Hippoi Athanatoi

This week, the last week of the semester, I finally managed to get around to private lesson in addition to my final regular lesson. Its been a few months since the last one, and I have been feeling that lately. I really wanted to get some serious work in on the weaknesses that have troubled me the most lately; my poor sense of rhythm and my lack of co-ordination. And, of course, I wanted some quality time with Murphy.

But before I dive into the lesson on Monday, what did happen last week? Well, I wasn’t alone there, so we had a theory lesson. Horse anatomy, in fact, and Campino and Nikita got painted up with green marker pens to show various bones and angles. I enjoy these sorts of things (the anatomy, not putting green marks on horses), and it fit in well with my homework about dog anatomy for the show training class I have been attending for a few Thursdays (the last one was this week), though I am not very good at it so far. I imagine it takes a lot of practice to get an eye for what is or isn’t a good angle, for example.

There won’t be much of a report for today’s lesson, as we’re having theory. Well, unless I am the only one showing up so I get to ride again, which is vaguely possible considering the time of the year and the collision between the match between Sweden and Greece. In fact, I am tempted to stay at home myself, but I probably won’t as I need to try to arrange a private lesson for next week. That’s our last week of riding until August.

So, why am I posting now, then? To catch up on last week’s lesson, of course. ;P

I ended up on Gamir, and since the paddock was incredibly dry and dusty, we rode indoors. It wasn’t too hot, actually, but hot enough that Gamir started out soft and limber from the get-go. That was quite different from how he tends to be in winter. We warmed up mostly on our own, so we didn’t get a lot of feedback right then, but it felt to me as if he moved with a longer strider rather than a quicker stride when asked to move forward a bit more. Keeping my mind on the difference is, slowly but surely, making me more aware of what exactly is happening.

The lesson itself focused on working towards a half-pass, though we started out just doing a leg-yield with the neck flexion in the direction of movement as opposed to away from the direction of movement. We then added the bend of the horses body once we were able to get good sideways movement while retaining the neck flexion. At a walk, I was able to more or less sort this out. Gamir is well-schooled and finds moving sideways pretty easy, though maintaining the flexion and the right amount of forward movement takes a bit more work. At a trot, it did not go so well. These sort of exercises demand a lot from my own body control and co-ordination, and I pretty much twist myself into a pretzel trying to do it at a trot.

I was pretty pleased with the start of the lesson, not the least because I felt as if I had a better grasp on how Gamir was moving, but I need to work a lot on my co-ordination. I suspect that if I wasn’t riding, it would be a lot worse in general, and I should probably get back to taking dancing lessons to work on it outside of the riding.

After a few weeks of no shows, we had another one today. This was the same show that last year went very poorly, as the raspy speaker system spooked Ringo. He ended up with a 2 then, so I was definitely hoping to do better than that today. Of course, the last show (the boxer special last month) also resulted in a 2, though we have since heard that the judge there was so tough and so keen on handing out 2s that more blue ribbons had to be prepared. Still, he’s a little too round right now, since the heat has meant we can’t exercise him as much as we usually do, and his muscle tone is not as good as it was a month ago. With this in mind, I tried to keep my expectations realistic.

After looking over what I wrote about Ringo’s mental evaluation test a few weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to write up a more thorough description of what it was like. Especially since we were so nervous in advance that we didn’t bother to get a hold of a video camera like most everyone else does these days, and the regular camera hadn’t been charged up so we ran out of batteries halfways in. Oops. ;P For those who aren’t familiar with this sort of test it might also give a better idea of what its like. One important thing to keep in mind is that although the scale is 1-5 for each test, the numbers don’t mean the same each time. Sometimes you want a 1, sometimes you want a 5 and sometimes something in-between. It also depends on the breed what you want, since they’re bred to do different things in certain situations.

It may be Sunday now, but I am still a little sore from last Tuesday’s lesson. Or, well, more from carrying out all the materials needed to build our little jumping course. Since we had a double jumping lesson, our instructor had put together a course consisting of 10 fences. Ouch. Lots of fun to jump, less fun to drag out and even less fun to drag back in afterwards.

One of my semi-regular blog reads is Deep Genre, where a number of sf and fantasy authors post about writing and related subjects. This morning, a post from yesterday by David Louis Edelman caught my eye. Its called Building Character(s) and contains a concise list of ideas for how to make a fully fleshed-out main character.

Of course, some of it doesn’t quite translate to a collaborative environment such as a MUSH, and some doesn’t work so well for having a character that evolves during play. Personally, I like starting with a more-or-less fully fleshed-out character, but I know that a lot of people prefer having more of a sketch to start with and letting the rest come from being on the game and interacting with other players. Both approaches are equally valid, though from the point of view of a game admin, I prefer the former since its easier to deal with at the application stage.

In any case, I think I will have to write up an article on how these ideas could translate to MU*ing, though I am thinking it will show up on the Blood of Dragons webpage rather than here. Given our rather extensive CharGen system, that sort of thing could perhaps be helpful.

This week, I blame Eurovision for my tardiness in posting. ;) Though, there wasn’t much to write about either, since we did our little once-per-semester tour in the nearby woods last Tuesday. Some of the horses had been sick with a mild virus, so it was decided that not doing anything strenuous was best. Since I was put on Murphy, that was fine by me. Riding outside of the arena or paddock is always something that makes me a little nervous, though Murphy is pretty reliable and that makes all the difference. This time, I had a very good ride. We got to do a fair bit of trotting and cantering for once (after all the development in the area, we don’t have a lot of good paths to use), and it even made me wish we had some jumps we could do. Murphy would have loved that.

