Cowboys Bore Me, Boys Annoy Me

"What's the worst thing about your job?"
"The long hours, and it's really lonely."
"Oh, I know what you mean. When I did rodeo in high school, it was really lonely."
"Really."

He could not understand how hard it is to live alone, working 12 hour days, and only seeing your boss and the barn dogs for days. He could not drop the comparison to his rodeoing days. He didn't get that I was exhausted all the time.

So, I dropped it, and I dropped him.
I'd rather be lonely.

-- Girl

Read more...

Midnight in the Camper of Good and Evil

I should have been asleep.
I blame this on my father.
Of course, as he handed me the book, he reminded me.
"Don't start it unless you have time to finish it!"

To which I have to say, really? Does he think I live at Hogwarts, where I can turn back the clock? Where does this imaginary time come from? Between feeding, riding, sleeping, and the occasional drift into civilization, my time is booked. (<-- word plays like this amuse me now. I think that's a side effect of overexposure to horse manure.) I knew he was right though. I should have saved the book for a Saturday or Sunday, when I spend most of my time curled in bed. But because I am teenaged and willful, I started it anyway. What book, you ask? Relentless by the king of thrillers and my personal favorite Dean Koontz. (Sorry, Stephen King, but Dean makes me cry and laugh. You only make me confused and weirded out.) I read it in one go, delving into the layers of humor and fear like it was my last literary conquest. Now, I knew it was going to be creepy, but I wasn't too concerned.

I'd already hacked through Silence of the Lambs a couple nights earlier. Alone in my camper, I made it through without a single freakout, scream, or night of insomnia. I didn't even worry about my unlocked door. There was no way Koontz's book was going to be worse.

If you haven't figured it out by now:
I was wrong.

Koontz's supernaturals, demons, and ghosts terrify me. I've always read him late at night in my second story bedroom - scared, but content knowing that any evil thing would probably get my parents first. And hearing their screams, I would be able to use our "fire safety" plan. Yeah, Mom and Dad... When you taught me about getting on the roof, I didn't get the fire rescue thing.
I did, however, decide it would be a great way to escape from evil spirits.
You must be proud.

It was about eleven at night. Every creak, crack, and groan from Clark the camper seemed amplified. I had already turned so that I could have my back to a wall. Just in case, you know, some evil happened upon my kitchen. Between sentences, I'd glance up to check that nothing from the book had spilled over into reality. Every once in a while, I'd say something, anything, to break the silence.

(Usually hello, because Koontz instills this horrible fear that something will say hello back.. And I had crossed the horrible fear line chapters ago.)

As I finished a chapter, I realized I really needed to pee. But there was no way on God's green earth that I was going to leaving my camper safe-haven and venture out into the dark, soundless night.
Absolutely. Not. No-go.

A chapter later, I decided I was wrong, and I better find some way fast to venture out into the aforementioned night of doom. I called my dad, who answered in a groggy-dad voice. "What?"

"I need you to stay on the phone with me while I go to the bathroom." Okay, this sounds like a very strange request, but my bathroom is maybe a 3 or 4 minute walk (about a 1-2 minute dash) from my door. A lot can happen in 3 minutes. Just ask a Dean Koontz character.

"Huh?" He has received enough strange calls from his kids that he no longer chooses to form full words until he knows what the hell you're talking about. (Unless it sounds like you're about to do something reckless. Which in my mind, the bathroom run very well might have been. He did not have the same sentiments.)

The phrase "needed to pee like a racehorse" never made any sense to me until that night. I wanted nothing more than to dash for it and crawl back into my safe, warm home. With my dad on the line, I made my run. I'm not sure why talking to him was that comforting. It's not like his voice was going to stop evil in its track. However, the shadows looked quieter, and the silence felt smaller.

I made it!
Once I was tucked into bed again, he advised me to put the book down.

Let's take a poll.. What do you think I did? Did I put the book down like a sensible adult, remind myself that I had work in the morning and the words would still be there tomorrow?
Of course not. Teenager.. Hello.

A hundred pages later and into the last chapter, I was really glad I had taken that break.

