Sunday, July 22, 2007

Current Events with a Side of Humble Pie

Thank you all for your kind and thoughtful comments on my last post. I too think about what will happen when my mother dies. Honestly, I have no idea how I will feel, probably seventeen different emotions at once. My aunt said of her (and my mother's) father: I went to his funeral to make sure the bastard was dead. At this point I don't keep that kind of anger inside anymore, but there are things that she's done and said that are unforgiveable and therefore, I cannot hand her a Get Out of Jail Free Card. The wonderful Helen over at Everyday Stranger is pregnant with twins. In a recent post she confessed that she's worried the babies will turn out just like her. I was always worried that if I ever became a mother I would end up just like my mother, a thought that sent me back into therapy after we started trying to have a baby.

*sigh* There are many more posts about her to come, I'm sure. Moving on.

I check out the celebrity news now and then, I enjoy pictures of red carpet gowns as much as the next gal and I faithfully read People every time I go to the hairdresser (every 5 weeks). But, I have to say, lately there's been a dearth of sponge-worthy celebrity/entertainment news.

Call me crazy, but I couldn't care less about:

  1. Britney

  2. Lindsay

  3. Paris

  4. Nicole

  5. Posh & Becs

and finally...*ducking to avoid the flying objects*...Harry Potter. I think I read the first 100 pages of the first book and put it down. I've watched the first two movies as they were playing at someone's house I was visiting and I thought it would be rude to leave in the middle. I know many of you and many people IRL who are as crazy about Master Potter as their kids. Even if I had kids, I wouldn't like the books, although I would be happy to see my youngster reading them. I think it's very cool for the kids that started reading the HP books when they were about the same age as the kids in the story, and that they've sort of grown up together. I also think it's wonderful that the first billionaire author is a woman who started from nothing.

And finally...for those of you who ride, you are painfully aware that it is a very humbling experience. No matter what level you're at, the minute you begin to think you've got something down pat, your horse will remind you that personality trumps technique every time, and humble pie is a dish best served cold.

Miss seems to have gotten through her dental adventure fine, but she's still fighting something. Whatever is going on in her system is moving through her legs in turn, one day she'll be off on the left front, the next day on the right rear. I'm not used to dealing with a creature who seems perfectly fine one day and the next can't be ridden for a week. It scares me to death when they throw around words like "crippled", but I guess in horsespeak that's a transitory state.

Last week I came down to lounge her before our ride and worked her pretty hard. At the very end Willow come over and asks, "Is she limping?" Immediately my heart is in my throat -- obviously she wouldn't have said that if she didn't think she was. Willow got on her for a few minutes, then let me walk around on her, but declared she was "pretty lame" on the front left. She looked perfectly fine to me. I felt so bad I was almost in tears.

So, she's been off for 5 days and Willow tells me its OK to give her a light lounge today and leaves to get lunch. I'm just about done with a light workout with her when the owner of the farm comes over to stop me, saying that she looks quite a bit worse than she did the other day, finding a pulse in 3 of four legs. Again, she looked perfectly fine to me, maybe a little lazy, but I was purposefully not pushing her. I feel like I can't be trusted to take my own horse out without someone else looking at her first to make sure she is fit to work. Ugh. Pie anyone?

12 comments:

  1. Oh that is a hard one, telling if a horse is lame. Sometimes it is just so obvious and sometimes it's hard for even a very trained eye.

    One time I was lunging a mare as part of my job as a groom. This was a halter horse and I was supposed to be getting her hot enough to sweat fat off her neck. The mare was always hard to work and this day was no different. But as I got towards the end, a trainer came in and said she looked lame. Turned out the bellboots had caused rubs on her pasterns. I felt so bad I had missed it. I still don't know what the trainer saw that I didn't. Very frustrating.

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  2. I'm sick to death hearing about Britney, Paris, Lindsy, Nicole and now we have to endure Posh. The more the media splashs around the stunts they pull, the worst kind of example they set for the generation behind them.

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  3. I don't do HP either. We saw the first movie or two; I forced myself. I guess having an unmotivated reader for a son actually helps on this one. He could care less either.