We’ve finally added a bunch of new pictures of Ringo. There’s one addition to the 2007 gallery, the rest are in the newly added 2008 gallery. They’re mainly from the last show, the boxerspecial on the 11th of May, and from his MH test on the 17th of May. I am also working on a more thorough description of what happened during his testing, which may be up in a day or two.

Last week was taken up with worrying about the dog’s test on Saturday, so of course it totally slipped my mind to write about my last lesson. Given that its already Tuesday again, its definitely time to get it done now.

I was put on Gamir instead of Murphy this time, and given that we ended up focusing on a lot of canter work I suspect that was a rather purposeful shift. Gamir needs much less help with his canter, so he’s a good horse for me to work on doing less. Which I still need to work on. A lot. ;P I also managed to continue the trend from last week of mistaking a higher stride frequency for a longer stride when working on varying the tempo, both during the warm-up and during the actual canter work.

Today, the time had come for Ringo’s ‘MH’ test, which is an evaluation of his mentality. In general, it is done between 12 and 18 months of age, but we felt Ringo was too immature this autumn and then it took until now before the local boxer club arranged another one. Given that he has shown a fear of fireworks as well as reacted to gun shots, I was very nervous about taking the test (the last part of the test is four gun shots). In fact, I almost changed my mind about doing it today, as late as when we were out there and ready to start. But we decided to go ahead anyway, and given the end result I am very glad that we did it. Instead of scraping by on the shots, Ringo passed with the best possible score. Whew!

Now, mind you, I am pretty certain it had a lot to do with him being dead tired at that stage, because he had been so keyed up earlier and managed to get himself quite worn out from lots of pulling and from his usual sensitivity to warmth. However, even taking that into account, his reaction was miles better than I had expected. He also surprised us (less positively so) by not doing so great when it came to gripping things and when it came to curiosity. At home, he’s ferocious when it comes to grabbing and holding onto things, and tug of war his a favourite game. He also tends to be pretty curious. But today, he was actually quite reserved. I think he becomes a bit more passive when he has a lot to process, basically. It seems to be either going totally bonkers because his brain overheats, or becoming very pensive.

He also showed some very interesting reactions to people. If the helpers initiated contact with him, he went wild with joy, jumping up in their faces. If they did nothing, he just sniffed them and ignored them. To some degree, I think this is because of his age; he’s started to learn that if someone doesn’t show interest in him, he’s supposed to ignore them. In any case, we were thrilled with him passing with such a good result on the shooting, and it was interesting to see how he reacted to the other parts of the test.

We sure had a busy weekend. First a kennelclub show on Saturday and then the boxerspecial on Sunday. The common denominator for both was hot weather and a very well-behaved Ringo.

No, I don’t miss last week entirely. We didn’t ride, as we will be doing a double-length jumping lesson in a few weeks. This week, though? Well, I almost didn’t ride this week either, since a lovely norovirus (also known as “winter vomiting disease”) decided to forget that it was May and struck me down with a vengeance on Monday. I was sick as a whole pack of dogs, and while the worst was over on Tuesday, I was still very weak then. But, I took a bunch of pain killers and some fruit sugar to perk me up, and headed off.

In a remarkable move, Archaia Studio Press has made almost all the issues of its flagship title, Artesia, available for free at Wowio. This includes all three initial series of six issues, through Artesia Afire. The on-going Artesia Besieged, however, is not included, nor are the annuals Smylie created.

Artesia is, hands down, the best epic fantasy being produced in American comics. There is now absolutely no excuse to give these a try.

Its been slow on the show front since January, though I have actually had plenty of other things (like our weekly trips up to the local club to train the little monster) I could have posted about. I’ve just been very lazy. That’ll have to change now. Today was the first of three shows in May, with the other two coming up the 10th and the 11th. We’ll have to hope for a better result there. ;) Today’s judge did not much care for Ringo, and we did not go on from the individual evaluation. This was the evaluation:

Male under development. Needs stronger sex characteristics in his head, somewhat small teeth, dark eyes, head needs to be somewhat larger for the body. Powerful neck, adequate length. Needs to come up a little on his legs, open forearm angles. Good muscle tone, somewhat thin coat today, good guard hairs, beautiful stripes. Needs steadier movements. Accessible and lively temperament.

Result: UKL-2

Some of these things sound quite strange to us, since they contradict things previously said, so we’re chalking it up mostly to the judge. ;) His coat is, however, not great at the moment, so that may affect the other two shows too.

What was great today, however, was his behaviour. Well, great for him, anyway. It seems like weekly training at the club has gotten him to be a little more responsive to me when around a lot of dogs and a lot of people. I have also learned a couple of good tricks for dealing with him when he goes into overdrive, such as just pulling the leash down and standing on it, and I finally remembered to take my time when he did act up rather than hurrying up because I worry so much about being an inconvenience. So, instead of pressing ahead with a dog hanging from my arm and growling at me, I stopped him, waited until he gave in (basically, he had to cool off a bit so I could communicate with him again, since he just ends up totally blocked when he gets too excited), and gave him some treats. I also picked up some useful tips about showing him at a show training this last Tuesday, and I think it helped a lot with keeping him posed fairly nicely in front of the judge.

So, despite a lack of red ribbons, I am pleased with the day, and I hope it made a positive impression on Ringo.

As I sat down to write this post, I realized that I would once again be running into vocabulary issues, and that I probably need to tackle this sooner rather than later. I do have a horse terminology dictionary which goes from English to Swedish and from Swedish to English, but it doesn’t cover as many dressage terms as I would like and some of them I am a little suspicious of. Some searching around seems to have uncovered what I needed for this post, however.