I was vaguely aware of our barn cat meowing at my door. He does this almost EVERY night and will occasionally run his claws down the camper (no consequence is fast enough to convince him that this is NOT okay.). He hadn't visited me the last few nights, but apparently my noble dash to the outhouse reminded him of the finer living he was missing out on.

I was wrapped into the words. Hundreds of pages built to this moment. I clutched the book, hung on to the letters. A billion predictions bounced around in my head. I was almost th-

Something launched into my bedside window, propped open as an emergency "fire safety" plan. The screen clattered to the floor. I screamed, jumped, jerked. Oh dear God, I was going to die in this camper in the middle of nowhere! I dropped the book, twisted my sheets, cursed my dad for giving me the dastardly novel.

And then.
A pause.

I stopped and stared at the cat, who was hanging half-way in and half-way out of my window. He clung for a moment, a look of disappointment on his face. It was the same look Wylie Coyote had every time he ran off a cliff.

After a second, the cat slid back out the window with a pathetic meow.

When my heart started beating again, I laughed. When I could finally stop laughing, I breathed. When I finally caught my breath, I finished the book.

The cat ignored me for the next couple of days because, as you all know, if you witness a cat in a questionable position you should not exist. (And if he ignores you, then you don't. Wish cat logic worked on some people..)

He has not bothered the camper since.

-- Girl

Read more...

How To Mend the World

A great friend on a great horse.

I need a track to feed this addiction
That makes everything blend like fact and fiction.
Stop for a second, here's my prediction.
I'd rather taste wind than feel soft, slow friction.

I need some ground to lay this dying heart,
Forget your quick fix, I need a jump start
To something forever, something apart
From it all. Oh, doll. This is a dying art.

I need to feel his rhythm, catch his beat,
Feel the cold world melt with his heat.
I know he's the only one that I'll ever meet
Who can match my heart with his pounding feet.

I need to explain all my sins away,
I take this confession almost every day,
The wind takes my breath and all I could say,
And only his power and warmth can remain.

I need to feel everything else is fake,
That the only thing real is the pair we make.
The trees could splinter, and the earth could shake.
But only with him do I truly awake.

I know when he lays down, prepared to die,
Some think he won't gallop the fields in the sky,
But here's the truth, they don't look in his eye,
Cause the angel inside can already fly.

-- Girl.

Read more...

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's... Barbie?!?!

It was one of those hot summer days where our boarders would show up with coolers of beer and outfits best described as questionable.

We really hadn't been doing much working. The Boss Mare had ridden one or two, and I'd been playing swap-a-pony in our pastures. You know what I mean.. When you have to move one horse, but end up trading around five others to make the move "smoother".

He pulled up in a Tahoe that screamed trashy, a fact punctuated by the loud rap music spilling from his speakers. I felt like I had just stepped into Pretty Woman, if Julia Roberts were bare-chested, beer-bellied, and barefoot and the saleswomen were clad in Spandex pants, tall boots, and grime.

I think it might have been the giant cross tattoo on his chest or the faint aroma of cigarettes and weed that clung to his worn-out sweatpants, but he stuck out like a sore thumb.

"Are you guys missing a horse?"
"No, I don't think so." The Boss Mare chimed from her perch.
"Well, this horse with a mask and cape just came through my front yard."

Every head snapped to stare at me. I stood up. Barbie is allergic to fly bites and wears nose to tail protection almost all the time. "That would be mine."

So began the frantic search for Barbs. Tahoe Boy drove me around our neighborhood, searching for my disappearing horse. He explained that she had just strolled through his yard, past his faux pit bull (I say faux because this sucker was clearly some Mastiff/Boxer variation labeled "pit bull" to sound cool..).

The Boss Mare rang me up. "We found her! She's on the other side of our neighbor!"

In other words? A briar patch.

I thanked Tahoe Boy, climbed out of the SUV, and raced my way past a trailer. I picked my way across a field littered with beer cans, baby diapers, and used fireworks. Amid the remnants of a redneck Fourth of July, Barbie had left her thoughts of how the other side lived.

I have never been so thrilled to find a pile of poop.

Then I saw her, complete with "cape and mask". I started through the patch, stringing words together as fluently as a sailor. By the time I reached her, the blood had already reached my socks. She was bumping against the barbwire fence, and as I slung her halter on, she caught her hoof through the bottom strands.