    PS - I am this way about all magic and fantasy things to include Hobbit stuff. It took me months to get through the first portion of LOTR. In general, I do not reading about a place where I do not know the rules.

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  4. It's really nice that you have so many helpful people around to give you advice. *ahem* And of course they mean well. But, I've noticed that sometimes barn managers/owners like having the last word. Just relax. Don't feel bad. If you didn't notice, it must have been subtle. It also might have been nice for her to explain what she saw.
    The Lindsays and Britneys of the world are setting such bad examples for our kids. I wish the media knew how little we care about these faux celebs.
    I'd like a slice of mince meat please.

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  5. i casually mentioned to a group of ladies at lunch the other day that i hadn't read or seen any of the harry potter stuff. holy cow! no one could believe it. they thought i was nuts!

    i just never had an interest.

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  6. I think it is VERY hard sometimes to tell if a horse is lame. Just recently (after over ten years working with horses) I can tell (sometimes) if one looks off. But I can't exactly tell WHAT is wrong most of the time.

    I was free lunging a horse for a trainer one day recently and decided she looked a little off. Not super lame, just not herself. So I called the trainer and she came into the round pen and started working the horse and said, "Which leg do you think it is?" I didn't really know for sure. I was all proud of myself for knowing the horse was lame, but really, I didn't know much. Horses are quite a difficult animal, really. If a dog hurts it's leg, at least it lifts it up and carries it around so you can tell the vet exactly what leg is injured :) A horse just keeps going with a little bob if his head or some other subtle sign as the only hint that he is sore.

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  7. Don't be hard on yourself about Miss. You just can't tell sometimes. It has taken me many years to see what others are seeing. I still can't catch it all the time.

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  8. Hi Donna,
    Thanks for dropping by my blog. Glad you found me. Always good to know there are others out there who can relate to my experience and vice versa. Will drop by regularly to see how you're doing as well. Best to you...

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  9. Well, I don't know... how else are you going to learn, you know? I don't know of anyone who is born with a complete understanding of the workings of a horse. I think you're just doing your best, and I bet that's pretty damn good and Missy is probably real glad that you are hers and vice versa.

    Ditto on the trainwrecks of the starmaker machine... ah, for the days of real Hollywood... given me Ava Gardner, Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn or Marlon Brando... sigh.

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  10. Oh come on Donna! We have a new moron to add to the list. Posh! You cannot possibly be sick of her so soon, she is new in the scene.

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  11. Mothers.
    Mine drives me absolutely crazy but I still have this need to work things out. Maybe it's the nurse in me, I don't know.
    Celebrity Gossip...I'm all over it! Like you, bored, bored bored with Brit, Becs and Posh (who has got to be an Extra Terrestrial) and even with the Jen/Brad/Ang saga. But Lindsay...she messed up this week. Big Time Idiot.
    I'm very sorry to hear about your horse. She's had some bad luck with her health lately, but she seems to overcome it each time with the TLC she gets. Sometimes I think it's easy to overlook things because you don't want to find things. Or, at least I think that's what I can be like. Yesterday, I had to take Mao to the vet becasue I thought he was stung by a bee. He had a big boxing glove paw. Turns out that he was in a cat fight and the bite has already healed, but has left him with an infection. I noticed that he was sleeping more indoors, but I neglected to see that he was hurt. I feel terrible about it, but animals have a way of hiding things and you only notice when it's gotten noticeable.
    I do enjoy when you post your farm pictures! Those horses are so pretty.

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  12. I completely agree with you on the HP front. I read the first book but didn't like it and haven't touched the others although both of my kids have read all of them, including the newest one, which my son bought the day it came out and finished reading it that same day. I saw the first 2 movies also and have no desire to see any of the others.

    Don't be so hard on yourself with regards to Miss. You obviously care very much for her and her welfare. It takes a lifetime of being around these animals to be able to know them, and even then sometimes it seems like a crapshoot.

    I know I'm being anal here, but the actual spelling of the word is "longe" - french in origin, although it has been anglosized to the phonetic spelling of lunge :)

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