get moving. Get dressed and make yourself ride Wally in the arena, even if it's only for a few minutes."

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Level 4: "Thank God my husband has already fed Wally and cleaned the paddock, because I feel terrible. I thought The Plague was eradicated. Not only am I too sick to ride, I'm placing myself under voluntary quarantine and not leaving the house. What time does Oprah come on?"

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Fortunately, whether I'm too sick to ride due to actual illness or a flare-up of pain, it never lasts too long. The best cure for any ailment, it seems, is climbing on the back of a good horse!

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As always, I enjoy reading your comments. You can contribute your thoughts by clicking on "comments" below. You'll notice that now you'll have to type in a few letters to gain access to the comments section. That's just the typical anti-spam device because unfortunately my blog-- like much of the Internet-- is prone to spamming. And I'd hate for some software program to post links to unworthy sites on my blog.

The Un-Barn Dog

This is my father's dog, Skippy. Though the animal belongs to both my parents I doubt my mother would ever lay claim to the pooch because he's perhaps the most petulant, rambunctious, mischievous canine our family has ever owned. And that's saying a lot. Skippy has eaten or crunched at least $1,000 worth of eye glasses, television remote controls, slippers, shoes and pillows. (Yes, my mother for some perverse reason has kept a running total on the mayhem). Then there's the grocery list of foodstuffs that Skippy has swept from the countertop, ranging from entire sticks of butter to batches of cookie dough and loaves of bread. Last Christmas he undecorated the tree until my parents finally got wise and installed a section of white fencing across the living room doorway. For its own safety, the poor Christmas tree had to be corraled away from the dog.

And yet my father loves that dog. Whenever my dad takes the old blue pickup truck out for a drive-- usually to get a load of hay-- Skippy goes along in the front seat. It's quite the sight to see my dad behind the wheel of the aging Ford truck with the big blond dog sitting alongside him. While you're smiling at that warm image, let me interject that Skippy has entertained himself numerous times on these drives by nibbling through the seat belt, chewing off the cruise control knob and slobbering nose prints on the inside of the windshield. But my father doesn't seem to mind. Nor does it matter to him that Skippy is famously missing the mark when it comes to being a barn dog. He's run off with and buried countless sweat scrapers and riding crops, and nearly every horse brush is peppered with canine teeth marks.

If you're wondering what kind of dog Skippy is-- other than a destructive one-- he's a Labradoodle. My parents have had many, many wonderful Labrador Retrievers, but for some reason they decided to venture into more exotic waters when it came time for a new pup and got Skippy, who's half Lab and half Standard Poodle.

The moptop hair coat is occasionally clipped into a semi-Schnauzer/kinda Cocker Spaniel coiffure. But that requires the services of Sarah, our local traveling dog groomer. She arrives in her state-of-the-art grooming salon on wheels and then proceeds to convince Skippy that he does indeed want to have a bath and a shave. As you can probably envision, that's quite an undertaking, with Sarah at one end of my parents' small ranch, my parents at the other, and Skippy somewhere in between, darting around wheelbarrows, hopping over hay bales and scurrying past the corrals to avoid his hair appointment.

This Christmas, when my sister, my brother and I purchased a gift certificate from Sarah so that Skippy could have a grooming session on us, I asked Sarah, "So this amount will cover everything?"

She sighed and replied, "Yes, it even includes the rodeo beforehand."

I followed up that comment with, "Hey, he really is a good dog... in an amusing sort of way."

Sarah, who has both horses and dogs, then said, "Ya' know, I've 'done dogs' for a long, long time. And over the years I've come to the conclusion that anything with 'oodle' in its name-- Labradoodle, Goldendoodle, Lhasadoodle, Jackadoodle,whatever-- if it has 'oodle' in it, antics will ensue. That's all I'm sayin'."

It's the antics of barn dogs like Skippy that make me appreciate barn cats. Though I'm not really a cat person I do like having a kitty or two around the stable. Here at my house, I'm slowly trying to convince a big spotted feral kitty that I'm not a scary monster. I know it lives underneath the cypress trees I planted on my hill, across from my feedroom, because sometimes when I go out late to conduct a bed check on Wally I see it dash into the undergrowth. Eventually I plan to trap it, get it spayed (or neutered) and tame it enough to get it to hang around consistently. I'll be following the advice found in the article I wrote for Horse Channel: Here Kitty, Kitty... Come Live at My Barn! And by the way, the photo at the top of the article is a picture I took of my parents' formerly feral barn cat. She, unlike Skippy, is quite well behaved and has never once chewed up a set of seatbelts.

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Wally as Poet, Part II

I came home today from teaching my riding lessons and went straight to the medicine cabinet. I had to give the lesson horse a quick school through a grid of jumps and it jolted my neck and set off painful muscle spasms. Needless to say, I wasn't in any condition to ride Wally as planned. It made me feel guilty. He stood at the gate, nickering at me, wondering why I was ignoring him. I couldn't resist his cute face. I went into the feedroom, grabbed a handful of peppermints and apologized. In response, Wally wrote this haiku:

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Mother is unsound

She's creaky like old race horse

I know a good vet...

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Hopefully I can saddle up Wally and trail ride him tomorrow. Otherwise he may have something even worse to say about me!

Wally as Poet

Wally occasionally greets me in the morning with small patches of hives. Oddly, he only gets The Bumpies on exposed parts of his body, which prompted my vet to surmise that it's some sort of contact allergy. Yet I've tried switching fly sprays, feed, shampoo and bedding. I've had Wally sleep outside in his paddock on dirt and inside in his stall on shavings. Nothing seems to matter. So my solution is to clothe him from head to toe before he goes to bed. It beats dosing him daily with antihistamines. The bad news? My horse looks like a professional wrestler before sunset. After I dress him in his pajamas, Wally always looks so humiliated. He's undoubtedly the most expressive horse I've ever owned. In fact, he recently began composing poetry to convey his feelings. He favors haiku, a Japanese form of poetry that is both succinct and descriptive. Haikus always have 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second and 5 again in the third. Here's the first haiku that Wally allowed me to share:

I have allergies.

Mother dresses me funny.

I am embarrassed.

With the cold, wet days of winter weather upon us, Wally will have plenty of free time to write plenty of haiku. Who knows what he'll write about next!