Luckily, one of our boarders helped keep her calm on the other side of the fence. I got her sorry behind out unscathed, and then we began the real journey.

I'm not sure if the Boss Mare has really been around OTTBs much because when I mentioned bringing the trailer up, she promptly told me I could walk Barbie home. Let's do some math, shall we?

1 very hot Thoroughbred+ stress + more stress + being led away from the most direct route home + 1 faux pit bull + a narrow street + a meth house = GIANT bad idea.

Barbie is not fond of cars or dogs, in particular big ones who think she'd make a nice "natural" alternative. And we all know from the Giant Pasture incident that the idea of walking a horse back gives me chills, especially when we are on a public road.

We made it passed the dog, down the hill, around the meth house, and passed the field of foxtrotters. I have never been more thankful for a lack of cars or a chain across a pony's nose.

Finally home, I assessed the damage. Two little cuts, not a rip in her blanket. Of course, she's dripping in sweat and stress, but that's not long term.

"She must have gone over the back fence." The Boss Mare contemplated. ".....You weren't exagerrating."

Like I've said before, Barbie likes to pasture-hop.
Literally.

-- Girl

Read more...

The Masochist was Too Nice, So The Sadist Tried Dressage Instead.

"What do you want to work on?" I eyed her as I walked into the arena. She was sitting up but not supporting herself one lick, and her reins were a mile long. Her mare had a neck stretcher on.

"Jumping." She said absentmindedly. "Or maybe something else. I don't really know. I should probably work on Dressage." She walked a circle, and I watched with the same expression one finds in a horror film. Basic geometry massacred. Oh Lord. "Maybe something I don't usually do."

"Just ride for a few minutes and let me watch." Well, she did, and I did. Finally, I stopped her.

"What are your goals?" She wanted to show, to do a baby event, other reasonable things. As she talked, I unrigged the neck stretcher. "You realize what has to go if you want to show?" She pointed to the neck stretcher as I tossed it out of the ring. "Precisely."

Then off came the stirrups. And on came the lunge line. I could tell she was a bit off-put. Here she was, a worldly pre-teen undoubtly talented in the saddle, on the same line that the seven year old was on early. "Today, we are going to work on balance and using your seat to influence your horse."

Stare.

Forty minutes of no-stirrup Dressage work is good for the cocky pre-teen soul, and after hours of teaching my littles, I was frothing at the bit to get into some Dressage theory. We discussed being counterbent, balance, and sitting trot. The dynamics of the Dressage seat and how it applies to jumping. The elusive outside rein.

I was having a blast. Being a bit of a sadist (a must for working with young horses and children), I recognized her grimace as a sign of a lesson well taught. Of course, there were other signs too - improved balance, posture, movement - but let's face it. No pain, no gain. Somewhere between discussing stepping into the outside rein and core strength, I realized..

Oh, God.. Not possible.. I could not have..

But it's true, friends. I have become a Dressage nazi.

The sight of a counterbent horse makes my insides twist, and I fantasize about putting pins on the backs of saddles because cantles were not put there to sit on(my littles will tell you, giggling, "We don't sit back there because we pretend we'll get poked in the bottom and that's no fun.").

Circles are the essences of life, and dear God, make them round or I might have a coronary. The littles will also tell you the inside leg and outside rein say where to go and the inside rein says where to look. You know you've got a problem when you catch yourself teaching that to seven year olds.

At the end, she walked her mare out, a thoughtful expression on her face. "Maybe I need to start working more than just riding around if I want to show."

Epiphany. Shocking. "Maybe." I hesitated. "So did you have fun?"

"I'm sore." Not surprising, I'm sore always. I do not consider this a bad thing. "But I feel like I learned something new."

And that's the name of the game.

-- Girl
(note, obviously not written about my working student job.. jumping out of chronological order for post.)

Read more...

Barbie's Gone Royal and Redheaded!

Barbie, Barbie.

She's one long-legged, hip swinging broad. A daughter of Storm and a Half, a granddaughter of Jetting Along, she's got the bloodlines of a Thoroughbred princess.

15.3 hands, the color of a polished penny..

