# Trotters, Arabians, Donkeys and Other People



## SueC

*2021 NOTE TO ANYONE NEW READING*

Come talk to us on the last page!  It's enough to skim a couple of pages there and you can jump right in if you're looking for a friendly group discussion. This journal is part of a group of journals we run more like a social thread than a private journal, and it's populated by interesting characters who think outside the square and who respect other animal species and their needs for expressing natural behaviours like, in the case of horses and other social grazing mammals, free socialising with buddies, trickle grazing, and an ability to explore their environment, which sometimes has to happen with human "backpacks" if you're not incredibly fortunate to have access for wide free-ranging spaces for your horse(s).

My husband and I are lucky that we do. We're on Red Moon Sanctuary, a 62 hectare smallholding comprised of 50 hectares of incredibly biodiverse nature reserve we manage for conservation, and 12 hectares of pasture across which our horses and donkeys free-range along with our small herd of beef cattle, and wildlife like kangaroos and emus. We've been here 10 years (as of 2020) and in that time have owner-built an off-grid strawbale farmhouse in which we host eco-stays (see here and here), which is a fantastic way to meet all sorts of lovely people who care about the planet and the concept of community. ❤

We've also planted shelter belts and rehabilitated our roadsides from invasive weeds back to wildlife habitat, and established a permaculture F&V garden which increasingly feeds us and our guests. And, we've got three retired ex-harness racing horses, one of which I ride and give lessons on, another of which I'd love to saddle train and ride as I did his half-brother (time is an issue), and a 27-year-old who is truly retired, but a total sweetheart.

I grew up across two continents, in three countries; from age 11 I was on a horse breeding and racing farm in Australia because that's what my family chose to do. I personally don't like horse racing, for a number of reasons - most of them to do with industry-standard poor animal management practices and because anything which involves lots of money seems to foster corruption and bring out the worst in people. Also because I find it boring to just race horses around ovals, and prefer disciplines in which there is more communication and camaraderie with the horse - like trail riding, classical dressage (done sensitively), endurance riding (I had an Arabian mare on whom I rode endurance in my teens and 20s) and gymkhanas. In those disciplines, horses can participate well into their 20s, instead of being a use-and-throw-away type item.

When I grew up, I became a biologist/environmental scientist, and later an educator and writer. When we hit 40 we decided to "tree change" to a smallholding, which is where we are now. I've got a keen interest in mental/emotional health from growing up in a difficult family and from seeing similar fallout to my own in friends and in students I was teaching. These days I write about that, and a number of other subjects, on a regular basis. Recreationally, I write here and on an alternative music forum. I also write professional articles for independent magazines when the mood is upon me.

I will be creating an INDEX for this journal soon, because it's so long! 

Things like:

Learning to ride in Europe
Educating my first horse from scratch - an Arabian yearling bought half-price in the summer of 1983, when I was 11
Re-educating my current riding horse from harness to saddle in 2009
Assorted trail rides in the Australian bush, where I took the camera
Many more reports on gorgeous mountain and coastal hikes because we live in a wonderful natural walking area on the pristine South Coast of Western Australia and love getting out and stretching our legs
Rehabilitating "institutionalised" horses at Red Moon Sanctuary - here's a link to our last adoptee's first day here with us - he'd spent 17 years since weaning not allowed any social contact with other horses and was kept solitary in the same yard day in, day out
Various philosophical reflections
Various mental/emotional health pieces to support fellow survivors of family dysfunction
Pieces on building our house and managing our farm and nature reserve, which are "re-prints" from magazine articles
...and lots more...

Watch this space.

_Returning you to historical journal now, from back in 2104 (and please note, when I started this journal I was glossing over my birth family situation because I had not yet started talking frankly about such problems in public - that happened here.)_

♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣​

This is going to be a combination of show-and-tell, reflective journal and place for SB appreciators to hang out. I am a default Standardbred appreciator because my parents started breeding, training and racing them when I was still at school. My father is still training and racing a trio of young horses and at age 75 is, as far as I know, the oldest reinsman still driving in races in Western Australia.

I am in the 40+ social group at HF and, when DH and I recently exchanged farms with my parents for a long weekend to give them a change of scenery for my mother's 75th, and I brought photos back to my group, the idea dawned on me that this might make a nice general thread starter on Standardbreds and other Trotting breeds, their harness and ridden training, converting an OTSB for riding, etc. So here goes, starting just with that, cut-and-paste, and I'll fill in the history with more detail later, and answer any questions that might arise.

*____*

Here are some photos of the horses at my parents' place, which we took last weekend:










Stable row: Chip, (Frog not looking), Dezba, La Jolie, Rosie, La Cherie.










Shed: Baralu, Torrific Girl, Sunset Coast. (Classic Julian opposite, not in photo.)

Two other horses use walk-in-walk-out night quarters, not photographed here.

My father was around the same age I am now when, 30 years ago, he decided he'd had enough of working in an office fulltime, bought a very inexpensive piece of bush in Australia, and built the stables and shed himself, with one offsider. He taught himself to lay bricks and to do roof framing and cladding. Then he started training and racing trotters. He even bred them at one point, but did much better with horses he bought in or rescued, often horses that needed "fixing" in some way: He said recently that when you breed, you don't know what you're going to get; when you buy, you can see what you're going to get.

This is Chip, along with my Romeo the last of the old generation of horses he brought in to race:










Chip was impulse bought inexpensively at a yearling sale, was small and wasn't particularly famously bred, but Dad just liked the look of him and his nature. I was in my early 20s and said to him, "Did you really need another horse?" and he said, "If he doesn't go you can have him, he's so pretty and a real character." As it turned out, he did go all right: Was my father's most successful horse - won 10 times, including 4 metropolitan races, and placed 19 times. We also rode him. I took him to a 25km short endurance event between metropolitan races once and he breezed home in that as well. He was retired paddock sound with a spinal injury he got from running head-first into a tree when playing. He is now 23.










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## SueC

This is Classic Julian, like Chip also still a stallion, and grumpy here because my dog is annoying him:











Classic Julian was the single foal my father was able to breed out of his most successful race mare ever, Classic Juliet. Like my Sunsmart he is by the US import The Sunbird Hanover, whom my father stood at stud at the tail end of his career when his owner was paralysed in a traffic accident, in return for a couple of foals from his own mares.

Julian is a lovely horse, but smaller than either of his parents, and although he quickly won twice at the start of his racing career, something went mysteriously wrong with him health-wise and after that, he only placed a couple of times until retirement. Typical of the frequent lack of logic of horse breeding, this was our best bred horse ever - champions through both sides of the pedigree, successful parents - but ended up performing below average. His mother, Classic Juliet, was one of the old generation of bought-in horses, acquired as a weanling, and one of the first horses my father raced. She won 7 times and placed 10 times, including in metro races, before breaking a notch off a knee joint that made her likely to injure herself with further racing, so she was retired. She was my Romeo's younger full sister and died last year aged 27. Classic Julian is 14.












Next we have Torrific Girl (left), a young mare my father bought when Julian retired, who is currently trialling and learning to race, and Sunset Coast (right), another foal from the old generation of mares my father drove. Sunset Coast is by The Sunbird Hanover and out of Mediterranean, who was a good country race mare, notching up 3 wins and 15 placings while taking my father through the process of becoming a licensed reinsman in the late 1980s. Sunset Coast was very talented, but involved in several horrific racing accidents she never got over psychologically, and retired after a floating accident that tore a huge hole in her inner thigh. She is now 18 years old.









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## SueC

Next are two of the home-bred and now retired generation: Sunsmart's dam French Revolution (left), and her full brother Le Chasseur (right). Both are grandget of Dame du Buisson, a French Trotter mare we innocently imported into Australia when we came here in 1882 - she and a Bavarian Warmblood gelding were family members and we decided to bring them along and scrounge for years if necessary to do it. I used to ride this lovely, friendly, considerate ex-racer, ex-broodmare on trails as a child, and long story short, the local trotting association convinced my father to breed from her, and she haemorrhaged to death 12 hours after foaling. The foal was unfortunately nothing like her - miserable temper and one of the few horses I actually disliked - and also quite useless for racing purposes, but bred from to preserve the bloodline and assuage some guilt, I am sure... That stallion, French Legacy, died some years back in his mid 20s.










Le Chasseur is French Legacy's only winner and was a reasonable racehorse, but had tendon issues that forced his retirement. He and French Revolution are very kind, friendly, tractable horses like their French grandmother, and have inherited her colour.










French Revolution is 25 and Le Chasseur 21. The mare looks shaggy because she is mid-moult - the gelding has already moulted. These are the two that I've offered to care for at our place to reduce my father's work load a little. We have lots of pasture and wouldn't mind seeing their friendly faces here. My fingers are crossed they will come to Redmond soon - these are seriously good-natured animals. 

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## SueC

This is Dezba, the mare whose last week's race video I linked the 40+ group to (can post that here later).










She is a little greyhound of a mare who was basically doomed to become dog food before reaching maturity, and my father had liked the look of her at the training track, so he took her on as a project a year ago, and she is blossoming. Just about to turn 7, she has now accrued 11 placings with my father training and driving, and is happy and relaxed on and off track. She is a real sweetheart and, like lots of horses that get unhappy in mainstream stables, really benefits from a personal touch.











A collective photo of most of the rest of the horses:










Dezba, La Jolie, Frog (don't ask :smile, Rosie, and La Cherie. All the horses to the right of Dezba are by French Legacy, never made it past trials, and are in their teens. None of them would be particularly brilliant to ride either - one is very small and nervous, another quite grumpy, Frog is a big chicken - scared of his own shadow despite lots of work from yearling age and a rusted-on follower of other horses who freaks out the moment he is a few metres from his own kind. Jolie has badly turned-out legs, a birth defect. Having such a large quantity of excess animals hanging around is one of the things that has made sure I've never bred a horse myself: I took warning. I know a few of you said my father is lovely to have kept all his retired horses, and that's true, but life is also somewhat boring for them, so I prefer to have a small number of horses so I can have more time for each, and to have them free ranging.

Having said that, my father was also interested in horse welfare and the living conditions of his horses are a vast improvement on the way riding horses in Europe are generally kept. He made sure to have 4m x 4m loose boxes for plenty of movement and day turnout with considerable room to move, and at least one paddock mate for most of the horses. 

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## SueC

This is Baralu, the youngest of my father's menagerie:










I really like the look of this one: He reminds me of an Andalusian in his bearing, plus face, mane and tail. Because he is relatively fine-boned, my father is giving him time to mature before racing him. Rising 4, I think he will make a fine mature horse in a year or two and to kill two birds with one stone, I have offered to adopt him post-racing. This means my father doesn't have to worry about what will happen to Baralu should the horse outlive him, and that when Sunsmart retires I will have another nice horse to ride.










Baralu is a rig - he has retained testicles in his body cavity - which means he is a sterile stallion. This also has implications for the kind of home he can go to later. Having said that, he has a testosterone-antagonist implant which is a chemical method of achieving, for around a year at a time, similar results to physically gelding a horse. Still, you can see that his attitude to the dog is quite similar to Julian's: Both of them would kill a dog if they could corner one. Baralu is very friendly to people, but overly playful and boisterous, and still a bit of a handful, as still in the early stages of his education.





































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## SueC

Phew, so many to get through! To finish, here is a close-up view of some of the horses from the collective photo before:










Frog, full brother to Rosie and Jolie.











Cherie and Rosie. Cherie is a full sister to Chasseur and French Revolution. Rosie is a full sister to Frog and Jolie, and these three were out of Alfa Dynasty, a mare my father raced at the same time he had Mediterranean, and who had one win and 14 placings while my father was qualifying to be a licensed reinsman. Alfa Dynasty died in her early 20s of a ruptured bowel nearly a decade ago.

The Sunbird Hanover died of a twisted bowel at age 24. French Legacy, the Bavarian Warmblood Mingo, and Mediterranean died of age-related illnesses in their mid-to-late 20s - the mare just went to sleep in her loose box one night and never woke up - the most peaceful departure we've had.

My father's first ever race mare, Kiwi Logan, had a fabulous debut season culminating in runner-up in the Triple Crown age classic final, but she collapsed and died like Hickstead only a few months later, after a flawless training run. Another little mare broke her leg on track in the 1990s. Chip had a full sister who died young of impaction colic, and Colirini, the unraced mother of Chasseur, Cherie and French Revolution also died of a twisted bowel while Cherie was still at foot. Mediterranean also had a foal by French Legacy, but he died of impaction colic also. Interestingly, all the bowel-related deaths were in retired or otherwise sedentary horses: We never had one in a horse that was in training. 

(The sandy nature of WA's West Coast leads many local horses to tend to accumulate sand in their intestines, and countermeasures are, in our experience, not totally effective if horses are also sedentary. If enough sand accumulates, it can block the gut or predispose the gut to torsions. The dry lots on which my father's horses run are quite typical for the West Coast in footing - the local deep sand, in a climate of only half a year with consistent rainfall, doesn't stand horse traffic unless irrigated and managed with rotations - but his lots are much bigger than such turnout generally is. I live on the South Coast with a much longer growing season and more substantial soils, and my own horses are on pasture.)

I think that's everyone accounted for. My own late Arabian mare, you've already seen.

...end of special transmission... 

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## SueC

Because I'm trying to be efficient here, I am including below a reprint of a post I did when I first joined this forum in February 2014. It gives a little general background in summary format.

___________________________________________________________________

*Hi from Australia!* 

Hiya all, I came across this forum when searching for somewhere with quality and interesting horse related discussions, and am really impressed with how international it is and the general standard of posting and conduct. It's so cool to get snippets of the lives of other riders living in other places and I love the photos. I get to see places I've not travelled and see how things are done there! And it amazes me how universal some things are.

I'm a European who moved to Australia as a littlie, but not before I learnt to ride. On huge Warmbloods, that's the way it's done there: They didn't give kids ponies, just a ladder! :lol: I remember how high up it felt when I finally got on top of that Mt Everest of an animal, and how I desperately didn't want to fall off, so of course I immediately did, which was kind of good because the fear of falling is usually far worse than the actual thing. I'm actually really grateful for the regimented equine education I had as a beginner, what with lots of group arena riding, figures, basic dressage: It stood me in good stead ever after.

In Australia I grew up on a horse stud because my father, who is horse obsessed, didn't seem to know when to stop breeding them! He got into trotters because of a pet mare from France whom he brought out, and I currently ride a great-grandson of hers who is a lot of fun. My personal preference has always been for riding, but when you're in a harness family even your Arabian endurance mare ends up being cart-broken! :lol: I grew up endurance and trail riding, attending flag-racing and novelties gymkhanas, and practising dressage and tricks in the back paddock. My jumping career didn't last long because my legs grew so long that even if the horse clears the jump, my feet, which would hang far below even on a Clydesdale, knock over the jump.

Now mid-life, and after a hiatus in horse riding from my mid twenties to mid thirties, we moved to the sticks three years back and I have three horses, including two ancient retirees from my childhood. Also three donkeys, but that's another story! And an adorable dog. The sun is kind of hot in this part of the world, which may be a reason we decided to build a farm house out of straw bales. Yes really! We're getting closer to completion, photos (including menagerie) on:

Flickr: Red Moon Sanctuary's Photostream

A bow right here to any Americans reading: You guys pioneered bale building, thank you! One of your compatriots, Andrew Morrison of strawbale.com, was our most useful resource for building that kind of house: We were novices, and it's been something of a journey. At one stage, before plastering, one of our horses tried to eat our dining room! :lol:

Well, best wishes to all, and happy riding!

SueC


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## SueC

For additional context, here's a little video of DH's and my South Coast home two years ago, when the Donkey Society brought the group of donkeys we offered to adopt. One of them, Sparkle (tiny paint jenny), is basically blind and needs her long-term herdmates Mary Lou (long-haired Irish donkey, looks like a Rastafarian yak) and Don Quixote (classical looking donkey) as guide donkeys long term. Mary Lou and Don Quixote were terribly obese, and have been slimmed down considerably with grazing muzzles etc since we acquired them.

The video also shows the horses' initial reaction to the donkey arrival, and gives a glimpse of how South Coast conditions are a bit more lush than West Coast.


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## SueC

Some relatively recent photos of me with my own horses.

My late mare aged 27 at a beach outing with friends.











Same mare, same age, some relaxed trail riding to keep her in good shape and humour. Like many Polish/Crabbet Arabians she was a super endurance horse in her prime. Also great at novelties like bending and barrel races, saddle trotting races, etc. Was fun to do dressage with and had great flying changes, which we started doing just for fun in the back paddock when I was growing up. I had this mare for 31 years. When I bought her as a yearling, I was 11 and we didn't realise I was going to be 5'11" at maturity. :smile: Still, like lots of Arabs, this one was up to it. She was the first horse I educated from scratch.











My husband with her after I had entered her in one led and one ridden open-breed open-age class, just for fun and because she was looking so wonderful for her age, at our local agricultural show when she was 27 and due to my career commitments and travel had had a ten-year hiatus from any sort of competition. The next oldest horse was more than ten years her junior, and the judge nearly fainted when I told him how old she was after the competition. :smile:












Early stages of re-educating my French Trotter/SB cross Sunsmart from harness to ridden.











And...the donkeys earlier this year:











Also, our ancient SB Romeo looking in on us while we were plastering our living room:


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## SueC

I dug up another photo we took at trackwork a few years ago, of dad driving Classic Julian when he was still racing:










You don't get that many harness photos on HF so I thought I'd post it! :smile:


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## SueC

Enough context... now back to some action, so I'm also going to share here a recent unfortunate chainsaw accident and subsequent harness race I originally wrote about in my 40+ village.


*Please take care with power saws* 

Hey all, my father, who's used chain saws for over four decades and never had an accident, had one yesterday cutting firewood. A funny shaped branch slipped and the saw kicked to the side and got him in the palm of his left hand. He was extraordinarily lucky not to have severed any tendons or nerves. An emergency department doctor spent nearly two hours stitching him up and says he should make a full recovery.

To give you an idea of what my father is like though: Happened at 10am, my mother came home from shopping at 10.30 and wanted to take him to emergency but he'd pressure bandaged his hand and insisted on training his horse first as it had a race coming up on the weekend. Then he had to feed all his darlings and he decided he might as well bring them all into their stables early in case the medical treatment went on after sunset. So by mid-afternoon he left to see his GP, who took a look at the hand, nearly fainted, and sent him to the emergency department...

I've offered to take two of his retired horses into care here on a permanent basis, to reduce his load from 12 (3 in training, 9 surviving retirees) to 10. I'm looking to take care of Sunsmart's mother and her full brother, both early 20s, both chestnuts with stars and very friendly. I have ample room here and I know I'm going to lose Romeo before too long. He's officially 30 (although his real birthday isn't for weeks yet) and that's a bit of a record. He's doing well though, pelted around with the others at full gallop today and has stopped being lean now! Very energetic at present. Would want to be though, with all the stuff I'm feeding him because he is four molars down! 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by *Celeste* 
_Sue, I hope your dad heals quickly. I think it is awesome that he keeps his older race horses! That is great!_

I've been referring to his place as "The Equine Retirement Village" for years. Not only does he keep every single one of them (except Romeo and Sunsmart, whom I adopted), but he continues to stable them at night and muck out after them. For 12 horses all up, to do that, plus hand-feed concentrates twice a day and meadow hay four times (dry lots at his place, no pasture) took me 3-4 hours a day on the weekend just to do all that, and that's before you actually work with a horse! And he's 75, and still trains three horses, and has mountains of upkeep around his property that keeps him busy besides...

Quote:
Originally Posted by *RegularJoe*   
_Reminds me of a friend from high school. His dad was, if memory serves, 61 and had never seen a doctor for any reason whatsoever. 

He put a chain saw half way through his leg, nearly to the bone. 

He wanted to just sew it up himself. 

My friend's mom basically had to threaten to divorce him if he didn't go to the hospital._

Funny story! I have one like that! A colleague of mine back in 1998 (picture a dreadlocked art teacher) cut his leg on a piece of metal, poured whisky into it, drank some whisky, and sewed himself up with fishing line. Unfortunately he got an infection and then had to go to hospital anyway. I don't think the whisky in the would helped any (because it basically cooks not just the bacteria, but the cells on the wound surface and that really interferes with healing...blame the old cowboy movies...)

My dad isn't anti-hospital as such. He just puts his horses first to a somewhat ridiculous degree... http://www.horseforum.com/members/24775/


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## SueC

Quote:
Originally Posted by *Eole* 
_Sue, I'm sure your father will heal well... if he can be convinced not to use that hand for a couple weeks._

:rofl:

Even when my father had a hernia repaired in his 60s and was told to avoid lifting/strain for a month, he was mucking out stables and training as usual. He did make the concession to only half fill the wheelbarrows...

So resting his hand is a similar story. In fact, here he is driving in a race on Sunday afternoon, days after the accident. He and his little (rescue) mare Dezba came third. He's had her a year - previous place she'd got so stressed out she wasn't eating and she wasn't performing, and they know my father is good with this kind of stuff and offered him the mare. He hasn't won yet with her but they've had numerous placings, and this is another. He's easy to spot with his pink/black horseshoes driving jacket.

http://media.harness.org.au/wa/BYC07091406.mp4

If that doesn't open, choose your video option from this link (Race 6):

Race Results -BUNBURYÂ*Â*7 September 2014- Australian Harness Racing

He did tell me he was taking the precaution of wearing a food handling glove between his bandaged hand and driving gloves for extra protection from dirt and moisture. :lol:


Quote:
Originally Posted by *RegularJoe* 
_Nice finish! Just enough left in the tank to capture third._

Yeah, that was a really nice tactical drive - and that's great because after the last race he was beating himself up after sitting in the running line and taking her out with 400m to go instead of closer to the finish, which meant she had to run extra distance (around the curve) and push wind longer, and they ended up 6th.

This time, in that video, he was racing his maiden mare in a mixed race with some horses who had already won up to three races (the horses who finished 1st-4th there were the three favourites plus Dezba). So he didn't want to fight one of the favourites for the lead but took the slipstream behind that horse, which is a good spot to be if you can get out at the end - and if it's a favourite leading you, then you're unlikely to be shovelled back at the end by a tiring leader. Paid off because he got to overtake the leader in the end.

It's only her third race back from a spell and she is not quite back at peak fitness yet, so my dad is very happy! And I'm proud of him for getting a free mare to be so competitive. She's run 2nd five times and 3rd six times since he had her and with previous owners she'd only had the one placing before she started starving herself out of stress and unhappiness. As mares that haven't won aren't generally used for breeding, her life expectancy wouldn't have been very long if dad hadn't adopted her. As it is she's staying in the family - I've already promised she can retire with me (because dad expects she'll outlive him).

It's not like we have a champion racehorse there, but this kind of thing is very satisfying and more than pays for itself as well, and a great hobby for a 75yo person compared to watching TV! 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by *SueC*   
_...this kind of thing is very satisfying and more than pays for itself as well, and a great hobby for a 75yo person compared to watching TV!_

_Nearly anything is a better hobby than watching TV, 75 or not. 

Interesting that you said it pays for itself. If I'm not intruding, what's the payout for a third place finish? 
_
It's around $500 in country races like that. She's made around $10K in the last 12 months with her 11 placings. 2nd pays around $1200. There's also a little money for 4th and 5th. A win would be $4500 or so in country class.


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## SueC

I am including the following "reprint" because people ask me regularly about trotting versus pacing.

Quote:
Originally Posted by *Eole*   
_Classic Julian is so handsome, I had noticed him in the previous pictures. Are they all pacers?_

I look at Julian and see his under-saddle potential - he's beautiful and athletic and only 14 and totally sound. I think he'd be as good a riding horse as my Sunsmart, who is by the same sire. Julian is slightly smaller, but has a better head carriage - I had to work Sunsmart out of being upside-down when I started. I think he's wasted in the paddock, and bored to boot. But I already have a riding horse and can't ride two.

Julian raced as a pacer but has a beautiful trot as well, like Chip, who did whatever gait the rider cued for - there is this misconception that pacers are useless at serious equitation because they allegedly can't trot or canter properly or get the leads right. There is a small subset of pacers who can't trot, they only ever pace in the paddock as well, but whatever they have in the paddock, they will potentially have under a rider with the right communication. However, unless a rider has some competence in under-saddle training and in basic dressage, the horse is just going to keep doing what it thinks the humans want from it unless shown otherwise. If trotters/pacers are ridden from the go-get parallel with their harness training, then they never need re-training, but re-training is straightforward for a competent rider.

Sunsmart was a trotter, pacing didn't agree with him although my father tried to teach it to him for seven years, so he never got to race as there were no trotting races in WA at the time. Same goes for a few other horses my father bred but never raced - the mare that everything started with was a French Trotter, and some of her descendants, like Sunsmart, took after her to the extent that they weren't "ambidextrous" like most Standardbreds.

Sunsmart's gaits at liberty - this is a fun video if you haven't seen it, where he chases cattle for entertainment:






End of excepts from my HF social group. Hopefully this gives some non-harness folk a glimpse into that discipline, and makes a nice starting point for this thread.


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## frlsgirl

This is very interesting. I know nothing about Standard Breds...I don't think we have them in Germany? Or maybe we call them something else. Subbing so that I can learn more.


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## SueC

Hi Frlsgirl! 

In Germany you have them too, (American) Standardbreds and various European trotting breeds, all collectively referred to as "Traber" - and people in Europe ride them far more commonly, including in serious competitions, than they do in Australia.

Very famous example: Olympic showjumper Halla.


Olympic showjumper Halla - a German Trotter with SB blood (stud books allow free mixing).











Trotting blood is also often well represented in various riding and carriage breeds (and Trotters themselves, of course, developed from good carriage horse lines interbred with TBs etc).

I spent my first decade in Europe and noticed that carriage driving was (thirty years ago anyway) still a popular pursuit with Warmblood riders. They'd be in the saddle one time and driving their horses the next. It was way cool. That kind of versatility was highly prized. We had a Bavarian Warmblood once, and we found out that (thirty years ago anyway) prospective breeding stallions had to pass examinations on conformation, halter handling, dressage, jumping, carriage driving and _*ploughing*_ to be allowed to breed registered offspring. :smile: 

Also the Bavarian Warmblood studbook accepted various Trotting breeds, SBs, TBs and Arabians for breeding BW horses, so long as they passed all these examinations of course! Our BW was out of a German Trotter dam called Yakima who was a regional showjumping champion of her time, so her foal to a "regular" BW stallion, Morketo, was registered as a BW without hesitation.

If you go to a _Trabrennen_ in Germany you may well come across blood relatives of the horses my father bred. Our foundation mare, French Trotter Dame du Buisson, produced five foals in Germany before we bought her, and they ran very well, and almost certainly produced further racing offspring. Her foals used to race in Daglfing, Munich.


----------



## frlsgirl

SueC said:


> Hi Frlsgirl!
> 
> In Germany you have them too, (American) Standardbreds and various European trotting breeds, all collectively referred to as "Traber" - and people in Europe ride them far more commonly, including in serious competitions, than they do in Australia.


Ahhh...Traber...I got it now. I've lived in the states for the past 20 years and I don't recall seeing Trabers at any of the riding schools where I took lessons when I lived in Germany, but I do recall the breed term and remember watching trabrennen on TV. I didn't know that you could use them for every-day type of riding...thought they were exlusively used in harness/racing. Learn something new every day


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## SueC

Well, horses are horses, and though there are specialist breeds around, many of them are still versatile.

Where I went to riding school in Germany, they had mostly Warmbloods, but there was also one draught horse, Kalinka, who got ridden (an old schoolmate, reminiscing, recently said, "We had to do the splits to ride her, as child riders!") and one Trotter. Interestingly, it was the Trakehner who had issues with his canter leads.

Our first horse, a Bavarian Warmblood, was half Trotter by bloodlines, and our foundation mare we actually bought as a riding horse, and she was a wonderful, reliable horse. Nobody we met in Germany expressed surprise to see a Trotter being ridden, which is quite unlike the situation in Australia, where there is a snootiness about it. While we agisted at German barns, we came across several other Trotters in the breed mix that included Warmbloods (like Trakehner, Oldenburger, Hannoverian), Arabians, Thoroughbreds, Irish Hunters, Icelandic and Fjord horses. Trotters have a good jumping reputation there, because of Halla and other such showjumpers/eventers.

Whereabouts in Germany were you from? And can you get Brezeln and decent bread in Oklahoma?


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## SueC

For those interested in riding Standardbreds, NBEventer recently started this thread here:

http://www.horseforum.com/horse-breeds/underestimated-standardbred-459114/


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## SueC

*Frlsgirl*: I noticed you ride a Morgan. This breed is related to the American Standardbred, as the faster Morgan carriage horses were incorporated into the breed during its development, along with TBs like foundation sire Hambletonian.

A reasonable article on the Standardbred on Wikipedia:

Standardbred - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The point mutation discussed in the article and its relationship to trotting ability is vastly oversimplified in the article. Like many complex characteristics, many genes are likely to be involved, not just one simple mutation. Other breeds also have good trotting abilities, and do not all have this point mutation - for example, other trotting breeds, and also good working Arabians (my Arabian mare trotted faster than some Standardbreds and consistently won saddle trotting competitions in gymkhanas).

I do like this photo of a SB doing dressage, from the article above.











It's a shame that "standard" has such negative marketing connotations these days compared to "deluxe" and other superlatives. The SB is thus named because they all had to trot to a certain time standard to go in the stud book.

Also a nice website here on Standardbreds for pleasure and performance under saddle:

The Standardbred Pleasure & Performance Horse Association of NSW Inc. - Home


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## oobiedoo

I have a Standardbred mare, an older girl. We're thinking around 20yrs. I bought her for $200 from a couple that said they rescued her from a mud pen with no food,hay or fresh water. I was looking for something my 2 yr old granddaughter could learn to ride on and they said this is the girl. As close to spook proof as you can get, never a kick,bite or anything that would hurt a person. So for the last 3 year's she's lived in our backyard and taken many many walks on a leadline around the loop road We live on.
Chloe has a her size pony now to learn to ride independently and I've decided to ride Judy myself. I used to ride anything when I was young but lost confidence after a few falls as I got older. I'm 61 now, so I took her to a friend's barn where there's a round pen and an arena to ride in and someone around to call 911 if I do fall off 😉. I've gone over twice this week and lunged her a little then rode in the arena,mostly walking, circles,changing direction until I get my confidence back. It's finally beginning to cool off here some so maybe soon I'll try some trails behind the barn. My friend that's a trainer and instructor is there with me in case I do need help.
When she round penned Judy she says every now and then she can get her to gait, heck I just want a nice walk/trot at this point. Amy said she didn't know if there were certain cues or commands because she has no experience with Standardbreds. I did notice in your cow chasing video, when we first turned Judy out in her big pasture, she trotted and flew around with that tail out and up like a flag. I did think her gallop almost looked like some kind of bunny hop, is that normal? I know this is kinda long, I'm just so happy with my sweet old girl and counting on her to get me past that old fear so I can really enjoy riding again. I really don't care if she gaits or not, I'm happy with a good trot. Amy seems to think if she can do it then we should learn how to make her do it on command. I'm riding her in an English saddle and a thick,fat loose ring snaffle or just bareback. Are there specific commands or equipment needed to get the pace? My granddaughter still says Judy is her horse. ☺
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## SueC

Hi Oobiedoo! 

How nice that you have an old SB girl. One thing that's really great about OTSBs for prospective riders is that they come with many, many hours of useful training and handling in them, and are usually good with feet, being hosed, transporting and little bits of gear dangling all over them, plus usually quite unflappable around vehicles, crowds, human-built environments and general commotions. They have already logged so many hours of working with people in different environments. Because of that, they are one of the best things going for beginning riders looking for a safe, tractable, reasonably priced horse that's also happy to do more than just plod along.



oobiedoo said:


> So for the last 3 year's she's lived in our backyard and taken many many walks on a leadline around the loop road We live on.


This sounds great - do you have photos to show? 



> Chloe has a her size pony now to learn to ride independently and I've decided to ride Judy myself. I used to ride anything when I was young but lost confidence after a few falls as I got older. I'm 61 now, so I took her to a friend's barn where there's a round pen and an arena to ride in and someone around to call 911 if I do fall off ��. I've gone over twice this week and lunged her a little then rode in the arena,mostly walking, circles,changing direction until I get my confidence back. It's finally beginning to cool off here some so maybe soon I'll try some trails behind the barn. My friend that's a trainer and instructor is there with me in case I do need help.


This all sounds good. I hope you are enjoying your riding! 



> When she round penned Judy she says every now and then she can get her to gait, heck I just want a nice walk/trot at this point. Amy said she didn't know if there were certain cues or commands because she has no experience with Standardbreds.


I take it your mare was a pacer, rather than a trotter? And your trainer is getting her pacing occasionally?

Teaching consistent voice commands for each type of gait really helps - and transition the horse back down and start again until the horse "gets" it. (This is a gradual process like anything, just be consistent.)

Generally I didn't allow our SBs to pace on the lunge line - plus they have no natural inclination to pace when doing tight circles, as in tight circles, like the smaller arena figures, the trot is more stable and comfortable for them. Some SBs are natural pacers (who didn't have to be taught with hopples but did it from birth) and a small amount of these are "full-time camels" though, and can't trot or canter well. Your mare doesn't fit into that category.

SBs who can trot and pace are more inclined to pace on firm surfaces (limestone roads etc) than on soft footing, and in straight stretches than in twisty-turny trails. This is in part biomechanics - horses tend towards the gaits that expend the least energy for given conditions - and in part it's conditioning - firm surfaces and broad straight stretches are reminiscent of trotting tracks. Likewise, a non-pacing SB will tend to trot fast rather than canter in such conditions, unless you cue otherwise.

Another important consideration is head position. In an "ambidextrous" SB, trotting is associated (and this can be reinforced with training) with being on the bit, while for pacing they like to carry the head higher and angle the face up. So your rein cues become an important part of how you tell your horse to trot versus pace, if you want them to retain both gaits (if they have them in the first place).




> I did notice in your cow chasing video, when we first turned Judy out in her big pasture, she trotted and flew around with that tail out and up like a flag. I did think her gallop almost looked like some kind of bunny hop, is that normal?


This is usually the byproduct of having been driven in pacing hopples: When a pacer breaks up into a canter while in hopples, it can't actually canter normally, it has to canter disunited - with the same-beat leg pair not on diagonals but on the same side. This is a bunny-hopping gait, and some OTSBs revert to it because of this prior experience. You can discourage it when riding by always immediately transitioning back down to the trot and asking for the canter-on again: And make sure you have your horse correctly bent to start with - like working on a circle. 

They then get used to being able to have their "normal" canter when working with a human during riding, and not having to have a "funny" canter like out of an accidental break when working in hopples. Neither Chip, nor Romeo, nor Sunsmart (the main SBs I rode consistently for years) picked up disunited canters very often when ridden after a couple of weeks of schooling - it can happen occasionally when the horse is distracted or the rider isn't bending the horse properly or clear with the cues - or when riders have got used to letting a horse carry on disunited (which further reinforces it to them as desirable).

If you look at the video of my SB chasing cows closely, you will notice that he voluntarily breaks into a normal, united canter the moment he starts twisting and turning, and performs several correct flying lead changes, but at the very end, when he notices us with the camera, he gets distracted and in the last lead change ends up disunited, and then almost immediately brings himself back to a trot. 

Good information on canter, leads, etc here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_(leg)




> I know this is kinda long, I'm just so happy with my sweet old girl and counting on her to get me past that old fear so I can really enjoy riding again. I really don't care if she gaits or not, I'm happy with a good trot. Amy seems to think if she can do it then we should learn how to make her do it on command. I'm riding her in an English saddle and a thick,fat loose ring snaffle or just bareback. Are there specific commands or equipment needed to get the pace? My granddaughter still says Judy is her horse. ☺


 Love your story, and hope you continue to have a positive experience! I think I answered your pacing question above. But feel free to drop in anytime with more questions, photos and just telling the rest of us what you and your mare are up to! 

Happy riding and handling!


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## SueC

*PS for Oobiedoo*: Personally I would be focusing on doing standard dressage-type stuff in the arena, and leaving the pacing for trails if you want it. Arenas usually have soft footing, and that's where a horse who can trot or pace equally comfortably would normally be more inclined to trot, and to get it pacing there could then end up confusing it later when you don't want it to pace - make teaching that distinction harder. I had a simple rule: No pacing in the arena - since I like dressage and pacing isn't compatible with that. They were free to pace on trails but on cue, like any normal gait - and it helps to go with their natural inclinations to make it easy for them, e.g. sticking to a trot or canter on soft or twisty-turny trails, and using both the pace and the trot on straight stretches with firm footing, developing consistent cues to distinguish between the two - rein cues to elevate the head to prepare for the pace, on the bit for the trot (and this can be simpler if you ride in double reins, with a snaffle/curb bit or a pelham), deeper seat when asking for a trot, whatever voice or other auditory cues you want to give - e.g. I click my tongue for canter-on when lunging, and then do the same when first riding a horse new to saddle work, in parallel with the usual aids, and then drop the clicking gradually as the horse learns the aids and can work from them alone, and so on until the aids are barely perceptible.

I think the most important thing is to keep things simple and understandable for the horse and build demands gradually, so both of you stay happy.


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## frlsgirl

SueC said:


> Well, horses are horses, and though there are specialist breeds around, many of them are still versatile.
> 
> Where I went to riding school in Germany, they had mostly Warmbloods, but there was also one draught horse, Kalinka, who got ridden (an old schoolmate, reminiscing, recently said, "We had to do the splits to ride her, as child riders!") and one Trotter. Interestingly, it was the Trakehner who had issues with his canter leads.
> 
> Our first horse, a Bavarian Warmblood, was half Trotter by bloodlines, and our foundation mare we actually bought as a riding horse, and she was a wonderful, reliable horse. Nobody we met in Germany expressed surprise to see a Trotter being ridden, which is quite unlike the situation in Australia, where there is a snootiness about it. While we agisted at German barns, we came across several other Trotters in the breed mix that included Warmbloods (like Trakehner, Oldenburger, Hannoverian), Arabians, Thoroughbreds, Irish Hunters, Icelandic and Fjord horses. Trotters have a good jumping reputation there, because of Halla and other such showjumpers/eventers.
> 
> Whereabouts in Germany were you from? And can you get Brezeln and decent bread in Oklahoma?


The riding schools that I attended in Germany had mostly Warmbloods and Welsh Xs. I'm originally from the Frankfurt area but spent a lot of my riding time up north by Hamburg. 

The food in Oklahoma is ok; we have friends who own a German restaurant in town so we have special access to brezeln :lol:


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## SueC

frlsgirl said:


> The riding schools that I attended in Germany had mostly Warmbloods and Welsh Xs. I'm originally from the Frankfurt area but spent a lot of my riding time up north by Hamburg.


Oh, Welshies, how nice! Did they cross them with bigger horses or ponies?

My father spent quite a while in Frankfurt and I went there once or twice as a child. I have a good friend who now lives in Hamburg but I've never been. Closest was Bremen, I was about 8. I remember the fog horns! 




> The food in Oklahoma is ok; we have friends who own a German restaurant in town so we have special access to brezeln :lol:


That's great!  I have to bake them, and though they taste fine, I have not yet learnt to perfect their shapes - because I had to learn it from a cookbook, not a demo. Because they have to rise after shaping, they kind of don't stay neat... My husband is of English extraction and a great fan of any sort of German baked goods. Bienenstich too, which for some reason the French bakeries here usually carry. But Brezeln, there is a good German bakery doing those in Hobart, Tasmania, a little too far from us for regular custom! :shock:


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## frlsgirl

SueC said:


> Oh, Welshies, how nice! Did they cross them with bigger horses or ponies?


The schools used the Welshies for the smaller kids and the WBs for the bigger kids. Even though I was too tall for most of the Welshies, I did fit on Tora, a mystery Welsh X:


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## SueC

That's a wonderful photo! Thanks for posting it.  I'm just in the process of dusting my old prints off and scanning them in to digitise. It's like archaeology...:shock:


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## egrogan

SueC, just found your thread. As a kid, I was very jealous of my cousins, who's father and grandfather trained SBs who ran on the NY State racing circuit (Saratoga and Finger Lakes primarily). Their grandfather was a real horseman, but their dad sort of lost interest in the training and ended up owning claiming type TBs when they moved out to the west coast. My cousins never really cared though, much to my horse-crazed but horse-deprived dismay! 

I hadn't thought about standardbreds for years but happened to turn on the TV to harness racing the other night. Watching the pacers was mesmerizing- it's amazing to me that horses can really move that way.

Anyway, I enjoyed the tour through your herd, and will look forward to following along.


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## SueC

Hey egrogan, welcome and thanks for your interest!  I've had far too much fun here today on the coffee and ridiculous trail riding experience threads and must now really, really get some sleep, as it is scandalously late...


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## Cherrij

I am keeping my eye on this, trying to read it, but always something drags me away. One day I will finish reading


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## Remali

Oh wow Sue, you are living my dream! I've really enjoyed this thread.

I've always admired Standardbreds, there is a Standardbred rescue not very far from where I live, once I get more mobile (my knee, and car issues) I'd like to drive down there and see their horses

Your father's horses have such nice substance, I'm in love with Chip and Baralu.


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## SueC

You and me both. When I saw Baralu, I said to my dad, "Don't worry about where he's going to retire. I was always interested in buying an Andalusian and he ticks all the boxes why without being one." And with Chip, you can really see the small Arabian admixture in SB pedigrees coming out big time, like a throwback. He was great to ride - shame we had to stop because of his back injury. Actually, I also really like Julian - at 14 he still has lots of potentially useful working years, but I have my hands full with Sunsmart just now...

Shame you don't have a TARDIS, Remali. Otherwise you could pop in when you felt like it. Always horses in need of extra TLC!

Love your new avatar photo! Maybe you could start a new photo thread - your Arabians were magnificent!


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## Remali

Oh how I wish I had a TARDIS! Now wouldn't that be something?!

Thanks, my avatar is of my Arabian mare, Kara. The photo was taken back in the late 1980's when Kara was either 3 or 4 years old.


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## frlsgirl

Do all Standard Breds pace from birth? Or is this something that they learn later on?

I was reading in Sally Swift's book that horses can canter and walk from birth but don't learn how to trot until later. I guess it's hard to do with those long spider-looking legs.


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## SueC

Hi Frlsgirl!

Not all SBs pace, or can be taught to pace. There are pacing and trotting races.

SBs are born either natural pacers, or trotters who can be taught to pace, or trotters who can't be taught to pace.

Natural pacers pace in the paddock - some can trot and pace, some only pace.

We had one natural pacer. We got her as a weanling and she was already pacing. She could trot too, but pacing was her preferred option for medium or fast speeds.

We've never bred a natural pacer foal, but I imagine walk and canter would be what they would have to do until their ridiculously long legs have more body to control them properly!


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## SueC

One of the best threads we've had so far on OTSBs is here:

http://www.horseforum.com/horse-training/off-track-standardbred-385082/

Lots of interesting and useful information, and inspiration. 


Other news: Photo of a saddle trotting trial in Bankstown, Australia - in France they've done this kind of alternative, non-gig racing for decades, good to see it here!


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## frlsgirl

SueC said:


> Other news: Photo of a saddle trotting trial in Bankstown, Australia - in France they've done this kind of alternative, non-gig racing for decades, good to see it here!


Wow - look at those legs fly! It looks like the riders are leaning forward/in two-point position? Do they do rising trot? Sometimes my little Morgan mare forgets that she's supposed to be a Dressage horse and reconnects with her inner saddle-seat trotter; I swear it feels just like this picture but it's probably not that exaggerated


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## SueC

Styles for riding that fast trot vary, as you can see here:







Personally I always post at speed. I suppose in a race most prefer to lean forward like in TB races and just stand it out because it probably unbalances the horse less at speed and hence given them a competitive advantage.

Longer clip here, including preliminaries, which are quite interesting:







1994 World Record Under Saddle:






This is an interesting one, run in time trial style, with a prompter driven in a sulky, galloping as prompters do! The woman riding on this occasion does so with a fairly normal stirrup length, in contrast to the races in the clips above.


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## Remali

Interesting! I never knew they rode Standardbreds in races.


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## SueC

My father is celebrating his 76th birthday later this month, and he just drove his rescue mare Dezba in a mare's mile race at his local paceway, scoring a narrow second place over far more favoured competition. This is her second placing out of three starts this season - a win really doesn't look far away for this little sit-and-sprint specialist. But, it's already a big win that a horse that nearly made dog food has now earnt over $11,000 in placings while keeping a senior citizen very active!

Easy to spot with the pink jacket and black horseshoes.

http://media.harness.org.au/wa/PAC06101409.mp4

If that won't open for you, choose your video option from this link (Race 3):

Race Results -PINJARRAÂ Â 6 October 2014- Australian Harness Racing

He tells me his chainsawed hand is now two thirds healed...


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## frlsgirl

SueC said:


> My father is celebrating his 76th birthday later this month, and he just drove his rescue mare Dezba in a mare's mile race at his local paceway, scoring a narrow second place over far more favoured competition. This is her second placing out of three starts this season - a win really doesn't look far away for this little sit-and-sprint specialist. But, it's already a big win that a horse that nearly made dog food has now earnt over $11,000 in placings while keeping a senior citizen very active!
> 
> Easy to spot with the pink jacket and black horseshoes.
> 
> http://media.harness.org.au/wa/PAC06101409.mp4
> 
> If that won't open for you, choose your video option from this link (Race 3):
> 
> Race Results -PINJARRAÂ*Â*6 October 2014- Australian Harness Racing
> 
> He tells me his chainsawed hand is now two thirds healed...


That is very cool. I hope when I get old that I will be just as active.


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## SueC

I hope so too. - I'm _still_ trying to talk him into giving me two of his nine retired horses to look after, since we have the room (my mare died in April, Romeo is 30 this month) and I think looking after a dozen stabled horses is a lot of work...and ten should still be enough work for him. But he is having difficulty with actually sending them down here! I suppose seeing them every six weeks is not enough compared to seeing them daily... yet I'd really like him to have a little more leisure time...

We know a lady who turned 100 a year ago, and she said the secret was never to stop. Lived independently until the age of 99 and still in her own home at 101, but with care.


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## Northernstar

SueC said:


> My father is celebrating his 76th birthday later this month, and he just drove his rescue mare Dezba in a mare's mile race at his local paceway, scoring a narrow second place over far more favoured competition. This is her second placing out of three starts this season - a win really doesn't look far away for this little sit-and-sprint specialist. But, it's already a big win that a horse that nearly made dog food has now earnt over $11,000 in placings while keeping a senior citizen very active!
> 
> Easy to spot with the pink jacket and black horseshoes.
> 
> http://media.harness.org.au/wa/PAC06101409.mp4
> 
> If that won't open for you, choose your video option from this link (Race 3):
> 
> Race Results -PINJARRAÂ*Â*6 October 2014- Australian Harness Racing
> 
> He tells me his chainsawed hand is now two thirds healed...


 Good for him, Sue! What a tremendous achievement! That video was tremendous  ** So glad his hand is healing...gosh, that's something of an accident!


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## SueC

Here's best wishes to my father, who is driving his mare Dezba in a mile race on his 76th birthday tomorrow. 

Last Monday, he led with his yet-to-win mare and came a respectable 4th in a mixed-gender mile race with quite a few repeat winners in his field. If they actually ran proper maiden races, I suspect the mare would have won already. Instead, the C0 class contains many winners whose wins have "expired" from 2-to-4-year-old seasons, or from importation from overseas - plus because of junior reinspersons concessions. It's pretty hard to get a genuine maiden race these days, outside of 2yo racing, which we won't participate in!


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## frlsgirl

Why would the separate them by gender? Does one have an advantage over the other? Are geldings typically taller and can therefore run faster?


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## SueC

Size isn't usually that big an issue, small light horses can make excellent sprinters. It's basically the developmental effects of higher testosterone concentrations in males that make the difference, similar to the situations in human athletes. And, lots of people don't geld race horses, or geld them far later than riding horses, because continuing high testosterone gives a competitive advantage, both from its physiological and its behavioural effects.

So there's mixed-sex races, but also mares-only races. SB age classics are usually split into separate sexes.


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## frlsgirl

Ahh, that makes sense. That's probably why people aren't allowed to take DHEA supplements in rated competitions either.


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## Northernstar

SueC said:


> Here's best wishes to my father, who is driving his mare Dezba in a mile race on his 76th birthday tomorrow.
> 
> Last Monday, he led with his yet-to-win mare and came a respectable 4th in a mixed-gender mile race with quite a few repeat winners in his field. If they actually ran proper maiden races, I suspect the mare would have won already. Instead, the C0 class contains many winners whose wins have "expired" from 2-to-4-year-old seasons, or from importation from overseas - plus because of junior reinspersons concessions. It's pretty hard to get a genuine maiden race these days, outside of 2yo racing, which we won't participate in!


Best Wishes and a Belated Happy Birthday to your father!


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## SueC

Well, here's the most exciting finish of any race I've linked to here! This is Dezba and my father coming fourth on Tuesday night in Bunbury, with the first four horses all almost dead-heating. There was less than 10cm between first and fourth. I couldn't believe the sprint the little mare put on when she got out of the traffic - she seemed to move by jet propulsion and it was run in 1.56.4, which is great for that particular country track. The race classification was C0-C3, so theoretically horses with between no and three wins, but of course there were horses that had won a lot more than three times, as usual (with 2, 3 and 4 year-old racing and NZ assessments not counting as usual, plus junior reinspersons concessions).

Video Replay - Australian Harness Racing

If the link doesn't work, try here:

Race Results -BUNBURYÂ*Â*28 October 2014- Australian Harness Racing

...and select the video option.

Since Dezba is a maiden horse and was racing with far more seasoned horses, and the horse from Barrier 1 was also the favourite, tactically one would look to get behind the front-running favorite and, if that isn't possible, to restrain the horse to entice someone to come around and give cover (so you don't have to push wind). The former not being possible, my father did the latter, and besides being held up in a mini traffic jam that caused them to get out later than ideal, this was a good race - with a super finish!


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## SueC

A few weekends ago we visited my parents and photographed a fitness training session with my father and Dezba.









Tacking up.










Warming up on the sand track.










"Roman Chariot Driving" - galloping the horse through sand for cardiovascular fitness.










Turning to work in the other direction.










Light and flight!










Warmdown.


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## egrogan

She's so shiny! Looks like she's enjoying herself.


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## SueC

Yes, she is shiny. The canola meal in the ration helps - copra, sunflower seeds also help with shiny coats, and of course a good vitamin/mineral mix.

And she is enjoying the training. You can see my father doesn't carry a whip, he just encourages the horse, and a healthy, happy horse of that sort of breed enjoys running, like a sheepdog does. My father doesn't trial with a whip either, and only carries one in races because he is obliged to. Unlike the majority of drivers, he never belts the horse with a whip: You should see the weals across the rumps of many trotters post-race, it's disgraceful. We are totally in favour of banning whips from races, since RSPCA regulations about their use continue to routinely be circumvented. It would be nice to see better horsemanship instead of belting.

Also, of course, many racehorses are over-raced and sour, so racing is no longer fun for them. Dezba was at this point when she was given to my father 18 months ago - was refusing to eat and totally depressed. Now she's happy, improving, and regularly placing in races. Horses respond to TLC and sensible, sympathetic practices.


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## Northernstar

SueC said:


> Yes, she is shiny. The canola meal in the ration helps - copra, sunflower seeds also help with shiny coats, and of course a good vitamin/mineral mix.
> 
> And she is enjoying the training. You can see my father doesn't carry a whip, he just encourages the horse, and a healthy, happy horse of that sort of breed enjoys running, like a sheepdog does. My father doesn't trial with a whip either, and only carries one in races because he is obliged to. Unlike the majority of drivers, he never belts the horse with a whip: You should see the weals across the rumps of many trotters post-race, it's disgraceful. We are totally in favour of banning whips from races, since RSPCA regulations about their use continue to routinely be circumvented. It would be nice to see better horsemanship instead of belting.
> 
> Also, of course, many racehorses are over-raced and sour, so racing is no longer fun for them. Dezba was at this point when she was given to my father 18 months ago - was refusing to eat and totally depressed. Now she's happy, improving, and regularly placing in races. Horses respond to TLC and sensible, sympathetic practices.


My mares are shiny due to a good loose mineral and daily brushing also- the canola is certainly bringing out her extra shine, and is good for _we humans_ as well!!


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## egrogan

I've got flax seed in my mare's rations, and when it was still relatively new to her, I thought I could see that nice shine more than I do now. Of course, she has winter woolies on now, so it's hard to imagine a sleek, shiny horse under all that!


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## SueC

Hi egrogan, it's nearly summer over here and our animals are out of their "bear skins" now!  By the way, your Morgan mare is looking wonderful at 20 years old! Carries herself nicely in your avatar photo, hindquarters engaged, nice posture, looks like she's enjoying herself!

Hey NS, canola oil has a good nutritional profile for humans too. We feed the meal, which has a high residual oil content. But, do you actually have any recipes for canola meal? The smell always reminds me a little of peanuts. I suppose we could add it to bread, like LSA (ground linseed/sunflower/almond meal sold in the health food section over here in Australia, for adding to smoothies, muesli, baked goods. Maybe we could add it to our rye waffles to complement the yummy maple syrup! ;-)


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## SueC

Here is the race replay from the race my father and Dezba participated in yesterday:

Race Results -PINJARRAÂ*Â*10 November 2014- Australian Harness Racing

Just click on the replay button. Dad got a narrow third, which I thought was great given the level of horses running in that race: Much of the field again multiple winners already. She'd not been expected to finish in the first 6 of the field but considerably bettered expectations.

My father was kind of flopping about near the finish line and I asked him what all that was about. He laughed and said he'd forgotten to take his whip out and could not during the race as he couldn't break contact with the reins or he would have unbalanced her. It's an easy mistake for him to make as he neither trains not trials with a whip and only carries one in races because they make him - he voice cues etc. In races he usually obliges the officials by tapping the plastic triangle on the crupper to make a little noise and look like he's doing something (we don't hit horses with whips; unfortunately most harness drivers do, and the weals across the rumps of many trotters post-race disgust us). So yesterday he couldn't do that and improvised with the reins so he wouldn't be stood down for unprofessional racing (which is what often happens if you don't use a whip).

The little mare that was basically on the scrapheap before she changed ownership to dad has been in striking distance in a good proportion of races since she changed stables. She will still gradually improve in fitness and speed, and while not a world champion in the making, has already blossomed into a respectable racehorse, and hasn't peaked yet either. She's making enough money already to finance the upkeep of herself and her stablemates, which isn't bad, considering my father is 76 and this is really a hobby these days, rather than serious racing as it was 20 years ago. One senior citizen and one discarded mare improving each others' lives and doing well: I take my hat off to both of them! 

Warning: One horse in the race fell after crossing the finish line. It's not a pretty accident. It happened for no apparent reason. My father knows the trainer and he says the horse is scraped but not majorly injured. The shafts of the cart broke off and did some damage to her side and she has abrasions on her face, kind of like coming off a bicycle. Expected to make a full recovery but they're still trying to work out why she fell.


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Hi egrogan, it's nearly summer over here and our animals are out of their "bear skins" now!  By the way, your Morgan mare is looking wonderful at 20 years old! Carries herself nicely in your avatar photo, hindquarters engaged, nice posture, looks like she's enjoying herself!


Thanks, Sue. She's a great little mare, still full of plenty of spunk!


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## Northernstar

SueC said:


> Hi egrogan, it's nearly summer over here and our animals are out of their "bear skins" now!  By the way, your Morgan mare is looking wonderful at 20 years old! Carries herself nicely in your avatar photo, hindquarters engaged, nice posture, looks like she's enjoying herself!
> 
> Hey NS, canola oil has a good nutritional profile for humans too. We feed the meal, which has a high residual oil content. But, do you actually have any recipes for canola meal? The smell always reminds me a little of peanuts. I suppose we could add it to bread, like LSA (ground linseed/sunflower/almond meal sold in the health food section over here in Australia, for adding to smoothies, muesli, baked goods. Maybe we could add it to our rye waffles to complement the yummy maple syrup! ;-)


No recipes for canola meal, I'm afraid, but you bet we believe in using canola oil for cooking! It's a staple in our pantry. Granted, we eat very little fried foods, but when frying in oil is necessary, it's done lightly only with canola. The only other is olive oil basted on grilled veggies in the summer with seasoned salt.  *** So glad the mare that went down is ok, btw! That's a good report! Your dad is quite a remarkable guy for his age, and yes, hats off indeed!


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## SueC

It's official: Sunsmart's mother and uncle are coming to Redmond to retire with us, possibly as early as tomorrow - depending on the transport company schedule.




















Sunsmart's dam French Revolution on the left, uncle Le Chasseur on the right. Both horses by French Legacy (Maple Lanes Strike/Dame du Buisson) out of Colirini (Jun Jun Ni/Coliris). Maple Lanes Strike is also the grandsire of Dezba, the mare whose races I have been linking to here.

Le Chasseur was a natural pacer and won and placed in races before retiring due to an inherited tendon weakness which also ended his dam's race career. The problem only shows up at extreme speeds and for all other intents and purposes the horse retired sound. He is now 21 years old.

French Revolution was not a natural pacer and was retired to have a foal after trialling. She produced Sunsmart (by The Sunbird Hanover) who is also not a natural pacer, but a super riding horse. Had there been trotting races in Western Australia at the time, I expect he would have raced well. He has inherited his great-grandmother Dame du Buisson's effortless, big-striding trot - and also has a nice soft canter. French Revolution herself was given a basic saddle education and was variously leased out to riders at one point before retiring in her birthplace. Now 25, we are confident she will enjoy the change of scenery and wide open spaces of Redmond.

Both these horses have sweet and gentle dispositions and are very people orientated. Sunsmart is more like his sire: Friendly, but sassy; a horse who wants to work all day and see the world, and who was never into hobnobbing much until he got into his early teens. Now he hobnobs, but is more into games than affection per se.

Family reunion all around. Youngest sibling La Cherie is staying in Lake Clifton with her buddy Rosie.


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## 4horses

I just wanted to say I really enjoy your stories! What wonderful and talented horses you and your father have! 

I wish I could go back into the horse business, but my wrists aren't holding up well for mucking stalls! 

It is wonderful to see racing horses that are happy and well taken care of.


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## SueC

Hi 4horses, thank you for your interest and comments! 

If your wrists aren't up to mucking out, why not free range a horse somewhere? That's what we do here in Redmond, and the horses are happy to socialise and roam so freely (and they are protected from extreme weather in paddock rugs when appropriate).

I personally support what my father is doing, but was never tempted to do the harness racing thing myself as an adult. I helped out but, for myself, I prefer riding, and generally dislike the racing industry. It's riddled with all sorts of corruption, and hard on horses (unless a trainer takes a stand of conscience), and produces lots of pedigree dog food...

I'm happy that my father is managing to break even in this industry even though he refuses to participate in things like drug cheating, racing immature horses, inflicting welts on a horse with a whip, or disposing of a horse when it has finished racing / if it never gets off the ground. I'm also very happy that he has adopted a discarded mare and given her a good home, and that she is suddenly happy and performing well with him.

I'm currently informally surveying people about things they would improve about the racing industry and its regulation. I would very much welcome your comments.


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## frlsgirl

It's great that you are able to offer these horses a place to retire. Regarding the racing industry, not everyone is kind and offers ex racers a chance to retire or a second career. Many are discarded once they've outlived their usefulness. There should be more retirement options for horses and/or regulation that requires the racing industry to place former race horses into appropriate homes.


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## SueC

Agreed, Frlsgirl. I also think there would be a drastically reduced number of horses to dispose of if the money from 2, 3, 4yo age classics was shifted to 4, 5, 6yo age classics, thereby taking away much of the financial incentive to race immature horses. In great-grandmother's day, people weren't racing immature horses. In France, 2yo racing used to be forbidden, at least in harness racing. As a result, horses were routinely racing into their teens. Now, the majority of harness racers are arthritic or injured at 5 or 6, and a few that aren't race past 8 or 9.

But any such suggestions would lead to loud screams from the industry. Breeders wouldn't have the same demand for horses, and training establishments and syndicates would complain about paying for the extra "unproductive time" while a young horse was maturing...

Dad was saying on the phone, "I wanted to keep them myself and had a hard time letting them go!" But he gets to visit them here, and the horses obviously know me and will be well looked after. I think he relented because I lost my mare in April and Romeo is losing teeth, and it will be nice for the horses here to have two more horses around.

They're going on the "horse bus" this morning and will be here later this afternoon. 400km trip.


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## SueC

Family reunion!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eobm6fCR0MI

Sunsmart greets his uncle Le Chasseur across the fence as his mother French Revolution looks on. The film quality is a little fuzzy because the horses were brought just before dusk. Sunsmart is still more solid that I like him to be because he was left on the grass non-stop with my elderly Arabian mare for six months to keep her company while she needed extra feed before she died earlier this year. He has always been an easy keeper and is now slowly jogging his excess weight back off.


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## SueC

Photos of the brother-sister pair yesterday, which was their first day in their big paddock (click to enlarge):





























More photos here, all on one page and easy to view:

(Explanations and commentary is available by clicking on individual photos on that site.)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/


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## egrogan

Looks like a pretty nice retirement home, Sue! They are lucky to have you.


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## SueC

Well, I think they were equally lucky with my father, except I have more room. ;-) It took a few months to persuade him to let me care for them.


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## frlsgirl

Very cool. Do you think horses recognize each other from back in the day? Even if they were separated for a long time?


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## SueC

They were only apart four years and yes, they do. After the initial surprise, they carried on where they left off. You could also see the difference in the newbies meeting the Caspian mare, whom they'd never met before.

There is a great book investigating these sorts of questions called "Horse Watch: What It Is To Be Equine" by Marthe Kiley-Worthington, who's sort of the Jane Goodall of horses and has done behavioural studies which are really interesting, and bust a few myths, for example, by showing that horses who grow up naturally in family groups exhibit more cooperative than competitive behaviours, and by showing that horses can learn significant vocabulary as well as body language cues - they can even learn some basic syntax, such as the distinction between "Marthe come to Shemal" versus "Shemal come to Marthe", which is pretty cool. Plus, they exhibit reflective consciousness.

Remembering past herd members or environments pretty much for life is the norm. In that they are very like elephants: When we lived in Germany in the 1970s, there was a case where a member of the public was grabbed by a normally personable and nice bull elephant, swung into the enclosure and trampled to death in front of a horrified visitor crowd. It turned out on investigation that this person had, more than twenty years earlier, been a keeper in the elephant enclosure who had been dismissed for cruel behaviour towards the elephants of that time. The bull elephant had been a young elephant when this had happened, and apparently had no trouble picking this person out of a crowd of visitors after all that time. He was just standing in the crowd, not provoking the animal.

My deceased Arabian mare recognised the person who had halter-broken her as a yearling just before I got her with an archaic method that involved tying her to a strong post and swatting her into frothing hysteria with an oilskin to "show her she couldn't get away" several years later on a visit to our farm. The normally friendly mare snorted, put her ears back, turned around, and made elaborate kicking motions towards the fence where this person was standing. She would not approach him, indeed she then took herself off to the far end of the paddock: And at that stage, would usually either approach a human visitor with curiosity, or hang back a little in a neutral way. This kind of response we'd not seen before and never saw afterwards with her.

Fascinating things, animals. I think in the attempt not to anthropomorphise, people often go really overboard in the other direction, and quite forget that we too are social animals, and share many things in common with other social animals.


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## Northernstar

Yes, spot on! That was a _fabulous_ book, and thank you for the recommend! 

As for the bloke who 'halter broke' your mare, I'd fairly take him by the shirt collar and drag him off my property so fast it'd make his head spin.... Ooooh, I know God was watching and he'll have _much_ to answer for some day!


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## SueC

He doesn't do that sort of thing anymore, he was young and foolish and following a method much in vogue at the time, and detailed in his horse-breaking literature... you still see plenty of people with that attitude, mind you...


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## Cherrij

Your father got beautiful horses. And at least to me, brother and sister look very much alike, and I bet they are happy to be out in the big grassy fields


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## SueC

Very hard to tell apart at a distance. The gelding has a very sloping croup compared to the mare, and a better set of the neck. He is also more shiny and muscular, probably in part because less of a couch potato.

I'm sure they will enjoy the great big green fields eventually. At the moment they are still a bit bewildered by the size of the world compared to their previous experience, of being in smaller runs surrounded by forest with no view of surrounding landscapes. So instead of grazing all over the field, they spend most of their time hanging out under the big shady tree near the gate neighing when they see other horses or people passing. When we go in, they follow us everywhere and start grazing around our feet and trying to persuade us to scratch their necks or hug their heads. They're a bit like giant Labradors: Very friendly, want to sit on your lap and play games, endearing, and also not Einsteins.

Very amusing. A neighbour who helped us get the hay into our shed rang his wife on his mobile phone and said, "Come over, you've got to see these horses, I've never seen anything like this." :rofl:


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## SueC

More races to watch... On Monday my father drove two horses in the same meeting. Dezba was in Race 5, and his young, learning mare "Torrific Girl" in Race 1. Dezba came third against tough competition, and Torrific Girl managed to come second _and_ get disqualified from racing for six weeks for breaking gait in a tight situation early in the race. Amazing she still came second after breaking gait and then racing out wide for much of the race. Anyway, has been sent into the corner to do six satisfactory trials before she can be nominated to race again...

Here's the link: If you want to watch, click the video replay icons next to Races 1 and 5 to view.

Race Results -PINJARRAÂ*Â*1 December 2014- Australian Harness Racing

Unfortunately I can't post the video links any other way because they have changed the way they present them. Should still work easily enough on the linked page.


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## SueC

Happy New Year to all.

Torrific Girl has completed half her open trials with two second places and, last start, an all-the-way win against a multiple metropolitan winner. Punters at the local track are outraged at the fact she's been asked to do that many trials.

Dezba ran 4th last start from a wide barrier. Both horses are having a mini Christmas break and will continue to compete in early 2015.

Paddock scene from our place at Redmond below, showing the new arrivals. (For those new to this thread, Redmond is DH's and mine and I ride, Lake Clifton is my parents' place and they are the ones racing their horses.)


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## SueC




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## EliRose

Just read through this whole thread - whoa! You and your father have lovely horses. Your two new retirees remind me a lot of my OTTB gelding. Stunning.


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## SueC

Thank you, ER. They all have their flaws like any horse (or person), of course, but they do look nice in the photos. You know what I find interesting? After growing up with that scenario, my own preference is for having as few horses as possible - if I started from scratch, I'd only ever have one, at most two in-work horses on my place (one for me, one for company and for others to ride). This has indeed always been the case for me personally: It's just that I kept my retirees (and now adopted some of my father's retirees, because I grew up with them). I think that when you have one horse, you can focus on it properly, and that things get spread too thin when there are more. Plus, I think to have a life outside of horses, you have to look carefully at numbers.

I noticed that as a good riding friend suddenly went from having one wonderful horse to accumulating others (because she too is a softie who likes to give a home to other people's horses - except in her case it's been broodmares, with exponential consequences), she was riding less and less the more horses she had. Also, my father's harness racing success peaks have always coincided with having four or less horses in actual training (he does it fulltime).

Your OTTB is on your avatar photo, right?  Very nice! Do you have his story anywhere? If yes, please send me a link! If not, chat away here if you have time: I always like stories about off-track or off-anything else horses getting a second career!


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## EliRose

I'mThat's very interesting! I can understand how limiting numbers can be beneficial though. Since I started riding on my university's team, I've suddenly gone to being in charge of one horse to having to help be in charge of 11 in-work horses. Which coincidentally I might become fully in charge as I'll probably be horse manager in the spring (this entails ensuring everyone is in full health, farrier, vet, etc) o.o Luckily I have a lovely team to work with!

Yes, that's my Remy! He's a now techical 10 year old that I got from an OTTB rescue in April. He's my "first" horse, but I have free leased and ridden for about 12 years. He's a lovely guy, although he can be a pain. He was gelded late as his owners had stallion aspirations for him. He's very well-bred, out of a nice black type mare. He was also from his sire, Graeme Hall's, second crop, when it looked like Graeme Hall was going to be a "big" sire. Remy failed to place in seven races, and in fact came dead last more than once.

He was gelded, given to a rescue, and sold to a woman who retrained him as a Western trail horse. When she got him he was apparently afraid of EVERYTHING (his trainer is well-known to be very rough, and did not take very good care of his animals), which is bizzare as the Remy I know is certainly no wimp. I think she emboldened him a little too much actually! Six years later she fell on hard times and sold Remy back to the rescue, along with her other OTTB. 

The rescue was very ill-prepared for Remy to be as ornery as he was. He dropped over 150 lbs with them and they basically locked him in a stall for months. Eventually they sent him to an affiliate program, a young woman who I think is going to go very far. She made him a proper horse again, and started him with dressage. He's not hot but he's a bit of a bull on the ground. It does not help that he is very, very smart and a thinker. You cannot smack this horse or use a chain shank on him, he gets very stressed. He requires compromise, that Rachel understood but the other rescue seemed to not.

I bought him two months later after trying probably 11 other horses (and breaking two ribs on one!), and falling in love with him. I brought him to college across the country in August, which was insane. But Remys wjust awesome. Bomb proof but with a big personality and a lot of try. I've been down my dressage basics with him, although he's currently in training with my hunter coach. He might end up being a jumper because Remy just has a big, scopey jump with nice form. Or preferably an eventer, if I can work up the courage!

Sorry this turned into a novel lol! I'm home until late this month and miss Remy a ton, although he's getting worked three times a week by my coach. Here's a video from the day after he got to Montana. He was on a trailer for four days and lost a bunch of weight/condition and was more than a little stocked up, but still had fun playing in the pen and looking at the mountains! I also included his first-ever free jump after six years as a trail horse.


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## SueC

Isn't his trot lovely! What a handsome horse! Thank you for his story, it's a good story, beset with the typical bits of poor management in his history (that level of stable confinement, for starters) that many horses go through. It's good that he ended up with people who treated him appropriately: Rough people and such horses are always bad news and often end with a horse going to the pet food factory in the end. Given decent treatment, of course, a horse like that will give you loads in return.

In Australia anyways, the lower levels of eventing classes are not scary. The jumps you could clear yourself hopping on one leg and the dressage standard required is unbelievably basic. If dressage is your thing, then you'll pick up lots of points in that part of eventing, especially with a horse like yours who appears to have good aptitude for dressage, both from the liberty video and what you wrote. Dressage is often the weak point of many eventers.

And there's no reason you can't compete in both, and other things besides. Variety is the spice of life!


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## Northernstar

Just have to chime in and say what lovely horses I'm viewing here on this thread!


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## SueC

So come on, NS, show off your lovely girls here! They fit right in!


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## Northernstar

Awww, gee! Thanks Sue! They're not from a trotting stable but all three in their youth have done some pretty neat things 
In my avatar, one sees them in winter, and here's one from summer- they're of the age 21 to 23....
I love that sheen after a good brushing!


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## SueC

Very pretty girls, NS, and I'm sure you have great muscle tone in your arms from all that brushing! ;-)


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## SueC

*HOORAY!!!*

:happydance:

*CONGRATULATIONS* to my father and Dezba, who this afternoon broke through to score the mare's first win, in a full field of 12 starters, studded with "big boys" - and doing this leading as well, even though this little mare is most happy as a sit-and-sprinter! Time was 1.56.8, which is over a second faster for the mile than even the most successful horse my father had, back in the 1990s. Horse DNA and tracks have come along since then... super, super run for a mare that had been scrapheaped before dad picked her up as a project.

And I just have to say it again: Dad is 76 years old... and had kind of retired from being a hobby trainer before he got three new horses in the last couple of years...so his last win was around a decade ago now (with Classic Julian). I'm very happy his hard work with Dezba has now yielded that elusive win. Here's the link:

Race Results -PINJARRAÂ Â 19 January 2015- Australian Harness Racing

The video link should pop up on that web page within 24 hours of this post. I can't wait to see it myself, as I was 400km away. Good on you dad! 

He's getting his photo in the paper, and the local trainers were super happy to have one of their own score a win against the "big boys" who ferry their horses in from the city, on the home track!

Oh, and his young mare Torrific Girl has won her penalty trial on Sunday and should be racing again later this month.


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## egrogan

Good for your dad and that determined mare! I really hope I'm doing what I love at his age 
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## SueC

Me too... although the earth seems to be going to hell in a handbasket...so that seems to decrease my chances...


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## Northernstar

A hearty congratulations to your dad, Sue! _What a proud moment!!_


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## frlsgirl

Congrats to your dad on his big win! :clap:


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## SueC

Here's an update on the integration of our two newcomers into the herd at Red Moon Sanctuary (the retired chestnut brother-and-sister pair we adopted from my father's trotting stable - the mare is my Sunsmart's dam)!

The owner of the Caspian mare sold some of her horses and found she had room at her place again, and picked her up a month ago to reunite with the Caspian mare's daughter that she harness drives for pleasure. The ruckus this caused my two boys made that an ideal time to open up the gate and let the newcomers mingle freely. Despite two of them being late-cut stallions, there were no major dramas, and the horses all got socialising happily and grazing closely together very quickly.

Some happy snaps:










Early morning exploration of loose hay around round bales in our driveway. Left to right: Sunsmart, Le Chasseur, Romeo, French Revolution.












Morning harmony. Romeo used to tease Le Chasseur mercilessly years ago when Le Chasseur had a crush on him when he was still a stallion (Romeo was a gelding when we got him at age three...how do you write this sentence unambiguously???). Now it's all just friendly!












Everybody in the cow paddock for a change of scenery - including the donkeys which only a few months ago were considered scary monsters by the new horses.  Romeo is off camera having his special geriatric breakfast.












Some of the steers (left to right: The Pirate, Sergeant Pepper, Spot; six more off camera), and all the horses in view . The steers are still objects of some suspicion with the new horses, but no longer objects inducing blind panic.












Sunsmart, his uncle, and his mother eating hay one late summer morning while Romeo has a large geriatric breakfast of fine-cut oaten chaff, concentrates and minerals. The pasture is at its lowest quality this time of year. (The road in the background divides us from our northern neighbours, who breed beef cattle.)


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## SueC

On the owner-building front, we've made a bit more progress on the interior of our house. New photos of that (and more animal photos) here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/

Captions are available by clicking on individual photos to enlarge.


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## Remali

It looks like pure bliss where you live Sue!


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## SueC

Hi Renee! It's a nice spot - I chiefly notice it when taking photographs, and when getting up in the morning. Unfortunately it's often difficult for people to fully appreciate where they are and what they have, especially if they get buried in a mountain of tasks that needed to be done yesterday. Then it's human to not notice your surroundings so much and be focused on the monkey chatter in the head.  Something I am at least aware of. I think it may get easier once the house is done and we can maybe host some WWOOFers. 

I hope you are doing well. I expect you are blanketed in snow at present?


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## frlsgirl

Your place looks so relaxing...maybe you could open a day spa for horses and their riders? Something like 2 for 1 pedicures? You can trim the horses feet and hire someone to do the riders nails


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## SueC

Haha!  Actually, we're going to open an eco-farmstay, showcasing energy-efficient housing, the management of 50ha of Australian remnant vegetation for biodiversity conservation, sustainable organic agricultural production (presently doing beef and honey and will be doing heritage vegetables), and replanting 10-20% of cleared land with shelter belts that are also wildlife corridors - as well as containing tree fodder species that can be pruned for high-quality livestock feed.

We will also be conducting guided walking tours of the mountain ranges and coastal nature conservation areas of this spectacular botanical region. We're both avid climbers and walkers, and love to show people the wonderful walking trails around here.

One of our favourite places is this:









View of Mt Magog from Mt Talyuberlup in the Stirling Ranges (1h from here)



A gallery of our favourite scenic photographs from our walks here:

Landscape Photography and Gallery | Brett and Sue Coulstock

I considered putting horse riding on the menu, but the problem is that, due to the culture of avoiding responsibility for personal risk and suing others when things go wrong, public liability insurance is so enormous these days for offering equestrian activities - so big that it's shut down a large number of pony clubs in our country. And we don't want to do it uninsured. We specifically acquired donkeys as decoys to reduce interest of future guests in our horses.

Even without horse activities, I think our hands will already be quite full. I still haven't got time for keeping chickens and getting a house cow...not until after the house is complete...


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## SueC

I haven't had time to write for a while, as we're exceedingly busy trying to get our guest wing finished and doing the inevitable paperwork that comes with tax time (much complicated by the whole farm / farmstay thing).

A quick reminder to all: Husband and I live in Redmond on the South Coast of Western Australia, while I mostly grew up on my parents' farm and trotting stud / racing stables in Lake Clifton, an hour south of the capital city and four hours from here. I kind of talk about both in this journal, and down here in Redmond we don't engage in racing trotters - we retired some of my father's, and I ride when I've time to spare from building, farming, outside employment, writing articles on self-sufficiency and other things, extracting and selling honey from our hives, etc etc.

I'm taking the time to write today because someone in the family digitised ancient slides I never knew existed showing some snapshots from long ago, towards the start of our journey with horses.

So here goes:

First of all, I found some pictures of me at around age 10, jumping with the two horses we had, and which we brought to Australia with us the following year:










This was Dame du Buisson, great-granddam of my current riding horse Sunsmart. She was a French Trotter mare who had done well in trotting races in northern France before being bought by a German breeder. She produced five foals that raced on German tracks before being retired from their breeding operation and sold at age 12 into a riding career. This is not in the least unusual in Europe. These horses are ridden from the go-get anyway and trotters are quite popular as jumpers (the most famous of them the Olympic icon Halla) and general riding horses. This mare wasn't given any specific jumping training, but happily jumped low obstacles like this for fun. Most of all, though, she was a superbly reliable all-rounder for my early riding years, before she was put back into foal at the behest of the local trotting association after arriving in Australia.

Her wonderful disposition had me riding bareback a lot. On a trail she would actually re-balance me if I got wobbly, before picking up the pace again. I never, ever fell off this mare, with or without saddle. She was well over 16hh and as a young kid I couldn't get on her back just by leaping up. Other people used to give me leg-ups, until the mare, apparently figuring out what the issue was, started dropping her head and neck suggestively. When I leaned across, she slowly hoisted me up, and after that, it became standard.

This photo was taken around half a year after I completed a beginner's riding course military-drill style in Germany - a course heavy on dressage. I'd spent a lot of the previous six months discovering the joys of trail riding, and mostly on this mare. This particular agistment centre had a lot of showjumping enthusiasts who left obstacles all over the place. I'd learnt to do simple single obstacles as part of my initial riding course, and here was asked to jump both of our horses so photos could be taken.

I still had issues with balancing myself over jumps, and therefore rode bitless for such things. We had soft English hackamores the horses loved which were perfectly adequate for trails and general noodling. We only popped bits in for work requiring more finesse - like schooling in the arena.

I remember that the approach to this jump required us to jump from circle-left. Because I weighed hardly anything, I had to put the weight I had quite heavily into the inside stirrup to get a sharp turn. I then couldn't quite figure out how to re-balance myself square for the actual jump, and ended up leaning in the direction of the circle.

Oh, and nobody wore helmets, not even the people who trained for showjumping competitions. And nobody had ever heard of special body-protecting jackets. I sometimes think that we were safer riders because the awareness of potential impending doom kept us focused in a way people donning all the safety gear perhaps are not.











This was Mingo, a Bavarian Warmblood and our first ever horse. This horse had arrived at our riding school just before his fourth birthday as an intractable, difficult animal, sold cheap despite being the only foal of a regional champion show-jumping mare called Yakima. He'd originally been bought as a two-year-old and at a steep price for a late-teenage girl who was aspiring to show-jump at high levels. Somehow this had produced a horse who didn't want anybody on his back for anything by the time he was three. Even the riding school proprietor couldn't do much with him. We had different ideas about riding and it upset us that someone had tried to ride and jump a horse of that age. Also, the horse developed an attachment for us very quickly. Probably we were unusual in his life in that we didn't dislike him. We eventually acquired the horse ourselves and just noodled around with him in a relaxed manner. Once he was teamed with the mare in the photograph above, he settled considerably, trailing all over the countryside with her.

An interesting note about the breeding of this horse: Yakima was a German trotter, just like the famous Halla had been. When bred to registered Bavarian Warmblood Morketo, her foal was registered as a Bavarian Warmblood, in a similar way Thoroughbreds and Arabians that performed well were allowed to continuously infuse into that breed. The stallions, however, in those days had to pass strict performance testing in dressage, show-jumping, harness driving and _ploughing_. The Bavarian Warmblood was supposed to be a truly versatile horse, one you could ride competitively, drive, and plough your fields with!

The jump we set him for this photo was higher than what we asked the mare to do, given his aptitude. I still had the leaning-into-the-turn issue, although that was slightly better on the next take. Regardless, I do remember how mountainous this pretty low-level jump felt to me when I was ten!


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## SueC

And now I'd like to remember an animal we had to leave behind when we moved to Australia in 1982:










This was the family dog - my first ever dog. I don't think I was aware yet that the dog couldn't come with us - because he would have had to spend 6-12 months in quarantine in the UK before being accepted into Australia, and we didn't like to think of him being inexplicably cooped up with complete strangers. So, my grandmother adopted him, and he probably extended her life by years, both as a personal trainer and because she lived alone after being widowed. He was a great dog though, and I really missed him.


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## SueC

We took the horses to the UK to start them in the quarantine facility where they spent a couple of months. We actually travelled in the back compartment of the special transporter and slept in the hay in little sleeping nooks that kept sleeping people out from under horses' feet. I remember the channel crossing from Oostende to Dover in the ferry. I was petrified because I'd just seen the film Towering Inferno and I imagined how awful it would be for the horses to drown in the truck in the belly of the ship if we came to grief. We arrived safely in the UK, where I discovered sheepdog trials on the motel TV!

We have print photos of the place in Sussex where the horses were quarantined, which I might scan sometime and post.

The next photos I have from the set that prompted me to do these entries is the horses at the neighbouring farm, when our own farmhouse was being built in Lake Clifton:










They'd clipped Mingo at the Australian quarantine facility because his European winter coat had plagued him in the heat of the Australian summer. The desert-sand appearance is typical for high summer on the Swan Coastal Plain, which only has a 6-month growing season.


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## SueC

And this was us riding at the neighbours' farm:










My mother, who had originally done the riding course with me, only rode occasionally at this point because she had problems with her intervertebral discs she didn't want to aggravate. My father learnt to ride as a young child on the backs of carriage horses he groomed when his father was a prisoner of war in Siberia for five years and the children in the family had to do odd jobs on farms to help the family eat.


