Finally got to ride the darn TB last night. He was not pleased. First I pull him away from his delicious grain, then I strip him naked, slap a saddle on him, shove my big ol' Robarts Spring Loaded Spoon mouth in his gob and hop on. My punishment for not riding enough was apparently to take away my lovely, effective, yet twitch-inducing, pokey spurs and give me evil ball spurs that do not poke enough. TB was, as always wonderful when we started, then we did patterns which he did not find amusing at all. My trainer thinks he got cold and started acting all hot and dorky. Next time he gets to wear Pajamas so he ain't so cold! Poor baby (but he was kind of a turd).

I must say his mane is looking pretty sweet right now, think old, dirty wig at the bottom of grandma's hope chest. eeew. shudder! It is only about 3 inches long, but it is all scrunchy and matted, blech. He is shedding like a beast though and if I wasn't such a slob, I would be able to find my rubber curry and give him a good going over, hmmm maybe Sunday.



I did a quick internet check to see if I had milked enough humor from "classical riding" and although I am sure it has so much more to offer, I am easily bored, and so, I move on...

Today I am going to talk about barns and barn culture. There are several different types of horse-loving creatures at the barn. Teenagers are always to be found at a barn, they are like barn cats, only more shuffle-y. I like barn teenagers actually, for the most part horsie teens are pretty funny and friendly. Every once and a while a mope will shuffle in and grunt at you while working out their teen angst, but otherwise a pretty amenable bunch. Plus I like to make fun of them in the clinics and they have to respect me because I am old. Ha. Ha. The 18-25 crowd are mostly in college, every once in a blue moon they will shuffle in and visit (notice a distinct pattern of shuffling with the younger set?) It is always good to see them because, lets face it, they are last year's teenagers, only now they don't dress as nice and they shuffle more.

The 25-35 crowd, now here is where you can get into trouble, there are many sub-categories in this age group, some of them pretty scary. the first sub-category is the professionals, that is the breeders, trainers etc, they're cool. Next come the "mommies" this is a group so sad, so forlorn that it makes my heart swell with happiness that I am not them every time they herd Taylor, Sophia, Jake, Tristan and Agamemnon in for their lessons on Sunday with the "weekend instructor" . Mommies are far too busy to make it out during the week, when any real riding is done. So they wake up all bright and sparky on Saturday and drive Aiden, Jaden, Caden, Braden and Hayden out for their quintuple lesson. There are usually a gaggle of mommies (gaggies, is the technical term, FYI) they plunk their big ol' khaki covered butts in folding chairs, cover themselves with blankets and blather the entire time about yoga, soccer, how Tanner and Grayson are doing at Sylvan Learning center and pee wee hockey. this is usually done while the smaller of the gaggies' brood scream and run around the barn trying to "feed the horsies". (is my revulsion coming through O.K?, cause, you know, I could ramp it up....)

The next category comprises me, and all the truly cool clients at the barn (3 of us) it is the respectably under 50 but no longer a "mommy". We have older kids, and now have the time to be truly great, which, you know, we are. Really what more is there to say?

The next group is the 50+ horse owners, you notice I didn't say riders, because there are 2 types of 50+ people at any given barn. The first type are the "select" riders, you can tell this group has been showing since the beginning of time , because their mantra is "it just doesn't matter!" they put their horse in training, because they don't really ride, they have been riding so long that really, what is the point? So they hop on at a show, go in the 50+ or "select" classes, crash around, win and call it good. Don't try to teach them equitation, its not that they don't want to be better riders, its that they just dont really care enough to try to be better riders. My pet name for them is "old bags" , because truly, that is what they are. Rowdy, hilarious old bags.

The second group of 50+ horse owners are the "old hags" I touched on them in the "classical riding" post. These are the sour, bitter dregs of humanity. They are either "dressage" freaks because they are too scared to jump anymore (not that I blame them for that) but still don't really ride. They can also be rabid parelli freaks who need to 'desensitize' poor Jasper before they ever ride him. Jasper must be really, really spooky because it takes them about 5 years to "desensitize" their horses. The old hags can also be women that used to own horses, or their kids owned horses a jillion years ago, if that is the case they usually spend their time sticking their nose into other peoples business to tell them what they are doing wrong. The last 50+ group are the "rescuers" which usually goes about as well as you would expect it to.

Ciao!