When she's in good weight and groomed, it's enough to make your heart swoon. You may make an offering to her loveliness, a peppermint or a bit of carrot, but don't hold your breath. She is convinced all people are trying to poison her. (Don't you dare forget her Highness's ancestors faced such possibilities.)

Expect to spend a week convincing her the carrot isn't not cyanide.

If her pasturemates are less than suitable, she will leave and look for more satisfying companionship. She prefers those who are also chestnut and Thoroughbred or pony geldings who actually appreciate her beauty. Like the pop princesses of our day, she will pasture-hop until finding a group that will dote on her accordingly.

Those lucky enough to ride her have to handle her at her worst to get her at her best. Her best is akin to Marilyn Monroe in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes", light and airy with a vibrant edge. And her worst can make Ozzy Osbourne look like a saint. However, two steps into her swinging Mae West walk will send your head spinning and your heart lusting for more.

As I freewalked her around, one trainer stopped to stare. "She walks like a hooker!"

She is rather indifferent about her humans and could very well do without them unless they want to massage her or rub her down with a rag like a new Camaro.
In which case, she will stand for hours.
Isn't it nice when humans realize their real purpose in life?



-- Girl

Read more...

Burn Out Blues? No thank you.

Sometimes, and I mean this politely as possible, you gotta give Dressage the finger.

Sometimes, you just have to get on a horse and say, "Baby, you want to go on your forehand, looking like a camel? Be my guest."

You need to gallop, to stretch, to ride backwards bareback. To do all the things your mother told you not to do because, "Don't you realize that's a 1000 pound animal!!" You have to breathe in the excitement of being run away with; the brazen ache that only rears its head when you don't know what's going to happen next.

You need to melt into the saddle, swing and flex. Enjoy a buck without trying to frantically glue it all back together. Relax into the end of a trail ride, the long flapping reins and the connection more clear than tempi's.

You've got to find your childhood. You've got to remember WHY you ride, or else it's not fun.

I love Dressage. God knows I spend enough time breathing in all I can about it, but I'm sick of it. I have pushed so hard, so much, so fast.
I want it, badly. I want it so much.
But what I need, HAVE to have, is a moment where I remember why I started riding.

So, I'm going to ride like a son-of-a-gun today. I'm going to bounce and laugh and get out from between those letters. It may not be pretty, but it's going to be hella fun.

I suggest you do the same.

-- Girl

Read more...

The Day the Barn Stood Still

It was one of my worst days as a young horsewoman.
Not to be confused with the concussion, the broken elbow, the dizzy nauseous sting from being kicked in the aforementioned broken elbow, or the day we put the one of the quietest geldings I've known in the ground. Nor with the moments I've hated the sport, the times spend crying over misunderstood theories, or the night I decided never to ride again. (obviously, that lasted a looong time.)

We feed by running the horses up in their groups, leaving their stalls open. Most dodge into their own; the young and the new are less predictable. On this particular day, I was not feeding. It was a Friday, and our weekend feeder had come in. Because I have the social life of a 70 year old hermit, I was still at the farm, taking up space. Plus Horse had been rather questionable about feeding, and I felt the need to supervise..

In addition to having stalls, we have three feeding stalls. I would say there are the size of a straight-load trailer stall. One is open; the other two house our show equipment (tents, tables, scoreboards, so forth.) They are dark and cob-webbed and cramped.

In other words, they are EXACTLY what any normal horse would avoid.

Horse is not normal. I have lost all hope in her basic sanity.

Horse climbed over the tents and tables, wedging herself into the show equipment stall. Upon completing this task, she discovered not an ounce of grain. We watched her take a bold step back.. And bump into the foray of tents.

Realizing she was stuck, Horse's anxiety skyrocketed. She began rocking back and forth, bumping the front of the stall only to sling back to the tents. I have used the same technique to get my truck unstuck, but (shocker, I know) that was not comforting. We made an attempt to calm her down and move the tents, but the notion the tents were moving only seemed to agitate her more.

Anyone with horses knows: When things go bad, they go bad fast.

She began banging on either side of the stall, and with no way to move the tents or reach her head (we would have had to climb in where she was pawing and stepping), the feeder and I stepped back.

Then she began to rear and twist. I covered my face. I think I may have let out a strangled scream as I listened to four years of my life crash into the sides of the stall. I had the briefest sick thought that she was going to tear down the wall of the stall to get out.