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## SueC

When the farm house in Lake Clifton had been built, we moved the horses over. By now I'd bought an Arabian filly, because I learnt that Dame du Buisson would be returned to being a broodmare (a decision I bitterly lamented, but had no say in...and a decision that cost the mare her life). Various other family members had bought other horses for various other purposes.










This photo was taken out of the living room window. All there was on the farm then was a perimeter fence and the new house. The horses hung out near the house, until we fenced some paddocks for them. The grey is a four-year-old Stock Horse / Arabian cross who was bought as a general riding horse for visitors. I did a lot of his saddle education. Since we ended up having few visitors who wanted to ride, he was eventually on-sold. By that time I was using my Arabian mare as a lesson horse for visitors.





















The horses actually grazed our first oat crop part-time - as Dame du Buisson is doing above. It was the first edible thing cultivated on the newly cleared areas.











My Arabian filly was around two when this photo was taken.


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## SueC

A happy snap from this time.










I was 11 or 12 here, and the filly was progressing well with the long hours of groundwork I did with her...having a horse I could not actually ride yet was a totally new experience for me. I think the three years of preparation before she became a riding horse stood us both in good stead. She resembled a circus horse before she was even ridden, because I had so much time on my hands and wanted to work with her.

I laugh looking at the attire and bare feet. I spent years barefoot as a child, even around horses (when the ground was soft). It was so hot in Australia to a newly arrived European that you just couldn't wear much. People had completely different childhoods back then. Kids frequently disappeared after breakfast and returned only for meals. Even the neighbouring Australian kids grew up barefoot, and we all swam in the leech-infested river, scanning ourselves at regular intervals for the dreaded wiggly bloodsuckers, and screaming heartily when we saw one...


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## SueC

Another shot from around that time:










Bareback riding on the very rough track that was going to become the sand training track. When we rode the two mature horses, the others used to just follow us along. This is an unflattering shot for me as I've hit the wobbles! Still, I'm glad I found it: It reminds me of the many rides we did with young horses just tagging along in those early years. Before the roads were sealed, we used to take my little filly (who looks bay in this photo) on long trails in the state forests with the two adult horses - and it really helped muscle her up and get her used to being in the bush. That way, she also didn't get nervous in the bush when she was eventually ridden in it solo. It was all old hat.

I really am very grateful for the amount of freedom I was able to experience as a young person growing up. It's almost unheard of in the current generation (though still common amongst the farming community, who retain some of these traditions and who feel people need to learn to deal with risks, not be wrapped up in cotton wool). I just have the most fabulous memories as a result.


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## egrogan

Such a fun journey, Sue! Loved seeing all the childhood pictures.

Today is America's Kentucky Derby day, and it always brings up some fun memories from my days as a horseless kid. I was pretty obsessed with Thoroughbred racing growing up. My dad liked the track- some of our extended family trained trotters and owned some lower-level Thoroughbreds, but I never got to spend any time with them (and thought my cousins were so DUMB to not understand how absolutely amazing it was they had access to THEIR OWN horses! They didn't care at all!). Anyway, on Kentucky Derby day, my dad would take me to the "betting parlor" and let me make his $2 bet in the Derby (a conservative bettor, we always placed a show bet- and he usually cashed his ticket with my picks!) After the race was run, I would always go run around outside myself, pretending to "gallop" my own horses to relive the race. I so wanted to be around horses, but had to wait until I my adulthood to be around them.

All that to say, I love seeing how other people grew up with horses as part of their lives- these pictures were great


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## Remali

I love seeing your photos, and hearing about how you grew up with your horses... how wonderful!! I really like how you take so much time with the horses, and just have fun with them.

Sort of reminds me of when I was 10, and I got my first horse. The other neighbor kids (who also had horses,) and I, would take off on all-day trail rides, exploring every corner of our part of the world. It was such a fabulous way to grow up. None of us wore helmets either (and quite a few rode barefooted, and rode bareback), no one wore helmets back then (this was in 1967, and then in the 1970's), yet not one of us got injured, remarkable seeing as we rode in some crazy places (beach, hills, etc.).

Looking forward to more Sue!


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## SueC

Egrogan, I think one of the things that convinced my parents to send me to a horseriding course was that starting from around age 8, I christened my bicycle "Isabella" and then, with a similarly afflicted friend who had also named her bicycle, we put ropes on the handlebars for reins and rode the bicycles around pretending we were riding horses and making neighing noises. We also spent time volunteering at the travelling circuses to groom their trick ponies - and I was spending far too much time at the local dairy farm where we got our fresh milk, grooming the dairy cows - and making "showjumping courses" in the backyard for our dog to jump over! 

I think they were hoping to cure me of all this by showing how reality isn't the same as our imaginings. For instance, how looking after horses is hard work (the riding school I went to focused a great deal on horse care, and so we mucked out, groomed horses, tacked them up, untacked them, washed them, led them around to dry, picked out and tarred their hooves, fed them, raked the arena etc). Actually, I enjoyed all those things...and I guess we all got bitten by the bug.

Remali, sounds like you had a lot of fun too. Yes, wasn't it a different world? ...do you have any photos from the period you are describing? If so, please share! 

I was just thinking about risk and injuries and despite some of the hair-raising (in retrospect) things I got up to as a kid, I always did have a real sense that I could get hurt, and kind of grew velcro on my legs and developed fast reflexes. Noone in my family or acquaintance got hurt scudding around barefoot and bareback: The worst injuries actually happened in the most ordinary situations. Like once, we were cantering across a grassy field with saddles on and my father's horse fell into a concealed ditch...and he shattered his collar bone (party ice fracture!) and needed several surgeries. I did get concussed once falling head first off a horse onto a piece of wood without a helmet, but I was out of practice after a semester at university and hadn't paid proper attention as I was only riding relatively slowly around a paddock...

I actually reckon it's harder for kids to hurt themselves through falls than adults, because kids have so much less weight and therefore so much less momentum, and they also have a lot of clinging power, and tend to be less afraid, which helps them stay on.


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## frlsgirl

Sue - I fell off more when I was a kid but rarely got hurt bad. I haven't fallen off at all since I started back up in 2011 unless you count the one time the horse fell with me and I landed on my feet while he bit the dust. 

I think I'm more afraid of falling now because I know it's going to hurt more so I cling on a lot tighter. That's not to say that I will never fall off again; I just work harder to prevent it. These days, I usually hurt myself doing stupid things like jumping off the mounting block, lifting a hoof wrong, or standing on concrete for too long. Thank God for Advil.


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## SueC

Frlsgirl - it certainly hurt a lot less when I fell off as a kid, I think because of the lower weight/momentum thing. Except the first time I fell off, that was a killer...fell off a 17hh mare called Viola in my first lesson, a group riding lesson. I was 9. I'd lost the reins and the mare trotted off. It was only slow but I was leaning forward to try to get the reins back and of course had no idea how to balance a trot. I really crunched into the ground and I was crying and of course, they said, "All right, get back on, we're waiting!" as they will do in a German riding school, ha ha, where they also don't give kids ladders (or mounting blocks) to get on huge Warmbloods...

I think you have to learn how to fall from such a height. Kind of go floppy. It's what cats do. And how _not_ to fall from such a height...

I've not actually fallen off very much since the original riding course 30-odd years ago either. Mostly when horses fell, or when a horse refused a jump (especially bareback, almost no chance to stay on when there is an unanticipated refusal). Once I was gallopping along a trail without realising someone had closed a two-string wire gate on it. The horse and I cartwheeled before we hit the ground separately, but miraculously neither of us got hurt. I was in my mid-teens I think. I've occasionally come off on a trail when I've not paid enough attention and a horse got spooked by a kangaroo jumping in the bushes.

I last fell off a horse properly when one of dad's stallions fell with me, ludicrously just trotting. I think he had a back issue, I can't think of any other reason why a horse would fall over its feet at a working trot on perfectly level ground. That was 10 or 15 years ago now.

The other thing I've done occasionally since is slip straight off the other side when mounting bareback from the ground with too much momentum. It's especially spectacular when you go over head first. That really amuses my husband. :rofl: But is it "falling off" when you've not actually been on the horse yet? Maybe I should call it "falling over" a horse? What do you think? 

Yeah, I throw my back out trimming hooves, or getting on my horse with just the wrong kind of twist, or lifting a shifting load... We've actually bought ourselves walking poles last week, you know the things hikers use in the mountains? It's because we're starting to feel our knees on steep slopes. Ye gads...


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## egrogan

My first memory of falling is when I was probably 10 or 11, I had been taking lessons at a fancy saddleseat show barn (my parents had no clue about different riding disciplines, just plunked me down at the place closest to our house), but as I clearly had very little aptitude for saddleseat and no money for showing, I was assigned a round pony of indiscriminate breeding and sent out to ride in the fields. We were on a group "trail ride," and the bigger horses started trotting up a steep hill and my little pony, Misty, lurched into a rough canter to keep up with the rest. I had never cantered before, and was propelled straight over her head. Landed on my back looking up, and that honest little pony stopped stock still, one front hoof suspended in mid-air so she didn't put it down right on my face. She wasn't fancy or pretty, but I do still have that memory of her taking care of me.


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## SueC

So what is saddleseat?

It seems pretty irresponsible to me that there are establishments that just plonk kids up on a horse and send them on a trail ride before the kids have shown they can walk, trot and canter competently in the arena/other enclosed area, do all the up and down transitions, and show they can steer by performing various figures etc, plus know how to jump a simple obstacle, as a bare minimum...

I guess that's a very German expectation though, and I know in Australia, it's very common to just throw kids on the back of horses and send them on trails with little experience. If they manage to stay on, in my experience the horse ends up having a rider who falls into its back trotting, and uses the reins, attached to the metal bit on the sensitive bars of a horse's mouth, to "waterski"... I saw plenty of people like that on endurance training rides...


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## egrogan

I don't want to represent myself as a saddleseat expert, but here is the US Equestrian Federation overview: https://www.usef.org/_IFrames/breedsDisciplines/discipline/allsse.aspx

Most of the horses in training at that barn were American Saddlebreds who were competitive at the national level, but for some reason they did have a string of lesson horses. I was the odd country bumpkin kid who showed up at their door. To be fair, I did have some arena lessons too, though I'm not sure how much they gave me confidence. My first true memory of riding is being on that little pony in a GIANT indoor arena that, at least in my memory, was probably the size of 2-3 football fields. It had a movable dividing wall in the center, but was often left open on each side so people who were driving their horses in the arena had enough room to come through with a cart. The horses being driven had chains on their ankles, and combined with the harness equipment, the sound of the cart approaching from the other side of that wall always sounded so ominous to me- sort of like the rattle of the ghost's chains in the movie "A Christmas Carol." You could hear the carts approaching before you could see them, and then when they blew past you, you could feel their momentum. Looking back on it, I think it terrified me as a kid! I wish I had video of me riding then to see if it was really as scary as it seemed.


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## Cherrij

I haven't caught up with the lot of it, but OH MY, SueC, you had the best childhood! I am actually jealous. 
I have always loved Australia (even though I am very scared of spiders and stuff)
Our country is too small for too many people to have horse farms, or any farms, so well.. I did meet horses early, but not that kind of experience.. 

and it is all just so pretty and amazing, and your experiences.. WOW.. I am amazed.


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## SueC

Cherrij, there was a band called the Talking Heads I rather liked who in the 1980s had a bunch of modern-day proverbs plastered on the sleeve of their (vinyl) LP "Stop Making Sense" - things like "People will remember you better if you always wear the same clothing." Another one topical here is, "Postcards always look better than the real thing." 

I think when we see pretty photos of other people's lives we necessarily get a rosy, tourist bureau picture of their existence. I mean, who posts all the boring stuff like, "Me doing dishes" or "Me hanging clothes on the line" or "Me cleaning toilet" or "Me picking my nose" or "Me semi comatose on sofa"?  

And people at home in a particular town rarely view it with the same excitement as visiting tourists. Something about human nature.

This is not to say I don't appreciate my childhood or my present life. It's just to say that the side on show is usually the chocolate side, so to speak, and there is plenty of plain, boring, annoying, depressing, infuriating, tedious stuff in anyone's life, I think. So you don't need to be jealous, because from where I sit, you living in Latvia with the famous liverwurst and traditions, working with a one-eyed Renaissance breed horse who looks pretty spectacular seems like a wonderful adventure too! 

And here's a little bit of trivia about growing up with horses for you: In our family, and I believe in many other such families, the horses were frequently considered more important than the people, and this can get a little sad if you wish for a conversational sort of family life with lots of positive human to human interactions.

My husband is not a horse fanatic, and I think this is one of the reasons we enjoy the richly conversational, relational family life together that I always pined for as a child. ;-) And, he'll even feed my old horse when I'm not home!


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## SueC

And now for something completely different:










Six new calves arrived at Red Moon Sanctuary today to share the season's growing bounty of grasses, clover, lotus etc with the horses in the western paddocks (where the horses mostly hang out). The Friesians have grown into big lubbers that push things like trees and fence posts over for fun and therefore can only be put into our tree-planting paddocks for a couple of days at a time if I don't want to spend days repairing what they destroy. But, these guys are just a perfect size for sharing the western paddocks for now, and the big guys are out in the rougher country these days. (And the biggest three will go to market next week to pay for the new arrivals. Beef breed calves cost a fair bit more than dairy poddies because they are more efficient feed converters and mature more quickly.)










My husband named them: (Left to right) The Latte Twins, Creamy White, The Mocha Twins and Short Black... a coffee theme for this lot.










These are Murray Grey calves, an Australian breed developed a hundred years ago by crossing Aberdeen Angus and Shorthorn. Our new lot nicely displays the common colours of silver, dun and chocolate...and we also have one of the rarer blacks, which I think is a nod back to the Angus.

I like the sturdy, shaggy, no-nonsense look of these cattle. They look well prepared to cope with the upcoming winter, and appear to be settling in super fast - grazing from the time they came off the truck. All these photos were taken within an hour of their arrival.











And my Dad's chestnut retirees said, "What the Dickens?"

These two retired harness horses that have been with us since November have made great progress at learning that emus, kangaroos, donkeys and cattle aren't monsters. But when half a dozen beef calves arrived today, they felt the occasion worthy of their interest, and even a few sprints around the block. 25yo French Revolution (dam of my riding horse) on the left, and her 21yo full brother Le Chasseur on the right.


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## SueC

Our general photo page for Red Moon Sanctuary and all its critters and happenings is here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/

It includes pictures of the big Friesian steers and our herding dog. And our painfully slow limp to the finish line with our owner-built straw bale house.


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## frlsgirl

SueC said:


> Our general photo page for Red Moon Sanctuary and all its critters and happenings is here:
> 
> https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/
> 
> It includes pictures of the big Friesian steers and our herding dog. And our painfully slow limp to the finish line with our owner-built straw bale house.


Lovely pictures; I especially like the beach picture; looks like a post card.


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## SueC

Since I was posting old photos, I wanted to also post a few of my late Arabian mare here. This was from 2009, when she was 27:
























































Great little mare, and sorely missed. We had to euthanase her a year ago. Her memorial is here:

http://www.horseforum.com/horse-memorials/memorial-sweet-girl-399593/


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## SueC

Also from 2009, two photos of Sunsmart the week he got down to Albany, where I was agisting him solo in a cow paddock near where we were renting. This is before we bought our little farm.










I was using my mare's old saddle on him at the start, as they had very similar conformations (big barrels, low withers). It's funny looking at this old photo of my horse - he was still so undeveloped in the top of his neck (had been a star gazer when driven in harness).










This is riding down the road, with a neighbour's horse we happened to meet. I was having trouble with the saddle, it kept slipping to the side. When we got the saddle fitter out to get him the wonderfully comfy Ascot Romana AP, she said the problem was asymmetry in the horse, and she adjusted the saddle flocking to make up for it. A lot of OT horses have the problem - racing is usually in one direction (counterclockwise in Western Australia). He's more symmetrical now. 

I just love this horse though. He's so gutsy, and such an excellent worker, plus he has personality.


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## SueC

(Click on the photos to see any of them screen size!)

This was a beach ride a couple of months later with a good friend and her (late) huge OTTB. It's where this photo came from:











My husband was hiding in the dunes around Albany harbour with the camera. Here are the other photos he took that day:










This was before the ride, walking my horse from the car park to the shoreline to let him get familiar with the environment. Sunsmart hates puddles, and water crossings, and farm dams. He only drinks from a bathtub or bucket, such is his suspicion of water. This was the first time he'd ever been to a harbour. I looped the lead over his nose because I really didn't want him getting away from me, and running headlessly down the busy tourist road! 












Here he is learning, "Yes, it's a BIIIIG bit of water, but not so spooky after all!"












Kym with the lovely Rikki-Tikki, an old hand at harbour riding, who instilled a lot of confidence into my then-water newbie.












Shoreline chatting.












Albany really is a gorgeous place...












Conspiring to gallop along the beach. My husband didn't catch that, as we got too far away too quickly, and was distracted by some sea shells (he loves macro photography).












But we did get this great shot of Rikki-Tikki on another occasion (where we just went to the harbour to take some nice photos of Kym and her lovely horse).


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## SueC

The huge, 17hh, solid Rikki-Tikki being dwarfed by a young purebred Percheron mare:


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## SueC

Rikki-Tikki at Muttonbird Beach - on the Southern Ocean:


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## egrogan

Lovely photos. 

And, I grew up just outside of Albany...New York


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## SueC

Thank you, I just felt like posting a few...

I think though you say "Oll-bany" for yours, while we say "Ell-bany".


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## SueC

*Journal name change!*

I just wanted to say a big thankyou to Tinyliny and Wallaby for changing my journal title for me. When I started this journal, I was only intending to give an inside view of life in a Trotting stable, and discuss the driving and riding of harness racing horses.

But although I grew up there, and visit regularly, I actually haven't lived there for nearly 20 years. And then I started journalling about our own farm and the horses, donkeys and other assorted critters who live here, and pulling out old photos and stories from way back, and pretty soon the old title was no longer appropriate!


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## SueC

Haven't posted photos of the donkeys for a while and this one of Don Quixote lurking was cute! 











The next one shows a Willy Wagtail approaching Don Quixote to clean him. These little birds flutter all over the donkeys, horses and cattle on our property to rid them of pesky insects, and their services appear to be appreciated by them.


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## Mulefeather

Beautiful donkey! I can't wait to see more pics.


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## SueC

Hi Mulefeather! Nice to "see" you here!  In this journal I also like to see other people's critters, so if you have some photos to post, go right ahead! (Or if you already have a journal or thread, throw me a hyperlink!)

...he's a nice donkey, though you can see he's still a bit overweight. Not as badly as when we got him, but since we're relying on (not overly drastic) dietary restrictions alone, rather than threshing grain with them or putting them on a rotary mill to grind flour, this takes time. The wearing of grazing muzzles for daytime pasture turnout and yarding at night with a little mineral mix and a small amount of bland, coarse hay has had good effects on him and Mary Lou. Sparkle was never overweight and has not needed restrictions.

Here are recent photos of the donkeys daytime free ranging with the horses and cattle (although the cattle are mostly invisible in these):


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## frlsgirl

I see cattle in the same enclosure as horses? Do they all get along?

Also, are donkey's in Australia all standard size? We have mini donkeys and standard size donkeys in the US. Ana likes donkeys; she had a donkey friend at her last home and she shared her pasture with a mini donkey last year.


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## SueC

They get along.  In nature, e.g. on the African plains, different types of herbivore hang out on in the same location. Zebras, antelopes, wildebeest, etc.

The horses are usually the kings of the castle, and cattle show them a lot of respect. But they also touch noses with each other etc.

Here's an old clip of my riding horse and my late mare with our first batch of cattle. When I started filming, Sunsmart suddenly decided he wanted to round them up... 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S8noWo0ta0


Donkey sizes: Not very big generally. Our biggest is about the size of an Italian working donkey. Mary Lou is the size of a Shetland Pony and Sparkle even smaller...


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## frlsgirl

What a cool clip; she looks mighty proud of herself


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## Zexious

Sue--I can't get over how cute your donkeys are. If you ever feel like spamming my journal with photos of them, no one is stopping you ;D!

I think the spotty one is my favorite <3 I'm sure I could look somewhere obvious (ie-first page)/I have probably asked before, but what is his name?


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## SueC

frlsgirl said:


> What a cool clip; she looks mighty proud of herself


The dark horse is a he.  My late mare is the grey. And yes, very proud of himself. When he first met cows he was a total chicken. Until he discovered they ran away from him! :rofl:


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## SueC

Zexious said:


> Sue--I can't get over how cute your donkeys are.


I think it's a species characteristic, I've never seen a donkey that's not cute, have you? I mean, with the possible exception of the dwarf miniatures who look like soft toys rather than actual, real living things and are actually a line of mutants...

Donkeys are like horse-shaped teddy bears with Easter Bunny ears. And they have such funny personalities... My husband is not a horse person (although he will kindly and expertly feed my lot when I can't be around), but he's totally besotted with the donkeys...




> If you ever feel like spamming my journal with photos of them, no one is stopping you ;D!


:lol: Be careful what you wish for! ;-) But you can dig out all our official donkey photos from our online photo album here pretty easily - if you're on a fast internet connection:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary




> I think the spotty one is my favorite <3 I'm sure I could look somewhere obvious (ie-first page)/I have probably asked before, but what is his name?


The classically donkey looking donkey with the dark hair and light points is "Don Quixote" - my husband named him because he likes word play (Donkey-Otee). The shaggy long-hair is Mary Lou, and the little spotted one is Sparkle. She's legally blind (probably sees shapes, certainly sees light and dark), but has a map of our whole place in her head and when she somehow gets too far away from the other donkeys, she just brays and they come running. 

All the animals - other donkeys, horses, even the cattle and the dog - have figured that she has a disability and cut her a lot of slack with the herd rules etc. They are so considerate near her, even my often-snarly big working horse. She's everybody's darling.


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## SueC

I'm not sure I've posted this on my journal yet, but this is footage of the donkeys arriving at our place in 2012 and the horses' amusing reactions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8HJ98cNsmY

My riding horse Sunsmart and my late grey Arabian mare were going, "What in heaven's name are these?"

Our ancient, very Zen gelding Romeo was actually in the driveway, and when the trailer pulled up he immediately went nose-to-nose with all three of them and was very friendly - them higher up on the trailer, and he on the ground meant they were all face level, and it was such a cute scene, but unfortunately not caught on camera. He became an honorary donkey the same day.  Once, when he was seriously ill and it looked like he wasn't going to make it, he was lying on the ground and the three of them surrounded him in a tight circle, just watching over him for hours when they would normally have been grazing. And he, in turn, defends the donkeys from possible danger like a cow defends her calf.


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## egrogan

My husband, a "horse tolerator" is also smitten with donkeys. We talk about bringing horses home eventually, and he agrees "as long as he can have a donkey." Not sure what it is about them, but he's hooked. He won't look at horse ads with me, but we have a donkey rehab/rescue place nearby (Save Your *** Rescue) and he is happy to spend time looking through their ads


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## Zexious

Sue--Adorbs! I love the name Don Quixote. If I remember correctly, Don Quixote rode a donkey in the story but, to be fair, it has been a long time since I've read it.

Do you have a favorite? Don't worry, I won't tell~


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## SueC

*Zexious*: I don't really, they are so different and so lovely in different ways. Their personalities too!  I asked Brett just then if he has a favourite, and he said, "Don Quixote is my favourite donkey. Sparkle is the best donkey in the world. And Mary Lou is Number One Donkey." 

Was it Sancho Pansa riding the donkey? And Don Quixote a "broken-down old nag"? We can't quite remember either. In the European Donald Duck cartoons (written by Italians, never available in English, much more serious) Don Quixote was riding a rusty bicycle, but their historical re-tellings were often very tongue-in-cheek... 

Brett and I just melted over the donkey photos in Egrogan's link above. They just are infectious animals... (If you're the right host, haha ;-))


*Egrogan*: What a fabulous name for a Donkey Rescue! :rofl: I reckon your hubby just must have a donkey, or better, two donkeys to keep each other company... and to enchant you with their antics... sometimes ours just go "cracker-donkey" as a group - wildly running and pig-rooting and braying and doing little circles, out of apparent joie de vivre... and in the mornings, when they want to come out, they make the best alarm clock we've ever had...you can't help but smile when you hear their vociferations...


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## Bondre

SueC said:


> Was it Sancho Pansa riding the donkey? And Don Quixote a "broken-down old nag"? We can't quite remember either.


Yes, Sancho Panza rode the donkey, Don Quijote's mount was an old horse called Rocinante. We live in the heart of Quijote country, so although I've never braved reading the mighty tome, the basic details stick ;-) . And it crops up constantly in my boys' school books. 

I love your Don Quijote, Sue C. He's gorgeous! And what a great name for a donkey 
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## SueC

Hello, Bondre!  Thank you for sorting this out, and from the heart of Cervantes country! I wonder why we spell Don Quixote with an x and you spell it with a j. Have we anglicised it along the road, like so many other things?

By the way, your country has some rather good tennis players you send to Australia every year!  And the top-ranked Spaniard, for sure, always impresses us over here with his humility and good sportsmanship.  Something many of our Australian athletes could learn from... (over here it's always a national disaster if the English beat us at cricket, etc etc etc)


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## SueC

*Life in the food chain*

I've been unable to post something substantial for a while! These are the main things that took up my time lately:

Two Tuesdays ago (DH's morning off) we had to track down our three biggest steers who were loose with the whole herd in the 8ha big pasture backed by 50ha of bush to hide in, as they were supposed to be going to the *regional cattle sale*. They weighed 600kg apiece and with the winter coming, we needed to get their weight off our seasonally waterlogged pasture, plus give the other six extra feed over winter and spring.

I woke up rather dubious, as I'd not seen the cattle for nearly a day. But, there they were about half a kilometre out from the house, and I attracted their attention by hallooing and rolling a round bale out of the shed. They literally galloped in, with plenty of handstands and bucks along the way. Our driveway is securely fenced, and it was an easy job to let the biggest four in as they were the ones with a commanding position of the gate - then I shuffled Batman back out with the others, whom I was also feeding on their side of the fence.

(Batman was very lucky that Sergeant Pepper and Stripe pipped him at the post weight-wise - and the Pirate was always going to, he was enormous. Batman is my sweetheart out of this lot of Friesian steers - he just likes people, and he comes up to me to hobnob and get his ears scratched. There always seems to be one like that. Last time it was Wills, when we had a small group of Angus. He was 850kg when we sold him at age 3 and a gentle giant. I used to sit leaning up against his front leg when he was chewing cud and we'd just chat.










That was Wills above, about a month before we sold him. He was magnificent. I was soooo tempted to keep him, but they start getting problems with their feet in this country if you keep them too long, unless you trim them regularly like we do our horses. And with four horses and three donkeys to trim and a house build to finish, I didn't have time to teach him to have his feet handled, and trim him as well. Plus he would have missed his friends, so I had to be realistic.)

Anyway, the current lot a few months back:










That's (left to right) Sergeant Pepper, Pythagoras, Spot, The Pirate, Bonny Prince Charlie and Chevron, with Stripe, Tiny Tim and my lovely Batman not in the photo. All of them were named after their markings. (Our six new calves featured a few pages back are Murray Greys and their colourings dictated a coffee theme for their names.)

...back to Tuesday: We let the three big steers have a good feed of hay while we waited for the milk truck to pass out to the dairy and back (we didn't want to have our steers on the public road at the same time as this huge tanker doing 110km/h). By 10am it had gone and we walked the big boys out the gate and up the road, to the cattle yards on the neighbour's place about 1.5km away. At the end of our property there is a bush track that can be taken parallel to the road and that was a far less stressful place to drove cattle! Which we did, by the way, on bicycles. You can walk next to them when the cattle are placid and you can outrace them if they start running.

The droving went well until the cattle were supposed to cross the road and go down the neighbour's driveway. One of us was stationed to stop the cows running past the gate, the other herding them from behind. So they got to the road and decided to turn left and run home again. 300m later I had them (my road bike does over 40km/h and the cattle do not) and turned them back. Brett has called Robyn (one of the cattle yard neighbours!) on the mobile phone to ask for help at the gate, and with her assistance we soon had them going where they were supposed to, and munching nice oaten hay in their yards.

Noel (a professional cattle farmer) took them to the sale with three of his older bulls, and his Limousin Bull apparently fell in love with our steers on the way to the sale yards (but they weren't in the same partition of the truck, they had their own space).

Harvey Beef bought them at $1290 each, which was above the median price for dairy steers. Prices are up 40-50 cents a kilogram this year, because of the demand created in part by reduction in supply due to BSE (Mad Cow Disease) in various countries. Harvey Beef exports 70% of its beef, and currently the US is a big customer. So, there is a small chance that we might actually literally be feeding some of you US readers, or at least someone you know, with our organically grown, grass-fed beef.

After herding these guys to the neighbour's place, I had to finish *sealing the guest wing floor with an awful, solvent-based sealant*. If I get cancer, this will be why... and as I worked my way out of the corridor, the *fire truck* picked me up to help extinguish a deliberately lit fire that was burning farmers' fences down the road. (I've been a Volunteer Fire Fighter since last year, Brett for over 20 years. He was at work so I was on the truck.)

The next day I was at work, doing hydrotherapy with a lovely girl with cerebral palsy. The rest of the week I frantically house-cleaned and baked and cooked for a *three-day exchange with my parents*. I drove down on Saturday, they came down on Sunday to hobnob with the horses and my husband and to go sight-seeing while I babysat their place (ten horses, dry lots and stables, four hand feeds a day, which is why we can't spend family time together in Redmond). Dad trimmed all the horses here in Redmond for me to give me a break from that work, and I appreciated it! 

I've been back exactly a week, and am still catching up with work here. Today I've been *making more architraves and skirting boards* out of rustic rough-cut boards. These are for finishing the first guest room. I will post photos soon.

Oh, and I got back on my horse today despite all the work around here, and we had a nice ride. He did a wonderful fast trot, all floaty, with his hooves super-balanced after one of dad's trims!


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## SueC

On Sunday I discovered that even camels have itchy spots! :smile:










I had the first opportunity of my life to test out this idea on a camel at Pentland Alpaca Stud, who happened to have a nice new camel. After the usual large-herbivore introduction rituals, the camel quickly showed me where it liked to be scratched. It made faces and wiggled its upper lip when I got it right in a very similar manner to the way a horse or donkey will. It became quite a long "conversation" and the camel would have preferred it if I hadn't left. (My husband wants to hire the camel for a day to put on our farm, just because he'd really like to see how the horses would react :rofl


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## SueC




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## SueC

I wanted to put in my journal a "reprint" from a thread about ridiculous trail riding experiences, now in the context of the journal introduction on pages 1 and 2...

________________________________________________________________

I have been dragging my memory for trail riding incidents that might entertain some people. I don't think that coming across a marijuana plantation when I was riding my mare as a teenager is that entertaining... I do, however, have one entertaining incident - it's just that it's going to come at a considerable cost to my personal dignity to tell it. 

I am remembering this because of the coffee thread that's currently on as well. Because coffee has a terrible diuretic effect and I do not recommend drinking a large mug of it before going on a 20km trail ride. I'd not tried to do that before. I mean, any endurance enthusiasts will surely have got toileting on the trail down pat. The men have a natural advantage - no squatting required, therefore less necessity for getting their warmed-up horses to stand very still, and less likely to get startled looks from their steeds. My Arabian mare was very polite about such stuff, clearly getting what was going on. But the day I had the coffee, I wasn't riding her...

No, I was riding my father's then-5yo stallion Chip as part of his multifaceted racing preparation. 20km was an hour's work for him, including warm-up and cool-down. This was a clown of a horse: Played with garden hoses, beach balls, any likely objects - retrieved sticks, and carried them around his paddock cantering in circles, with the big circus finish of standing on his hind legs, stick held aloft. He loved working with people and would neigh and run up to his paddock gate whenever any of us were in the vicinity. He'd fish for the lead rope end when walked and give you "Aren't I clever!" sideways glances when he had it. If you goose stepped next to him, he'd imitate you. Without any question, this horse had the most colourful personality of any horse we've ever worked with.

So in keeping with Murphy, it was _this_ horse I happened to ride after drinking a large mug of coffee. I got halfway into the forest, just 15 minutes down the road, when suddenly cantering along didn't feel so great. That was one heck of a quick diuretic effect... Trotting on the down-transition was, of course, worse. I barely made it off the horse, and performed my first and hopefully last simultaneous dismount/partial undress procedure, landing frog-like in front of the highly surprised horse: What was this rude training interruption - and what was that monkey doing on the forest floor? With great interest and attention, he began to investigate while I pushed his nose away and told him to mind his own business. However, breeches are elastic and I was kind of hog-tied and otherwise engaged, and my arm muscles from floor level are no match for a well-developed horse neck with 400kg behind it. So, I found myself having to move backwards crab-style while trying to avoid any icky splashes. Worse still for my sense of decorum, the horse was beginning to do the typical prolonged Flehmen thing that stallions do when sniffing the droppings or urine of mares.

Then a kangaroo appeared in the bushes, and now the horse, of course, reacted by taking his head right up and trying to swing around to face the new commotion, while I was hopping along on the forest floor below admonishing him and trying not to fall over. And then, of course, I needed to dry myself... I really think only the female riders reading can truly appreciate the predicament, it's such complicated business for us...

At this point, the horse's attention returned to me - I was now more interesting than the kangaroo. Thankfully, at this stage, I was quickly ready to get back on the horse, and we completed the training without further incident.

But, in the 17 years since, I have never drunk coffee again before riding a horse.

Chip is now 23. These photos was taken two weeks ago at my mother's 75th. I am including them in the hope of distracting everybody from having temporarily surrendered my dignity to give you all a good laugh.



















Remali, flytobecat, Corporal and 17 others like this.

_________________________________________________________________

The whole thread is side-splitting and so worth checking out again, what with all the hilarity the participants got up to, so unearth it here:

http://www.horseforum.com/horse-talk/ridiculous-trail-ride-experience-479794/

One of my favourite HF discussions so far!


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## bsms

^^ Great description! It makes me appreciate the convenience of being a guy...cuz I sure would miss my morning coffee!


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## SueC

And while we're on the subject of funny stories, let me tell you about my husband's riding experiences. He's had two since we met back in 2007, being a non-horse person, but a good sport. The first was back in 2008, when he agreed to be led around on my then-27-year-old Arabian mare. With basic instructions he got in the saddle (he has great posture in everyday life, including sitting on chairs, and this really helped with this ride) and off we went walking through the agistment centre's leafy paddock trails. Around a quarter of an hour later we returned, and Brett dismounted. I asked him, "So what was that like?" - and he replied, "Kind of like being drunk without drinking, and all juddery. Not a pleasant experience."

Fair is fair: Although I think my husband has natural aptitude for riding physically (and just the right build to do any kind of riding with a horse), it wasn't his thing, and that was fine.

But two years later I did get him back on a horse, this time on the taller, bulkier Sunsmart. In his own words, from his blog:

_Some fun for Hallowe’en this year … to start with, we were invited to a costume party on the Saturday night, so I went as a Nazgul! We hired a robe, cloak and sword (samurai, but a decent replica with a nice feel to it). The leather gloves were mine (used for a 19 Nocturne Boulevard cover last year), and I covered my face with a balaclava. Sue then convinced me to get on her horse on our block and she took pictures…._











_I photoshopped that picture as it was a sunny day with very little of the medieval gloom of Middle Earth during the War of the Ring; I also removed the fences and added a tower







). Didn’t actually ride the horse anywhere (other than in a very small circle), and the reason it actually looks alert rather than bored is that behind me are some emu’s … and he hasn’t quite gotten used to emus yet._


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## SueC

bsms said:


> ^^ Great description! It makes me appreciate the convenience of being a guy...cuz I sure would miss my morning coffee!


Well, thank you!  This is an accolade coming from the most consistently hilarious writer on the forum! 

Hmm, yes, people with Y chromosomes do have certain anatomical advantages for outdoors toileting, but on the other hand, I don't have to have my gonads sitting unprotected between a saddle and myself. And I'm not so sure I'd swap toileting convenience for my multi-tasking ability. ;-)


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## Mulefeather

LOL Sue! That's a great story and one I can definitely appreciate. Admittedly I kind of have a temperamental bladder, so it's definitely a nice thing that I work very close to the ladies' room at my job!


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## bsms

^^^ I had a series of kidney stones in the 80s. They couldn't find any reason for them, so they told me to "Drink lots of coffee, lots of soda, lots of water and get used to knowing the location of every bathroom within 5 miles of you!"

It worked. No kidney stones for 25 years.

On yesterday's ride, I stopped and walked Bandit a quarter mile to get the kinks out of my hips, knees and lower back. While walking him, he stopped and...well, ****ed like a racehorse. He went...and went...and went. My daughter and her friend caught up and then started giggling. I rubbed Bandit's neck. "Beats kidney stones, old boy". He grunted, in agreement I suppose. Finally packed things up and we walked a little further, until my joints felt and moved like joints again. Then we finished the ride.

When you have to go, you have to go. Its just easier going sometimes for a male.


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## frlsgirl

That is hilarious Sue; I refuse to go potty on the trail so I only drink a little bit of water before I mount and then run to the bathroom like a mad woman as soon as we return.

Ana does the same thing; she will hold her pee all day because going potty in public just seems wrong to her; she has no problem pooping all over the place, but I've never seen her pee in public.


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## SueC

Hmm Bob, imagine how uncomfortable Bandit would have been before he emptied his tank - I bet he'd empathise if you read him my trail-peeing story. ;-) Actually, with racehorses this is serious business, because if your horse has a full bladder during a race, it will negatively affect its performance. So, racehorses are taught to urinate on cue - also because otherwise you have to wait a long time if your horse is picked for a random urine test pre-or post race.

So what we always did is this: Whenever we witnessed a horse in our stable peeing, we'd do this ululating kind of low whistle for the duration of the pee. (This starts when they're born, or when you get them in as yearlings.) With enough repetition, they begin to associate the two things. So when you got to the racetrack, and you start this whenever you're just going there to train, you take the horse into the urinal box and you do that whistle, and give it some time. And if it urinates, you praise the horse. So, by the time the horse is racing, you can take it to the urinal box before a race and whistle and it will almost always pee, and therefore run with an empty bladder.

Apparently there is an African tribe where similar things are done to cue the infants to urinate and defaecate while being held over bushes. These tribes don't have, and don't need, nappies, and the toilet training technique works even on very young babies.

My own parents, in the early 1970s, when I was a toddler, always used to sit me on the toilet before venturing out shopping with me, or on a road trip, and turn on the water tap a little as a cue. This worked very well, but such associations last a lifetime, and I've always had to cross my legs and hop around in discomfort if I'm near a waterfall or burbling brook with a reasonably full bladder, or if someone turns the tap on. My husband thinks it's really funny! 

Sunsmart, with his harness background, usually attempts to pee before we go riding, without cue. But if he doesn't, and he has to go during a ride, it's with all the lengthy water-letting accompanied with various sound-effects: Little painful sounding groans at first, and at the finish, a big sigh that clearly says, "Oh, that's so much better!" If there are bystanders, it invariably amuses them.


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## Remali

Oh my gosh, I love your stories!!! I laughed so!


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## SueC

Remali said:


> Oh my gosh, I love your stories!!! I laughed so!


Well, I'm glad!  Would be a shame if there were no positive outcomes from this journalling business, other than giving me a writing and reminiscing playground for my personal amusement!

Hope you're well and enjoying your spring weather!


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## SueC

I really enjoy the trail riding photos on 40+ and have long wanted to contribute something along those lines. I don't yet have a trail camera, but today we cobbled something together, which I'm also posting in my journal. :smile: 

You could tell it was going to be a beautiful Sunday very early on.










The dawn promised it, and sure enough, soon we had a splendid, sunny autumn day with still, clear air. Perfect riding weather! The donkeys came to keep us company while I tacked up Sunsmart. Mary Lou was really interested in the hoof boots I was putting on the horse. She was probably hoping they were edible.










I was wearing the $5 op-shop find my husband calls my “superhero pants” - a purply-maroon pair of tight stretch jeans you wouldn't wear in public except if you were deliberately trying to impersonate the Bee Gees. However, they're very nice to ride in – they are actually long enough for me, which makes them a rare find, plus they have no studs on the back pockets which could scratch the saddle. All my riding pants ride are a tad short and crawl up my leg as I ride, making a big gap of socks and skin. My “superhero pants” don't do this. 










Here I am adjusting the noseband I never usually put on my horse; I usually just keep his halter on. I ride Sunsmart in a Spanish snaffle and so this noseband has no practical purpose, I just wanted to see what it looked like. The leathers are too narrow to run them comfortably under the horse's bridle, so I just ran it over the top today, which isn't correct, but at least it wasn't uncomfortable for the horse.

Also note Jess, our Kelpie. She is excitedly circumnavigating the horse, as is her habit when we are about to ride.










Here we are in front of the farm shed which supports the solar panels that, in tandem with a battery bank, supply all our personal and business electricity needs. We've never had to run the generator yet!










Behind us is the reason I haven't had quite as much time for horseriding or Pilates as I would have liked to have in the last four years. We've lived in it for more than two years and are getting close to finishing now, but an owner build is a big project, especially once Murphy's law takes effect!

The dog is waiting impatiently for us to stop doing boring stuff, and get on the trail. 30-year-old Romeo is breakfasting in the background, out of his big tub.










Jess is playing "limbo" with the electric fence. And Sunsmart is displaying two things with his solid physique: 1) His French carriage horse ancestry - very solid animals; and 2) The fact that both of us need to do more trails, more often. While he is not obese, as an ex-endurance rider I'd like to see at least 20kg less on him, and that big belly made svelte by decent fitness training.










Hello! :smile:



















Since I have no trail camera and didn't want to carry and operate a normal camera while riding, I'll have to just tell you about the actual ride: It was my first off-farm ride in a good while. We have enough tracks on our farm to ride at least 45min without repeating any, and I've been happy with that given how busy we have been with house building, livestock and off-farm work. But, I've been meaning to go back out for a while, as I'd like to get Sunsmart very fit again, like he was before we lost access to the wonderful tree plantation trails we loved. Our eastern neighbour, on hearing of our predicament, told me I could ride on his place if I wanted. He has a few big paddocks right next to us where some of his cattle roam in undulating country with a fair bit of remnant bushland. I'd been there a couple of times before, and it's lovely scenery. So that's where we headed, in a roundabout way, first warming up on our own trails. 

I had to open a “cocky gate” to get out at the eastern corner of our property. This is a section of barbed wire fence between two strainers where the free end is attached to a narrow post which you fasten to the strainer post by means of two wire loops. So essentially, when you unloop the narrow post from the strainer, you can create a gap in the fence you can walk through, before closing it again behind you. You can't do this unless you have a horse that will stand patiently while you fiddle with loops, and walk exactly where you direct him without spooking sideways, or you could have a very nasty situation with barbed wire tangled around the horse's legs.

We took a bush track along the neighbour's bull paddock to his big paddock and then rode there for around 40 minutes, roughly once around. On the way out we passed along the south boundary of our own block, and past a soak where the dog had a drink and a swim before getting stuck on the wrong side of the fence. She had to follow us on the wrong side until a kangaroo gate allowed her to cross back again:










By this time we were coming out of bushland into open pasture, and fourteen small Angus steers in the adjoining property thought we were great entertainment. They ran along beside us as we rode along the fence, kicking up their heels, one of them bellowing at and repeatedly charging my dog, who in turn launched herself snarling at the steer (she's a stock dog) in counter-intimidation.

After a while, we decided to cross the open paddock and ride adjacent to nearby remnant bushland until we reached the paddock boundary. My horse tends to be a bit toey around the stretch of road reserve there – he's convinced the bogeyman lives in that spot. The adjacent firebreak offered excellent footing, and we went bowling along at a nice fast trot for a good bit, before a kangaroo crashed around in the bushes next to us. My horse is used to kangaroos, but not to imaginary bogeymen, so he slammed on his brakes and partially spun around, and – I slid off! That was a first in my six years of riding him, if you don't count the few times I've mounted him bareback with too much momentum and gone right over the top of him, much to the amusement of onlookers.

Another first was that, inexplicably, I landed comfortably on my feet next to a stationary horse with my hand on his withers. I've never landed on my feet before when coming off a horse, in all my riding life.

I walked next to him for a bit until I was sure my dodgy back hadn't suffered, by which time he was no longer concerned about the bogeyman. I got back on, and we rode up the pasture a bit until our neighbour's big breeding herd in that paddock discovered us. The calves all scurried for their mothers at the unexpected sight of us, who in turn set up a bovine chorus. The massive Angus bull had a good look at us too. I didn't want to unsettle the herd and took my horse through the bush again, out of their sight. Soon we were back in open country, trotting along the road boundary until we got back to the entry gate.

Our neighbour was just adding a cow and calf to the paddock, and we had a chat before I rode back home along the bush trail, through the cocky gate, and into our large bush-backed paddock we call “The Common” - when I noticed Brett and the camera were lurking there:


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## SueC

Back home, off came the tack. Because of his thick winter coat, Sunsmart was sweaty and itchy. So I let him have a good roll before bathtime:














































And up!










That clearly feels so much better!

Now for bath time:










Brett was nice and got us a bucket of warm water from the house. The tank water is very cold just now, and the horse really appreciated the warm water.










When I wash his head, he always wants to play with the sponge! :smile:










Drying and de-itching the head!










And, of course, the finale:










Meanwhile, we went and made my favourite fast lunch: Spaghetti Marinara - hmmmm! The horse finished his feed and went off to graze with his friends.

An autumn morning well spent! :smile:


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## SueC

People sometimes ask me about the rope around the horse's shoulders.










It's something a dressage enthusiast showed me six years ago. Basically it makes sure that the direction of the cues that go to the bit stays more steady, even if the horse were to raise its head. Sunsmart was very upside down in the neck when I first started working with him under saddle after his harness career, as he had habitually star-gazed in harness. This little set-up helped correct that problem, and his head carriage and neck musculature are much improved these days.

The rope just runs through the reins, and is attached to the girth either end (above the saddle cloth loops, so it doesn't slip down). It's a bit loose in this photo (and I should cut off the leather martingale stops on the reins as they might snaggle), but he doesn't do head-in-the-air anymore when spooked, so not that crucial.

The rope has some of the functions of a martingale, but it much softer and also does other important things: 1) Stop the reins from being thrown over a horse's head if the rider or horse fall, and so stop the horse from tangling its legs in the reins and hurting its mouth; 2) Give you a useful piece of rope should you need it on a trail, like I once did when one of my hoof boots came off because a strap broke. I took off the other-side boot too, and tied them to the rope. This means I didn't have to carry them in my hands on the way home. 

And if I meet a suspicious character, I can hog-tie him! :wink:


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## egrogan

I'm glad you mentioned that, as I will be honest that I sat for awhile and looked at that picture when you first posted it trying to figure out what was going on there. At first I thought it was some sort of side reins or draw reins, but then I think I concluded it was a lead rope attached somewhere and just run back to the saddle in case you needed it for tying out on the trail. And I was wrong on all accounts! 

But I'm not totally sure I understand your description of what it does. So it's not attached to the bit at all, right? Attaches over the girth, runs around the front of the horse and attaches on teh other side of the girth?


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## SueC

Yes, exactly. So your bridle has to go on first when you tack up, and then when you put the saddle on, you pass the rope (which stays attached to the saddle on one side) through the reins and you then tie the loose end up to the other side. I just have bowline loops in either end that pass over the girth, but above the level of the saddle blanket straps, so the rope doesn't slide down the girth.

And yes, at a stretch you could also tie your horse up on it when picnicking! But it's quite a breakable rope, it's not thick.

I don't like draw reins etc, I like things simple and comfortable for horse and rider. This rope thing is something I tried when it was explained to me, and found it useful, and multi-purpose.

To paraphrase the function, it simulates riding with the hands very low and if the horse raises its head it doesn't drastically change the direction in which the reins are acting on the bit.


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## frlsgirl

Interesting, and quite creative! I guess this is the kind of stuff you learn from experience. I'm clearly still a novice trail rider because I never think of stuff like this; I was trying to tie my jacket around Ana's neck so that I could use it to carry stuff; it fell off at the trail entrance; so I had to dismount, walk her back, get rid of my jacket and remount. I later had to dismount and remount when we encountered our first water obstacle; that's when I realized that we need more practice mounting from the ground. That's also the same day that I realized wearing black breeches in the Oklahoma heat is not a good idea...sigh...like I said, all newbee mistakes.


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## SueC

Well, frlsgirl, I think I made a serious coffee newbee mistake in that scenario I posted on page 15! 

Anyone here want to offer some splendidly silly things they've done in their equestrian journeys?

One splendidly silly thing I did once is jump bareback with a gelding with extremely high withers...


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## frlsgirl

There are so many...lets see...most recently, I took the saddle pads home so that I could wash them. I'm not supposed to wash them in our fancy machine, but, you know, husband was out of town so I figured as long as I clean up my evidence, he would never know.

A couple of days later the washer stopped working and displayed an error message indicating that the pump drain was clogged, so husband dismantled the washer to get to the bump, and guess what he found? A fist full of Ana hairs!

So I had to listen to a lecture of why we don't wash Ana's stuff in our washer.

The dumbest thing I've done while riding, is that time when I tried to open the gate while mounted; I was hanging sideways off her back trying to get the chain untangled, it finally released but I hadn't quite sat up in the saddle yet, when the gate swung open and hit her in the butt; she took off like a rocket, while I climbed back on top of her. 

I felt like one of those stunt riders that let themselves hang of the sides of the horse at a full gallop and then climb back up. I really thought I was going to end up in the dirt that day; it was shear determination and probably a lot of luck that helped me get back up.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> There are so many...lets see...most recently, I took the saddle pads home so that I could wash them. I'm not supposed to wash them in our fancy machine, but, you know, husband was out of town so I figured as long as I clean up my evidence, he would never know.
> 
> A couple of days later the washer stopped working and displayed an error message indicating that the pump drain was clogged, so husband dismantled the washer to get to the bump, and guess what he found? A fist full of Ana hairs!
> 
> So I had to listen to a lecture of why we don't wash Ana's stuff in our washer.


I can't count the number of times I've had this same conversation. But guess what's in my backseat at this very minute- a sweaty, dirty saddle pad that I am shoving in the washing machine this afternoon


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## SueC

I know some people solve the horse-gear washing problem by having a dedicated washing machine for horse gear and other pet things. Usually they just hang on to an old washing machine and put it in their shed to wash those animal things there. Lack of plumbing is what stops it from being a universal solution. But one nice solution if you don't have backup plumbing is to buy an old twin-tub machine which you fill straight from the tap, or even with a garden hose (at a stretch, you could do this with a top-loader, but those are automatic so you'd have to make sure you're back again when the rinse water needs to come in). You can drain the machine onto the garden with another piece of hose.










Towards the beginning of our owner building, in late 2012/early 2013, we were living in an old caravan on site while getting the house habitable, and the above shows my first wash day when we moved out to Redmond, and we were using my trusty old twin-tub right next to the water tank (our only water source), powered by the generator in the shed (at this stage we had no other source of electricity). Rather than running the wash water out with a hose, we put it into watering cans and watered our young fruit trees, who badly needed regular watering in summer anyway.

This was another photo from that time - with Don Quixote considerably fatter than he is now (grazing muzzles helped):


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## SueC

And now something that really makes me smile: I found some old photos of my Sunsmart when he was less than 24 hours old.




























That mare and her full brother are retired with us at Redmond these days, and I posted the photos of their arrival late last year on page 7 of this journal.

It's so amazing that the little fella grew into this:


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## SueC

Another foal photo:










How Sunsmart got his name is related to his behaviour when he was a foal. He used to always lie down in the shade - and he still rests in shady spots more consistently than our other horses. Sunsmart is the name of a successful anti-skin cancer campaign where we live, plus the horse's sire was The Sunbird Hanover, who was out of Sunray Mimi. So the "Sun" part started with a grandmother.

Here's a photo of Sunsmart when he was a little older:











The last one is of him and his dam just before we separated them:










Of course, these days they are paddock mates again. She often likes to stand right next to him and sniff him when I tack him up, and I will scratch her ears and say to her: "What a big lubber you produced there!" :rofl:


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## SueC

And this was The Sunbird Hanover:










He was a son of the legendary US pacer Albatross:











The Sunbird Hanover spent years at stud in Australia and produced a long row of excellent pacers. His last owner was paralysed in a car crash and asked my father (who had taken his best mare Classic Juliet to this stallion) if he would retire him, which he did. So that's Dad in the photo with Sunbird, who gave us Classic Julian out of Classic Juliet, and also produced Sunsmart (out of French Revolution) and a mare called Sunset Coast (out of Mediterranean) in his retirement at our place.

The Sunbird Hanover was a wonderful, gentle, clever stallion with a keen sense of humour. He was one of my all-time favourite horses, and I am so pleased that I have one of his sons, who also happens to be the great-grandson of the mare I rode as a child in the years immediately after finishing the basic riding and dressage course in Germany and before I met my Arabian mare:



















More photos of this mare, and her story, appear on page 10 of my journal. I still miss this mare, and Sunbird...and yet both of them have left me something wonderful to remember them by in Sunsmart, who shares many of their traits, both physically and in his demeanour.


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## SueC

Lots of interesting discussion going on elsewhere presently. I wanted to "bookmark" the topic of spooking here - a topic I'm really interested in. 

Spooking and bits:

http://www.horseforum.com/horse-riding/bit-use-587762/


We also recently discussed spooking and tactics for prevention and management here (link is to the starting post and discussion goes over the page):

Branded/Brandy , . Final name "Bandit"! .Mia's replacement

...because there is a lot more to it than just bits, of course! :smile:


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## SueC

...also I want to "keep" here a lovely little discussion we are currently having on 40+ about horse training philosophies. Starts around here:

http://www.horseforum.com/horse-talk/horse-talk-mature-people-over-40-a-111931/page2703/

We just seem to have a diametrically different subculture to the main open forum, and it's one of the reasons I really enjoy our group!


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## SueC

One of our fabulous 40+ social group members inspired me to bareback my horse around our farm trails this evening. It occurred to me that I'd not gone bareback in two months because I've been focusing on getting my horse fit again (= sweaty), and also on cutting down on unnecessary laundry (i.e. pants that are dirty and hairy on the inner leg and need soaking).

The sun was setting when we headed off as it had been a busy day for me, doing paperwork, fixing the last of the timber cornices in the guest room, cutting out a shelf for an asymmetrical area, doing a little fencing, sheet mulching a tree that's getting too much horse traffic, lighting a bonfire, filling up stock tanks, cutting firewood, etc. 

It actually took me three attempts to get on my horse bareback from the ground because I'm a bit out of practice and didn't want to overshoot over the other side and go splat, as entertaining as that is for others. I clearly need to make this a regular thing again if I don't want to lose it in my advanced age... When we set off around the house (our lead-out track starts behind it), Sunsmart snorted at the bonfire that was burning down and I had to persuade him that it was safe to go past. Then off we went on the track through the bush at a nice trot, alternating between working and medium. His trot is so soft it's easy to sit and like meditation to float along on his back through the scenery.

Riding without a saddle is a far more connected and focusing experience than riding in a saddle. I've always liked it. The one down side is that it's so much easier to slip off when the horse gets jumpy about some bogeyman in the bushes. Kangaroos get active at sunset and horses get more skittish at that time of day (and on windy days), so when we happened upon kangaroo rustles I decided to slip off my horse and lead him for a bit as I wasn't feeling that my reflexes were ultra fast after the long day's work. In fact, my reflexes were on the "nap" setting, which is great for being elastic on a horse but not great for staying balanced during unpredictable movement.

About 50m on I got back on the horse, and this time on the first attempt. The dog was barking madly as she always does when I get on a horse or bicycle and she anticipates having a good run with company. We turned into our swamp track and trotted along in the dying light through wetland scrub until we came into our "secret meadow" which is hidden from view by being mostly enclosed in wild vegetation, and on which the strawberry clover grows well into the summer, even after the rest of the pasture has dried up.

It's a short ride from there to the little intermittent stream that runs through the cow pasture, then past the farm dam, and home again. I had wanted to do two laps but the light had gone. The dog was saturated from leaping into the dam, and rolling madly on her back as is her wont.

I swear I'm going to get myself a little camera to capture these things... Will make such posts far more interesting! :smile:

After riding, I started an essay, made dinner, and baked a pumpkin spice cake with walnuts. We've just harvested an enormous crop of pumpkins...

So if anyone has any favourite pumpkin recipes to share, I'm all ears! :smile:

Oh yeah, and anyone else who wants to share their enthusiasm for bareback riding... come right in and be my guest!


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## egrogan

What kind of pumpkins? I often use pumpkin and butternut squash interchangeably in savory recipes, but it does depend a bit on the type of pumpkin. Depending on that, I'd love to share three of my favorites: butternut squash (pumpkin) risotto; spicy thai squash soup; and squash/pumpkin curry.


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## SueC

I'd love all three of those recipes, thank you! 

The main varieties we grow are shown here:










The colourful ones we are "wearing" are Turks Turbans - very nice eating pumpkins too. It's a good thing they store easily for up to a year because everyone loves keeping them around as decorations.

We also grow Australian Butternuts. There's two in the middle of this pile. They're excellent for enduring the summer heat and water stress we get here, and taste great. It's odd you append "Squashes" to them as they are true pumpkins, but I guess US terminology is different. "Squashes" in Australia are things that are more watery than pumpkins like the Butternut.

Like the Spaghetti Squashes on the front right - bright yellow things. They taste nice as zucchini substitutes in minestrones - and when zucchini season is over, these guys will still be around as they store well. But the real party trick and the reason for the name is that if you bake them whole and then split them and scrape the flesh out with a fork, you get strands of "vegetable spaghetti" - as shown in this photo I googled:










And then there is the Pennsylvania Crookneck - in the top photo it's the big thing in the foreground. That one is a freak who doesn't have the typically curved neck of these pumpkins:










The Pennsylvania Crookneck is the ancestor of the Butternut, which is a mutation with a reduced and straight neck that suits supermarkets better due to packing concerns, but in taste they are identical. For the home grower, the Crookneck has the advantage of having this huge seedless neck - less work when you're chopping them up.

Lastly, we really love the Potimarron, although it's a bit fiddly to grow and the yields aren't spectacular. It's the little orange-red pumpkin hiding behind the Pennsylvania Crookneck in the top photo. If you roast these beauties, they taste very like maroni (roasted chestnuts).

PS: Home produce photos welcome here!


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## egrogan

Yep, I know our US terminology for pumpkins vs squashes can be odd, which is why asked what you had  I think those 3 recipes could probably use almost anything you shared in that picture (except the spaghetti squash). I will round up the recipes and post later.

My garden is so sad this year. It's been a cool spring with periods of very dry and then very wet. Nothing seems to be taking off yet. Except the garlic chives, those things can thrive in any conditions!
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## egrogan

Sue, I had fun pulling out my tattered old recipe book and searching for recipes. I love cooking, but rarely use recipes, unless I'm not sure about flavors or proportions the first couple of times around. It was fun to rediscover some dishes that I really enjoyed but haven't made in awhile.

This is a bit old school, but most of these recipes have been cut out of cooking magazines over the years, so I had to scan them in and upload them, since I don't have web links.






































The risotto is a family favorite- always a primary component at our Thanksgiving holiday meals.

My big exception to the "no-recipes" approach is cooking Indian food. I find that the proportion of ingredients and spices doesn't come as naturally too me, so I do tend to use recipes there. I included the cover of my absolute favorite Indian cookbook, _660 Curries_. I am primarily vegetarian, so appreciate the extensive legume and vegetable options, but I know there's a whole world of meat and poultry in there I've never touched!

Edited to add: I couldn't find the Thai Curry Squash soup recipe in my clippings book, but I think it was generally along this theme- http://cookieandkate.com/2014/thai-curried-butternut-squash-soup/


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## SueC

Thank you very much, Erin, for those delicious-sounding recipes - we will make full use of them!  It's always good to have diverse sorts of recipes for something you happen to have a lot of and have to get through, like our pumpkins. An analysis I read said that pumpkins have a better beta-carotene content than even carrots, and contain a lot of Vitamin C as well, plus useful amounts of potassium and fibre. So, worth eating regularly.

The zucchini fritters (first recipe you posted) are very similar to one of our favourite uses of zucchini: We make these fritters with equal amounts of grated potato and zucchini, and a bit of onion or spring onion as well. Traditionally we've used tomato sauce or sweet chilli sauce/sour cream to spice them up a bit. My family has German/Italian roots, and "Kartoffelpuffer" is a traditional German recipe - fritters based on grated potatoes. We used to have these loads for lunch when I was growing up, and when we started growing zucchini, the 50:50 type became a common variation. It's the kind of comfort food that has stuck with us, and now my husband is addicted to these as well! 

That's a very uber-Indian curry recipe there: I'll have to go spice shopping, but we look forward to trying it. We have a simple curry based on beef (or kangaroo), potatoes, pumpkin and peas in a tomato/coconut sauce and a bit of Rogan Josh base, served over brown rice, that's become part of the staple recipes around our house.

That risotto recipe is making my mouth water already: The pumpkin and herbs are going to be such a nice twist on the traditional risotto! And the sweet and sour we will also have to try.

Thank you again for posting these! Food and recipe talk is always welcome here.

:apple:


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## SueC

A little update on the retired horses (since Sunsmart gets most of the airtime here).

The two chestnut siblings, 21 and 25 respectively, are really enjoying their free range life here with us, and are getting to like wide open spaces...










Indeed, so much so that they are beginning to leave the 4 hectare pasture in which the horses are mostly kept (together with the Murray Grey calves) to take advantage of daytime access to the 8.5 hectare pasture with 50 hectares of bush and tracks behind it.

It often takes time to get horses who grew up entirely in stables and small lots used to the open country. To make it a pleasant transition, we don't just throw them out there - we make a point of rugging them in cold and wet weather. Gradually, as they acclimatise, the level of rugging is pulled back to the more extreme weather (and we certainly get extreme weather here on the South Coast).

At the start, they would nervously follow the other horses and donkeys out into what we call the "Common" and sprint right back to their familiar territory within minutes, especially if the saw the big Friesian steers out there. This would draw some surprised glances from the other equines. However, these days the brother-sister pair are more relaxed, and are spending half-days out before they want to go "home". The other horses, and the donkeys, think of our whole place as "home" and have no such preferences.

I don't have recent photos of the big run, but this was a photo we took from the attic last summer, with Sunsmart and Romeo enjoying a kip in the shade amongst the trees beyond the farm dam:


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## SueC

Now I will turn my lens on our ancient horse, Romeo, who will be 31 this spring.  Here is Romeo breakfasting in the orchard, as seen through the dining room window:










All these photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Romeo is the age record holder of any of the Standardbreds in our family (my parents used to breed them, buried a dozen over the decades, and still have ten). Standardbreds generally make it to 25-30 if disease or accidents don't claim them first (assuming they are allowed a retirement, which all of ours are). Arabians are somewhat longer-lived, more like 30-35, at least the working strains we are familiar with. Donkeys beat that, regularly living past 40 if well managed.

Romeo's full sister, Classic Juliet, died at age 28, after really going downhill fast with worn teeth combined with a glandular problem that turned her from normal into skeletal in weeks. When she colicked on top of this, a decision was made to put her down.

Romeo has the same problem with his teeth, which are falling out at a rapid rate now. (Our other old horses mostly haven't had tooth troubles, and certainly not to the extent of these two.) Last time his teeth were filed, the veterinarian discouraged me from getting his teeth done again - they are so loose and worn down they are likely to fall out from being rasped, and the procedure is no longer comfortable for the horse.

Amazingly, he is still managing to eat enough to keep him happy, and the quality of his life is currently good. If he gets a tooth abscess or anything like that, or becomes in any other way uncomfortable, he will be euthanased.

This is him this morning, gallivanting around our garden, where he is an honorary lawnmower:










The dog is hanging with him in her typical sheepdog style, and Don Quixote is lurking in the driveway. My lavenders are coming along well - I grew them all from cuttings. The horse doesn't interfere with them - but the donkeys would! 



















In the foreground is _Melaleuca diosmifolia_, one of Brett's favourite native shrubs, and very bird-attracting! In the background, the three-year-old Tagasaste (tree lucerne, a fodder plant) is starting to flower, which will keep our beehives happy.










Romeo really is looking very old these days, with all his grey hair and loss of muscle mass, but he still puts in a good gallop daily and races the younger horses with aplomb at feed time.

What's in his bucket these days, morning and night, is astronomical:

8-10L fine-cut oaten chaff
2L soaked horse cubes
0.5L pelleted rice bran, soaked
0.5L copra
0.5L canola meal
1-2L unprocessed wheat bran
Alternating ground limestone and vitamin/mineral mix
Magnesium ad lib and not with the other supplements

It's a mix he is doing well on. It's a fine line when you are feeding so many concentrates to a horse that isn't working hard, but in his case, it's necessary to get the calories into him. He can no longer process hay and, apart from what's in his feed bucket, basically subsists on whatever short, tender shoots he can nip off in short lengths with his incisors. Thankfully we have green grass at least 10 months of the year, and the irrigated garden and tree lucerne during drought.

Standardbreds are considered at low risk for things like Cushings and laminitis. However, I am supplementing him with magnesium as a safeguard.










He is so bear-like in his winter fur... in summer he is sleek.

I could keep five horses on what I feed him, but we just like having him around, and he likes being around as well. We've had him in the family 27 years, and I will tell his story here some time soon, when I start a series of case studies in the rehabilitation of "problem" horses, which is how he got to our family in the first place!


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## SueC

Some general photos we took on our farm this week:



















We are in a valley with a creek running through the middle, and in the cooler months, mist forms above the creek. This provides wonderful atmospheric vistas in the mornings at at nightfall.


Western Rosellas are starting to come into our garden on a regular basis:










This is on top of many, many small native birds, like Willy Wagtails, Grey Fantails and Honeyeaters, who nest in the Tagasaste hedges and visit the 3000+ native shrubs and trees planted in the garden and in paddock shelter belts in the last five years.

Now we personally don't have Koalas - they are not native to Western Australia - but we went to an animal park a few weekends back and I just had to take photos of these sleeping marsupials:


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## Remali

Love the photos Sue! Your place is paradise.


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## Zexious

Your farm is so beautiful!! ;-; I am jealous... Especially of that little CHICKENTHING!


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## SueC

:confused_color: Erm, what chicken thing, Zexious? The Rosella, or possibly a spooky horse? (The biggest reference to chickens around here is Brett applying this epithet to the chestnuts, so forgive my confusion!)

Don't be jealous, you don't know what life has in store for you. As a young single person I was moving around so much at one point I despaired of ever owning a house. Then I got married, and not until my mid-30s (took that long for Mr Right to show up), and Brett and I pooled our resources, paid off his first mortgage, then we lived in a tiny one-bedroom rental for five years so we could have a chance at buying a substantial amount of land in a genuine rural area, and eventually the right kind of place became available - because a big farmer sold his four titles separately upon retirement, and we got the smallest one, at 62ha (but still our favourite out of the four, as it's 80% well-preserved native vegetation, several hundred species of understorey plants - we're in a biodiversity hotspot here on the South Coast and we're very keen to preserve our bushland in all its glory...).

Then we had to owner-build to get something we actually wanted to live in. We've nearly finished now after more than three years, been living in it for two years, had some time in a caravan at the start, no electricity, no hot water other than what you boiled on the stove!  That was fun, hahaha.

We have chronological photos of the house build here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/sets/72157628414190373

Anyway, you never know what might happen!

And we also have a guest room here (just finished) and are sociable beings!

:welcome:

Renee, nice to see you here! Can I tempt you to do a journal telling the story of your Arabians, illustrated with photographs? Guarantee you I'll be glued to it if you do!


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## SueC

So my darling, long-suffering husband says to me, "Oh, you have no current photos of those chestnuts in the big pasture? Let me fix that!" - and takes the camera out at the next opportunity. He got these photos of the two French Trotter crosses in lovely light:










Le Chasseur on the left, French Revolution on the right. The gelding keeps a short glossy coat all winter no matter what you do, so rugging in wet, windy or freezing conditions is extra important for him - his sister becomes like a bear, as does her son Sunsmart... The fine coat genes apparently descend from Arabian horses, but my Arabian mare also got shaggy during winter!










The gelding has always has a slightly convex profile, the mare a very slightly dished one. Le Chasseur actually, of all the horses we bred from our foundation mare, although a grandson not a son, looked the most like Dame du Buisson, particularly about the face - but didn't have her calibre, he was light instead like his grandsire Maple Lanes Strike. No matter though, he ran very well in his harness career. But Sunsmart, the great-grandson, inherited both her calibre and her astounding athleticism and endurance. It really is interesting how far down the line a horse's influence can go.










The light really does make them glow here!










It's because of this photo that I dug up some foal photos of this horse for the next post - his head was already like that when he was tiny!  I think convex profiles can be handsome as well. For example, I just love Lusitanos!














And here, Brett just outdid himself! :rofl:


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## SueC

Three photos of Le Chasseur as a newborn foal, his first day in the world, with his Standardbred dam Colirini (Jun Jun Ni - Coliris).










This colt was the mare's second foal. I vividly remember that she was out in the sand paddock the afternoon she unexpectedly foaled with no warning at all! The foal was on the ground just like that. My father saw the mare lying down when he looked out of the window and raced out - his mares usually foaled in the grass paddocks if we could arrange it, and she wasn't quite due yet! By the time he got there, the foal was out, and the mare getting to her feet. He freed the colt from the surrounding membranes, opened the gate, picked him up in his arms, and carried him to the grass paddock, his mother in tow. By the time he took the photo, the foal had ironically found himself a sand hole to lie in, but at least he was dry at this point! 










Colirini actually had an awkward conformation, like her sire Jun Jun Ni, and had ligament problems, which is why a friend of my father's gave her to the family. Since all the other harness mares we had were racing at the time, my father took this mare essentially as insurance for the French genes in case French Legacy died. Dame du Buisson had unfortunately died shortly after producing French Legacy, her only Australian foal. (Five more in Europe carried on her lines there.)

So, French Revolution was the first foal by French Legacy, and Colirini also had Le Chasseur. I personally wouldn't have bred from this mare - yes, working this mare too hard too young was a contributor to her ligament issues - she had shown promise and was a tall filly and doing fast times as a youngster - but she wasn't my idea of an ideal broodmare, and indeed Le Chasseur himself, who was started carefully and not raced young, started developing identical problems after two successful racing seasons.

Still, Colirini had a wonderful temperament, which she passed on to both these offspring, and which make them an absolute delight to have here during their retirement. You couldn't possibly find two friendlier, gentler horses.

And if Colirini hadn't been bred, I wouldn't have Sunsmart, and I'm very happy with him, he's just fabulous to work with and to ride.










Just look at that endearing little banana face! 

Interestingly, Colirini had a short forelock, and all of the descendants we have from her have short forelocks.


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## SueC

A little reflection on free-range herd living for horses: All the horses I have here used to be on daytime turnout to dry lots with hand feeding, with one buddy if they were a mare or gelding, or alone if a stallion (which two of them were). Romeo and Sunsmart had already been living free range for four years when the chestnuts arrived. At first the "new" horses didn't know what hit them when they saw all the space and weren't put into buildings for the majority of a 24-hour period, but now they are really taking to the whole thing with aplomb.

This morning, the whole lot of them stormed out together from their 4ha fenced area into the unfenced "Common" that makes up the other 58ha of our farm. They were kicking up their heels and wearing "isn't this great" expressions, and ran to and fro for a while for sheer fun, before settling down to grazing the lush ryegrass that is coming in on that part of our land. It was a pleasure just watching them.

This evening, after feeding, I was letting Romeo back in with the others as usual (he eats in the orchard as he has way more in his bucket), the others looked at him, looked at each other, and kind of went, "Well, we're all here, let's go!" - and moved up into the hill paddock as a group. They reminded me of this chamber orchestra I went to see, the way they all communicate with glances and act in unison as a result. It's really special to see these animals do this.

In traditional stable/turnout situations, the horses spend large proportions of their day basically waiting for some human to come and do things for them - what they eat, where they go, who they socialise with is determined so closely by the humans. Free-ranging over a large area they can actually explore, our horses can make so many decisions about their daily lives independently, more like wild horses. Other than getting a bucket feed from us, they totally fend for themselves with foraging and can choose what, where and when to eat, and they decide who they hang out with (including other herbivores like donkeys and cattle), where they go on that range, and what they might like to see. They are so comparatively independent of humans this way, and have a far richer life for it. I see them look at each other sometimes in one of those "orchestra moments" and then all of them suddenly canter off onto the lead-out track behind the house to run down the forest track to the western boundary, from which they slowly make their way back along the pasture fence, grazing as they go. The house is central to all these goings on and has windows facing in all directions, so I see lots even from inside the house... and I just find it thrilling that these animals have so much liberty.

:loveshower:

Also, as I was coming home from a ride around our tracks this evening, I passed the donkeys. Don Quixote started running along with us in his comedic rocking-horse canter, kicking up his heels, then doubling back to his girls and running loops around them, making little braying noises (I stopped my horse to watch). Next, they all started running and circling and kicking up their heels. It was so funny... they do this every now and then. We call it going "cracker-donkey".


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## SueC

Recent donkey photos!










The donkeys in the driveway.










Don Quixote in all his glory. He's continuing to lose weight gradually - he and long-hair Mary Lou have been in grazing muzzles for two years whenever they go "out" to the large paddocks during the day. The donkeys were everweight when we got them in 2012.










Sparkle, our blind donkey (who gets around very well!). She is sporting the "It rained on me and set like that" hairstyle. She loves being brushed. If she hears the sounds of a horse or donkey being brushed she is magnetically attracted by those sounds...


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## SueC

_A post I wrote on horse training problems, from another thread - written because the advice given by some people, on the internet and in real life, in response to horse training issues is often highly myopic and unhelpful:
_
What people need when they come here to ask questions about horses and training issues is encouragement and sound advice. Period.

What is never helpful is:


 Jumping to conclusions about their situations
 Making condescending sermons on how horses are dangerous animals
 Not honouring the fact that people and horses have great learning potential
 Kneejerk statements about sending the horse to a trainer or people being “outhorsed” or the horse “having their number” or that they are unqualified to be even breathing in the absence of a trainer
 Perpetuating myths about horse behaviour
 Glibly criticising a person's choice of horse
 Dismissing the great value of reading widely and systematically about horse behaviour and training
 Insinuating that a learner can never hope to reach the hallowed heights of the advising person's expertise
 
However, unfortunately, the above list features commonly in advice given in horse training situations, on forum discussion pages and in real life.

What is even less helpful is presenting advice which, if followed, is likely to have negative consequences for the learning of the horse and rider/handler, and which is capable of creating yet another “problem horse”. The most common form of bad advice is the kind that pays little attention to the kinds of things that very commonly create problems with horses, and leaps instead immediately and pathologically to the half-baked theory that all will be well if the horse has it impressed upon him that he is a lesser being than the handler and therefore must obey the handler (apparently whether or not he actually understands what is wanted, or is in a position to produce it).

And this is the number one reason horses start to engage in desperate behaviour. Instead of investigating the most common reasons horse don't do what is wanted, many people push at horses, imagining they know precisely what to do and are too stubborn, ornery or uppity to comply, and “I'll show'em who's boss.” This includes both many amateurs and many professionals in the horse industry – the latter often setting the tone for the former and extolling their own expertise.

Mostly when horses don't do what we want, it's because we've not taught them properly, or we're not consistent with our cues, or the person who taught them a particular thing cued them a little (or a lot) differently to the way we do, or they have been traumatised by negative experiences with people, or there is an underlying problem with the tack and/or an injury causing discomfort, or the way the animal is kept causes it health issues, frustration, boredom, depression, etc, or the rider's lack of skills or balance is causing a problem for the horse, or a combination of the above (and this list is by no means exhaustive).

In such scenarios, if an ignorant and unsympathetic person (whether amateur or professional – we've seen it lots of times) comes along and decides a horse needs to be shown who's boss, a horse is often driven into desperate behaviour to try to escape from the situation, and thereby acquires “vices” thus unwittingly taught it by its handlers – rearing, bucking, striking out, breaking away, etc. And then, before too long, unless someone with commonsense, understanding and goodwill appears, the horse ends up paying for the stupidity of its human handlers, with its own life, as it becomes another “dangerous and unpredictable” animal headed into the direction of a dog food can. 

Soundbytes can't teach you to train, and they can't teach you an ethical philosophy. Innate qualities such as kindness, empathy and logical thinking are profoundly necessary. Serious systematic reading on horse behaviour and training is very helpful, as is spending time with people who train horses in a gentle and kind manner, and, of course, spending time working with the animals themselves... Compared to humans, horses are remarkably peaceful and cooperative creatures, and humans could learn a lot from them if they laid aside their mistaken notions of their own superiority. updownrider, Beling, anndankev and 1 others like this.


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## SueC

*GENTLE HORSEMANSHIP*_

I just wanted to reflect a bit more on gentle horsemanship, safety and other issues. I ruminate here on the influences in my own riding life, so skip this one if you prefer short posts! :smile:_ 

Gentle horsemanship is not a new idea. In the Ancient Greek world, Xenophon and others wrote about the idea of training horses gently, and about the importance of horses trusting their handlers and enjoying their work. This sort of ethos also influenced classical continental riding schools in Europe.

I can retrospectively see the influence of such ideas even in the small rural German riding school where I had my first introduction to horse handling and riding at age 9. These were some of the basic rules that we were taught:

1) When collecting a horse for work, introduce yourself first: Stand at the horse's head, talk to it, let it sniff your hands, run your hand gently over its neck and/or give it a scratch – only then lead it out of its stall. A horse is not a bicycle.

2) Lead a horse from the shoulder, with clear voice cues – under no circumstances drag a horse around by the lead or reins. This is dangerous for the handler and degrading for the horse.

3) At all times, on or off the ground, communicate with your horse through body language, voice cues, etc. A horse is not a machine. Use correct and consistent aids, and when the horse responds correctly, stop the aid immediately and give your horse positive feedback, such as a warm, drawn-out “Good boy!”, running your hands along its neck, etc.

Safety rules for handling included the usual ones about maintaining a 100% awareness of your relative position to a 500kg animal, avoiding approaches directly from the front or rear, and talking to your horse. The principle of mechanical advantage, frequently needed when handling a horse in a tricky situation, was taught to prevent horses leading handlers rather than handlers leading horses, or horses getting loose – relative position to the horse, unbalancing forces applied to the side, threading of the lead over the nose of the horse, all those sorts of tricks; never engaging in a tug-of-war which you must inevitably lose but maintaining your relative position to the horse. Reading the horse's body language and forestalling potential problems rather than letting them develop was also drummed into us as students. When children weighing 30-40kg are handling the inevitable 16-18hh German Warmbloods which were the norm at German riding schools back then, this is essential, even when the horses are generally calm and well-trained.

The riding program was rigorous, and there were no mounting blocks. I remember doubtfully staring up at the stirrup which I was supposed to reach to get on a 17hh mare's back, and we were shown how to use momentum to smoothly get on a horse from the ground. The riding lessons consisted largely of military style group drill in elementary dressage, conducted in an arena. The first lesson was all walking, learning how to sit, handle the reins, move off, change direction and halt. Trotting was introduced from the second lesson on and was highly disappointing and stitch-inducing at first. Riding figures, transitions up and down, rein-back, turn on the forehand, riding away from the group and counter to the group, solo performances with the rest of the group watching, negotiating cavaletti and small jumps, lots of work without stirrups to develop rider balance, and rotating through all the different horses in the course of your lessons was how the basic programme operated. Only when you were considered competent at these things in the arena were you allowed on a trail. We got very sore from the constant demands in those lessons, but we also learnt an incredible amount in a short time. I think there's something to be said for people having high expectations of what their students are going to achieve. I compared notes with elementary school friends attending different riding schools, and my experience seems to have been the norm in the region, and probably much of Europe.

By this time, Swedish horsewoman Lisbeth Pahnke-Airosto was writing her Britta&Silver series, a set of novels aimed at horse enthusiastic children and teenagers with a large horsemanship teaching component woven right through the stories, which were based on Pahnke-Airosto's own experiences growing up riding in Scandinavia, and eventually working professionally with horses. This series was very successful in many European countries, but has unfortunately never been translated into English. It also espouses gentle training methods and understanding horse behaviour, and has positively influenced many young horse riders. Pahnke-Airosto is now in her late 60s and still riding – jumping is her thing – and writing for Swedish horse magazines. Her partner designs show jumping courses. In a Christmas card she sent me a few years ago, her diminutive beaming figure stands against a towering arena jumping obstacle. She wrote of a recent adventure riding a racehorse on a track at speed, which made us smile. I digress, but it's the kind of thing I find inspirational.

I'd like to hear anyone else's experiences learning in riding schools, and also from people who were largely self-taught: I have met a number of people who grew up rurally and learnt to ride very competently, and develop super relationships with their horses, without the benefit of much formal training. So far, the common denominators I have identified for that to be successful is growing up with animals, the possession of commonsense, empathy and independent, critical thinking, and the hunting out of information, written or otherwise, on horse training and riding.

Personally I had six months at the riding school I wrote about before I spent a year and a half riding a lot of lovely trails with family and friends on a very kind, very forward 12-year-old French Trotter mare my family bought after she had produced five foals for a local breeding/racing stable. Then we all moved to Australia, where my family established their own breeding/racing stable, and I bought an Arabian filly to train up for riding. Gentle horsemanship had a number of prominent proponents in Australia in the early 1980s: Robbie Murray wrote _Training Australian Horses_ (originally published as _The Gentle Art of Horsebreaking_ in 1976), which was a very useful reference, along with the late Tom Roberts' marvellous _Horse Control_ series (_The Young Horse_, _The Rider_, _The Bit_, _Reminiscences_). I'm not going to recount the methods here, just highly recommend the books written about them. They are most helpful, with lots of practical advice and case studies. These methods have always worked for us, and produced calm and cooperative horses who enjoyed working with people.

Our 40+ group here at HF predominantly consists of people riding and training with gentle, sympathetic methods. Here is one HF member who has impressed me with her manner with horses, and with the rapid progress she is making educating a recently acquired mustang from scratch. I noticed she is using food rewards as part of her programme, which I generally don't, but it is working very well for them, and the horse is calm and respectful of her as a result of the calm, consistent, respectful handling he is receiving. The mutual good feeling between horse and handler are very apparent, and I find these two a joy to watch. It's great to know that there are unsung people all over the world quietly doing such work. :smile:

Augustus the Mustang | Adventures of Augustus the Mustang

Hope you enjoy her informative blog!


