Lifehacker has some useful advice about Staying on a Horse. I like the tip about not gripping because I hate it when I read books and I find a statement about the character holding on by gripping the legs. Hap cured me of gripping when I was startled by bolting forward whenever I would do it.
The last tip is especially good: I have never fallen off a horse while following it.
National Geographic has a photograph that looks almost like a painting of horses in Siberia.
The weeds in the backyard didn’t look any different to me than the weeds in the horse fields, but Smoke and Rags seemed to enjoy them.
From left to right: Smoke, Rags and Hap. I left the gate to the new field open last night, and the horses are taking advantage of my forgetfulness. Usually, they only get a few hours on the new field in the late afternoon, so they don’t eat it down to the ground.
I get complaints that I never show photos of Rags on my weblog. Here is one that I took of him grazing in what we call the new field yesterday. Rags is a 20 year old Appaloosa gelding. His color pattern, called chestnut varnish, is not quite as well known as the traditional spotted blanket of so many Appaloosas.
A few weeks ago, this cute little palomino was turned out in one of the fields across the road from our place. I had wondered why the sounds he made to my horses sounded more like a stallion’s demanding “mare, get your ass over here” neigh than the usual lost sounding whinny of a horse turned out without friends. Sure enough, today I was able to get close enough to verify that he seems to be a young stallion. I am glad I plan to move Lily back to my trainer’s in a few days, since the poor thing must be getting teased to death by her presence across the road. I am also glad that our fence is a lot more solid than this one looks.
I took this photo this morning of Rags and Lily from the deck with my new Kodak DX7590 digital camera. The aspect of these photos are different from the ones that I took with my DX3900: I think they are closer in aspect to “traditional” photos.
After I rode Hap with the bareback pad yesterday, I took him outside of the arena for a little hand grazing.
