another rainy day and more random thoughts

I haven't been able to ride yet today due to rain, but the horses seem to be enjoying the break from the heat, and the fields are drinking in the rain as it falls.

My husband called this morning in some distress because when it rains the turtles get active, and he had stopped several times on his way to work to rescue turtles on the road. His distress was over a turtle he was unable to rescue - he stopped, pulled over, and as he was walking out to move the turtle from the other lane to safety, a truck came by and purposely veered out of its path to run over and kill the turtle.

There was not much I could say that made things better. Perhaps the turtle was sick and a quick death was actually a good thing. Maybe the man will have some sort of awakening later today about his hideous behavior. Or maybe my husband will be moved to some new revelation after witnessing such cruelty. It's very hard to make sense of the things people do sometimes, or what ripples the acts might set in motion.

Here on November Hill, I had to smile when I went out to feed breakfast. It's a rainy day and donkeys must have been in dire need of some activity. I found every lead rope that had been hanging in the barn aisle dragged out to the grass paddock. There was a blue one, a green one, a purple one. Three fly masks that had been hanging in the barn aisle had also been taken out and were soaking up the rain. Two brushes were out there as well.

I wish I'd seen if both donkeys were busily cleaning out my barn aisle, or if Redford did it all on his own!

On another note, I have discovered a wonderful online magazine called Horses For Life.

In an interview with Phillipe Karl, he says:

As soon as the horse is giving his mouth and is flexible in the neck, the rider should train a proper extension of the neck, in order to gymnasticise the whole body in the forward movement. But, each time the horse stops giving his mouth, he is saying: “It is too much, I am contracting, and out of balance,….please stop this and restore the right conditions”. When the rider doesn’t care about that, he tries to manage the horse by mediocre means – using force, tight nosebands, running reins, over-flexion etc.

In fact the fundamental thing is: through a lively mouth (understanding, relaxation, balance, attention), bend the neck, extend it, raise it, as the horse needs and according to what you intend to do. This is more important and more difficult than being obsessed by ONE position, supposedly the good one. The official doctrine is that you will create balance by forward movement. [My rebuttal] is that you don’t teach a young child to stand on his legs by forcing him to run.

There are many gems in the interview, and many of the articles are fascinating. So far I haven't done the paid subscription - but there is a fair amount that you can read for free.

Karl calls his training philosophy the "school of lightness" and I found a lovely video that shows a bit of what this means.

I've been doing a lot of reading recently about bridle fit, including tightness of noseband, bit placement, and weight of reins in the hand, and how this applies to creating bend and flexion. Lightness and freedom is what I'm after, and I'm disappointed to say there's a lot of the opposite going on in the dressage world.