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## SueC

More about the French Trotter breed - and one of my favourite French Trotters!

The French Trotter differs significantly from Standardbreds. Chestnuts and black horses are more common than in the SB. The French Trotter is more solid and big-striding, and preserves some of the old French carriage horse genes. Also it's a trotting specialist (SBs are more geared to pacing, European Trotter breeds to trotting) and will give you a tremendous, comfortable flying trot. These days of course, the French Trotter has a lot of SB infusion.

Here's one of the most famous French Trotters ever, and he was a real beauty too - a stallion called Ideal du Gazeau, who had a big international race career:




























This horse was racing when I was a child in Europe, and I had a poster of him on my wall!


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## SueC

A little note: In the second last post, for reasons of brevity, I left out our first horse Mingo, featured previously in this journal! As I've discovered more old photos, he will make a reappearance on these pages as soon as the photos are scanned and processed!


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## SueC

_Well, as things are about to get historical again, I'm going to share a "potted history" I wrote to encourage someone else to follow their dream recently (buying and training a young horse, worried about messing up the horse, as a first time thing). It's about as short as it gets! :rofl:
_
Hey! :smile: Any horse can be messed up if people try hard enough! Personally I wouldn't let it worry me. I rode for half a year as a child before I started riding a "problem" Warmblood my family acquired. This in some circles would cause the usual predictable hoo-haa. But, it worked well for us. I found "plodder" and push-button horses boring and enjoyed the challenge of working with something with more sparkle and trying to find ways to communicate with an animal. The "problem" had actually been caused by the people who'd previously worked with the horse (as is usually the case with such horses), and the horse responded well to kindness, empathy, consistency, patience and not being harassed. He went from having a reputation for "throwing" people and refusing to do things to being a good-fun family horse, useful on trails and the kind of arena work and jumping I did as a progressing rider. Later on, the family bought a second horse so we could ride together, and we used to alternate.

Long story, but we got professionally involved with horses soon after that, and from the age of eleven I schooled my own horses, and never messed one up. So I don't see why you should, if you're a capable rider (and you sound like one) and you are willing to continue learning. I'm not an isolated case - if you're naturally drawn to that sort of thing and you have the right kind of personality etc, these things can work out very well. I've compared notes with quite a few friends and acquaintances who were riding and schooling horses early on in their lives, and there is a lot of overlap in attitudes and results. We all grew up surrounded by large animals and we had enthusiasm and confidence with them.

You're from NZ: Well, you have a young rider there making a splash with bareback, bitless jumping. She grew up that way as well - pretty distant from all the "oh but you can't" chatter. If you grow up like that - then you just _do_.

http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...rton%27s+story

When I started schooling my first horse from scratch, I had about two years of experience behind me (my very beginnings were in an intensive military-style group riding course in Germany, teaching us basic dressage) and by then my parents started training, racing and breeding harness horses in Australia. I read voraciously about horse training and behaviour and found that Tom Roberts' little book "Horse Control - The Young Horse: The Handling, Breaking-In and Early Schooling of Your Own Young Horse" was an excellent companion that contained more condensed experience than a dozen good people you could meet on the ground. TR himself had been instructing riders and educating horses in the British Army from the age of 16, and wrote this book in his 70s after a lifetime of diverse experience in a number of equestrian disciplines, and after gaining a reputation for being able to consistently fix "problem" horses, with whom he then competed in showjumping, polocrosse, dressage etc.

My father had worked with carriage horses as a young child and switched from being a systems analyst to setting up his own horse operation in his 40s, moving continents in the process with our family. He's the kind of person who always nuts out problems and works things out for himself, and doesn't have any time for prevailing opinions if they don't stand up to real-world testing. He set about getting a trainer-reinsman license and his very first horse was runner-up in the Triple Crown Age Classic in his first season of racing. He went on also to learn about corrective trimming and shoeing, and people brought him harness horses from far and wide to have various problems with their feet and gait fixed. Since there were no people with such skills in the district in the first place, he sent off for the O'Dwyer video series on corrective trimming and shoeing and just went from there. He'd already been barefoot trimming for two years at this point.

The first horse I schooled successfully competed in endurance, general gymkhanas and horse shows, and reached a decent standard at dressage. We had a long and happy 25-year riding life together. We slowed down a little when I turned 16 and went to study biology and environmental science at university, after which I entered into research and teaching for many years. My mare retired and died on the farm my husband and I bought five years ago when we hit mid-life and decided to tree change. Part of the challenge there was to build our own house.

I don't often give people my CV like this, so to speak, and I'm not doing it to impress on you or anyone else how brilliant we are. It's just a real-life story, and I think the difference between people like us and the back seat critics is that we've always embraced things with enthusiasm, voraciously sought, absorbed, and applied information, worked our backsides off, experimented, and never stopped learning - plus we have a lot of respect for animals and nature, rather than seeing these as our servants. I know quite a few people who've done things of the scope that we have, and more than we have, and they didn't get there by listening to all the reasons why they couldn't and shouldn't do it.

So go for it, and good luck to you! :smile: Bondre and Reiningcatsanddogs like this.


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## egrogan

I think I've said before on your thread and elsewhere, I'm so envious of people who grew up either with horses as part of their lives since birth, or through consistent, methodical training in the European riding schools. 

I learned in fits and starts through packaged 8- or 10-week lessons that came years apart while I was aged roughly 8-18. I am a servicable rider now, but have no experience or mentorship in training-I was just smart/lucky enough to buy a first horse who, at 18, was kind and tolerant and knew enough that I wasn't going to mess her up badly as I became more competent. 

I do think I can claim I've done some basic training with her to make her a safe, and even happy, trail horse over the past year, but can't claim there was any particular philosophy or mentor I could point to. I guess mostly common sense- I seemed to be pretty good about pushing us just slightly outside our comfort zones, so that when things went wrong, it was momentarily stressful but not disastrous. But lest I sound cocky, I think our happy trails are owed mostly to an easy going, forgiving horse that is generally willing to comply with what I asked her to do without much fuss. The more she did that, the more confident I was to ask for more. It's a humbling experience, trying to get these wonderful animals to work as a team!
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## SueC

Back to the present for now: Had a girl with CP we've known for a few years with our horses yesterday in her wheelchair, in the 4ha pasture, and they were all totally gentle. They all chose to come up and be with her - and _so_ in _slow motion_ - that just amazed me the first time I let the three younger ones approach her (started last year with just the donkeys and the ancient 31-year-old unflappable, congenial gelding). I was all ready to intervene and never actually had to - it's like they adapted themselves to her needs. They were standing around her angelically, softly breathing on her, not moving a muscle, and not being jealous of each other. They were glued to her for ages.

Three of them are super-friendly horses, but they don't normally interrupt their grazing for 20 minutes just to sniff a visitor. The mare got all maternal and concerned and spent ages with her nose in soft contact with the delighted girl (a Riding for the Disabled participant for 20 of her 24 years and totally horse mad). Every now and then, a horse nuzzled her shoes, or a knee. As this girl has limited movement and tiny fragile fingers I had my hands over hers some of the time, and the horses just got that they had to take care. (Of course I'm still ready to block anything that's too much, but amazed I really didn't have to.)

And the sometimes-grumpy Sunsmart, who normally can take or leave human strangers, first time he met her, completely overturned my expectations. I thought he'd be, "Humph, boring!" and walk away, and not very friendly. Yet he was congeniality personified. I've never seen him like this with a human being. He's not the touchy-feely sort, and yet first time he met her he spent 40 minutes solid with her, just gently breathing on her and totally companionable and doing this slow motion thing... He was still with her when the friendly horses went back to grazing.

These days, when they see her wheelchair, they all come in from wherever they are instantly, and slow right down near her. (And we've not taken them treats into the paddock either, because I didn't want their minds taken up with food in those meetings... something about her genuinely gets this response. My father said to me, "You know, if I have hurt my leg or something, my stallions just seem to know, and they go out extra slow and careful with me without having to be told!")

PS: We have dozens of wonderful photos of all this but I much regret I can't share them because of privacy protection. Just imagine horses with friendly expressions and a young lady beaming like a lighthouse! :smile:


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> I think I've said before on your thread and elsewhere, I'm so envious of people who grew up either with horses as part of their lives since birth, or through consistent, methodical training in the European riding schools.
> 
> I learned in fits and starts through packaged 8- or 10-week lessons that came years apart while I was aged roughly 8-18. I am a servicable rider now, but have no experience or mentorship in training-I was just smart/lucky enough to buy a first horse who, at 18, was kind and tolerant and knew enough that I wasn't going to mess her up badly as I became more competent.
> 
> I do think I can claim I've done some basic training with her to make her a safe, and even happy, trail horse over the past year, but can't claim there was any particular philosophy or mentor I could point to. I guess mostly common sense- I seemed to be pretty good about pushing us just slightly outside our comfort zones, so that when things went wrong, it was momentarily stressful but not disastrous. But lest I sound cocky, I think our happy trails are owed mostly to an easy going, forgiving horse that is generally willing to comply with what I asked her to do without much fuss. The more she did that, the more confident I was to ask for more. It's a humbling experience, trying to get these wonderful animals to work as a team!
> _Posted via Mobile Device_


See, I think you're doing tremendously with your mare!  And really, after my initial six months, I never saw another riding teacher in my life, I was on my own! (I think that potted history post went in at the same time as your post so you probably thought I had way more formal riding training than I did...)

I do think an advantage you have when there is relatively little coaching is that any bad habits you acquire will be your own, not someone else's! ;-) And anyway, you can pick up on that stuff... and you learn to think and act and read situations genuinely, rather than with negative overlay.

I think your mare is also returning the trust you place in her. It's such a two-way street. I always feel sorry for riders who don't get this and seem to think their horses are naughty children whose next flaw they must be ready to jump on...and exasperated, because such attitudes cause so much grief to horses and create so many unnecessary problems!

So you know, I really really enjoy reading about your horse and your mutual adventures! It's nice to read such positive journalling!


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## egrogan

Thanks for the kind words Sue. I have been neglecting Isabel's journal since I've been posting so much over in the trail riding thread (http://www.horseforum.com/trail-riding/2015-rides-share-your-trail-526706/). I need to get that updated!

Also, I can totally relate to your post about working with the young woman who has CP. Over the past two years, I have become more deeply involved in therapeutic riding and other equine-assisted therapies, and know exactly what you mean when you say that the horses just _know _how they are supposed to act around people with disabilities. Most of the beginner riders I teach right now have autism spectrum disorders, though I also work with a couple of riders with down syndrome. Since I work full-time in a completely different, non-horse related industry (I'm a researcher too! Though I work in social sciences, not natural sciences), when I teach on Saturday mornings, though it's cliched to say it, it's therapeutic for me too.


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## SueC

Well, moving into the middle of nowhere and building our own house has occupied me nearly fulltime for four years now... I actually got unilateral vocal cord paralysis in late 2008, which meant my voice was pretty much gone for around a year, and not up to teaching anymore (and living extremely rural means no research either). It's better now, but I don't want to risk it, and anyway, that's why we decided to totally tree change, to give me something positive to focus on when I was initially told I'd never speak again without an operation (which was wrong, but I do sound different than "before"). Nothing like an owner build to keep you occupied and not feel you are wasting your life, and really, the house and property are all embodiments of the things I was recommending for years, and this gave me a chance to really practice what I had been preaching, plus we've ended up with a really lovely place to live, so the work has been really worth it.

What's your research area? I find social science fascinating. Just listened to an amazing podcast on the way people's decision-making is influenced by peer pressure and subtle suggestions. This sounds dull written like this, but it's not, and it's probably the primary reason people tend to hold a lot of their kneejerk beliefs...

I read some of your posts on the therapeutic riding for disabilities threads. I have a cousin with Downs and spina bifida. It's so interesting what horses can do for people with physical disabilities, and emotional scarring. I also really enjoy bringing the girl with CP out amongst our horses. It's so incredible to watch the animals' responses, and of course she just loves having them up close.

In part I started working with people with disabilities because of what happened to my voice. That taught me perspective. And if you're feeling sorry for yourself, they say the best medicine is finding and helping someone who is worse off than you are - and I think that's so true. But really, I'm inspired every time I work with this girl. She's got this "My glass is 90% full" attitude and does more with her life, despite its physical limitations, than the average able-bodied person!


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## SueC

_Written this morning._




















*A Winter Morning*

Frost descended in our valley last night. After a cold front has passed in winter and brought its deluges, hail and steep temperature drops, the passing of the cloud cover usually brings with it frosty nights and clear sunny days. In our passive-solar strawbale house, we don't notice the drop in temperature very much indoors, except for the telltale condensation on the window glass. So early this morning, when we stepped outside, we sharply drew breath just like you do when you jump into cold water. A temperature gradient of over twenty degrees Celsius really makes itself felt.

We did our usual weekday morning ritual: Packed Brett's briefcase and food bag into the car, let the dog jump into the back for the ride down to the front gate, and I opened the garden gate while my husband reversed out. The gate handles were covered in smooth ice, and the tops of the fenceposts were peppered with jagged white crystals. Patches of rimy grass caught the morning sun, and my breath made little clouds in the air.

The horses were far off in the hill paddock, brightly coloured dots in the morning light. We had a little bit of conversation going up the driveway, straining to make ourselves heard over the dog's excited barking. The little drive up to the gate is an obsession with our Kelpie! Before opening the front gate, I opened the rear hatch and the dog came bounding out, racing up and down the fence in anticipation of chasing the car on its way down the road.










The gate lock was frozen into immobility, and took a fair bit of work to open. By the time I was letting the car out, my hands had gone from cold to numb. It's pointless wearing gloves during the morning routine because you can't feel what you are doing, plus they get so wet. At the road verge we had our traditional “goodbye, have a great day” kiss, and Brett drove down the road, sounding the horn to egg on the dog while I laughed at the sight of the growling little Kelpie rocketing along the fence line until she was nearly at the end of the property. There, as always, she turned around and wagged her way back to me, satisfied with a job well done.

I stuck my hands deep into my pockets and walked back along the driveway. The donkeys were coming in after camping on the Common overnight, single file, with our shaggy, yak-like Mary Lou hooting at me. I let them in and took off their grazing muzzles, filled up with grazing debris as always if they stay out overnight. I washed them out, hung them to dry, and soaked the old horse's morning feed.

Getting back into the house felt like entering a sunny greenhouse. No surprise there really, since this is basically what it is. We've not had the wood fire on in a week, even with the cold front coming through. Two to three hours of winter sun a day going through our windows onto the thermal mass is enough to keep the interior temperature steadily above 22 degrees Celsius, aided by the superinsulated ceilings, and thick straw walls.

By the time Romeo's feed was mushy enough for his ancient mouth, the horses had made their way down to their paddock exit gate. I let the old horse into the orchard to eat his bucket feed, and gave the other three a carrot each while taking their rugs off. They shook themselves, bantered with me, and then made their way out into the Common for the day.

Winter morning routine: And the day has only just begun. Back in the house, the honey in the settling tank is ready to bottle. As I fill up the jars, I toast some of the pumpkin bread I made – a quarter of the usual recipe substituted with mashed home-grown pumpkin. Buttered straight from the toaster, it tastes very like brioche, chewy on the inside, crunchy on the outside, the butter melting into it deliciously. This morning I let some of the honey stream run on a knife and slather this on top as well to sample the batch I extracted from the honeycomb on Friday. When I bite into the toast, a floral fireworks of the summer and autumn past explodes into my senses. The taste unfolds its complexity and lingers, and my tastebuds sing.










This is what happens when your bees collect nectar from several hundred understorey species and a dozen or so different types of eucalyptus in natural never-cleared Australian woodland, supplemented by largely native shelter belts that always have something flowering. And then, you take the honeycomb, and you uncap it in your kitchen, and you spin it in a hand-cranked extractor, and you let out the golden flood through a fine net into the settling tanks. Unlike most commercial operators, you never heat the honey, and the flavours are fully retained. The difference between that and what people can buy in the supermarket is like the difference between homogenised, pasteurised, reduced-fat milk in plastic bottles, and fresh creamy Jersey milk still warm from the cow and carrying the flavour imprints of the many different plants it can graze on a diverse pasture.










As modern humans, we trade away too many of the simple and brilliant things in life, for what? - Alas though, I've written enough for now and must get on with making that bespoke pine storage box for that awkward recess, and tending to paperwork and garden, if I want to have any hope of having time for a trail ride in this afternoon! :smile:


_And I did actually make it out there for a ride, but only around our place - by the time I'd fixed a problem with his hoof boots, it was too late to range far. But, the days are now getting longer again here in the southern hemisphere! :smile:_


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## SueC

Photo notes: The first two are some nice winter photos taken in the bushland of our farm. Jess in the car, me checking hive, half-full honey bucket for self-bottling customers at the organic shop.

A few more nice photos of the Australian winter:










Front coming in over the Southern Ocean.











Front coming in as seen by us on a climb in the Stirling Ranges, an hour from our farm.











Serious front coming in during another Stirling Ranges climb. We made it down to the car park before the weather hit.











Brett and I in our winter gear on Mt Toolbrunup, Stirling Ranges. This is the highest climb available in our pretty flat state of Western Australia. Although Bluff Knoll is a slightly higher peak, the car park is much higher up, and it's a touristy climb. Toolbrunup is the real thing.











This is also very much the real thing: In the snow on Marions Lookout en route to Cradle Mountain, Tasmania. The mountain track after Marions Lookout was snowed in that day, so we had to come back another day to get to the summit.


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> What's your research area? I find social science fascinating. Just listened to an amazing podcast on the way people's decision-making is influenced by peer pressure and subtle suggestions. This sounds dull written like this, but it's not, and it's probably the primary reason people tend to hold a lot of their kneejerk beliefs...


I do research around public school teacher recruitment, retention, development, and performance. In the last few years, I've focused primarily on early career teachers in urban schools.



SueC said:


> I read some of your posts on the therapeutic riding for disabilities threads. I have a cousin with Downs and spina bifida. It's so interesting what horses can do for people with physical disabilities, and emotional scarring. I also really enjoy bringing the girl with CP out amongst our horses. It's so incredible to watch the animals' responses, and of course she just loves having them up close.
> 
> In part I started working with people with disabilities because of what happened to my voice. That taught me perspective. And if you're feeling sorry for yourself, they say the best medicine is finding and helping someone who is worse off than you are - and I think that's so true. But really, I'm inspired every time I work with this girl. She's got this "My glass is 90% full" attitude and does more with her life, despite its physical limitations, than the average able-bodied person!


I got involved in therapeutic riding when I first started graduate school. I had been an elementary school teacher, and then a school administrator, in schools where large proportions of students had special learning needs. I eventually felt that my ability to help students as a classroom teacher was fairly limited- the politics and policies influencing schools, particularly urban schools, are so inextricably tied to the experiences of students and teachers in those schools that I became more interested in public policy and research, so I left the practitioner world to focus on policy research. But that first year of grad school, I felt a little empty without the direct connection to students. One Saturday morning, I was strolling through a small town in North Carolina, near where I attended grad school, and came across a booth representing a therapeutic riding program. They were looking for volunteers who had experience with individuals with disabilities, with horse experience as a bonus. At that time, I hadn't ridden for about 2 years, but was feeling the horsey itch again. It was sort of an "aha" moment- I could get back involved with horses, and reconnect with the community I was missing. From that point on, I was hooked!

That particular program focused heavily on what we call "early intervention," services for young children aged roughly 3-5 years old who have developmental delays due to physical or intellectual disabilities. The program was well-funded with local government support, and the quality of the services was excellent. I started riding again myself at that program (the program had a former eventing mare who had lost sight in both eyes due to uveitis, but she desperately wanted a job and was an amazing therapy horse. The kids connected with her almost instantly because she too had a disability)- I even got my then-fiance, now husband to ride a little as we were preparing for our honeymoon in Ireland, which involved a 3-day horse trekking trip. When I finished grad school and moved away, leaving that program behind was one of the hardest transitions. But almost 10 years later when I earned my therapeutic riding instructor certification, I got back in touch with the woman who ran that program, and she remembered me and celebrated with me! I probably never would have become involved in therapeutic riding had it not been for her.


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## SueC

If you ever have time to tell me about your Irish horse trek, I'm all ears! I nearly went to Ireland in my 20s and it's a real regret I have that I never made it to that country, since I love the landscapes, speak a little Irish Gaelic, am a fan of Yeats and assorted other Irish writers, and heavily like Irish music (but not the twee stuff that gets played on St Patrick's Day). I was lined up to work at a stables there but had to go home to Australia on short notice...

Three days' horse trekking in Ireland sounds great. Have to admit, if I had a TARDIS, I'd also like to do some pony trekking in _Iceland_, bathe in the thermal springs, hear the ancient language etc. I'm just over long-haul flights...


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## egrogan

Gosh, it's been almost 10 years now since we were there, hard to believe we've been married that long 

We went to Ireland as it's one of my husband's favorite places. After he graduated undergrad, he and a friend went and bummed around outside Dublin for the summer, cooking and washing dishes to pay their way. It left a real impression on him! 

We were there for a couple of weeks and started out in Dublin, headed south to Cork, then northwest out to Galway, and ended back in Dublin at the end. 

In the middle, we fit in the trekking trip around the Ring of Kerry. While I'm not generally one for packaged holidays, in this case we did go with a trekking company that handled all horse, transport, and lodging logistics. They had these glorious Irish Draughts for us to ride- their soundness and surefootedness, especially on really steep, slippery mountain trails, was amazing. The group was ~10 people, all friendly enough but also not so chatty it intruded on our own experience; we were a mix of Americans, Brits, and Germans. It was two overnights, staying in B&Bs, with the horses trucked between B&Bs each day to meet us. And at the end of each day of riding, we were met by the stable owner with flasks of whiskey to warm us up.

We went in May, so it was still somewhat cool and rainy during the mountain portions of the ride. But the last day, when we got down to the beach gallop, it was sunny and very pleasant.

Here are some of my favorite pictures...

Mountain portion of the ride, rainy Irish afternoon- that's DH on the big horse in the front:









My favorite picture of the whole trip, still have this one framed and on the wall- lovely ponies resting on our lunch break:









The whole gang- that's DH and I all the way on the left, one of the biggest horses and the smallest ponies 









Getting ready for the beach gallop. One of my most vivid memories was right after I snapped this shot. My lovely husband was so kind to try to get ready for riding by taking a few lessons before we went on this trip, but he is not a rider and that handful of lessons before our trip was really all he had done. I think he cantered a couple of times in lessons, but he was certainly not that experienced. So all these horses, clearly well trained for this job, knew that once the guide's horse started cantering, they should too. His horse (that's him in the green jacket) gave him a nice transition, but as the horse picked up speed, my poor husband started listing off to the right and lost his balance. Next thing I knew, he was laying in the sand, laughing hysterically. Nothing hurt but his pride, but the poor guides had to pull up the ride and deal with getting him back on the horse. He was fine and got right back on, but that was his one and only gallop in his life.










And here we are leaving the beach, climbing back up to the hills and our way home on the last day of the ride.









It really was a trip of a lifetime- I'm so glad we were able to fit it in.


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## SueC

Thank you very much for that wonderful story and the lovely photos!  I'm not one for package tour things either but that one looks good! Draught horses are truly regal. Ireland is so scenic, as your photos amply demonstrate...and the Irish accents are _edible_. I wonder if your husband is now permanently cured of gallopping? Or do you reckon he will have another go in his lifetime? ;-)


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> I wonder if your husband is now permanently cured of gallopping? Or do you reckon he will have another go in his lifetime? ;-)


Now that I think about it, I'm not sure that I've been able to get him on a horse at all since then. Hmmm....

He does come out to the barn a lot and is good at handling Isabel. There are plenty of taller horses at our barn that he could ride, but he hasn't. So, I guess that may have been his one and only experience!


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## frlsgirl

I can barely get my husband to come to the barn with me; never mind ride ride my horse.


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## SueC

_There seems to be a lot of resistance both on HF and (I think to a lesser extent) in the "real world" to the idea of gentle horsemanship. I've picked out a piece of conversation I had with someone the other day to address some of those misconceptions. It was on a thread about a hard to catch horse, which really, to me, was one of the most absurd threads I've come across (http://www.horseforum.com/horse-training/help-hard-catch-horse-589178/).

_
Quote: I want to respectfully submit that in my view it is not about being Alpha, or dominant, or The Boss, but about teaching my horse that sometimes, with some things, he does not have a choice.

 The choices we give our horses are things like: Do you want to walk on grass or gravel - on the verge or the bitumen - if both are available and practical. They get cued to tell them there is a choice. Also on trails my horse gets input over whether he might want to do known path X or unknown path Y, and whether he might want to do half an hour extra (not the same as the horse deciding everything - think partnership).

Transition cues, direction cues, etc are not the sort of thing I say to a horse, "If you want to" - that would be silly. That's something they're trained with gentle persistence to learn, and then encouraged to respond to promptly - and they do. (Australian horsemanship icon Tom Roberts' training methods also to a large degree carry that distinction.) I think the difference with our approach, and also the approach taken by the trainer on the mustang blog I linked to a couple of posts above, is that the horses _want_ to do it - because of their relationship with you, and the positive reinforcement. So we have very good results with what looks like "obedience" from the outside (but is happy cooperation), but the horses have a different demeanour, and are pleased to do their work.


Quote: Compliance is his JOB. 

You see, that's where I disagree. I don't see my horse as my employee, I see him as my dancing partner and my trail partner. And as a trainer it's my job to train in such a way that the horse will be happy to do what I ask.


Quote: I am not saying there is anything wrong with the "attract more flies with honey than vinegar" application, 

This is a really simplistic way of viewing that difference, and doesn't sum it up at all. Which is commonly a problem when people discuss these differences. Which is why I actually hardly ever discuss it in writing - mostly I shake my head and just pass this over. This is the kind of thing I prefer to show people on the ground, with a horse. Otherwise people just talk in circles and bring up all sorts of misconceptions of what they think gentle horsemanship is. So I'll say instead, look at the clips on the mustang blog - show is more effective than tell. I don't train exactly like she does, but we have very similar philosophies.


Quote: but I certainly don't want my horse to think he has options in some circumstances. He MUST be caught when I want him caught, he MUST stand tied quietly when I ask him too, and he may NOT walk on me to avoid the Rock Lion in the grass. 

Which is how untrained horses would act - not trained horses. And funnily I've never had a problem catching my horses, who free range on four hectares of paddock at night and fifty-eight hectares during the day. I just have to go out and call them and they run up. And if I don't call them but work outside and they see me, they come and keep me company. Sometimes if I've not ridden a couple of days, my gelding will then look at me and go physically to the tie rails and stand there looking at me, until I get his saddle and bridle. :smile: That's the beauty of horses enjoying being with you.


Quote: As far as the thought that there is no such thing as dominance, aka a pecking order, whether horses or dogs, is entirely wrong.

I've never said that. What I have said is that the way people think of dominance is simplistic and all-encompassing in the way it actually _isn't_, in social animals. When a zoologist looks at the way people commonly interpret all that stuff around dominance, it's actually just like a geologist looking at the flat earth society: It's really, hugely flawed. You can google dog training links (use key words "dog training" and "alpha theory" and there will be sites explaining exactly how the simplistic and flawed view of "alpha theory" came about historically, what the problems with that view are, and why it persists. Or you can do a couple of years in zoology and learn about animal behaviour _without_ the cultural tinted glasses most people look through, and appreciate its _complexity_. But, most people like simple explanations - which don't cut it, in the real world, in many instances. So you necessarily get far more limited results when you adhere to simplified models. People training like that can still win ribbons, of course - which many take to mean their approach must therefore be brilliant.

Social mammals actually display far more cooperative than competitive behaviours. For anyone who is genuinely interested in learning more about the behaviour of social mammals, Jane Goodall is a good start, with her classical chimpanzee studies. On horse behaviour, I really recommend Marthe Kiley-Worthington's "Horse Watch - What It Is To Be Equine."

The mustang lady I've linked to above is a HF member but she too mostly doesn't get into these discussions, because they are usually so unproductive. But - if your horse does what hers does (and they are only beginning) and if your relationship with your horse is as good as hers, by all means criticise! :smile: 

_The mustang link again:

http://www.augustusthemustang.wordpress.com/_


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## SueC

_Here's a reflection I wrote on the questions of, "Push or back off or be patient?" and "Can I do gentle methods with a horse that's been brought up on rough ones?"_

Well, you know how TR says, "When in doubt revert to quiet persistence?" I think that's very sage advice. He dealt with a lot more "problem horses" than we did in our small operation over the course of his long life, and that's his take, and we've never had any negative consequences from following that advice with any horse, "problem" or not. You know the proverb "Festina lente" - "Make haste slowly"? I think it's a similar principle. Patience and taking time pay off in the long run, because they don't destroy your learning foundation. And it's putting excess pressure on horses that makes them behave in dangerous ways, as they then cycle through desperate escape strategies. When the horse sees you as a trustworthy ally, and as a protector, it's going to calmly go past a lot more scary stuff than it ever would on its own, just from observation. It just takes time to develop that trust, but I think that this trust is one of the most underrated qualities in the contemporary horse community, who'd rather use crow bar approaches.

I've been reading Minette Walters novels, she reflects on human psychology, and she has one of the most brilliant definitions of abuse I've come across: _Abuse is the use of power without love or respect_. And I think that's how most people wield power these days, whether with fellow humans or with other species. And horses are acutely sensitive to the kind of "vibes" humans give off. If you're giving off calm, happy, respectful vibes they totally respond to that. Don't try training them when you're emotionally upset, or angry - is what I've learnt: Calm and happy is the prerequisite from my side of things.

Humans who bully or people who think they're so superior, in my experience, have all sorts of problems training horses that calm, happy, respectful people don't tend to have. They then think the horses are that way, but really their own attitudes are producing the training issues. Some breeds are comparatively easy to bully, and I've also noticed that those sorts of trainers tend to train those sorts of breeds, and if a particularly clever or dignified animal comes along, a showdown is in the making.

The sensitivity of horses to what's on board a person is really evident to any of us who oversee meetings between horses and people with disabilities. They display extraordinary sensitivity towards these vulnerable people. My paddock boss horse, who's mostly aloof with strangers, spent 40 minutes voluntarily, and at complete liberty, with a young woman with CP the first time he met her (in a 4ha space), totally gentle and considerate and just hanging out with her when he could have been exploring or grazing - sniffing her gently, having "dialogue" with her (no food involved), picking up sticks and playing with them for entertainment, which made her laugh.

While I wasn't in the least surprised that my "cuddly" three wanted to hang with her, this horse did blow my expectations out of the water. This is the same horse who, when another stranger came into the paddock uninvited and attempted to impose himself on him (came with a macho "I'm the boss" attitude), nearly put that person through the fence (saving my intervention), but I think the horse was right to do it, and it's certainly what I hope he would do if he had to defend himself or his herd against up-to-no-good human intruders, or predators (if we had any).

I really dislike the dictatorial training approach, and I've not seen it produce the kind of thing I want in a horse. There was a most ridiculous thread about catching horses and I've ended up posting here: Help With A Hard To Catch Horse

I don't know where some people get off. A horse is a herbivore and is evolutionarily geared to avoid potential predators like us. Historically, they were our food before they were transport. But now, apparently, the fact that a new owner has trouble catching a horse in several hectares of paddock is due to the horse's "lack if respect". Give me a break. I've also noticed that the people who talk the longest and loudest about horses' lack of respect and "getting it" are actually the kind of people least interested in the _offering_ of any respect, whether to humans or other species or the earth.

As usual, what I've said is going down like a lead balloon, but you know, that's not my problem (but it's why I rarely post in training, and neither do a whole bunch of gentle-horsemanship advocates and practitioners I know on HF, who are fed up with how those threads go).

I wouldn't let dictatorial trainers anywhere near my animals. (I'm not talking about all trainers who don't do gentle horsemanship methods, but about the extreme form who seem to think horses were put on this earth to obey their whims without question, and who get rough with their horses regularly.) Many are disrespectful, corrosive bullies, with humans and animals alike, and I suspect that narcissistic personality disorder, or some other form of psychopathology, features more prominently amongst such people. I expect my (very late-gelded) riding horse (who retains many stallion behaviours) would put extreme people like that, if they started on their power trips with him, on the ground with his front feet, and rightly so - and I actually wouldn't interfere, in such a case. I would see that as a natural consequence for bad behaviour on the part of the person. Kind of like I really wouldn't care these days if someone who's been tailgating people on the highway ended up in the next ditch. These people make life unpleasant and dangerous for their fellow beings, and I'm not as evolved as the Dalai Lama in having compassion for them. I find people like that excrementitious.

The "problem" horses we took over from such people over the last 35 years breathed a huge sigh of relief, and their behaviour became more positive, instead of getting stuck on an impasse. (Of course, we also acquired horses without behaviour problems from people who treat their animals with decency!)

To say, "If the horse is used to the 'Obey or else' school, can I do gentle horsemanship with them?" I think is like saying, if your first relationship was an abusive relationship, should you even aim for a healthy relationship next time around, or continue in the same groove? If you marry a person who was treated roughly in a past relationship, can they respond to courtesy and respect and the concept of partnership? Or should we just keep beating them with a stick because that's what they are used to? :wink:

PS: My husband and I often debate what characterises love. I say, "Do you love me for theoretical me, or is it a package deal that comes with wonderful meals, someone warm to snuggle up to at night, smiles, conversation, mutually shared adventures, those sorts of fringe benefits?" :rofl: But really, I think that's all inseparable. Love is a doing word. And the same principles apply to working with horses. :wink:


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## SueC

_Having a whale of a time on our 40+ group at the moment, and it just happens we are discussing spook management strategies, and I wanted to re-post one of my contributions here.
_
Quote:
Originally Posted by *AnitaAnne* 
_If I ever see a garbage truck coming towards me, I plan to get off!!_

That's actually an under-appreciated strategy. People imagine horses will start to do pretend spooks just to get people off their backs. Well, maybe with some people they do - maybe due to saddle/weight/comfort issues that need addressing, or maybe because they have Neanderthals riding them and don't really enjoy their company, or because they're getting hurt with insensitive bit handling (unsteady hands, grabbing, etc). But I've not had any problems with horses being encouraged to pretend-spook by reverting to work on the ground in iffy situations. I do it as a standard procedure. Horses, if they trust you and see you as an ally/protector, tend to calm down when you're on the ground right next to them, and you very much lower the risk to the rider, however seasoned. Eventually horses extend that belief in your magic bogeyman-banishing powers to having you on their back as well.

Harness education, which we did with twenty-odd different horses in our lives, always involved the usual groundwork and lots of long reining first. There was the main handler and the on-call babysitter, who would walk next to the horse / offset in front of the horse if you were, for instance, getting a bogeyman situation long-reining a horse through a bush track. Horses are glad to follow your lead in situations that make them tense, or the lead of an older, experienced horse who is calm and confident (which is how young horses working in teams used to get matched up). It always prevented so much of the trouble that people who just push their horses through these things tend to get - and we ended up with calm, cooperative horses. You go ahead a few times and it's "old hat". 

Same with water crossings (assuming you're wearing gum boots) - walk the horse through, walk it back, get back on, ride it through is usually an effective, fast and drama-free approach. I can do a dozen water crossings over the same stream with a reluctant horse using that method in the time usually taken by a rider who stays on and attempts to cajole (or bully) them from their backs to get just one crossing. Horses learn so much by imitation. The more a horse repeats an experience, the less scary it is.

Sometimes I wonder if some of the reluctance to revert to ground work from some quarters is because they find it such hard work to get on or off a horse! :evil:


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## bsms

The old US Cavalry manual had an odd split. OTOH, it said, "_The two best means of correction are the spur and the whip, employed together or used separately._"

However, a few paragraphs later, it says, "_The fact must be borne in mind that punishments are very rarely necessary. Most of the faults committed by the horse are due to his ignorance and lack of training...in either case, severity becomes an injustice and causes such harmful results that it is better not to punish at all than to punish wrongly._"

For myself...I tried a whip on Mia. Thick, heavy leather applied with lots of force...and she went backwards. Flew backwards! And the harder I hit, the faster she flew. Backwards!

Never tried spurs. I figure when things go wrong (and they do sometimes when I ride), I want my legs to grip with and I don't want to be gripping a panicked horse and spurring it unintentionally at the same time.

Now that I have Bandit instead of Mia, I find myself struggling with how much discipline is right and when does it become abuse. If a horse decides it is time to go home and eat instead of obey me, I figure that is time for us to have a fight. If things have reached the stage where my horse is gathering itself to spring forward and bolt, then immediate harsh use of the bit can save us both from injury or death - the only time to stop a bolt in progress is in the first spring. After that, as far as I can tell, about all that really works is to stay relaxed and wait for the bolt to turn into a run. Calling the horse's name softly worked once the bolt was fully entered - when an ear flicked back, her mind had returned and we could stop. But in that first motion to leap forward, you can catch the horse and keep them in place. So I understand doing what is needed to prevent injury to both horse and rider. And as best as I can tell, I've never injured a horse's mouth doing it. In the first moment, you can stop it with less force than an injury needs.

But I'm reminded of a scene in "Old Yeller" where the older boy asks his uncle how to deal with his younger brother - who is fond of throwing rocks at the authority figure. The uncle replies something like "I wouldn't get in a rock-throwing contest with Arliss to begin with".

Thinking about it, it seems to me that I don't want to get into a rock-throwing contest with Arliss...or Mia, or Bandit. If I can prevent the situation from escalating to that point, or decrease the tension until it can be handled without 'rock-throwing', then that beats learning how to throw a rock harder.

This resonates with me:" _But I've not had any problems with horses being encouraged to pretend-spook by reverting to work on the ground in iffy situations. I do it as a standard procedure. Horses, if they trust you and see you as an ally/protector, tend to calm down when you're on the ground right next to them, and you very much lower the risk to the rider, however seasoned. Eventually horses extend that belief in your magic bogeyman-banishing powers to having you on their back as well._"​I can't honestly think of a time when any of my horses acted relieved that I was dismounting. Happy to get home? Yes. But I've never seen my horse act like dismounting during a ride was winning anything - that it "profited him", to use Robert's phrase. I also believe in the old cavalry rule of regularly dismounting once an hour and walking the horse for a few minutes - good for my knees and back, if not theirs! I normally do it once or twice a ride regardless of anything else happening.

So if the horse is afraid of something ahead of me...not balking, which I can usually convince them not to do with my heels, but afraid...then why not back up 20 feet (with Bandit) or 100 feet (with Mia - her worry zone was bigger than Bandit's) and calm them down. When they relax, not before, dismount. The worst injury I've had came from trying to dismount a scared horse. And if I see trouble ahead, why wait until it is in my lap? Why not takes steps to avoid the explosion?

And once dismounted, I've never had much problem leading them past something. In the worst case, I can always let go of the lead rope and let the horse go. But I've never needed to do that.

A lot of folks I meet seem to consider that to be "The Way of the Coward". Well, it certainly involves less physical risk to me. But is it cowardice to think the best way to win a rock fight with Arliss is not to start one in the first place? If the horse can trust me enough to back away carefully and then wait while I dismount, isn't he already giving me an honest effort and cooperating with me? And once we've gotten past the scary area, none of my horses has acted up while I mounted. They've just waited patiently for our ride to resume.

Thinking about it, what is so wrong with simply avoiding a blow up? Why would a good rider want to push a horse into an explosion?


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## SueC

bsms said:


> However, a few paragraphs later, it says, "_The fact must be borne in mind that punishments are very rarely necessary. Most of the faults committed by the horse are due to his ignorance and lack of training...in either case, severity becomes an injustice and causes such harmful results that it is better not to punish at all than to punish wrongly._"


Here, they are with TR pretty much verbatim. Maybe there were two or more authors? Or this was a second or subsequent edition with some editing? Or maybe the author has multiple personality disorder? ;-)




> For myself...I tried a whip on Mia. Thick, heavy leather applied with lots of force...and she went backwards. Flew backwards! And the harder I hit, the faster she flew. Backwards!


Yeah, physically hurting a horse doesn't remove its ignorance, or calm a nervous disposition. If a horse being whipped is lucky enough to randomly alight on the thing the rider wants from it, then the rider will see whipping as a "good thing to do"... More often, this kind of situation just escalates, and it certainly does nothing to persuade the horse you are a reliable ally.




> Now that I have Bandit instead of Mia, I find myself struggling with how much discipline is right and when does it become abuse. If a horse decides it is time to go home and eat instead of obey me, I figure that is time for us to have a fight.


See, I agree the horse can't just go home, and I'll use strategies to prevent that. However, I don't think of it as a fight, or let it be a fight. (A teaching opportunity, sometimes a bit of a game of chess...but not a fight.) Maybe I'm just very persuasive. ;-) I think you can distract horses similarly to how you can distract toddlers: "Oh, look over here! Let's do this!" And if the horse is fretful, dismounting and doing groundwork can at times be better than sitting on a ticking bomb. And all the time, so important not to get emotionally upset or angry in those situations, and not to rush anything. Just calm and positive. A horse is so tuned into our own emotions.




> If things have reached the stage where my horse is gathering itself to spring forward and bolt, then immediate harsh use of the bit can save us both from injury or death - the only time to stop a bolt in progress is in the first spring. After that, as far as I can tell, about all that really works is to stay relaxed and wait for the bolt to turn into a run. Calling the horse's name softly worked once the bolt was fully entered - when an ear flicked back, her mind had returned and we could stop. But in that first motion to leap forward, you can catch the horse and keep them in place. So I understand doing what is needed to prevent injury to both horse and rider. And as best as I can tell, I've never injured a horse's mouth doing it. In the first moment, you can stop it with less force than an injury needs.


I think the immediacy of the response is probably what stops the bolt, rather than the severity (and perhaps you're not quite as severe as you think?). We had a horse that had bolted repeatedly in a snaffle, with various riders including past owners, but never again when we introduced it to a soft padded English hackamore - which took severity out of the equation, but immediately acted to lower the horse's head. I also think it's true that each horse is different and different things work for different horses.

It's certainly best to act _before_ the horse gathers speed.




> I can't honestly think of a time when any of my horses acted relieved that I was dismounting. Happy to get home? Yes. But I've never seen my horse act like dismounting during a ride was winning anything - that it "profited him", to use Robert's phrase. I also believe in the old cavalry rule of regularly dismounting once an hour and walking the horse for a few minutes - good for my knees and back, if not theirs! I normally do it once or twice a ride regardless of anything else happening.


Good rule, and a rider stays supple that way, plus the horse's back gets a break. Also extra mounting practice for the rider! I think it was also a good rule (Australian cavalry) to mount alternating sides. I ought to have employed that rule from when I was young, and have to admit I'm a bit unenthusiastic about off-side mounting. Shouldn't be though! Reduces sidedness in horse and rider.




> When they relax, not before, dismount. The worst injury I've had came from trying to dismount a scared horse. And if I see trouble ahead, why wait until it is in my lap? Why not takes steps to avoid the explosion?
> 
> And once dismounted, I've never had much problem leading them past something. In the worst case, I can always let go of the lead rope and let the horse go. But I've never needed to do that.


We neither. We've never "lost" a horse that way. In an extreme situation with a very scared horse I had to deal with rearing and plunging from the ground, but as long as you can maintain your relative position and keep out of harm's way that's quite manageable, certainly compared to trying to ride in such a scenario. That horse in that scenario was so freaked out he would have bolted home at top speed had I let the reins go. I had to keep him moving on the ground to dissipate some of that adrenaline. Standing still not an option. ;-) Took around ten minutes to calm him down. I then deliberately spent some time walking away a little from the _bogeyman_, and then walking back towards him. Over and over, talking calmly to the horse. Getting closer and closer. Until the horse tolerated the bogeyman. Praise praise praise etc, end of lesson.

In that particular case, it was a type of livestock in the neighbour's paddock that this horse had not encountered before. After that day, he was still suspicious and needed cajoling for a while, but never panicked at this type of bogeyman again. Or indeed panicked so blindly again. This was (ex-harness) Sunsmart during his first fortnight under saddle, at the beginning of developing a working relationship with me. It was really important that this situation ended on a good note (always is, but especially during this formative stage). And it's so much easier now, of course, seven or eight years later. A totally different kettle of fish once the horse sees you as someone you can rely on, etc. I think starting out is always the most difficult phase.




> A lot of folks I meet seem to consider that to be "The Way of the Coward".


This just smacks of ego to me - and the idea that a tough guy is dominant in all situations and just rides it out. It's pretty much Neanderthal level thinking. This attitude is more fixated on how a rider appears (hero or not to admiring crowd) than on whether the horse is learning and your relationship with the horse is progressing. 

Oh but wait, heroes don't have _relationships_ with their horses. ;-) They just _command_ the entire universe! :rofl:




> Well, it certainly involves less physical risk to me. But is it cowardice to think the best way to win a rock fight with Arliss is not to start one in the first place? If the horse can trust me enough to back away carefully and then wait while I dismount, isn't he already giving me an honest effort and cooperating with me? And once we've gotten past the scary area, none of my horses has acted up while I mounted. They've just waited patiently for our ride to resume.


:iagree:

We have basically the same sorts of thinking and experiences working with our horses, as what you're describing here.

Brains versus brawn - the pen versus the sword - reflection versus kneejerk responses - etc.  I do think that status anxiety and emotional baggage on the part of humans so often interferes with sanity and calm. You can see that principle operating not just in horse training, but in marriages, politics, xenophobia, foreign policies etc. Now there's a broad subject! 

I do think it's important to learn from your own experiences and not give other people's opinions as much weight as they might like. ;-)

I'm going to re-post this to your own journal in case anyone want to discuss it there! ;-) :charge:


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## SueC

And now on a lighter note, on 40+ we were discussing gadgets that might help fossilising riders to mount more easily, in case of dismount - work from the ground - get back on the horse scenarios. I think the best contenders are these :wink::




















Of course, with these you'd have to ride stirrupless! :smile:

If you want to keep your stirrups, maybe this solution is more appealing:




















Or we could put our heads together on this thread and engineer a few new solutions noone has thought of as yet! :grin:

:music019:


----------



## SueC

So I was doing the laundry this morning and thinking about the things being discussed earlier. Some more thoughts:

Re “The Coward's Way”: It occurred to me that it's usually cowards who project their own distorted thinking on the world... And that it's cowards who seek to bolster their sense of self-worth through acts of perceived bravado, and through exercising power without respect on creatures who are relatively powerless. It's cowards who are schoolyard bullies (almost always targeting physically smaller or socially isolated children), and cowards who rape grandmothers and steal their handbags, and cowards who take advantage of people who are vulnerable, and cowards who tie cats to railway lines and kick little dogs and do other cruel things to animals, and cowards who like to call other people cowards.

When a coward rides a horse, he has to be seen to be dominating the animal, show it who's boss, and whip it into submission. Because cowards are usually stupid, it doesn't occur to them that horses need to be taught the things we want them to do. The whole world is an extension of the coward's own distorted thinking, and therefore the whole world is after power, and the horse's failure to do certain things the rider wants is seen as a personal attack on their “superior rank” – as a challenge to their “authority.” Cowards love the popularised (but wrong) alpha theory and they love having control over others. Ideas like equality, listening, negotiation, partnership in any relationship, whether a sexual relationship or a friendship or a work relationship or in animal training, are threatening to cowards. Cowards have to be seen to be wearing the pants. I think cowards are hollow in their cores, and have pathetic lives – although of course many cowards rise quite high in the ranks of human hierarchies due to their pathological attraction to power, and feel, at least in the thin outer crust overlying their hollow cores, that they have “arrived” and that they are more important than other people.




And...I just wanted to rewrite this, which was from my point of view:




> In an extreme situation with a very scared horse I had to deal with rearing and plunging from the ground, but as long as you can maintain your relative position and keep out of harm's way that's quite manageable, certainly compared to trying to ride in such a scenario. That horse in that scenario was so freaked out he would have bolted home at top speed had I let the reins go. I had to keep him moving on the ground to dissipate some of that adrenaline. Standing still not an option. :wink: Took around ten minutes to calm him down. I then deliberately spent some time walking away a little from the _bogeyman_, and then walking back towards him. Over and over, talking calmly to the horse. Getting closer and closer. Until the horse tolerated the bogeyman. Praise praise praise etc, end of lesson.
> 
> In that particular case, it was a type of livestock in the neighbour's paddock that this horse had not encountered before. After that day, he was still suspicious and needed cajoling for a while, but never panicked at this type of bogeyman again. Or indeed panicked so blindly again. This was (ex-harness) Sunsmart during his first fortnight under saddle, at the beginning of developing a working relationship with me. It was really important that this situation ended on a good note (always is, but especially during this formative stage). And it's so much easier now, of course, seven or eight years later. A totally different kettle of fish once the horse sees you as someone you can rely on, etc. I think starting out is always the most difficult phase.


And now from the horse's perspective, with some humorous overlay! :wink: 
NB: Horses don't paragraph. It doesn't represent their thinking style.


“I was carrying the monkey along when we got to a wide open space, and I noticed to my horror that there were tentacled, fanged, dangerous bogeymen in the field beyond. I immediately wanted to turn and put a safe distance between them and me. The monkey seems to be slow on the uptake – often unaware of these dangers and telling me to keep going. I found I couldn't get away and was panicking. Suddenly the monkey was next to me. I still couldn't get away. My mouth was uncomfortable whenever I tried to run. So I tried rearing up, but after a while I found that didn't advance my cause either. I still couldn't get away. The monkey was making soothing sounds and yabbering at me and walking in circles with me. The tentacled, fanged, dangerous bogeymen were still in the field. They hadn't gotten any closer. The monkey wasn't worried, and was pointing at the bogeymen. I don't understand this monkey. I was walking in circles and that made me feel better. I would rather have run away but I couldn't. I liked being in motion, and it calmed me. When I was calm, I felt better. It also pleased the monkey, though goodness knows why. The tentacled, fanged, dangerous bogeymen were still in the field. They were not coming after me. The monkey walked with me, sometimes away from them, sometimes towards them. Every time I walked towards them afresh, it was less frightening. Then I saw they didn't have any tentacles, but they did have fangs. Are there fanged vegetarians? The monkey seems to think so. The monkey was calm and happy, and praised me every time I went closer to them. Either this monkey is monumentally stupid, or it knows something I don't. Hmmm. I've got to keep my eye on this monkey. When I was really calm, and standing looking at the bogeymen, my monkey was ecstatic, and I got to go home! The monkey climbed up on my back again, and we ambled down the field. Every now and then, the monkey asked me to turn around and look at the bogeymen. They weren't following us. When we got home the monkey gave me a bath.”


In all seriousness, what the horse learnt:

Trying to bolt away didn't improve anything.
Rearing didn't improve anything.
He didn't get eaten by the bogeymen.
Walking in circles was calming.
The bogeymen looked less scary the longer he spent near them.
The monkey is a puzzlement.
The monkey was pleased when he got calm.
When he had calmly faced the bogeymen, he got to go home.

If you've got to deal with a panicking, plunging, rearing horse, it's imperative to understand that this is just instinctive equine defensive programming in the face of perceived danger. It's nothing personal and it's certainly not about the pecking order. No horse, herd leader or not, attempts to stop another horse from bolting – more likely it will join in – as this is an evolutionarily successful survival strategy that has served equines well for millions of years. The ones that didn't do it got eaten. It's quite amazing that we can train horses significantly (but of course never completely) out of such behaviours around humans – it's a huge achievement when you think about it.

This was without question the most frenzied and extreme behaviour I've ever hung on to from the ground. At the start, I thought to myself, “Holy barnacle, I'm 70kg and he's nearly 500kg and he's as quick as a flash, what chance have I got? And what's my injury risk here?” Letting go was an option, but it would have taken a while to de-programme him out of a successful case of “Bolting is a good thing to do.” Successfully staying with him meant making huge progress out of just one teaching situation. So I determined to stay with him as long as I reasonably could, and just stuck to what I'd been taught from the time I was nine: Don't attempt to pull on the horse – just resist gently. You can't win a tug-of-war with a horse, even with a bit. When he moves, move with him and stay at his shoulder and slow down his progress. At the shoulder, you're least likely to be stomped on or thrown over, and you have the most mechanical advantage over the horse's head.

I had to move pretty fast and there were some moments where I really didn't think I could possibly stay upright or hold on. Amazingly though, it worked. And none of this was remotely about pecking order – it was just about what he would learn from the situation. Impeding his instinctive flight meant he would be exposed to something scary and learn it didn't harm him after all. He would face the fear and settle down without running away. It just changed the scenario from the usual equine routine of “See scary thing, run” to one count of “I stayed with the scary thing and it was OK”. And although it's great if you can stay with it, it's actually not the end of the world if you can't – it will just mean you'll have to spend more time on that stuff in subsequent sessions.

It was not a fight by any stretch of the imagination, and it wasn't contest for supremacy – that's just a silly overlay people create with their emotional baggage. It was quiet patient persistence, and a positive educational experience for the horse: He panicked, but he stayed near scary things and eventually calmed down, and nothing bad happened, and the monkey was happy.

Of course, it's so much easier if the horses we ride are raised in wide-open paddocks surrounded by all sorts of different animals, machinery and sights, and then exposed to all sorts of places and travel while still young, as my Arabian mare was, with whom I never had a major fear scenario when riding. Sunsmart was born cloistered in a stable and small yard without any wide-ranging vistas, and growing up he only ever saw horses, and only solid-coloured ones at that, and beyond that a circle of enclosing bushland from which an occasional emu or kangaroo emerged, and when he travelled it was always to a generic trotting track. Therefore, although he is not what I would call a timid horse by a long shot, I had to do a lot of de-sensitising with him when I started riding him: Not to machinery or cars – trotters are super with that, since they encounter mobile barriers, ambulances and huge watering trucks sharing the track with them at every trial or race – but to those ubiquitous organic bogeymen, especially on trails!


Now back to the laundry! :wink:

:smileynotebook:


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## frlsgirl

SueC said:


> And now on a lighter note, on 40+ we were discussing gadgets that might help fossilising riders to mount more easily, in case of dismount - work from the ground - get back on the horse scenarios. I think the best contenders are these :wink::
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Of course, with these you'd have to ride stirrupless! :smile:
> 
> If you want to keep your stirrups, maybe this solution is more appealing:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Or we could put our heads together on this thread and engineer a few new solutions noone has thought of as yet! :grin:
> 
> :music019:


Only one more year before I get to join the 40-something thread; I was depressed about turning 40 next year, but looking at how much fun you guys have, it appears I have nothing to be afraid of :thumbsup:


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## SueC

frlsgirl said:


> Only one more year before I get to join the 40-something thread; I was depressed about turning 40 next year, but looking at how much fun you guys have, it appears I have nothing to be afraid of :thumbsup:


Oh, you're 39 already? You don't look it!  So, another person who has looked after themselves well? I look better at 44 than I did in my 20s, and of course that's just exteriors...I'm also more happy and balanced than ever, and have lots more fun. I've a friend who is in her 80s and uber-cool - I've known her since I was 30, and she completely removed my then-fear of ageing. She taught me that we're a person, not an age, and that we can be free of what people expect us to do, and live authentically.

My husband is also most helpful - one of those rare gems who scoffs at men who exchange mid-life women for young things to deal with their own mid-life crises. He says, "But you're beautiful, and how would I have a decent conversation with someone half my age?" On a daily basis he makes compliments from dawn to dusk, and we have a lot of fun. I think it's really helpful that we're both mentally and physically active people and eat very healthy food. I think a lot of the stuff that I thought when I was young was due to ageing is actually due to unhealthy lifestyles.

It seems that with your Germanic DNA, you've also got the high cheekbones and wide jaw that are ageing-friendly, and stop your skin from collapsing!

We have an endurance rider on 40+ who joined "prematurely" at 39, and so you're always welcome to "pop in" and say hello in our little community. Some real characters there, and yes, it's a great fun, and very supportive, thread. Excellent people. :loveshower:


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## SueC

*Beginnings*

As I have previously mentioned:

I think one of the things that convinced my parents to send me to a horseriding course was that starting from around age 8, I christened my bicycle "Isabella" and then, with a similarly afflicted friend who had also named her bicycle, we put ropes on the handlebars for reins and rode the bicycles around pretending we were riding horses and making neighing noises. We also spent time volunteering at the travelling circuses to groom their trick ponies - and I was spending far too much time at the local dairy farm where we got our fresh milk, grooming the dairy cows - and making "showjumping courses" in the backyard for our dog to jump over! :smile:

I think they were hoping to cure me of all this by showing how reality isn't the same as our imaginings. For instance, how looking after horses is hard work (the riding school I went to focused a great deal on horse care, and so we mucked out, groomed horses, tacked them up, untacked them, washed them, led them around to dry, picked out and tarred their hooves, fed them, raked the arena etc). Actually, I enjoyed all those things...and I guess we all got bitten by the bug.

The next few posts tell the story of how the journey with horses began for us as a family (meaning my family of origin).


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## SueC

*
Reitschule Eurastetten*









_Horse in the wash bay by the stable barn at Reitschule Eurastetten_, _1981_


My riding-bicycles-with-reins friend started taking riding lessons at Reitschule Eurastetten, and I remember her red-cheeked enthusiasm in the ante-room where students changed their shoes and left their bags before entering our Year Three primary school classroom, telling us about the horses! She and I also used to go volunteer at travelling circuses together, and we would groom the trick ponies and muck out after them. Coincidentally, I also used to groom the dairy cows at the small farm where we used to get fresh milk, such was my enthusiasm for large animals!

To weave together a more cohesive story, I compared notes with my mother recently. I asked if it was because of this classmate that we ended up at the same riding school, and she said, “No, it's because I used the telephone directory!”  Another friend of mine was riding in Fürstenfeldbruck, a regional centre with a large riding school.

Eurastetten was a quiet rural hamlet nestled in pretty scenery. The small riding school had a farmhouse and the traditional connected farm outbuildings, all in limewashed white, with green doors. What used to be horse stables, cow stalls and general storage was now converted to housing horses only. The hay loft remained intact, and a small tack room had saddles, bridles and other gear neatly arranged in rows. A small separate building with a single large loose box inside was used to quarantine new horses coming in, and for horses who might benefit from the extra space during illness. Behind the stables was a sand arena surrounded by a log fence. The doorways leading out of these buildings were low and you had to take care with (adult) human and horse heads alike. I also remember that an obese multicoloured billy-goat with hooked horns who went by the name of Henri used to run loose all over the place, indoors and out. He wore a collar which was helpful for situations where he had to be moved out of the way.

The larger riding schools all had indoor arenas and showjumping facilities. Our small riding school had a single outdoor arena that was used all year around. Riding in the snow was fun. In torrential rain nobody turned up. In summer, things could be dusty. When we learnt about jumping, the obstacles were brought into the arena and then removed again later. We might not have had Olympic facilities, but things were laid-back and cosy, with a friendly, supportive atmosphere, and the riding programme was rigorous. Most of the boarders weren't interested in competitions, but they were very interested in riding their horses on the wonderful rural trails in the surrounding countryside. Some of the boarders even drove their Warmbloods in carriages to make a change from riding. They used traditional, ornate Bavarian harnesses, and the horses were hitched in pairs.

The riding school no longer exists. From what I can gather, it is now a boarding facility only, and is occasionally advertised as night accommodation for horses and riders on longer treks known in Germany as “Wanderritte” - with my erstwhile riding school teacher, Monika Skarabela, as proprietor.

Sometime early in 1981 I had my first riding lessons there. I've already written about those in earlier posts, and so will only add what my mother had to say about it. “It's all very well that you commended them for educating you well and not letting you on the trail before you could handle horses competently in the arena. But while they might have had that policy for children, I am not so sure they had it for adults, as the riding school owner once cajoled me onto a horse for the purpose of making up a trail group, when I was actually telling him I was nervous because of my back injury and wanted to stay with arena lessons for a while. Oh no, he assured me all would be fine and sent me off, but on that ride all the horses shied at a noisy vehicle, and I nearly fell off!” 

The main section of the outbuildings where the riding school horses lived had a combination of loose boxes and tie-in stalls. The loose boxes were all taken up by private horses in agistment, and there was another adjacent section like that for private horses which you entered through a different outer door. Day turnout onto grazing paddocks was available, and when the riding school horses had their annual summer break, they stayed outside all day and night.

The horses I remember best were two huge chestnut Warmblood geldings, Meteor and Jaro, who were my favourites to ride.

Meteor was a massive Hanoverian and the most bomb-proof and laid-back of the riding school horses. He was good-humoured with beginners slipping around on his back, and easy to stop, which was thoroughly appreciated by all the novices. I liked his kind nature on the ground, and the sheer awe of riding this muscular mountain of a horse – the power this horse developed when moving along was incredible to a little skinny 9-year-old rider.

Jaro was a very tall horse with a lighter build and a fiery temperament. He was a Trakehner, and he loved a good gallop, and many people preferred not to ride him. When I moved beyond the “how do I stay on and not thump around on a horse” stage, I learnt to loved the sparkle of this horse, particularly when on trails. We teamed up well and I developed a very soft spot for him.

Viola was a towering Thoroughbred cross who had been my mount for my very first riding lesson. I had struggled to get on this 17hh mare and soon after that, hit the ground most ignominiously, when I lost the reins and leaned forward to get them back, and the mare decided to trot off at the same time (in my struggles to get the reins back I was probably forward-cueing her with my legs and seat without, of course, realising this). The mare was a head-tosser, and retrospectively, no wonder: The corners of her lips were always sore and at times cut and bleeding. The poor thing ought to have gone in a soft hackamore for a while to allow her to heal up, and then either kept bitless or tried in something other than a jointed metal snaffle until a comfortable solution was found. This mare was, in retrospect, exactly the build and temperament of a horse who is likely to face issues with a snaffle (narrow mouth, ewe neck, excitable).

Cejka was a medium-sized grey mare, possibly Warmblood, but with clear Arabian infusion. She had the sweetest disposition, and a straight shoulder that made her the most uncomfortable horse to trot on. Nevertheless, because of her sunny nature we loved riding her, whether in the arena or on trails.

My childhood classmate who went to Reitschule Eurastetten in recent correspondence reminded me of the existence of a draught or draught cross called Kalinka, who was also used as a school horse and who was so broad-backed, my friend wrote, “You had to do the splits to ride her!”

Riding teacher to the children was the aforementioned Monika Skarabela, a pleasant and patient young woman in her 20s, who drilled us all in our military-style group lessons several times a week. The proprietor, a Herr Walters, gave individual lessons to adult riders. He and his wife also arranged riding camps.


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## SueC

_Random Warmblood, Reitschule Eurastetten, 1981. Henri the goat is lurking in the background!










Private horse being washed after a trail ride, Reitschule Eurastetten, 1981. I am reasonably sure the barefooted girl was called Heike!


_








_My riding teacher Monika leaning against the rails in the arena where our riding course took place, Reitschule Eurastetten, 1981.










Recent aerial photograph of the erstwhile Reitschule Eurastetten, which now appears to be a boarding facility only. The arena is still there to the left of the stable building and is now surrounded by trees. If you click on this photograph to get to the large version, you can spot a horse and rider practicing in the arena when the plane took the image! The wash bay and quadrangle are on the other side of the stable building. The residence is to the north-east of the quadrangle. There was another barn with loose boxes for privately agisted horses, seen here at the top right of the image. Most of the other buildings are neighbouring properties in this quiet rural hamlet.










Private horse in front of the stable barn, Reitschule Eurastetten, 1981. The open door leads to the tack room. I am fairly sure this mare was a German Trotter.










Private horse, Reitschule Eurastetten, 1981. I am reasonably sure this was another German Trotter. They were reliable, medium-sized, fairly light horses popular with a lot of recreational riders, and even some professional show jumpers. Olympic medallist Halla was the most famous example of a showjumping German Trotter.










Girl with Warmblood, Reitschule Eurastetten, 1981.










Probably another German Trotter, Reitschule Eurastetten, 1981.










Horse and owner, Reitschule Eurastetten, 1981.










This horse was called Pele and had the one loose box with an external window to look out of, in the private wing of the stable barn. Reitschule Eurastetten, 1981.










These are the two greys that appeared in separate photos above. These owners rode their horses, and also drove them in a traditional carriage for something else to do.










Horses in traditional Bavarian harnesses, Reitschule Eurastetten, 1981. The residence is in the background, and on the holiday riding camps, students stayed in the guest rooms high in the roof section of the house.

_


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## SueC

*Holiday Riding Camp 1981*

I had turned 10 and advanced a fair bit in my riding, and was now considered competent enough to go on trails. My parents gave me a great treat by booking me into a residential riding camp at Reiterhof Eurastetten for the start of the summer school holidays. The grasses were starting to flower with gusto, setting off my perennial hay fever, but I still had a great time during my ten-day stay.

This was actually the longest time I spent away from home during my childhood, and because I'd always been a fan of Enid Blyton's boarding school books, I found this very exciting. Guest accommodation was in the upper levels of the Bavarian farmhouse, and children went two to a room. The girl I shared with and I had a cosy little attic room with a small window that looked out over the outbuildings. We could see cars and horses come and go from our lofty vantage point, and look out for Henri the goat. The other girl was great company, and in-between spending time with horses, taking lessons and going on trails, we invented games and entertainments for ourselves and talked into the night.

We helped Frau Walters with food preparation, and were well looked after. I remember taking meals around a huge farmhouse table, and also, on warm sunny days, alfresco meals, sitting at the outdoors table. Frau Walters set up her deep-frier outdoors and made us potato chips to go with schnitzels, vegetables and salads. In the evenings we often had the typical black farmhouse rye bread, slathered with butter and with a spread of cheeses, cold meats, pickles and salads. I distinctly recall that this is where I first developed a taste for salami, which I had hitherto hated. I also remember my mother's great surprise when I ate salami with gusto at my first dinner back home!










_My riding camp roommate, Reitschule Eurastetten, 1981._


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## SueC

_Warmblood, Reitschule Eurastetten, 1981.










Our riding teacher Monika holding the now saddled Warmblood as a rider prepares to get on for a trail ride. There was a bit of a trick to mounting these tall horses, especially if you weren't fully grown yet!










Horses out to pasture during Summer Riding Camp 1981. Personal favourites Jaro and Meteor are in this photo, but I can't work out which is which. Regrettably we never thought to photograph them up close.










This just might have been Viola, the mare I had my first-ever lesson on in 1981. Without notes, I am reduced to hunches here 34 years later.










Eurastetten was surrounded by lovely rural scenery, and a haven for trail riding - and a trail rider riding out can just be seen in the background. In Europe, very little agricultural land is fenced, and there is a public right of access to service tracks on private agricultural land, to all harvested cereal fields, and to all forestry tracks. This makes it far easier to ride in the countryside than in Australia, where all agricultural and private forestry lands are fenced and have no right of access. In Australia, we are restricted to riding in state forests, on road verges and on animal-access zoned beaches. Unless you live right next to a state forest, this can make things difficult.










Horses enjoying the summer pasture, Reitschule Eurastetten, 1981.










More horses enjoying the summer pasture, Reitschule Eurastetten, 1981.


_


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## meganm21146

SueC said:


> Styles for riding that fast trot vary, as you can see here:
> 
> Prix Chimay (trot monte) - YouTube
> 
> 
> Personally I always post at speed. I suppose in a race most prefer to lean forward like in TB races and just stand it out because it probably unbalances the horse less at speed and hence given them a competitive advantage.


This horses in this clip move beautifully! Love this thread btw!  I'm still reading my way through, ha ha.


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## SueC

Hi Megan, welcome to this thread!  Hmm yes, it's getting a bit long, but then, I've always paper journalled avidly since the time I was a kid. Doing a public journal on HF was something new to try, and I suppose it's made me go back and write down all sorts of horse-related things, past and present, so that it might make sense to other people. But, I used to fill at least 200 A4 pages a year in tiny handwriting in my paper journals, and I don't expect this is going to be that much different! :rofl:

I just enjoy writing. Doing a public journal means there is the chance that my sharing will actually result in other people thinking, or laughing, or reflecting, rather than another volume getting stashed in the cupboard!  I know there are a number of journals here that I really enjoy reading. It's kind of like real-life books...

How's your pre-vet course? Anything interesting? Or are you getting bashed with calculus and history? ;-)


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## frlsgirl

Wow Sue; I loved reading about all your childhood riding adventures in Germany; glad you also had some pictures to share. I've been wanting to do the same thing about my riding journey but I'm having a hard time finding a lot of pictures as this was way before the digital age 

So far I have 18 pictures, so I could probably do something with that. I can't decide if I should start a new thread or add it to Ana's journal? Also, how do you add text in between photos?


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## SueC

Hey Frlsgirl, I vote they ought to go on your journal, and I'm dying to see them! (I have archaeological tendencies :rofl. My husband scanned my old photos and colour-corrected some of them as they are really showing their age. Text between photos? I just type between the photos... with the photos and captions posts I just italicised the captions. I use the photo icon in the quick reply menu to place my photos - just enter the photo location in the pop-up box. My photos are all linked from external websites. Not sure if that helps...


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## meganm21146

SueC said:


> Hi Megan, welcome to this thread!
> 
> How's your pre-vet course? Anything interesting? Or are you getting bashed with calculus and history? ;-)


Thanks for the welcome!
I am _loving_ my time in university! We have a farm on-campus that mainly raises pigs, goats, sheep, and chickens. We also have a couple resident cows. Every year we take the yearling heifers from another local farm to gentle, halter break, lead, groom, and basically pamper  A lot of my animal science courses are on the farm so it's a very fun program of study. As for calculus, we only have to take level I calc, so it's not to bad, I've already taken it. History isn't a huge requirement and I fulfilled that by taking a very interesting course on ancient world literature. The big killers are chemistry, organic chemistry, biology, and microbiology! Yikes! :wink:


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## SueC

Oh, ancient world literature, now that would be exciting!  Any bedtime reading recommendations?

Chemistry is fine and logical as long as people use the IUPAC naming system, but when I went to university, the first course in that (inorganic chemistry) was done with the then-new IUPAC system, and the following course (organic chemistry) was run by a fossil who decided what was good enough for him was good enough for everyone, and he didn't use the IUPAC system, but the random-naming system previously employed (which has formic acid instead of methanoic acid, etc), so then it became a huge problem for anyone who'd been brought up on IUPAC names to even know what they were talking about, and it was such a waste of time rote-learning 300+ random names when their systematic names were easily linked to the length of the carbon chain etc. :twisted:

It's OK if you're not enjoying organic chemistry, which can be tedious even if you are doing it in the IUPAC system, but let me assure you that biochemistry is totally fascinating!  And will tie in with genetics, and you'll go, "Ahaaaa - wow!"

I rather enjoyed microbiology, but we had a wonderful course. Have you had a chance to culture actinomycetes? They form such _cute_ colonies! And they smell wonderful... they actually give earth a lot of its earthy aroma! Plus I'm a cheese freak, and loved learning about all the different microbial strains that make various different cheeses unique (along with milk type etc).

How nice that you have a good practical component!


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## frlsgirl

SueC said:


> My photos are all linked from external websites. Not sure if that helps...


 
Ahhh that explains it; I attach my pictures under the "advanced" option; it doesn't let you type in between the pics when you do it that way I guess. I'll have to see about linking the pics somehow. I have probably 20 something pics now.


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## SueC

_I am now continuing the narrative on events at Reitschule Eurastetten, started on page 21 of this journal._


*Mingo – A “Problem” Horse*

During the summer holiday riding camp, the riding school had a new arrival – a young, brown/black Bavarian Warmblood called Mingo. He was put in the quarantine box, and my roommate and myself were curious. We became regular visitors to his box, and he appreciated the visits, especially given his isolation from other horses in this outbuilding.










The horse was rising four, and had abrasions on his cannons and tail from being dragged onto the transporter with ropes. What I did not know at the time – he was simply a beautiful but run-down horse to me – was that he was the only offspring of a regional champion jumping mare, and he had been previously purchased by an industrialist as a showjumping prospect for his teenage daughter. His breeder, who followed his story, later told us the horse had been pushed too hard, too soon and things had gone awry. When the young horse developed the habit of bucking and taking off, and his owners could do nothing more with him, he was on-sold, and Herr Walters bought him with the view to re-training him and either keeping him as a school horse, or on-selling him at a profit. (I had always assumed he was firmly intended for the riding school, but my mother told me that the school also boarded private horses and from the start were happy to sell to a potential private boarder.)

I do distinctly remember watching both Mr Walters and some of the more renowned private boarders come off this horse on several occasions during disputes with him. It surprised me, since I'd been previously allowed to ride him in the arena, and had got on fine with this horse. I asked my mother, “How could this be? Why was a child allowed to ride him when some of these advanced people were having difficulty?” As far as I recall, Monika also rode him without drama, and the horse only got upset with certain people. But still, why would a proprietor allow a child to ride a horse that had bucked him off? My mother explained, “At this point he was looking for a buyer, and you were doing well with the horse in lessons. You liked the horse, I liked him, and your father liked him. We all rode him, he was spirited and green but OK and he cooperated with all three of us. You were capable of riding independently outside the lesson setting, and we thought it was time you had your own horse. So we put in an offer on him.” When I asked her whether the antics with the proprietor and some of the private owners had given them pause for thought, she said, “The guys who fell off were rough with the horse, so they had it coming to them. It wasn't a consideration, since none of us were in that category.”

The proprietor never taught me personally, so I can't comment on his horsemanship. Monika Skarabella was a sensitive rider and practiced what she preached. What I do know is that as long as this “problem” horse was ridden with sensitivity, persistence and gentleness, and he liked and trusted his riders, he made no attempts to fly into bucks or become uncooperative. We never saw that side of him. His flaws as far as we were concerned were that he was still spooky, and that he had a tendency to want to let off steam on the trail – he expressed a desire to run fast, and my gosh could he run when you did permit him to go at top speed. He was a medium-sized, light and athletic horse, and to someone who'd mostly ridden massive Warmbloods to this point, his turbo acceleration and lightning speed were a bit of an eye-opener, and downright scary until you were used to it.

Although a registered Bavarian Warmblood, he was quarter Thoroughbred and his dam was a German Trotter who had been unsuccessful as a harness horse but gone on to become a showjumping horse of some renown in regional Bavaria. The Bavarian Warmblood society had no qualms about admitting Yakima's foal to Bavarian Warmblood stallion Morketo to their register. The upshot of this is, there are Warmbloods and there are Warmbloods, and this particular registered Warmblood was three quarters racing genes, and these genes certainly expressed themselves!

_
Another instalment on starting off with our own horses in Germany will be coming soon, which will trace how Mingo went from looking like he did in that first photo we have of him above, to becoming a good family riding horse and looking like this a year later:_


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## SueC

I've just tracked down a photograph of Mingo's sire Morketo:










More information on Morketo here:

The Sport Horse Show and Breed Database

At the time we were in Germany, we saw a few of Morketo's offspring at the Munich horse shows, including a mare called Morgensonne.

Morketo himself was half TB, as TB (and indeed SB) was permitted for interbreeding and inclusion in the Bavarian Warmblood stud book at the time. The horses did have to take performance tests for inclusion. For any stallion (BW or prospective addition to the lines) to qualify for breeding registered Bavarian Warmbloods, the tests included dressage, showjumping, harness driving and _ploughing_. The Bavarian Warmblood was an all-rounder with agricultural origins, and Bavarians like to uphold their traditions. More on the breed here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_Warmblood

This is a limited article on the breed, but gives a good introduction for English-speaking people.


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## SueC

Digging up that link to Morketo actually showed me something surprising about our Bavarian Warmblood: I'd always assumed that the 25% that wasn't TB or Trotter had a sizeable chunk of actual Bavarian-line horses in it. (We had a pedigree, but it didn't specify what sorts of Warmbloods those ancestors were.) Not so, it turns out: Thanks to that breed-detailed pedigree on the link, I worked out Mingo was actually 1/2 German Trotter, 5/16 TB, 1/16 Trakehner, and 2/16 Gelderlander. Not a trace of the Bavarian agricultural Rottaler ancestry. I knew they were trying to make the BW lighter, but sheesh... imagine having a Bavarian Warmblood that actually has zilch Bavarian Warmblood lines in it, and is all adopted lines. Isn't Warmblood breeding a mish-mash! What does it even mean, then, to say a horse is this or that if they are mostly interchangeable?


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## SueC

And now, a short commercial break about *snakes*. Every time I see people getting excessively worried by them, or positively foaming at the mouth to kill them, I come to their defence. I'm a biologist by training, and I have a different attitude to that sort of thing. Bats, for instance, I find unbearably cute, and it surprises me that many people don't feel that way.

OK, snakes. I actually like them! And both my parents' place near Lake Clifton and our place here have swamps and are crawling with Dugites and Tiger Snakes, both of which are venomous, and we've never had a problem with people or horses getting bitten, in 30+ years. When I was growing up, I went barefoot everywhere, I might add, and so did the neighbours' kids, and none of us got bitten.

We had a dumb dog once when I was growing up who picked on a snake and was bitten, but he recovered. Once a horse I was gallopping on a trail did a sudden big leap, and looking down I found he was leaping over a striking snake, but the snake was only striking because it was caught short (innocently lying basking in the sun one moment, the next this big hairy thing with hooves bearing down on it at breakneck speed). Our local snake species don't usually bother people or animals unless they get disturbed by them. In fact, a book I have on poisonous Australian fauna says that over 80% of snakebite to humans in Australia happens when people try to kill them. The other 20% is mostly people putting their hands into holes or stepping directly on them. 

I once fell asleep beside an acacia tree and woke up because the leaf litter was rustling. I noticed that a 2m Tiger Snake was emerging from the loose leaf litter right next to me and slowly sneaking away from me. It had obviously been there all along and was just looking for a chance to get away. I just lay really still so I wouldn't startle it.

We do occasionally kill snakes when we think they are getting territorial near our buildings, but don't like to do it. Once when I was a teenager this happened and I wanted to not waste the life and BBQ it - it's supposed to be good eating. My mother, who is rather anti-snakes, would not let me cook it. I think that was a shame, but I got the skin off it and tanned it in brine. Had it for years until a cat I had ate it.

I worried a bit when we first got our dog Jess two years ago, but she seems to have the good snake sense of many Kelpies, and she leaves them alone. Our veterinarian says it's mostly Jack Russell terriers who get bitten, since they won't leave the snakes alone.

Antivenene is available at all hospitals and veterinary surgeries. Generally you have two hours to get to a hospital if you do get bitten. To put it in perspective, we lose around one person a year to snakebite in Australia - and over a thousand to traffic crashes. Yet noone freaks out when they get in their car - and there's no antidote to a crash...


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## bsms

Hmmm...I kill rattlesnakes that get near my house or in our backyard. Anti-venom treatments for our Border Collie ran $2000, although he did survive being bitten on the nose. Our white German Shepherd loves to hunt and would probably go after them. I'm often out at night in the backyard to feed the horses, and grandkids tend to scramble around the rocks and brush without looking. A couple of them were around 5.5 feet and we also have had a few young ones.

That said, I leave the rest of them alone. If possible. I had one repeatedly come into our campsite. I'd throw him out using a branch, and he'd come right back in as fast as he could. The 4th time he came back, I killed him. 

I took a graduate level class in herpetology around 1978. The professor did venom studies and kept about a hundred rattlers in cages. I've also been jogging down hills steep enough that stopping was problematic and had rattlesnakes cross my path. I jumped over 3 from doing that on Edwards AFB in California. I've spotted them twice on horseback. Once when my horse was balking, and once when the horse didn't notice it. Both times, we took another path home.

We also had a Gila Monster cross the road ahead of us a week ago, which is one of the few times I've seen one in the wild. It would take work to be bitten by one, so we just watched him crawl along. He wasn't very big - maybe 8 or 9 inches long. Under a foot. This is an Internet picture, but it matches the one we saw:


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## Bondre

Being born and bred in England, I didn't meet many snakes in my youth. It wasn't until I went to the tropics for a year after graduating that I came across all sorts of snakes, lethal and harmless. Weird to look at a tiny coral snake and think how terminal it could be (while you frantically try to remember the red-black -white colour combination rule to distinguish the false corals from the real thing!). I met one mean-looking Bothrops sp. on a jungle mountaintop about three hours from the nearest village and remember a very tense couple of minutes while my companion and I edged cautiously around him, while he flicked his tail irritably. The funniest thing was when I got back home (to England) I would go on alert if I heard a blackbird rustling in the undergrowth.... and then would realise it's OK, no snakes here.

Where I live in Spain we don't see any venomous species, but grass snakes are common (and sometimes quite massive). At first we lived in a huge old rented farmhouse, and the front door didn't fit properly so grass snakes would often sneak in indoors in summer time looking for some cool shade. 

The worst time was once when my mother was visiting. She was in her seventies then, she's a very active and outdoor person but NOT keen on snakes, at least not in the house. I went into the living room and found a 2m long, fat grass snake relaxing on the floor. And my mother in the adjoining kitchen, washing the dishes. My husband and I had a quick and silent struggle to get the snake out of the house before she finished the dishes! We managed and she never realised what had happened  .
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## SueC

Wonderful stories, thank you both! Bondre, how funny about that little silent wrestle to get the snake out of the house before your mother noticed - would make a wonderful stage comedy, haha! It must have been exciting to go abroad after university, with such a big contrast: Mellow, rather domesticated Europe and then the wilds of the jungle! The British naturalists have rather a tradition of that...

Speaking of, I visited London in 1997 and was gobsmacked by the Natural History Museum. I spent four days straight there at the end of my stay and the only reason I didn't go back the next day is because I had a plane to catch to go home. In the mere _entry foyer_, in one of the little glass display cases, I chanced upon an original botanical specimen Banks brought home from Botany Bay. There it was, pressed and preserved and looking great after over two centuries, with Banks' own handwriting giving the details... It's so extraordinary, to think, "He cut that in NSW, pressed it, brought it back on the _Endeavour_, and 200 years later, here it is!"

My husband's parents are from Southern England - Kent and Surrey - and though he was born here, he speaks with a very BBC accent, owing to the family's constant immersion in BBC drama etc, and he seriously says things like, "Oh, I rather fancy a cup of tea!" Unusual verbage from an Australian - "I'm dying for a cuppa, mate!" is more standard over here. 

Bsms, are rattlesnakes aggressive? They have a cultural reputation for it, but is that just movie drama / ophidiophobia, or actually so? I've never been to the US. It strikes me that the rattling display is just the snake saying, "Back off, buddy!" Heard a rumour though that rattlesnake bites are not that uncommon? (Again, would be interesting what percentage of that happens when trying to kill the snake. When we have to kill a snake, we use a long-handled rake and a sharp spade - the teeth of the rake pin the snake, then it's easy to dispatch it quickly and cleanly by decapitation, as long as the spade is sharp...)