Instead when I looked up, there was Horse -- free and limping. Somehow, she had reared and turned around in the tiny stall. She had very minor slices, nothing like the door incident.

I gave her a week off, but she was still stiff and sore. I rode her once, and she balked more than her typical minor hissy fits. Something was wrong.

I cried after I called my mom to come pick her up. I'll admit it, I hate that one afternoon can change your goals. That fifteen minutes might be the end of everything.

Mom came and picked her up, bringing me Barbie (who you all will hear tons about soon!). Horse's future is in a pasture for a while, until I get home to take her to the vet.

-- Girl

Read more...

sore.

To be brief,

I am sore when I wake up.
I am sore while the ponies eat.
I am sore while I eat.
I am sore when I tack up.
I am sore as I untack.
I am sore standing on the mounting block.
I am sore walking and trotting and cantering my precise circles and eloquent patterns.
I am sore when my horses are naughty.
I am sore when my horses are amazing.

Last horse of the day, I peel myself from my saddle, tan breeches black from the leather. I grunt as I walk bow-legged to our crossties. I moan as I pull off the bridle and saddle, tear off my boots.

Boss Mare walks to her stool and perches.

"When will I not be sore?"
"When you stop riding."

She smiles because we both know that will never happen.

Read more...

Horse's Suicide Attempts, take one, two, and three.

To prepare you for the upcoming post of Horse's fourth suicide attempt (by far her most creative), I'm going to step back in time a little bit.

Let me start by saying I don't know why these animals find me or are born into my ownership, but everything I own is just this way of sane. Quirky, odd, strange. They have different ways of looking at the world from others, and maybe that's what attracts me to them. (Or maybe, just maybe, I'm tilted in the same way.. But I'm sure that's not true because every teenaged girl wants to live in a camper without hot water, right? Yes??)

Anyway, Horse is no different. Granted, her psychosis is slightly different from my other two brats lovelies (Pony and Barbie). Horse lacks the basic desire to stay out of small spaces or keep her mouth to herself. She also solves every equation by jumping or rearing (see post on turn-on-the-forehand....). She is insanely curious about EVERYTHING, to a fault, and has a fondness for watching small furry animals run from her.

She also likes putting herself in dangerous situations. Keep reading...

SUICIDE ATTEMPT ONE, six months old.
We, like most barns, do 24/7 turnout. So in each paddock, we have giant water tanks. Typical, normal. Horse found them fascinating. So fascinating, in fact, that one day she fell into one. I am not totally sure how she did it, but it has become family lore. My dad had been walking out of the barn when he saw her donkey-like ears protruding over the lip of the tank. He screamed for my mom and rushed to rescue the drowning baby Horse.

She wasn't scared or even really drowning though. He said she looked up at him like, oh hey, I'm in a water tank. He tipped it over, and she scrambled out.

SUICIDE ATTEMPT TWO, age three.
Some stall fronts have a "V" cutout so you can feed grain, and the barn where she got started had these.

Horse jumped out of it or tried to. She got hung right behind her girth. The cowboy said it was the scariest thing he'd ever seen in thirty years of horses: My baby, hanging half-way in her stall with so much pressure on her ribs she was having trouble breathing. He had crawled under her front legs and pushed her back into the stall.

It took a month before the swelling went down. She had been there four days and had only been walking. We did not send her away again.

SUICIDE ATTEMPT 3, age four.
The hardest rain storm of the year. I caught her and stuffed her in a stall. Her body was quivering all over. I remember it vividly.

The wind caught the top of her Dutch door and flung it open, but it wasn't until the rain picked up even more that she freaked. She'd never been inside in a storm and was not fond of stalls anyway. I remember screaming as she bumped into the bottom half of the door, screaming and sloshing into the rain to shut the top half.

I was too late. I was, however, in time to see everything that follows. The angle she jumped from was so off she caught the bottom door with her hind leg, swinging it under the middle of her chest. She slammed, full weight, against the door. It broke off its hinges, and she stumbled in the muck beyond the door. Limping, pronounced.

She had just healed from that when we both came to live at More Inside Leg.
You would think that she would have learned.

-- Girl

Read more...