Also, have either of you ever sampled snake on the menu? I have yet to do that. My father tells me he was once at the cinema with an Indian colleague, who was enthusiastically eating something from a packet and after a while offering some to him. He took it, tasted it, liked it, asked what it was. Apparently it was some sort of snake biltong. There you go. Beef biltong is a nice snack (one of the popular Australian brands is called "Road Kill" - typically Aussie naming) - I'm not averse to trying snake (but the last one we killed was too skinny to prepare for table). Like crocodile (which I also want to try), it allegedly tastes like chicken. Reptiles are on the traditional native Australian menu, usually roasted on coals.

Bsms, thanks for the Gila monster photo: How remarkably similar its shape is to our very common Western Australian Bobtail lizard (Tiliqua rugosa):










The bobtail is a type of Bluetongue. These closely related lizards all give the following display when disturbed:










If you're handling one and not careful, they are very hard to prise off once their jaws lock on!


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## bsms

"_Bsms, are rattlesnakes aggressive? They have a cultural reputation for it, but is that just movie drama / ophidiophobia, or actually so?_"

I guess 95% of the rattlesnakes I've met just wanted to be left alone. They don't view us as prey and normally don't want to pick a fight. The snake that kept coming back into the campground was an exception. Not sure WHY he acted that way, but he clearly wasn't willing to leave us alone. The guy I took the herpetology class from was an expert. He said the same - the vast majority of rattlers don't want a fight, but the odd one can be very aggressive.

I heard one rattling once and finally realized he was between my legs. I hadn't seen him and was stepping over him when he rattled...but didn't strike. I jumped and landed about 20 feet away, but that is like most of my encounters with rattlers. I enjoy seeing them out in the desert, although they are not that common in the desert near me.

"_If you're handling one and not careful, they are very hard to prise off once their jaws lock on!_"

The herpetologist also worked with Gila Monsters. He said they could clamp down hard, but their teeth were very weak. If you managed to be bitten by one (not likely), he said the best thing to do was grab the body and pull hard. The teeth would come out with your arm. Happily, I've never needed to find out if that works!


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## SueC

A few pages ago I mentioned I would post some more photos as our abode accrues more completed rooms.










This is a detail from the recently completed first guest room. I don't want to bomb this mainly horse-related journal with lots of house photos, so I will just post a link to our updated Flickr page. This will bring up all these photos instantly and tiled on the one page. If you're interested in information on any of the photos, click on the photo to make it fullscreen and captions will show. You have then entered slide show mode.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/

Much easier than re-posting it all here - both for me and for anyone interested in looking at the photos!


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## frlsgirl

Wow Sue, you are seriously one of the most productive people I know! Horse whisperer, house builder, journalist...what can't you do?


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## SueC

Hmm, what can't I do? Lots of things! 

I can't julienne carrots, so my husband does that. I can't seem to walk around a building without colliding with an article of furniture sooner or later. I can't suffer fools gladly. My husband, when I asked him this question, says I'm useless at plastering the top line adjoining the ceiling (he's very good at it, so it's his specialty when we plaster), but then he's relatively useless at mathematics. ;-) Or horse riding. Which makes me, by comparison, useless at kendo or oriental sword-fighting (his speciality). I can't and don't want to programme a computer. I passed calculus but have difficulty conceptualising it - and anyway, calculus is actually calcified plaque that a dentist will remove from you (so, I've had all my calculus removed, haha).

Oh look, I could list lots of things!  And this is actually fun!

Writing _Grass Roots_ articles doesn't make me a proper journalist. It's a lunatic fringe type publication. ;-) People write articles in it on things like how to eat prickly pear cactus, how to make irrigation systems from PET bottles that required hand turning in order to spread the water (so you might as well just be done with it and use a hose in the first place), 1001 uses for a dead fridge, how to catch pests in live traps and release them safely into wildlife habitat or your neighbour's yard (not worded quite like that, but that's the upshot), and how to do astrological gardening. :shock: They also have useful articles in the mix though - and it is the most popular self-sufficiency magazine in our country.

I might have to try writing for other publications to merit anything like "journalist". Of course, I journal, and so do you, so are we journalists in that sense, or journal-keepers? ;-)


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## SueC

_Continuing, from the top of the previous page of this journal, the narrative of events at Reitschule Eurastetten in 1981:
_
*Mingo, our Family's First Horse*










So here he was, officially ours, scrawny, with missing strips of fur from altercations loading onto transport, partially educated, front hooves so long and habitually left long between shoeing to the point he already had contracted heels at barely four years old, and with a lousy reputation for throwing riders and fighting back when treated without tact or consideration.

I quizzed my family to see if anyone recalled any details of the actual sale, which I don't. My father laughed and said he clearly remembered one thing: That when it was my turn to do a ride on the sale day, the horse was unsettled at the tie ring, probably by some commotion (or maybe because of past run-ins with the proprietor), and Mr Walters was saying, "Just get on, like this" and he demonstrated, and immediately slipped off the other side and hit the ground, as the horse gave a casual little lift of his hindquarters and lowered his head.

I personally have never liked mounting horses when they are unsettled - I wait until they are settled, and if talking isn't enough, groundwork will do the trick. I do remember that I was apprehensive about being pushed to mount an unsettled horse by an adult. Mr Walters was not my instructor, and my instructor Monika had never asked such a thing from us. I did eventually mount the horse and ride him around the arena without incident, as before. My parents did the same thing, and following that, the horse changed ownership, and we had our first ever own horse.

My parents and I are instinctively good with animals. I can go into a cow paddock with a strange herd and start getting their confidence within ten minutes, just hanging out with them. They will come up and hobnob and touch their noses to my hand and sooner or later, I will be scratching one on its face, then its ears, eventually its shoulders and back. Not pet cattle, beef cattle who, although generally highly curious, are generally nervous about letting humans too close to them if there is a choice.

It's always been like that for me. I respect their size and the potential for getting knocked over, but I've never been afraid of being near large animals. I respect their etiquette and don't advance contact if they are saying, "Hold it!" - I have to have a "maybe" for that. I always just sit still and let the herbivore make the first move towards contact. I'll talk to the animal, I'll use body language, and eventually it just gets that I mean no harm.

My husband, in the first year he got to know me, was frequently boggle-eyed when we walked past or through farming paddocks and he saw me interact with the occupants. "What are you doing near that huge thing?" and I'd laugh. I can no more ignore an animal than I could a stranger passing on a hike - I like to acknowledge others. And Brett said, and he still says, "When you go into a paddock, any paddock, pretty soon you are surrounded by a cloud of animals. They think you're fascinating." Well, I think _they_ are!

I've always worked with animals on a _mutual relationship_ basis, not a master-servant, human-lower being basis. I don't feel that I am special compared to a social animal of another species: I am an equal, and work from a side-by-side position, not an "I am above you" position. So how do I get an animal to do something I want it to do, some people have asked? Well, probably I am very persuasive!  But, my animals _want to_ work with me, just like I want to work with them. It's a symbiosis - a relationship of mutual advantage. I view training as a _conversation_, not a monologue.

I think animals pick that difference in approach with their "antennae"! And I think it's why I didn't have any unusual troubles with our first horse, or with the other horses since.










(Yegads, look at those front hooves, they're just scandalous, but it's so common in horse circles...)

And so, the summer turned into autumn back in 1981, and I continued to take part in group lessons at Reitschule Eurastetten on Mingo. The horse and I made progress and he was soon like any other riding school horse doing his arena work. My father and I alternated going on trails with groups, riding this horse. (My mother by then had given up riding due to the aggravation of a back injury, but continued to spend time with the horse.) Mingo was a bit spooky and very keen to move, but we had a pretty uneventful time of it, with one exception: A major group bolt that happened with a trail group. I wrote about it here:

http://www.horseforum.com/horse-riding/worst-spook-585921/page2/#post7522354

This was a traumatic event for the whole group of riders, and especially the woman who ended up in hospital with a broken skull. I've never experienced anything remotely like that in the thirty-four years since. However, I initially lost a fair bit of confidence after that on trails, and it took me months to get it back. I couldn't stop hyperventillating and going into flight reaction myself at the sight of large trucks and the like for much longer still! Such is the burnt-in memory of a trauma, which the amygdala in the brain is programmed to produce.


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## bsms

"_This was a really scary experience, and I've never witnessed anything remotely like it again in the three and a half decades of riding since. All the horses were running like they were possessed and heading straight back to the barn by the shortest possible route, which included short-cutting through the middle of a pine forest, not along a trail but literally doing slalom through the trees._"

"_I've never experienced anything remotely like that in the thirty-four years since. However, I initially lost a fair bit of confidence after that on trails, and it took me months to get it back._"

Hmmm...Custer had grown into manhood during the Civil War, when the frantic, all-or-nothing pace of the cavalry charge came to define his life. "The sense of power and audacity that possess the cavalier, the unity with his steed, both are perfect," remembered one Civil War veteran who attempted to describe what it was like to charge into battle. 

"The horse is as wild as the man: with glaring eye-balls and red nostrils he rushes frantically forward at the very top of his speed, with huge bounds, as different from the rhythmic precision of the gallop as the sweep of the hurricane is from the rustle of the breeze. Horse and rider are drunk with excitement, feeling and seeing nothing but the cloud of dust, the scattered flying figures, conscious of only one mad desire to reach them, to smite, to smite, to smite!"

- "The Last Stand" by Nathaniel Philbrick, pgs 46-47 Underlining mine.​Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said...

Do you give the horse his might?
Do you clothe his neck with a mane?
Do you make him leap like the locust?
His majestic snorting is terrifying.
He paws in the valley and exults in his strength;
he goes out to meet the weapons.
He laughs at fear and is not dismayed;
he does not turn back from the sword.
Upon him rattle the quiver,
the flashing spear, and the javelin.
With fierceness and rage he swallows the ground;
he cannot stand still at the sound of the trumpet.
When the trumpet sounds, he says ‘Aha!’
He smells the battle from afar,
the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.​ 
Job, Chapter 39. ​ 
It could be the intervening 2600 years may have resulted in less warlike horses. I have a hard time imagining Bandit charging fierce into battle. :wink: Still, there are accounts I've read from the Civil War of horses who seemed to enjoy the excitement of battle. One that stuck in my mind would, in the years after the war, bite anyone wearing a blue suit.

I've often wondered what it would be like to be part of a charge involving 2-3,000 horses moving in mass! The US Cavalry often used horses with minimal training. The same book I quoted above gives several stories of individual horses bolting in blind panic, carrying their rider into danger or out of it. At least 2 horses bolted and carried their riders several miles from the rest of the soldiers, where they died. One did the same, but then circled back and his rider became the survivor of a 5-6 mile ride alone thru the enemy, only to arrive back and rejoin the formation when the US Cavalry was retreating. 

I also came across an account of a charge made by 70 men. Luckily for them, it turned out the folk they were charging were friendly - because of the 70, 12 fell off their horses with 2 breaking their legs in the fall!

Group think in horses seems a lot like my fellow humans at times... Still, the account of the Civil War vet reminds me of what happens when a horse bolts with fear. Folks have told me I need "body control", and I've been known to advise people to "just stay on the horse" - but when horses are bolting in fear, there is nothing quite like it. It truly strikes me "as different from the rhythmic precision of the gallop as the sweep of the hurricane is from the rustle of the breeze." I could cheerfully go the rest of my life without ever riding another bolt of any level of intensity...and I never have experienced, and hope I never do, a group bolt! :eek_color:


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## SueC

Thank you, bsms, for that fascinating material!




bsms said:


> Group think in horses seems a lot like my fellow humans at times...


:rofl:




> Still, the account of the Civil War vet reminds me of what happens when a horse bolts with fear. Folks have told me I need "body control", and I've been known to advise people to "just stay on the horse" - but when horses are bolting in fear, there is nothing quite like it. It truly strikes me "as different from the rhythmic precision of the gallop as the sweep of the hurricane is from the rustle of the breeze." I could cheerfully go the rest of my life without ever riding another bolt of any level of intensity...and I never have experienced, and hope I never do, a group bolt! :eek_color:


It's not fun, and probably the simplest way to avoid a group bolt is not to ride in a group! :rofl: ...then it's just between you and your horse.

Actually, I do think all the solo riding I did in the Australian bush with various horses gave me an incredible immunity to group bolts when I did ride in a group. I never had to test it, but I've had horses rush blindly past me on the trail with my Arabian mare never altering from her trot, even though she loved to run and always wanted to lead. Also Sunsmart, in company, doesn't care a hoot what any other horse is doing, he will do his own thing.

I think if you are more bonded with your horse than your horse is to the other horses, that's also a good start... The riding school horses on that group bolt were strongly bonded to each other and mostly quite weakly if at all to their constantly changing riders...

And you know what I think about snaffles and bolting! :rofl:

Also I wonder if the "body control" brigade have ever actually experienced a group bolt... ;-) Would love to TARDIS them straight into the middle of that one and see if it would chasten them any!


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## SueC

*Stabling and Turnout Arrangements and their Consequences*

In the stables at Eurastetten, there was a mix of loose boxes and tie-in stands to accommodate the horses. The private horses were mostly in loose boxes, the riding school horses in tie-ins. The barn that housed the riding school horses had originally been a cow barn, and cows in barns traditionally were tied facing the wall. A trough ran along the wall for silage, beets, hay, etc, with a walkway to service it. Mucking out was done from the main accessway behind a row of tie-ins. Cattle were traditionally on grass turnout when weather permitted, and barns were mostly used in winter, poor weather and at milking time.

The cow barn had been partially converted to create loose boxes for horses. It also had some of the original loose boxes that had once been occupied by the draught horses that worked the land. Two short rows of stands remained, and the riding school horses occupied them. There were logs suspended by chains that separated the stands. The logs were attached flexibly near the troughs but could be pivoted from the rear. This design meant people didn't get crushed against the partitions if a cow leaned on them. Also, you could just grab the far end of the log and use it to move a cow sideways before entering the space – while standing well out of kicking range. After the barn conversion, this was also a handy way to move a horse over before you went in to groom it or collect it for work.










_Our only photograph of Mingo in a tie-in stand at Eurastetten. Although there is no pictorial evidence, the horse's head was still attached! I am including this photo to give people unfamiliar with traditional European cow barns an idea of the construction and the restrictive nature of tie-in stalls. The mare in the loose box directly behind Mingo frequently had azoturia after her weekend-only trail rides.
_

The horses in Eurastetten were often on partial pasture turnout for an hour or two a day in good weather. The riding school horses got plenty of outdoors exercise with several sessions of arena lessons and trails during the day, and one rest day a week. The boarding horses had far less exercise, usually just an hour or two five days a week if they were lucky, and some were only ridden on weekends. It depended on how much time or inclination the owners had to attend to their horses. Some owners had arrangements for the school to also use their horses for trail outings or lessons. Colics were rife in private boarding horses with limited exercise, and I well remember one mare repeatedly struck with azoturia after her weekend-only exercise.

When Mingo came out of the quarantine box in the separate outbuilding a week or two after his arrival at the riding school, he went into a spare tie-in with the riding school horses. This was his spot when we bought him, and no loose boxes were available. It became a concern for us especially when his pasture turnout was suspended because he rough-housed too much with some of the other horses on the pasture. With his large proportion of racing blood, he had enormous amounts of energy and would want to run it off whenever at liberty, and because he was young, he wanted to play with his pasture mates, many of whom were older, well-exercised horses from more sedate breeds, and only interested in grazing. There was only one paddock available, so no alternative turnout. Mingo also, because of his chequered history and inexperience, could not be sent on extra trail rides with riding pupils. The only exercise he got was what we could give him.

A situation where a young, energetic horse is standing essentially motionless in a tie-in at least 20 hours a day is untenable. He had limited turnout on occasions when noone else was using the pasture, and would rocket around the perimeter, buck, pig-root, leap into the air, in short, do what young horses do to let off steam. We would turn him out for at least half an hour before riding him if the pasture was available. I might add that it wasn't great for the pasture that our horse was using it as a racetrack-cum-gymnasium. Sometimes we turned him out in the riding arena when nobody was using it. He would zoom around the arena at liberty and eventually jump the log fence around it out of sheer exuberance. We would then have to catch him before he waylaid a horse and rider. Catching him wasn't hard as he readily came up to us – sporting a comical, “Oh goody, you are here!” expression – but all these efforts were only band-aids. A solution had to be found.


_Fast-forward to the present: I have four horses free-ranging on 4ha of paddocks at night at 58ha during the day. They are all racing breeds, and even though three of them are retired and over 20, they all rocket around on a regular basis. One of their favourite hobbies when they are on the 48ha space always starts with this “orchestra moment” where they stop grazing, look at each other, and then suddenly go pelting off in unison down the sand track behind the house. They make a screeching right-hand turn onto the forest track and gallop with abandon down to the western property boundary. They then either slowly return along the paddock fence, grazing as they go until they are back near the house, or they trot back immediately along the forest track, turn around, and have another communal run. Yesterday I counted four cycles of running in a half-hour period. I've had a bad cold and Sunsmart has been off work as a result, and is full of beans.
_


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## SueC

*Moving Mingo to Agistment in Einsbach*

There were quite a few boarding barns in the rural area immediately surrounding Munich. Horse-riding is a popular hobby in Germany. Many barns had full jumping courses and some even had cross-country facilities. Other barns were more laid-back and offered an arena, limited jumping, and good trail access.

We went looking at a few of these places. What we wanted above anything was automatic day turnout and a loose box. There was a piggery near Einsbach that ran a small boarding facility as a sideline. One barn wing had ten large, modern loose boxes, another had six older, smaller loose boxes left over from the draught horse days. All the horses were on thick beds of straw, and there were several large grazing paddocks onto which horses were turned out all day by the barn owner, weather permitting. Also there were fenced earth turnouts near the forest just for running at liberty. A generous riding arena with optional obstacles was available, and trail access was excellent. It was very close to where we lived – only a ten minute car trip. One loose box had just become available.










_Mingo and me on the open fields behind the Einsbach piggery in January 1982. The Autobahn was less than 300m away and we had nightmares about our highly-strung horse getting loose and running onto the barrierless six-lane road. Collisions between loose horses and Autobahn traffic were (and remain) common and horrific. Consequently, when taking a horse for a walk, I always led with the lead rope looped over the nose for extra security.

_
It was sad to have to leave the riding school, but the facilities at Einsbach were far better for our horse, and we moved him promptly that autumn. He transitioned very well to the new place and responded wonderfully to the all-day turnout with other horses. There were a few younger, playful horses and ponies with whom he romped around. Having lots of space to run all day instead of being cooped up in a barn really settled the horse. In good weather, we could now ride him straight from the paddock with no interim measures to let off his abundant energy.

My father and I were alternating riding the horse. Sometimes he would go and ride a trail while I explored the piggery and chatted with other boarders. When the horse returned from the trail, I would hop on and do an arena session. Other times I went on a trail with a group, and we rode in the surrounding fields and forests. Sometimes I did cavaletti and low obstacles with the horse.

My mother ruminated. One day she emerged from her newspaper and said, “There is a French Trotter mare for sale, near Daglfing. Good nature, very experienced horse, 12 years old, reasonable price, good riding home only, foal just weaned. Shall we go look? You could ride together instead of sharing.”

_Looking back three decades later, this, more than anything else, would fundamentally change our lives.
_


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## SueC

*Dame du Buisson*

After a long and promising phone conversation, the three of us packed ourselves into a car and drove to the outskirts of Munich. The Lichtingers operated a small trotting stud and racing stable near Daglfing. Trotters were routinely ridden as part of their training, and the Lichtingers had a share in a voluminous indoor arena in their training complex.

Maria Lichtinger was a tiny, sweet woman who loved her horses. She led us to the loose box housing the mare for sale. They had five foals out of this mare and, with the last one just weaned, needed the room. Mrs Lichtinger was tearful. She was so fond of this mare, who was a real sweetheart. If only they had more room. But the mare had had enough foals and needed a riding home now. She needed regular work and adventures.

Mrs Lichtinger opened the loosebox door. A large, leggy chestnut mare turned her head towards us. Kind eyes, narrow blaze down the centre of her face, long ears, big nostrils breathing at us in enquiry. She took a step towards us and sniffed me gently all over. She rubbed her top lip against the back of my hand. Mrs Lichtinger laughed. “This mare adores children. Maybe she thinks of them as foals. Young children can play right around her feet, and she takes care of them. She is always careful not to step on them and she can't get enough of children.” (This was, indeed, dead accurate, not just a romantic sales pitch. The mare had a magnificent disposition and was excellent around people, and extra solicitous and super-affectionate around children.)

The Lichtingers tacked up the mare and led her into the arena. They rode, we rode. The nearly 17hh mare towered over me. Once I was on her back, everything was suddenly ridiculously easy. Walk, working trot, medium trot, extended trot. Her trot was amazing, it was like she was gliding on oiled castors. I'd never experienced anything like that before. Canter on both leads. Halt. Arena figures. The large-framed mare turned through voltes with athleticism and practiced ease. Rein-back, how many steps do you want? It was extraordinary, and so effortless.

I loved our irrepressible, adventurous Mingo, and the challenge of riding this green horse who always felt like a rocket was waiting to go off under him, and we had done well together. I'd had fun, I had been scared out of my wits by that group bolt, I'd had to learn to think on my feet, and we were making good progress. He worked well in the arena, and over cavaletti, and low jumps (I was still learning technique and restricted myself to easy obstacles). You had to be one hundred percent present when riding him, this was not a horse suited to daydreaming!

And now this mare was so totally laid-back and Zen and instantly responsive. It was incredible to be riding so effortlessly the first time you were working with a horse. No riding school horse I'd been on had ever felt like this... they'd had too much to put up with to just glow like that.

In Australia, harness horses usually get a very rough saddle education, if any. In Europe it was completely different. This mare, who started out as a successful harness racing horse in France, had been ridden seriously in the arena for much of her life. Broodmares in stables like the Lichtingers' are exercised during at least the first six months of pregnancy, mostly under saddle. They do basic dressage, cavaletti and a little jumping, and they do trails. Young horse enthusiasts who have progressed at a riding school and are competent to ride independently not infrequently will exercise horses at racing and breeding stables. Because of the general competence of German ex-riding school riders at dressage, the standard of riding is high, and the horses become well educated.

Like this lovely, free-moving chestnut mare who breathed friendly breaths in your hair when you got off her back. I was smitten. My mother and father were smitten. The Lichtingers were smitten. She was only the first horse we has actually gone to look at once my mother championed the idea of getting a second horse. But, she was fabulous...

_And so, Dame du Buisson came into our lives, and her doing so would cause us to shift continents in just another year, and to start a harness stable ourselves, and thirty-odd years later, I would be riding her great-grandson Sunsmart, who inherited her free-striding, oiled-castors trot, and hosting two of her retired grandget who have exactly her chestnut colouring and kind, super-friendly nature.
_









_Dame du Buisson in Einsbach, Germany, January 1982_


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## SueC

_Dame du Buisson in the forest turnout, enjoying her freedom, Einsbach, Germany, January 1982
_









_Mingo kicking up his heels in the forest turnout, Einsbach, Germany, January 1982_










_Our horses enjoying the snow, Einsbach, Germany, January 1982_










_Mingo rolling in the snow, Einsbach, Germany, January 1982_










_More rolling in snow! Einsbach, Germany, January 1882_









_Dame du Buisson rolling in the snow, Einsbach, Germany, January 1981_


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## Bondre

I love reading about your family's horses when you were younger, Sue. Keep the instalments coming! 



SueC said:


> More rolling in snow! Einsbach, Germany, January 1882


Gosh, it really snowed in winter for you. In England winters were never so harsh. Though you must be a bit older than I thought :shock: ..... perhaps European weather was harsher back in the C19. :rofl:
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## egrogan

Sue, you're inspiring me to want to go through some dusty old boxes in my attic to find pictures of me riding as a kid. I don't think there are many, but there's one in particular that I can remember hanging on my bedroom door, with me wearing these horrendous black stonewashed jeans and huge puffy bangs (no helmet of course) tearing around on a friend's crazy little POA mare. I need to find that!

Your description of the tie stalls brought back vivid memories of one lesson barn I rode at briefly as a kid. Even my hazy memories of it make it out to be pretty run down and a sort of sad place (my parents knew nothing about horses and I think they would drop me in the driveway and leave me there until it was time to go home, but I can't imagine it's a place I'd want to go now!) 

There were two barns, which very well may have been converted dairy barns. One was "up top" where the lesson horses were, with a breezeway connecting it to the indoor. All the horses there had box stalls.

But "down below," the owners had what I now know was a backyard breeding operation- there was one mean Arab stud in a corner box, and all the mares, at least when they didn't have foals on them, stood tied in narrow "standing stalls" virtually all day long. Maybe they got turnout sometimes, I don't know. And I can't imagine where they foaled out those mares or let foals run. It's actually sort of a sad memory thinking back to it. I just remember that kids were warned not to go in that barn because you could get kicked by the horses who were tied up, heads in, back ends out, with just a butt chain behind them. And the rumor amongst the teenage girls was that you should _never _go in there if it was "that time of the month" because it would make the stallion crazy :shock:


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## SueC

Bondre said:


> I love reading about your family's horses when you were younger, Sue. Keep the instalments coming!


Man, it's like a tunnel, Bondre. I have one of those video memories all the way back to when I was three, and it's just going through the footage. And when you do, you feel like you're there all over again. It's like the growth rings on a tree. You just go in a bit and it's all still there.

Glad you are enjoying!  I get a little nostalgic. I miss all the deceased horses... especially that mare, who died of post-partum haemorrhage a few years after we came to Australia. Mingo made it longer, was put down at 26 due to loss of nerve control over his hindquarters.




> Gosh, it really snowed in winter for you. In England winters were never so harsh. Though you must be a bit older than I thought :shock: ..... perhaps European weather was harsher back in the C19. :rofl:
> _Posted via Mobile Device_


:rofl: Yes, that's one of the advantages of getting older, you can just make quips like that! My husband says that he is quite looking forward to buying a walking stick when he's in his 70s, so he can swing it around when he lectures younger people. :rofl: Three decades to go for both of us though until then!


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Sue, you're inspiring me to want to go through some dusty old boxes in my attic to find pictures of me riding as a kid. I don't think there are many, but there's one in particular that I can remember hanging on my bedroom door, with me wearing these horrendous black stonewashed jeans and huge puffy bangs (no helmet of course) tearing around on a friend's crazy little POA mare. I need to find that!


Yes, please do find that crazy photo and any others, I am fascinated by these sorts of histories and would love to see! It really surprised me to discover how few photos we actually had of us _riding_ way back when. I asked my riding-bicycles-with-reins friend from elementary school who attended the same riding school if she has any photos but she is having the same trouble as me: Few and far between, even more so. We just didn't have the presence of mind to record this stuff systematically. We just rode...

Loved your descriptions of those places you attended. It's amazing in what fine detail many people are able to recall places they were in as children!

It's a real shame about the way those breeding horses were treated. I wish people showed more respect and care for animals.


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## SueC

I am much enjoying this thread here:

http://www.horseforum.com/horse-talk/do-you-ever-have-feeling-horses-601498/

It's getting really interesting!


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## SueC

A new instalment of our early experiences with horses is in the pipeline, but the above thread has kept me busy. Initially I think it was rain-induced hypergraphia, now it's that there are so many ideas bouncing around...

For now though, I just wanted to post some "feral" photos of Sunsmart and me that Brett took when we were going for a walk around our farm. The horse is in a rather shaggy winter coat and I'd not had a haircut in months (now remedied).

Brett usually takes the most magnificent photos of the wildlife, plants, fungi and even slime moulds he is currently cataloguing in the nature conservation area of our farm (see https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/sets/72157632759314682) - but often we will pass the horses on the pasture on the way out, and he got some snaps of horse interactions en route:










I was trying to hold his attention instead of hanging on to his halter to get a head-up photo. If I make my hands into a platform that generally does it. Human hands occasionally proffer interesting edible things, in my horses' experience.

After that, I rubbed the inside of his ear - he and the donkeys and Batman the steer are the biggest fans of that around here. Brett didn't catch that, but he caught the horse's ritual headshake at the end of a good ear rub:










Too funny! He probably had a sneezy feeling there as well, judging from his facial expression. Sometimes referred sensations like that will happen.

And here's Smartie saying, "Do you mind? I was grazing before you came, and if you're quite finished..." when Brett took too long to set up the shot:










He's lost that green halter, and I've got 58ha to search for its whereabouts! :rofl:

The others don't wear halters, they'll come along without them. So will Sunsmart, but since I ride him regularly, I usually keep a halter on him for convenience.


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## SueC

*Exercise Complementary To Horse-Riding*

If we don't do any deliberate physical exercise besides ride our horses, we're not doing them or ourselves any favours. Also, we might end up looking bow-legged like some archetypal cowboys.

Some personal favourites:

*Pilates*: Nothing like Pilates to strengthen the core and improve posture. I've had mild scoliosis since childhood and, together with being tall, it produced poor posture...one of the reasons it was deemed beneficial for me to take up horse riding as a kid...although a more pressing physical reason was that I grew so fast I ended up with kneecaps that had rotated 40 degrees towards the inside of the leg, and horse riding actually really helped to correct that! (I toed out chronically when riding when I started, for that reason. These days my kneecaps are only around 5 degrees out, and horse riding is my only physio for it.) Anyway, if there's anything strange going on with your posture or body, Pilates really is excellent!

*Cycling*: Whether mountainbiking or roadbiking, it's great for overall fitness... of course, you'll have to go at a crack instead of just toodling along if you really want cardiovascular fitness and to crank up your anaerobic capacity (for that, interval sprinting is great - you kind of need a road bike for that). One of the commonest mistakes recreational cyclists make is to have too slow a pedalling rate and ride in too high a gear. Drop the gears down and spin it! If you're rocking from side to side, you're not doing it right, and it's not efficient for moving you along at the greatest speed per unit effort. My road bike has toe clips, which is a bit old school, since those are mostly replaced with shoes that click into pedals these days. Well, I've never liked those - I like to be able to walk comfortably when I get to a destination. Mountain bikes are better for your posture and for not shrinking down your upper body: The typical Tour de France riders have huge legs and next to no upper body. Compare that to mountain bikers...

*Walking*: At a pace, really stepping out, but I don't do "powerwalking" - that's so exaggerated it's not even an efficient way to get from A to B. Brett and I average 8-10km/h when walking briskly on level ground - around twice the average walking speed. Using a long stride is important here - not walking like a sewing machine, basically... We also like to do lots of uphill-downhill, whether through dunes or on actual mountains (such as we have in Australia! - but the Porongurup and Stirling Ranges nearby have peaks that give us 2-8h workouts on pretty steep gradients).

*Rollerblading*: As a child, I rollerskated along with most others my age. My family ice-skated on European lakes in winter. No such thing in Australia except on rinks, which isn't the same nature experience. But then I discovered in-line skates in my 20s, and the perfect local place to take them for a spin: The Middleton Beach to Emu Point bicycle path. The smooth surface is wonderful for feeling like you're just gliding magically along. To walk the path is usually 1.5-2 hours return, but you can easily do it on rollerblades in around 40 minutes - that's not even pushing. The bicycle path twists, turns, rises and falls through the foredunes, and you get regular breathtaking vistas of King George Sound. Vegetation and birdsong surround you most of the way.









The (relatively boring) car park end of the bicycle path.











Some touristy photos of the views you have from this path:



















So why wouldn't you? Last week I finally unearthed my roller-blades from the last of our moving cartons, and this morning I went down the path on a cool, sunny winter's morning, for the first time since building our house! Decided to make it a weekly thing again... it's great fun, and a nice workout for pretty much all your major muscles, including the core. Super for your posture too.

_...visitors are invited to share their favourite forms of exercise besides riding horses! 
_


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## frlsgirl

Oh wow; would love to take Ana to a beach like this some day; but first she would have to learn to like water.


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## SueC

That's what I had to do with Sunsmart, Frlsgirl - practice with puddles and lakes. It also helped that I had a friend with beach-experienced horse with me when I first took him to a beach!  I mean, water is one thing, waves are quite another...


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## SueC

*Two Horses Become Best Buddies*
_
This is the next instalment of our early horse-riding experiences in Europe, continued from page 24._

Soon afterwards, Dame du Buisson arrived at Einsbach and was placed in a loosebox next to Mingo. She was just separated from her foal and at the tail end of her lactation, and she immediately “adopted” two individuals in her new surroundings: Mingo and myself. Mingo was four, immature, nervous, and badly in need of an experienced equine mentor, and the mare took him right under her wing, sticking close by him out at pasture and showering him with reassurance and affection. This had a calming effect on the young gelding, who himself began to rapidly mature over the next six months.

My father and I alternated the horses, so I would ride Mingo one time, Dame du Buisson the next. However, the mare was so solicitous towards me when riding and showing me such preference on the ground that it was difficult not to begin to prefer working with her, and over time, although each of us still rode both horses, Dame du Buisson became my main steed and Mingo my father's. Another advantage of the French mare was that she was completely unfazed by any kind of traffic or large machinery – she simply never spooked. Everything was regarded with calm and confidence. While this also helped Mingo to desensitise, and of course, he was never going to bolt home if the mare wasn't coming, I was still traumatised from the group bolt with the entire group of riding school horses in the summer just past, and I remember a few instances when I was riding Mingo on a trail and would say to my father, “There's a tractor coming, would you swap horses with me?” On the mare, I felt completely secure under all circumstances.

Both horses were barefoot. Mingo had been in front shoes when we bought him, with hooves left too long between re-shoeing, and already had contracted heels. The ground near Eurastetten and Einsbach was not stony, so Mingo was barefooted and trimmed regularly to help his hooves. My father also bought a rasp and hoof knife to touch up frequently between farrier visits. The hooves were therefore kept short and working naturally, and the contracted heels started to relax again. Dame du Buisson had excellent hooves – rounded shape, large frogs, tough horn. She'd not worn shoes since her racing days and didn't need any on the footing we rode on.

And soon, it began to snow, and the whole countryside was blanketed in white. The photographs from the last instalment showed how snowy Bavaria got in the wintertime. The horses revelled in rolling in and playing with the snow when they were turned out in the daytime, and I have many fond memories of riding in the snow.

Peter Hoeg tells us in _Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow_ that Greenlanders have around two dozen words for snow. Greenland is far north of Europe, but even growing up near the European Alps, children develop a keen appreciation for snow and what it does to the landscape and to people. And so, after the autumn leaves have fallen in a flood of rich colours, and the deciduous trees are bare, and winter makes a wet and slushy start, one day the weather turns cold and the first magical snowflakes drift in the air, watched breathlessly by children who, at that very moment, begin to feel the approaching Christmas in their hearts.

In continental Europe in the early 1980s, Christmas was a season, not a day of materialism and over-eating, and to that season belonged candles, central table wreaths surrounding a pile of nuts and oranges, fir needles burnt carefully in a candle flame to produce an incense like no other, roasted chestnuts sold at street corners, chocolate calendars where you opened a door each day of December, Christmas markets and Lebkuchen, that incomparable soft spicy German gingerbread; and it was the season for building igloos and snowmen in your front yard, and engaging in as many snow activities as possible.

People from temperate countries automatically think snow is cold, but it's like a calm blanket after bone-chilling saturating rain and wind. When the snow falls, people start heading outdoors again in droves. Out of the cellars and storage rooms come sleds, ice-skates, and skis, people rug up in snow-suits and snow-boots. The landscape becomes a sort of fairy-land, covered in snow, and the conifers are festooned with snow, and ice flowers form on window panes. The snow absorbs sounds and entire landscapes go quiet, sometimes peacefully, sometimes eerily.

Riding horses in the snow is also a wonderful experience. Their footfalls are hushed, and when the snow is soft, it makes a comfortable footing. It's only later on, when ice becomes more prevalent, that you have to really watch out so your horse doesn't slip. Horses with shoes on then get special studs to help prevent slipping. Our horses didn't wear shoes and they coped just fine. We rode all through the winter exploring the altered landscape, sometimes just us on our two horses, sometimes in a larger group.

One particularly memorable ride from that winter involved the funniest fall I ever had in my life. We were trail riding with a group of people from the agistment centre. I was on Mingo at the tail end of the group. There was a log across the track and everyone jumped. Mingo, who was actually a good arena jumper, was mystified by this natural obstacle and came to a screeching stop instead of jumping. I laughed and dropped my rein contact, as I was expecting to take another run-up with him. But you can guess what happened next: The horse decided to jump the obstacle kangaroo-style, out of a halt. This took my by surprise and I fell head first into a huge snow heap created at the side of the track by a snow plough. I got stuck in the snow heap with my head and torso, my legs sticking out. As I was digging my way out, a black horse muzzle made its way down enquiringly in the snow heap: My horse wondering where I had gotten to. Now that was hilarious, and I never forgot the image of the black muzzle coming through the white snow I was stuck in. The snow was soft so that was also my most comfortable fall ever. 

Another humorous incident that winter revolved around the continental European tradition of drinking hot tea generously laced with rum and sugar in the wintertime. When you are outdoors, say ice-skating on a frozen lake, or hiking through the snow, or going sledding, you carry it along in a large thermos so that everyone in the family can warm themselves with a hearty mug of this reviving concoction. There's nothing like it in the cold, and even in Australia, we've carried on this tradition. Brett too, with his English background, has adopted this drink, although we both prefer brandy in our tea and substitute it for the rum. It's as much a classic as drinking a cool glass of cider in mid-summer after particularly exhausting outdoors work.

Thermoses of sweet tea with rum appeared as a matter of course in the riders' common room at Einsbach. It was a good thing to have after winter trail rides, when the horses were back in their warm stables munching hay. We noticed that some people appeared to spike their tea rather more generously than what you would for an all-round family drink, and as they progressed through their thermoses, it made them increasingly silly. And one day, we noticed that two young ladies seemed to have had more rum than tea in their mix, and swigged a fair bit of it before going riding.

Britta was probably in her late teens or very early twenties, fair-skinned, flaxen-haired, and diminutive, and she rode a massive grey Irish Hunter called Mac who clearly showed the Irish Draught influence on that breed. She had a young dark-haired friend called Elke, who was around sixteen and riding Britta's other horse, a large bay German Riding Pony, in Class L Dressage and Showjumping. It was these young ladies who headed to the stables in a rather giggly and unsteady manner after considerably reducing the contents of their thermos. It transpired that they were gearing up Mac for a round of jumping practice in the arena. The young ladies had recently constructed a course of very substantial oxers and rail jumps in the riding arena in order to prepare Mac for a Class M competition.

A number of us were intrigued by the unfolding scenario, and we followed the young ladies and Mac down to the arena as spectators. Mac was competing at the highest levels of anyone in the boarding facility, and was a grand jumper. However, with a giggly and unsteady cargo aboard, he lost his rhythm and banged into jump after jump, sending top rails flying. Finally, with a sour expression I remember to this day, he flat refused a jump, while his rider continued, still giggling, in a soaring arc over the top of the obstacle before landing with a flat thud in the muddy snow below it. Her friend Elke was killing herself laughing, and the riderless Mac decided to jump the arena enclosure and gallop back to the stables.

Those were the most memorable events of the winter of 1981/1982, which was my first winter riding trails in Europe, not quite a year after starting out in the intensive arena riding course at Reitschule Eurastetten. The snow began to melt around March, and I didn't know it then, but I would never ride our horses in snow again. By the time the next snows started to fall on Europe, all of us, horses included, would be off to Australia.









_Dame du Buisson in Einsbach, Germany, January 1982_









_Mingo and me on the open fields in Einsbach in January 1982_


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## SueC

_Dame du Buisson and Mingo, Einsbach, April 1982. The snow melted the previous month, the grass is growing (outside the horse turnout!), and the deciduous trees are budding. After all these years, the big chestnut mare still impresses me with how incredibly athletic she was even after spending five out of her past six years in this photo producing foals. As previously discussed, they did exercise their broodmares well where this mare had her foals, but the muscle mass and definition on this mare are so good considering we've been riding her around half a year at this point. This mare really moved under saddle - stepped out in a ground-eating, long-striding, yet relaxed walk, trot or canter, with the tail out behind her like a flag. She could still trot effortlessly when other horses were starting to gallop. If you ride one like that as a child, you can't go back to riding "normal" horses...you'll always be riding movers.
_








_Amazing hindquarter definition in the French Trotter mare. Mingo, 5/8ths racing blood himself, was no slouch, and ran like the wind at a gallop, but the muscle definition in this French Trotter mare and in her descendants I don't often see in other horses who are not actually in intensive fitness training. Click repeatedly on either photo to enlarge (at least two zooms up are possible).

_


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## SueC

*Spring In The Air At Red Moon Sanctuary*

When a high pressure system moves into the Great Australian Bight after a front brings our winter rain, hail and high winds, we get clear still sunny days and cold nights. These sunshiny days are wonderful for outdoors work and horse riding.

And then there's the washing! This is the second day of sunny weather after the last front. Yesterday, we spent our Sunday afternoon doing the Porongurup walk track with a neighbour: A two-hour ridge walk across the back of our most ancient and eroded mountain range in South-Western Australia, with wonderful views of the surrounding countryside. Jan had got her washing on the line before the walk - and I did my laundry this morning.

I peg out the washing on the undercover line between the carport posts, and also on the espalier wires in the orchard! This gives me instant immersion in the natural world as well. The tagasaste hedges around our house and orchard are white with a sea of jasmine-scented flowers and buzzing with our bees. Many small birds are nesting in these hedges, and in the other shrubs and bushes we have planted in the garden and the paddock shelter belts. I've spotted Silvereyes, New Holland Honeyeaters, Golden Whistlers, Red-Breasted Robins, Fairy Wrens, and other little birds busily feeding on nectar and/or insects in the hedge. The bees are also on the menu, but their populations are healthy and we don't mind sharing with the wildlife.

It's wonderful to be surrounded by a myriad of bird calls when hanging out the washing. Ravens cawed from a distance this morning, our Magpie family warbled, and Kookaburras broke out in their riotous rolling laughter until the dog was howling along with their enthusiastic chorus!

Since we have much water in the landscape, frog calls are also peaking. I can hear at least three different species as I am typing next to the open window. They too can feel the approaching spring. This morning I saw that the _Acacia saligna_s we have planted in our driveway are just about to burst out in their little yellow pom-pom flowers. Last year, at the peak of spring, they looked like this, as seen from our bedroom:










Romeo and the donkeys are also visible in this photo. We're looking forward to another lovely spring!


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## frlsgirl

That looks so lush and green; we are hitting the time of year where it's so hot that everything dies around here; then we have to start worrying about brush fires.


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## SueC

That will be us in six months from now! We've done a burn-off behind the house in the autumn just to take some of the heat out of a potential wildfire. Australian bush is adapted to fire and so we mosaic burn it to mimic how native Australians managed the landscape. It was essentially a form of fire-torch agriculture, creating a quilt-like patchwork of bushland in various stages of regeneration from fire, mixed in with old-growth patches. The landscape diversity this created also helped maximise biodiversity. Animals being drawn to lush new growth made hunting easier for the Australian native people.

The flora here on the South Coast is already considered an international biodiversity hotspot, due in part to the poor soils and tough conditions: Many different strategies evolved to try to cope. We have a truckload of carnivorous plants right here on this farm, along with hundreds of other understorey species. Brett has started cataloguing the flora and fauna in the 52ha of native remnant vegetation we manage on our farm. A small taster of what we have is here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/sets/72157632759314682


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## frlsgirl

Oh wow; a bunch of critters and vegitation I've never seen before. I wouldn't know what's ok to touch and what to run away from, lol.


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## SueC

I spent many years in the bush barefoot and in shorts and T-shirts growing up, and amazingly I am still alive!  ...as are the neighbours' children, etc. We have a very toxic plant that we shouldn't eat, a few venomous snakes like the Tiger Snake and the Dugite who mostly keep to themselves and won't bother you unless you bother them, and the famous venomous Red-Back Spider who again won't harm you if you keep your hands away! 

The statistically most dangerous thing you'll ever meet in the Australian bush is another human being (if they're a nutter)! And for defense against nutters, carrying pepper spray is pretty effective!


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## SueC

Some more photos to continue from the story of our early experiences riding horses in Europe (see previous page):










_Mingo making a cute face and hoping there are more carrots, Einsbach, Germany, April 1982.
_










_Mingo on turnout, Einsbach, Germany, April 1982.











Dame du Buisson and Mingo on turnout, Einsbach, Germany, April 1982. Also the following photos:





















_I was barely eleven and just learning to take photographs. Keeping horizons straight and not cutting off bits of my subjects was still a challenge! ;-)


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## SueC

I dug up more photos of Don Quixote sunning himself with a Willy Wagtail perching on his leg / rump. Willy Wagtails perch regularly on our horses, donkeys and cattle to catch insects coming in to land on the animals. It's a nice way to get lunch and provide a nuisance-reduction service at the same time! 





















And here's Brett in the guest room we just finished, with a storage box I made him for his computer cables and odds and ends.










My carpentry skills are slowly improving. As a matter of fact I was just halfway through finally painting all our internal doors when I had to stop because I contracted bronchitis. Still recovering. The worst thing is that I can't ride at the moment: Strictly no cold air and exertion, nor any door painting fumes. So I'm stuck indoors most of the time, but it's been good for my magazine writing sideline. I am just completing a "Small Farm Establishment On A Shoestring" article my editor wants for the next issue of _Grass Roots_. Our DIY dog palace is in the current issue. I've got quite a stack of things in GR now (scroll down the linked page for a list):

Red Moon Sanctuary

Brett is going to scan and post the full articles when he has upgraded our website, which is presently just a placeholder page. He's going to install a content management system so we can post things on farm life, display the species list he is compiling, etc. He's a clever person.


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## SueC

*Spring Oddities in Einsbach*

_This is the next instalment of our early horse-riding experiences in Europe._

The snow-melt brought with it the moulting of thick winter coats. Instead of grooming our horses in cross-ties in the barn, we now brought them out to the tie rails and curried out swathes of hair while the spring sunshine was enjoyed by two-legged and four-legged participants alike. It was a good workout for us, and the horses stretched their necks up high and wiggled their top lips with pleasure. One of the ladies had a drum vacuum cleaner with a long hose and a horse grooming attachment, with which she beleaguered her unimpressed horses. The rest of the barn were traditionalists and believed in good old elbow grease, oval rubber curry combs with concentric rows of crenellations, and soft body brushes for making their horses shine and giving them a good massage at the same time. In Germany, the work ethic was such that attempts to mechanise a time-honoured thing like the systematic hand grooming of horses was seen by the majority as laziness and accepting second-best – and in truth, no mechanised system of horse grooming I've seen comes anywhere near what a skilled person can do manually with the traditional tools.

The vacuum-cleaner lady was viewed with some amusement anyway, since she had poor arena skills, more from lack of serious application than ineptitude, and heaved her bulk ignominiously into a huge, sofa-like Western saddle that took up the entire back of her smallish, dainty Arabian horse. The profuse, exotic horn reaching vertically into the air at the front of the saddle was clung on to almost constantly, so that until I met skilled Western riders years later, I actually thought that was its primary intended function. The frilled leather garb in which she and her husband rode, and the flapping cowboy hats, were such anachronisms in rural 1980s Bavaria that they might as well have dressed as American Indians complete with feather head-dresses to go riding. They were not Americans, they were Germans with the broadest rural Bavarian accents, and the effect was so improbable it was jaw-dropping. Imagine an American citizen in Texas riding around dressed in traditional Bavarian knickerbocker-style _Lederhosen_, suspenders with carved _Edelweiss_ motifs, knee socks, woolen _Trachtenjacken_, and a little Bavarian hat complete with its decorative _Gamsbart _(goat's beard), while drawling “Howdy, pardner!” – and you may begin to grasp the breathtaking cognitive dissonance thus produced. All perfectly good in their home environments, of course...


_More next time! Meanwhile, please enjoy these images of Bavarian culture._



















Horse riders in traditional Bavarian dress. Note that people did not ride their horses like that in agistment centres - this was for traditional festivals or remote rural villages! Also noteworthy are the lovingly crafted traditional bridles and breastplates - not to mention the intricate braiding and decorating of the manes.











Traditional Bavarian bareback ox-racing! Quite a skilled and serious thing.









More from the Annual Bavarian Ox-Racing Championships! These guys have serious style!


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## SueC

Disappearing photos!

The direct link to the article may allow you to view the best image I found:

Riders in traditional Bavarian dresses sit on their horses as they... News Photo | Getty Images

Here are some more photos:















































It's still only showing some of the photos I am trying to post, so here is a _Gamsbart_:


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## bsms

I'm pretty sure I had some rides on Mia that felt like this...all one would need is some cactus on either side  . He has my facial expression down pat. Probably a pretty good imitation of my riding position, too:










But in truth, I couldn't stay awake long enough to drink enough beer to get me to ride in lederhosen...:wink:​


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## frlsgirl

I remember riding a very stubborn Haflinger when I was on "Reiterurlaub" in Austria; he basically did the opposite of whatever I asked of him  I just made a mental note then, that I would never, ever, own a Haffie.


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## Bondre

Amazing coiffures! Personally I prefer the more natural look, as they have lovely manes anyway without all the extras. The flowers and ribbons are nice, but all that fake mane must make you feel like you're riding a haystack ;-)

The ox-racing looks like a great spectator sport : -) . No steering, no brakes, just point your steer and grip like **** with your knees. Out of curiosity, what happens at the end of the race? Do the oxen know to stop automatically? Or is that when the leadrope comes into play?
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## SueC

*Frlsgirl*: That would make me want to try reverse psychology! :rofl: I'm sure there are many easy-to-ride Haflingers too, not to mention a few difficult Morgan mares! ;-) But you went to Austria for Reiterurlaub? How nice! How long for? And was this right in the mountains? ...I also meant to ask you if you ever read the Britta&Silver series when you were in Germany! 

*Bondre*: Riding a haystack, haha! :rofl: Yes, I think it would feel rather funny. I've not done it myself. End of oxen races - well, I think it's like with horses. They all know when to stop. The riders/drivers stop cueing them. Our experience of racing is that horses sometimes think the finish is a lap earlier than what it actually is, but they rarely think it is a lap later, and anyway, you can inform them of their misconception and that usually saves the day.

Actually, that reminds me: Phil Coulson, who drove our stallion Chip for us in metro meetings in the 1990s (Dad usually drives but in metro meetings in particular a lot of dirty business happens like people deliberately driving into another person's horse, and that's when Phil, who was racing royalty, came in really handy, because people didn't get away with doing that kind of stuff to him, plus he was a consummate horseman and had excellent tactics), was so happy one race meeting when the woman he wanted to marry had said "yes" that he miscounted laps and actually sprinted to the line and pulled up his horse one lap early. He got fined for unprofessional driving, but nobody was able to wipe the smile off his face. That is one of my favourite stories from local racing here. Phil was such a nice man, and his wife was cut from the same sort of material. Unfortunately he died of cancer a while back, but we'll always remember him.

Passing Of Harness Racing Legend Phil Coulson- Australian Harness Racing


*bsms*: You certainly possess the talent of laughing at yourself, which I was told by a wise person was a good trait to cultivate, since it would mean you'd always have something to laugh about!  I wonder if you have a "funniest riding photo" you could share with us?

...and anyone else also invited!


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## SueC

We've had a busy week off and on the farm. We are re-fencing in one of our paddocks, basically because the plants in our shade clumps needed more room, and we electrified these clumps, by laying underground cable and also by making corridor connections with new fences aboveground, for more lines of tree lucerne to grow for fodder. This afternoon I connected up all the wires and while there are a few connections to iron out still, it was all running at 4.5kV or more (we can get up to 8kV by tweaking things) and that was enough to let the calves use this paddock, so they were happy for the change of scenery and fresh food! Clover really growing now, and yummy ryegrass and lotus coming through, and the usual kikuyu and other perennials. The horses "swapped" with them, and are in the hill paddock, behind the big shelter belt and snug in their paddock rugs. There is a severe weather warning; thunderstorms, torrential downpours, hail and stong winds expected to continue in bursts until noon tomorrow.

I am now 95% over my illness. On Sunday the weather was wonderful and we did a climb in the Stirling Ranges! Will post photos soon, just have to upload them first. Immediately after the climb I fell asleep in the car and then found myself unmotivated to move out of horizontal position for 24h! Post bronchitis, not always so easy. So I "lost" a day there, but was fine after. Wednesday I went rollerblading again in the early morning and then after work I _finally_ got back on my horse for the first time since I got bronchitis. He was happy to work after three weeks off and actually, the other horses decided to come with us up the sand track for 600m, before chickening out. It was so funny though, Sunsmart was doing his flying trot and his mother was sitting right behind him doing the same, and his uncle was coming up beside him pacing (he's a natural pacer), and those two were *in their paddock rugs* and doing the full racing formation thing ex-harness racers automatically do when running in a group! :rofl:


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## frlsgirl

Glad you are feeling better. 

I've only met/experienced 3 Haflingers in person and all 3 of them were super stubborn. I'm sure that cooperative Haflingers do exist; I just haven't met them.

Britta und Silber? Sounds familiar, but I don't exactly recall. 
As far as reading goes, I subscribed to Wendy magazine; I think they still exist. I also had a copy of "The Making of Ahlerich" - that was a must read after Dr. Reiner Klimke and Ahlerich took Gold at the Olympics. I also had a general instructional book that I studied religiously. 

I did watch a lot of horse related shows and movies; including Black Beauty, Rivahlen der Rennbahn, and Die Kinder vom Immenhof.


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## egrogan

When I first got back to riding as an adult, one of the first horses I rode was a Hafflinger called Nutmeg. I was on her for the first canter I'd had in a good 5-7 years, on a lunge line, in an arena, what could go wrong? That pony was the poster child for blowing up her belly when tacking and no matter how much you tighthened the girth or checked it while you were on, there was always a chance she could outsmart you. So I am cantering unsteadily along on a 20-meter circle, and she starts speeding up and bulging out her shoulder, which made the saddle slip as the girth was not properly tightened, flinging me out at the wall. All I remember is crashing into the wall sideways as the saddle slid down around her barrel and having the wind knocked out of me when I hit the ground. That set me back quite a bit in the confidence department!


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> It was so funny though, Sunsmart was doing his flying trot and his mother was sitting right behind him doing the same, and his uncle was coming up beside him pacing (he's a natural pacer), and those two were *in their paddock rugs* and doing the full racing formation thing ex-harness racers automatically do when running in a group! :rofl:


I love this image


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## Bondre

Sounds like you've been through a bad patch with your bronchitis, but I'm glad to hear you're starting to have enough energy to climb mountains and ride again. Sunsmart's flying trot sounds really superb. Do the STBs do this naturally or do they have to be taught? 

Once, just once, when I was riding Macarena she did a trot that felt like flying. We were on the way home and she wanted to rush and was trying to break into canter. I said no, trot, and she went into this fabulous extended trot that felt as if we were floating. Sadly I've never managed to get her to repeat it - things like this make me wish I knew more dressage. 

Look forward to seeing your photos of your local hills. I climbed a lot of Scottish mountains in my twenties, but I've barely climbed a thing here in Spain. The landscape isn't so inviting - no established paths - and all the mountains are covered with horrible scratchy undergrowth, not very comfortable for walkers.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> When I first got back to riding as an adult, one of the first horses I rode was a Hafflinger called Nutmeg. I was on her for the first canter I'd had in a good 5-7 years, on a lunge line, in an arena, what could go wrong? That pony was the poster child for blowing up her belly when tacking and no matter how much you tighthened the girth or checked it while you were on, there was always a chance she could outsmart you. So I am cantering unsteadily along on a 20-meter circle, and she starts speeding up and bulging out her shoulder, which made the saddle slip as the girth was not properly tightened, flinging me out at the wall. All I remember is crashing into the wall sideways as the saddle slid down around her barrel and having the wind knocked out of me when I hit the ground. That set me back quite a bit in the confidence department!


 OMG! That would have messed me up for life! Glad you are ok!

I'm sure that there are good Haffies out there; I just haven't heard of them or met them.

The Haffie in Austria would lower his head and just run off with me; there was no stopping him.

The Haffie in Germany named Donja would just suddenly stop in the middle of the lesson and refuse to move. I can still hear the RI yelling "Donja!!!!!" 

The Haffie X that Ana is sharing a pasture with, uses her body weight to push me around; so I make her step way back when I get Ana; otherwise she tries to bulldoze over me. 

Anybody out there have a positive Haffie story to share?


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## egrogan

There's a member on here, Clava, who has two gorgeous Haffie mares (mother and daughter) and she looks lovely on her doing dressage, and they also go out eventing. I love seeing those threads. Here's one:
http://www.horseforum.com/dressage/hattie-haflingers-dressage-year-550002/

You can search for "Hattie the Haflinger"


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## SueC

Hello, everyone!  It's so delightful, after a week of grappling with tax and making new electric fences, and doing two night shifts off farm, to be reading your posts as I'm sitting here with my cup of tea.

I'd like to do a tea survey if anyone feels like playing: I drink some pretty non-mainstream concoctions and want to know if anyone here has anything out of the ordinary? I've always liked jasmine tea, from childhood, and when green tea with jasmine became available I switched to that instead of the black tea with jasmine. And I continued to put milk in it. And then we started keeping bees, and now my mainstay is a big mug of green jasmine tea with a generous addition of unhomogenised Jersey milk and a spoonful of our honey. Sometimes I even add a drop of rosewater to make it more floral. (Bondre, if you have any Nubians, their milk might be nice in this. I'm not sure what it's like in Spain, but here, the Saanens and Toggenburgs and British Alpines make very "goaty" milk I like to make cheese from, but I don't like in my tea. However, a friend keeps Nubians and said, "You'll find this very different!" and indeed, it wasn't very goaty at all, and fine in tea! )

Also I've taken to drinking my rosehip tea with orange juice, and my peppermint tea with a little splash of lemon. So if anyone here has any good flavour combinations, I'm all ears! ;-)

I'll get onto responding to each of you shortly. Meanwhile, I'd like to show any of you who are interested in the ancient mountain ranges of Western Australia some photos from a walk we did in the Porongurups recently, with a neighbour who also likes walking.

I'll start with the first photo we took, which is my husband in a tree hollow at the base of the range. This is a Karri tree, a Eucalypt that becomes quite tall and massive (although there are even taller and more substantial Eucalyptus species in Australia). Because of extensive logging in the last 200 years, few really grand old trees survive, but this is one of them:










A full-screen slide show with captions (below photo bar) can be entered here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/20870502306/

Use left arrows to go forward. All photos can be clicked on to display full screen size.

We love scenic spots like this and if anyone here has photos of their favourite nature spots, it would be cool if you posted them here. We're a pretty international group of people here and I like armchair travel. ;-) And for me, getting out and walking in places like this is one of the main ways I actually stay in the kind of shape which I need to be in to ride a horse!


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## SueC

Side note: Loved what Brett discovered growing at our place. These are called Snail Orchids and are so cute...


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## SueC

And here's the other local mountains: The Stirling Ranges, amazing jagged sandstone spires and flora... These are the photos I promised last week and Brett has now uploaded them.

Here's a few favourites:



























This last one is from the trip back into the agricultural land:











The full slide show starts here, use left arrows to advance, captions again in bar below photos:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/20354030934/in/photostream

We're hoping to do another peak soon. Mt Trio is good this time of year, lovely Darwinias. We used to climb all the accessible peaks at least once a year before we started building, and now we're trying to reclaim that!


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## egrogan

Wow, that last one is gorgeous. What's the yellow in the field?


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## frlsgirl

Reminds me of the Lüneburger Heide in North Germany:


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Wow, that last one is gorgeous. What's the yellow in the field?


This is canola in full bloom. Our region produces mainly beef, dairy, sheep, wood chips, canola and cereal crops like wheat and barley. There is also some intensive fruit and vegetable production, along with olive groves and vineyards.


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## SueC

frlsgirl said:


> Glad you are feeling better.
> 
> I've only met/experienced 3 Haflingers in person and all 3 of them were super stubborn. I'm sure that cooperative Haflingers do exist; I just haven't met them.
> 
> Britta und Silber? Sounds familiar, but I don't exactly recall.
> As far as reading goes, I subscribed to Wendy magazine; I think they still exist. I also had a copy of "The Making of Ahlerich" - that was a must read after Dr. Reiner Klimke and Ahlerich took Gold at the Olympics. I also had a general instructional book that I studied religiously.
> 
> I did watch a lot of horse related shows and movies; including Black Beauty, Rivahlen der Rennbahn, and Die Kinder vom Immenhof.


It's probably that we left in 1982, I've not heard of the last two. We mostly had "Der Doktor und das Liebe Vieh" which is actually a dubbed "All Creatures Great and Small", and they also ran dubbed versions of "Lassie" and, unbelievably, "Skippy the Bush Kangaroo"...which is actually _so_ lame, I've no idea who came up with that concept.

I've met, but not ridden, Haflingers. I did once get to ride a Welsh Pony bareback and that was my first ever bareback experience at around age 10. There was a girl at Einsbach who had one, and one day the two of us went out for a walk and shared her pony bareback. She mostly rode bareback and was a huge fan of that, and she egged me on to trot and canter her pony bareback on a stubble field after demonstrating that herself. Soon after, encouraged by the experience, I started riding our French Trotter mare bareback.

I didn't know of Wendy magazine but we did get Tierfreund in primary school, and that was a really super magazine that was so educational about wildlife all over the world, the welfare of domestic animals, environmental issues and social justice for the world's poor. They documented things like slaughter transports for horses (typically Germany to France and Poland) at the ends of their life spans and explained why the transports were so stressful and the animals should be processed locally instead. Also battery hens, bullfighting, habitat destruction in the wild, explanations of various local ecologies, recycling / reusing / using less, eating lower on the food chain, the hazards of plastic pollution - all those sorts of things. I think in retrospect it's so remarkable that there was a children's magazine for all that - I've not seen anything like that in Australia. My classmates and I were glued to it.

You mention religiously studying general instruction books. I did that too! I think in part that's a good German cultural thing. I had several, and also "Reiten mit Vernunft" by HJ Koehler. I think it's such an advantage to do lots of theory as well. Is the Ahlerich book still in print?

By the way, that's a pretty shot of the Lüneburger Heide. Have you ever seen Heidschnucken for real? I've seen photos and love the horns!


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## SueC

Bondre said:


> Sounds like you've been through a bad patch with your bronchitis, but I'm glad to hear you're starting to have enough energy to climb mountains and ride again.


Thank you, I'm glad too. It's no fun being ill and bronchitis is a nasty thing that sets you back so much in sleep and fitness. An illness like that does make you appreciate good health much more though and not take it for granted.




> Sunsmart's flying trot sounds really superb. Do the STBs do this naturally or do they have to be taught?


They can usually do it in the paddock from the time they are little, and track training improves their running technique further. The French Trotter mare had raced and her trot was such an amazing experience for me as a child, after riding on more sedate riding school horses. I think it's hard to give that kind of gait up after you have discovered it, especially seeing that the French mare had a totally standard canter and all that as well, and indeed the vast majority of SBs and Trotter breeds do. It's mostly poor training, poor re-training and poor riding that gives people issues with the canter on those sorts of breeds. I rode a fair few of my family's harness racers and had no issues with their canters etc. Occasionally you strike a natural pacer who actually doesn't like to trot faster than a jog (they want to pace for faster speeds), and tends to canter disjointed. One natural pacer we had was also a super trotter, very ambidextrous, and had a lovely canter and gallop.

I was very lucky that my replacement riding horse when the French Trotter mare was put in foal also had an amazing trot, although not a Trotter breed. It was a Crabbet/Polish line working Arabian and she had a floating trot and amazing extension. She didn't trot quite as fast as the French Trotter mare and it had a slightly different feel: The French mare was passing gaited - the hind legs went wide to reach around the front legs - my Arabian mare was line gaited - stayed on the same track with front and hind legs, but there's a theory that the reason so many of those Arabians are slightly cow hocked is to reduce interference at the fast trot which they do so well.

My Arabian mare matched several of the grandget of the French mare trotting around the training track when they were doing pacework (long distance trotting training, as opposed to sprint training, which happens in a different session). I tried it by following the harness horses and saddle trotting.

Sunsmart is line gaited and can clunk himself if I don't trim his hooves very short. His dam is passing gaited like his great-grandmother was.




> Once, just once, when I was riding Macarena she did a trot that felt like flying. We were on the way home and she wanted to rush and was trying to break into canter. I said no, trot, and she went into this fabulous extended trot that felt as if we were floating. Sadly I've never managed to get her to repeat it - things like this make me wish I knew more dressage.


The Spanish breeds do have a bit of Arabian infusion, don't they? So might have some of the genetics for an Arabian floating trot? The main thing again for encouraging that kind of trot is making sure the horse knows that the "faster" cue when trotting doesn't mean "break into a canter" - unfortunately, it's a common flaw in training to teach horses to canter as a "go-faster" proposition, rather than with a specific cue. Think about lungeing, that's where it often starts and many people cue the horse to canter by chasing it and encouraging it to go faster until it breaks and changes into canter, and then they reward that.

Some dressage trainers actually do the canter-on from the walk only in early stages of training, to avoid that issue. I didn't, but I taught my horses different tempi at the walk and trot before cantering them, so they got "extend" and "go slower/faster" before they cantered under saddle, and no confusion. There is also this thing about teaching "extend stride" versus "increase number of strides per unit time" and that involves seat cues, leg cues, subtle rein shifts, and a lot of mind bending.

I've seen lots of non-trotting breeds do marvellous extensions with training. The thing they don't necessarily pick up is speed, and it's a combination of extension and picking up the pace (more strides per unit time) that gives you the flying trot of a good trotter.




> Look forward to seeing your photos of your local hills. I climbed a lot of Scottish mountains in my twenties, but I've barely climbed a thing here in Spain. The landscape isn't so inviting - no established paths - and all the mountains are covered with horrible scratchy undergrowth, not very comfortable for walkers.
> _Posted via Mobile Device_


That does sound as uncomfortable as when Brett and I tried to do some of the "off the beaten track" routes in the Stirlings after buying a book on this, written by walking nuts. They actually have line drawings of "now steer towards the rocks of this shape" and "follow the saddle along the dotted line shown here and try to avoid the heaviest undergrowth." :rofl: We used to try these walks out on my husband's birthday, until he decided his birthdays were going to be free from exploratory walking. That's because the last time we did it, the walk that was meant to be 6 hours all up stretched into 12 hours as we got lost several times, got stuck in undergrowth that was nearly impossible to pass, and, highlight of highlights, had to scramble up a really dangerous cliff with a sheer drop at the top, without a rope. Man that was hairy - I really hate sheer drops, and the idea of potential death should I slip. :shock:

Lucky you about those Scottish mountains. If we had a TARDIS... we've seen some on TV, looks wonderful. Do you have any photos in digital format? We're real suckers for foggy, atmospheric climbs...


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> When I first got back to riding as an adult, one of the first horses I rode was a Hafflinger called Nutmeg. I was on her for the first canter I'd had in a good 5-7 years, on a lunge line, in an arena, what could go wrong? That pony was the poster child for blowing up her belly when tacking and no matter how much you tighthened the girth or checked it while you were on, there was always a chance she could outsmart you. So I am cantering unsteadily along on a 20-meter circle, and she starts speeding up and bulging out her shoulder, which made the saddle slip as the girth was not properly tightened, flinging me out at the wall. All I remember is crashing into the wall sideways as the saddle slid down around her barrel and having the wind knocked out of me when I hit the ground. That set me back quite a bit in the confidence department!


I can imagine it. That's usually only funny in a novel! I think the worst falls are when the saddle goes skewiff. I've never fallen nearly as badly from bareback - nothing to get stuck on.


Quote:
Originally Posted by *SueC*   
_It was so funny though, Sunsmart was doing his flying trot and his mother was sitting right behind him doing the same, and his uncle was coming up beside him pacing (he's a natural pacer), and those two were *in their paddock rugs* and doing the full racing formation thing ex-harness racers automatically do when running in a group! :rofl:_



> I love this image


It was great fun, although it only happened for a short while. I'll see if I can cajole them into coming along a bit further next time, they could do with the sight-seeing and the extra exercise. The funniest thing for me, apart from that they were in full harness racing mode _in their paddock rugs _(I suppose the leg straps might have reminded them of hobbles :rofl, was that they did racing formation and had those really intensely focused looks in their eyes that you see in races, and in stalking sheepdogs actually! :rofl: And Sunsmart also immediately went into formation mode. You could just hear him thinking, "I'm in the lead and I'm maintaining it!" and his uncle was going, "I'm on the outside and I'm going to try to outsprint this fellow!" and mum at the back was going, "I've got the slipstream and heaven help the others if there is a gap and I can get out!"

Experienced horses really get racing technique, and these three are so funny. It's so out of context to suddenly, on a sand track in the bush, find yourself in a quasi-trotting track scenario. When my Arabian filly was young, we got her to tag along with us when we rode the mature horses, and she just ran along having fun. It was very casual. Whereas ex-harness racers just "switch into mode" in groups. The French mare did it too. If she had the lead on a trail ride and anyone came up outside her, she's get this hyperfocused expression and put her ears back and extend her stride and ask, "May I _really_ run now?" She would also drift out to cut off the challenger unless you tracked her straight with your aids. It's serious business to them.


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## SueC

*Bondre*, I have a clarification for you:



SueC said:


> ...The main thing again for encouraging that kind of trot is making sure the horse knows that the "faster" cue when trotting doesn't mean "break into a canter" - unfortunately, it's a common flaw in training to teach horses to canter as a "go-faster" proposition, rather than with a specific cue. Think about lungeing, that's where it often starts and many people cue the horse to canter by chasing it and encouraging it to go faster until it breaks and changes into canter, and then they reward that.
> 
> Some dressage trainers actually do the canter-on from the walk only in early stages of training, to avoid that issue. I didn't, but I taught my horses different tempi at the walk and trot before cantering them, so they got "extend" and "go slower/faster" before they cantered under saddle, and no confusion. There is also this thing about teaching "extend stride" versus "increase number of strides per unit time" and that involves seat cues, leg cues, subtle rein shifts, and a lot of mind bending.


It's relatively easy to avoid creating this problem with the canter-on cue when you are training your own horses from scratch, and you're aware of that kind of stuff. It is much harder to train a horse that's already had that miscommunication drummed into it by some other person before you bought the horse (already saddle trained, or lunged with that miscommunication). Many "ready-made" horses come with this problem. And you can fix it, just prevention is easier than cure, and less time-consuming.

Also I ought to be a bit more careful with my language around what the horses are being taught. It's just the _cues_ for different things they already know how to do themselves, in the vast majority of things we ask from them. So we're teaching a horse a _cue_ for canter-on, as distinct for a _cue_ for extend stride at same gait, and/or increase stride frequency at same gait. We're not actually teaching horses to canter, extend strides/stride frequency etc. Pedantic I know, but important. You wouldn't believe how many people I've talked to who are convinced their OTSB really "can't canter" rather than doesn't understand a canter-on cue... (and I know you're not in that category)...


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## SueC

Today, an esteemed HF friend with whom I've had fascinating discussions on horse and human behaviour mailed me a link about one Tom Dorrance saying, "I think you would have liked him." I'd not heard of him before - to be honest, as a European-origin rider I've not generally been impressed by training stuff I saw coming out of the USA - some of that ******* "horse breaking" mentality I find really abhorrent - that whole "man versus beast domination contest" rather than inter-species cooperation and mutually respectful relationship.

So it was really nice to sit down and read this link and find such a lovely attitude in a horse person from that same culture. My friend was spot on: I would have liked him. Here's an excerpt - and I've highlighted things which I think really deserve emphasising because they are so different from how many people see it, particularly here in cyberspace. I completely agree with those points and am attesting to them as principles we've also independently found to be true and helpful in 30-odd years of training our own horses.


_I'm convinced that there are essentially three general things that Tom does which makes his relationship with horses so successful. First, *he pays attention*. For instance, whether he is watching or riding he is aware of exactly where all the feet are at any given moment-- not just the horses, his or yours, too. *He is totally aware of the tiny details*. Where it might take a cocked ear or bared teeth to tell most of us a short story, Tom *reads a whole book from a tight muscle or a slightly short step* with the left hind foot. He has paid close attention for eighty years and remembers it all. 

The second thing is simply this: *Tom sees horses as equals. That is, Tom doesn't believe his being human gives him any metaphysical superiority over any horse. To him, horses have as much right to their being as he does to his-- no more, no less, just equal. He treats them the way a very considerate and fair-minded gentleman would treat his equal. He grants them a basic being-to-being respect.* 

To people who have cultural expectations similar to those of Tom and many of the older Westerners, this description will mean a lot. To others, whose cultural expectations are more combative, particularly in their relationships with their family and friends, this won't convey what I mean. Once when he was helping me work with a horse, he asked me to do something-- I don't remember what now-- then cautioned me, *"Don't insult her, just ask." The kind of respect that Tom gives horses is characterized by kindness and informality. It involves carefully avoiding surprises and it always involves leaving a horse its sense of dignity.* 

*Tom expects to get the same kind of respect back from the horse.* He does whatever it takes to get it. Of course, he is so *aware of what makes any horse tick*, he* usually doesn't have to do much*. You or I might have to do considerably more. 

While a lot of Tom's relationship with horses comes from what he is, he does use a lot of specific techniques to achieve what he wants. I suspect that he has only worked them out in detail in the process of helping other people work through problems. Most of us can learn these techniques easier than we can those factors that seem to arise out of Tom's unique personality. I'll try to illustrate with examples throughout the rest of the article. 

Like many other horsemen he teaches a horse to move away from leg pressure, and usually he expects people to flow with the movement of their mounts. At a walk, this means each of the rider's legs moves roughly in time with the front leg on that side. Many of us tighten the muscles in our legs and speed up the motion slightly to drive the horse into a faster walk. I do this habitually. Once, when Tom was helping me this must have been getting in the way. He simply said, "Sometimes, I tell people to ride without legs." I let my legs relax and hang down easily. They still moved slightly with each step. But with the muscle tension out, there was no demand from my motion and no pressure on the mare. I must have done the right thing because Tom didn't say any more about it and the mare began working better. 

Remember, Tom is *very flexible; he adjusts to fit the specific situation*. If I say Tom did this or that, it doesn't mean he'd do the same thing in a similar situation with a different horse. 

If you ask Tom a question about how to do something or how to get your horse to do something, he'll look real serious for a second then earnestly say, "Well, that all depends." What he means is that *he needs to know more details before he can give a good answer. Each horse and each situation is different*. Sometimes he will ask a question to prompt the details that he needs, or he just might wait until they're volunteered. Then, he'll say, "Well, you might try...." If you'll listen, *he'll often offer several suggestions of what might work*. 

If you do try something Tom suggests or if you try to do what I describe Tom doing in any of the examples I might use and * it doesn't work, you're going to have to stop and think about the general principles and come up with another way to try to accomplish your goal*. This is what makes Tom's approach so hard for the rest of us but so rewarding for those well versed in it. As Tom once said at a clinic, "I can't give you eighty years worth of experience this afternoon." 

When I tried to talk to Tom about taking hold of a horse's mouth in more technical terms--amount of pressure and speed of application, he very nearly didn't respond at all. I'm sure he understood but thought that such an approach was beside the point. If you read True Unity, his book with Milly Hunt Porter, you'll find that he talks about things like feel, timing, balance, goals, and respect but not about specific techniques. He's likely to tell you how to go about achieving something but unlikely to tell you exactly what to do. 

When Tom mentions timing in his book, he makes a point about the right instant-- *the right instant for the horse to make a move and the right instant for the rider to act to help the horse. Tom might state the general rule something like this, "Support and direct, before it happens." *

I watched Tom spend the better part of an afternoon, trying to get a rider to pull on one snaffle bit rein when her horse had the front foot on that side in the air, so that he would step more easily toward the new direction. Tom wanted the rider to cue when it was easy for the horse to do what she wanted. The window of opportunity was really that period of time from when the weight came off that foot until it had begun its descent down again. There was a best time to cue and the horse responded most readily when Tom took hold of the bit. In the end, the rider was not hitting it perfectly, but sometimes she hit it within the window of opportunity. Tom was satisfied because both she and the horse had made as much progress together as they were ready to achieve. 

There's a parallel in music. A good musician times the beginning and ending of her notes and changes in volume and pitch exactly right part of the time and almost right most of the time. A virtuoso times these things exactly right almost every time. 

I don't know how many times I've heard Tom say to me or someone else. "You're too late. We don't worry about it this time but use it to prepare for the next time." 

One afternoon, Tom was helping me by letting me help him with a nervous mare owned by one of his friends. At first he had me trot and lope to warm her up just enough to take the edge off. "A horse has to develop confidence in his surroundings first, then themselves and their rider," Tom explained. The mare didn't want to buck, but she wanted to go too much. She rooted her head and chewed on the bit. I could feel her strength coming up from her hind legs through her loin and neck. I tried to change the way I took hold of her mouth but no matter what adjustments I made, she kept on tossing her head and gnawing the snaffle. 

When Tom began directing me, we walked. In fact we spent more than an hour walking, stopping and talking, and walking again. As I pointed the mare straight down the center of the arena, Tom said, "Now, just stop your hands." His hand sign seemed to say "do it easy." I took that to mean that he wanted me to put a very light -pressure on her mouth then wait patiently for a response. I stopped pushing with my legs, took the slack out of the reins and waited. Eventually the mare stopped. When she did, I responded immediately by relieving that light pressure. We worked at this quite a while. It was almost as if we were seeing how slowly I could stop the mare. As we repeated the exercise, the mare responded more and more readily to the slight pressure and I lightened up even more to keep the transition very smooth. 

Of course, each time we stopped moving meant that we soon had another transition from the stop into a walk. Tom was as particular about how gentle and in time with her I was in this starting as in the stopping. At first, when she still wanted very much to go, I had to keep some contact to keep her standing until Tom asked for a start. I let the pressure off slowly in order to keep the mare from taking off too fast. After a while, Tom said, "Open up a little more for her." After that, I moved my hands ahead a little quicker and farther when I asked her to start. A little later, Tom said, "You're opening up too much." The level of support that the mare needed had changed but I hadn't. 

Gradually, the mare and I got more and more in tune to each other. Tom had been very careful to keep me from reacting too quickly so that the mare *gradually developed a real confidence that she could trust me not to surprise or hurt her. As this confidence developed, she grew more and more relaxed and I suppose I did, too*. "See now," Tom said once. "A little bit ago all you had to do was give her permission to move. Now, she waits for you to suggest it." * It was important that I suggest instead of demand*. 

Somewhere in the middle of all this, the mare quit chewing the bit and throwing her head. Apparently, *those things had been symptoms of a more important underlying problem*. It was really a matter of confidence. By the time I had loped her around the arena a time or two in the warm up, she felt pretty confident that her environment-- where she was-- was something she could live with comfortably. But whoever had ridden her before me apparently hadn't given her much confidence in riders. I probably wouldn't have either if Tom hadn't been there to guide me. 

Her self-defense strategy was to take control of the bit and the speed away from the rider. Her strategy might not have produced a pleasant experience for either her or a rider but she seemed to think that by seizing control she could get a kind of mental relief by avoiding the unexpected. If this sounds convoluted, you have to remember that* over several million years of evolution, the horse developed a keen ability to escape from trouble by taking the initiative and running*. 

This entire series of exercises was done at a walk. But, after the mare and I came to our *mutual understanding* and had gotten in time with one another, Tom suggested that I try to change leads at a lope. Interestingly enough, our togetherness did not fall apart when we speeded up. Although this mare had never done a flying change of leads before, when I gave her an opening to change-- *supporting her with my legs without kicking and my hands without pulling*-- she did it. The first change felt a little awkward but the second and third were much smoother. After those good changes, we quit. "*You have a tremendous responsibility, [as rider and trainer]*," Tom said. "Don't overexpose the horse so that they don't lose it, once they've got it." _

The link is here:

Tom Dorrance: A Most Extraordinary Horseman (Part 1) - Mike Thomas Horsemen

Thank you very much for that, RCD! 

I read the whole of the link, and its follow-up, and I do have something I'd like to critique. It's not about TD, that's fine. Obviously horse people aren't clones of each other even when they agree on basic philosophies, and will have slightly different approaches and tactics, e.g. I'd personally never back a horse without preliminary preparations because I don't think it's acceptable to do something that will cause a horse disquiet if that's so easily prevented with preliminary work.

My critique is more about some key aspects of how the writer of the articles presents horsemanship, and he's not the only person who does it either. Many people who review very capable horsepeople seem to assume that the person they are reviewing is somehow the first person in history who invented particular approaches and philosophies, or who had that "ESP" quality with animals, or who put so many threads together in their web. There is this tendency to deify, and again I think this is especially prominent in American culture - to make gurus out of people and to feel they are so unattainable, and then to kind of make apostles out of the people who learnt directly from them. I think this probably would have embarrassed TD, as well, to be portrayed like that, because he would have understood that good horsemanship and good training philosophy crops up regularly all across the globe and all across history, and crops up in tutored people as well as quite untutored people who are capable of learning from their own experiences, and good at observing.

If we drew a Venn Diagram, there would be a lot of overlap in both philosophy and practice in Tom Dorrance and our Australian Tom Roberts who wrote the "Horse Control" series that was my most useful comprehensive horse training guide ever for training my own horses. And they weren't close associates or anything like that, comparing notes. Tom Roberts predates Tom Dorrance, and likewise, other very capable people predated Tom Roberts. Good horsemanship evolves independently many times over in time and space amongst people who have the right kind of disposition and attitude towards the animals with whom they are working, and whose observational skills and experiential learning are finely developed.

These people may or may not ever hear of each other. I think it's mostly modern people's removal from nature, and the anthropocentric approach ingrained in Western culture, and the various emotional baggages people have that get in the way of automatic empathy and respect for fellow creatures, that create the barriers for acquiring good horsemanship.

Those things can be worked on, and if people worked on changing themselves instead of changing their horses, a lot of progress would be made.

:apple: :music019:


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## bsms

I have very limited experience with horses. FWIW, Lilly and Mia - both purebred Arabians - were what I once called "Please and Thank You" horses. By that, I meant that if you always said "Please" and "Thank you", they would give you their very best. If you said, "Do it, dammit!", they would respond, "Why?" Or even, "Make me!"

Trooper is not a "Please and Thank You" horse, which is part of what makes him good for beginners. He'll save 100% effort for someone he likes (my youngest), but he'll give 90% to someone he doesn't care about (me). I'm sure he prefers to be asked before being told, but it isn't a big deal to him either way. And he seems to view "Thank You" as a waste of words. He's more of a "Dragnet" horse - "Just the facts, ma'am".

Bandit is closer to Trooper than to Mia in personality. At least for now. I'm not certain he knows what "Please" means. He likes a thank you, but doesn't really expect it. He is a submissive type horse around other horses, and he seems that way with people too (although the two don't always match). If you say please, he seems to take it as uncertainty on the rider's part, and uncertainty makes him nervous. He acts more confident if I tell him I've already decided and he doesn't need to think about it.

If something really makes him nervous, then getting him involved in the decision on how to handle it works well - a trick from Tom Roberts. "We can swing 50 feet to the left, we can trot, or we can take one step closer every 30 seconds, or I can turn you around, go back 75 feet, dismount and lead you - which do you prefer?" A lot of times, just giving him 10-15 seconds to look and assess, followed by a light squeeze is all it takes to get him to go past something. But you have to develop a feel for what is going on in his head.

I've self-banned myself again from the dressage sub-forum. I hadn't posted on it for 5 years, but stuck my toe back in the waters and...had folks get upset that I said I didn't want to follow all the advice found in a book on dressage. Part of my problem was with equating "constant contact" with "communication". It is certainly a way of communicating between a skilled rider and horse, but it is also certain a good rider and good horse can communicate a lot without contact (or bits).

I've had folks tell me they couldn't feel their horse thru a western saddle. All I can say is that I can. The tension in the back, the pattern of footfalls, the balance of the horse, the head position, ears, shifting, etc - all communicate quite well. What I find with Bandit is that holding slack reins in one hand and using my legs for reassurance tells my horse, "You're a big boy! You can do this!" in a way that directing him with reins does not. It makes us partners working together on a problem.

Of course, both competitive dressage (English) and competitive reining (western) seem to emphasize submission instead of teamwork. And in defense of ranches - if you need to go out, get on a horse you haven't met before, and go ride 40 miles into rough country and work cattle, you need obedience first and foremost. It is a job, for both man and horse. Neither needs to like the other very much.

Any parent knows you cannot apply one technique to all kids and get good results. Each child is different. So are horses, and so are riders. You need to seek common ground with the horse you are on. I think it boils down to caring enough and having enough respect for the horse that you SEEK the answer. I don't think horses mind if we don't HAVE the correct answer already. 

Like a good trainer, they reward the try...:riding:


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## SueC

bsms said:


> I have very limited experience with horses. FWIW, Lilly and Mia - both purebred Arabians - were what I once called "Please and Thank You" horses. By that, I meant that if you always said "Please" and "Thank you", they would give you their very best. If you said, "Do it, dammit!", they would respond, "Why?" Or even, "Make me!"


Arabian horses as a breed lived very closely with nomadic people for centuries and are renowned as a sensitive and intelligent breed. "Do it, dammit" doesn't work on many Arabian horses, and on those who do get coerced, they're usually not happy about it - from my observations of people and horses. When I occasionally lost my temper and got into impatient "Do it, dammit" mode as a teenager with my Arabian mare, it would set my training back several pegs, and I'd have to work really hard on restoring a good relationship between us before I could recover that ground. (When I didn't lose my temper and worked quietly with her, and gave her uptake time, she'd pretty much do anything asked for, and once she "got it" she'd then give that instantly next time I asked.)

My father says the same thing about training his harness horses. On the whole, I think SBs tend to be a bit more "Ok, let's get on with the job" without as much emotional complexity. But the really clever ones we also found to be more emotionally complex, and "Do it, dammit" was never a good recipe for them. They were also our best horses.




> Trooper is not a "Please and Thank You" horse, which is part of what makes him good for beginners. He'll save 100% effort for someone he likes (my youngest), but he'll give 90% to someone he doesn't care about (me). I'm sure he prefers to be asked before being told, but it isn't a big deal to him either way. And he seems to view "Thank You" as a waste of words. He's more of a "Dragnet" horse - "Just the facts, ma'am".
> 
> Bandit is closer to Trooper than to Mia in personality. At least for now. I'm not certain he knows what "Please" means. He likes a thank you, but doesn't really expect it. He is a submissive type horse around other horses, and he seems that way with people too (although the two don't always match). If you say please, he seems to take it as uncertainty on the rider's part, and uncertainty makes him nervous. He acts more confident if I tell him I've already decided and he doesn't need to think about it.
> 
> If something really makes him nervous, then getting him involved in the decision on how to handle it works well - a trick from Tom Roberts. "We can swing 50 feet to the left, we can trot, or we can take one step closer every 30 seconds, or I can turn you around, go back 75 feet, dismount and lead you - which do you prefer?" A lot of times, just giving him 10-15 seconds to look and assess, followed by a light squeeze is all it takes to get him to go past something. But you have to develop a feel for what is going on in his head.


Yeah, that tends to be a very good approach. The "feel for the head" is something not everyone seems to develop, and it's so crucial. If you can't read is going on with your horse, you're working blind.




> I've self-banned myself again from the dressage sub-forum. I hadn't posted on it for 5 years, but stuck my toe back in the waters and...had folks get upset that I said I didn't want to follow all the advice found in a book on dressage. Part of my problem was with equating "constant contact" with "communication". It is certainly a way of communicating between a skilled rider and horse, but it is also certain a good rider and good horse can communicate a lot without contact (or bits).


I agree with you about that. It's unfortunate that people get upset when you don't want to follow something like it's a religion, but you want to experiment and come up with something that works best for you and your horse. People as a whole are often very "mono" and railroaded in their approaches. They just want to copy whatever their particular guru / system of thinking prescribes - and I actually think that's true for so many things, including horse riding and religion! And then people start sniping at each other: Denomination X versus Denomination Y. Personally I dislike dogma of any type and prefer an experimental and flexible approach.

About contact: Because I grew up on trails as well as in the arena, I rode horses differently for each. The trails are more about freedom and going hiking, the arena is more about holding hands and dancing. I do remember as a youngster being horrified by the artificially tucked in head positions of competitive dressage horses, and the constant imprisonment (it seemed to me) of the horse between excessively applied reins and excessively applied legs. So I just never rode like that, and anyway, classical dressage people will tell you that's shortcutting, and isn't going to give you the same results as a truly cooperative (rather than coercive) venture between the horse and rider. Classical dressage enthusiasts differ significantly from the competitive dressage crowd.

Sylvia Loch is an example, I'm enjoying her books at the moment (I've been to the town library!). Perhaps you can give people like her a try, since they don't advocate submission and heavy-handedness with horses. I think their riding looks better too, and the way their horses carry themselves.

The lady on this blog (showcasing the non-coercive training of a mustang, and its amazing results):

https://augustusthemustang.wordpress.com/

...started in classical dressage. I've had some interesting conversations with her and I think you'd have a lot of common ground with her too.




> I've had folks tell me they couldn't feel their horse thru a western saddle. All I can say is that I can. The tension in the back, the pattern of footfalls, the balance of the horse, the head position, ears, shifting, etc - all communicate quite well. What I find with Bandit is that holding slack reins in one hand and using my legs for reassurance tells my horse, "You're a big boy! You can do this!" in a way that directing him with reins does not. It makes us partners working together on a problem.


That sounds great. ...I think you're lucky to be able to feel your horse through all that leather!  I find that so much easier when I go without a saddle.




> Of course, both competitive dressage (English) and competitive reining (western) seem to emphasize submission instead of teamwork.


Whereas good ballroom dancing is definitely about partnership and reading each other! 




> And in defense of ranches - if you need to go out, get on a horse you haven't met before, and go ride 40 miles into rough country and work cattle, you need obedience first and foremost. It is a job, for both man and horse. Neither needs to like the other very much.


Yeah, it's a shame. Slavery built the pyramids, I suppose. (But it didn't do Michaelangelo frescoes, or Bach's Toccata & Fugue!)




> Any parent knows you cannot apply one technique to all kids and get good results. Each child is different. So are horses, and so are riders. You need to seek common ground with the horse you are on. I think it boils down to caring enough and having enough respect for the horse that you SEEK the answer. I don't think horses mind if we don't HAVE the correct answer already.
> 
> Like a good trainer, they reward the try...:riding:


Yeah, I think that's right! And aren't they good trainers? ;-)


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## bsms

Horses are wonderful teachers, if we are willing to learn. It is like my daughter's comment - 'most horses don't talk because most people don't listen'.

I don't object to genuinely responsive contact. My daughter tried the LiteRider bitless bridle, but she said when Trooper got nervous it was easier to bring him back to her with the bit - to tell him she was there too! I may try it again with Bandit, or try a good sidepull with him, because his mouth is an awkward one for fitting the bit right and I'm content to try communicating without it. But we'll see.

Where I get frustrated is when I'm told I must use constant contact or have a horse who isn't ready to ride. Heck, I rode MIA bitless for 3 years...not sure how either of us survived it, but the problems were due to training holes that I didn't know existed. I like bits, but with the right training an awful lot of horses could go without them! It seems self-evident to me that we should give cues to a tender area such as the mouth as little as possible, and use external cues whenever possible.

When I first switched from an Australian style saddle to a western one, the frame and all the leather under the leg really bothered me. But my horse seemed to like it, and I eventually started feeling my horse again. Maybe it is like a person who loses their sight, but then develops more focused hearing. I think the style of western saddle also makes a big difference. I still hate the Circle Y saddle my daughter loves. But the slick-fork, hard seat saddle Kevin built...well, it might be easier to fall out of, but I think it is easier to feel the horse as well. It certainly requires one to pay attention to balance in a way some western saddles do not!

Gotta admit though - it makes for a lot of leather under the leg:








​ 
I'd like to get another English saddle someday. I sold my Bates, but I was pretty fed up with the CAIR system anyways. If I end up keeping Bandit long term, then a good English saddle may be in my future. Bandit has been a very good horse for me, and he is teaching me a lot, but I miss the "Please and Thank You" attitude of the Arabian mares I've owned - that "_Oooo, what are we going to do together today?_" attitude. But we'll see. In the military, we used to joke that bonding was the result of shared misery. If so, then maybe Bandit and I need to go out and get miserable together! :think:

PS - I plan to buy a book by Sylvia Loch after the first. New month, new spending...


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## SueC

bsms said:


> Horses are wonderful teachers, if we are willing to learn. It is like my daughter's comment - 'most horses don't talk  because most people don't listen'.


Yes, I've seen you quote her on that before and it's a fabulous quote!  Could go into an "Equine Proverbs" somewhere!




> I don't object to genuinely responsive contact. My daughter tried the LiteRider bitless bridle, but she said when Trooper got nervous it was easier to bring him back to her with the bit - to tell him she was there too! I may try it again with Bandit, or try a good sidepull with him, because his mouth is an awkward one for fitting the bit right and I'm content to try communicating without it. But we'll see.


I think it's always good to experiment with these things and see what works best for you. I really enjoyed riding bitless in the soft hackamores you've seen, and when they fell apart I often just rode in a stable halter and bareback, sometimes even for endurance training on trails. (I was young and immortal! ;-)) I'm going to share here a home video we made of me riding my Arabian mare like that when she was 30, after she'd already been retired from riding for two years, and though I was still lungeing her regularly (to counter the awfully dipped back she was getting in her old age and help keep her in good condition), I'd not hopped on her back in over a year. It was totally impromptu.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaBbJZgKIXM

I actually found it really difficult to sit properly because of her dipped back. Also, there was a recent discussion on how sometimes bareback riding results in chair seats, and it reminded me of this clip. Basically, she was so broad across the back and shoulders that my legs just couldn't go anywhere else. In a saddle the angles are different. It's an amazing difference in seat position, isn't it? The photo below was three years earlier, so by no means the horse's prime either.














> Where I get frustrated is when I'm told I must use constant contact or have a horse who isn't ready to ride. Heck, I rode MIA bitless for 3 years...not sure how either of us survived it, but the problems were due to training holes that I didn't know existed. I like bits, but with the right training an awful lot of horses could go without them! It seems self-evident to me that we should give cues to a tender area such as the mouth as little as possible, and use external cues whenever possible.


Which is why I really like what this NZ lass is doing (and this is a different clip this time):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAYDfNUUGJk

Minimalism like that can be wonderful. Notice that she too says about "problem" horses that people are the problem - something a fair few people advising on HF find galling. I don't think it's any coincidence that people who can get on a horse and communicate with none of the usual tools or safety gear also have a knack for rehabilitating horses. I think it would make a good litmus test for that.

About the constant contact point: If people mean constant physical contact via bit and seat/legs then I don't think that's necessary. Contact can also be a mental thing. And as far as the physical contact with bit and seat/legs goes, I always liked TR's "Contact One" advice, which is the featherlightest contact you can have. That's how I ride when I ride with contact. My reins actually sit under my middle phalanges instead of near the knuckles for exactly that reason - it's not possible to apply nearly as much force from that place, and it's easy to make very subtle changes. Legs don't get clamped around the horse but sit still and relaxed most of the time. I move them forward/backward for circling etc, but I want to hamstring anyone who kicks or even digs their heels into the side of a horse. It's so unnecessary, and so deadening. All my "faster/slower/extend stride/alter tempo" type cues are exclusively through my seat, just subtle shifts of weight. I don't think you should be able to notice the aids most of the time when someone is riding well, they should be so subtle.




> When I first switched from an Australian style saddle to a western one, the frame and all the leather under the leg really bothered me. But my horse seemed to like it, and I eventually started feeling my horse again. Maybe it is like a person who loses their sight, but then develops more focused hearing. I think the style of western saddle also makes a big difference. I still hate the Circle Y saddle my daughter loves. But the slick-fork, hard seat saddle Kevin built...well, it might be easier to fall out of, but I think it is easier to feel the horse as well. It certainly requires one to pay attention to balance in a way some western saddles do not!


I saw that saddle on your journal and remember thinking that it's one I would actually volunteer to ride in - I thought that the saddle seems to have a deep seat similarly to my Ascot Romana instead of looking like a sofa. I've never ridden in a Western Saddle and most of them look so cumbersome to me and I want my knee roll and to be able to fall cleanly off a horse in an accident without a humongous horn and cantle locking me into place... but I looked at the saddle you got from Kevin and actually thought that might be quite a rideable saddle.




> I'd like to get another English saddle someday. I sold my Bates, but I was pretty fed up with the CAIR system anyways. If I end up keeping Bandit long term, then a good English saddle may be in my future.


I'm much happier with my current saddle than with the Bates Caprilli (which was a non-CAIR version), but twenty years ago the Caprilli was one of the better things on the market. I rode in some pretty rough APs at Riding School - hard flat things, and we had a Zaldi saddle for our first horse - Spanish or South American made I think, and predisposes to a chair seat, but OK for jumping.




> Bandit has been a very good horse for me, and he is teaching me a lot, but I miss the "Please and Thank You" attitude of the Arabian mares I've owned - that "_Oooo, what are we going to do together today?_" attitude. But we'll see. In the military, we used to joke that bonding was the result of shared misery. If so, then maybe Bandit and I need to go out and get miserable together! :think:


:rofl:

I have a feeling that your Bandit might thaw a little yet. On the other hand, some horses are a bit dull, and I've always preferred the more "difficult" ones that have a lot of brain activity! Sunsmart is one of that type, his dam and uncle are not - they are very friendly and likeable horses, but definitely not particularly clever or adventurous or thinking types. They also prefer just to get instructions and don't get very involved in two-way communication.

I miss how my Arabian mare used to stop on hilltops with views spread before her and just look out over the big wide landscape and sigh blissfully. She was a horse that loved to go, but she always stopped for a good view for quite a while and breathed in this "isn't this wonderful" way, and sometimes she's turn and look at me as if to say, "Are you enjoying this view too?"

What happened to Lily, by the way?



> PS - I plan to buy a book by Sylvia Loch after the first. New month, new spending...


:rofl: You must have quite an equestrian library by now! Usually I'll loan from the library to see if it's even worth owning it, unless it is totally obviously fabulous. It's pretty hard to compete with those four slim yellow books from TR...


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## SueC

*Blast from the Past!*

My DH just scanned and digitised two prints from an old family album for me, so I can share them.

This is my father and me in the mid-1980s training Classic Juliet to go in the cart when she was somewhere between one and two years old, which is the usual age we were getting young horses used to a cart. However, pretty early in the piece my father decided not to race two-year-olds at all. Also no full racing programme until the horse is mature. All our horses retired paddock sound and we have no issues with arthritis with any of the retirees, of which we still have a number in their 20s and one in his 30s.










At the critical stages we always had two people with a horse. Here I elected to drive and dad to lead. This was her first lap around the sand track with a driver. She'd been long reined extensively in preparation and had been familiarised with the cart. Next stage after this would be my father driving and me babysitting at the head, without a lead rope, just for the horse's confidence. The person at the head got pretty fit! :smile:










Classic Juliet became my father's best race mare. She had 7 wins, 6 second and 4 third placings. We didn't even race her until she was five as she was so small and took a while maturing. She actually won at her debut and I remember that well, she was sitting in the running line and then as she was eased out at 500m just went "zoooooom" around the field with her ears flat back and my dad was smiling like a Cheshire cat in the sulky.

After three years of racing we had to retire the mare as she broke off a stabilising structure in a front carpal joint in an accident. It didn't make her unsound but it did increase the risk that she might overextend the joint at speed and break a leg as a result, and we didn't want that. She reached her late twenties and died a few years ago. I still have her now 31-year-old full brother Romeo here in Redmond. He was born the year before her, actually, and has made it for years longer. I think the pasture here has really helped him, and the astronomical twice-daily bucket feeding...


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## SueC

*A Total Must-See*

If you've not seen this already, do yourselves a favour and check out the photos of this person tandem driving his horses, they're great! 

http://www.horseforum.com/driving/cart-sizing-615633/page2/#post7935929

He also has some stories with plots like The Goodies! :rofl: I'm still recovering from that one...


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## SueC

We tried to see if our old camera, which is more portable, is still usable. Hmmm. It is if you like surrealism. But anyway, I asked if Brett would capture some of the impromptu pleasantries between the horses and me as we were on our way to go plant some trees. The chestnuts siblings are like Snugglepot and Cuddlepie: They come as a unit like Siamese twins and usually I will have one either side of me when I offer a nice scratch:










Here's Le Chasseur counter-scratching the tie rail as I am scratching his tail area, and his sister is on the other side of me also getting her tail scratched by my other hand. Stereo scratchies!  What I find interesting is looking at the mirroring that happens between the horse feet and my feet, on this picture and the following ones from the same session.

I shake my head when I sometimes read on HF people saying you should never let horses that close to you because they are so large and "dangerous". Our horses yield at the slightest pressure and I've never got into a sticky situation having horses at liberty either side of me like this. Besides yielding sideways and backwards and any other way, they also don't apply impolite amounts of pressure when standing with you, and unlike some people on HF, I don't consider gentle contact impolite, not from my horses or my dogs or any other animals. Indeed, proximity is used to express affection in many social animals. Kelpies will rather endearingly lean against your leg when they're standing with you. 

More happy social grooming time captured here:










Please note the dying donkey in the background! :rofl:

Also here: ;-)










Sunsmart's nearly 26-year-old dam really likes a back rub.










She really is one of the cuddliest horses I've ever come across, in quite distinct contrast to her ticklish offspring!










Watch her lip in the next few photos:





































She was the second foal my family ever bred and she continued as she started: Super snuggly. Often, when I'm tacking up Sunsmart, she will sidle up next to him and look at the grooming bag and then at me, "Have you got a couple of spare minutes?" And when I go back to grooming Sunsmart, she'll stand ultra close and breathe on the both of us and give me looks. :rofl: Often I just throw her some tree lucerne off our bushes and that way she can have a good currying when I get home. It's spring here and the horses are shedding, and they are looking for extra attention with their coats!


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## SueC

I ruminated a bit about why I think it's unhelpful to describe horses as dangerous.

I think it's sensible to understand that a horse (or indeed cow) can weigh around ten times as much as you do, and to understand where your relatively safe standing positions are around a large animal. Generally this means: Not directly in front, not directly behind, and stand off around 30 to 45 degrees from the front when next to a horse, or stand a little back from the head, to avoid zones that horses are most inclined to rush into when startled (or indeed, with cattle, to avoid zones where you might be headbutted or charged). You have to be aware of where you are in relation to a horse, and you have to be able to read its body language.

When you work with your own horses and you know each other and they yield automatically when asked, you can relax a little about those rules, while keeping an eye on their body language so you will know when to move back to safer areas. It's something I don't think about, I do it automatically because I've been around large animals for over 35 years.

It's really a case of being alert, but not alarmed, though, as the cliche goes. The problem with telling people horses are "dangerous" is that it produces an emotional response in many people that can create apprehension, and apprehension and nervousness are not feelings that are going to be at all helpful when dealing with large animals, and particularly with large "flight" animals that can absorb those feelings by osmosis.

The other problem is that if it leads people to completely discourage friendly and polite social body contact from their own horses, it actually means their connection with the horse will not be as close and they will then be more, rather than less, likely to have accidents and miscommunications with their horse.

So, while it's good to be aware of the risks to life from large mobile objects, speaking of, cars are far more dangerous than horses and yet few people remember these risks when getting behind the wheel (one simple example of many, the majority of drivers do not leave a safe following distance between their own car and the one in front). Statistically, humans are also far more dangerous to humans than horses are. I think a sense of perspective is good, and reducing risk is good (while eliminating it to my mind is impractical and creates other risks). I don't think fear or nervousness are generally useful. I guess I'm saying, use your sense and logic and thinking, rather than feeding into fight-or-flight type biochemistry, which is often unhelpful.


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## bsms

It is tough to know what to say or think on the Internet. Someone will write 5 sentences and ask "Is this dangerous?" How in the heck can anyone know off of 5 sentences?

After spending time with Mia, there were things I'd do with her that I wouldn't consider doing around a strange horse, or even around Bandit after 4 months. Mia and Trooper both demonstrated a willingness to be hurt themselves instead of hurting the human next to them. The most obvious case was when we had two corrals separated by a narrow path - not a good idea. Lilly and Trooper had developed a hatred for each other that eventually led to Lilly being sold. My oldest daughter was leading Trooper between the corrals when Lilly attacked Trooper over the 5' fence. She bit him 3 times, and he saw it coming.

But there was no where for him to go except over the top of my oldest daughter. So Trooper was bitten 3 times, and he barely flinched until there was enough room to get my my oldest. Only then did he leap forward to avoid further attack.

If either Bandit or Cowboy was in that situation, I'm sure they'd go over the top of the human.

Another time, Mia and I were going thru heavy brush...long story as to why. I had dismounted. I was almost on my knees, pushing thru the brush. As I'd get near the end of the lead line, I'd give a little tug and Mia would move a few feet further. When I looked back, about halfway thru the brush, Mia was almost on her knees. The branches were grabbing and poking her and the saddle and snagging the stirrups. Mia had her eyes squeezed shut. She wasn't even looking where she was going!

That was when I realized the obvious: if she bolted, she'd go over the top of me and bust me up good. But we were committed, and I knew her, so we pressed on. When I was finally in the clear, I told her it was OK. She straightened up, opened her eyes, sighed, and was ready to ride.

I had done something stupid and put myself in a very vulnerable position. If I tried that with Bandit today, I'd probably pay the price. I think that will change with time. But right now, I don't trust Bandit not to step on my foot. We've had some 'discussions' about that. Cowboy isn't mean, but he'd save himself at any cost to the human. I don't think he'll ever change...at least 6 previous owners (some good, apparently - he's knows how to be an excellent little horse)...a lesson horse, ridden by people whose first lesson should have been the difference between a horse and an ATV - you get the picture. He's been around too many humans who didn't give a rat's rear about him to care very deeply about humans.

On another thread, there has been a long discussion about 'passive leadership'. Like some of the others on that thread, I don't like the terms 'good horse' or 'bad horse' or "mean horse' or 'respect', etc. I think we make more progress by thinking in terms of: "horse trained to do things I like" and "horse trained to do things I dislike".

Then when Bandit steps on my foot, I don't think "Bad horse! Sinner!". I just think, "Training opportunity - no, we don't act like that here!"

I was lucky. When I started at 50, there was an Internet tack store that had hundreds of online videos, all free, running 3-10 minutes, on subjects like "How to walk up to a horse". That basic - and I needed that level of help! I wish HF could put together a YouTube channel of videos on basic horse handling and understanding. With a strange horse, so much of the ride depends on how you treat the horse from the moment he first sees you until you mount up.

Folks who have been around horses all their lives tend to forget how much they know that a newbie doesn't even know to ask about. How you hold a hoof while cleaning it out can speak volumes to a horse. And judging from my fellow students during the months when I took lessons, many people are NEVER taught how to treat a horse with both firmness and respect. We want them to respect us without our ever showing them any...

< / rant > Sorry. Once I started typing, I got rolling. And indignant. But I also know what it is like to start as an adult (at 50!). I can't blame folks who are starting but whose teachers never teach them.


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## frlsgirl

Sue - just wanted to respond to your inquiry about tea.

In the mornings, I also love jasmine green tea but have recently switched to apple cinnamon green tea; I drink it plain; no sugar or cream.

But, as a special treat, I also drink black coconut tea, with some sort of creamer; I'm lactose intolerant so I've been experimenting with different types of milks; I was using soy for a while but recently tried hazelnut milk and really liked it. I think I'm going to try Lactaid milk next.

In the afternoon, I like a strong cup of black raspberry tea.


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## Bondre

SueC said:


> We tried to see if our old camera, which is more portable, is still usable. Hmmm. It is if you like surrealism.


Nice photos, interesting colours. Is the sky always purple in Australia? ;-) It's odd to see the horses in their winter woolies.



SueC said:


> I shake my head when I sometimes read on HF people saying you should never let horses that close to you because they are so large and "dangerous". Our horses yield at the slightest pressure and I've never got into a sticky situation having horses at liberty either side of me like this. Besides yielding sideways and backwards and any other way, they also don't apply impolite amounts of pressure when standing with you, and unlike some people on HF, I don't consider gentle contact impolite, not from my horses or my dogs or any other animals. Indeed, proximity is used to express affection in many social animals.


I think it's a question of knowing your horses. Mine are almost always at liberty when I interact with them, and because we know each other and have mutual respect, I can relax with them with confidence that no-one will get out of line. They are only two, of course, which makes things less complicated. A herd at liberty would be a different story. 

I would find it very sad if I felt I couldn't interact confidently at liberty with them. Last year, after introducing a new horse, there was a tense period until the new status quo was established. I hated having to be on my guard all the time, and I'm sure Macarena found it very stressful (she was the underdog).



SueC said:


> Often, when I'm tacking up Sunsmart, she will sidle up next to him and look at the grooming bag and then at me, "Have you got a couple of spare minutes?" And when I go back to grooming Sunsmart, she'll stand ultra close and breathe on the both of us and give me looks. :rofl:


Oh, the looks they give you :rofl: Flamenca is just the same. If I groom Macarena before riding, Flamenca sidles up on us and sticks her head in between Macarena and the brush lol. So I alternate between them, but Flamenca always gives me 'the look' when it's Macarena's turn for the brush. No doubt I COULD interpret all this as a massive lack of respect, seeing as yes, she has to invade my space to get between Macarena and the brush. But if I had that attitude and reprimanded her for approaching, I would miss out on some very endearing interactions with them both. 

Dear old thing, she really loves affection. I've only had her for eight months but it seems like she's been here for ever. If your old mare and Flamenca got together, they'd both do some fierce sidling trying to sneak in for the best scratches 
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## SueC

*Frlsgirl*, that all sounds delicious!  Thank you for sharing. I must keep an eye out for those variations, we may not have them here yet. Hazelnut milk sounds wonderful...

*Bsms*, thank you for your long rant, which was really interesting and entertaining as usual. Agree agree agree. Love the story about Mia and you in the undergrowth: Sometimes these things happen, and they are exactly the things we will remember fondly for life. I think in tight situations like that, teamwork really comes to the fore when you have a good relationship with your horse. ...I actually had no idea you'd never ridden (at all, at all? Not even as a kid at a fair?) before 50. Wow. Aren't you doing well? That's incredible. I joined HF more recently than you and so, from what I read, just thought you were re-riding after some limited experience earlier in life, like a few people on 40+. I think the POV this gives you is also really, really valuable: Because you're not starting with any autopilot, and you have to think about everything, and are a critical thinker, and therefore will automatically want to challenge some of the stuff that you come across that just doesn't seem logical or true. This, you're doing very well, whereas many people who grow up in the horse industry are unquestioning about a lot of suppositions, folk tales, practices etc. Sort of like growing up in a particular religious denomination. ;-)

*Bondre*, yes yes yes, and :rofl:! Thank you for stopping by and leaving this nice post. I hope you have a fabulous week.


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## egrogan

Hi Sue, I happened to have recorded The Hambletonian Stakes and its undercard a few weeks ago and just sat down today and watched it. It's been a long time since I watched harness racing, so I have a few random questions:

1. What is that strap between the poll and the withers that they connect right as the horses come onto the track? It seems to keep the heads held up pretty high, just wondering the reason.

2. What are the rules when a horse breaks stride? Seems like they can go to the back of the field and continue racing. Does a horse ever actually win after doing that? If not, why stay in the race?

3. This was a pretty crazy setup (they called it a "shady daisy") one of the horses (Dude's the Man) was wearing on the undercard- but with blinkers and a shadow roll, I'm curious what else they're trying to block out for him? 









Too bad the filly didn't pull it off in the Hambletonian, seems like she was a real fan favorite and with a little more distance would have gone passed the winner.


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Hi Sue, I happened to have recorded The Hambletonian Stakes and its undercard a few weeks ago and just sat down today and watched it. It's been a long time since I watched harness racing, so I have a few random questions:
> 
> 1. What is that strap between the poll and the withers that they connect right as the horses come onto the track? It seems to keep the heads held up pretty high, just wondering the reason.


It's a fixed headcheck and we do not use it ourselves. It's supposed to keep horses' heads elevated to bring back their centre of gravity or some such theory so they can supposedly run faster (we think that's a myth and that they run faster when they can use their bodies with the fewest constraints), and it's to stop the horse getting its head down as this makes it more likely for the horse to break into a canter (in pacing hobbles they can canter disunited, which is no speed advantage, indeed it results in the horse losing ground) and, some people think, having the ability to take the head down low makes it more likely the horse will fall.

We don't like artificially jamming horses up with gear into unnatural and uncomfortable positions - and we also don't like what happens when a horse with a fixed headcheck does fall. We've seen horses skid along helplessly on their bottom lips when they've fallen with their heads strapped high. Also they are unable to use their heads and necks to re-balance themselves if they trip or get unbalanced.

We race our horses either in no headcheck, or in a running headcheck. A running headcheck has rings through which the reins run and which helps stop the horse from lowering its head too far. When the reins are not applied above standard contact, the horse has a normal, uncramped head position, and in a stumble or fall, it has complete freedom of head and neck. It's kind of like a well-adjusted running martingale, but to stop the horse lowering its head below, rather than above, a certain point. We had a stallion who used to grab his breastplate for fun during warmups when in reins only, and this could result in him snagging himself on gear, so he's the kind of horse we put a running headcheck on.

The photo below is of my father's younger mare in a running headcheck. All you can see of it is the little plastic piece that connects the rein rings to the headcheck about halfway along the neck. To enlarge, click (you can do this twice). The head position is free-choice like this and the horse can balance itself according to its own feedback.











Below, a more experienced horse, Classic Julian, before his retirement from racing at age 14 (obligatory in WA, though hypocritical considering they have no trouble allowing immature horses to start repeatedly and damage themselves in the process). He wears the typical minimalist gear my father will use on fully trained and experienced horses.










There is a collar around the neck just to stop the reins getting potentially entangled with other things. The horse is in an open bridle and is just in pacing hobbles and a chest plate with long lines that get attached to the cart. One of his rear fetlocks is strapped because he has long pasterns and had the tendency to otherwise get gravel rash on his (inside, for our racing direction) rear "bumper".











During warmup, you can see how the long pasterns hyperflex and can land the horse's pastern joint too close to the ground. Short pasterns, on the other hand, provide less shock absorption and increase joint wear. Ideally, pasterns are longish without being overlong, and so they don't make contact with the ground. The entire family coming out of that line had long pasterns, and we needed to strap up his uncle Romeo as well, though not his mother (who was featured in the "blast from the past" photos a few posts back).

Front view:














> 2. What are the rules when a horse breaks stride? Seems like they can go to the back of the field and continue racing. Does a horse ever actually win after doing that? If not, why stay in the race?


It depends whether it's a pacing or trotting race, and if the latter, what country and district. In pacing races, horses never gain an advantage from breaking stride, as they can only canter disunited and this is slow. Because of the hassle it causes to other horses with the interruption of smooth traffic flow, a horse will be sent back to run satisfactory trials before being allowed to race again, unless the stewards accept that the break was due to gear failure or contact from another horse / driver.

In trotting races, horses are generally unhobbled and can theoretically gallop and gain speed advantage from breaking gait. In some places, a horse is automatically disqualified when this happens, but in most, the horse isn't disqualified if the horse actually clearly doesn't benefit from the break of gait. I expect they also will need to produce satisfactory trials before racing again.

Sometimes horses do win or place after breaking gait. Here's my father's young mare from above, who's a bit of a terror for breaking gait, in a race last year where she broke gait and still came second (and had to do six satisfactory trials before being allowed to return to racing).

Here's the link: If you want to watch, click the video replay icons next to Races 1 to view.

Race Results -PINJARRAÂ*Â*1 December 2014- Australian Harness Racing

Why do people stay in races if they clearly have lost too much ground in a break? Because then the horse still has a training run, by completing the race. Saves you doing another speedwork session. People will retire a horse from a race if the horse is unwell as a result of an incident in the race.

One of the reasons my father's young mare has issues with breaking gait is that she trains entirely on her own, like all dad's horses these days. This means she only gets to race in a fast group during trials or races. Most people match race their horses in training with other people's, but my father trains mostly at home and alone. My father's best horse friend died a few years ago and he feels very unmotivated to take his horses to the public track for training these days, to train with others. So it's not easy for a young horse nervous of tight group racing situations to get desensitised. I think she'd learn faster if she had regular training with other horses, but on the other hand dad is 77 this year and it's good that he still does what he feels comfortable doing, even if it's not quite what he used to do. His horses still earn enough to finance his hobby, and the retirees.  




> 3. This was a pretty crazy setup (they called it a "shady daisy") one of the horses (Dude's the Man) was wearing on the undercard- but with blinkers and a shadow roll, I'm curious what else they're trying to block out for him?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Too bad the filly didn't pull it off in the Hambletonian, seems like she was a real fan favorite and with a little more distance would have gone passed the winner.


Yeah, that's a pretty drastic setup of headgear (and did you notice the toes are too long as well? That's pretty common unfortunately, and unhelpful for the horse). We use shadow rolls at times in young horses getting used to night racing, otherwise they can try to jump over or spook at shadows made by the bright overhead lights! Blinkers, blinders etc: I'm afraid we consider them mostly shortcuts to getting the horse properly comfortable with being in a race and all its sights and sounds. We've also seen that backfire on people. If the horse can see where it is going, accident risks are reduced as the horse can take evasive action where necessary without waiting for the driver to direct it. Heavily blinkered horses will have no idea if they are getting too close to the cart in front or the horses around them.

Did you know some people even use noise-cutting ear plugs on race horses? Personally I think it's always better policy to let a horse use its senses and put the extra training in to make it confident, and I frown on these things as anything other than temporary measures for particular cases.

I'll have to have a look at a race replay!  My riding horse Sunsmart's sire, The Sunbird Hanover, raced in the US before export for stud duties.  Lots of connections in international racing there!


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## SueC

*Tree Planting!*

I mentioned we were en route to some tree planting on that psychedelic horse photo post on page 29. Since buying the property in 2010, we have been planting shelter belts and shade clumps in our pasture, and we have also started rehabilitating weed-invaded roadsides - and working on such a section of roadside was exactly what occupied us last Thursday. Tree planting is a winter/early spring thing, and we still have a couple more patches we want to do this year.










Brett with our box of tricks on the wheelbarrow: Tree protectors, mulch, an adze for making the deep planting holes, leather gloves, plasticised gloves for planting, wet weather gear and an innocuous looking 8 x 8 cell tray with seedlings aboard (green stuff in centre of arrangement). We've been using that simple setup for five years, in which time we have planted about 5000 trees and understorey plants so far in shelter belts and shade clumps across our pasture areas, and along degraded and weed-infested sections of roadside. - The wattle with yellow pompoms on the right is an Acacia saligna planted four years ago, and it has been suppressing the weeds for the previously embattled remnant local Melaleuca shrubs growing in the ditch. Left of the wattle are a couple of two-year-old Eucalypts from our 2013 planting round, and the grazing paddock behind the fence is bordered by a four-year-old shelter belt of Eucalypts and _Acacia saligna_ to the left, and a fodder belt of tagasaste (tree lucerne) in the background. It has a twin paddock (also 2ha) to the right off photo, and together with our 8.5ha pasture “common” allows for rotational grazing of stock and occasional exclusion to grow hay.











Roadside rehabilitation in an area degraded by invasion of weeds and perennial pasture grasses. These roadside reserves used to feature Australian remnant uncleared local species, but large roadside sections become choked and then taken over by pasture species, resulting in loss of biodiversity. We are controlling the grasses along sections of our roadverge by judicious annual applications of glyphosate and replanting native species that suppress grasses, such as Eucalypts and Acacias. This is helping what remains of the local remnant species, who are starting to come back from the brink in the rehabilitation areas. Eventually we aim to rehabilitate all the weed-infested sections of our road frontage with native species. We are also protecting the stretches of healthy remnant vegetation that remain along around half of our road frontage.


In the pasture behind the roadverge, our young shelter belts and shade clumps are starting to have a nice aesthetic impact on the previously monolithic pasture (look for multicoloured vegetation; the remnant Eucalyptus bushland behind the pasture is tall and grey-green). Even better, we have witnessed an explosion in the populations of small native birds and insects which have colonised our revegetation areas. The stock also benefit from shade, shelter and feed (tagasaste and acacia branches).











Brett on the far right in a “hole” we are closing in the roadside vegetation. The grey-green shrubs growing in the ditch are remnant local Melaleucas who have benefited from weed suppression via judicious glyphosate applications, and the replanting of weed-suppressing native species like Acacias and Eucalypts we have planted on the fence line. The yellow-flowering young trees are four-year-old _Acacia saligna_, interspersed with (still small) Eucalypts which take longer to get going.











Doing this creates a synthetic native verge composed of tough native species suited for planting into hostile areas, and remaining local species which benefit from the rehabilitation programme by bouncing back. Our dog Jess is walking near two four-year-old Eucalypts; younger plants are in the green protector sleeves all along the fence. Some native reeds and Melaleucas survive amongst the grasses we are gradually reducing and we have seen them bounce back and flourish on other stretches as we have controlled the grasses – such as on the far left.











Horses are infinitely more compatible with on-farm rehabilitation projects than cattle. In the five years we have been replanting deep-rooted native perennial vegetation in shelter belts and shade clumps across our pastures, we have never had to repair a single fence because of our horses – all the fence damage is due to opportunistic cattle figuring out when there is a temporary electric outage, and using it to bulldoze fences and replanted areas! Here, three of our horses are enjoying grazing near the tree belts, viewed through verge replanting with four-year-old Eucalpyts, and newly planted understorey in tree protectors between them. Some local shrubs to the right are also bouncing back due to the weed control we perform on these areas.











In this stretch of verge we are rehabilitating, the addition of the four-year-old, golden-flowering Western Australian wattle on the left, and some Eucalypts planted at the same time, is already adding to the beauty of the rural scenery. Tree protectors contain young understorey species, and the local original Melaleuca shrubs (under the Acacia and behind the road sign) are bouncing back as we battle the invading pasture grasses and other weeds for them.











That's me with an 8 x 8 cell tray of native seedlings tailored to a “hole” we are closing in the roadside vegetation. The grey-green shrubs growing in the ditch are remnant local Melaleucas who have benefited from weed suppression via judicious glyphosate applications, and the replanting of weed-suppressing native species like Acacias and Eucalypts we have planted on the fence line. The yellow-flowering young trees are four-year-old _Acacia saligna_, interspersed with (still small) Eucalypts and understorey species in tree protectors we placed in past years. In 2015 we decided to add Flooded Gum (_Eucalyptus rudis_), Swamp Mallet (_Eucalyptus spathulata_), Paperbark (_Melaleuca preissiana_), Tea Trees and a few other wet area specialists into this seasonally waterlogged section of verge, plus a few more Acacias for the drier spots. - In the background pasture, our young shelter belts and shade clumps are starting to make their presence felt in the landscape. Look for the multicoloured foliage in front of the grey-green tall remnant Eucalyptus bushland.











A local Blackboy (_Xanthorrhoea_ sp) has thrived, like more off camera, since we started controlling the grasses that were invading the verge. It also seems to love being near a four-year-old, nitrogen-fixing, weed-suppressing Acacia we planted, flowering with golden pom-poms in the background. The grey-green local Melaleuca shrubs to the left of the Blackboy are also looking so much healthier, and starting to seed successfully.











Here's Brett with a wider view of that area.











That's me putting a tree protector around a Paperbark seedling.











This is me on the western portion of the patch we are rehabiliting further this year, at the end of the planting session.











And here's Brett with the eastern section at the end of the session!

Landscape rehabilitation is a gradual process, particularly if you're also trying to finish an owner build, manage your stock and farm, run your household, open a farmstay, write magazine articles, ride your horse, and attend your respective external part-time employments! Still, we are really pleased with the results already evident, and think that this work is a good investment of our limited time.


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## bsms

"_I actually had no idea you'd never ridden (at all, at all? Not even as a kid at a fair?) before 50. Wow. Aren't you doing well? That's incredible._"

I wanted to learn to ride as a kid. My Dad said he'd teach me when he got back from Vietnam, but he didn't get back. My Mom thought it was a waste of $$.

In the late 70s, I took a riding class at college. "Mac" taught western riding. There were about 15 of us, and the class was a quarter - so maybe 12-15 times on a horse. He is the one who told us that trotting was the most useful gait for a horse, because it got you places with a horse who could still do things. He also insisted we learn posting. He didn't care about diagonals - said trotting was useful for covering ground, and diagonals weren't very important in open country.

I had a few chances to ride when visiting ranches. If you'd been on a horse before, they'd give you a level headed horse and you got on and rode.

In my 20s, while in the Air Force, I had a couple of months taking lessons in jumping. I don't recall there being any instruction - just get on a good horse, and start riding over things of increasing size. No helmets then, either. The place I was at had some very expensive horses owned by people in LA, who would helicopter out to ride 3-4 times a year. The horse I was jumping on was over $10,000...very nice horse, and his owner rode him several times a year!

After a couple of months, "lessons" stopped because I was transferred. The "instructor" told me I looked awful riding and she didn't know why I hadn't fallen off yet, but I seemed to get along well with 'my' horse. Seems to me that if you are an instructor, and a student looks awful riding, shouldn't you say something? OTOH, after several weeks of lessons, they let me come out and ride the horse any time I was free...which wasn't often in the military. So about 8-10 "lessons", and perhaps as many times just going there and riding 'my' horse without being watched.

Then I didn't get on a horse until 50.

But here is what was missing from any of that riding: How to work WITH the horse! In all of it, the horses were treated like ATVs. If they moved while you cleaned their hoof, you hit them. The idea of helping the horse balance, or squaring up his feet before cleaning, never got addressed.

When you went to get a horse, you walked directly up to their face and threw a rope around their neck. The idea of approaching a horse in a way that the horse would understand as non-threatening was never raised. 

If a horse balked, you hit them. If need be, you hit them harder.

With help from the Internet videos I watched at 50, I learned how to approach a horse politely - and I immediately saw a difference in how my horses responded! How to halter a horse gently, rather than throw a rope over their neck and stuff their face into the halter. How to get the horse to follow you instead of just jerking his head forward.

I followed the advice. I rode Mia for a few years in a rope halter, often with ugly results. When I took a few months of lessons at a local stable...well, there was some good instruction on working with a horse. Some. But the horses rode much better for me than for the other students because I had learned how to enter a stall, get my horse, groom and clean him, saddle him up and mount up POLITELY! How you pick up and release a horse's foot for cleaning can tell the horse a lot about you!

One very strong memory:

I was assigned a horse who was not very responsive to riders. When cleaning his rear hoof, he moved a foot and almost lost his balance. I dug my shoulder into his hip to help him, guided his rear foot back to the ground and kept the pressure in his hip until he could get his balance back.

He literally turned his head around 180 degrees and STARED at me. I offered him my hand, he gave a sniff, and I gave him a quick rub and told him I lost my balance sometimes too.

After I mounted up, he was receptive. Very receptive. Within minutes, he was demonstrating why he had once been a solid competitor. He would do stuff before I had a chance to cue him. It was like he was reading my mind.

The instructor was surprised at how well he was behaving. Said he was making everything easy for me. And he was. I didn't tell her he was doing it because I was polite when cleaning his hooves!

That sort of thing - the horse as a thinking, feeling creature - was totally absent from the lessons I had in the 70s/early 80s.

Of course, Mia was a huge part of my education. She was a horse you rode WITH, never just ON. She had too much personality, intelligence and drive to allow someone to just be ON her. It was impossible to ride her and not be aware she was thinking and involved, and expected the same from her rider!

But some of this is stuff that a good horseman raised around horses does without thinking. A new rider, particularly as an adult, doesn't know it and can go years without learning - unless someone shows them. And I don't know of any good resource now for showing someone the very basics. The stuff on YouTube is often the opposite of how it should be done, and none of my books discuss this sort of stuff.


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## SueC

Wow, bsms, that's so awful that horses weren't treated politely where you learnt, and I'm glad you worked out how to do it yourself. I took lessons in Germany in 1980 and we had it made clear to us all the time by our instructor that you were to be respectful and polite to a horse and not treat it like it was a machine or some kind of lesser being. You were expected to chat to your horse and let it sniff you before you tacked it up and brought it out, you were supposed to watch the horse's expression and body language to make sure you weren't brushing it too hard in the wrong spot or tickling it with being too soft, you were supposed to let it sniff the saddle before you put it on its back, you were supposed to tell it, "I'm getting on your back now, OK?" and to give praise every time the horse did something right / got what you wanted from it, and after riding you were to say "thank you" to it.

I think in part it's probably a cultural thing - I know a school friend learnt at a different school but she was instructed similarly about treating horses well. Of course, attitudes are a spectrum everywhere, and I do know the proprietor was more gung-ho and I suppose more ego-driven, which explained why he didn't get on with Mingo and our instructor did, and we did (p23 story on our first horse, a so-called "problem" horse).

I do wonder- is the US horseman Tom Dorrance, whom RCD brought to my attention by sending me a link, really in the minority amongst people of the Western riding tradition for treating horses with respect and kindness? Discussions on the training pages leave me with that impression, although I have to say, there are quite a few Western riders on 40+ who believe in treating their horses decently and who avoid the training pages also.

And Erin and Frlsgirl and Wallaby (and quite a few others) all seem to me to have good teamwork with their horses, and not view them as just a mode of transport or a mere lackey. The three I named ride English, I wonder if that's part of it? Not that you can't find people in that tradition who are awful to their horses, but do you think that's more entrenched in the Western riding tradition? I mean, how much truth is there to the "******* cowboy" stereotype that I've often heard referred to by riders of my tradition?

Because in Europe, "You ride like a cowboy" was definitely not a compliment. It meant you needed your attitude adjusting and that you also needed more riding lessons as well to learn how to ride and relate properly. I kind of hinted at that with the "Spring Oddities" story on page 26, which I'm overdue to continue.

Also living in Europe, and in Australia, you kind of get the impression that there is something cultural about the US that's about the frontier in a gung-ho, cowboys versus Indians sort of way, and also that there is this kind of militaristic undercurrent in the very fabric of society, which seems to affect the way people treat each other and their animals. As someone living in that country, do these external perceptions surprise you? How much truth do you think there is to them? I've never been in the US and it's hard for me to tell. I also think that the Internet in general suffers from an overrepresentation of negative people compared to the general population, and I think HF is no exception, and therefore can't be used to make statistical extrapolations to the general population anywhere.

I mean, clearly there are many people in the US who aren't like that. We know lovely expat Americans - but we've also met some US tourists who insisted that the Australians were to adapt themselves to their culture and not walk on the left on share paths is Australian national parks, and the attitudes of people like that don't make them good ambassadors to the US. (And I hasten do add, the binge-drinking Australians who like to party in Bali likewise give Australia a bad name abroad with their Neanderthal behaviour. We have plenty of yahoos here too.)

It wouldn't be fair if I didn't close with what I think are the most negative things about Australians: The national myths of the "fair go" and of "mateship" - the former only really applies to those people who look and think like white Australians, and the latter often embarrassingly implies that citizens of other countries don't know how to be neighbourly and generous to each other in wildfires, national disasters etc (and there is something insular to the Australian culture - you can only assume something like that if you haven't travelled and seen other cultures, and you don't know how to think independently).

My turn to say "end rant"? :rofl:


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## bsms

" You were expected to chat to your horse and let it sniff you before you tacked it up and brought it out, you were supposed to watch the horse's expression and body language to make sure you weren't brushing it too hard in the wrong spot or tickling it with being too soft, you were supposed to let it sniff the saddle before you put it on its back, you  were supposed to tell it, "I'm getting on your back now, OK?" and to give praise every time the horse did something right / got what you wanted from it, and after riding you were to say "thank you" to it."

That part was completely missing from the lessons I had. Any of them. I found it quite helpful with my horses after being taught it by watching Chris Irwin on the videos StateLineTack used to have.

Culturally....hmmm...I'm ex-military, enjoy shooting and get upset that it is harder to find areas to use for target shooting. I have a concealed carry permit and use it at times, and live in a state where a license for concealed carry is no longer required. If someone tried to break into my house - well, it happened to my neighbor a few years back and it took 40 minutes for the cops to arrive. One window was damaged but the guy must have been scared off before the cops arrived. I'd meet him coming in with my 44 magnum...

Truth is, cowboys vary. My room mate from college told me, at the time, that horses and dogs are just tools. Use them and get rid of them when they can't work. But he's also a good guy, and 40 years later has a picture on the wall of him riding Trooper's sire, framed by hair from the mane. And he'll tell you stories for an hour or more of "The Best Horse I'll Ever Meet" - that dominant, aggressive stallion. I asked him about "tools". He looked at me, paused, laughed and said that maybe at 60 he had more sense and real learning than he had at 20!

He also has an old, blind Border Collie who doesn't like people living under his house. He says she never liked people, but loved being around sheep and was the hardest working dog he ever met. She can't work now, so she lives where she doesn't have to deal with people and can smell and hear the sheep. He puts out food & water for her and lets her live her remaining life 'people free' - but near the sheep she loved. "Just a tool!" Yeah...

He's the sort who has a bunch of horses, and assigns them work - cutting cattle, herding sheep, etc, based on their preferences. Trooper worked sheep and hated cattle. His sire was the opposite.

There are plenty of cowboys who LOVE horses. And there are plenty who will do this to a horse:










There were cavalry officers who hated horses. OTOH, one kissed the neck of his horse during the Little Big Horn because he was surrounded and figured he had seconds to live. After he kissed his horse...the horse exploded thru the Sioux and he lived to tell the story.

John Wayne disliked horses and riding, but he came to really like the horse he rode at the end of "True Grit".

In short, it depends. Some folks are the sort who care, some learn to care, and some never care.

I haven't read Tom Dorrance. I've read two books by Mark Rashid, and he clearly believes in treating the horse as a thinking individual. But it seems to me folks around here go in either extreme. Some are very dominant. Others never get around to riding their horse because they are waiting to establish a relationship - and get offended if I tell them to get a dog instead.

Bandit (and Mia too) needed both, mixed. There are times you have to say, "You eat my hay you go my way". Other times you need to trust them, and I think you always need to understand their fears. But with both of them, I sometimes need to say, "You are not THAT scared...just make it happen because we are NOT turning around and quitting!" And both sometimes need me to dismount, and show them their fear is not justified.

There is a difference between being strong and being a bully. The horses need strong, but not bully. They need both confidence and understanding. Lots of cowboys are great riders who work extremely well with horses. Lots are not. I would love to be able to ride like the good ones. I'd also like to shoot the guy who spurred Trooper...

Oh...and I've seen as much or more poor horsemanship from the local English riders as western. Think a dressage wannabe who NEVER gets out of the horse's mouth, or who cannot ride without a crop.


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## egrogan

It's really interesting, I teach primarily young kids with either physical or psychological disabilities to ride, and tend to work with the rank beginners. It's nice that they don't have a lot of preconceived notions about being around a horse, so we emphasize the relationship right from the beginning- and partly, that's because in a therapeutic riding environment, the relationship between horse and rider is as much the point as the riding. But I have been really surprised that there are many therapeutic riding programs where there is no opportunity for grooming before or after the lesson- that is all handled by volunteers, and the horse is brought to the ring to meet the student as they mount. I am so thankful the programs I've been involved in have always included grooming and tacking (of course, modified as needed to accommodate any physical disabilities).

And this past year, I've ended every lesson by reminding the kids to pat their horse and tell her that she did a great job (I say it so much that my regular riders have started parroting that phrase when they come to the middle of the ring to dismount..."_now don't forget to pat your horse and tell her she did a good job today." _Makes me smile...) This all started because we have one older lesson mare, in her early 20s now, who has been working in our program for close to a decade . She was getting a little sour with the work, but she's always been one of my personal favorites. All it takes to turn around her "grumpy ears" is for her volunteer to give her a little scratch on the chest during a break in the lesson, she just likes to know she's doing the right thing. I found that as soon as I asked the volunteers to scratch or pat her, her whole demeanor about the lesson changed-and then I started thinking, why not get the riders involved in reinforcing the good behavior and offering her a "thank you." She seems to work well in my lessons and is not showing any of the previously sour behavior, so I think she's just a horse who likes to know someone appreciates what she's doing!


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Also living in Europe, and in Australia, you kind of get the impression that there is something cultural about the US that's about the frontier in a gung-ho, cowboys versus Indians sort of way, and also that there is this kind of militaristic undercurrent in the very fabric of society, which seems to affect the way people treat each other and their animals. As someone living in that country, do these external perceptions surprise you? How much truth do you think there is to them?


I have never talked about politics on HF, but will make one tiny exception here...

No, this does not surprise me. I think there's a push and pull in our culture right now about how much we want that to be true. The aggressive, militaristic, gun-toting culture feels so oppressive to me some days and my husband and I have very serious conversations about how long we see ourselves staying in America. Not that Canada and Europe don't have their problems (the present Syrian refugee crisis being one heartbreaking example), but my external stereotype is that these are places where violence is less omnipresent, religion is not thrown into the public sphere, social supports are more widely available, and society is generally oriented around what's good for most people rather than maximizing what any individual can hoard for him or herself.

And to bsms's post above, I have the polar opposite view on the gun issue and wish we would actually mount a serious movement to repeal the second amendment. I come from a military family (my dad served during Vietnam too) and seeing how nonchalant my younger brother was about his friends taking the lives of people in Afghanistan and finding it amusing, like it was some video game, made me absolutely sick- and caused a serious schism with my family-and seeing them come back to America and continue flashing around their guns like toys has strongly shaped my view on it. And here, I will end my rant and probably not make another political comment on HF


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## frlsgirl

SueC said:


> Also living in Europe, and in Australia, you kind of get the impression that there is something cultural about the US that's about the frontier in a gung-ho, cowboys versus Indians sort of way, and also that there is this kind of militaristic undercurrent in the very fabric of society, which seems to affect the way people treat each other and their animals. As someone living in that country, do these external perceptions surprise you? How much truth do you think there is to them?


 It was definitely a culture shock moving from Germany to the US; I agree that the US has this "frontier" vibe which is absent from Germany; I think it's all just related to history; the US fought very hard to gain independence from GB so Americans are very proud of that accomplishment and will fight to defend it. Germans on the other hand, want to preserve order and peace at all cost; which is understandable considering the massive hardship and destruction the country endured during war times.


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## bsms

I'm a poster boy for an "aggressive, militaristic, gun-toting culture". 25 years in the military. Been shooting guns since my teens, although the price of ammo has kept me from shooting lately. Dad was in the military, my two oldest kids were (oldest daughter was in the Marines), almost all my extended family are veterans.

That has nothing to do, IMHO, with either gun violence in America or working well with animals. Violence in America is extremely localized. Roughly 50% of our homicides involve black guys between 15 & 35 killing other black guys that age. That is about 2% of the population. In Chicago, in 2011, 70% of all murder VICTIMS had a criminal record. Near where I live, the areas around the freeway are a drug corridor with a lot of associated violence. 15 miles away, many folks don't lock their doors. I try hard to avoid the bad parts of town, particularly at night, because there is almost nothing good that will come by my being there. If I do go, I go armed with a gun. Why? Because, as the old joke goes, a policeman won't fit in my pocket. 

In Arizona, many of us prize our frontier heritage. Self-reliance was huge because folks were frequently alone. If you didn't get the job done, there was no one else who was going to do it for you. 

Even now. My rancher ex-class mate has been ranching 40 years, and on some days he can't lift his arms past his shoulders any more. A few years ago, he had a sheep herder who got lost in a blizzard at night. Concluding he was going to die, he dropped the reins and began confessing his sins to God. He was still confessing when his horse bumped him against the sheep camp. He told my friend, "That horse will get the best care now!" But talking it over, my friend said it had happened to him twice in his life. Maybe that is part of why he gets sentimental about some horses - they have saved his life before.

As a recreational rider, I can be as patient as I want with my horse. But when it is 30 below 0, and you still need to ride...well, one's patience may not be too high on those days! And when you work in country like this:








​ 
there isn't a lot of room for spooks or bad ("unhelpful") behavior. But of course, most horses ridden in a place like this learn the rules early on! My friend told me there was nothing wrong with Mia that a few 50 mile rides wouldn't solve. I'm pretty sure he was right, but I wasn't physically up to doing it.

I think it is also a mistake to assume horses pushed hard don't adapt, provided the pushing is fair. The cavalry taught a rider to use spurs viciously if need be, but they also worked their way up to riding like this:








​
Notice the horse's ears. You don't ride a terrified horse off of something like this. You teach them and build up to it - and once the horse has confidence in his rider, he'll handle it fine. It isn't the approach I want to take, but that doesn't mean horses trained with a rough hand cannot turn into confident, willing partners. As long as the rough hand is fair, it will work.

If I had to choose between having a horse like the one above, and having one of the pampered pets who can't be ridden too close to the corner in a dressage lesson - I'd want the former. But it is a false choice, and I have time.

This used to be done at Atlantic City:








​
Looks kind of cruel. But as one of the riders pointed out, before the horse could jump, you had to take it UP THERE:








​
And if a horse was terrified, trying something like that would have been suicide. In fact, horses had to LIKE it:"_Another horse, I think his name was Patches, drew quite an audience. After making so many jumps he no longer waited for his rider. He would charge up the ramp to the tower and take a running jump off the diving board, leaving the rider behind. A couple of the girls tried to leap on him as he flew by, only to be left sailing through the air mount-less._"​Bird Lovers' League: THE DIVING HORSES OF ATLANTIC CITY

"The Montana Cowboy: An Anthology of Western Life" is a very plainly written collection of people's memories growing up on ranches in Montana. I liked it because it is honest. And because many of the folks writing were self-confessed horse lovers. But that didn't mean horses were ridden gently and with tons of tact. They were often ridden hard, by hard people living in hard times. But people pushed themselves as hard as they did their horses. I can respect that.

My Dad was a hard man, and often very hard on me. But many years after his death in Vietnam, my Mom told my wife that Dad would regularly either wake up in the middle of the night, covered in sweat and panicking, or start thrashing about while still asleep. In 20+ years of marriage, he never told her what the nightmares were about. I tried to corner him before he left for Vietnam and find out what combat was like in WW2 and Korea. He stared at me, got up, and walked out. Whatever the memories were, he took them to the grave.

When I was young, I blamed him for how he treated me. I don't any more. He was a hard man. But a good one, who tried to do right as he saw it. With 5+ decades under my belt, I respect him. I don't want to imitate him, but I respect him. I don't try to judge him any more.

That is how I feel about the old west and horses. And some of the ranchers I've met. They are not soft. But many try hard to be fair. I don't ask more than that, and I don't think horses do either.

PS - Thinking about it, riding horses and being around them may have changed how I view my Dad nearly 35 years after his death. Mia and the other horses have taught me about more than just riding...:think:​


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## SueC

frlsgirl said:


> It was definitely a culture shock moving from Germany to the US...


It was certainly a culture shock for us moving from Germany to Australia, and Australia, although it has some gung-ho frontierness, has a different kind of gung-ho frontierness to America, and seems far more laid back to me as a society. When we had the Port Arthur massacre back in the 90s, our public overwhelmingly supported gun law reforms that made it more difficult for people to own guns, and to own high-calibre and quick-reloading guns in particular. If you couldn't justify it, you couldn't get a license for those sorts of guns, and let's face it, not even farmers thought they needed those types of weapons for knocking off livestock. Basically, you need to be a farmer or in a gun club to get a license these days, and you need to be of good character, and if you're not, your license isn't granted, or if you already have one it's repealed. The people who whinge about it are in the minority here and are what we would call "********" - and one person I knew who whinged about it was a fellow who ended up with a domestic violence restraining order, who'd physically threatened his partner repeatedly, and was outraged when his guns were taken off him. I was doing this: :clap: - and my friend has since rebuilt her life and re-partnered well away from this unpleasant man.

The stats post gun-law reform here are very encouraging. We're now even less likely statistically to die from accidental or deliberate shootings in Australia - and our statistical likelihood was much lower than the US's to begin with. It would stress me out to live in a country where wielding guns was considered normal, even casual.

For dealing with possible intruders here, I have a very sharp pitchfork in the house. I'm lousy at combat but would have no hesitation using that thing to defend myself, and to drive it home even though this potentially causes serious, and possibly fatal, injuries. I probably wouldn't have felt this way before we were targeted a few years ago by a psycho intruder (we weren't home, but he did obnoxious things like string up my underwear all over the house and put poison in our horse feed) whom we knew and who had done similar things to other people before that, and the police weren't interested in dealing with him, and he's since moved on to the next victim, who was held at knifepoint when coming home from work, and whose housemate had been bashed up before that lovely little scenario. Neither were successful with pressing assault charges, indeed the police instead charged the housemate with defending themselves with pepper spray (which is actually legal) and the judge threw it out of court. (And before anyone says that this doesn't happen in the US, there are stories coming out of the US justice system where burglars are paid compensation by house owners when cutting themselves on glass breaking in, and of a man who had to pay for the plastic surgery of the guy whom re found raping his wife, and whose face he subsequently, and quite understandably, bashed in, while his wife got no compensation for what had happened to her...)

My husband trained in Kendo from a young age, and trained me in attack and defence basics after we had that encounter with that psycho who is apparently protected by the police. And I am more handy with a light, sharp pitchfork than a wooden sword or a cane, plus noone has ever been able to take it off me in a training situation. And I have pepper spray. I do think self-defence is necessary. We're unlikely in Australia to have to deal with intruders wielding guns: Knives and baseball bats are more de rigeur with burglars here. I have considered buying a few marine flares for if ever I did have to deal with an intruder with a gun. But we have a dog, security cameras, and a good system with the neighbours where the understanding is that we will ring each other anytime if there is trouble, before we even bother ringing the police.

Very unpleasant topic, no? And what a side track from what I wanted to say about the culture shock.

So about that: We were mostly shocked with how people in Australia treated horses when we arrived here in the early 1980s. They seemed to think hitting their horses was a) acceptable, and b) a good substitute for actual training. The majority standards of training we observed were very poor, and horses were very uneducated compared to the situation we'd left in Europe. We saw this in the professional racing and breeding industry as well as with recreational riders. Of course, there were exceptions. But these exceptions tended to have books by Tom Roberts or Robbie Murray (Australian gentle horse training enthusiasts, all in the English riding style, not that riding English necessarily correlates with gentler riding, as we've discussed) on their shelves, whereas the rough people tended to have no books at all, or books by certain types of American Western trainers. And also, the rough people tended to be quite unintelligent and quite aggressive in general - whereas the people who were nice to their horses tended all to be people it was a pleasure to be around, whether you were a horse or a human! 

The other kinds of culture shock included not being able to get decent bread (back then) or things like oregano, and that people were never punctual, and that the houses were so comparatively disorganised and untidy, and people didn't seem to do things _systematically_. Frlsgirl will get all this, I hope the rest of you get some of it! :rofl:


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## SueC

I really appreciate how nicely the discussion people are having on some contentious issues is proceeding here. It shows we can have different points of view on certain things, and that we can make the effort to understand where other people are coming from with politeness, good manners and genuine willingness to think about what other people are saying, and this is good for everyone involved. This is precisely why I am drawn to the journal section of this forum, and to our 40+ social thread. 

And now I have to sign off for today, but I will leave everyone with some photos of our beautiful Stirling Ranges, which we visited for another climb on Sunday:










Brett before our first Mt Trio ascent since owner building, demonstrating how small the incipient climb really is. We're working on getting our mountain fitness back (we climbed every weekend and did little prep trails several times a week before getting consumed by farm establishment and owner building) and Mt Trio is “only a little mountain” indeed, but the first section is steep. The ridge walk on top is a piece of cake.










This is a Lemon-Flowering Gum in its native habitat. Naturally it's confined to the immediate vicinity of the Stirlings, but we have planted a few around our farm as well, and the oldest ones are flowering spectacularly at age 4. Mallees (scraggly types of eucalypts) are making a nice screen for the mountain.










Brett having a drink at some quintessentially Australian-coloured cliffs near the top of the ascent into the ridge walk. (The drink is diluted cranberry juice, which we're both crazy about.)










Mt Trio is famous for this particular species of Darwinia, which occurs naturally nowhere else in the world. For those who don't know, the South Coast of WA is one of the world biodiversity hotspots. The difficult conditions have driven lots of different evolutionary strategies for survival.










What a Darwinia bush looks like when not taking close-ups!










Mt Trio has crumbling cliffs near the top, and broken sections the size of trucks litter the slope below it. Mallees lining the walk track contrast with heath-like vegetation.










We loved the bicoloured bark of this particular type of mallee, contrasting silver and ochre against a backdrop of spectacular Dryandras whose serrated leaves are pale on one side and bright green on the other. This photo was taken at the start of the long ridge section of the walk.










Here I'm enjoying the lovely long ridge walk section of Mt Trio, which is just spectacular with its wonderful vegetation and breathtaking views.










Brett all smiles at the cairn, with the Lord of the Rings type scenery of the Western Stirlings stretching out behind him. Two spots of particular personal significance are in view here: At the very left, you can just see the central spire of Mt Toolbrunup where Brett proposed to me eight years ago. If you follow the slope down that mountain, there is a jagged mountain in the distance behind that, connected by a long ridge to a twin-peaked mountain. This is where we've had lots of fun doing the off-the-beaten-track Mt Magog (tall and twin peaked) to Mt Talyuberlup (jagged) ridge walk on past birthdays. Either mountain can be scaled separately, but people who take leave of their senses can attempt to combine both walks by crossing the ridge. It's a beautiful walk, but takes 7-8 hours from start to finish if you don't get lost amongst the thick vegetation and cliffs.










Fabulous views to the east from the top of Mt Trio take in Ellen Peak (tall mountain on the left), Bluff Knoll (the one that looks like a Dali-esque face in profile with a nose sticking up), and Yungermere Peak (right).

I hope some of you enjoy seeing off-the-beaten-track Australian scenery!  If any of you have any lovely scenery to share from where you live, you are totally welcome to post it here!

PS: These photos are all clickable at least twice to get larger versions!


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## SueC

bsms said:


> Mia and the other horses have taught me about more than just riding...:think:


I think all of us regular crowd here are going to agree with that! 

Man, I'd seen photos of what horses had to do in wars before - and I am glad horses are no longer widely used in warfare, because I kind of think they shouldn't be paying the price for the human species' difficulty in getting along and not creating chaos in the world.

That photo, by the way, probably explains why, at least in Germany, Three-Day Eventing used to be referred to as "Military" - horses right up to the 1970s at least used to have to go down high steep banks like that. I think the cross-country courses were made less likely to result in injury by removing some of the hairier types of obstacles from the competition - and I have a German riding book from the 1970s that discusses these sorts of things in the "Riding Critiques" sections on Dressage, Jumping, Eventing and recreational riding. Lots of photos like that - I should perhaps scan and post a few sometime. I think you'd enjoy the Dressage critiques offered in the book, where the author takes on things he doesn't like in the high echelons of competitive dressage, with photo after photo presented to show harmonious versus unharmonious work (the author is old-school).

Have to say, I wouldn't want to see diving horses myself because I wouldn't want to support that. I wonder what the casualty rate was, behind the scenes, in training suitable candidates? Aspiration pneumonia, fractures... Perhaps some horses do start to enjoy activities that also are actually very risky for them (and they wouldn't know the extent of that), but my little line of what becomes unacceptable risk definitely includes steeplechasing (AKA jumps racing), just based on statistics and on the double whammy of jumping high obstacles, but doing it at high speeds - a really fraught combination.

By logical extension, I'm not a fan of tower-diving and other extreme things like that which bear no resemblance to what a horse became evolutionarily adapted to do. I guess you could be the devil's advocate here and say, Then why ride? - to which I would say, that's a totally different scale of this form of objection... Human bodies, for example, from an evolutionary perspective, are very good at endurance activities. This helps explain why I really like to go hiking for hours and hours, and why doing that is demonstrably good for my health. But, I also like to wear a backpack so I can have nice food and a thermos and wet-weather gear and other useful things - which my far hunter-gatherer ancestors mostly wouldn't have. - Domestic horses have a very limited opportunity for roaming long distances, which is what their ancestors did. Riding domestic horses on trails is, I think, analogous in some ways to a hiker with a backpack. If most of the world has become such that the only way domestic horses can roam safely for many miles is with a rider on their back, then we can probably all agree that it's better the horses roam around with a rider, than that they don't get to roam around far afield at all. I've not actually met a horse in my life that hasn't enjoyed trail riding (although they probably exist, and more likely I think if raised entirely in artificial environments like buildings and small yards).

That's about as much as I can offer to the discussion on that topic!

:cowboy:

Erin, have you ever worked with traumatised people with your horse therapy? Do you know if anyone is using animal therapy for things like PTSD?


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## SueC

A few general thoughts on risk, injury and mortality in domestic horses: I'm looking back here on what ailed and killed the horses in our family over the last 31 years.

Dame du Buisson was our first fatality, back in 1984. She was 15 when she bled out from a ruptured vessel after what was actually a straightforward foaling. A friend of ours who is an equine specialist from Denmark (and roams the world) told me that the most likely reason this happened is trauma during a previous foaling.

Next, we lost our first harness racer, Kiwi Logan in late 1986. She'd been runner-up in the Triple Crown Classic just before having a holiday, and she was back in training when she collapsed and died after a standard workout at the track she had easily completed. Walking back to the stalls, she suddenly wobbled and then immediately collapsed before dying almost instantly. Murdoch University's PM said, "Either aneurysm or blood clot, most likely in the brain." This is essentially the same kind of thing that happened to the famous jumper Hickstead.

Sometime in the early 1990s, a handy race mare we had (Teen Force, awful race name) shatter fractured her rear cannon in a trial. The leg simply collapsed under her in the home bend. It isn't that common for harness racing horses to break their legs in racing - it's usually bad falls that cause it in this form of racing. This little mare probably had a (painless) hairline fracture pre-trial from kicking against the float during transport - lots of racehorses kick out in the float when arriving at the races, or arriving back home. In the time of the old style floats, people hung rubber mats over the solid timber loading ramps to reduce harm to float and animal. This little mare also developed a lot of power from her hindquarters during a sprint, and unfortunately this would have exploded the hairline fracture. We thought hard about whether to give up racing when that happened, but in the end, we didn't. People came to us with stories of horses breaking their legs just running along in the paddock, and the fracture risk in harness racing actually isn't that high. Indeed, none of our other horses in more than 20 years since has broken a leg, not on the track or anywhere else.

Those were the "deaths in action". The majority cause of premature death in our horses, though, was twisted bowel or impaction colic, and interestingly, this never happened to horses who were in work - only to horses who had retired from racing. Colirini, dam of the two chestnuts we have here in Redmond, went like that in her teens, with a five-month-old foal at foot. That was the most traumatic death I've ever witnessed. Twisted bowels are always bad, but this was an acute and massive sudden twist and the horse went from perfectly good one minute to walking through several fences and then becoming completely frantic. I've never seen anything like it before or since. I was going, "Quit trying to get her diagnosed, get your gun and stop her agony now!" Usually I'm all for getting a horse diagnosed, but this was not such an occasion. Had it been my horse, I would have put her down myself immediately. The diagnosis merely confirmed what was blatantly obvious, and meant another hour or so of misery barely dulled even by extreme sedation.

The Swan Coastal Plain in Western Australia is deep sand, and almost all racing establishments have sand yards and sandy dry lots. Sand accumulation in horse intestines in very common here, especially on dry lots. Horses in training appear to be less vulnerable to sand accumulation - they have better gut motility, less boredom, etc. Various forms of drenching, and feeding of psyllium husk etc, are the common (and not always effective) counter-arsenal to the problem. Anyway, since Colirini, a number of horses have gone in a similar way: Alfa Dynasty of impaction colic at around age 20, our pint-sized, too small to race Ladychip similarly but she was barely in her teens, Mirage in his late teens, and most recently, The Sunbird Hanover at age 24 in 2007.

So for our horses, at any rate, racing was statistically less dangerous than sedentary retirement. Most premature deaths were due a combination of becoming sedentary and accumulating sand.

Armed with these statistics, I was determined when we set up our farm at Redmond that the horses we keep here would be free-ranged on pasture to better replicate a more natural lifestyle for horses than what happens in the standard stable/yard setups. Here, they run in a herd, socialise freely with each other, donkeys and cattle, roam variously over 12 ha of pasture with access to kilometres of tracks in our 50ha on-farm conservation reserve, have eating patterns similar to wild horses, and get protected from weather extremes by rugging in cold, wet, windy conditions. They enjoy this lifestyle and pelt around happily numerous times a day, with real room to run, and a great deal of choice in how they spend their days.

Of course, beef pasture isn't the coarse, low-quality herbage horses traditionally ate, and one of my horses I have to watch like a hawk and manage significantly so he doesn't become overweight. The other just aren't overeaters.

We've had no impaction colics or twisted bowels in the five years we've run horses at Redmond, and we hope it stays this way. The three retirees we currently host are really getting into the self-exercise opportunities they have here.

Other causes of death in our horses were somewhat more acceptable to us: Our first horse Mingo died in his mid-20s simply of becoming old and frail. He gradually lost control of his hindquarters and one day simply couldn't get up. Similarly, French Legacy in his mid-20s simply wore out and increasingly had difficulty getting up. Both horses were euthanased at that point. My Arabian mare was 32 when we had to put her down here at Redmond with a suspected pedunculated lipoma. 

The best death of all, if there can be such a thing, was managed by Mediterranean, at age 28. She was sprightly into her old age, and one day, she decided she needed to separate from her adult daughter, with whom she'd been happy paddock buddies all along. She simply asked my father to roam free around his farm, and when he let her, she went further and further abroad with each trip, grazing and looking at sights. She'd go back to her daughter, and next time spend longer away. Both of them seemed to have come to an arrangement - Sunset Coast was very accepting of her old mother and buddy's strange solo trips into the countryside. My father says in the course of a few weeks she went back to all the places she had trained as a young horse, to walk and to look: All around the farm firebreaks, and all around the various jog tracks through the bush and the cow paddocks. He even saw her taking a leisurely lap of the fastwork track, and always, she would stop and look around and just take in the sights.

And one morning, my father found her lying as if asleep in her loosebox, with her head resting on her chin between her front legs. She'd eaten all her food overnight and he only realised she was dead when she didn't get up to have breakfast. There were no signs of struggle and she simply looked asleep. My father even took a few photographs because it was so remarkable. If only all of them could have such a peaceful departure!


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Erin, have you ever worked with traumatised people with your horse therapy? Do you know if anyone is using animal therapy for things like PTSD?


Yes, a lot of the research on equine assisted activities in the recent past has focused on its use for people with PTSD, particularly veterans. It's a rapidly growing research area that spans disciplines- psychology, social work, medical research, and sometimes animal behaviorists, vets, biologists. 

If you're interested, here are a couple of studies:
Horses working with veterans with PTSD (this is an in-progress study but the lit review in the proposal is informative); equine assisted psychotherapy for children with PTSD

And there are also a couple of really moving documentaries showing the connection between veterans and equine programs. I particularly like this one, which focuses on a program that rehabs retired TB racehorses in an equine therapy program for veterans: Saratoga Warhorse | HRTV.com

Personally, I haven't ever worked at a program that serves veterans. However, I have worked with many children who have seen and experienced horrific domestic violence and being around horses is helping them in their recovery.


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## bsms

I saw a picture some time back of dead horses on the battlefield at Gettysburg. It was overwhelming. Men and horses both, but the horses didn't know what they were fighting for. I'd bet a lot of the men didn't, either, when you get down to it. A documentary on WW1 said many of the men in the cavalry had been city boys with very limited experience with horses. The British Army took in 100,000 horses at the beginning of the war, and trained an equal number of men (boys). The documentary said many of the men came to depend on their horse as much as their horse depended on them - horse and rider viewed each other as the only sane thing in an insane world. That documentary led to a screen capture that is one of my favorite pictures:








​ 
It was taken near the front, and both horse and ride soon packed up and moved to the front. Don't know if either survived, but many of the horses were killed at the end to save money.

Some horses came to look forward to battle. They would get excited about it. That isn't hard to imagine, since they are not rational animals who calculate odds and think about death.

IIRC, the diving horses didn't have unusual deaths. Horses either quickly came to like it, or not. If not, then no one wanted to go way up a narrow ramp with a horse who might explode...so the keepers were the ones who enjoyed it. But I could remember it wrong. It's been a long time since I read about it. It is one of those odd things people have done with horses over the centuries.

Colic: Mia had colic 6 times in 6 months after arriving. She had colic about twice a year for the next two years, then never again. I think her problem was her nerves. 

Sand colic is common here. Most horse are on dry lots, like mine. Most are fed alfalfa. The leafy part of the alfalfa falls on the sand and the horses work to get every last leafy part - and IMHO pick up a lot of sand as well. We feed our horses a pelleted hay for their main nutrition and give them two meals of bermuda hay. After reading this article, I tend to get them the coarser hay:"Studies (and my personal experience too) have overwhelmingly demonstrated that providing 1.5% to 2.5% percent of body weight per day (15 – 25 lbs for a 1000lb horse) in hay (or forage) will produce the best results when trying to eliminate sand from a horse’s intestine."​How can I prevent SAND colic in my horse? â€” Foundation Equine Mobile Medicine and Dentistry - equine veterinarian in Southern Pines, NC

Two meals of coarse bermuda, and one of pellets. On days when it rains - and we've had 6 weeks of days like that now - we feed mostly pellets. Even Bermuda hay gets dirty if it is muddy out. Mia is the only horse we had who came down with colic, and she went the last 4-5 years without it. The others have never had it (crossed fingers!). We don't use any commercial sand clearing stuff - just lots of coarse hay. We toss the flakes of hay on the ground and let them eat.

Some folks here water their hay to 'clean it' before feeding, and they seem to have colic problems a lot. I've concluded that horses on dry lots need enough room to move around and lots of stem-filled, coarse hay. Alfalfa is cheaper, has higher nutrition, flakes nicer and our horses love it - but they haven't had any in years. I don't know if our program works, or if we have just been lucky. I don't know of anyone else around here who feeds the way I do, but I plan to continue as long as it seems to work.


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## SueC

Sounds like a plan! Dad feeds his lot meadow hay from round bales, including lots of coarse long-stemmed stuff, annual ryegrass, and some clovers, serradella etc. He feeds mainly whole oats in the bucket feeds. He has moved over the years to lower clover content hays, and to feeding four times a day instead of three and giving slightly more than before, and accepting that his retirees are a little pudgier than he would ideally like (but by no means obese). Since then, no further colics in seven years, fingers crossed. Another thing that I think may have helped is that he replaced his automatic water troughs, which were mostly clogging up to a trickle several times a week, and I think this discouraged the horses from drinking. At Redmond our horses drink from bathtubs, or the farm dam, or the seasonal stream - so they can drink all they like without having to wait around.

That was a fabulous photo. Yes, it's a shame that the war horses that survived in many instances were put down rather than shipped home. Disgusting really. Many of the Australian war horses were requisitioned private horses too...

A little trivia: Horses were excluded from the main parade during a huge ANZAC commemoration held in Albany recently... because it was considered to be too high risk to have them in the parade amongst a crowd of people... not in the opinion of the horse owners, but in the opinion of the officials, of course. An outcry followed this decision amongst the public. Their "compromise" was that the horses and riders could be in a penned off paddock that the parade would go past. !!!!!


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## SueC

Oh, and I hope I didn't freak anyone out with my pitchfork! :rofl: I think the shorter range a weapon is, the less likely it is that damage will be caused, in general. There's a difference between having to ram at someone with a pitchfork, and with pulling a trigger, and in its furthest extrapolation, with pushing that "little red button". I can completely understand that people, especially people living remotely, want something that will give them an excellent chance against a hostile intruder they might have to face alone and on short notice, and I'm not criticising bsms for saying he would defend himself with a gun. I mean, ex-army that's second-nature to him, right? Me, it would give me the heebiejeebies. I'm a farm girl, hand me that pitchfork! ;-)

I used to be a 100% believer in nonviolent resistance, but what might have been useful for Gandhi and MLK in bringing about social change, I lately (after being confronted with a hostile intruder having been to our house, albeit in our absence) have really begun to doubt as an effective tool for dealing with intruders to your home, especially given quite a few of them these days are high as kites on methamphetamines and the like. My teenage version would say to me, "You've sold out!" ...I've had to trade some idealism for realism though. Especially since getting married, I have no interest in getting my life wiped out by someone who is setting out to make trouble. That's when I moved onto the pitchfork stage, I suppose. I've always had pepper spray, and always thought that totally acceptable ethically as it is very effective at blocking an attacker, yet unlikely to kill them. And though a pitchfork is more dangerous to the intruder, it is also more effective in some situations, and in order for the intruder to be seriously harmed or killed, they have to refuse to stay away from you.

If anyone has any other handy self-defence hints, I'm interested! Also, if anyone wants to tell me where their own personal line would be drawn.

If I had a Harry Potter type wand, the Confundus charm would be my weapon of choice. ;-) ..."Where am I? Who am I? What year is it? Where is the exit?" :rofl:


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## bsms

When I left for Afghanistan in 2007, I left my wife & youngest daughter my 44 magnum rifle. It is light, easy to use, more powerful than 99% of handguns yet easy to control. 

I told them to move into our upstairs bedrooms. If someone broke in during the night, stay upstairs. Call the cops. But if someone went UP the stairs to the bedrooms...just be waiting with the 44, and don't hesitate. Someone entering bedrooms at night isn't in any way innocent. I'd rather have my TV stolen than shoot a man. Heck, my TV isn't even hooked up! But I'd rather have a guy shot than have my wife or daughter raped. 

When I do carry, it is normally a little 22 5-shot derringer. I like it because it is extremely easy to conceal. It also drives home an important truth: I'm not there to save the world. If someone is robbing a bank, have at it. But if things get REALLY ugly, 4-5 shots of 22 LR might create an opening to protect myself, my family or another. But if you pull out a 22 LR with a 1.5 inch barrel, you are not John Wayne and there is a good chance you will die too.

My BIL has carried for 25 years and never pulled a gun. That is pretty typical. I pulled a gun once, close to 40 years ago. I had a 22 revolver (S&W with a 4" barrel) with me for plinking - something folks used to do while hiking 40 years ago. When I got back to my car, several miles from the nearest pavement and much further from the nearest cop, there were 8 guys on my car, drinking. 

They said nothing, just got off and started fanning out around me. I remembered I was carrying my revolver, so I pulled it out and got ready to shoot the nearest guy.

Oddly enough, none of them said, "That's just a 22!" And none of them said, "8-6=2...we can take him!" Instead, they stopped and I moved around them to my car and left. Never even thought to file a police report, although I should have.

None of that means I think everyone should carry a gun or use guns. Folks need to think about their lives, their beliefs, what they are willing to die for and what they are willing (or not) to kill for. That is true of ANY weapon. If things go bad, there isn't time for careful thought or training. They need to be done before trouble starts. And a kitchen knife is potentially a deadly weapon. So is a pitchfork.

BTW - pepper spray can be an excellent alternative. They now make portable tasers that are fairly cheap. I may swap out my little 22 derringer for PS. But I don't think pepper spray would have helped me 40 years ago, even if it had existed. It would be an excellent thing for my wife and daughter to carry, though...


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## SueC

It's a shame that we even have to have such security plans in the first place, isn't it? People commonly use the word "animal" in a derogatory way, but humans are pretty much the worst species for what they will do to each other without provocation or starvation or anything drastic like that. There's all these people afraid of spiders and snakes and sharks, and I think, "Look at the statistics!"

Having said that, I am mostly surrounded by excellent and kind people in my own circle and neighbourhood, and there's also lots of wonderful stuff coming out of humanity.

Pepper spray: It's worth trying it out, as different cans give you different spray patterns and delivery pressure. Also apparently it goes off after a few years and you should replace it - you can test it. And you can also get little dispensers to put on your keyring as an extra. I did solo bushwalking for over a decade before meeting my husband. When I was 28 a woman my age walking solo on a beach in Geraldton was dragged into the dunes and killed. That was too close to home and that's when I got serious about carrying serious pepper spray, in a place I could instantly access it.

In all the years I've carried it, I only had to nearly use it once, when I was followed by a suspicious character on the Cataract Gorge walk in Launceston, Tasmania. I noticed I was being followed. I sped up, he sped up, I slowed down, he slowed down, I stopped and looked at a view, he concealed himself behind bushes, and I went, "OK, this is serious!" And I surreptitiously slipped the can into my hand with the finger on the trigger, and got mentally ready to just turn and cover him in the stuff if he got within range. Then I chanced upon some other walkers on the track. I joined with them and told them what was going on, and we walked the rest of the track together. I did file a police report and the police did tell me they had a rapist on the loose who'd been opportunistically attacking women for months.

You're spot on, certain behaviours show that a person really doesn't care one bit for your life or safety, and then they need to be stopped. And I will make a political comment now: In our country at least, there is too much turning of blind eyes against citizens who terrorise other citizens, or even put others at risk by drink driving etc, and too much talking up of foreign nationals and what they might do to us. In my book, the sociopath whom we've had the misfortune to encounter is also a terrorist - he sits in his place plotting how to cause harm and distress to others, and makes raids on their properties, and threatens any people present, and has done so repeatedly to a series of people he has taken a dislike to. You become relatively safe when he moves on to the next target. And the police are not interested at all, even though forensics said it was 95% provable as far as they were concerned. Yet were we to ring them and say a foreign national was buying suspicious amounts of fertiliser, they'd be all over them instantly, searching the house, going through their phone records, etc - all of which, if done just once, would likely convict our "domestic terrorists"...but it doesn't get done, unless there is a public figure involved or situations escalate to murder.

And statistically, it's our own citizens most likely to cause us grief, and I wish that the response to that was more serious.

Speaking of, I heard a podcast with an Irish terrorism specialist, a psychiatrist, and he said that most terrorists actually aren't sociopaths, as sociopaths make lousy fighters for a cause other than themselves. He says they're mostly men between age 17 and 25 with the still immature brains of their age group, and most of them, by their mid-20s, grow up and leave their cause and want to have a normal life, go shopping, have a holiday, start a family, grow vegetables, all that pedestrian stuff. That was really interesting. Also that they're not actually different essentially to anyone joining the army for a particular cause, it's psychologically all the same basic stuff, going to fight for your particular in-group. So after the age of 25, an ex-terrorist / fighter is almost guaranteed to make a far better neighbour than a sociopath who takes advantage of others. I should put the link to the podcast in:

Assumptions: terrorists, music and love - RN Showcase - ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

That is an interesting series of programmes!


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## SueC

Erin, thank you for those horse therapy links, they are really interesting! I'm going to speculate that one of the reasons animal therapy is so useful for psychological/emotional scars is that it takes people out of their heads and into the present, into these Zen moments, and with something significant and other to focus on. Traditional psychotherapy / counselling can go around and around in circles. I think there's a time to talk, and a time to leave it behind and experience a different sort of universe, in the present (perhaps in alternation).

Which of you who had animals, when you were growing up and you had woes or there was friction in the family, didn't turn to them? Go for a long walk with your dog, a long ride on your horse, or just sit in a stable next to a pile of hay while the horse calmly munched away and companionably nosed you every so often? Horses have this incredible dignity. They're quite different to dogs. I love dogs, and dogs are high-contact animals who will roll around on the lawn with you play-fighting, or come sit leaning against your legs if they think you're sad. Horses are more standoffish - it takes a bit more to get that connection with a horse than with a dog - but that also makes it more "wow" when it happens. And when a horse just comes up and stands with you and breathes into your hair, resting up a hind leg, and staying put, I think that's a bit like when people are swimming with whales. It's extraordinary.

Once we hit Australia, I grew up very isolated in my high school years - we were on a remote farm, the bus to the local middle school took over an hour, the bus and school was the only socialisation you routinely had with humans your age, and when you came home there were adults, and lots of animals, and the Australian bush, and when it got dark, books. I think that scenario almost by default is going to make you connect with animals in a profound way. This is very similar to the upbringing "The Bionic Vet" Dr Noel Fitzpatrick (of Oscar the Bionic Cat fame) recounted in an interview I heard with him recently.

Oscar, the cat who had an accident and got life-saving bionic feet, for anyone who doesn't know about him:






Noel Fitzpatrick is an endearing sort of character. The Irish accent definitely helps! ;-)


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## SueC

An earlier Oscar video which shows him walking again for the first time since losing both his rear legs below the hock in a combine harvester accident:







Oscar's back history:







A recent clip showing the kinds of technology Dr Fitzpatrick has been developing for cases where amputation is indicated or limbs have been lost - hopefully this will be adopted into human medicine:






I find this really inspirational.


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## SueC

And speaking of inspirational, this is a fabulous lecture by Dr Fitzpatrick given to mixed undergraduates at the University of Surrey:





 
Turns out that experimental use of the technology in humans has commenced. The lecture, though, is more about making your life count, and has lots of laughs and great visuals.


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## Reiningcatsanddogs

Sue,

I’m kind of late to the party but in response to your query on my message board, Tom Dorrance is the only one (western culture)I have run across in print who I believe in his heart and head had a non-anthropocentric approach to horses. I don’t see him as a “guru” but I do relate to his way of doing things. 

His brother Bill was also very good in that respect, followed by Ray Hunt a protégé of Tom. It seemed though that the more things became tailored to public consumption, the more it fell away from some of the central concepts that Dorrance applied, until you have what people now think of as “natural horsemanship”.

Dorrance grew up surrounded by Califonio Vaqueros. Not all vaqueros were kind in their approach to horses, but many of them were heavily influenced by the Native American Indians who were also working the ranches in the 1800’s. This gave a “spiritual” respect to the horse, as many of the Indian cultures at least in their ideals (as we know not all people follow the ideals of religious teachings in their deeds), believed that all nature deserved respect and in the case of some tribes, was equal or even superior to the human in that they had no greed and lived by nature, in balance with Creation. In some Indian cultures this was more true than in others; we tend to lump them all together when in reality there were some very distinct differences in their belief systems. 

There is a long thread that BSMS alluded to on “passive” leadership with regards to a trainer by the name of Mark Rashid. I will give you an example of this concept that I used about a week ago with Oliver.

We were riding off trail and came back to the trail. My trail buddy went right, Oliver knew the shortest way home was to the left and became quite insistent that we needed to go that way (we had actually been “lost” for the last half hour. I really could have cared less as I knew if we rode far enough we would eventually hit something recognizable, my riding partner and his horse however got a bit flustered. I think Ollie sensed that).

Out of habit, my first reaction was to gain the upper hand, turning him in tight circles and then cueing him out in the direction we were to go in (a traditional type response). After about a minute of this, and both of us at an impasse, having gotten as firm as I felt comfortable, I tried something different. We stopped. Stood still, no cues, no movement, just stood and breathed, we both relaxed. Thirty seconds later, I asked him softly to move out to the right and he did so without hesitation. We both got back to the business of thinking rather than a clash of wills. 

I could have kicked him harder, pulled harder on his mouth, hit him with the ends of the reins or grabbed a switch off a tree to get him to comply, sat through a bucking incident (or ate dirt in which case, who “wins” there?)….in short, I could have “won”. But what would I have really won? 

Cooperation was accomplished without resorting to any of those things. I wish only that it was my first habit, rather than a failsafe (it is a work in progress).

Rather than escalating the confrontation I went the opposite direction and removed confrontation on_ *both *_of our sides, changed our mindsets and then simply “asked”. I have watched my horse apply this concept to a variety of herd mentalities a half dozen or so times in the last year, it is his “leadership” style. 

Sometimes the solution is not to fight harder and “win”, but to remove the reaction to fight and use the mind the Good Lord gave you to work with.


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## SueC

...I'm currently distracted from my own journal by a wonderful discussion being had here:

http://www.horseforum.com/member-journals/macarena-flamenca-2015-a-536297/page7/

I've linked the approximate place the discussion started, about horse amygdalas etc etc. The entire journal is fabulous though, and one of my favourite places to go read!


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## frlsgirl

Hi Sue!

I wanted to check in with you and see if you know/have heard of Natasha Althoff? She is a big Dressage superstar in Australia and has a lot of Dressage teaching content online. I signed up for one of her programs called "Dressage Mastery" and I'm really enjoying it.


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## SueC

frlsgirl said:


> Hi Sue!
> 
> I wanted to check in with you and see if you know/have heard of Natasha Althoff? She is a big Dressage superstar in Australia and has a lot of Dressage teaching content online. I signed up for one of her programs called "Dressage Mastery" and I'm really enjoying it.


Hello Frlsgirl,

I have to make a confession: Since we started establishing our small farm in 2010 and building our house, both of us have stopped keeping an eye on the world at large except for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation website, which we peruse for a few minutes each day. I don't buy horse magazines, and just focus on the kind of magazines I write for. There is a woeful lack of broadcasting of dressage, jumping etc in Australia, except during the Olympics - unlike the situation in Germany. If dressage and jumping were broadcast here, I'd certainly watch!

But now that you have alerted me to this person, and it comes with your personal recommendation, I shall certainly be looking her up online!  Thanks for the information! :riding:


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## SueC

Lots to do at the moment, but I dug up some old photos from 2009 and thought I'd share them: Drowned rat on horseback! :rofl:

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi was a friend's horse, an OTTB who'd set a track record in Queensland and "a horse noone could do anything with anymore" until my friend picked him up and started treating him with decency and patience, and exercising him properly. He was a fabulous horse, I loved him to bits, he was very like our Romeo both in disposition and in the kinds of problems he'd had with people. Exceptionally fast racehorses not infrequently end up with greedy people and are spat out at the other end with behaviour problems... if they are lucky, they will be picked up by someone with sense, but it's the exception rather than the rule. Both Romeo and Rikki-Tikki were lucky.

Anyway, once when we were taking photos of my friend and Rikki riding in the harbour, I was invited to have a splash on the big, solid, 17hh horse, and found that my friend's stirrup irons didn't accommodate my leg length, so I had a stirrupless jaunt on him. It was my first ever ride on Rikki-Tikki, but we already knew and liked each other well. I got completely soaked by the water thrown up by the horse legs at speeds faster than walking, and ended up looking like a drowned rat and freezing in the wind:










But my favourite photo was this:










:rofl:

..."it's moments like these"...)

I just love how the things the photographer didn't intend actually sum up that ride so well - the tilted horizon, missing bits of person and horse, water splash on the lens as we screeched to a stop near the camera. You try riding at speed wet through and in a slippery wet saddle without stirrups... unforgettable! :rofl:

I have nearly a whole journal page of photos we took of Rikki-Tikki and my friend at various scenic locations back here:

http://www.horseforum.com/member-jo...nkeys-other-people-479466/page12/#post7436114

He's really worth a look. Sadly he had to be put down two years ago from worsening laminitis. I like to remember this magnificent horse who, in the second half of his life, found understanding and had a great deal of fun.


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## SueC

A re-post from another thread:

Quote:
Originally Posted by *bsms* 
_I cannot speak to those who compete with horses. But for those more interested in trail riding or even just arena riding for fun, getting a horse who feels free to talk with you, who interacts with you and who is engaged in what you both are doing together - THAT feels like 'horsemanship' to me. Not just riding, but understanding and interacting with the horse. Teaching the horse confidence with humans. Getting a willing partner instead of just an obedient servant. To go from being the command center to the coach..._


My reply was:

We started with arena and trails for fun 35 years ago, with our family's first two horses. (Dad had ploughed with horses as a young boy, and been taught by the farmers he worked for in order to help support his family during the war, when his father was in a Siberian prison camp for years, to drive carriages and ride bareback on the carriage horses as well.) This was exactly our ethos, and it seems it's a far more common ethos in Europe than in Australia or the US. Lisbeth Pahnke-Airosto sent me a recent copy of Ridsport (Swedish horse magazine) for which she wrote some features. She and her team have just finished arranging the 2015 European Championships for ponies in Showjumping, Dressage and Eventing (and Lisbeth was happy that the Swedish got the bronze medal :smile. She also pointed out to me an article on horse education written by a Bulgarian trainer she works with, and I'm not surprised that all the photos show happy, relaxed horses and humans who have a very obvious affection for their horses (the biggest photo shows the trainer and horse cheek to cheek with the most marvellous expressions on their faces). Now I just have to translate what he's actually saying from Swedish to English!

Anyway, Lisbeth Pahnke-Airosto wrote a very influential and educational series of horse novels based on her own experiences, that guided and inspired many young riders in Europe, including yours truly, from the 1970s onwards. It was this very ethos that was embodied in her books and that she passed on to many of her readers. Lisbeth Pahnke-Airosto can speak to this ethos working wonderfully in competitions - Showjumping has been her personal favourite. And our family can confirm that this ethos also works marvellously in competitive harness racing, which my father has now done for 30 years (coming runner-up in the Triple Crown Classic with his very first horse as a qualified trainer-reinsman back in 1986, and having had a row of successful horses over the years). I can confirm it works marvellously for competitive endurance, ridden gymkhana events like barrel and bending races, and dressage and horse shows, which I participated in with my late Arabian mare, who was the first horse I trained from scratch, and educated to saddle and harness according to this ethos... which was an ethos that was also shared by my instructor in the European riding school where I learnt to ride at the age of nine.

Nobody I knew in Europe ever did "join-ups" or anything like that, and we've never done that either. The European style of training is very different. It has a spectrum ranging from kind to cold like anywhere, but in my youth I was surrounded mostly by people with the kind approach, who, it was my observation, never seemed to have the same sorts of problems with their horses as the ones who didn't seem to prize making a genuine connection with their animals, and who were in it mostly for ambition.


I'm just going to post the two photos that went with that baby-sitter quote bsms has been citing, so people can see for themselves what that looked like in harness education:

_This is my father and me in the mid-1980s training Classic Juliet to go in the cart when she was somewhere between one and two years old, which is the usual age we were getting young horses used to a cart.
_









_At the critical stages we always had two people with a horse. Here I elected to drive and dad to lead. This was her first lap around the sand track with a driver. She'd been long reined extensively in preparation and had been familiarised with the cart. Next stage after this would be my father driving and me babysitting at the head, without a lead rope, just for the horse's confidence. The person at the head got pretty fit! :smile:
_









_If you think about it, the babysitter who continued to mentor from beside or in front of the young horse was taking exactly the same physical, and psychological, position as the mother of a foal will. We found that this helped the young horses' confidence no end, and they soon did independently what they had been taught initially with their babysitter present - just like in a herd learning situation. (In a herd, the inexperienced horses will never be pushed to the front in a scary situation - they will be shielded by their mothers, and other mentors. Yet many humans will, unnaturally, push the horses to be the first when there is a scary situation...instead of protecting them.)

I make a similar argument about the helpfulness, in certain situations, of getting off a riding horse and adopting the same physical and psychological position when dealing with something scary or new. I always find the horse really relaxes if it sees me touch the thing of which it is so frightened. Pretty soon, in most cases, if you give it time and are relaxed about it (and don't try to _force_ the horse closer), the horse will be approaching and sniffing the scary thing itself.
_
Italicised parts were excerpts from the original post. To me, of course, this is all second nature and makes complete sense in a way that some of the ideas I've seen on horse training really do not. Some of them seem to completely ignore that the horse is a sentient being with intelligence and dignity, and no less an intrinsic value than a human being actually (although many people subscribe to the humans-as-the-pinnacle-of-life idea...well, I don't, and as a result of not looking at horses with low expectations, I see how magnificent they actually are). :smile:


Discussion here:

www.horseforum.com/member-journals/bandit-cowboy-bsms-muddling-through-together-622121/page2

It's nice to see the level to which some of the journal discussions around here have been rising!


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## SueC

Since we live in an area of scenic beauty, I often post photos of our hikes and climbs on this journal. Here are some recent photos from the Kalgan River walk (3h, 12km, twisty-turny uphill-downhill):









Brett at the rock pools at the start of the walk.










Old stone house on the river bank.










Brett amongst typical streamside vegetation.










The dog always enjoys our bushwalks (when we're not in National Parks, where dogs aren't allowed).










I also enjoy the walks, and they're getting my fitness back to pre-bronchitis and pre-building levels. Before building we used to walk seriously for hours every weekend, and do small strenuous walks or cycles several times a week.










I love our dog, she's such a hypercharged canine, hardly stands still!










She spent a fair bit of time in the water as well - she swims like a hydrofoil, with her chest lifting out of the water and leaving a giant wake behind her. All the dogs we've had enjoyed swimming, but none was so lightning-fast in the water...










I love the one ear up, one ear slightly tilted thing going on with our Jess! :smile:


...my horse also thanks me for working on my fitness, it makes me a better rider.

I kind of burnt out several times over the past five years with unrealistic schedules coupled with a strong work ethic. I am now learning that I actually do have to take care of myself first so I can properly attend to the things I have to do (and don't have to do all at once).

Does this strike a chord with anyone? How old were you when you learnt this? (My husband was born with it! :rofl


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## frlsgirl

SueC said:


> I kind of burnt out several times over the past five years with unrealistic schedules coupled with a strong work ethic. I am now learning that I actually do have to take care of myself first so I can properly attend to the things I have to do (and don't have to do all at once).
> 
> Does this strike a chord with anyone? How old were you when you learnt this? (My husband was born with it! :rofl


 Ummm, I'm still trying to figure this out. I do take care of myself but my ambitions often exceed my self-care measures, if that makes any sense? There are just so many things I want to do! I just always feel like I'm going to miss out on something if I don't keep pushing myself. Maybe I'll settle down once I hit my 40s :wink:


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## frlsgirl

Sue? Hello? You've been unusually quiet. Hope everything is ok.


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## egrogan

Yes, I sent Sue a PM a few days ago but haven't heard anything. Hopefully she's just busy...
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## SueC

This journal has apparently been re-opened - testing!


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## SueC

Well hello, old friends and general readers! :smile:

It's been a busy couple of years for me and so I made a priorities list and there weren't 40 hours in the day to do everything.

Of late though I've been thinking about continuing with the online horse journal. I've had mixed feelings about that - for a number of reasons. One complication is that I'm a professional writer, and if I blog something online and decide it's good, it really complicates being able to publish it in the "real world".

Another is to do with how I feel about the journal - there is one thing that really bugs me about it. Apparently it's a common phenomenon: The pressure to really sanitise how you talk about your birth family, even if it's a really unhappy family and atrocious things happened on a generally daily basis. I've got a good friend who blogs on mental health and trauma recovery and works professionally in that field, and we've spent a lot of time talking about these kinds of issues. And the upshot is: You've got to be honest, and you've got to tell your authentic story, not just the glossy version that avoids embarrassing other people who did things they shouldn't have. There is way too much cover-up of wildly unacceptable behaviour and playing "happy families" to the public, and it's actually hurting everyone who is still in these kinds of unacceptable situations, because it adds to the conspiracy of silence.

This journal really looked at two things: The past, and how I got started with horses, and how my birth family started racing horses - and the present, i.e. horsey and donkeyish goings on at Red Moon Sanctuary, the property my husband and I have together - with the occasional scenic side trip. The present story shall be continued, and I've got no mixed feelings about that.

As regards the past, there were a couple of times I squirmed when people commented about what a lovely childhood I had - based on the presented sanitised material that showed me growing up with horses. I did comment along the lines of, "Postcards always look better than the real thing!" - see right at the top of this page:

http://www.horseforum.com/member-journals/trotters-arabians-donkeys-other-people-479466/page12/

That was putting it very mildly. I've no intentions of boring everyone with the nitty-gritties of an isolated and unhappy childhood :music019: in which the horses - along with other animals, and books, and poets, and musicians, and logical thinking and reasoning, and some good teachers at school - were what in many ways saved my sanity and gave me hope for the future - a hope that was indeed eventually justified, looking back from the other side of 40. I just want it on the record that things were not OK when I was growing up - and to send a big hug to anyone out there who went through awful things with the people who should have created a safe and nurturing environment for them as children, and an even bigger hug and "hang in there" to any young person who is still in that situation - please believe things can get better. :hug:

There is a lot of material available these days on growing up with toxic families - some of it is excellent. One of the things that's a common refrain is that the broken things in families often don't change - only you can decide to change, as an individual, and to become who you want to be, and to work on the dismal unconscious brain programming that comes with growing up in a toxic family. It doesn't matter how much you stand on your head and wiggle your legs, or bend over backwards - other people aren't suddenly going to be nice or to treat you with respect or to see you for who you really are instead of a projection they made - they have to decide to do that, and often they will not, for all sorts of reasons.

Any people versed in psychology who have read back over this journal will undoubtedly have noticed that I basically held up my father in some kind of heroic role, which is how I was conditioned to treat him as a child. It didn't sit comfortably with me as an adult to present him like that, because it is so far from complete. Yet if I hadn't then there would have been serious repercussions at the time - but those potential repercussions no longer bother me. And that was a trick and a half. And reading back over this journal, it's also really obvious to me that the parent-child relationship was in many ways reversed - with the child supporting the parent in their hobby and cheering them on - not vice versa - and the vice versa didn't happen in my childhood. Don't imagine that my parents went around taking photographs of me working with horses unless they were specifically cajoled into it, or that they cheered me on - they did not. It was my job to cheer them on. Well, I quit that job a while back. Energy and time are precious, and these days I'm more astute in how I allocate them.

So, back to horses. :cowboy:

I will update that extensively and soon.

In summary: Romeo is, amazingly, still alive and kicking and turned 33 late last year. He costs an arm and a leg to feed with special "porridge" we make up for him, but we didn't think that was a good reason to put him down. He's still enjoying himself way too much for that.

I'm still happily riding Sunsmart, and he's great. Unfortunately, we had to put down his mother late last year due to a pituitary tumour, aged nearly 28. Her brother Chasseur pined - well, they all did - but Chasseur in particular, because his sister had been his best buddy. What with ancient Romeo hanging around our garden a lot of the time doing his own thing, and me wanting to go riding with Sunsmart without piteous neighing and panicking from Chasseur, I needed a new paddock buddy and adopted Julian (referred to earlier in this journal) out of his 15 years of solitary life in a small sandyard, and he instantly buddied up to Chasseur, and all is working well again. Photos of all that coming up soon.

And the donkeys are all well, all three of them, and are enjoying Australian national fame by being having their exploits in print, and also being the current friendly face of Grass Roots magazine: https://www.facebook.com/GrassRootsAust/

And Brett and I are well too and enjoying life.

More soon! 

Best wishes to all

Sue


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## SwissMiss

SueC said:


> This journal has apparently been re-opened - testing!


You are back :biggrin::happydance:


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## SueC

Well hello to you too, Swiss Miss!  To what do I owe the honour? ;-)

Best wishes to you!


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## SwissMiss

SueC said:


> Well hello to you too, Swiss Miss!  To what do I owe the honour? ;-)
> 
> Best wishes to you!


Lol. I was lurking while you were still actively writing (before your "vacation" from HF), but was often wondering how you are doing :wink: 
Was always in love with your house :biggrin:


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## SueC

Oh, a lurker! ;-)

Welcome to the daylight! 

And if you're ever travelling the globe, you do know we're an environmental open house and like having visitors? (And we're a troll-free zone! ;-) )

That house construction idea is actually from your shores, you know. Translates well into the Australian contexts!


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## egrogan

@*SueC* , so excited to have you back to share your adventures. Talking about family- particularly when family has affected us in ways that are painful- is very difficult for me as well. I work in an organization where "telling your story" and "bringing your whole self to work" is the expectation, and I find it difficult as I'd really prefer not to engage with many of the stories of how I grew up. I didn't have any difficult trauma, but rather have always felt like I don't quite belong with the people I come from, and have subsequently created a very happy life of my own design with my husband. 

All that to say- I think what you chose to share, and with whom, is extraordinarily personal and that you can't beat yourself up for choosing a "sanitized" version if that's simply the easiest path. For me, I like coming here to share about my horse adventures, and tend to focus mostly on that. Other people are comfortable sharing differently. And I think that's what makes this feel like a "real" community, rather than just an online bulletin board, to me. I will be honest though, I don't engage much in social media and so I sometimes do pause and wonder about sharing so much about my horse life on _any_ internet site. But since I don't have a huge real life horse network, I find this virtual network really valuable and love keeping up with the journals and the trail riding thread, where you really do get to know people...It seems like in the past year, more people are meeting up and riding together in person, and that's really neat.

Welcome back and post away...on your terms :grin:


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## SueC

Hello @egrogan, ha - bringing your whole self to work only works if you don't have any sociopaths at your workplace. Good luck! 

Wasn't beating myself up, btw - just didn't like the huge gap between what I said, and what I didn't say that was on my mind when I was writing way back when, on growing up. So I've addressed that. It's by people coming out with that stuff that others can be encouraged not to hide in shame over things they were not responsible for. This doesn't suit the people who have hurt you, but it's not our business to censor the true story of our own lives just to protect their public images and feelings. If we want to tell our truth, we should. And if we think it's nobody's business, that's fine too. ;-)

Glad the journalling is so positive for you!


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## SueC

So here were our four horses sunning themselves in their favourite resting spot under the big redgum tree, back in October 2015 (our southern hemisphere spring). This is a typical morning ritual for them in the cooler seasons of the year. We are 30km in from the coast, and our nights do get chilly. This is an amusing photo - look at Sunsmart (chocolate coloured and looking remarkably like a dead whale washed up on the beach)... he's framed by his dam on the left, her full brother to his right, and our Methuselah, Romeo, standing on the right.








[/URL]

Horses Sunning Themselves - Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Let's see if I can remember how to insert photos...


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## SueC

Speaking of dead whales - donkeys can impersonate them pretty convincingly too. This was in January 2016.


Romeo and Don Quixote – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australiaby Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


And here goes:


Romeo and Sleeping Donkey – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


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## SueC

February 2016, favourite paddock snaps:


Horse Quartet near Four-Year-Old Windbreak – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Peas in a Pod – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

The above is such an excellent shot of Sunsmart and his dam - you can see the likeness, but also how much the sire came through in this horse. For anyone wondering about the branches, it's mid-summer and that means tree lucerne supplementation.


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## SueC

And now we're going waaaaay back, two decades back. This is a newborn Sunsmart with his mother. It's really extraordinary when you think about it, how that little parcel of legs grew into the big lummox you can see in the post above...


French Revolution 14/11/1989 - 2/11/2017 by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr



French Revolution 14/11/1989 - 2/11/2017 by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

And yep, that's me way back when too.

Sunsmart was named thus because from the time he was little, he would always rest in the shade. In Australia, there was a slip-slop-slap anti-skin cancer campaign called "Be Sunsmart" at the time, and this fella certainly was.

For those of you who read Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" - nicknames for this horse are "Smartie" when I need a short name, and "Smartibartfast" for special occasions. :rofl:

Next post will regrettably be about pituitary tumours in horses. But, it's a beautiful morning, and if I go now I can just squeeze in a ride before chores! :charge:

Wishing an excellent day to all.


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## SueC

So, cancer and horses. Death and horses. I'm going to back up a little.

I grew up, in the second half of my childhood, at a racing stables where horses were stabled and yarded - in little sand runs with no green pick and a maximum of one yard buddy. This is a fairly typical situation for racehorses in this country. And when these horses died prematurely, the main cause of death was colic or twisted bowel. In-work horses were protected by their activity levels and only had mild colic attacks at worst. But once retired, these horses were dropping like flies in their teens and twenties, from colic - and there were at least six fatal colics, in an establishment that typically housed around 15 horses. Watching horses die from colic is a horrible thing - it's always a desperate and violent battle. And it's a battle I got very sick of, since colic and twisted bowel are largely lifestyle induced and therefore largely preventable.

When I was 23, I came across an interesting saying: _If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got._

I am a biologist by training and fascinated by animals and nature. When my husband and I came to set up Red Moon Sanctuary seven years ago, we set it up so that all our animals - beef cattle, donkeys and horses - could free range in a social group of their own species across several large, interesting paddocks, with nooks and crannies, little hills to stand on, shelter belts and shade trees, and a farm dam, across 12.5 hectares in total, as well as additional access and service tracks to explore, and views of neighbouring properties, animals and activities. The different species all run together, just as happens in natural ecosystems - think of the African savannah - and this has many benefits for the animals as well as the land.

Our horses now spend around 16 hours a day getting incidental exercise grazing - they get all their roughage from free ranging, and cover a respectable distance doing so, since they move from one side of the property to the other many times a day in the process. They also spend around 2 hours a day playing and exploring, which gives them moderate to intense exercise - there are plenty of interesting things to do and look at. The donkeys and the younger cattle, for instance, love running up and down the dam wall, and looking at the world from the great height it offers. The donkeys run in circles around the trees chasing each other, braying and kicking up their heels. The horses have running contests and play their own little games - one of them likes to pick up sticks and balance them in his mouth while sporting an "aren't I clever?" facial expression. (That's Sunsmart. He also wants to play the "stick game" with me when we come back from a ride in the state forest, on the last section between two gates where I just walk beside him. I offer him a stick and he carries it self-importantly, and then turns to me, and I'm supposed to grab it, and then he pulls on it. Hours of fun. You should see his face when he does it.) The balance of the time - around another 6 hours - is spent resting under trees.

This means that in terms of time budgets, our horses are now living very similarly to wild horses - similar amounts of time spent on similar activities. Wild horses routinely cover 30-60 km a day, and while our horses aren't quite doing that, they are getting a heck of a lot of exercise when left to their own devices. In the stabled and yarded situations all of them came from, they spent less than 6 hours a day eating, while standing in the one spot, about 6 hours a day resting and snoozing, and the balance of the time mostly standing around bored - except for the solitary stallions, who spent large parts of their days walking or jogging up and down their fence lines like automatons, creating deep trenches in the soil that eventually unearthed the star pickets that housed the electrics that kept the animals apart.

In the seven years we have had horses here, we haven't had a single colic, not even a mild one, even though around half the horses had experienced colics before. That's six horses we had here long term all up, plus two shorter-term visitors. I don't keep more than four horses at a time, since I want to look after them well, and also because horses are quite hard on the land (mostly when they're tearing around having fun, which they absolutely must be allowed to do) and overstocking would quickly lead to extensive soil structure degradation. Occasionally a horse dies - most of ours are over 20 - and another one comes in. And within weeks, you can see the difference in their physical shape and their mental outlook.

But all horses die eventually, of course, and the two we've lost here so far have been to cancer. My Arabian mare was put down at age 32 when a pedunculated lipoma started creating unacceptable problems for her. Sunsmart's dam ended up with a pituitary tumour and was put down just shy of turning 28.

Cancer is quite common in horses over 20, and most of it is benign, so they can live with it for long periods. My Arabian mare had grape-sized melanomas on the underside of her tail since age 18, but they didn't form a significant irritation and she didn't die from those. Sunsmart developed a cluster of lipomas around his umbilicus two years ago. They grew quite alarmingly at one point and then mostly sheared off when he rolled one day (the skin over the umbilicus is weak). The few that remained stopped the wound from healing, and were taken off. The wound healed nicely, no problems since.

But sometimes, a cancer is fatal. Pituitary tumours are also quite common in horses over 20, and while these cancers themselves are benign, and usually quite tiny, they unfortunately destroy parts of the pituitary gland - the master regulator of the body, in endocrine terms. The pituitary controls all the other endocrine glands - adrenals, thyroid, ovaries, testes - and itself regulates many body functions directly. Pituitary tumours vary in terms of the speed and extent to which they affect a horse. In mild cases you can treat them with medicines to extend their lives for maybe a year or two, but the tumour itself can't be removed. Our mare's was a rapid and severe case.

The first thing we noticed is that in the winter of 2017, she grew a denser and longer winter coat than usual, and began eating her hard feed as if starving, although her body condition was good. A few months after that, I noticed one day that her hooves had _very suddenly_ changed angles and really collapsed forward - I couldn't believe it, she had always had fabulous feet (no long toe/low heel genetics or lifestyle factors) and she was trimmed every 5-6 weeks. It had only been four weeks since the last completely normal trim. She looked like a horse with laminitis but moved completely normally (walk, trot, canter all fine), and didn't have the genetics for laminitis either (unlike my Arabian mare), nor the typical body shape and metabolic issues. I couldn't understand how a horse with collapsed-forward toes could move as if nothing was wrong. In retrospect, it's pretty clear that the pain-killing effects of excess cortisol secretion and perhaps extra endorphins (from the pituitary disruption) kept the pain down artificially past the point where it should have showed up.

When the weather heated up, she was suddenly hit with symptoms that affected her quality of life - she sweated profusely and looked miserable on any sunny day over around 23 degrees C (normal thermoregulation was disrupted), and then the lameness normally associated with laminitis began. She stopped moving around with her herd, and huddled in the yards. She had instant supportive therapy and lots of TLC while we waited to see if she was irrecoverably ill. We kept one horse in with her at all times for company. After a week she was a bit better, calmed down, and ate everything we brought her. We were cautiously hopeful. On cool days she was almost normal and even ventured out into the big paddocks again a bit. But then she began to drink massive amounts of water - in excess of 90L overnight and more in the daytime - and develop polyuria. We had to replace electrolytes, and now it was really starting to look like she had no chance of getting better. Too many body functions were too affected, and too quickly. Three weeks after she stopped being able to live a normal life, we made the decision that it was kinder to put her down. The veterinarian agreed with our assessment, and we said goodbye.

It was sad, it always is. Having said that, it wasn't nearly as traumatic as dying of colic. She had a good life except those last three weeks, and even in those three weeks she had good days, and she had a long life, nearly 28 years, and her last day was a good one, and she happened to be on her morning nap under a tree after a nice breakfast when she was put down, totally oblivious of anything.

She was a sweet-natured mare, and I really miss her. I knew her from birth, and even though she came to us as a retiree, and I didn't have the long working relationship with her that I had with my Arabian mare, I really got fond of her.

This is how I will remember her; it's a very typical snapshot of her interactions with me in the three years we had her here.


French Revolution 14/11/1989 - 2/11/2017 by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


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## SueC

PS: No, the sky isn't purple in Australia. This was a malfunction of a dying camera but we kept the photos anyway. They're kind of surreal, so we made no attempts to colour correct them...


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## SueC

The next day I felt like total crap, which is on par for the course. I needed to cheer myself up. So I sat down to write a totally feel-good animal story for _Grass Roots_ magazine. And who better to write about than these critters?


Donkey Perspectives - Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

I'm a regular contributor to GR, but it surprised me that this one jumped the queue to the extent that they snuck it in the very next issue. Perhaps other people needed cheering up as well. Maybe it will cheer up someone on HF too, so I will share the manuscript. Australian readers, of course, can still pop into their local newsagency - and GR do international subscriptions as well.

GR folk often refer to their subscriptions as "prescriptions", since it affords a breath of sanity in a mad world, and a real sense of community. It's full of lovely stories on tree changing, small farming, organic growing, heritage breeds, livestock management, DIY, crafts, recycling, alternative energy and technology, owner building etc; and contains excellent recipes and readers' letters. There are very few advertisements compared to standard magazines, and you definitely won't see advertisements for sports cars, liposuction, dishwashers, six-burner stoves, cosmetics, condos, yachts, Rolex watches, unnecessary gadgets, and other mainstream consumer material. However, you will be able to contemplate whether you need solar panels, a compost toilet, a grain mill, a chicken tractor, essential oils, cheese starter cultures, parasite diagnostic services, heirloom seeds, or a few dozen books from the review section.

So here it is.


Cute Donkey Antics IV – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr



*A TALE OF THREE DONKEYS*

by Sue Coulstock, Redmond, WA

In 2012 we looked around our pastures and saw beef cattle, two retired horses, a working horse, plus the odd bit of welcome wildlife like kangaroos and emus. We thought, “Whom else could we give a home here?” Then we read about the plight of many neglected donkeys, so we wrote to the Donkey Society and offered to adopt a handful of old or ill donkeys when need next arose.

I have acquired lots of equine expertise, training my own horses from scratch for riding and driving since age 11. A huge bow here to the late great Australian horseman Tom Roberts whose four little books on horses and riding taught me so much more than anyone else. An even bigger bow to the horses, who have taught me far more than I ever taught them! I love classical dressage for its emphasis on communicating with your horse and working as a partnership, rather than “making the horse do things.” I also love getting out on bush trails with my horse Sunsmart. I’ve studied anatomy, physiology, nutrition etc etc. I trim our horses’ feet myself except in high dry summer, when the hooves are rock hard and I get an annual masterclass from a top local farrier. So we felt we would make a good home for a couple of donkeys with health and/or age issues, since there is a great deal of overlap in the management of horses and donkeys.

A few months later an email came: There were some donkeys in need of a good home. They weren’t old and neglected, but they were a group of three with special needs. Their lovely owner Dorothy was experiencing health issues that made it difficult for her to keep her donkeys. She wanted a good forever home for them, where they could stay together. These donkeys were only in their teens, and donkeys can live well past 40. One of the jennies was blind, and relied on her two herd mates to be her “guide donkeys”. They sent a photo and we said yes – how could you resist these guys?


The Three Stooges? – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


*THE DONKEYS ARRIVE*

On July 12, 2012 the “Donkey Bus” from the Donkey Society made a delivery. We filmed this happy occasion and you can see the video on redmoonsanctuary.com.au. It also shows the amusing reactions of our horses, who had never seen donkeys before.

On the bus were a donkey gelding Brett duly christened “Don Quixote” and two jennies. Don Quixote is a classical donkey you’d expect to see in a Christmas parade: Dark with a white underside and muzzle, and big enough to carry a small person. Mary Lou is a chocolate-coloured Irish Longhair, who at times resembles an enormous walking shagpile carpet. She can literally develop dreadlocks. If she doesn’t shed out at the start of summer, we have been known to clip her short for the hot weather – the climate isn’t very Irish around here. Sparkle is the smallest donkey, and the most touchy-feely one. She just loves cuddles, scratches and having her piebald coat brushed. If I’m brushing a horse and she hears it, she comes over and queues up to be next in line. This little donkey lost most of her eyesight early in life (cause unknown), but seems to be able to tell light from dark and see general outlines. One of the Donkey Society ladies joked that Sparkle just needs glasses! You can see that her retina is partially detached. We tell people she is legally blind, and therefore cannot drive a car.

Sparkle copes surprisingly well with the loss of vision. Her hearing is exquisite. She appears to have an extraordinary ability to make landscape maps in her head. She quickly memorised where all the fences are, and just needs help finding the gateways. She looks a bit unfocused when approaching other animals, as she cannot read their gestures. We have noticed that all our donkeys and horses cut her a lot of slack, and tolerate incursions from her that they wouldn’t accept from the others. They understand that she is a little different, and make allowances for her inability to read cues. We were very careful with how we socialised her into the larger equine herd when she first arrived, so the others would have a chance to figure her out and she wouldn’t get hurt in the interim.


*DELIGHTFUL DONKEYS AND THEIR NOISES*

Ah donkeys. They look like a cross between the horse, the teddy bear and the Easter bunny; utterly endearing. My husband, who says I’m the softie around this property, oohs and aahs over them every time he sees them, and they ooh and aah right back. They make the most ridiculous noises. When Don Quixote is warming up to bray, he sort of starts his engine with a few splutters before settling into ululating foghorn mode, ending in a crescendo of falsetto and following up, as per classical donkey tradition, with a few deep nose-blowing snorts. It’s an incredible production! Mary Lou’s bray sounds like a rusty water pump. She also has an impressive repertoire of long drawn-out honks which always peak in an insistent vibrato, employed especially when there are carrots around. And Sparkle – well, when she first brayed on our place after a long silent settling-in period, the whole herd of cows came running from the other end of the property because they couldn’t believe what they were hearing! She appears to employ large echo chambers for her particular vocalisations.

Donkey braying carries for kilometres on a still night, and is used in the wild to keep in touch with other donkeys. Occasionally Sparkle gets lost at night when in the large bushy paddock and we hear her bray to her herd mates, who then quietly go and collect her.

If you’ve not heard donkey noises before, we recommend you look up “Trumpet and Donkey (Original)” on YouTube. It shows what happens if you play a brass instrument near a donkey paddock.


*DONKEY HEALTH ISSUES*

The biggest health issue for donkeys in the lusher parts of Australia is obesity. Donkeys originated in poor country with sparse, coarse grazing, and can get into awful trouble on lush green beef pastures. It’s like taking a wholefoods devotee off their healthy food and stuffing them full of Mars bars. Ideally you would graze donkeys in a relatively poor paddock with rough grasses and supplement them with minerals and if needed, extra roughage in the form of good-quality cereal straw, coarse meadow hay, _Acacia saligna_ branches, and similar non-tender tree fodders. 

If you’re on beef grazing country like us, you have to carefully manage all equines to ensure they don’t become overweight on the pasture in spring. With horses we usually do this by restricting the pasture area they have access to, restricting the amount of time spent on pasture each day if necessary, and supplementing with coarse meadow hay. My working horse needs a lot of trail riding as well during the spring flush as he puts on weight very easily.

With donkeys you need to do the same, but more of it. We frequently have to employ grazing muzzles to restrict the two overweight donkeys’ food intake. These are “nosebags” with a hole in the hard plastic bottom through which a small amount of pasture can be accessed at a time. You can find them in most horse equipment stores. Equines are trickle grazers. Grazing muzzles allow them to have continuous access to small amounts of food and roam far and wide, which is much better than giving them full access to excessive food for some of the time and then locking them up in a boring yard until they can come out to eat again. The drawbacks of grazing muzzles include that equines can’t scratch their itchy spots with their teeth when wearing these, and that they can get too hot in them in summer. Also, the ability to select coarser forage may be adversely affected, so it’s good to have a multi-prong approach to obesity prevention.

Obesity in equines frequently leads to very dangerous metabolic problems and laminitis – a painful, crippling inflammation of the feet. It can lead to permanent hoof deformities, inability to move freely or work, and even to the bones in the hooves coming through the sole, which is horrific and usually fatal.

Overgrown hooves are another common health problem in domesticated donkeys. Donkeys evolved in rocky areas where their hoof growth was matched by the wear and tear of the terrain. In soft paddocks, with little exercise, hooves overgrow and then quickly deform, often causing permanent damage. We trim our donkeys every six weeks. This also helps prevent hoof rot, together with Stockholm tar applied to the underside of the hooves after trimming – extra important in winter and prolonged wet weather. I will write about equine hoof care in detail next time.



Up Close and Personal - Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


_PS: They did change the title to "A Donkey Tale" - which is fine by me. The original title had a bit of a joking reference to Dickens' "Tale of Two Cities"... _:dance-smiley05:


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## SueC

For Swiss Miss: A house update.

In the summer of 2016/17, we finally completed the exterior finish coat, long a lower priority than interior finishing. There was a bit of scaffold work on the east end and the front of our house, which we were glad to be done with, since you have to lift heavy buckets of lime plaster up to those heights instead of being able to plaster straight from the wheelbarrow!



Final Plaster Coat East Wall Day Two – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Day Three on the Monster Wall – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Finishing the North Barge Painting – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


So this was the exterior finish plaster all done - though the scaffold is still up at the back to finally attach the TV antenna (never a huge priority, and we'd just hooked it up indoors in the interim).


Owner Build Five Years In – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


This is a common view looking out of the windows first thing in the morning, since our 33-year-old gelding is often an overnight lawnmower in the garden:


Look Who’s There – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


But then in winter last year, we had a more unusual view:


Garden Scene I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

This was due to a hard frost (unusual for this region) killing off much of the perennial grasses - the winter feed - in the low pastures. We had to de-stock all our two-year-old steers, and nurse the yearling heifers through with a lot of tree fodder, some hay and occasional access to the lawn. These are Murray Greys and have dispositions like Bambi, so no trouble and obviously supervised; also quite small still and not a problem for the turf.


We do get visitors:


Surprise Visitor – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Are There Any More? – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


The bird-attracting native garden around the house is looking a treat these days:


Nice Camping Spot – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Amazing how that grew in just four years, from cell stock from the rehabilitation nursery. The seedlings were finger-sized and came in trays, and cost us less than $200 to do the whole garden, front and back. I also propagated a lot of rosemary and lavender from cuttings for contrast; the bees love these.

I'll do some interior photos another time, a bit down the track - some are already on our website: 

www.redmoonsanctuary.com.au


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## tinyliny

beautiful!


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## SueC

Thank you!  We spent five years just with our heads down working, and when we came up for air in the last couple of years, we slowly started to realise that somehow, _all this_ had appeared where previously there was just a mostly boggy cow paddock! It's been unbelievably satisfying to see that it is really possible to make a huge difference to a landscape and to habitat quality, by persistent working with one's own humble hands, one day at a time - and to do so in under a decade. The house is just lovely to live in, and totally off-grid, and so self-managing and sustainable; but even more wonderful is how the ongoing planting of the shelterbelts and other vegetation, and even the permaculture garden of human food plants, has brought on an explosion of birdlife and other wildlife, enthusiastically taking up the new "apartments"! 

And the fact that the horses are having such a wonderful life there as well after their previously lonely and confined existences... just lovely.

Oh, and I forgot to mention - we didn't have buckets of money, and did this on a shoestring - on less than half the average Australian property mortgage - which shows how much you can do if you owner build. We could never have afforded to buy something like this, we had to build it up with our own hands, and spend half a decade doing it!


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## SueC

*High-Tech Dental Care*

On Wednesday, we had a visit from our vet Miles to do routine dentals on Chasseur and Sunsmart. (Julian had recently been done and Romeo is past being able to be done.) We switched over to this veterinarian in the past year after our previous good horse vets left the area, and are happy that he is excellent with horses. In the past, our horses had always been done with the old-fashioned hand rasp and mouth gag setup. Not this time!

This was our introduction to high-tech equine dentistry, involving a portable crush, a shot of tranquillizer, power dental tools, water jets for rinsing, and some creative head restraining with an additional overhead halter. Sort of like this:











I wish I could have got a photo. The mobile crush was very impressive, it just hinged off the back of a trailer. The horses, loose in the same yard area, were going, "How did _that_ get here? That wasn't here before!"

I found it interesting to see the power dental tool in use. It was like a cordless drill body with a long attachment, with a smallish oval vibrating rasp at the end. It does a great, quick, very targeted job but you can see why the tranquillizer is an essential partner. The noises are a bit unsettling!

Once the molars were done, even the incisors got a going over to remove hooks. To do this, a large-bore plastic tube was inserted in the mouth sideways in the diastema, to keep the tongue out of harm's way. In the traditional hand-held method, noone had bothered with incisors. This looked like the most uncomfortable bit for the horse.

The two darlings took a while to recover from their temporary intoxication afterwards, but their tooth function and comfort is excellent again. The carrot test is a good indicator - can they handle a whole carrot without dropping bits from their mouths? Chasseur, at age 24.5, had been having trouble with that test, and is now fully functioning again in that department.

The horses love the carrot test.


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## AnitaAnne

Sue that house is just breathtaking! I had no idea just how beautiful it would be from all the mud pictures before! 

I am truly amazed by the design; y'all are truly artists and the house is a testament to your creative and physical talents. Plus off grid? WOW. 

Stunning, it is simply stunning!!! 

Something that you build with your own labor is 1000x's more satisfying than anything one can just purchase.


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## SwissMiss

Looooove the house! And amazing what has changed in the surroundings as well!


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## SueC

*Anita Anne and Swiss Miss*: Thank you! We're very happy with it. And it's so true that what you DIY is much more meaningful and satisfying than what you can buy. It's true in so many ways, including in getting a nice saddle horse! ;-)

What have you two been up to? General projects? And horse related? 

And speaking of DIY, the sewing machine is on the table, so that I can finally properly hem those curtains that have been hanging there as is for a couple of years... You know what it's like, I'm sure...

But just before that, I did have one thing for the journal. See next post! :charge:


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## SueC

*Birthday Ride*

25/3 is my birthday, so I wanted to go for a special early ride deep into the forest. But on my birthday morning, I could not find the key to the back gate through which we access the forest. This is a key that has a red ribbon threaded through it in case it falls to the ground, and it normally resides in my zippered riding pants pocket.

After the last ride into the forest, my riding pants needed washing, and I had to remove the key. I put it on the white mat on top of the chest freezer next to the washing machine, where I always put it in this situation. And on the same day, before the pants were dry, I had to put a whole lot of stewed peaches and plums off our trees into that freezer, so I remember deciding to remove the key to a safe spot

Anyone getting deja vu here?

Come birthday morning, I spent an hour looking for the key while visions of the lovely blue-green lake at the end of my proposed destination floated temptingly before me. Then I had to give up, because it was better to think of an alternative destination than to be delayed even further.

So I decided we would go into Sleeman Creek Nature Reserve, to the north of us. We can see it from our house:


Rural Scenery – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

The Reserve is the wooded area on the right-hand side, adjacent to our neighbour’s hill pastures. We mostly visit it on foot or by bike, walking the dog. There were three reasons I’d not been there for years on the horse: 1) Lots of fresh riding trails in the forest to the west of us; 2) A dog that has no traffic sense and tries to round up cars; and 3) A whitewater creek in wintertime, too dangerous to cross.

But now it was autumn, so no rushing creek; and I had a ruse for the dog in the form of a spare lead rope. So we set out on a warm-up loop around the back of our own farm, in the opposite direction of the Reserve; and by the time we reached our northeast gate, we were unkinked and ready for adventure.

Our northeast gate is a so-called “cocky gate” - a section of fence you drag around on a post, and attach back to a keeper post to close. Our cocky gate has lots of barbed wire, so it is lovely to have a horse who will stand still without any fuss while I fold back the gate out of harm’s way. That’s such a leap when I think of him fresh off the harness racing track in 2009 – he wouldn’t stand still for a second, not on the lead and not in work, because it had never been taught to him.

As a refresher, this is us. I don’t usually carry a camera when riding, so I will reconstitute this ride with pre-existing photographs.


Sue and Sunsmart - Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

It was no hassle to walk the dog and horse together – the horse mostly walks next to me even without having to be led on the reins. When a little way down the access road, I gave Jess her freedom and got back on the horse, and we trotted down the road looking at the interesting views, and sometimes dropped back to a walk to look more intently at particularly interesting things. We both do it.


Hello - Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Pretty soon we crossed the Reserve boundary, which means having to squeeze between two lowish rocks barely more than a foot apart, put there to prevent vehicular entry. From there, we meandered our way down to the dry creek bed. The dog went for a customary bath in one of the low pools while Sunsmart and I crossed the rocks and headed up the hill.

Jess has a talent for finding unspeakable things on outings, usually in the form of old sections of skeleton with various crusty bits still attached. This is her with one of her favourite finds ever, coming up that hill. Enlarge the photo if you dare!


Happy Dog with Snack – Sleeman Creek Nature Reserve, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

This time, the dog was wet but thankfully not carrying any finds as she caught up with us.


Dog in Pretty Rural Scenery – Sleeman Creek Nature Reserve, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

There is a lovely view back over our valley from the hilltop, which we stopped to take in. You can see our house from there too. I really didn’t want to turn around and go home, but there was a birthday lunch to attend. And there’s always next time! I can’t wait to get back there with my horse and explore the back boundaries of the Reserve, where Brett and I have never gone on our hikes. Don’t you love Google Earth? And who knows what we will discover. I love trail riding.


Red Moon Sanctuary from Sleeman Creek Nature Reserve – Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Birthday food photos next time!


PS: Sorry about the font. Had lost this post twice due to various malfunctions and ended up pasting from word processor.


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## SueC

*Moonlit Ride*

The moon was coming up early this evening and I decided to do a moonlit loop around the back of our place after feeding the horses. It's a whole different feeling to ride by moonlight - and amazing just how much you can see, after your eyes have adjusted. The physiology behind that is fascinating, by the way:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptation_(eye)

Horses do it better than we do, but we're not bad at it ourselves.

The bush track on which I rode out was sand, and reflected wonderfully, throwing light all around. This is nice footing for moonlit night riding. We trotted on that kind of footing, but went back to a walk for the muddy, dark footing on the swamp track. It is a really meditative thing to ride by moonlight. When your vision is compromised, a lot of other senses turn up the volume. (That's why we get more out of music listening in the dark, especially on headphones!) So you really hear the crickets and other insects, and different frog calls, and various birds settling into their perches, and the high-pitched squeaks of the microbats as the come out to hunt. Nature just seems to breathe differently at night. I've liked going for bushwalks in the night since I was fourteen, and now that we're on our own place I've got lots of opportunities to ride at unusual times as well. The horse appeared to enjoy the experience too, and the dog was ecstatic as always. Will have to do it again soon!

Just going to post a shot of emus grazing amongst our horses last week. These guys are regular visitors and have gotten used to us and our daily business.


Emus and Horses I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


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## QtrBel

A belated but very Happy Birthday wish for you. I so love reading through your threads, links and replies. A small strawbale studio for a test run here is still on my bucket list. The humidity makes me nervous but am thinking if I can get high and open I can get around that.


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## egrogan

Those are some big birds! And I thought I was doing well have my girls fearless around our wild turkeys!


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## SueC

QtrBel said:


> A belated but very Happy Birthday wish for you. I so love reading through your threads, links and replies. A small strawbale studio for a test run here is still on my bucket list. The humidity makes me nervous but am thinking if I can get high and open I can get around that.


Yes, you can! 

Ever checked this out? Andrew is really really helpful, and does workshops all over the US. He was our sanity saver and so helpful, even though we were in Australia!

https://www.strawbale.com/

I love the horses on your pic. And those harnesses! Are they your horses and harnesses? Because if so: :bowwdown:


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Those are some big birds! And I thought I was doing well have my girls fearless around our wild turkeys!



Wow, aren't they lovely. Probably scarier because they flap, no? I mean, do they? Emus don't, they just run...

Let me tell you an emu joke.

A man finds an emu egg and says to his wife, "Invite the extended family! We're having scrambled eggs!"


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## QtrBel

"I love the horses on your pic. And those harnesses! Are they your horses and harnesses? Because if so: :bowwdown:" I feel the same about your Sanctuary. Thank you. Yes, they are/were my (personal) very first team. Sadly Peaches passed after spending 24 years with us. Daisy is still going strong when there is work to do or light riding. Mostly clean up from hurricanes and trails. That particular harness was sold after an accident that has left my shoulder prone to reinjury. It was leather and extremely heavy. It was replaced with biothane that is similar in decoration. To give you an idea of their size I am 5.10 - closer to 6 with those boots.


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## QtrBel

I'll have to give that link a read. Matts Mhyrman, Judy Knox (who passed in 2011) and the Davids (Bainbridge and Eisenberg) were who I am most familiar with from my years in Texas.


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## Zexious

Can I just say how much I love emus?? <3<3<3

In all seriousness, I'm stoked to have you back, SueC! You're so thorough in your journal; I enjoy reading it a lot!


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## SueC

*Zexious*: Thank you...very glad you're enjoying.  Here's some more emus for you. They are such comical-looking birds, especially their faces when they look at you.


Emus - Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Emu in the Sedges - Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Emu - Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Re fencing and wildlife: Our internal fences are three strands of stretchy polybraid, bottom and top electric, and spaced so that large herbivores get zapped, but wildlife can pass through with relative ease. These guys know the middle strand is not hot, and stretch it to get through – like we primates do. The kangaroos seem to get through with a limbo technique. Some people regard emus as pests, but they do no harm to us and we are stoked to see them.

And going from huge to tiny, here's a lovely little thing:


Fairy Wren in Our Garden – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Austra by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Looks harmless, but is apt to wake you at dawn in spring and summer by knocking against your windows - because of its own reflection... We have a whole family of them in the garden and it is extraordinary how much noise they can make!


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## SueC

QtrBel said:


> "I love the horses on your pic. And those harnesses! Are they your horses and harnesses? Because if so: :bowwdown:" I feel the same about your Sanctuary. Thank you. Yes, they are/were my (personal) very first team. Sadly Peaches passed after spending 24 years with us. Daisy is still going strong when there is work to do or light riding. Mostly clean up from hurricanes and trails. That particular harness was sold after an accident that has left my shoulder prone to reinjury. It was leather and extremely heavy. It was replaced with biothane that is similar in decoration. To give you an idea of their size I am 5.10 - closer to 6 with those boots.


*QtrBel*: That is a _magnificent_ horse. Wow! There is something so special about these giants. So that's Daisy? Just look at that regal bearing. A horse like that makes the typical show horse look like a mere fluffed-up toy poodle. A horse like that doesn't even have to _try_! 

Gorgeous colour. What breed of draught is this?

Love the harness but was thinking, how many hours does QtrBel spend cleaning and oiling this when maintenance time comes around?  Wonderful material, lots of work. Is the new harness easier-care?

I'm really grateful for people like yourself who safeguard these lovely horses and traditions from extinction. I'm a nutter for heritage farm breeds. Old breeds are being lost all the time - with the modern obsessions with e.g. Aberdeen Angus for beef in Australia, and it turns the place into a genetic monoculture. Only 30 years ago there were about a dozen common beef breeds in our part of the world, now it's mostly fence-to-fence Angus. :-(


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## tinyliny

are those emus wild, or something you keep on the sanctuary?

I suppose they could be dangerous, if, for example you got between a mom and her chicks?


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## SueC

tinyliny said:


> are those emus wild, or something you keep on the sanctuary?
> 
> I suppose they could be dangerous, if, for example you got between a mom and her chicks?


Our farm has both domestic livestock and incoming wildlife. We have 50ha of biodiverse nature reserve, adjoined by similar areas on the south and west boundaries. Wild emus and kangaroos live in these areas and come out onto pastures. They roam large tracts of bush and farmland by going through or over fences.

With emus, it is the male who raises the chicks. The Australian bush affords little nutrition compared to wildernesses on younger geology like you have in the States, and like in Europe. So our marsupial mammals typically run at around 2-3 degrees C lower core body temperature than most placental (non-Australian) mammals, to conserve energy. The koala sleeps a lot in the daytime and whenever not actually feeding.

So the female emu needs a big holiday after producing the eggs. She has to go off and look after herself and get the best nutrition she can to recuperate. The male, whose energy and resource expenditure in producing the fertile eggs was comparatively low, has the reserves to raise the chicks and therefore does it.

Male emus like looking after their young and have been known to try to steal other males's young when they can, to raise! 

They do get very protective when they have young, but wouldn't ordinarily attack herbivores on pasture as they aren't a threat. Dogs, on the other hand, and overly nosy humans had better watch out! Riders are generally safe unless they dismount and so become recognisably human.


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## Zexious

They are so silly looking! xD
I have relatives (in Orange County, California, no less) that dabbled in raising emus. They had two of them, I think. When they're babies, holding them is like holding a little football 

I love the little fairy wren, too. What a striking, beautiful color.
What's your most favorite type of native animal? I wish our wildlife (here in the suburbs..?) were so diverse!


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## QtrBel

Sue that is Peach. One of my favorite pictures. She spent time in the showring and brought home the ribbons. She is a American Belgian Draft as opposed to the Brabant which the come from. That color with a flaxen mane and tail are my favorite but they come lighter, darker, roan, with or without pangare and more rarely but it does occur as a sorrel or chestnut with same color mane and tail. Americans bred to select that color, flaxen and lighter feathering so that became the breed standard for the American Bels. I have a friend that keeps asking when I'll come by and snag a couple of Suffolk mares. They are more endangered and have used the American Belgian as an acceptable cross if the body style matched their breed standard. It has added in the much lighter points which is a shame as the Suffolk is uniform rich chestnut with same color mane and tail and much more drafty in the old style. One of these days I keep telling him.

The harness was wiped with an oil cloth and spot cleaned plus the horses were well groomed before hand. I kept them covered with sheets when not in use to keep dust and dirt off. Cleaning and oiling thoroughly was able to be kept to a minimum - usually every 6 weeks or so in the off season or immediately before shows and public appearances like the Forth Worth Stock Show parade or the circus parades. My new harness can be hosed and cleaned with a mild dishwash. It comes apart strategically so I don't have the weight to deal with and the decorative pieces are clip on to prevent wear and loss of the decoration as it is glued on.


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## SueC

*Zexious*, I like all of it, including the bats, spiders and venomous snakes!  Australian fauna (and flora) is so fascinating and species diverse.

Here's a link to a little photo album of the flora and fauna on our place.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/albums/72157632759314682


And here's a link to friends of ours, who photograph professionally. These guys are so excellent at what they do! Great trip through the Southwest Australian wildlife and flora; and they do a lot of macro photography of insects and other ittybitty things.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jean_hort/

There's another emu story coming up thanks to a visitor we had today.


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## SueC

In case anyone here thinks bats aren't cute:










From our ABC: Orphaned fruit bats - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Video of the same here:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/27/orphan-fruit-bat-babies-photos-video_n_3664281.html


And it's not just baby bats. Go to any bat book and hold the photos pages upside down so the bats are the right way up! So cute.


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## SueC

*Horse & Emu Story*

It just happens that today we had Bill over, and got talking about the subject of horses and emus. Bill is an octogenarian who grew up in this area, and is like a historical encyclopaedia of this district. It is so amazing what you can learn about this place from him.

It turns out that Bill rode through the same areas I now ride in recreationally, when he was a teenager just out of school and making some money doing various types of farm work for neighbouring farmers. His father's farm was just a few kilometres west of us on the opposite side of the road. At the time he and his siblings were born, expectant mothers went from here to the midwife's place in Albany, 30km away, in an arranged horse and trap before the baby was due. The Depression was just starting so many people took up uncleared bush block blocks that were government grants for homesteading. People literally had to live off the land, hunting, fishing, and growing what they could, with newcomers exchanging labour for food while also working on their own places. People went to work on government railways projects and so on when there was work to make money, and returned to their farms afterwards.

When Bill left school at age 14 in 1948, the family farm provided for the family's fruit and vegetables, and they had a house cow, some chickens, the odd pig to eat (fattened on scraps), and they often shot kangaroos for meat. There was a fair bit of bartering amongst the local homesteaders. Bill worked on the family farm and also hand-milked cows for the Mullaly family (from whom we bought our own block in 2010 when they sold up their four titles) for one pound a week plus meals at their farm. The old, now derelict dairy is just up the road from us, surrounded by several mulberry trees over one hundred years old. By this time, cream was taken by horse and cart to the railway siding in Redmond townsite, 8km away, to go by train to the butter factory in Albany.

Bill tells an amusing anecdote of a time when a very young Johnny Mullaly (who sold us our farm) was forever riding his tricycle with a pet rooster on the handlebars, but that's another story.

After a stint in Gnowangerup harvesting oats with two 12-foot headers one behind the other pulled by a Massey Ferguson with a 12-year-old driver called Keith driving and 16-year-old Max working the headers with him, Bill returned to Redmond to work for the Males up the road, and this is where the horses come in. Ben Male had two all-purpose horses used for riding and harrowing. Riding was for transport back then, and Bill rode one of them to the swamps to pick green peas that were grown there for market. Bill remembers him as a chestnut with white socks and a white facial marking, appropriately named “Socks”. He says he also rode the other horse, whose name he can't remember, but it had a habit of going too close to blackboys (grasstrees) and tree trunks when riding home in the dark and this could be dicey for the rider's legs. He says he preferred riding Socks, who left space between himself and objects in the dark and had a very friendly nature.

One day as young Bill was riding Socks out to the swamp to pick peas, he saw an emu with its stripey-patterned chicks in the distance. The male and most of the brood scarpered, but one chick got left behind and Bill rode over to have a look at it hiding behind a blackboy. He'd never seen a young emu up close and was very curious. He's the kind of person who now recounts the types and habits of the local birdlife and other wild animals in incredible detail, after years of living and working in the bush.

Bill got off the horse, and left it loose because it was the sort of horse that stayed with the rider. He was straining to see the chick when he heard rustling, turned around, and saw the male emu about twenty feet away coming straight for him, fluffed up and making grunting noises. Bill dived straight for his horse and catapulted on its back, and that was the sudden end of the episode. The emu relaxed as Bill was now away from the chick, and no longer a human on foot. Humans on foot can get heartily pursued, as can dogs.

And after that, he rode on to pick his peas for the day.

What really amazes me about this story is how much life has changed in less than one human lifetime.


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## SueC

QtrBel said:


> Sue that is Peach. One of my favorite pictures. She spent time in the showring and brought home the ribbons. She is a American Belgian Draft as opposed to the Brabant which the come from. That color with a flaxen mane and tail are my favorite but they come lighter, darker, roan, with or without pangare and more rarely but it does occur as a sorrel or chestnut with same color mane and tail. Americans bred to select that color, flaxen and lighter feathering so that became the breed standard for the American Bels. I have a friend that keeps asking when I'll come by and snag a couple of Suffolk mares. They are more endangered and have used the American Belgian as an acceptable cross if the body style matched their breed standard. It has added in the much lighter points which is a shame as the Suffolk is uniform rich chestnut with same color mane and tail and much more drafty in the old style. One of these days I keep telling him.


Best wishes with your heirloom breed work. 

I can see why Peaches got her name - excellent colour and very peachy. You must miss her - I'm missing her already and didn't even meet her! ;-)

When I was a little girl I went to the Oktoberfest in Munich, where they had huge carts bearing full beer barrels pulled by Belgian Warmbloods in full regalia. The brewery was very proud of their teams and it was a much-loved tradition in Bavaria to keep a few teams just because, and even though it was more expensive by far than a lorry.

The Belgians they had were red roans mostly, some with dark manes and tails. Hugely impressive animals; I read an article about them and the brewery at about age 10 when I had started riding, and they explained why they had been somewhat unpatriotic and gone for Belgians. Apparently the mightiest load moving breed of them all, and they just loved the temperament and colours.





> The harness was wiped with an oil cloth and spot cleaned plus the horses were well groomed before hand. I kept them covered with sheets when not in use to keep dust and dirt off. Cleaning and oiling thoroughly was able to be kept to a minimum - usually every 6 weeks or so in the off season or immediately before shows and public appearances like the Forth Worth Stock Show parade or the circus parades. My new harness can be hosed and cleaned with a mild dishwash. It comes apart strategically so I don't have the weight to deal with and the decorative pieces are clip on to prevent wear and loss of the decoration as it is glued on.


It's good to be able to reduce weight when the ligaments etc are starting to misbehave. My husband got a tear in his rotator cuff half a year back, and do you know how he did it? Not plastering the house or lifting heavy things around the farm. No... he did it turning around in the driver seat reaching for his lunch pack on the back seat! Bit of a wake-up call that one has to look after things very carefully and be very mindful, in order to maximise the future use of one's equipment...


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## QtrBel

If it weren't for the feathering I'd have a pair of the original Belgians (Brabants) but I wouldn't want the upkeep that comes with them. The lack of is what makes these girls, Suffolks and Percherons so attractive. The Coors (beer) company here went with the Am. Belgian as their hitch choice. I wish they still had them not that I don't like the Clydes or find them impressive but there is something about a Belgian. 

I miss Peach more than I can say. She was such a big part of my life so such a long time. Having her daughters is like having a small piece of her. She was such a character. So much personality. 

I so enjoy your thread and have loved watching the Sanctuary come along. Looking forward to more stories about the animals and wildlife!


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## SueC

*QtrBel*, feel free to pop in a lovely photo and anecdote of these amazing animals here anytime, it will make my day! Automatic oooh-aaah! And they need more airtime! *:dance-smiley05:
*
And I really relate to the feeling that having descendants is like having a part of an animal still - and also that you steward them for the one you lost. One day I'll tell the full story of that French Trotter mare who was my original riding horse, and her untimely demise due to irresponsible breeding... I have two descendants here, including Sunsmart and the one who most looks like her.


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## Zexious

Ahhh, I love bats <3 Especially when they're wrapped up like burritos. I'm also a big fan of snakes--the spiders I could do without. Though, I don't mind them so long as they're not in the house  (Or...where I can see them, anyway!)


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## Alder

I just found this thread, and find it really interesting. 

Two years ago I moved to an area that has a lot of Standardbreds because of the Amish and old order Mennonites here. Our local grocery store has an area for the horses and buggies in the parking lot. I've really come to appreciate these wonderful horses, such great athletes, strong, fast and so much stamina!

Your thread has made me curious about the history of them. We bought a retired buggy Standardbred and she looks so much like your pictures. She's not an easy horse mind, very intelligent and very opinionated!


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## SueC

*Alder*, welcome!  That's really cool that they have a horse and buggy parking lot at your local store. I think the athleticism of these horses is due to the fact that they are entirely performance bred. When people start breeding horses (and dogs, and chickens, etc) for the show ring, they inevitably create fashionable mutations of lesser biological quality than wild horses or performance horses. Soon there's grotesque anatomy, e.g. squashed faces in dogs, joint problems and table top backs in dogs and horses, difficulty with breathing due to compromised airways in dogs and horses (due to breeding for distorted faces), "Arnie" type muscling in cattle and QHs (who are then prone to azoturia), all sorts of stupid stuff.

So I love the endurance line Arabians, who are still very like their desert ancestors, and I actually prefer a good Standardbred or European trotting breed over many of the specifically saddle-bred horses I see running around. These horses can move, and they're very sound (unless already raced, and raced young; the racing industry as a whole is really rough on these critters and many are significantly physically damaged from overuse before maturity). Length of rein is becoming an issue with the newer-fangled racing strains in Australia, but wasn't with the old-fashioned harness racers.











That's Sunsmart's (and Julian's) granddad, Albatross - American harness racing legend. With Standardbreds and trotting breeds, literally all of them are closely descended from some world champion or other, not in ribbon-wearing, but in athletic performance.

He's a prepotent ancestor and really shows through even in his grandget:




Introducing Julian XV – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr



French Trotter Influence - Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


This next one is Julian in the background, and a French Trotter cross in the foreground - the one that looks the most like his French grandmama. Both have that athleticism. The chestnut is 24 and hasn't been in any kind of work for a decade - I can't ride more than one properly, but I can retire a few and give them a good life.


Horses Enjoying Tagasaste II – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


And here's a clip showing the typical floating trot and soft canter - Sunsmart amusing himself a few years ago:


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## JoBlueQuarter

Some horse, @SueC! Very beautiful! His trot (and lope too) is sooo much like my filly's! Floaty, light as a feather, breathy... beautiful!


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## SueC

Hello and welcome, *JoBlueQ!*  Feel free to share nice photo with us here. It's an enjoyable part of life to work with horses, isn't it?

*Zexious*, we have had a microbat in the house here recently. It was really fast so this is the best photo we have:


Bat In The House – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Look for the blurry shape to the left of the circle of light on the ceiling. We were trying to guide it out of the door. Turns out that works better when you turn the corridor light off and the outside light on. Bats actually follow the light, which sort of surprised me, seeing they are inactive during daylight hours.

Here's how it started:

I woke up in the middle of the night to a noise that sounded as if mice were holding a barn dance in the attic above us. As we occasionally get mice in the attic due to the finish plaster not having been done there (i.e. gaps to ceiling space), I went to investigate, and found that there was a flying object rapidly whirring around the space. Bleary-eyed, I looked at the fight pattern and realised it couldn't be a bird, although it was the size of a silvereye. We do have microbats all around the garden, so lightbulb moment. I then proceeded to remove the flyscreen and open the big window in the gable end. This took a while because the flyscreen was stuck and I had a sore finger, because I got a piece of chaff under the nail mixing up old Romeo's feed a couple of days back. So while I was pulling at the reluctant screen and sweating and expostulating, I started to admire the bat's navigation skills. It wasn't bumping into walls, and though it was whirring around my head on a regular basis on its rounds of the attic, it didn't actually bump into me. Hooray for bat sonar!

Once the screen came out, I went downstairs to let it find the exit. After a while I went back to check on it and found it whirring around the office, downstairs from the attic! So I closed the office door to stop it getting in the high-ceilinged living area, removed the flyscreen, opened the window, and baby-sat the bat, who was starting to take rests on the bookshelf (great taste!). Eventually I just draped it in a T-shirt and gently bundled it out through the window. Pretty little fellow, he was holding on to the shirt for a bit after I removed him to the exterior, but then flew off into the night.

A couple of days later it was back, and got into the open living area, we managed to gently shoo it out via the corridor and that's when we got the photo. We suspect it gets in through one of the bathroom fan casings, and will have to put wire netting in to prevent entry (and accidental bat mashing should the fan be turned on while the bat is in the casing).

The wonders of living in the bush! Pretty little things.


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## Zexious

What a great story!
Wildlife really does have a knack for finding its way in, even here in suburbia. Do you have any spider stories you can tell? Are they really as large in the bush as everyone says?


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## SueC

Not too many spider stories, Zexious!  There's lots of them around and we photograph them sometimes, but they're generally not very interactive with humans.

The few that pop into my mind mostly involve huntsman spiders:











That's an example, but our West Australian ones are really hairy and about the diameter of a large mug. They aren't dangerous to humans but will bite to defend themselves if attacked.

I came to Australia from Europe at age 11, and there aren't any big hairy spiders like that in the part of Europe I grew up in. I wasn't aware of their existence in Australia either in the first couple of months, but then... Well, my father had bought a largely uncleared farming block and had this brilliant idea that we were all going to clear the land using axes and elbow grease. He organised four axes for the family members and handed them out to us with various exhortations. This phase was an unpopular phase and didn't last long; our neighbours had a good laugh and before too long he bought a tractor.

Anyway, it was during this axe-clearing phase that I was chopping down some prickly undergrowth near a large eucalyptus tree with really gnarly bark - a favourite huntsman habitat, as I was to find out. As I was chopping away, wearing shorts because of the summer heat, I suddenly felt something tickling my knee and looked down - and next thing I jumped about a mile high, because one of those saucer-sized hairy things was running rapidly upwards on my leg. On coming back to Earth, I launched myself straight into a hysterical sort of anti-spider dance, until I was rid of the beastie.

They're not dangerous, but they do tend to put the wind up people when making sudden appearances, especially on your bare legs. Many years later, a colleague at coffee-break recounted driving her car to work on the Perth-Bunbury Highway and having the same sort of thing happen to her: Dressed in shorts because of the summer heat, tickling sensation on leg, had a look and - eeeek! She told us how almost in a trance she calmly and safely pulled over onto the verge, came to a stop, exited her car and then, and only then, rapidly jumped up and down yowling and flapping at herself until she was rid of the beastie.

As a university student I once had a pet huntsman, because I felt the need to behave like a sensible biologist would behave and see these creatures through a bigger lens than mere cultural arachnophobia. The spider just turned up in my room, and I didn't chuck it out. Far from it, I bid it welcome, named it Freddy and saw to it that it had plenty to eat despite being indoors. My laboratory dissection kit had a lovely long probe with a nice handle which was excellent for catching flies and presenting them live as sort of wiggly shishkebabs to dear Freddy. When I had one, I located Freddy and brought the wiggly fly within about an inch of the spider's head. I always had to hold my breath and get really mentally focused so I wouldn't drop the probe when Freddy did his sudden and very spectacular pounce upon the fly.

And so Freddy and I had a happy association lasting many months. I'm sure you're interested in how it ended. Well, one morning I woke up to the sight of Freddy on the ceiling right above my bed, and initially I just marvelled at the amazing ability spiders have to cling to the undersides of relatively smooth surfaces. Their legs have a few helpful structures for these sorts of acrobatics and it's all terribly admirable. But then I asked myself the question: Do they ever make a mistake and fall off? And since none of us are infallible, spiders included, I caught Freddy by means of a carefully placed huge glass pickle jar and piece of cardboard to slide between the spider and the ceiling once I had him surrounded. I then carried him in his jar out to the garden and re-united him with the great outdoors, in which he was free to find his own prey and perhaps a lady spider. With any luck, Freddy's descendants are still out there.


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## SueC

I'm going to pick up the narrative again from November 2017 and the loss of our old mare, which was discussed in this post:

http://www.horseforum.com/member-jo...ys-other-people-479466/page34/#post1970510795


French Revolution 14/11/1989 - 2/11/2017 by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

So this mare, seen on the right here, was Sunsmart's mother and also full sister to the horse in the background. The brother-sister pair had been paddock buddies for a couple of years before we adopted them three years earlier, and were inseparable; and the mare was really pleased to find her only foal present when she arrived here. He had run with her until nearly two years old, and was within sight and occasional sniff for a decade after that at their old home, so they knew each other quite well. The mare led the group once here and was typically seen with her brother on one side and Sunsmart on the other, always in the middle, and if those two boys ever bickered she would put her ears back and immediately go between them. Old Romeo also enjoyed meeting some of his old acquaintances again, and everybody liked the lead mare.

So the loss of her hit them hard. These horses have many times seen dead horses taken away on a tractor, since at their old place there were regular colic deaths. They always look on these occasions until the tractor is out of sight, and they are always very quiet and subdued afterwards.

After the mare died, Romeo decided he wanted to live in our garden full-time, and would rest outside whichever room he could find us in at the time. He would stand at the open window to chat with us, and spent a lot of time just sleeping instead of grazing, so he lost some weight, which he is finally putting back on now. The moment I went out in the garden he'd follow me along with my tasks. To some extent it's what he normally does, but he was really stuck to me for a number of weeks.


Patio Moment – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

He really started to camp out in our garden, lying down right in front of the house.


Nice Camping Spot – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

He didn't want to socialise with the two other horses we had left, so I started taking him down the big paddock where the donkeys were hanging out. I didn't need a lead rope, the horse just followed me along. He's good buddies with the donkeys and he stayed with that little group, resting under the trees in the heat and returning later in the day to graze in the garden again. This became a new lunchtime routine; I didn't want the horse to stop being in some sort of herd at least part-time, so every day before lunch I'd go out in the garden, give Romeo a cuddle, and say, "Come on, let's see the donkeys!" and he'd follow me along down to where they were resting under the trees. I'd sit with the lot of them for five minutes and then quietly sneak away when everyone was settled.


Romeo and Donkeys – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Donkeys have a quiet manner about them and are pretty much perfect for occasions like this. When Romeo was ill a couple of years back, the donkeys decided to stay with him instead of range, and when he was lying down they would make a circle around him. I almost had the feeling they were on guard. They were certainly keeping him company, and when he was better they went around with him as part of their group. Since we got the donkeys in 2012, Romeo has been a part-time donkey, part-time horse, and part-time garden ornament; depending mostly on his own preferences.

Meanwhile, the other two boys were hanging about in a dejected manner. They spent the first couple of days after the mare's death at mostly opposite ends of the paddock under different trees, with their heads hanging down, and when they met in passing they would pull grumpy faces at each other. Both horses would come to me and bury their heads in my chest - as horses also will do when they have physical injuries bothering them. Gradually they started keeping each other company. They had to work out how to co-exist without the mare to be the peacemaker between them. Sunsmart lost all his gloss; he is only now starting to get it back. He also spent a lot of time lying down.

This is the two of them three weeks after the loss of the mare.


Sunsmart Snoozing – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr



Just Passing! – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


I could see we would need another herd buddy to restore some zest to these animals, plus I was finding it difficult to ride Sunsmart with Chasseur getting all distressed in our absence. Romeo was still refusing to do anything but be in the garden or hang with the donkeys. So I contacted the RSPCA horse adoption scheme and put our name down, but they had nothing suitable at the time. (Our name is still down with the RSPCA for an old draught horse that might need a retirement home.)

I did personally know a horse I wanted to adopt, a horse I'd known since birth, helped educate, and had felt sorry for, for many years. It was one of those solitary confinement stallions from my parents' place. He had actually been gelded after his retirement from racing five years previously, and yet still had no paddock buddy. He was so bored standing in a sand run by himself day in, day out, not able to socialise, not able to explore, and not even able to graze - all those horses are hand fed in sand yards. This particular horse is an unusually clever horse, and being kept in this manner always hits the brightest ones the hardest. (There's a reason the ISA Brown chicken is what it is. Heirloom breeds would struggle under factory conditions. The ISA Brown has been bred to lay many eggs and to be mentally dull so it can cope better with the boredom of a factory existence.)

Here he is, at his old home.











Brett made the approach about adopting this horse, and (rather surprisingly) he was on the next horse bus down to our place. Classic Julian was coming, and he was going to get friends, grass, and a world to explore.


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## egrogan

Sue, I think maybe you explained more about the donkeys early on, but the pictures in this post caught my eye (and the story about them protecting Romeo warmed my heart!). As I think about having the girls home, I know I can't just have the two as one will go bananas when I take the other out riding, and I do a lot of solo riding. Lovely husband likes the idea of a donk, but neither of us have any experience with them. I've been sternly warned about three things:
1. Planning to keep them on a decent pasture would be terrible for them health wise, and they should be dry lotted (not sure that's something I will be able to easily accomplish right away, though I'm sure we'll develop a sacrifice area sooner rather than later pending where we locate shelters)
2. You can't treat them like a horse and you need some specialized training experience to handle them well, mostly to gain their trust
3. They will tolerate a horse's company, but they really need another donkey or mule for their social well being

I can accept all those things and it makes me think a donkey is probably not right for our extra companion, and like you, I am anticipating offering up a retirement home to a horse in need (probably to an old Morgan whose family has used her up for a show career and needs a new shiny thing for the kids' next ride. Sadly, there's a decent amount of that around here.). But husband keeps coming back to the donkey question. What would your advice be?


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## SueC

@*egrogan* , go and see some donkeys.  Just see whether you take to them or not. If you do, you could keep a pair of them and your left-home horse shouldn't fret as long as you confine her and the donkeys in the same general area when you go off riding, especially if she knows the donkeys well. It was just impractical for us to do that every time I went riding. A horse will stick with a horse, so adopting another horse was a good long-term solution for me, with minimal fussing before riding. It really depends on how your system is set up. Our donkeys are very adventurous and like to hang out on the far reaches of the farm, and I didn't feel like a long long walk before each ride. 

Of course, you could always do both... with a decent-sized farm, the world is your oyster.

Donkeys do best on dry, coarse pasture. We use grazing muzzles on them during the spring flush and let them go muzzle-free in the summer, when the grass is dry. You definitely have to keep them off the spring flush, either by keeping them off the lush pasture, or by using grazing muzzles that really limit their intake of the stuff.

Is there any grass under your trees? Tree plantations can be good places for donkeys, if they have a little coarse grazing to offer.

And as for handling, you can't be rough with them, donkeys take exception to it. Since neither you nor I are rough with our horses, but use patience in our training, you wouldn't find it that different!


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## SueC

Here's a post for you and hubby, @egrogan! 

http://www.horseforum.com/member-jo...ys-other-people-479466/page34/#post1970510903

All about why we keep donkeys.


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## egrogan

Thanks @SueC. We have a donkey sanctuary type place close by so maybe we will go spend some time there.


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## SueC

*Julian Arriving*

On Monday, November 27, 2017, Julian went on the big horse bus that services the Southwest. The transport service got delayed picking him up, having started in Geraldton that morning, and he only left his old home after lunch, which meant he didn't come off the bus until after dark. This was not ideal; I prefer a horse to be able to see its new surroundings when it gets there. It meant that I had to yard him for the night, in the small safe shelter yard, with the old horse across from him and the two younger ones in the main paddock behind the fodder hedge from the yard.

I'll backtrack a little to Julian coming off the bus. He walked off the ramp, saw me, and went, "Oh, it's you!" I farewelled the driver and walked the horse through our front gate and down our driveway, talking to him and showing him various things, while he was making little snorting noises and looking around as best as he could in the dark. The transport truck had gone up the road to a turning bay, and we heard it coming down the road again. Julian turned around to look at it, and watched it with some fascination as it made its way down the road. It was lit up on the outside with little visibility lights, like strings of fairy lights; quite a sight. I was a little surprised by how long the horse looked with great interest at the truck. Having said that, he'd never travelled on one before - all his previous excursions had been on a horse float. When the truck had disappeared from sight, we continued our walk towards the house and yards.

I left him comfortable, fed and with company across two fences for the night, and went to bed in the kind of state children get in on the night before Christmas, or their birthday. I was so impatient for the sun to rise, so I could settle him in properly.

I was up before 5am. The horses had all worn grooves along their various fences walking up and down all night. Romeo got his usual breakfast in the garden, and then I could turn my attention to the other three.

I set up a rope barrier about 2m from the electric tape gate. Sunsmart and Chasseur were on the gate side and totally aware it was electric, and Julian didn't need to get shocked accidentally, so hence the rope. The first things I wanted them to be able to do is to say hello across the fence with noses touching, but not be able to fight with each other or get tangled in the fence. As all three of these horses are late-cut stallions who lived their stallion lives in social isolation, I like to play it a little safe when introducing new herd members, especially other late-cut stallions!

I had my camera with me and was snapping away to record the horses' interactions in their introduction to each other. The photographs speak for themselves. 














At this point the donkeys turned up, as they always do when something interesting happens. I had them roped off into the big common for this occasion so they could observe but not enter. It's not great to throw too many variables at a new horse - my focus was to integrate him into the horse herd first, and let them show him around his new home. Julian had never seen donkeys before and found the sight of them quite astonishing.




Horses tend to think donkeys are space aliens when they first see them, so Julian quickly got back to his horse friends across the barrier and was letting me know he'd really like to go into their paddock, please! As the interactions across the barrier had all been friendly and positive from all parties concerned, I didn't see a problem with it.





Chasseur (the chestnut) in particular is ultra sociable, and having had a very close bond with his now deceased sister, he was in the right frame of mind for making new friends - as was Julian, who had been socially isolated most of his life, and had never run free with a herd before.

That was about to change.


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## SueC

I'll give you a personal context for the next lot of photographs. I had grown up, in the second half of my childhood, on a horse stud where the very animals you are about to see in these photos getting to know each other as a herd, each spent over ten years in solitary yards, with double electric fences between them. They paced up and down their fence lines in frustration for large parts of their day, like deprived zoo animals in the olden days, before the building of more appropriate enclosures and the introduction of enrichment programmes and appropriate socialisation. It was a sight which always deeply saddened me, and there was nothing I could do about it - besides the bandaid measure of taking them out for walks or a bit of work when I had time.

I eventually adopted one of them, Sunsmart, as my replacement riding horse when my Arabian mare retired; and later on I put my hand up in turn to the other two in these photos, as space became available, when older horses died. And I can't see the photos you're about to see - ordinary photos of horses getting to know each other and running as a group - without also seeing in my mind's eye the many years they all walked up and down their respective fencelines with dull staring eyes and set faces, trying in vain to get away from their confinement.

After all these years. Julian is 17, Chasseur 24, Sunsmart 21. Julian was alone for the longest, out of these three.
















Between the last two snaps, I took a little film:







Kind of like bad opera singers! :rofl:

The acoustics on this clip are very good - listen closely, and you'll hear the typical early morning birdsong at our place in summertime.


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## SueC

Whenever you do introduce late-cut stallions like this, there will be a few colt shenanigans, as the next photo shows - but if you look closely, you can see that it's very harmless, nobody is aiming at anyone else, and the horses are immediately back to their sniffing and hellos. It's completely normal social behaviour for horses.

Of course, you must have lots of room when introducing horses like this, so that nobody can get driven into a corner - that's the main reason accidents happen. In nature, horses can run away from conflicts; if the paddocks are too small or have blind corners, they can't do this and that's when they can get trapped and into real trouble.


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## SueC

Our timeline so far is: Julian was introduced across the barriers at 5.10am for mutual sniffing of faces. He was let into the paddock with Sunsmart and Chasseur at 5.34am. A big all-over sniffing session with a bit of squeaking and a few bits of showing off then took place in our flat paddock, and they moved into the adjacent hill paddock together at 5.50am (last photo last post, and subsequent photos this post). At this point, the two "old hands" were serious about getting some breakfast into themselves after the night's excitement with a new arrival in the yard, while Julian was now taking in his new environment.










































And by 6.07am, even Julian was starting to notice all that lovely grass and thinking about breakfast. Alfresco breakfast, mind you! 




























The place looks just magical with the sun coming up, and by 6.19am, when I took the last photograph, which casual observer would guess that one of the horses grazing has only just joined the group?

Magic morning. :welcome:


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## Zexious

I love Julian! He has such an expressive face <3 (I'm not sure if I missed it somewhere along the way, but what breed is he?)

Watching him explore his new home, meet his new friends, and indulge in a little top-notch breakfast was wonderful. 
I can't wait to see what you post next!


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## crazyredchestnut

You have some gorgeous horses (and donkeys!) and the grounds are stunning. Your pics are great quality too. What camera do you use?

Definitely subbing to this! :thumbsup:


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## SueC

*Zexious*: Julian and Romeo are Standardbreds (and Romeo is Julian's uncle ;-) ); the other two are Standardbred / French Trotter crosses (and Chasseur is Sunsmart's uncle ;-) ). I'm a bit posted out at the moment, having done all the catchup, and have a professional deadline to work on next (Tuesday is D-day), but back in the thread is a nice spider post for you. ;-) Have a great week!

*CRC*: Hello and _céad míle fáilte_, and thank you! I use a really simple to use Canon PowerShot SX20 IS (has a zoom lens) that we bought in 2009; my husband has a macro camera for his wildlife and flora shots, if you ever track us back to our Flickr photostream:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/

I think it's mostly the quality of the light in our part of the world that makes the photos look like they do.

Welcome to HF!


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## crazyredchestnut

Thank you for the warm welcome! (and _as Gaeilge_ as well, I feel honoured haha) I've been scoping out all the horse forums I could find and I really liked this one, so here I am!  Keep up the photos, I'm loving them!


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## frlsgirl

It's so great to see horses interact with each other like that. What a wonderful gift of sweet freedom and socialization. You wouldn't know that these are elderly horses; I love how they puff themselves up. 

We have a 20 something year old Hanno "Dante" at Ana's barn; I used to ride him before we got Ana. He mostly just stands in his stall looking old and depressed; he is the head gelding of the barn and Ana is the lead mare. They recently got a new horse, a young TB gelding "Red"; they turned him out with Dante so he could show him around. It was so adorable how Dante walked Red all around the property like he was giving him the tour and explaining all the rules to him. For a moment you could see Dante just light up like he had a purpose again, a very important job of introducing Red to everybody. Horses are just special.


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## SueC

We are having a general discussion on the social page for Krones&Kodgers on animals, their abilities, senses of humour etc. and I just want to see if I can drag my Jess the dog photos and story over here easily:



Dog Entertainment I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

It's a favourite pastime for this dog to roll around on her back making growly noises and passing toys between her mouth and her paws, backwards and forwards, and the more we look and laugh the more she hams it up.


Dog Entertainment II – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Here she's got a pretty deflated balloon. Her balloon fetish started at Brett's last birthday. She'd never seen balloons before and was intrigued. Soon she worked out that they would pop if not handled carefully, and these days she hardly pops one - not until they get weak. She carries them mostly by their knots and then shakes them around making _grrrrrr_ noises, looking to see if we are watching. Most of all though she likes us to float the balloon down towards her, and she'll bump it up really hard with the tip of her nose to make it float up again; and she loves to do this for a long time, so that we have actually hung a balloon on a cotton string off a ceiling fan at the right height for her to jump up and nose-bump it to make it go up anytime she wants to. We supervise popped balloons carefully so there isn't any danger of it getting eaten (which she's shown no inclination to do anyway, if one pops she runs straight to the cupboard where the balloon packet is kept and waits for me to come and blow up a new one for her).

She also takes great pleasure in doing things in unusual ways. For instance, in her own armchair, she likes to sit up with her back against the backrest like a person, it's so hilarious; and eventually her back paws end up in the air, like here:


Affection Time for Jess – Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

She's a very bright dog who loves to solve problems and to do teamwork - typical kelpie. And she's just a normal dog in many other ways that count.


Herding Dog and Cattle VI - Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Jess Rounding Up Waves - Albany, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Jess Stalking Bees – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Happy Dog with Snack – Sleeman Creek Nature Reserve, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Hmmm, seems to have worked!


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## SueC

She also loooooves going anywhere in the car:


Farm Dog Fun – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Jess the farm dog is, like any honourable farm dog, _obsessed_ with driving places and being part of the action. Here she is on a road trip in the back compartment of our hatchback. We have taken the hat rest out to make a secure “travelling box” for the dog... and these days our shopping goes on the back seat...

And she's always supervising or herding livestock in daytime hours:


The Donkeys Looking for the Humans – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Jess and Don Quixote – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Shiny Animals – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


And here's the horses recently - I opened the lower tier of the garden for them to graze as there is so little green grass left on the pastures; they like it and it means I don't have to mow.


Early Morning Equine Visitors To Our Garden – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


We are waiting for the season to break - this has been the driest year since the 2014 drought. Cutting tree lucerne is _de rigeur_ at present for fresh greens for the horses, and this week I even got in a round bale of hay - mostly for the steers, but a bit for the equines for roughage.

Long-term average rain to this date for our region is 145mm over 36 days. So far this year we've had 47mm over 16 days.


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## tinyliny

which is your rainy season? fall, winter . .. summer?


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## SueC

Typical Mediterranean climate: Dry hot summer, wet cool winter, and the "season break" (reliable rain starting) in autumn. It's usually green here until summer and then the heat and dry turn the paddocks brown. On the East Coast of Australia they have summer rain, so luxuriant growth. It's said that if civilisation stopped on the Wednesday, the forest would reclaim Sydney by the weekend!


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## frlsgirl

Jess looks like she takes her job very seriously. We have a little Jack Russel Terrier at the barn who insists on going everywhere with the barn manager; even if he's just driving the truck to disperse hay, the dog needs to be in the passenger seat supervising


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## tinyliny

I'm amazed it is so light, so early where you are. at 5:20 am , here, it's pale light, not fully lit.

Also, a question . . . . the grass, is it something that grows as a native plant, or do you have to seed it there?


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## SueC

Hello @tinyliny!  We're relatively close to the poles so it's light outside just after 4am in midsummer. Plus we don't do daylight "saving" (shifting) in Western Australia, so 4am stays 4am etc. In Tasmania (closer to the poles) it dawns before 4am in midsummer.

Australian farms with pasture on are almost all initially seeded with annual and perennial grasses and legumes. The native "kangaroo grasses" persist in woodlands and some of the rangelands, but are mostly suitable for marsupials (and donkeys ;-) ). Our pasture was seeded around the 1950s by previous owners. The reeds have grown back in places and we leave them for bird and wildlife shelter, occasionally burning old ones for fire hazard reduction and to stop the reeds from expanding their range.

How's your art going? Enjoying some projects?


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## tinyliny

oh. how interesting. There are areas in Eastern Washington State (my state) where setters brought in grasses and it's totally gone everywhere. So, the sort of rolling hills, with pine trees and grass underneath is a landscape that ,while it seems 'natural', is only about 175 years old, or less.

In fact, when we are out in the 'woods', there are so many plants that don't belong there, but seem as if they do. Hard to imagin what the landscape used to look like.

In the past, the aboriginal peoples, there and here, used fire to manipulate and manage the land. Now, we suppress it, so again, things look much different than they did hundreds of years ago.


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## SueC

That's much the same here in Australia, @*tinyliny* ! Grasses are arch survivors and often become invasive weeds on continents from which they did not originate. So in Australian agricultural areas, weed invasion of remnant native bushland is a really pressing problem. At our place, I have to control the kikuyu, a perennial pasture grass originally from Kenya - it's a super pasture grass, and a nasty weed in bushland, so in the intersections of bushland and pasture I have to go around with glyphosate in a garden sprayer to keep the kikuyu fronts from pushing forward into the bush. It's the least toxic and persistent option for controlling this grass effectively. We have also rehabilitated our roadsides adjoining pasture by controlling the kikuyu and replanting native species to make shelter belts. A really nice side-effect has been that just by controlling the grasses, native seeds left in the ground have come up and as much of the shrub regrowth there is from original seeds left in the ground as it is from things we have planted from the rehabilitation nursery.

Besides that and actually worming our animals and flea treating our dog and that we wouldn't have a problem with calling a veterinarian to administer antibiotics if a nasty infection warranted it, we farm according to organic principles and avoid the use of toxic synthetic chemicals.

It's interesting you say your native peoples used fire in land management. The Australian native people also did this and the silly European-descended administrators are stopping this more and more, and that's partially responsible for the increase in devastating bushfires around our country. In this area, Australian native people used to mosaic burn, creating a patchwork of vegetation in different stages of succession which actually benefited biodiversity (as ecosystem diversity will), and an impossibility for a fire to go completely rampant. Unlike now. (One of our top Australian ecologists, Tim Flannery, has written extensively about this but all the decision-makers are sitting on their ears.)

The 50ha of native vegetation we steward was mosaic burnt Australian native style by past land managers, and we're continuing the tradition. One of the reasons we bought this place is because beautifully preserved native bushland is so rare on farming blocks. Our place is so species diverse and runs from one forested hillside through a woodland and swamp and up the next forested hillside. It's a whole transect and it's a little piece of Gondwana, which is just amazing - hundreds of species that have been here since forever.

We've got a photo album on mosaic burning here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/albums/72157687658557055

Click on any photo to enter slideshow mode with full explanatory captions.

General flora and fauna photos from our reserve here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/albums/72157632759314682

That's one of the reasons we've got "sanctuary" in our name. It's the voluntary stewarding of native bushland and wildlife, combined with our concern for quality of life for our farm animals, and sustainable land management. Also, it's a lovely sanctuary for us humans. I'd never had a place I could call my own before and neither of us had ever owned land.

Here's a lovely thing that grows in our bushland - the "Flying Duck Orchid"!


Flying Duck Orchid – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


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## SueC

frlsgirl said:


> Jess looks like she takes her job very seriously. We have a little Jack Russel Terrier at the barn who insists on going everywhere with the barn manager; even if he's just driving the truck to disperse hay, the dog needs to be in the passenger seat supervising


Aren't they characters? They might be small, but they're all dog! Jack Russells are very popular here in Australia and even farmers often have them as pets, even when they already have Kelpies, Border Collies, Blue Heelers etc as working dogs.

A funny story. While Jess is the first dog I've had who can keep up with my horse trail riding, when I was a university student I had my late Arabian mare agisted in the Perth Hills for a year and trained her for a local endurance ride. There was this Jack Russell terrier who used to jump out of the driveway of a property I passed along the way, and nothing I could do or say would make him go back, and the owner was apparently living on the moon or something because they never noticed this. Anyway, the dog would make a laughing face and wag his tail and entire rear end like crazy and tag along with us. Thankfully it was a loop ride so I got past his property again before going back to my agistment centre.

I used to try to shake this dog off by sprinting my mare down a sand track and then trotting her at a fair clip for ten minutes. Then she'd get a breather, and every time, a few minutes into our walking break, the little dog would have caught up with us - I would see him coming up behind us but I wouldn't see his little legs, they were going so fast. You know Road Runner? He was like that, but in miniature. Unbelievable heart in that breed of dog.


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## egrogan

tinyliny said:


> In the past, the aboriginal peoples, there and here, used fire to manipulate and manage the land. Now, we suppress it, so again, things look much different than they did hundreds of years ago.





SueC said:


> It's interesting you say your native peoples used fire in land management. The Australian native people also did this and the silly European-descended administrators are stopping this more and more, and that's partially responsible for the increase in devastating bushfires around our country.


It wasn't until a college ecology class that I learned how beneficial fires could be to an ecosystem. It seems so counterintuitive to us now. But we studied the traditional role of regular fires in sustaining the New Jersey pine barrens and got to take a very interesting trip to see them: Fire in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, Pine Barrens Fire - Pinelands Preservation Alliance Of course, when people choose to put very expensive vacation homes smack up against a fragile ecosystem, we all know who's going to be the winner in that conflict...

In the past couple of years, Japanese knotweed has become invasive plant #1 in our area. You can't burn or treat with chemicals, you just have to be diligent about digging out the full root system, and then put it in dark garbage bags, sealed, and left out in the sun to kill it. It spreads so fast I think it's pretty clear we'll lose the battle. We've managed to keep it off our property, but it's been a lot of work and is creeping closer all around us because other people aren't knocking it back.


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## SueC

A little diary entry about riding! :cowboy:

My gosh! The last entry on a ride was here:

http://www.horseforum.com/member-jo...ys-other-people-479466/page35/#post1970513413

...pages back! The day after that moonlit ride, I had a lovely experience - Julian and Chasseur saw me saddling up and decided to tag along on the farm tracks. It was the first time either of them had been up the central sand track, all the way to the other end. Julian is an exploring type, and I think that basically compelled Chasseur to come along for the trip. At the end of the main track they decided to return home, while Sunsmart and I did the loop home.

Then that week I injured my shoulder, no idea how; just woke up with it really hurting, and it was clearly a sprained ligament. It must have been pre-injured before I slept on it wrong. I had to put it in a shoulder brace to stop it hurting when I was even just walking at first, because the jarring aggravated it. As I'm a side sleeper, sleeping wasn't fun the next couple of nights. Farm activities were cut back, and those jobs I had to do were done mostly with my left hand. Brett helped out by lugging heavy things for me and getting up early to feed Romeo, whose senior breakfast bucket weighs a ton.

And no riding. :-( Thankfully, I had a writing and photography deadline to keep me extra busy, and that was compatible with resting my shoulder.

After a week it was better, but then I discovered Sunsmart needed his hooves trimmed, and my shoulder wasn't up to that yet. If you don't let these things heal properly, they can become chronic.

This evening I managed to trim the horse. Yay! :happydance:

Bill, the octogenarian friend who comes over on Sundays to have lunch with us, sat in a chair in the sun watching me trim and said, "So how did you learn how to do this?" And, "Do you know any other women who trim horse feet?" (The answer to that is yes.) And, "Wow, that hoof rasp works well!" (Greg Coffey sharpened it for me after coming out to trim my horses mid-summer, when I have a break from it because the hooves get too hard and it only takes him 5 minutes per hoof; plus I can get annual feedback and ask curly questions.)

And then of course I had to try Sunsmart's boots on the newly trimmed hooves to make sure the fit was good, and then of course I just _had_ to get on his back and ride him all around the outside track of our place. Only a warm-up, a half-hour jaunt because it was getting late, but it felt so good to be back on the horse. A nice long walk through the forest, a canter along the back boundary, a lovely sprint up the big hill, meandering leisurely along the east forest boundary watching the neighbour's bull and letting Jess have a swim in the dam, and then trotting and cantering home across the pasture on the north boundary.

Then some hay fed to the horses, and the four Friesian weanling calves let into the back paddock to help themselves off the big roll. We had a nice downpour Friday night/Saturday morning that wet the ground through well; now we need some follow-up before the pastures can grow properly and stop looking brown and sparse.

Looking forward to the next ride! :racing:


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## Rob55

Wow. What beautiful horses and property. Thanks for sharing. I will read this through. I’m riding a STB TWH mix right now that nobody wanted. His owner got him for a song as a barely ridden 6 year old. He walks, running walks, racks, trots, step paces, Fox trots, canters and gallops. He is fast and strong and level headed. He belongs to a lady I know, but I’d love to have a horse just like him.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## SueC

More riding! :charge:

My shoulder is getting very tolerable; was back on the horse today for nearly an hour, looping through our trails. I'm still wearing the shoulder brace when riding or doing any physically demanding work, just to protect it a bit. It was a nice sunny autumn day here today, and I was riding after I'd already done an early-morning walk around Lake Seppings in town with the dog; and after lunch I went back to town for various things and more walk trails for me and the dog - along the harbour, and then when Brett was ready to leave work, we all went on the Mt Melville Circuit, another 40 minute walk with some nice uphills. We got home in the dark just as it started to rain, and I fed and rugged the horses. The calves needed their water trough refilled, everyone needed their evening top-up hay, and then there was a hot shower and dinner to make. So I'm kind of tired now and yearning for bed and just typing this while Brett is washing up, because I'm so pleased that the injury break is over and done with and I'm back riding, walking etc etc. And now there's no excuse - I absolutely must get back to doing Pilates as well, because it helps prevent those sorts of injuries...


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## SueC

Rob55 said:


> Wow. What beautiful horses and property. Thanks for sharing. I will read this through. I’m riding a STB TWH mix right now that nobody wanted. His owner got him for a song as a barely ridden 6 year old. He walks, running walks, racks, trots, step paces, Fox trots, canters and gallops. He is fast and strong and level headed. He belongs to a lady I know, but I’d love to have a horse just like him.
> _Posted via Mobile Device_


Hello and welcome, Rob55!  I'm really curious to see a picture of that horse you're describing. Sounds great!


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## SueC

SueC said:


> Hello @*tinyliny* !...How's your art going? Enjoying some projects?


Excuse the self-quote, but have a look at these...marvellous...

http://www.horseforum.com/art-craft-work/tinylinys-art-journal-587322/page24/

I love how good art can bring a life to subjects that you can't get with a camera.


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> It wasn't until a college ecology class that I learned how beneficial fires could be to an ecosystem. It seems so counterintuitive to us now. But we studied the traditional role of regular fires in sustaining the New Jersey pine barrens and got to take a very interesting trip to see them: Fire in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, Pine Barrens Fire - Pinelands Preservation Alliance Of course, when people choose to put very expensive vacation homes smack up against a fragile ecosystem, we all know who's going to be the winner in that conflict...
> 
> In the past couple of years, Japanese knotweed has become invasive plant #1 in our area. You can't burn or treat with chemicals, you just have to be diligent about digging out the full root system, and then put it in dark garbage bags, sealed, and left out in the sun to kill it. It spreads so fast I think it's pretty clear we'll lose the battle. We've managed to keep it off our property, but it's been a lot of work and is creeping closer all around us because other people aren't knocking it back.


Thank for those links, @*egrogan* ! 

That Japanese Knotweed problem looks like our Bridal Creeper problem:




















It would be great if _everyone_ did their bit in controlling these kinds of things. Sad to say, there are many times our own _government_ isn't controlling invasive weeds on areas of their responsibility, and then they try to fine private landholders adjoining these infested government areas for not controlling these same weeds on their own properties. One neighbour told them, "Go ahead and fine me, I controlled it for years and it keeps coming back from the public reserve where nothing is being controlled, I've stopped wasting my time and if you send me a fine I am calling in a film crew to expose this to the public!" He wasn't fined, and the enforcer ended up resigning and not being replaced...

Very interesting reading on those pinelands! It seems we could all learn from the accumulated wisdom of the indigenous peoples of our countries.


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## SueC

Occasionally I re-post things from other threads here and vice versa.

A "horse with undesirable behaviour" thread always seems to bring out the "Whip it and show it who's boss" brigade. :think: Last time that happened, The Velvet Underground's _Venus in Furs_ started spontaneously playing in my head. Excellent lyrics! For those who don't know it:






Anyway, here's the thread:

http://www.horseforum.com/horse-training/horse-turns-back-me-when-he-788919/

And here's a copy of a case study I contributed to it:


I'm in the "minimal effective response" camp when it comes to these situations. Hoofpicks are great! :wink: I grew up drawn to the approaches of Ms Robbie Murray (_Training Australian Horses_) and Mr Tom Roberts (_Horse Control_ series), trained as a biologist and really recommend Ms Marthe Kiley-Worthington's _Horse Watch: What It Is To Be Equine_.

My current riding horse was straight off the harness track, just gelded at age 11, and had shocking ground manners (but an excellent work ethic) when I started re-educating him to saddle. He'd been kept in social isolation and had spent his "recreation time" in a sand yard with double electric fences between him and the rest of the world. He spent nights in a loose box with bars around it and went for anyone - human or horse - who ventured near his cage, biting over the bars, rolling his eyes, charging, the whole kit and caboodle. But if you came with a lead rope, he'd meet you at the door and hurry to the tie-down with you, eagerly anticipating some work. He had no time for pleasantries - his attitude was, "Get on with it, I want to work!" and he had a general _grrrrrrr_ disposition to the world, which he hadn't experienced as a pleasant place.

He was quick to understand the saddle training and very cooperative when I was on his back, but when I started with him he had a habit of doing a shark impersonation when I got off him at the end of a session - I'd be met on the dismount by bared teeth and a big gape in my face that had me looking down the tunnel of what looked like the inside of Jonah's whale. So what I simply did is to hold rein contact on the dismount until he was rid of the habit - that way he couldn't get his head around.

He was also the most ticklish horse I'd ever met and hated being groomed. I'm ticklish myself and I tried to make grooming as pleasant as I could for him - avoid aggravating his really ticklish spots and just dandy over those, and reserve the rubber curry-comb for the itchy spots he was discovering he had. If he did his shark impersonation in response to me hitting a ticklish spot, I was ready for him with the dandy brush, which I simply placed between his teeth. The surprise on his face was priceless. After a while it became: Him: "_Grrrrr_!" - Me: "Hey, want to hold this?" and he started holding things in his mouth when I offered them to him: Brushes, the riding crop, a stick, whatever - and I'd say, "Aren't you clever holding that?" and he started to look like a dog does when it retrieves a ball for you - happy and pleased with himself.

These days, he _loooooves_ being groomed and lines up for it, telling me where all his itchy spots are - and he loves to play "Can you hold this?" and variations on the theme, which have stayed with us after the regular shark impersonations faded away. The game is now a party trick he does for guests, and something to keep him and me entertained if I'm between two gates when we're out on trails, and walking beside him for that bit. He'll go, "Stick?" and immediately hold it when I pick one up for him. Then he'll offer it back to me and the way it goes is that I grab one end and go "_Grrrr_" and he pulls back, enjoying the game, just like my dog does when we play with her rope. I really enjoy this kind of added dimension to interacting with an animal, and if I had completely shut that side of him down I'd just have a service robot, which I wouldn't like at all. I've got a reliable working horse whose personality I can enjoy and who will bring his ideas to me.


Sue and Sunsmart - Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

He's a happy chappy now and great fun to work with, and I can put beginners on his back no worries at all. At our place he lives in a herd and free ranges, which is how I prefer to keep horses.

And always he loves to hold the sponge after I finish washing the sweat off his face post-ride. "Can I have it?"


Bathtime - Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Anyone interested in free-ranging is welcome to visit my journal. In November we took in another late-cut stallion, this one socially isolated for 15 of his 17 years and as grumpy as Sunsmart used to be, with the same antics over fences and bars. He's discovered the world, and socialising, and is turning into a nice happy chappy. His first hour with the other horses (all late-cut stallions who used to be in solitary confinement and bored to tears and had never grazed in a wide-open field or run with a herd) is photographed here:

Trotters, Arabians, Donkeys and Other People

loosie, tinyliny, Foxhunter and 5 others like this.


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## SueC

That _Velvet Underground_ piece is such an intelligent look at violence in society, causes, where it leads, etc and is so ironic and sad at the same time. Lou Reed was indeed a master of social commentary. I think poetry, literature and music hold some of the biggest treasures to help us unlock this world and to have hope; they seem to do it far more completely than any social sciences / psychology textbooks.

I've just remembered one of the pieces we did in high school, when we were 16. It was a poem by Henry Graham; here's some excerpts:


_Sociosexual Primer for Children (of all ages)_

BIRTH
No one ever completely recovers from it.
It helps considerably if one is born
the right way up, but
as I have forgotten the difference
between right and wrong, up and down
you will have to ask someone else for
directions.

MOTHER
Baby ducks can become attached
to a bright red ball. Your
bright red ball may have hard hands
that sting. Try not to become attached
to hands that sting, as in
later life soft and gentle hands
may not fulfil you.

FATHER
Has complete control of no.
Always remember that one day you
will be able to deny others
simple pleasures. The pain
you may inflict on those who love you
will increase the bigger you become.

LOVE
Increases in direct proportion
to the lack of interest of the beloved.
For complete information listen
to popular music; every facet
is thoroughly worked to death.


I look back very fondly to that particular classroom, teacher and group; we learnt so much about life and humanity in that class.

Currently I'm reading _Working Class Boy_, an autobiography that examines the causes and effects of interpersonal violence on culture and individual humans, and how violence begets violence. It's very topical in our society, where there's an epidemic of domestic violence, depression and social violence. Because it's written by one of our rock icons, hopefully some "tough guys" might read it and have a think. Thanks Mary for lending that one to me! 

If anyone who's reading this wants to tell me what's on their bedside book pile, I'd love to hear it.


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## bsms

I'm not sure violence begets violence is accurate. With kids and horses, some limits need to be set. And those boundaries are often enforced via physical means. But just like a horse learns not to run into a fence, a kid learns to control himself within boundaries - provided the boundaries ARE like a fence.

Tom Moates has a chapter where he points out that fences don't chase horses. A fence just is. The horse can hurt himself against it. Or not. And the horse learns, and can graze inches from a fence in total peace - because fences don't chase horses. It becomes the horse's choice. The fence just is. And it always is.

My parents used a leather belt for punishment. I haven't followed that example, but they were good parents. I knew they loved me. They had boundaries and they enforced those boundaries harshly - but they were very consistent. If I tried to exceed a boundary - "Head home when the streetlights come on" - then I was punished. But they didn't enjoy it. Didn't punish without cause, and once the punishment was over, it was over.

Their punishments were like a fence. Always ready, but entirely MY choice - because their fences didn't chase children.

I view bits this way, approaching from a western perspective. The bit is used to create a boundary. The horse is expected to control himself within those boundaries. Once the horse figures it out, then we can change speeds, turn, adjust speeds within a gait, etc, all without ever taking slack out of the reins.

My parents' goal was to give me freedom, not constraint. If I learned to control myself, I could play outside, roam for miles, and be fine - provided I headed back home at a certain time. We could go to nice restaurants, shows, etc.

My goal with my horse is to allow him a measure of freedom. He cannot free range. But if he controls himself, we can go out for long walks (riding), sometimes trot or canter, drop into washes, go off trail, explore - which Bandit seems to enjoy - and do so with both of us safe. And with very little use of reins, and without a crop, or kicking, or fuss, or stress. Together. 

I'm a fan of setting boundaries, and allowing freedom within those boundaries. But as Harry Whitney put it to Tom Moates, "Fences don't chase horses..." Unfortunately, people often do - and they chase children as well. :evil:


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## bsms

> "I use it sometimes to talk about firmness," Harry told me...That you can be really firm if there is the clarity and consistency. Then it is not troubling to the horse.
> 
> There is a very defined boundary where the electric fence is - I mean it is a visible thing, the horse knows exactly where it is. He knows if he stepped into it and got bit or not. He knows it never bit him unless he stepped into it. *His actions totally control the outcome*...The pressure didn't come into him. *The fence doesn't come across the field at a high run and shock him for no reason.*"


-- Further Along the Trail, Tom Moates


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## SueC

Hullo @*bsms* ! How's it going?

I define violence as something designed to produce fear and pain, and being beaten with a leather strap would come under that definition. It's certainly not what I would call the minimal effective response.

An electric fence doesn't; I've been accidentally shocked quite a few times but this doesn't result in fear, nor in very much pain - I'd classify it as a sharp discomfort. Our animals also aren't afraid of electric fences nor do they get nervous around them; they get close but take care not to touch them.

Violence isn't necessary for discipline. I have plenty of friends who have brought up respectful, kind, caring children with excellent manners, who never raised a hand to them. I spent years teaching classrooms full of teenagers and obtaining an atmosphere of courtesy and order that did not rely on my beating anyone ever, or making them afraid of me. It did involve making the boundaries, as well as the consequences for boundary incursions, very explicit, and immediately following through. (And making the learning interesting, and focusing on the positive, and giving lots of feedback, and genuinely caring for the students as human beings.) It was important that the consequences weren't out of proportion with the offences, and that respect and courtesy were _modelled_, not just demanded from other people. The UK's "Supernanny" worked along very similar principles to straighten out home situations with very young children.

Intentional disruption of classroom learning always resulted in immediate removal from the classroom, which resulted in social embarrassment as children went to other classrooms with a bunch of paperwork to do. More minor things ended up with a tally of "time owed" on the board; and there was a bag of preventative tricks as well. Schools have to be supportive of this kind of approach for it to work, of course; but when they were, I jumped in on two occasions to take over "classes from hell" who had completely run riot with their previous teachers, and in both cases the classes were business-like and orderly as the new norm within two weeks. In one situation I had colleagues on standby to cart off several deliberately disruptive hooligans from the class immediately (we knew it was going to happen) and that was an instant improvement. These guys stayed on independent isolated study programmes until they could conform to the classroom. It didn't take too many removals for even these "tough guys" to settle and to start acting with courtesy. It doesn't work in every school, but I wasn't interested in working in places where management had low standards and accepted riot as a normal order of business. Also, you occasionally meet sociopathic/sadistic teenagers, but the dangerous ones don't tend to stay in the main schooling system for long.

Horses, I should add, are far more naturally cooperative creatures than humans! ;-)


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## bsms

I'm not afraid when standing beside a busy road, or waiting in my car for a train to pass. I know full well that stepping out in front of those cars or the train would result in extreme violence to my person, but I also know I control the outcome. Don't want to explode into vaporized body parts? Easy - don't step in front of the cars.

OTOH, if I had reason to believe drivers routinely targeted bystanders and would drive off the road to hit them, then I'd be terrified while standing beside the road. With good reason.

I used less physical punishment with my kids than my parents did, but I see no evidence I did a better job of raising happy, contented and productive children.

When in the military, my GOAL was to get my subordinates to do their jobs because it was important, or because it was more enjoyable to get it done, etc. But the reality was some only worked under threat of punishment. To the extent I could, I tried to weed those people out. But they existed.

"_Intentional disruption of classroom learning always resulted in immediate removal from the classroom, which resulted in social embarrassment..._"

That wasn't my experience in my student teaching days. Both because the school where I did my student teaching didn't allow teacher to immediately remove students, and because when a student WAS removed, they took pride in their removal. Even the very experienced teachers struggled with classroom discipline, often spending the majority of their time dealing with 1-2 students in a class. I finished my student teaching and looked for other work. I had no desire to spend decades in that environment.

I don't use a lot of physical punishment with horses. But I do set some boundaries, and pushing past those boundaries will result in punishment. That doesn't result in my horses living in fear of me, any more than I lived in fear of my parents or stress out while standing near a busy street. I think the reason is the boundaries are reasonable, clear, constant, and the horse only encounters punishment if he insists on it.

There are undoubtedly parents who beat kids for fun, or do so erratically and utterly out of proportion. There are undoubtedly riders whose first thought is "How DARE you oppose my will, you stupid horse!" I don't deny punishment CAN be very harmful. I just see no evidence it is ALWAYS harmful. I believe my parents used more force than needed, but neither my sister nor I feel in any way damaged by it. We never feared our parents. We didn't need to.

PS: I hope to start riding more. My riding always cuts back during the winter, although many would expect the opposite for someone living in southern Arizona. I don't think I'll be posting a huge amount, though. I've concluded that my interest in horses is a small subset of the riding world, and I don't enjoy how many treat their horses - or other people.

In some ways, I think HF has helped me become a better rider. In some ways, I wonder if it has delayed my learning. So much of what I read in books or online just doesn't match what I see in my horses. So much seems so...artificial.

Not trying to derail your journal, but I can't imagine you objecting to my speculating in public...so, from my favorite author on riding, VS Littauer, discussing what he called "elementary control":



> All over the country, in small communities, there are people, both adults and children, who own their hacks, often take care of them themselves, and ride them pleasantly without any technical knowledge of how to control a horse. *In their quiet riding, which is unabusive to the horse, the efficiency of control is based on well-established mutual confidence; here a pat, there a word or two, are more effective in such cases than a pull on the reins.* This love of the animal and the understanding of his mentality and emotions is always pleasant to observe and *one could only wish that the knowledge of control on an intermediate level could be added to this ideal type of association between the mount 'and his rider.* [Note: Why?]
> 
> An understanding of the horse's mentality is extremely important in schooling. As a rule its consideration distinguishes a good trainer from a bad one, but such simple things as that the horse is easily upset by a rapid succession of orders, by sudden and frequent changes of speeds and, once upset by a certain behavior of the rider will remember it for a long time, should be appreciated even by riders who ride on the elementary level. *Through a considerate behavior in the saddle, which a horse will remember as well as a disturbing one, one can build up the horse's confidence to the point where minimum and truly elementary control with hands and legs will be all that will be necessary to go through woods and across fields.*


What bothers me is that he views this as crude riding. If this is "elementary", then why would anyone want to go beyond it, and use "higher" levels of control? If my horse and I can travel along " *based on well-established mutual confidence; here a pat, there a word or two* ", then in what sense is THAT low-level riding? It seems to me a higher form of riding, at least as far as the horse is concerned!

Looking back, much of my struggle with Mia was rooted in a riding culture - both local, in books, in videos and here on HF - rooted in CONTROLLING the horse instead of TEACHING the horse. I was told hundreds of times, if not thousands, that I needed to work her in the arena until I could "control her body - control every movement of her shoulders, hind legs, back, etc". But what she really needed was slow teaching, and freedom!

With 90% of the riding world focused on "body control", it took a long to to realize what should have been obvious: she controlled her body, and I needed to train her mind. I didn't need "rein effects". I needed to teach her, not control her!

@*gottatrot* once posted a picture similar to this:








​
She had genuinely experienced riders tell her the horses looked unbalanced, out of control, in need of a trainer to teach them to move properly! Their noses are out, they are leaning in a turn...yuck!

I find it hard to relate to that. Impossible, actually! Horses move so beautifully without us! Shouldn't our goal be to help them move with us the way they can move without us? And shouldn't we encourage, as an ideal, horse and rider traveling along "*based on well-established mutual confidence; here a pat, there a word or two*" instead of relying on "rein effects" and crops and shaping the horse with our legs?

I watched a video a few weeks ago on "half-halts". I wanted to punish the instructor, and I wouldn't have minded using a leather belt to do so! By the end, I thought, "_If you are that afraid of your horse, DON'T RIDE!_" And during the course of the video, no one ever asked, "_What does the HORSE think about all of this?_"! The horse was an absolute saint, which is why my farrier prefers mules...

Sorry if I am ranting, and I don't mean to derail your thread. I don't oppose punishment, but I cannot imagine riding while relying on it.


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## Zexious

I think people on this forum (in general?) get too wrapped up in their own little world--their view of things, their goals, and the stimuli that they come into contact with on a daily basis. 
Much of the above ("control" vs "teaching"), honestly just sounds like difference in vernacular, to me. 

Short of abuse, I try not to judge what other people do, unless asked to do so by the aforementioned party. I think the equestrian world would be much more palatable if others did the same :')


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## SueC

Hullo @*bsms* ! 




> When in the military, my GOAL was to get my subordinates to do their jobs because it was important, or because it was more enjoyable to get it done, etc. But the reality was some only worked under threat of punishment. To the extent I could, I tried to weed those people out. But they existed.


Oh yes, they do indeed - the sociopaths who can't be motivated by ideas of doing the right thing, or by doing something for the common good. These can only be motivated by appeals to their own interests, and from what I read they are around 1 in 100 of the general population and increasing, and actually in greater proportions in managerial positions and in parliaments, because they are drawn to power and status. I'd imagine there would be more of them in the ranks of the army as well, as in the general population?





> "_Intentional disruption of classroom learning always resulted in immediate removal from the classroom, which resulted in social embarrassment..._"
> 
> That wasn't my experience in my student teaching days. Both because the school where I did my student teaching didn't allow teacher to immediately remove students, and because when a student WAS removed, they took pride in their removal. Even the very experienced teachers struggled with classroom discipline, often spending the majority of their time dealing with 1-2 students in a class. I finished my student teaching and looked for other work. I had no desire to spend decades in that environment.


We've got schools here like that too, and I've always washed my hands of those because I'm not a professional bouncer who doesn't care what the kids learn. It's around 50/50 here, the chances of teaching in an environment where it can be enjoyable all around after everyone is house trained! ;-) And it's not disadvantage per se - it's more a lack of boundaries, and immediate consequences for pushing past them. One of the most disadvantaged schools in the state here was fine to work in because it had a culture of high standards amongst the teachers, plus support for workable classroom management. The school was in many ways providing what a lot of the homes were not - a socialising experience, boundaries, warmth, and the idea that you could do something positive with your life. In other places it's just mayhem, physical violence, constant disruption; the kids are in breeding grounds for jail and are only learning antisocial behaviour off each other, and egging each other on.

It's a shame you never got to teach at a place where it would get enjoyable after the initial house-training!  It's a lovely experience.




> I don't use a lot of physical punishment with horses. But I do set some boundaries, and pushing past those boundaries will result in punishment...


I guess a lot of this is semantic. I don't let horses push me around - but I don't need to whip them (and I'm not suggesting you whip your horses). The most I do is a slap with the flat of my hand on the rump or an offending nose, not to hurt as much as to say, "Wake up! Not OK with me!" Mostly all I have to do is say, "Oi!" and our horses will stop and check out what I'm on about. I can say, "Oi" if two horses are getting too rough with each other and they'll turn and face me, for example.

If I'm walking through someone's paddock and there's a boisterous foal or yearling who wants to jump up on me, I just carry a rope and helicopter it over my head, so that the horse will get a smack with the rope end if it comes too close when I'm just walking (not the shackle end, the soft end). They figure out that the whirring means "Stay away" anyway, hardly had a horse push into that zone.

Had to slap Julian on his bottom a couple of weeks after he arrived - he had just established himself as new herd leader with the other horses, and was walking backwards towards me as I was saddling up Sunsmart, crowding us (and not because he wanted his tail scratched). So I went, "Oi!" and went to an angle past the reach of his hind legs and gave him a slap on the bottom, and off he jumped. Then he turned around to face me and walked back towards me walking towards him, with a worried look on his face, and we mended fences - the moment he's behaving, I can be his buddy. No repeats necessary so far. It's funny how they do that though - come back to you and look to re-establish positive contact straight away, and then sigh when you give them a rub. They all like to be on good terms with me.




> There are undoubtedly parents who beat kids for fun, or do so erratically and utterly out of proportion. There are undoubtedly riders whose first thought is "How DARE you oppose my will, you stupid horse!" I don't deny punishment CAN be very harmful. I just see no evidence it is ALWAYS harmful. I believe my parents used more force than needed, but neither my sister nor I feel in any way damaged by it. We never feared our parents. We didn't need to.


I'm glad you didn't. A colleague of mine has PTSD from a childhood of being belted for things like wanting to listen to The Carpenters, or not lying for the family. She's in her 50s now and discovered this in her 40s. Beyond getting belted, she was getting belted for really questionable offences.





> PS: I hope to start riding more. My riding always cuts back during the winter, although many would expect the opposite for someone living in southern Arizona. I don't think I'll be posting a huge amount, though. I've concluded that my interest in horses is a small subset of the riding world, and I don't enjoy how many treat their horses - or other people.
> 
> In some ways, I think HF has helped me become a better rider. In some ways, I wonder if it has delayed my learning. So much of what I read in books or online just doesn't match what I see in my horses. So much seems so...artificial.
> 
> Not trying to derail your journal, but I can't imagine you objecting to my speculating in public...


Friendly debate is always welcome here. People don't have to have the same opinions, although I would draw the line at those oiks whose immediate and favourite tool (with people and animals) appears to be bullying and brute force, and who seem to enjoy wielding it - a form of sociopathy and devoid of empathy.

Have fun riding! :cowboy: I'm just getting back after a fortnight's enforced break with a shoulder injury.



> ...so, from my favorite author on riding, VS Littauer, discussing what he called "elementary control":
> 
> What bothers me is that he views this as crude riding. If this is "elementary", then why would anyone want to go beyond it, and use "higher" levels of control? If my horse and I can travel along " *based on well-established mutual confidence; here a pat, there a word or two* ", then in what sense is THAT low-level riding? It seems to me a higher form of riding, at least as far as the horse is concerned!


There is this thing in philosophy called the "paralysis of analysis" and I think a lot of people can get bogged down in it. Your perspective on this seems sensible to me. I think people can bring a lot of personal and cultural baggage to a subject. Independent, critical thinking is always a good thing.




> Looking back, much of my struggle with Mia was rooted in a riding culture - both local, in books, in videos and here on HF - rooted in CONTROLLING the horse instead of TEACHING the horse. I was told hundreds of times, if not thousands, that I needed to work her in the arena until I could "control her body - control every movement of her shoulders, hind legs, back, etc". But what she really needed was slow teaching, and freedom!
> 
> With 90% of the riding world focused on "body control", it took a long to to realize what should have been obvious: she controlled her body, and I needed to train her mind. I didn't need "rein effects". I needed to teach her, not control her!


You'll hear no arguments from me on this. It also bamboozled me, both coming to Australia and as a common line of thinking on HF. If you want to control something, buy a motorbike. Or practice controlling yourself. Not a fellow critter.






> @*gottatrot* once posted a picture similar to this:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ​
> She had genuinely experienced riders tell her the horses looked unbalanced, out of control, in need of a trainer to teach them to move properly! Their noses are out, they are leaning in a turn...yuck!


:rofl: The height of anthropocentric thinking, don't you think? The idea that we have to go around improving the way other species go about things. But then, it usually ties in with a general attitude of knowing better - sort of like colonialists improving the countries they've invaded and saving those poor savages from themselves. 




> I find it hard to relate to that. Impossible, actually! Horses move so beautifully without us! Shouldn't our goal be to help them move with us the way they can move without us?


Well, Tom Roberts did say something along the lines of a horse having to be a ballerina while it carries a monkey on its back, so the monkey better learn not to interfere with the balance! Yes, indeed, they don't need any adding to their beauty, IMO. 




> I watched a video a few weeks ago on "half-halts". I wanted to punish the instructor, and I wouldn't have minded using a leather belt to do so!


:rofl:

I've not seen the video. Was trained to do half halts as a prelude to asking a horse to do a manoeuvre in the dressage arena - a very minimal "Something different coming up" cue that should be practically invisible. As that it works fine for me. I'm not sure how others do it but if you overdo this thing it could get really irritating. Same if you overdo ring work, or overdo anything, I suppose.




> ...The horse was an absolute saint, which is why my farrier prefers mules...


Yes, that's hilarious!  I had a core group of ladies from the Donkey Society here for lunch a month back. My horses loved hanging around all of them, which is remarkable for strangers. I remarked on it - "I think that's because donkeys wouldn't put up with the rubbish that horses are routinely expected to put up with by horse people, so you don't do it! And you know how to approach politely!" They all laughed and said, "Exactly!"

I've not met a donkey person yet who was about _controlling_ the donkey. They're all about working _with_ donkeys. Like I am about working _with_ horses, or donkeys, or dogs, or people. ;-)




> Sorry if I am ranting, and I don't mean to derail your thread...


You've not derailed anything, and a good rant is very healthy every now and then! Here's a free rant voucher you can redeem for future use! ;-)

Happy riding! :charge:


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## bsms

I don't object to half-halts done as what the military would call a preparatory command: "Something is about to happen, so get ready to respond quickly". Squadrons would sometimes get warning orders. For example, there would be an act of terror, or a disaster somewhere, and the squadron would be told to get 4, 8, 12 jets ready to launch. Most of the time, it would turn out we weren't needed and would then stand down.

And in many horse sports, I can understand its function. Since the horse sees no significance in the letter E, or hasn't read the pattern and know that at that point in the arena he will need to change gaits in response to the tiniest cue possible, then a warning order probably makes sense.

It is part of why I couldn't ride a horse for show. I'm not saying others cannot or even should not, but it tends to be contrary to my philosophy of riding - WHY I ride and what I want to get out of being with horses.

By the time I swapped Mia for Bandit, I had decided horses learn trust by humans being trustworthy. That doesn't mean being trustworthy from the human perspective, but from the horse's. From a human perspective, insisting a horse walk right past a smelly trash can is trustworthy. But from a horse's perspective...the trash can has strong smells the rider cannot detect. There is 40 feet of clear area (road). So why not keep 30 feet between yourself and the potential threat? Just in case. That is what a prudent HORSE would do!

So by letting Bandit sometimes zig-zag along the road, keeping a safe space between himself and the alternating threats, I was being trustworthy from HIS perspective. And over time, he has learned that most garbage cans are not threats, and even that I seem to have some judgment there...so we zig-zag a lot less. But the trust has developed because I've made allowance for how a prudent horse thinks, and been trustworthy from the horse's perspective.

That is also an example, @*Zexious* , of the difference between a riding philosophy of control versus teaching. Here is how HF recommends teaching a fearless trail horse:



> 1) *Obedience is NEVER optional*. A good trail horse is nothing more than a horse that does everything 'right away' that a rider asks. * Absolute and quick obedience -- 100% compliance without an argument should be the goal. *
> 
> 2) Your job (as the rider) is not to let your horse look at everything new and decide it is OK. That is your job. You should NOT show him that there is nothing to be afraid of. Your job as an 'effective' rider is to teach him that he needs to trust YOU and ONLY YOU -- not his natural instincts. *It is your job to teach him to pay attention to his job (doing whatever you ask) and not his surroundings*. Your goal should be to teach him to ignore anything he 'perceives' as fearful....
> 
> ...*I want a horse to ignore everything but me*. You have to remember that whatever you let or ask him to do (like checking things out) is what you are teaching him to do. Do you want a horse that is afraid of everything and stops at every new thing he encounters or do you want a horse that goes everywhere you point his head without questioning you? Remember, you just can't have it both ways.
> 
> http://www.horseforum.com/horse-training/how-we-train-fearless-trail-horse-99776/


Actually, I want something in between. I don't want a horse who goes everywhere I point without question, and I don't want a horse who stops at everything. I want a horse who wants to be there, not a horse moving along unaware and uncaring about his surroundings. I want Bandit alert and observant:








​
I want it even if he gets a little too alert sometimes:








​ 
That last picture, BTW, shows how small Bandit actually is. And while a horse who ignores his surrounds may be a "fearless" trail horse, he sure doesn't sound like a fun one!

But of course, a horse who questions you, or who takes a strong interest in his surroundings, won't place high in dressage, WP, or reining. Many would argue I suck as a rider because I make compromises with my horse. One horse clinician wrote a book about horses. He said the goal of all riding was a horse who obeyed the rider's every whim. And I DON'T have that goal!

Since I abandoned the dominant approach, and adopted an approach of mutually acceptable compromise, my rides have become a constant conversation with my horse. He sometimes indicates a preference about where to go next, or will suggest we leave the wash at a certain spot, etc. Many times I'll respond with "_Why not? Let's try it!_" So when I say, _"No, not here._..", he seems to believe I have a reason and accepts it with good will. 

BTW - a few seconds after that second picture, we turned off the paved road where Bandit was nervous and diverted into the desert where he felt safer. Because it made him happier, because it was OK by me, and it made us once again a team.

To repeat Littauer, since I found this an interesting quote when I re-read it - here with a different emphasis:



> An understanding of the horse's mentality is extremely important in schooling. As a rule its consideration distinguishes a good trainer from a bad one, but *such simple things as that the horse is easily upset by a rapid succession of orders, by sudden and frequent changes of speeds and, once upset by a certain behavior of the rider will remember it for a long time*, should be appreciated even by riders who ride on the elementary level. *Through a considerate behavior in the saddle...one can build up the horse's confidence to the point where minimum and truly elementary control with hands and legs will be all that will be necessary* to go through woods and across fields.


A "rapid succession of orders, [with] sudden and frequent changes of speeds" is darn near a description of many horse sports. It is darn near a description of how many rider learn to ride on lesson horses. Yet if Littauer was right, then it is also a way to destroy trust in the rider. And a horse who doesn't trust the rider will only obey through fear of punishment, or thru being bred to submit regardless.

My goal, on the other hand, is to "_build up the horse's confidence to the point where minimum and truly elementary control with hands and legs will be all that will be necessary to go through woods and across fields._" That is how I enjoy riding. It is how my wife and DIL and daughter enjoy riding. It is how the occasional visitor likes to go riding with us. And you achieve it, in my limited experience, by giving up control so that you can gain the horse's confidence instead.

And thanks, SueC, for offering a chance to discuss these ideas. I would love to have had a chance to go on a trail ride with VS Littauer. I think he'd find my position questionable, my cues rather crude, but my horses relaxed and pleasant for an afternoon's ride. And I think Littauer would understand that enjoying an afternoon in the open with my horse was all I wanted or needed from riding.


----------



## SueC

bsms said:


> ...And in many horse sports, I can understand its function. Since the horse sees no significance in the letter E, or hasn't read the pattern and know that at that point in the arena he will need to change gaits in response to the tiniest cue possible, then a warning order probably makes sense.
> 
> It is part of why I couldn't ride a horse for show. I'm not saying others cannot or even should not, but it tends to be contrary to my philosophy of riding - WHY I ride and what I want to get out of being with horses.


I've always enjoyed both - the trails and the arena. Trails are like going walking/running with a friend, arena to me is like learning to dance the tango together.  I also did lots of novelties when I used to compete - bareback barrel racing, slaloms, walk-trot-canter races, potato races, all sorts of challenges. To me that was, "What can the horse and I do together?" and I was always interested in finding out. It was all about communication.

About the Letter E: One of the challenges of good dressage is not to let your horse anticipate what's next in the set programme, by not practicing the programme verbatim until you actually perform it in competition - you perform it out of order etc. You're ideally not trying to show how well your horse can rote learn a programme (and horses are really good at that), but how well you communicate with each other.

I personally couldn't think of the half halt as an _order_ - I think of it as a cue, a preparation. I simply don't think in the language of control when I'm working with a horse, I think of it as a conversation, as a dance, as teamwork, as learning. I think how we think makes a difference in how we act and the kind of vibes we give off.

Brett, who's not a horse person but on very good terms with our donkeys, had a good laugh when he read this conversation, at the notion of _controlling_ a donkey. :rofl: It's really interesting that all the training approaches that work for donkeys work for horses too (and result in happy horses), but not vice versa. Donkeys are highly intelligent animals. Working with a donkey is a negotiation and a situation of mutual respect, and a donkey will work with you because it _wants_ to, when it's decided you're a good guy and you can enjoy working with each other. And that's how I've always wanted it to be for the horses as well, any animal really. I actually find it offensive that someone should want to take a creature and turn it into a service robot that has to blindly do what it is told. Human or other animal.




> By the time I swapped Mia for Bandit, I had decided horses learn trust by humans being trustworthy. That doesn't mean being trustworthy from the human perspective, but from the horse's. From a human perspective, insisting a horse walk right past a smelly trash can is trustworthy. But from a horse's perspective...the trash can has strong smells the rider cannot detect. There is 40 feet of clear area (road). So why not keep 30 feet between yourself and the potential threat? Just in case. That is what a prudent HORSE would do!
> 
> So by letting Bandit sometimes zig-zag along the road, keeping a safe space between himself and the alternating threats, I was being trustworthy from HIS perspective. And over time, he has learned that most garbage cans are not threats, and even that I seem to have some judgment there...so we zig-zag a lot less. But the trust has developed because I've made allowance for how a prudent horse thinks, and been trustworthy from the horse's perspective.


Yes, I completely agree with you, and so would the horse trainers who most influenced me (Australians Robbie Murray, Tom Roberts etc), as would equine behaviour biologist Marthe Kiley-Worthington. It initially takes longer to train a horse that way, but you get a better result - a better team. And once the groundwork is laid, you then progress more quickly than a "service robot" situation progresses, and into territory that they will never enter, because they're working from a position of human arrogance and assumed superiority, rather than a position of teamwork between two species who are combining their respective strengths as different biological species - a real symbiosis, of mutual benefit.




> That is also an example, @*Zexious* , of the difference between a riding philosophy of control versus teaching. Here is how HF recommends teaching a fearless trail horse:
> 
> _1) *Obedience is NEVER optional*. A good trail horse is nothing more than a horse that does everything 'right away' that a rider asks. * Absolute and quick obedience -- 100% compliance without an argument should be the goal. *
> 
> 2) Your job (as the rider) is not to let your horse look at everything new and decide it is OK. That is your job. You should NOT show him that there is nothing to be afraid of. Your job as an 'effective' rider is to teach him that he needs to trust YOU and ONLY YOU -- not his natural instincts. *It is your job to teach him to pay attention to his job (doing whatever you ask) and not his surroundings*. Your goal should be to teach him to ignore anything he 'perceives' as fearful....
> 
> ...*I want a horse to ignore everything but me*. You have to remember that whatever you let or ask him to do (like checking things out) is what you are teaching him to do. Do you want a horse that is afraid of everything and stops at every new thing he encounters or do you want a horse that goes everywhere you point his head without questioning you? Remember, you just can't have it both ways.
> 
> This is how we train a fearless trail horse!_
> 
> 
> Actually, I want something in between. I don't want a horse who goes everywhere I point without question, and I don't want a horse who stops at everything. I want a horse who wants to be there, not a horse moving along unaware and uncaring about his surroundings. I want Bandit alert and observant.


Well, like you I totally disagree with that little piece of cited advice, and I'd never personally implement it in the training of a trail horse, or any animal - for reasons already discussed above. And I'd have to say to that, the three horse specialists I mentioned above (for example) are at a level of expertise and skill in working with horses that's not been reached by people giving that sort of advice cited above. You just have to compare what the respective persons did with horses in their lives; the breadth of it and the detail of it.

A horse that stops at everything is simply an inexperienced horse in early stages of training. A service robot is just a body, with the mind largely obliterated.

I have ridden trails largely solo since I was ten years old, and needed to be on reliable horses. The first was a very experienced mare, Sunsmart's great-grandmother, who actually actively looked out for me. She'd had six foals, the last just weaned, was a great mum to all her foals and recognised that I was a littlie who needed taking care of. She'd rebalance if I got out of balance. She would lower her neck for me to slide across to get on bareback, and elevate me up. On one occasion, I'd gone walking barefoot in the bush in Australia, and got trapped in a patch of prickles. This was on my parents' farm, when the horses had the run of the property in the beginning. I was sitting on a log with aching feet wondering what I was going to do, when the mare simply turned up, and lowered her neck, so I slid on her back, no reins, no rope; and she took me very carefully right back to the farmhouse. It's amazing what can happen with animals if you're open to it and don't treat them like robots or slaves.

Why on earth would I want horses not bringing their considerable skills and intelligence to their relationship with me? I guess the horses taught me that early.

The next horse was my Arabian mare, whom I trained solo because everyone else at home was caught up in their own worlds, starting with her as a yearling and me as an eleven-year-old with a good grounding in dressage and trails from a riding school in Europe pre-immigration to Australia, and an excellent horse training library to help me along. When she was four we started competing in endurance and in whatever riding competitions we could get to (not easy if you have to fit in around a racing schedule which your parents think is the "real deal" - I _rode_ to my first endurance ride...), and doing very well for ourselves. >90% of her trail training was done solo. She was completely reliable. I'd already walked so many miles with her in the bush, on the lead, when she was too young to ride, and she'd seen everything before I even rode her.

The beauty of doing a trail with a horse who's in tune with you is that horses are actually far better at spotting hazards than riders are, especially at speed. Many a time it's the horse's skills that saved us from a nasty fall that would have been inevitable on a horse that was merely trained to go where it was pointed without question. You've got to be able to trust each other in that, and to communicate well, as opposed to merely giving orders, which I think is such a one-dimensional (and un-fun) way to live and to ride.




> That last picture, BTW, shows how small Bandit actually is. And while a horse who ignores his surrounds may be a "fearless" trail horse, he sure doesn't sound like a fun one!


Love the pics, and glad you're both having fun! 




> But of course, a horse who questions you, or who takes a strong interest in his surroundings, won't place high in dressage, WP, or reining.


My Arabian mare was an all-rounder who did well at all sorts of things despite, and indeed _because of_, being allowed to think and to bring her ideas to the table. It's all about the communication, which can be lightning fast - almost as if by mere thinking. I loved classical dressage and practiced it for years with her, and in the very limited competitions we could get to for that sort of riding when I was a youngster, she always brought home a win or placing - and once we actually got to go to the Autumn Horse Show in the capital. I have to admit that shows with all their primping are not my thing, but riding is; and though we brought back ribbons (including a first) from that outing as well, I decided I preferred other things - endurance, gymkhanas, actual dressage instead of just shows. And actually, most of all I liked just hanging with the horse doing our own stuff! Flying changes in the back paddock, many miles of riding through the beautiful Australian bush for hours and hours, sitting in her pile of hay at night listening to her chewing and touching noses with me from time to time.

When she was 27 we still did some light riding:





...and still enjoyed ourselves! 




> Since I abandoned the dominant approach, and adopted an approach of mutually acceptable compromise, my rides have become a constant conversation with my horse. He sometimes indicates a preference about where to go next, or will suggest we leave the wash at a certain spot, etc. Many times I'll respond with "_Why not? Let's try it!_" So when I say, _"No, not here._..", he seems to believe I have a reason and accepts it with good will.
> 
> BTW - a few seconds after that second picture, we turned off the paved road where Bandit was nervous and diverted into the desert where he felt safer. Because it made him happier, because it was OK by me, and it made us once again a team.


You will find much lasting satisfaction in that kind of riding. Happy trails!  :cowboy:




> ...And a horse who doesn't trust the rider will only obey through fear of punishment, or thru being bred to submit regardless.


The breeding aspect is a really interesting point. In domestic chickens, the ISA Brown was developed as Australia's battery chicken. It's bred for egg production and is dulled down to be able to survive in shocking industrial conditions. Heritage breeds wouldn't handle that kind of captivity - it would drive them bonkers. I don't think the ISA Browns are particularly happy either, they're just dulled down chickens. And I think we're also seeing a dulling down mentally in some other domestic breeds, including in some lines of horses - a genetic sort of thing, rather than the breaking of a horse's spirit aspect, which is environmental ("training"). That kind of animal will far more readily submit to being a service robot - but not be truly happy either.

And the ability of animals to live with dignity and a good measure of happiness, and able to express their natural behaviours in a reasonable environment, is important to me - whether in companion animals, or in food animals.




> My goal, on the other hand, is to "_build up the horse's confidence to the point where minimum and truly elementary control with hands and legs will be all that will be necessary to go through woods and across fields._" That is how I enjoy riding. It is how my wife and DIL and daughter enjoy riding. It is how the occasional visitor likes to go riding with us. And you achieve it, in my limited experience, by giving up control so that you can gain the horse's confidence instead.


Also true in marriage! ;-) In any real relationship. And doing what brings mutual, instead of very one-sided, enjoyment is a good thing.




> And thanks, SueC, for offering a chance to discuss these ideas. I would love to have had a chance to go on a trail ride with VS Littauer. I think he'd find my position questionable, my cues rather crude, but my horses relaxed and pleasant for an afternoon's ride. And I think Littauer would understand that enjoying an afternoon in the open with my horse was all I wanted or needed from riding.


The funny thing is, even the very first German dressage book I bought as a kid made exactly that point: Nothing wrong with that!  I think even then some people were trying to teach others not to look down their noses at people who "merely enjoyed horses" in an unstructured, unfettered way.

Thanks for discussing! :runninghorse2:


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## Zexious

@bsms - I respectfully disagree with some of what's been said.

I think most riders, both here on the forum and the many I’ve dealt with in person, would agree that their relationship is formed on a foundation a trust. 
If all (or even most) horses, with the exception of yours, lived in a constant state of fear [of punishment], would that not show in their behavior? Surely not all horses are bred to be submissive pansies, who would offer no opinion of their own.
Too, your view on trust (from a horse’s perspective) seems rather presumptuous. We cannot ask a horse “Has my choice to let you zig-zag around the road made me seem more trustworthy?” Can Bandit really equate that _your allowing_ him to zig-zag/learn on his own that a particular stimuli isn’t frightening over time, then reason that you’re a good dude and totally trustworthy as a result? Or has he decided through repeat exposure that garbage cans aren’t scary, and the rider doesn’t factor into whatever reasoning happens?
How is this more or less effective (or more or less detrimental to a relationship a rider has with a horse), then asking the horse to confront what's frightening, and leave the encounter on a positive note, no longer afraid? One and done. 

Have you dealt with many ‘competitive’ horses, bsms? Any top of the line reiners, jumpers, dressage stars? I can tell you from experience, that they’re not all push button mounts like you seem to think they are. They are incredibly athletic (that probably goes without saying), and almost always have a mind of their own. It takes an very talented rider to bring the most out in the horse, to “speak its language”, provide the right cues, and to garner the trust necessary to successfully complete the task at hand. Do horses of all tiers get distracted, have an off day, or simply decide they’re not going to do something? Absolutely.

If everyone were riding out by themselves, I think they’d be more likely to do as you’re suggesting you do. With no other riders to consider in an arena, no jumps to maneuver, and no time schedule to keep ('x' lesson starts at this time, her lesson starts at this time, I don't want to be disrespectful and get in their way, so I should be cooling down by this time...). It would matter less where a horse decides to meander. 
When I would take Gator out of the arena, I absolutely let him choose the path. What does it matter to me if he trails a little to the right, or a little to the left? Not everyone who competes has a competition mind every second of the time they’re with their horse.

Ultimately, it comes down to this: you get enjoyment out of your horses and your style of riding. That’s really all that matters; I see no reason to peer down upon the views, methods, and goals of others, particularly when they’re really not as different as you claim they them to be. Riders on this forum (even if their horses give the “right” answer far more often than they concoct an answer of their own) are no less of a team than you and Bandit.

(And, not to mince words, but that's not how "HF" recommends teaching a fearless riding horse, that's how @Cherie recommends teaching a fearless horse.)

_________________

I don't think anyone here is advocating for a "slave", or a "robot". I think the notion of "A horse is a very large animal, that can be very dangerous when not handled/trained properly" is getting hyperbolized and misconstrued. Is it not possible to take a different approach without “assuming superiority”?
Personally, I like my horses a little more on the 'push button' side. While I can say without a doubt that I’ve never, in all my life, ridden a horse that was “trained to go where pointed without question”, and I’m totally ok with that, I'm also not looking to train a horse from the ground up (been there, done that), I'm not looking to have a conversation with my horse over every single cue I give it. I’ve shown at high levels, I’ve lessoned for years, and (in light of my injury in 2013, and especially due to the fact that I’m no longer sure that I can create the necessary lines to show hunter/eq) when the time comes for me again, I think now I’d just like to hop on a horse and piddle around without needing to learn or teach with each encounter.
I think we all want slightly different things, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

What's you've said at the end of your post, @SueC , particularly resonates with me. 
I see it on this forum all the time: this "my way or the highway" type of mindset. (I'm not necessarily claiming that's what bsms is displaying here, I'm just saying we encounter it a lot here on our little corner of the internet, and in our little hobby/sport. Maybe it exists everywhere, I don’t know.) I do my best to respect the views of all people, but it frustrates me when I read between the lines and see a "holier than thou" attitude. (Not directed at you, Sue!)

I just think there's a lot to be gained from remaining neutral, positive, and open minded.
You both have beautiful horses, and great relationships with them. I love seeing the pictures, and I feel lucky that I'm able to live vicariously through the wonderful people on this forum.


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## bsms

Zexious said:


> ...Too, your view on trust (from a horse’s perspective) seems rather presumptuous. We cannot ask a horse “Has my choice to let you zig-zag around the road made me seem more trustworthy?” Can Bandit really equate that _your allowing_ him to zig-zag/learn on his own that a particular stimuli isn’t frightening over time, then reason that you’re a good dude and totally trustworthy as a result? Or has he decided through repeat exposure that garbage cans aren’t scary, and the rider doesn’t factor into whatever reasoning happens?
> How is this more or less effective (or more or less detrimental to a relationship a rider has with a horse), then asking the horse to confront what's frightening, and leave the encounter on a positive note, no longer afraid? One and done....
> 
> ...With no other riders to consider in an arena, no jumps to maneuver, and no time schedule to keep...It would matter less where a horse decides to meander...
> 
> ...I see no reason to peer down upon the views, methods, and goals of others, particularly when they’re really not as different as you claim they them to be...
> 
> (And, not to mince words, but that's not how "HF" recommends teaching a fearless riding horse, that's how @*Cherie* recommends teaching a fearless horse.)....


(1) - I tried the "_asking the horse to confront what's frightening, and leave the encounter on a positive note, no longer afraid?_" approach with Mia. That was nearly the universal recommendation I got on HF and in books, and it was a total failure. It made things worse, not better. 

I've said in the past that it obviously works with many horses, and obviously worked for Cherie, but it was counterproductive with Mia. And to give Cherie her due, in a PM exchange with her, she said Mia was one of those horses who would need a different approach - far less confrontational, and much more "back door", to use George Morris's phrase.

"_Can Bandit really equate that your allowing him to zig-zag/learn on his own that a particular stimuli isn’t frightening over time, then reason that you’re a good dude and totally trustworthy as a result?_" 

Bandit's background was heavily in the "confront what's frightening" approach. As his rider correctly pointed out, you can't win a relay race if you take 5 minutes to discuss things with your horse. And the resulting horse would go along, apparently unafraid. Until he tipped over the edge, and he would then react violently, with bucking or with a brutal spin and attempt to run away. He could be pushed, but he remained tense inside.

Like Mia, the approach that apparently DOES work with some horses was counter-productive with Bandit. Riding him out was like being on time bomb, waiting for the apparently calm horse to explode.

But I happily had my experience with Mia to draw on, and advice from people like Tom Roberts:








​
That approach has taken time, but the result is a horse who is far more relaxed. A horse who hasn't exploded in a couple of years now. A horse who hasn't spun around in ages and who increasingly will listen if I ask him to press forward - with slack reins. Because he isn't trapped.

My farrier says this is the way one has to work with mules. He says that what most people do to horses will ruin a mule for life. "_You must do with mules_", he says, "_what you should do with horses._"

(2) - "_With no other riders to consider in an arena, no jumps to maneuver..._"

As I said, "_*And in many horse sports, I can understand its function*. Since the horse sees no significance in the letter E, or hasn't read the pattern...

It is part of why I couldn't ride a horse for show. *I'm not saying others cannot or even should not*, but it tends to be contrary to my philosophy of riding - WHY I ride and what I want to get out of being with horses_."

Bandit's previous owner was totally correct - when your goal is winning a relay race, you can't allow your fastest horse to spend 5 minutes deciding it is OK to go past a rock! What Bandit's previous owner did made sense FOR HIS GOALS. But since I don't share those goals, I'm free to take a different approach.

(3) - "_I see no reason to peer down upon the views, methods, and goals of others..._"

I haven't. I have argued many times on HF that if someone wants to compete in dressage, or WP, or reining, or show jumping, AND they can do so with a happy, contented horse, then do so! Enjoy! However...

"My goal, on the other hand, is to "_build up the horse's confidence to the point where minimum and truly elementary control with hands and legs will be all that will be necessary to go through woods and across fields._" 

(4) - "_that's not how "HF" recommends teaching a fearless riding horse_"

HF made that thread a sticky. It is the #2 "sticky" under "Horse Training". I guess I view that as some sort of endorsement.

----------------------------------------------

What folks do with their horses, provided it isn't abuse, is their business. I'm sharing what has worked for me, with my horses, and WHY I find it in line with my philosophy of riding. I think recreational trail riding is under-represented on HF and often looked down upon.


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## bsms

What follows is a long quote from Horse Control Reminiscences by Tom Roberts. It is only available used, and most of his books are expensive now even if you can find one for sale. But this, again, is thinking outside the box...at least, it isn't something I've seen many discuss...

--------------------------

This horse was a confirmed jibber. He would not move when ridden alone. He just stood.

We were all eyes - and ears! How would the Captain fare with THIS horse?

[The next day] Promptly at 9 am, the Captain mounted and began to talk, as was usual. He was a most interesting lecturer, and he went on, and on. He made no attempt to move the horse, which was what we students were all waiting to see.

He talked and he talked. It was not until about 11:30 am again, that he suddenly seemed to realize the time. Again, the Captain drew his watch from his fob pocket and appeared to be most surprised to find it was so late.

"I'm sorry Gentlemen", he said , "I had no idea I had been speaking so long. Now what was the matter with this horse?"

"Try and get him to move", yelled several voices simultaneously.

To our utter astonishment and confusion, the horse cantered straight off down the School.

After a few minutes work, the Captain returned smiling..."Gentlemen, I have deceived you...Yesterday, when I mounted this horse, I immediately recognized I had to deal with a jibber [horse who would not go out alone]. I could feel he was determined not to move. The hour was late, and I knew I would need time. ALWAYS ALLOW YOURSELF TIME. Never fail to allow yourself plenty of time when about to start on a difficult horse - whatever the difficulties he presents.

"This morning at 9 o'clock, I mounted this horse with several hours ahead of me. The horse was determined not to be ridden forward. But I, too, was determined not to move.

At half-past 9, we were both still determined not to move. 10 o'clock came, and he was still determined not to move. So was I.

At 10:30, I could feel he was starting to become a little restive - but I was still determined not to move.

Now, at 11;30, we are BOTH ready to move."

[....Years later, in Australia, given a horse to work who would jibber]:

...I mounted the horse and rode off.

It was a beautiful night, full moon, still and quite warm. India at its best.

In accordance with Capt Pearce's advice I allowed myself plenty of time. I had at least 12 hours - should I need it.

The horse appeared to be enjoying the evening too, and we walked some two or three miles before he stopped. He chose as his excuse a very faint track in the grass: a track made by a few bare-footed Indians. It was little more than a faint mark. It was certainly nothing resembling an obstacle.

I first tried the driving aids to ask the horse to continue on, but at the end of 30 minutes he had not moved a foot forward - or in any other direction...

At the end of that time I was satisfied that being 'nice' to him had failed and that the time had come to try the effect of whip and spur. I really 'laid it on' before I accepted the fact that he was prepared to suffer any punishment for a much longer time than I was prepared to administer it.

Ordinary methods had definitely failed, and the time had come for me to try to put Capt. Jimmy Pearce's theory into practice. This is what I had really come to try.

I intended now to sit...just sit...on this horse's back until we were BOTH ready to go forward.

QUIET PERSISTENCE

It is all in the distant past now, and I am unable to say exactly how long he stood and I sat, motionless. It was one of the very few occasions in my life when I wished I smoked, just for something to do. The horse just stood - and stood still - and I just sat - and sat still.

Eventually he began to show signs of wanting to go back to camp, but I kept him standing still and facing forward just where he had stopped....I saw not a soul through the evening and night.

It was not until several hours more had passed (it seemed longer to me) that the horse reluctantly stepped over the so faint track. I had made no attempt to drive him forward when he became restless: he knew what was wanted of him and eventually he decided to move forward without any driving.

With voice and hand I then immediately showed my approval, and when he had all four feet over the faint track I turned him and rode him back to his Syce and his feed. Myself - I had breakfast before trying to sleep...

IMPROVEMENT

The next evening I set out again and followed the same course in every way. Another beautiful evening...and the horse stopped at the same spot.

For a few minutes I again tried to get him to continue by using the usual quiet driving forward aids, but only for a few minutes, and then I dropped the reins and just sat still. I wanted him to notice that his failure to respond to my leg aids would be followed by this spirit-breaking stillness, which would continue until he decided to do what he well knew was required of him.

After a while (some 45 minutes that seemed like hours to me - and I am sure to the horse also), he just stepped on. Again, with hand and voice I showed my pleasure and immediately turned him toward camp again...

...Off we set the next evening, same route, and again he stopped at the same place. After a few light forward driving aids I again dropped the reins and sat. After only some 10-15 minutes on this occasion on he went, and I again told him what a good boy he was....

On the next night, the 4th of my rides, he paused for a matter of seconds only, then over the track, and again, "Home, James'.

After the fourth night he did not even pause...

...This was the end of his jibbing...Never again did the horse stop - to my knowledge. Certainly, if he did, nobody saw or heard of it.

-------------------------------------------

The "Captain" and Tom Roberts, riding together:








​ @SueC introduced me to Tom Roberts, and I'll always be grateful for meeting him - in his books.


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## frlsgirl

Yikes. I came here to read about the wonderful life of Sue and her horses....


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## SueC

Zexious said:


> If all (or even most) horses, *with the exception of yours* (emphasis added), lived in a constant state of fear [of punishment], would that not show in their behavior? Surely not all horses are bred to be submissive pansies, who would offer no opinion of their own.


I've added an emphasis here - I don't think this is fair, Zexious. @*bsms* hasn't implied this. There are plenty of horse riders who don't work off the (scientifically debunked but culturally persistent) dominance theory, either by conscious decision or just instinctively. None of the horse trainers whose books are in my collection do - and they've taught an awful lot of people. That was also my experience of horse riding in Europe when I started; it was only on coming to the Peel-Harvey Region of WA in the 1980s that I encountered a majority horse culture that was really rough on horses. I might add that in that region there weren't many dressage riders, and that hardly anyone working with horses had been to riding schools - many people just bought a horse, hopped on, and started pushing it around when things started predictably going wrong - jabbing at the bit, kicking its sides, often simultaneously. People justified it to each other as "having to show the horse who is boss." Thankfully, things have changed for the better in that particular region in the last 30-odd years, but some of it persists. It's like a cultural kneejerk response in some places, and the problem is that advice like that quoted by @*bsms* in a previous post (re trail horses) just reinforces it (and I'm aware that even the people commonly giving that particular advice wouldn't condone even half the things these people did with horses themselves).




> Too, your view on trust (from a horse’s perspective) seems rather presumptuous. We cannot ask a horse “Has my choice to let you zig-zag around the road made me seem more trustworthy?” Can Bandit really equate that _your allowing_ him to zig-zag/learn on his own that a particular stimuli isn’t frightening over time, then reason that you’re a good dude and *totally trustworthy* (emphasis added) as a result? Or has he decided through repeat exposure that garbage cans aren’t scary, and the rider doesn’t factor into whatever reasoning happens?


What the horse can certainly tell is whether the human is _forcing_ it to go close to something it fears, or not, and _punishing_ it if it doesn't. Tom Roberts makes the point that from the horse's perspective (and he is always looking at that perspective, and teaching students to) a lot of riders seem to be completely unaware of dangerous things in the environment, and that you have to acknowledge the existence of Object X, and be tactful about it. @*bsms* has given some case examples out of TR's books to illustrate, and the technique used doesn't impair the horse's positive relationship with its handler.

Also, @*bsms* does not imply that a single episode of working with a horse makes you _totally_ trustworthy to that horse - it's a gradual process, like all instances of building trust. I think it is more constructive to debate about what has been said, than about what hasn't been said or even implied. To do otherwise comes close to ridicule rather than constructive debate.

Trust and repeat exposure isn't an either-or thing, it works hand in hand.

Two other points to add:

1) When horses live naturally in herds, the leading horses are the first to go past the "scary objects" and thus teach the youngsters that there is nothing to worry about. A mare will show her foal that something isn't scary by openly observing it and calmly moving close, even touching the object with its nose - never by forcing the youngster close to the object, or kicking or biting at the youngster. The foal is free to investigate as much as it wants to, and gradually builds confidence. When I'm teaching a horse something, I effectively act like the lead mare. That technique always reassures the youngster and builds confidence in the world. So when I'm leading a horse past a scary object, I go between it and the scary object, like a mare would, and touch the scary object, and let the horse come up and investigate, which it always will if you give it time, and persist with it. Then it's just rinse and repeat the next few times until it's "old hat" and the horse is touching the object calmly. That's in the groundwork, and there is transference from this situation, so that the next scary object isn't as scary etc.

2) Naming it is another interesting technique. Here's something a donkey friend wrote to me recently about her riding donkey: _Sebastian was just so smart and he and I understood each other. I only had to say a few words to him and he got the message right away - about where we were going on our ride and other things too... Donkeys do shy at things that ‘jump out of the bush’, but I found over time that if I had a name for whatever had frightened them, they accepted that I wasn’t scared, and they soon learned not to shy. Donkeys don’t go far when they’re scared. They run a short distance and then turn around to look at what frightened them, usually concluding it was really nothing to get excited about. They are very sensible animals, generally, and exceedingly intelligent._

In my reply: _It's interesting what you say about having a name for everything to help prevent spooking; I found similarly with Sunsmart, who had been raised so isolated from the real world that I considered superglueing myself to the saddle when I first took him down to Albany (in agistment back then) and showed him all the sights. He loves to explore and see things, but he also was convinced at first that cows were monsters (never seen before), and that water troughs were monsters ("), and that the Appaloosa around the corner was a big space alien (had never seen a patterned horse before), etc etc etc. And of course rustling bushes, oooooohh!

With cows, I found that naming them helped, and that onomatopoeia in the names helped - so if there was a cow, I'd just go "Look, moooooo!"; and later on our own place when there were kangaroos in the bushes I made a point of saying, "Look, boing boing!" and also whenever he saw a kangaroo in plain sight. And soon, the moment he hears you naming the thing, he relaxes - he knows you've seen it, and what it is._

Just a couple of aspects that are useful when de-spooking horses.




> What's you've said at the end of your post, @*SueC* , particularly resonates with me.
> I see it on this forum all the time: this "my way or the highway" type of mindset. (I'm not necessarily claiming that's what bsms is displaying here, I'm just saying we encounter it a lot here on our little corner of the internet, and in our little hobby/sport. Maybe it exists everywhere, I don’t know.) I do my best to respect the views of all people, but it frustrates me when I read between the lines and see a "holier than thou" attitude. (Not directed at you, Sue!)


This very same "holier than thou" attitude is the main reason I now chiefly journal and do social threads on HF. I lost count of how many times people sneered at me when I related how I work with horses - and were not above using ridicule and personal insult in the debates. I don't enjoy that kind of useless ping-pong match; time is better spent doing other things.

And my personal impression of @*bsms* is that he's a very analytical and forthright person thinking out loud on his learning process - and I've really enjoyed his journey, and the things he's had to say along the way, and it still saying. Just as I've enjoyed the things you contributed to the forum, dear @*Zexious* . We can all learn more from each other yet.

How's the foot going? And I don't know what's happened in your riding world in my absence these past few years... any hyperlinks?

Very best wishes to all of you!


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## SueC

frlsgirl said:


> Yikes. I came here to read about the wonderful life of Sue and her horses....


We're just having a geek discussion!  You may enjoy some of the Tom Roberts anecdotes @bsms has kindly posted; TR was my main training influence when I was educating my Arabian mare to saddle many moons ago now.

How's it going? I'll check in at your journal again soon!


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## SueC

This is especially for @*frlsgirl*.

We extracted a box of honey yesterday - I uncapped frames, and Brett spun them with a hand-cranked spinner. Nine frames in all.



Box of Honey – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Uncapping Honey – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Uncapping Honey II – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


So now I'm going to make honey cluster muesli this morning!


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## bsms

@SueC introduced me to Tom Roberts, and his account of how one approaches training a horse in "Horse Control - The Young Horse" and his stories about how some puzzles got worked out in "Horse Control - Reminiscences" helped me turn a corner with Mia.

I also need to emphasize to @Zexious that I do NOT view my preferences as needing to be universal, or that dressage horses are abused, or that Bandit's previous owner, for example, is a bad man or bad rider. On the contrary, I respect Bandit's previous owner and am thrilled that HE - unlike me - has enabled Mia to reach a point where his family considers her near 'bombproof' and feels free to ride her bareback (although is wife still prefers a saddle).

He had some tools at his disposal that I did not - the ability to let her roam her new environment as part of a free-ranging herd, to have her bred by the stallion in the herd, to let her fun full out for miles against other horses...but if he was a bad rider or rotten person, he would not have been able to take Mia to where I couldn't go with her, regardless of any additional tools.








​ 
Many things with horses depends so much on the person doing them. That doesn't make all things "right", but there are surely multiple approaches that can be used with a horse. And if ANY rider in ANY sport can get to their goals with a happy, contented horse - by all means, have at it!

In one of her earlier posts, SueC used a term that resonated with me:

"_I'm in the "minimal effective response" camp when it comes to these situations...._"

While many approaches can work, I think searching for the most subtle yet effective approach is important. I don't know how anyone can train a horse without use of SOME force, but the minimum needed is the goal of all good riders. Riding horses presents us with many times where the horse has locked the front door. Where I live, many respond by breaking down the front door. Heck, Bandit's previous owner turned to Clinton Anderson because CA was so much GENTLER and so much more UNDERSTANDING in his approach than many of the local trainers he could have imitated - but did not.

Searching for a back door that allows you to slip inside, have some coffee (or tea, or a beer) with the horse, and that results in the horse unlocking the front door - THAT is good riding. My Dad used a leather belt on me without ill effect. I never had reason to doubt my parents' love for me, and the underlying good will can work wonders. But I never used a belt on my kids, although I often failed to look for a back door into their behavior. Horses, and Mia in particular, opened my eyes to other options. I'm glad Mia is in a place where she seems to be genuinely at peace, but I'll always be grateful to my 7 years with her - and what she taught me, often using "*This will profit you. This will not.*" and "*Quiet Persistence*"! She didn't just change how I view horses, but taught me a great deal about life - and I was 50 when I met her!










Truly a remarkable horse.​


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## SueC

Very good! Now let's all have some soup.  I do hear the weather in the US is unseasonally cold and atrocious - what's it like in your necks of the woods, @*bsms* , @*Zexious* , @*frlsgirl* , @*egrogan* , any other US visitors? Over here we're having an unseasonally dry start to the year, so we've really welcomed the deluge that's been coming through these past 16 hours or so. Thunderstorms and lightning from a trough from up the tropics, being sucked down to us. It's been raining so hard we've hardly been able to hear indoors - like turning a million shower taps on full!

So it's soup recipe time!


If you like soups, I've got three really easy and tasty ones right here that we make regularly:


*CREAM OF ZUCCHINI SOUP WITH RICOTTA AND FETA*

Sautée 1 coarsely chopped onion in olive oil. When soft, add 750mL of chicken stock, 1kg chopped zucchini, and 1 tablespoon oregano. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes until the vegetables are soft. Add 100g of crumbled feta cheese, 100g of ricotta, a dash of cream and some freshly ground pepper. Puree with a blender stick and serve decorated with sprigs of fresh oregano and crumbled feta, accompanied with crusty bread.

This is a really tasty and satisfying soup which makes good use of home-grown zucchini and keeps you going with the complete proteins of the cheeses. Other cheeses that suit this recipe include soft blue-veined cheeses like Dolcelatte and Gorgonzola, or soft white-mould cheeses like White Castello. (Fans of blue-vein cheeses: Try the combination of crumbled blue-vein cheese with whole green mild chillies on a crusty pizza, with just a little herbed tomato paste underneath!)

If you want to add cheddar to your soup, I think that goes better in the next soup below.

A little tip from a good friend: She simply grates excess zucchini in summer, and freezes them in ziplock bags to add to vegetable soups, stews, bolognaise sauce, frittata etc all year round. I started doing that last summer - very good idea!



*CARROT AND GINGER SOUP*

This is a recipe my husband dug up somewhere and made as an experiment and it's so good it's now on our menu regularly, especially when anyone has a cold or hayfever. Double or triple the ginger when that's the case.

Sautée 1 coarsely chopped onion in butter along with a chopped celery stalk. When soft, add 1.2 litres of chicken stock, 1 chopped potato, and 700g of chopped carrots. Bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes until the vegetables are soft. Add 2 tablespoons grated of fresh ginger root, a pinch of nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste, and 100mL of cream. Puree with a blender stick, serve and enjoy.



*CORN AND CAPSICUM SOUP WITH SMOKED HAM AND CHEDDAR*

This one is ready in 10-15 minutes and nicely substantial. Sautée 100g of chopped smoked ham, 1 coarsely chopped onion and 1 -2 chopped capsicums in olive oil. When soft, add 750mL of chicken stock and 500g corn kernels (frozen will do, but cut fresh off the cob is phenomenal); bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Add 100-150g grated cheddar cheese, a dash of cream, and salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Puree with a blender stick and decorate with a swirl of cream.


I don't have photos of these soups, but I do have lots of food photos from our place here - and a lot of them have recipes in the captions (fullscreen the photo for that):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoo...57687753093115


Just going to add one more - this is unbelievably good in winter:


*CHEESY SEAFOOD CHOWDER*

Butter or olive oil for sautéeing
3 slices smoked ham or bacon, chopped
1 large onion (or 2 leeks), sliced
500g diced potatoes
3 cups water
3 cups white wine
420g canned diced tomatoes or equivalent fresh
1 tbsp (or more, it's nice) marjoram and / or oregano
Salt, pepper and paprika to taste
750g marinara mix (smoked cod cut into chunks also works)
2 cups milk
300g corn kernels (fresh or defrosted)
200g grated tasty cheese

Sauté ham and onions until onions are glassy. Add water, wine, tomatoes, potatoes, herbs and seasonings and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

Turn up heat, add seafood, milk and corn and simmer on medium heat for a further 10 minutes, until seafood is cooked and potatoes tender but not falling apart. Add grated cheese and let it melt into the soup before turning off heat. Lovely with crusty bread. 


PS: We're still making your pumpkin risotto recipe, @*egrogan* !


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## egrogan

> PS: We're still making your pumpkin risotto recipe, @*egrogan* ! :smile:


That makes me so happy. Such a good meal. My husband has gotten really into baking over the past couple of years and that dish is perfect paired with some crusty rolls and fresh butter!

Weather here may finally be turning a corner- looks like a steady stretch of sunshine and temps between 50-60*F. My chickens have also declared it's spring- we've got crazy hen hormones running amok here. One of them has decided to go broody, but sad for her there is no rooster and I can't give her any fertilized eggs because our move is now about a month away, and I don't need to make the chicken transport any more complicated than it already is. But now that she's a puffed up, screaming terror in the nest boxes, the rest of them have started laying in weird places where they can find some peace and quiet...


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## bsms

After a few weeks of high winds and wildly varying temps (20-30 deg F swings in 24 hours), it looks like a week of mild wind and highs around 80-85 for us. My wife has sort-of quit her job and likes making soup, so maybe there will be soups in the future. She turned in her resignation letter and her boss made a counter-offer: take 2-3 months off, and return to work if she wants at the end. I've got a lot of spring clean-up waiting for me - branches to cut off of a tree that always grows too fast, a hole in the wall of our house about 23-24 feet up, making it tough to use a ladder but also dangerous to try to reach down from above. Bees will move in this spring if I can't get it covered well.

So plenty of chores that don't involve horses, but good weather to do them in.

Took this picture earlier in the week. The flowers are beautiful, but you can also see how well hidden the cactus is when not flowering. When riding across country, the rider needs to be alert for those since the horses sometimes miss them:








​ 
Out for a walk with my wife. This is an old dirt road near the Arizona Trail. It would be great for riding on, except getting there requires crossing a lot of sharp rocks, and just ahead is another place where the horses would find it painful. Walking in that area sometimes leaves MY feet sore, even in hiking shoes.










A lot of bicyclists use the Arizona Trail. Gotta admit I'm not too fond of them. They come flying around a corner, too quiet to hear but moving so fast that there is barely time to get out of their way when I'm on foot. I know my horses would HATE them. To me, riding a bike like that is like galloping a horse along a trail where a lot of people walk...rude. We walked for an hour there yesterday and had to jump off the trail 4 times to avoid being run over. 

That is why we rarely use that trail, except to connect us with old dirt roads where we can walk in peace. That section would be ideal for riding, so maybe ride 1/4 mile, dismount, go 100 yards on foot letting the horses pick their way without my weight, then mount up, ride 1/3 mile, dismount, etc?

PS: My wife just doubled the size of our hen coop and moved it under a tree. The hens are in heaven...​


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## Zexious

@frlsgirl - I'm sorry ): I hope I didn't come off as too aggressive or abrasive, and I'm sorry for bringing the thread further off track. I try to keep my tone as curious/conversational as possible, but it's difficult to tell how it will be perceived on the other side of the screen. 

I super love the chicken, @egrogan . I'm trying to convince my mom to get some--I think she'd enjoy them! Do you find that they're difficult to take care of?

Love the pictures as always, @bsms . 

Sue, unfortunately I am still not in a position to ride. I've had five (or six? I've lost count) additional surgeries in the past handful of years. This is the first year I've gotten a break from them since my accident, and I'm only now able to start toning up again to ride. Such is life :')


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## SueC

@*Zexious* , this would strike me as a good time to perhaps drive in a cart!  Perhaps you can dink along somewhere? I really hope your foot comes good properly soon. I can't imagine how annoying, inconvenient and depressing it must be to have this kind of ongoing injury, and I send you lots of good vibes. :hug: If you had a TARDIS, you could come by for a relaxing, recreational weekend in a natural setting with lots of home-grown food. And re off-tracking - I think we're all human and sometimes have to get things off our chests, and the important thing is that we can sort out any misunderstandings and all still be friends. I like all of you guys and you're always welcome here. 

@*frlsgirl* , also best of health to you, it's good to "see you" and Ana again!  One day, you'll have that pet raccoon... ;-)

@*egrogan* , so I take it the paperwork went through OK? If so: :loveshower: I've been keeping my fingers crossed hoping this would work out! How far away is the new place from where you are now? Removing chickens, horses etc on top of household effects is going to be a major operation, but at least you won't have to do it again for a long long time if ever. Wishing you lots of energy for the move; good thing your husband bakes! At home I'm the one who bakes, but Brett is the stir-fry specialist and he insists on doing the dishes over 90% of the time. It's nice when people can do things like that for each other.

@*bsms* , that scenery of yours is so ruggedly beautiful. A few years ago Brett and I watched _Breaking Bad_, which was set close to your part of the world. They had just excellent camera work and cinematography on that series, really letting the audience get a good soaking of that scenery. Your journal video with the 360 view the other week reminded me of that too. - That conflict with other trail users is apparently worldwide. Courtesy seems in short supply. When I agisted in Albany, we had motocross bikers to contend with - many of whom thought it was funny to rev at the horses, do wheelies in front of them or try to push people into fences. An acquaintance's Percheron mare got pushed into a barbed wire fence on an outing by those idiots and of course nobody could take action against these people as they don't have license plate numbers and the helmets conceal their faces, making ID difficult even if you film an encounter. The worst thing is that they invaded a dedicated bridle trail all the time, and the ranger did nothing about it. It's more accidents waiting to happen, and I'm so glad I'm in the hinterland now.


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## SueC

With winter coming up, I'm getting even more food-obsessed, so I am going to do a few more food posts. Here's something special and yummy to eat on a weekend.


Chocolate&Pear Tart – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

*CHOCOLATE PEAR TART WITH OATMEAL/ALMOND/COCOA CRUST*

_Cookbook concept adjusted to cut out refined flour, reduce sugar and butter, increase cocoa, and use nut meals and whole grains. (I like to upgrade recipes to more healthy and at least as delicious...)
_
*Crust:*
1 cup oats
1 cup almonds
70g cocoa
80g butter
3-5 tbsp water
A little flour if necessary

*Filling:*
200g dark Plaistowe or equivalent good-quality extra-dark cooking chocolate
300mL thickened cream
2 free-range eggs, lightly whisked
50mL brandy
Big dash natural vanilla essence

*Topping:*
4 pears, peeled, cored, and cut into 8 wedges each
2 cups dry red wine (or dry white wine and two rosehip teabags)
6 each of cardamom pods and cloves (or some vanilla beans and/or aniseeds if you prefer)
1 cinnamon quill

The evening before you want to eat this tart, prepare the pears and put them in a smallish saucepan with the wine and spices, so that the liquid mostly covers the pears. Put the lid on and bring to the boil, then reduce to a gentle simmer for 25-40 minutes, turning pears occasionally. Turn off when pears are tender and before they start falling apart – they need to keep their shape. Let them sit overnight in the spiced wine to develop colour and flavour.

Prepare the pastry: In a glass mixing bowl, soften the butter on low in the microwave. Use 1 cup rolled oats to make oatmeal by whizzing in your food processor; afterwards whiz the almonds until quite fine. Add to the butter, also add cocoa, stir with a spatula; gradually add the water until it comes together. Line a 22cm diameter tart tin with baking paper. If yours has a detachable rim, you only need to line the base and lightly grease the sides. Transfer dough to centre of tin and work outwards with hands and knuckles. Shape the pastry up the sides of the tin using your thumbs (fingers hold outside edge of tin), thick enough not to burn easily at the top. Put into middle shelf of oven at 180°C for 15-20 minutes to pre-bake, but not brown (use the fan if you have one). Note: You do not need to use rice or beans to weight the pastry as in blind baking; this pastry does not deform. Do put an air hole or two into the baking paper though, to stop that from trapping air and buckling up.

Put into middle shelf of oven at 180°C for 15-20 minutes to pre-bake (use the fan if you have one). 

Meanwhile, break the chocolate into pieces and put it in a glass mixing bowl, to microwave carefully on low until melted. Then add cream in batches, each time stirring gently with a whisk and returning the mix to the microwave on low for a small burst (to stop the chocolate going cool and congealing again when the cream is added). You could also do this in a saucepan on low, adding some cream from the start, but that’s a bit more tricky and requires extra washing up. Let the mixture cool a little (so you don’t make scrambled eggs) before whisking in eggs, vanilla essence and brandy. Pour your completed chocolate custard into the pastry case and return to the oven at 150°C for 15-20 minutes until just set. Let it cool to room temperature, then refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Just before serving, take the pears out of the spiced wine, and arrange them around the tart. No accompaniments are needed here, there are three different flavours and textures that complement each other perfectly: The bitter dark chocolate-almond crust, the sweet velvety chocolate custard, and the spectacular spiced wine pears, whose red hue offers a feast for the eyes to go with the tastebud fireworks of this luscious tart.

The spiced wine is super mixed 50/50 with orange juice as a hot drink on a winter’s night.


(Also makes a great breakfast in bed on a birthday!)


Happy Birthday – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


While the recipe is long to read, it's quick to make once you get the hang of it and you'll soon be making it regularly...


If any of you have favourite unusual recipes, feel free to post away! :smile:


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## egrogan

Thanks, @*SueC* - all systems go on the new house. The sellers have been beyond cooperative with a couple of little things that popped up in inspections, and we will formally close on the purchase on 5/18. So, less than a month now! The new house is about 90 minutes north of where we are now. The chickens will probably get moved up around 5/25 (we have someone helping us get the coop and run built since there is so much going on and we won't have time to do it ourselves), and the horses at some point in June. 

That tart looks amazing by the way!

Since fall is approaching for you, here's a seasonal recipe I enjoy when brussels sprouts start coming into the farmer's market:

https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/kung-pao-brussels-sprouts

Ingredients

2 pounds Brussels sprouts, halved
5 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon cornstarch
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tablespoons finely chopped peeled ginger
2 tablespoons hot chili paste (sambal oelek)
6 dried chiles de árbol, lightly crushed
½ cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons unseasoned rice vinegar
⅓ cup unsalted, roasted peanuts
*Recipe Preparation*



Preheat oven to 425°. Toss brussels sprouts and 4 Tbsp. oil on a rimmed baking sheet; season with salt and pepper. Roast, tossing once, until softened (but not soft) and browned, 20–25 minutes. Set aside.
Meanwhile, mix cornstarch and 1 Tbsp. water in a small bowl until smooth.
Heat remaining 1 Tbsp. oil in a medium saucepan over medium-high. Add garlic and ginger and cook, stirring often, until garlic is golden brown, about 2 minutes. Add chili paste and cook, stirring, until darkened, about 2 minutes. Add chiles, soy sauce, sugar, vinegar, and ½ cup water and bring to a boil; stir in cornstarch slurry. Simmer, stirring, until sauce coats spoon, about 2 minutes. Let cool slightly.
Toss brussels sprouts with sauce and serve topped with peanuts over steamed white or brown rice.


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## SueC

This sounds excellent, @*egrogan* , and I'm going to try it! Will have to be bought sprouts because I've not managed to grow any from seed yet, although we have plenty of Tuscan and Scotch Blue Dwarf kales in the garden pretty much year around, from the Brassica family; and broccolis and cauliflowers seasonally. I'm going to persist with trying to grow it from seed though...

Good homemade food is such a great thing. We've been so pleased about finding more and more of what's on our plate coming from our own garden. We were going to have chickens but because we have bees, we're doing barter with someone who needs honey and has way too many free-range eggs from her own hens. We'll still have chickens eventually - and I love that Wyandotte wing lacing...

I said I'd do a couple of food posts and here's another:


Painted Mountain Corn – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Painted Mountain Corn Drying – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

This is a personal favourite: Heritage multi-coloured corn, bursting with antioxidants and corn-ness instead of sugar. Modern commercial eating corn varieties are simply bred for sugar content – lollies in vegetable form. This heritage variety is more like the corn originally grown by indigenous Americans. It's superb as corncobs with a bit of melted butter and salt; a great side to all sorts of things. I got the seed from a generous bunch of readers from _Grass Roots_, which is our version of _Mother Earth_ - couldn't get it in our state, so they sent it to me and look how gorgeous they turned out. The dried cobs are a colour selection being kept for seed for next year’s crop and for seed sharing with other growers – apart from the pale white immature cob in the background, which we ate.

This corn is a great accompaniment to this dish:


Proper Roast Chicken – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

We went to the farmers’ market one Saturday morning to pick up some proper chickens, one for immediately, one for the freezer. You can’t get chicken like this at the supermarket: This farmer from Kojonup inland from us specialises in a slow-growing American heritage meat breed, run free range and processed on his farm. This tastes like chicken used to taste before industrial farming took over – like you can generally only get if you grow your own. These animals have actually lived, not just sat around with juvenile arthritis in an industrial setting, as modern broilers do (with skeletons unable to support oversized, fast-growing muscles).

The sides are from our vegie garden, except the carrots, which we buy for $4 a 5kg bag as juicing carrots: Roast potatoes, roast pumpkin, garden salad. Lovely Sunday lunch. When I roast a chicken, I usually put a whole lemon inside the body cavity and just rub the outside with olive oil and salt for a crispy finish.



Kitchen Snapshot I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

This was the kitchen recently at the end of stone fruit season. Peaches ripening – we’ve had a funny season and a proportion actually fell off before losing their green tinge. Tomatoes ready for use, and a big bucket of greens for a vegetable soup.

And we've got so many pumpkins:


Kitchen Snapshot II – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Turks Turban harvest came over a month early this year. They are as decorative as they are delicious in soups, or roasted in wedges.


Harvest Table – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australiac by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Autumn provides lovely produce that can be decorative on any table. Here we have, from the left, bright orange Potimarron pumpkins, a mixture of Tromboncino and Dutch Crookneck pumpkins in the background, young Tromboncino zucchini (dual-purpose variety) in the foreground, and Painted Mountain Corn, around a vase of mixed eucalyptus branches from the garden.


Tomato season is in full swing:
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Home-Grown Lunch – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Tomato season means delicious fresh cream of tomato soup, done with skins, seeds and all and mouth-watering with fresh crusty bread and zingy wedges of cheddar. A side salad shows what’s in the garden – apart from the carrots; we buy in juicing carrots we’re happy with.


This is Moroccan Harira:


Moroccan Harira – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Harira is a nourishing soup full of herbs, vegetables, legumes, noodles and lamb; served here with a side of crusty home-made bread. It's so economical and delicious. I make it in a "cauldron"! ;-)


The Cauldron – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australiac by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


I learnt to make our own pita breads last year and this is our favourite way to have them:


Lamb and Tabbouleh on Pita Bread – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Home-made fresh wholemeal pita bread (the flour grown and processed locally by Eden Valley Farm) makes a crunchy base for tabbouleh with vegies from our garden, and local lamb drizzled with Greek yoghurt and sweet chilli sauce.

The beauty is doing all this stuff on less than half the average Australian grocery spending, because of how much food we grow ourselves. I used to be a starving university student subsisting mostly on rolled oats, pasta, liver, and block cheddar, and swore to myself that I would eat healthy food when I got my first salary, and that's how it has stayed. Five years of nutritional deprivation in student days have led to a lasting subsequent appreciation of and obsession with healthy fresh food.


I make big batches of honey cluster muesli for staple breakfasts, which we have with berries, grated apple, yoghurt etc. But sometimes, I wake up with hollow legs and need something with lots of protein:


Healthy Breakfast – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

On this particular morning it was a crust of still-hot freshly baked bread to go with scambled eggs with smoked salmon and parsley, with a side of fresh garden tomatoes. To balance it out, a smoothie was served with it, whizzed together from frozen strawberries, a dash of cranberry juice, a mostly peeled orange and a big dollop of natural Greek yoghurt. I felt re-born after this breakfast, and skipped my usual morning tea that day!

A nice thing about "tree changing" and living on your own farm is that you actually get to have time for these simple basic things. We don't have expensive habits but we do like our food to be healthy and nutritious. :apple:


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## egrogan

Now I'm hungry @SueC, and I've just had my lunch!

We are making homemade wheat pita these days too, and I absolutely adore it. I can't remember if I've posted this to you before or not, so apologies if I've already shared. But, this is an almost weekly dinner for us as it's one of my absolute favorites to stuff in pita all together as a sandwich:
Falafel with hot sauce
Cabbage and pomegranate salad
Cucumber yogurt sauce
https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/shredded-cabbage-salad-with-pomegranate-and-tomatoes
With your leftover pita (ha- if there's such a thing as leftover homemade pita in your house!), you could also toast it up for fattoush the next day, which will also help you use those tomatoes.

And, these scallion buttermilk flatbreads are a close cousin to pita, great on the side of a salad or wrapped around something for a sandwich.


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## Zexious

I can't get over how absolutely stunning those food pictures are, you really have a knack not just for cooking, but also for photography! The vibrant colors are incredible, and the meals look like they waltzed right out of a cookbook. Do you have a dish that's you're absolute favorite to make? I really could use a TARDIS, if for no other reason than to try that "Proper Roast Chicken" dish, and that yummy looking corn!

Cooking has never been my forte, and I admittedly struggle in the kitchen. Boyfriend has worn quite a few professional "hats" in our nearly five years together, and (while he seems to be happily settled in a pseudo-different field now) chef was one of them. Why would I bother learning when I'm with someone who has professional training? xD At least, that was my thought process at the time. I've always found it a little stressful, especially because my prep is so slow. These days I stick mostly to eggs and sandwiches ): 

I've only driven once (a pair of Percherons, it was awesome!), so I'd definitely need to learn, and I'd also need access to a horse who's broke for it. It's definitely something I've considered learning, but I'm in sort of an odd position at the moment. I don't really have many "equestrian" contacts here, and certainly none that drive. 

I think I've mentioned this on another thread, but I tend to go around in circles a lot. A thought process that typically looks a lot like this:
"I have Gator, and should not move forward with purchasing another horse until I haul him to Texas, and am in a better physical state" > "But I miss being around horses so much... maybe I should buy a mini so I can at least get some 'therapy' in the meantime" > "If I'm going to spend the money on purchasing a mini and the upkeep for one, I should just purchase something I can ride and fully enjoy" > back to point one. 
I'm not really sure what the right answer is. ):


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## SueC

Zexious said:


> I think I've mentioned this on another thread, but I tend to go around in circles a lot. A thought process that typically looks a lot like this:
> "I have Gator, and should not move forward with purchasing another horse until I haul him to Texas, and am in a better physical state" > "But I miss being around horses so much... maybe I should buy a mini so I can at least get some 'therapy' in the meantime" > "If I'm going to spend the money on purchasing a mini and the upkeep for one, I should just purchase something I can ride and fully enjoy" > back to point one.
> I'm not really sure what the right answer is. ):


Yes, that happens!  Do you know the story of Buridan's ***? It's not like your predicament, but it may amuse you and give you food for thought.







There are many ways to resolve this paradox. Here's one:


https://philosophynow.org/issues/81/Why_Buridans_Ass_Doesnt_Starve


:smileynotebook:


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## SueC

@*bsms*: I gather that's Mia's foal running in front of her in that photo you posted with her at her new home? And I wanted to say thanks again for bringing an interesting discussion to this journal - I enjoy high-level discussions on this topic in a relaxed setting!  It's remarkable how it's often the newcomer to an area of endeavour who can see and question things that are so much a part of the wallpaper that people who have been in the room a long time may not notice them anymore! I think that's a really good thing. Otherwise, as they say, "Change happens one funeral at a time!" ;-) And isn't it amazing how much working with and learning from horses teaches us about life. And that life really begins after 40! ;-)











@*Zexious*: Thank you for your kind comments on that food post. I actually wasn't encouraged to cook when I was a kid, in case I made a mess in the kitchen, and had to learn pretty much from scratch when I started living away from home during the week at age 14 to attend a Senior High School in Perth. I remember that my first attempts at pizza bases were a total failure - they were like Blu-Tack - do you have that in the States? It's a semisolid sticky goo for attaching posters to the walls without damaging them. It wasn't until I took a Microbiology course at university that I really started to make good pizza dough. ;-) - Percherons are such a lovely breed! Re driving, do you have a Donkey Society in your state? Donkey people do a lot of driving and are a friendly bunch; if you contacted such an association I'm sure you could attend driving and driving training days if they have them (they have them here!), and make a bunch of cool new friends as a bonus. - And if you're ever in Australia, I'll make that chicken dish for you! ;-)


@*egrogan*, thank you very much for those great recipes, I will enjoy making those. Do you know, I recently had too much leftover crispy pita bread and was eating it over and over broken up with cheese, tomatoes, olives etc, until it got a tiny bit monotonous. And I didn't even think of fattoush - I've seen that before, and even eaten it before when I lived in Sydney, but I've never actually made it myself and now I have all the ingredients in the garden for it. So I'm making it this week, and I think it will become another staple! - I've had several sad goes at making falafel, which resulted initially in a lot of mush in a frypan, and subsequently in semisolid falling-apart objects. Any tips on avoiding problems? I'll try out your recipe next time I have a go at those. :falloff:


Summer is coming up for you, so here's a salad that became a favourite this past summer at our house - friend's recipe:

*
TRUDY & TREVOR'S BEAN SALAD*

2 big handfuls of green beans, cut diagonally 6-8cm, then lightly steamed
1 cup butter bean mix, or fresh, lightly steamed broad bean kernels if you grow broad beans (_Aquadulce_ is a wonderful eating variety)
1 cup cherry tomatoes or diced larger garden tomatoes
1 handful snowpeas, sliced diagonally
1 Lebanese cucumber, cubed
3 spring onions or 1 small red onion, sliced
1 cup chopped fresh parsley
1 generous chunk feta cheese, crumbled into small pieces
Dressing of your choice (lime juice whisked with a little whole-egg mayonnaise was my favourite last summer)

Just mix it all up together and enjoy!


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## SueC

bsms said:


> I've got a lot of spring clean-up waiting for me - branches to cut off of a tree that always grows too fast, a hole in the wall of our house about 23-24 feet up, making it tough to use a ladder but also dangerous to try to reach down from above.


That sounds like a job that sits on the to-do list and causes aggravation. Can you borrow or hire a scaffold? We got a second-hand scaffold for building our house; paid under $1K for it and really great for maintenance, gutter cleaning in high places etc.


Scaffold Comes in Handy – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


And in the next one you can see where the scaffold is still sitting presently. The reason is that we need to install the TV antenna at the gable apex and it's actually been such a low priority we have been putting it off! 


Owner Build Five Years In – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

In Australia, surprisingly large numbers of people die from accidental falls. Scaffolds and even mechanical cherry-pickers reduce that risk. A neighbour hired one of those to build his farm shed.


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## egrogan

@*SueC* , the key to non-mushy falafel is this: use dried, not canned chickpeas, and _don't cook them _before forming the patties. I know it sounds strange, but that made all the difference in the world for me as I too had those mushy problems.

I realized the wrong recipe linked above, so here it is again: https://www.thedailymeal.com/recipes/cooks-illustrated-falafel-recipe

You'll soak the chickpeas in cold water for 10-12 hours before you want to use them. In a food processor, just whiz all the ingredients together. It won't be a smooth paste, but rather a fine, almost sandy texture. Then I take a large tablespoon, scoop out an oblong ball, and pat it slightly flat so it cooks evenly. I fry them in a shallow pan with a light skim of neutral oil. They can sit in a warm oven on parchment paper until you're ready to eat them, and they reheat well.

Can't wait for summer beans to try that recipe. I love fresh beans!


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## SueC

Here's a little something from the _Krones&Kodgers_ thread, which along with the 40+ thread is a group of people I really enjoy. I'm not technically qualified to be on K&K yet, but the kind folks there waived my underage-ness and @*Change* even bequeathed me her black leather cheer-leading outfit, since she is now an official Krone:

http://www.horseforum.com/horse-tal...0s-thereabouts-655873/page328/#post1970517871

http://www.horseforum.com/horse-tal...0s-thereabouts-655873/page326/#post1970517393

http://www.horseforum.com/horse-talk/krones-kodgers-aka-60s-thereabouts-655873/page327/


And this is the funniest clip about horses I've seen in a good while, from K&K. Thanks, @*george the mule* ! 







:rofl:


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## knightrider

I have a solution for that Buridan's *** problem that I've used for myself and lots of children when we can't make a decision. I tell the children to flip a coin, with heads being one decision and tails being the other. When the coin comes up, you will either feel some small amount of joy . . . or disappointment. If it is joy, then you know that is the decision you secretly want. If it's disappointment, then you know you secretly wanted the other thing. It's pretty effective, too.

I couldn't post my answer in the window where you asked it, so here is my answer.

I had the photos on Photobucket and when they decided to charge $300 to use Photobucket, they removed all the photos. I never went back and replaced them because I didn't think anyone would ever read the journal or care. It is so kind of you to say you liked it.

I decided I wanted to be a writer at age 4 before I knew how to write. I made up my own language and my mom saved the books I wrote in that language. It was a form of symbols for words.

I started getting rejections from publishers at age 18, and have been steadily rejected ever since. I probably have gotten a hundred rejections in my lifetime, and it has led me to believe that my stuff isn't worth reading. I am so thrilled that someone actually is reading (and maybe even liking) my stuff that I put on Horse Forum, "Horse Stories and Poems". My husband refused to read my novels, my kids were bored with them. I gave my best friend copies of my novels to keep, in case my wooden house might burn down, and her husband threw them out when they moved. You can imagine why I thought my writing is valueless. I read a whole bunch of mini novels that people put on Horse Forum in that section "Horse Stories and Poems", enjoyed every one of them, and so, got the courage to give my own novels a shot. Wow, it's been great. 

When I get some time, I will put up some of the photos that Photobucket deleted. If you like my journal, go read Golden Horse's journal about Mr. Gibbs and Gottatrot's entire book that is on one page of her journal. They are both better than mine and you will hardly be able to put them down!

Thank you again, for your interest. It is such a shot in the arm after (what feels like) hundreds of years of rejection!!


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## bsms

That video was hilarious! "_Ooooh, look at me, I'm a ghost! Run away!_"

I ought to look into scaffolding. It might be cheaper as a one-time thing to simply hire someone who repairs stucco walls. The work itself would take 30 minutes, tops. Getting into position to do it SAFELY...that's the challenge!

The bees made a hive high up in the wall. They were killed. Sorry, but aggressive bees in my carport doesn't allow for co-existence. About every other year since, migrating bees can smell just enough to want to move pack in. I"m not sure fixing the hole completely will work, either. County Code requires openings at the bottom of the wall, and bees can move up inside the wall from there. It's a challenge. Last year, bees killed two men in two separate attacks after giant hives built up. We've been able to stop the hive while it is still small, but it can still be dangerous. Don't have a good answer.


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## Zexious

"I am a reasonable ***!"
Haha, that certainly resonates with me!

Earlier this year I read Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow". May be worth picking up a copy if you're interested in the psychology of decision making! (I read another similar title earlier in the year, but I can't for the life of me remember what it's called, ugh)


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## SueC

knightrider said:


> I have a solution for that Buridan's *** problem that I've used for myself and lots of children when we can't make a decision. I tell the children to flip a coin, with heads being one decision and tails being the other. When the coin comes up, you will either feel some small amount of joy . . . or disappointment. If it is joy, then you know that is the decision you secretly want. If it's disappointment, then you know you secretly wanted the other thing. It's pretty effective, too.


That's a good one!  And as you say, it also informs you whether or not you actually had a hidden preference.




> I couldn't post my answer in the window where you asked it, so here is my answer.
> 
> I had the photos on Photobucket and when they decided to charge $300 to use Photobucket, they removed all the photos. I never went back and replaced them because I didn't think anyone would ever read the journal or care. It is so kind of you to say you liked it.


Visitor Messages can be perplexing to figure out. Click on "View Conversation" to reply easily.

Gosh, that's a steep charge! We pay $50 annually for Flickr, which we find excellent for our purposes - the main one is as an online photo album.

Most horse journals go like this: "Hello, this is me and here's my horse (s), this is what we did today." And yours has an intriguing title and went like, "Hello, I'm the horse and this is my monkey I'm trying to figure out, and here are my opinions!" :rofl: I love humour, and enjoyed the adventures you related (ghostwriting for your horse haha!). And if you're putting photos back in eventually, I'll read the "middle" then because it's always better with photos in! 




> I decided I wanted to be a writer at age 4 before I knew how to write. I made up my own language and my mom saved the books I wrote in that language. It was a form of symbols for words.


Very cool! 




> I started getting rejections from publishers at age 18, and have been steadily rejected ever since. I probably have gotten a hundred rejections in my lifetime, and it has led me to believe that my stuff isn't worth reading.


Dear @*knightrider* , don't worry about rejections from publishers, you've got to expect those. Many people who end up with novels published have agents to champion their cause who know the right people - and that sounds like really hard work to me too. Another way is to enter into writing awards with things you're pleased with. Or not to bother and just go online and write, either as a permanent home or as an exercise.

Rejections from publishers have a lot to do with public taste. I don't enjoy a lot of mainstream writing that they clearly can sell; I like niche things. So I wouldn't see that as a comment on your writing ability or whether you should be read. Just find your niche! 

Have you ever read James Herriot's veterinary memoirs, subsequently made into the _All Creatures Great and Small_ series? I really enjoy his writing; it's not just a vet story, it's got wonderful characters and gorgeous countryside and personal reflections, and history. But he had so many rejections he gave up; his wife persisted with sending his manuscripts away and found a publisher for whom he was the right fit.

And JK Rowling had rejections; I bet the people who rejected her stuff as unsuitable were tearing their hair out when her books became a huge success. Which goes to show that rejections from publishers don't automatically equate to bad writing.

And thank you very much for sharing your writing!


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## SueC

Some more practical thoughts on *Buridan's ****:

1) It's true that the *** in the hypothetical situation has no reason to choose one of the twin hay piles over another, but it also has no reason *not* to choose one of them. The more pressing choice in this situation is actually whether or not to eat.

2) It's a bit of an assumption that Buridan's *** can be sure that the hay piles are _exactly equivalent_ from a distance. Surely lots of sampling is required! ;-) Both a scientist and an *** would think so.

3) And in reality, this is how many equines of our acquaintance solve the problem of Buridan's ***: Sample Pile One. When mouth is properly stuffed, walk over chewing to the other pile - that way you don't lose eating time. Sample Pile Two. If necessary, keep walking backwards and forwards between the piles like a professional wine taster just to make sure. And if it's multispecies hay, pick out your favourite species from each pile.

Apologies to the philosophers who were actually trying to make a genuine point!
:cheers:


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## SueC

Zexious said:


> "I am a reasonable ***!"
> Haha, that certainly resonates with me!


:rofl: Humour is a great thing!



> Earlier this year I read Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow". May be worth picking up a copy if you're interested in the psychology of decision making! (I read another similar title earlier in the year, but I can't for the life of me remember what it's called, ugh)


I have heard of this and will see if our library has it. 

My husband dug this up for me and I thought you might like it:

Snakes and Ladders and the Nature of Virtue - Existential Comics

It's amusing and thought-provoking, and in visual form!

He also bought a book I'm now glued to, called _The Power of Habit (Why we do what we do and how to change)_, by Charles Duhigg. Fascinating stuff and very applicable. Great for getting the better of bad habits.


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## SueC

bsms said:


> That video was hilarious! "_Ooooh, look at me, I'm a ghost! Run away!_"


That horse certainly appeared to enjoy the effect he was having on his paddock mates. 




> I ought to look into scaffolding. It might be cheaper as a one-time thing to simply hire someone who repairs stucco walls. The work itself would take 30 minutes, tops. Getting into position to do it SAFELY...that's the challenge!


Actually, that's very true - sometimes it's better to let someone else deal with the problem. Unfortunately it sometimes takes Brett and me time to come to conclusions like that! ;-) Although when we built the house, we didn't overestimate our concreting, carpentry and roofing capacities, so professional contractors built the structural skeleton of the house:




They did an excellent job, and we took it from there - and had plenty left to do... 



Took another 5 years to get it to this point:




I imagine you'd have a fair few strawbale builds in your region? The climate is ideal for it.

What sort of stucco construction is your house, and how did the hole come about?




> The bees made a hive high up in the wall. They were killed. Sorry, but aggressive bees in my carport doesn't allow for co-existence. About every other year since, migrating bees can smell just enough to want to move pack in. I"m not sure fixing the hole completely will work, either. County Code requires openings at the bottom of the wall, and bees can move up inside the wall from there. It's a challenge. Last year, bees killed two men in two separate attacks after giant hives built up. We've been able to stop the hive while it is still small, but it can still be dangerous. Don't have a good answer.


When bees get in a ceiling, ceilings have been known to collapse from the weight of the honey that gets accumulated - a big colony can make 30kg of honey in a week when the going is good.  Bees and houses don't mix, and getting stung isn't nice.

Can you put wire flyscreens over the ventilation holes to stop insects getting up there?


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## SueC

Will be returning to the subject of horses shortly! I got a sore backside riding bareback the other day; that'll teach me to be more careful about attire when riding! Seams and riding do not go together. I've got some lovely photos we are putting online today and then I can post them here.

Meanwhile though, an omission to correct. Brett and I celebrated our *10th Wedding Anniversary* on February 3 this year. I was taking a break from journalling then, but I did want to post the photo, taken on top of Mt Toolbrunup in the Stirling Ranges, the very place Brett proposed to me over a decade ago, and how could I possibly say no to him? And what better place to celebrate a decade together? (We did the anniversary climb on his birthday in July, as February was too hot to do it!)


Brett & Sue on Toolbrunup Summit – Stirling Ranges, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

They say that your choice of partner in life determines the majority of your happiness or otherwise thereafter. We both got very lucky. (And had done our homework! ;-))


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## bsms

Our stucco is stucco-covered wire. County code requires openings to prevent mold - in Arizona? - but I want to get wire screens over the pipe vents this week. I think the migrating bees used the pipe ventilation openings to get inside, and then built a hive. They then created an opening in the wall maybe 25 feet up. The exterminator is an old friend of mine. We killed the hive pretty quick, and used steel wool and silicone seal to fill the opening. But a couple years later, a migrating group found the same spot - smell, I guess - and we had to repeat. It has stayed empty for two years now, but we'll get migrations soon. And I'm sure the smell is still there.

Th bees here are fairly aggressive. What helped is we dealt with the hive within a week. But give them a chance to get in and territorial, and...it can get dangerous. The exterminator told me he preferred dealing with rattlesnakes any day of the week over bees. Unfortunately, the hollow wall construction here is ideal for a hive to use. I'll probably spray poison inside the wall near where the hives have formed to try to discourage any recurring. I don't like that, but I don't know what else to do.

I don't know of any strawbale buildings in the area, but it seems like it would make a lot of sense. And congratulations on the 10th Anniversary. I feel lucky to have passed 31. We've had our ups and downs, but I think they have acted like tempering metal...not fun to go thru, but stronger afterward.


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## SueC

OK! It's autumn here in Australia, and it's been a really dry start to the year in southern regions, so we are doing some supplementary hay feeding right now. We had some solid rain a week ago and the annuals are germinating in the pasture, so now we're going to need more steady rain to keep them going! The pasture's pretty poor due to the dry start to the year, although we do have some green kikuyu still popping up, as well as a little strawberry clover here and there. Not enough roughage right now though, so hay comes in handy.




Horses and donkeys are “compartmentalised” for the duration of hay feeding so that the animals who need it most get the most food. The two donkeys in with the chestnut don’t need much food, but can’t get near the chestnut’s food as he won’t let them, so no problem. :smile:

And that's Sparkle in the garden right with the round bale.

You can see she really likes to get in there!




Sparkle has a privileged position when it comes to feed time. This donkey is blind and not overweight and therefore gets to be with the actual bale and away from possible skirmishes over feed, which are harder for a blind animal to avoid. Sparkle very much enjoys her time with the round bale at feed time. :wink:



And because she's soooo cute, I'll post one more of her eating!




Here's Sunsmart enjoying his breakfast, with his jaw in full swing. Not that he needs much extra food! :smile: Although his opinion on that wouldn't coincide with mine...




Feedtime at sunrise – and Sunsmart’s attention is now on wildlife at the far end of the grazing common:




I am very pleased with the lovely neck this horse has developed with riding and free-ranging. He had an atrocious upside-down neck and no muscle development along the top of it when he was a harness horse.




Autumn is a nice time of year here - misty mornings, lovely light. Makes everything glow!




The wildlife is so interesting, Sunsmart is having a good look! Mouth full of breakfast, of course.


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## SueC

The morning sunlight makes the autumn countryside glow. The horses are rugged at night from autumn onwards to keep them comfortable – racehorse breeds often don’t grow very effective winter coats themselves. In the morning I take off the blankets so the horses can enjoy the morning sun on their skin. This is Julian, with Sparkle in the background:




And this is Julian and Chasseur. The chestnut is 24 and not as much of a “good doer” as the two Sunbird Hanover boys, so he gets a big ration separately. This keeps him in good shape and stops Julian and Sunsmart from gaining excess condition. 




And Romeo (nearly 34) is out of sight in the garden with his head in a big bucket, as usual.


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## Zexious

It's so funny you say that, Sue! I've been trying to get ahold of that very book ("The Power of Habit") for the past two weeks. (Should I include the long or the short version of that story? Ugh xD!) I'm glad to hear it's got some positive reviews, and I look forward to hopefully snagging a copy from my library here soon!
I did remember the title of the other book. It's "The Undoing Project" by Michael Lewis. I think you'd enjoy it. 

I know I've said it before, but I'm absolutely smitten with Julian. I love the rich color and quality of his coat, and there's just something so intriguing about his expression. If he were a person, he seems like the type I'd enjoy sitting down with for a cup of tea.
But honestly, it's hard to select a favorite from your herd with so many worthy candidates!


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## SueC

Zexious said:


> It's so funny you say that, Sue! I've been trying to get ahold of that very book ("The Power of Habit") for the past two weeks. (Should I include the long or the short version of that story? Ugh xD!) I'm glad to hear it's got some positive reviews, and I look forward to hopefully snagging a copy from my library here soon!


 We all have some habits we could lose, and habits we could gain. I've been putting off doing regular Pilates at home (when we lived in town I did classes, and the peer pressure makes it easy to do the workout), and getting back on the bicycle for cardiovascular work on the hills. Now why would I do that, when both are really important for good health for me? Partly it's that it's harder to conjure up energy if you work outdoors a lot anyway, compared to in an office job which makes you stir crazy. So one might perhaps need to do that sort of exercise at a high-energy part of the day...




> I did remember the title of the other book. It's "The Undoing Project" by Michael Lewis. I think you'd enjoy it.
> 
> I know I've said it before, but I'm absolutely smitten with Julian. I love the rich color and quality of his coat, and there's just something so intriguing about his expression. If he were a person, he seems like the type I'd enjoy sitting down with for a cup of tea.


 Thanks for the book recommendation! So many good books, and only one human life span... I don't know how anyone can possibly get bored...

He's lovely, and I'm so happy he's not just standing alone in a sand yard anymore. He's very bright and loves to explore, and has been doing so non-stop since arriving at our place. He's even tried out the bush trails already - "I want to see what's along here!" and jollying the others along with him. And he's so social - loves drinking from the same tub as Chasseur, eating from the same pile of hay, grazing exactly side-by-side - which is wonderful for Chasseur, who was so bereaved by losing his sister and best buddy in November...





> But honestly, it's hard to select a favorite from your herd with so many worthy candidates!


I don't even try; they're lovely. And yet so many Australian riders would turn up their noses and say, _Standardbreds_? Which is silly, since a good horse is a good horse. Having said that, the racing breed in Australia is starting to develop very finely built horses with very short necks. I've ridden one of those and it felt like I had no horse in front of me. The lines these are from are very classical, and Sunsmart and Chasseur also have French Trotter blood, from this mare:










She had the feathering of the French carriage horses which were interbred with Thoroughbreds to develop the French Trotter, and she had the height and solidity of them as well - and she could _move_! Her fast trot out on the trails was an experience for young me, after the mostly Warmblood riding school horses - like floating along on a cloud but at jet speeds! It was working trot, medium trot, then - whooosh! :rofl: Chasseur is a grandson, Sunsmart a great-grandson, but they've all got her trot - despite the fact that they also have pacer lines in them.

Julian and Sunsmart are grandsons of the famous American horse Albatross:










You can really see him in both of them.


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## SueC

bsms said:


> Our stucco is stucco-covered wire. County code requires openings to prevent mold - in Arizona? - but I want to get wire screens over the pipe vents this week. I think the migrating bees used the pipe ventilation openings to get inside, and then built a hive. They then created an opening in the wall maybe 25 feet up. The exterminator is an old friend of mine. We killed the hive pretty quick, and used steel wool and silicone seal to fill the opening. But a couple years later, a migrating group found the same spot - smell, I guess - and we had to repeat. It has stayed empty for two years now, but we'll get migrations soon. And I'm sure the smell is still there.


Our octogenarian friend Bill, who grew up in this district, told us an interesting story. When he went to primary school, back then local people walked or bicycled or rode to school or went in a cart, and it was all ages in the one classroom, as the schools were so small. Elleker school had problems with beehives in the cavities. It never bothered the kids, but one year when they had a new teacher, the bees were really attracted to that teacher and would buzz around her head and within a few weeks she quit, there was no immediate replacement, and all the kids had to stay home for months! I've asked Bill if he thinks the teacher used hair spray - this can attract bees - but he says he was too young to notice!

Do you have Africanised bees in your part of the world? I hear those are pretty vicious. We don't have those here.




> The bees here are fairly aggressive. What helped is we dealt with the hive within a week. But give them a chance to get in and territorial, and...it can get dangerous. The exterminator told me he preferred dealing with rattlesnakes any day of the week over bees. Unfortunately, the hollow wall construction here is ideal for a hive to use. I'll probably spray poison inside the wall near where the hives have formed to try to discourage any recurring. I don't like that, but I don't know what else to do.


I don't know if you get this problem in the US, but here we have trouble with ants invading electronic equipment, such as fence energiser units. Had to have our fence unit repaired three times and since then I've been spraying it lightly with residual insecticide every three months, no recurrence. Same with the inverter and other electrical equipment of our off-grid solar electric system - I started spraying that quick smart after the fence energiser experience - it would be a nightmare if they destroyed our electrical supply and so costly to fix. I don't generally use industrial chemicals like that, but there are exceptions in those situations.




> I don't know of any strawbale buildings in the area, but it seems like it would make a lot of sense. And congratulations on the 10th Anniversary. I feel lucky to have passed 31. We've had our ups and downs, but I think they have acted like tempering metal...not fun to go thru, but stronger afterward.


Congratulations to you and your wife on your 31st! That's a lovely milestone and worthy of some flowers:










It's very true what you say about ups and downs, and how the rough times make you stronger. I think a lot of young people think that everything is Hollywood in a good marriage, and then get disappointed when it actually becomes hard work to deal with some issues, family background, etc. I think that's because of how marriage is portrayed in movies, and also that people generally don't want to admit that they too are human and they too struggle with their relationships and lives at times. It's so typical to keep a "happy families" front no matter what, and that kind of pretending can be really damaging.

I think what brought Brett and me through the bumps is that above all, we're each other's best friends. And then ten years later you've learnt more about yourselves and each other, and you can look back at all sorts of adventures and projects you did together, and you've got this shared history you're really proud of. Also Brett is the most broadly educated person I know - in so many areas - and it's mostly continuing self-education; so we simply don't have boring conversations, and we don't run out of things to discuss and explore. So many people these days are so specialised they can't see the big picture; it's really nice not to encounter that at home.


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## SueC

*AUTUMN WEEKEND*

It's Sunday morning and we've got another one of those days: A sudden day from the desert bringing back a blast of high summer, just when we're getting used to the cooler temperatures. At 9am it was like a hairdryer out there, and since then the heat and wind speed have only increased. It's currently at 30km/h, gusting to 50km/h, and we're having to hide loose items so they don't get blown away. Hot and disgusting, so no riding till late afternoon today. I had to throw an old sheet over my climbing pea seedlings this morning; they were only planted out last week and I don't want them to turn into dry dead stalks today.

So we're indoors now and we'll do pumpkin soup, and then steak with mushroom sauce and rice, corn cobs and salad for our Sunday lunch with Bill, and we'll watch the pilot episode of _Vera_, an interesting British detective story which I've caught from Season 4 on and am now catching up on. It's really well put together; great cinematography showing off the Newcastle area in the UK, great character development, and actual space to think - the opposite of the cutting techniques of the 1990s, where people were jumping from shot to shot in seconds and jumping from scene to scene in a manner I call "ADHD TV". Very subtle music only, and only sometimes; and long lingering shots; and philosophically, the point that any one of many people could have done the deed under the right/wrong circumstances - that this isn't the stereotypical territory of a small minority of psychopaths only, but well within the realm of the ordinary person given particular circumstances.

That'll make a change from _Down to Earth_ Season 1, which we finished last weekend. That Brian... man, I'm glad my husband isn't like that!

Yesterday, we had a productive Saturday: After the usual weekend breakfast in bed, with extra cups of tea, we went for a long walk along our north boundary and along a dirt road to the Nature Reserve, and there took tracks to the creekline. Only a sad little muddy pool is left, the creek bed is dry. The dog had her customary bath in the remaining puddle before we returned and I made eggy pancakes for morning tea. We slathered those in home-made plum sauce and dollops of cream - delicious! This fuelled us up to do some chores. Brett cleaned the whole house and I did much-needed trimming in the garden, and mowed some of the lawn areas to make clippings for the compost bin. I also cleaned out the western end of the farm shed, where my horse feed/tack area is, and broomed and hosed everything, so now everything is squeaky clean again. There comes a point where dust is really annoying!

Then it was lunch:



Leftover chicken makes a good lunch teamed with beetroot/lentil/feta/walnut salad, and tomato/basil/mozzarella salad. That chicken from last Sunday kept us going for most of the week, and this was the last of it.

After that, we tackled the bees: Inspections on our four hives to ready them for wintering, and taking a box of cleaned "stickies" (frames freshly extracted and given back to bees to clean) back off the garden hive. We've got a lot of Caucasian bee genes in our hives now through the feral drones, diluting the gentleness of our original Golden Italians. They make more honey with the feral genes and survive better, but are also not chilled about having their hives opened, so we're really glad of our "Astronaut Suits".

I always get boiling hot with the bee suit over the farm clothes, and jump straight in the shower after bee work is done. By this time it was 4pm and I just had evening supplementary feeding to go: Horses with their hard feed and hay, donkeys with a little hay, and the poddies get a big heap of hay between them, separately so they don't get competition! I have a neat trick for ferrying hay about to different places: I pile it from the round bale onto a 3x4m piece of thick black plastic left over from pouring the concrete slab of the house, grab two edges and just pull it along on the ground - easy peasy, nothing to carry and the plastic is really slippery. It also means I don't have to work with hay at face level very much - and since I'm allergic to ryegrass, this is a good thing.

That evening I just fell into bed early, after crusty rolls, cheese and tomato soup. We read, watched some classic Dr Who _Five Doctors_ specials, and I passed out by 9pm, much to Brett's amusement.

Brett has a new lens for his macro camera:


Romeo and Rainbow I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australiac by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

He got a lovely landscape shot just as I was prepping evening feedtime, with Romeo at the communal mineral lick. The horses all get a vitamin/mineral mix in hard feed in the evenings, but also have access to mineral/salt and salt-only blocks.

Sometimes things get really busy, but it's a good busy with lots of things disappearing off the to-do list (which is of course constantly getting added to as well!). Speaking of, time to go make lunch!  Hope everyone has a happy weekend. :charge:


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## Zexious

Though I can appreciate the practical use of a book like "The Power of Habit" that's not really my reason for reading it. Sure, it'd be great to improve some of my daily habits (I don't know many people who would disagree!), but I was really only interested because it was an easily attainable addition to the New York Times' Best Sellers list. I aim to read a few dozen books a year--I usually aim for about 40 titles; I only wish there were time for more!--and almost exclusively choose books that make the list in an attempt to stay well read by contemporary standards. These days I sprinkle in some of the classics, for the very reason you mentioned: I was worried I'd reach the end of my life with too many of the "greats" left unread!

I tend to find that nonfiction instructional pieces tend not to resonate with me in the way they aim to, unless they pertain to very simple, step-by-step processes (like preparing a meal or changing a lightbulb, for example). I can acknowledge the science behind their claims, and I like investigating their thought processes, and so for this reason I still enjoy reading them, but I never leave the experience feeling as though I gained more than if I had had a real world experience of my own.
This is probably why I'm not particularly interested in much of the equine based nonfiction floating around. I read countless horse related books as an adolescent, but found them paling in comparison to the time I spent with the horse, with my trainer, in a clinic, or at a show. I just felt I had so much more to learn from a professional in the flesh than from someone so far removed from my own journey.
But I digress!

It sounds like you had an incredibly productive weekend!
I know I've said it before, but I love the photos you post of your meals. There was a campaign here in the States recently (I can't remember the name, of course #killme) prompting people to get their plates looking more like a rainbow, to encompass a broader variety of fruits and vegetables into their diets. The vibrant colors your meals feature are always so striking and beautiful--I bet they taste great, too!

Tell me more about your bees and the suits. Do you own then? (The suits, I mean.) Where on earth do you find something like that to purchase? (Isn't the internet amazing? xD)
I love bees....from a distance. I think they're super cute in theory, and of course love/appreciate what they do for the environment. Part of me would love to have a hive if I were in a position to do so, but the other part of me would still be weirded out, I think.

Love the photo of your property. Looks like heaven! <3


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## SueC

Zexious said:


> Though I can appreciate the practical use of a book like "The Power of Habit" that's not really my reason for reading it. Sure, it'd be great to improve some of my daily habits (I don't know many people who would disagree!), but I was really only interested because it was an easily attainable addition to the New York Times' Best Sellers list. I aim to read a few dozen books a year--I usually aim for about 40 titles; I only wish there were time for more!--and almost exclusively choose books that make the list in an attempt to stay well read by contemporary standards. These days I sprinkle in some of the classics, for the very reason you mentioned: I was worried I'd reach the end of my life with too many of the "greats" left unread!
> 
> I tend to find that nonfiction instructional pieces tend not to resonate with me in the way they aim to, unless they pertain to very simple, step-by-step processes (like preparing a meal or changing a lightbulb, for example). I can acknowledge the science behind their claims, and I like investigating their thought processes, and so for this reason I still enjoy reading them, but I never leave the experience feeling as though I gained more than if I had had a real world experience of my own.
> This is probably why I'm not particularly interested in much of the equine based nonfiction floating around. I read countless horse related books as an adolescent, but found them paling in comparison to the time I spent with the horse, with my trainer, in a clinic, or at a show. I just felt I had so much more to learn from a professional in the flesh than from someone so far removed from my own journey.
> But I digress!


Yeah, I remember when I first entered a university library, just seeing floors and floors of books and browsing, and realising that many of them were very interesting and that I could never read even just the interesting books in that particular library in my lifetime. I was a teenager and that was my first shocking realisation of my own mortality! :rofl:

Brett and I both select our reading for education and/or enjoyment. If we can't learn anything new from a book, or at least enjoy the book immensely, then we have decided that a book isn't worth reading. Brett's motto is, "There are too many great books in the world to waste your finite time on really ordinary books!" It seems we don't find that great a proportion of our books on bestseller lists, although we do find some that fit our criteria.

Have you ever picked up a botany book, or a microbiology book, or a zoology book - the undergraduate textbook types - and just had a look around? I found those sorts of books fascinating even before I formally studied the natural sciences. Nature is never boring to me, either being in it or reading about its intricacies.

I think it's great that you take an empirical approach to life; that's really important. But as long as one has that, one can also expose oneself to theory, and it helps make up your own mind about other people's thinking. Obviously some theory isn't worth exposing yourself to very much, but you can usually work that out with spot reading a page here and there before deciding if you're going to jump in and read the whole thing. A sort of BS filter! 

The chances of my having empirically discovered Newton's Laws for myself, for example, would have been pretty small - so he is one of the giants whose shoulders I can stand on to see a little further - to paraphrase his own view on that matter!  But an empirical approach and critical thinking are really important for deciding whether you're standing on a giant's shoulders, or on some pterodactyl droppings. ;-)



> It sounds like you had an incredibly productive weekend!
> I know I've said it before, but I love the photos you post of your meals. There was a campaign here in the States recently (I can't remember the name, of course #killme) prompting people to get their plates looking more like a rainbow, to encompass a broader variety of fruits and vegetables into their diets. The vibrant colors your meals feature are always so striking and beautiful--I bet they taste great, too!


They do; it's such a misconception that healthy food tastes boring. Try this sometime to get some rainbows and zing into yourself: Half fill a smoothie jug with berries, add some orange juice from fresh oranges, throw in some of the zest as well - no need to grate - and a good dollop of plain Greek yoghurt, and whizz with a blender stick. In summer, we use frozen berries for an instant soft-serve fruit sorbet that is all fruit and yoghurt and super healthy; and since we started making this we simply cannot abide by commercial sorbets with their lack of actual fruit and their added sugar and fake fillers. If your berries are tart, you may want to use very sweet oranges, or commercial bottled orange juice.



> Tell me more about your bees and the suits. Do you own then? (The suits, I mean.) Where on earth do you find something like that to purchase? (Isn't the internet amazing? xD)
> I love bees....from a distance. I think they're super cute in theory, and of course love/appreciate what they do for the environment. Part of me would love to have a hive if I were in a position to do so, but the other part of me would still be weirded out, I think.


The Internet is indeed amazing, and where we get most of our apiary supplies. These are the suits we use, and they're not that expensive if you buy online:

https://www.ebay.com/p/Thickened-Be...l-Over-Full-Body-L/858769587?iid=122345931842

I find it extraordinary that none of our horses or donkeys ever blink if we walk around in these things. It's as if we're in any old clothes, although they do have trouble with eye contact when the hood is on!


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## egrogan

This is the most recent botany book I've read :grin:










https://www.amazon.com/Drunken-Botanist-Amy-Stewart/dp/1616200464

Botany _and_ NY Times best seller!


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## SueC

Brilliant, @egrogan! 

We had a lot of fun reading the sample preview from the link you provided. It reminded me of a time when I was reading a specialist biology book on mushrooms, where the role of the Fly Agaric in the desperate recreational culture of the Siberians was elucidated. Kids growing up in Europe are told, "Don't ever eat this, you'll die!" - I was told this too. The Fly Agaric is the classical red-capped, white-spotted fairytale book mushroom... and it turns out that in sublethal doses, some people who are having difficulty with the human condition/the economy/the freezing weather/etc use it for entertainment. Namely those Siberians this author was on about. He went through the whole history going way back and noted that the price of these things was so high only the nobility and merchant class could afford them on the open market. However, he also pointed out that the active ingredient goes through the body unchanged - it isn't metabolised - and it ends up in the urine, for which there was also a market at more economical prices than the mushrooms themselves, and apparently the poorer people bought this. I shudder to think. That's true desperation.

In my mid-20s I went to the UK and had a chance to spend days on end in the Natural History Museum there. At the time they had a super exhibition on the relationship between plants and humans. The really interesting thing is that instead of presenting it as, "Humans grew X here and Y there and Z went along the trade routes to be cultivated there, etc" with the humans as the active agents, it was presented from the point of view of plants successfully competing for human attention - much as flowering plants compete for the services of insects by evolving all sorts of weird and wonderful flowers - and getting humans to extend their range and tend lovingly to them and remove their natural competition!

It's interesting to look at things from the non-human point of view. That also reminds me of a horse joke: Two circus horses are talking. One says to the other, "My human is coming along really well. I've got him trained now to give me a treat every time I go up those steps. How's your human going?" ;-)

Speaking of weird and wonderful flowers, here's some from our own backyard - 50ha of ancient Gondwanan flora we are stewarding on our farm:


Drakea livida as seen on BBC – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

The BBC came to film this species near the Stirling Ranges some years ago, and we were delighted to discover it in our own conservation remnant. The Hammer Orchid is pollinated by male wasps, by producing for them a dummy female complete with pheromones that they will try to pick up and mate with, as they ordinarily do with their own wingless females waiting for them on branches. Attempting to mate with the dummy catapults the head of the male into the stigma at the other end of the joint in the plant, and by repeatedly being duped the male will carry pollen from orchid to orchid.

The Flying Duck Orchid is another beauty:


Flying Duck Orchid – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

That's one of my favourites of Brett's macro photography shots, which are coming along very well.


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## frlsgirl

I feel unworthy to be here right now... just got another audiobook today; "Heroin Diaries" by Nicki Sixx, so yeah definitely not something I aspire to be but it's very entertaining and enlightening; makes my 30 minute commute feel like 30 seconds. Not exactly self-improvement type of entertainment but I always wonder about addiction and how society shames drug addiction but doesn't care about sugar addiction, food addiction, nicotine addiction and so on. Isn't it all the same in the end?

Oh wow Albatross was one handsome dude. 

Very interesting plants you have in Australia. We don't have much interesting vegetation in Oklahoma except for the most colorful beautiful weeds; purple and yellow


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## SueC

frlsgirl said:


> I feel unworthy to be here right now...


You're never unworthy to be here, dear @*frlsgirl* ! :cowboy:



> ...just got another audiobook today; "Heroin Diaries" by Nicki Sixx, so yeah definitely not something I aspire to be but it's very entertaining and enlightening; makes my 30 minute commute feel like 30 seconds. Not exactly self-improvement type of entertainment but I always wonder about addiction and how society shames drug addiction but doesn't care about sugar addiction, food addiction, nicotine addiction and so on. Isn't it all the same in the end?


What we can learn from books and podcasts like that is to walk a mile in another's shoes, and to understand what has brought them to this point, and to strip away some of the judgements that might have been with us before. I think that's a really good way to start to understand other people and other perspectives - by reading, or listening to, a diversity of human stories. Since moving to the farm and going from office work to outdoors work, I do a lot of listening to podcasts on all sorts of things. People's stories are always in the menu. One of my favourite Australian podcasts is this one called _Conversations_, and you can listen or download from anywhere:

Episodes - Conversations - ABC Radio

These guys are brilliant interviewers, and I learn so much from listening.

And I think you're dead on; some addictions are generally looked down on, some aren't recognised by many as addictions, and some are even celebrated - like workaholism - "Oh, you work so hard for your family!" - and yet if you ask the young children, they wish they would see more of their parents. There was a song about that too - _Cats In The Cradle_.




> Oh wow Albatross was one handsome dude.
> 
> Very interesting plants you have in Australia. We don't have much interesting vegetation in Oklahoma except for the most colorful beautiful weeds; purple and yellow


Trust a Morgan rider to appreciate the highly related Standardbred! 

Yeah, Australia does have really amazing plants, but can you believe that when some of the first European explorers got to our local area, they said that the vegetation was drab and prickly and had little to recommend it? :rofl: They were dreaming of their English Oaks and not really looking properly at what was in front of them. Their loss...


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## SueC

There's a super journal here with all sorts of wonderul nerdy discussions going on:

http://www.horseforum.com/member-journals/why-i-gotta-trot-645777/page182/

I'm going to repost for my journal a self-analysis as I rider I did as a result of reading there:


I'm going to chime in on the discussion of seat and riding. I can be a little case study of how we all bring our little postural problems and pre-injuries to our riding, and how that influences how we can get comfortable on a horse, and explains why different people are going to have different preferences.

I'm one of those tall people whose primary postural issue is remembering to stand up straight, but relaxed, with the head up - and not let shoulders stoop or the head hang down. Pilates more than anything helped me to do that, and built core strength and coordination beautifully - now that I no longer live in town and we finished building our house, I just have to remember to do it at home! :rofl: And then perhaps I can get back to that point I was at before we moved to a farm and built a house and all that. However, I now have the mat out in the middle of the living area all day long, to do routine stretches - bend the spine one way, then the other - just cat stretches and child position in alternation a couple of times a day, for starters, and then getting back into an actual 30-minute workout with all the hard stuff like hundreds.

I initially started Pilates to keep a lower back injury from my early 20s under control, and for this it is excellent. I've got some ligaments between the pelvis and the spine that got stretched too far during the injury, and this predisposes me to follow-on lumbar injuries, and if I don't do Pilates regularly I end up moving the wrong way at some point and my spine will go into total torsion for a couple of days plus, not fun! The good thing is that it kind of forces me into doing a system of exercises which will also stand me in good stead for preventing more injuries and for remaining flexible in my old age - something I have to think about, having arrived at my mid-40s. Because once you don't use it, it's so easy to lose it...

So I actually think that a lot of the work of being balanced and flexible and getting comfortable on a horse starts with stuff we do off a horse, and is good for all sorts of other things.

I've got a couple of riding snapshots to share to show the evolution of my personal postural challenges. Here's some riding photos of me as a kid, in the gangly stage between 10 and 13:











This is just over a year into starting to ride. Hunched shoulders, head too forward on the spine, just like on the ground at that age. I was learning to jump, so I went bitless to avoid accidental jolting of the horse's mouth while learning to balance myself over jumps. This is Dame du Buisson, a French Trotter mare who's the great-grandmother of my current riding horse Sunsmart, and this photo was taken in Germany.

Also the toes were really turned out at this point, and that's because in growing long bones really quickly, I ended up with patellae (knee caps) that faced absurdly inwards, and was basically knock-kneed for most of my middle childhood. Riding actually really counteracted that problem for me; the riding itself was very effective physiotherapy for that particular problem.

Some more old jumping photos - the next ones on the mare's stablemate Mingo, out of a German Trotter and by a Bavarian Warmblood stallion:










That's such an "OMG" facial expression on me, but at least the horse really knew how to jump! :rofl: I remember that this height felt to little me like jumping over a house. You can also see here that after approaching the jump from circle-left, I kind of forgot to rebalance myself in the saddle before take-off. :smile:

The next one was a little better in that respect:










I personally don't view the loose reins as an issue here, since the main thing is for the learner not to interfere with the horse's head or hold on via the mouth/nose of the horse when starting to go over jumps. The horses are used to jumping and don't need supporting cues via the reins over stuff that's basic for them, and it's good to sort out one thing at a time when riding: Learn to balance first, then sort out rein contact over jumps later, when you won't be tempted to use them like waterskiing lines.

Here's a side shot on the mare the following year in Australia:










The toes are starting to come in towards a better position, but as a riding instructor down here likes to say to ladies: "Headlights on high beam please!" The hunching wasn't solved till later. I think my stirrup leathers should have been longer; I'm getting crowded in that saddle and it's really pushing me up the cantle and stopping me from sitting deep and relaxed.

Fast-forward to my late 30s, when I was doing intensive Pilates classes twice weekly:










That's Sunsmart, in his first year after coming off the harness track, discovering the wider world with me. We had him agisted in Albany at this point, about a year before we bought our farm in Redmond, and I got to do lots of activities with other riders. I was really pleased with his progress at his early stage; he had been terribly upside-down as a harness horse. I'm ultra comfortable on the horse here, feeling relaxed and in a far better posture than as a beginner rider. The horse too is relaxed and happy.

But actually, this was on my old saddle, a Bates Caprilli All-Purpose, good in its day but also a bit too small for me as a rider. So I updated to an Ascot Romana All-Purpose shortly after that, and had it properly fitted to my horse.



This saddle has a lovely deep seat and is nice and wide in front of the rider's thigh, which means you can hang on in unexpected emergency braking situations just by sitting deep and maintaining gentle contact with your legs. You don't need to do a nutcracker impersonation to stay on the horse at times of rapid deceleration.

I'm reasonably happy with my posture on this one, except that my spine is hyper-curved - too much lumbar curvature, and too much thoracic curvature the other way - and that's because I wasn't doing Pilates classes at that point. So for me, good posture on or off the horse = do your Pilates.

Like @*Fimargue* , I can't abide sitting cramped-up in a saddle and veer towards a basic dressage position even on trails - I do not shorten my stirrups going from arena to trails. I also like riding bareback, which helps to develop the long relaxed stretchy seat position. If you don't relax and make your legs long bareback, your chances of making acquaintance with the ground before you actually intend to dismount increase drastically. So bareback is like the acupuncture of riding - it forces you to relax, or you'll get hurt! :rofl:



And, as you can see, I don't have my elbows strictly at my sides. I have wide shoulders and if I force my elbows in, it results in tension rather than a relaxed posture. So I go with a relaxed posture that suits my own anatomy. And we all have to work out what that looks like for us!

Very best wishes to all of you, your families and your four-legs! :smile: 
bsms, gottatrot, knightrider and 4 others like this.
weedlady, Hondo, Fimargue, BarbandBadgerandPedro


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## SueC

This is my favourite horse and rider photo in a long, long time! 
@walkinthewalk kindly permitted me to copy this across from our K&K social thread:


_"This was Sonny, the Arab/Saddlebred I raised and trained from birth until I laid him to rest at 29 years. He was tough as nails.

I was 18 (1965) and Sonny was five in this pic, taken on my grandfather's farm. Sonny wouldn't be saddle broke for five more years, simply because I couldn't get on organized rides back then unless there was a saddle on the horse. "
_


Isn't this _magnificent_? Everything about it.


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## bsms

SueC said:


> ...Like @*Fimargue* , I can't abide sitting cramped-up in a saddle and veer towards a basic dressage position even on trails - I do not shorten my stirrups going from arena to trails


Interesting. Where I come from, people talk about dropping their stirrups a hole when heading out on a trail. Maybe because no sane creature jumps anything in the Sonoran Desert.


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## SueC

Not even a cactus, @bsms?

Hello, @walkinthewalk! If you ever feel like telling us the story of that girl on her horse, I'd love to know it!


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> @*SueC* , the key to non-mushy falafel is this: use dried, not canned chickpeas, and _don't cook them _before forming the patties. I know it sounds strange, but that made all the difference in the world for me as I too had those mushy problems.
> 
> I realized the wrong recipe linked above, so here it is again: https://www.thedailymeal.com/recipes/cooks-illustrated-falafel-recipe
> 
> You'll soak the chickpeas in cold water for 10-12 hours before you want to use them. In a food processor, just whiz all the ingredients together. It won't be a smooth paste, but rather a fine, almost sandy texture. Then I take a large tablespoon, scoop out an oblong ball, and pat it slightly flat so it cooks evenly. I fry them in a shallow pan with a light skim of neutral oil. They can sit in a warm oven on parchment paper until you're ready to eat them, and they reheat well.


This is going to revolutionise the whole falafel debacle for me!  Not cooking chickpeas, just soaking them, before using. Now there's something that I can really see working. I'll let you know how it goes! 




> Can't wait for summer beans to try that recipe. I love fresh beans!


Have you seen the Dragon's Tongue variety? It's great fun:











Here's the current bean heirloom varieties we can get from our supplier:

https://www.diggers.com.au/shop/vegetables/beans/

I love their catalogue. And am just putting in some more of these Purple-Podded Peas:










These yield well, look great, and make harvesting faster - no hide&seek amongst the green foliage! 

How are your moving preparations going? Are you able to harness energy from being excited about it all?


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## egrogan

Loved seeing those bean varieties @*SueC* - and had great fun looking through that catalog. If you enjoy browsing heirloom seeds, this is the place I usually order from: https://www.rareseeds.com/

Although on the bean front, I have to be honest that I always default to plain old French style, thin hericot vert because I love them so much in so many different preparations! I haven't done a lot of my own drying of varieties like you included but now that we'll have a proper pantry for storage...maybe!

As far as the move, I am starting to get that feeling of impatient anticipation - sort of like a kid on Christmas Eve- but things are moving quickly now. We sign all the paperwork at the new house two weeks from today, and then I've taken the next week off from work to get started with moving. That week, I have a local handyman helping get the old equipment shed renovated for the chickens and another local guy coming to get some fencing up in one field so the horses can move sooner rather than later. To be honest, I haven't even started thinking about stuff that needs to happen _inside _the house yet :wink: I figure that can happen as it happens, but I'm mostly focused on making sure we have space ready for all the animals. We have until May 31st to be completely cleared out of our current house. This month is going to fly by!


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## SueC

Recent fun discussions on http://www.horseforum.com/member-journals/why-i-gotta-trot-645777/page186/#post1970532735 and http://www.horseforum.com/horse-talk/krones-kodgers-aka-60s-thereabouts-655873/page344/ resulted in this piece.

To Isaac Newton, with love. ;-)

Just a little aside about falling off horses.










Using Newtonian physics, we can break down the fall into a horizontal component and a vertical component.

Horizontally, the rider continues in the direction taken at parting from the horse. In the absence of atmospheric friction and gravity, the rider would continue at the same speed and in the same direction indefinitely, or until another force was applied. 

Of course, real-life riders have to contend with both atmospheric friction, and gravity. So, in the horizontal component of the fall, the rider is actually decelerating because of atmospheric friction. How much depends on headwinds, tailwinds and atmospheric pressure, which in turn is affected by altitude. It also depends on the surface area of the leading edge of the rider, and the surface characteristics of the rider's attire - lycra is bad for slowing down, fluffy microfibre much better.

In the vertical component of the fall, the rider is accelerating towards the ground at 9.8m per second per second, less the braking effected by atmospheric friction, as already discussed above. Use might be made of a parachute to increase the braking effect of atmospheric friction, especially if there was an upwards component in the motion of the rider after parting from the horse, like this:











This is because parachutes take time to inflate, which is more generously afforded by increased distance from the ground at t=0.

Alternative options using increased surface area for more efficient friction braking include this, which also introduces an additional sideways gliding component:











We are attempting to decrease the force of the fall, which depends on the height from which we fall (Shetlands are safer than Clydesdales), the velocity acquired by the rider before parting from the horse (slipping right off the other side when attempting to mount bareback is comparatively safe, especially with a pony), the efficiency or otherwise of atmospheric friction in slowing us down (artificially increasing surface area and wearing high-friction clothing help, as does trying to fall in the direction of a headwind), the mass of the rider (F=ma, so children indeed feel it less), the elasticity of the rider as an object (children are better for this too; it helps if you can bounce, as this redirects some of the force stored temporarily as elastic potential energy into kinetic energy), the landing terrain characteristics (elastic? rigid? crumply? ... a deep bed of autumn leaves is ideal, as is a deep layer of soft fluffy snow - I can thoroughly recommend the latter from personal experience), etc.

One more important concept from classical mechanics that can help us here is that we can spread out the impact force over a longer time interval, and absorb shock in other materials, if we want to have a better experience. This is why we have crumple zones in cars, or crash helmets lined with crushable materials - to absorb the shock. We've already seen a bit of this when discussing landing terrain characteristics; now we can apply it to rider surface characteristics. In harness and TB racing, people now wear body armour vests to help protect them in falls:











This one looks more heavy-duty:











This one is inflatable:











This one is traditional, but doesn't have good crumple zones, as it was really designed for another purpose:











And this is a Cyberman:










Just thought I'd throw that one in! :wink:


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Loved seeing those bean varieties @*SueC* - and had great fun looking through that catalog. If you enjoy browsing heirloom seeds, this is the place I usually order from: https://www.rareseeds.com/


Oh wow, @*egrogan* ! That's a great catalogue...love the varieties...am enjoying trawling through it. We were eating Painted Mountain corn on the cob last night and Brett said to me, "I feel like I was cheated growing up - I thought corn was yellow! And this tastes so much better!"

It's so lovely to see these old preserved varieties...and to grow them...and to eat them!


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## SueC

Brett took some cute photos early in the morning the other day. He has a new lens for his (usually macro) camera and wanted to test it out on the donkeys by taking comedy shots. They obliged.











I'm going to start calling Mary Lou "the bearded one"! :rofl:

Brett claims that I'm frequently surrounded by a "cloud of animals" (his words), and here he took a photo of such an occasion. After having their photos taken by Brett, the two donkey girls came over to hang out with Julian and me. Sometimes I wish I had three hands, or was an octopus. Everyone's got an itchy spot! :smile: And Sparkle's clearly saying, "What about me? I'm here too!" She's such a funny donkey!







These photos come up quite small on HF but if you click on them, large versions pop up!

Very happy with how Julian has settled in, and how he's enjoying the space, grazing and company of various species.


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## frlsgirl

So you have the donkey's in the same enclosure as the horses? The mini foal across the street from us recently got weened from his mom. It was really sad for a while so they put a mini donkey in with him. The donkey follows him around just begging him to be his friend and he's like "you are not my mom and you never will be" lol. Poor little donkey. How come Mary Lou has a beard and the others don't? A different type of donkey?


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## gottatrot

SueC said:


>


Can this one talk? I am thinking she can, even if you've never heard it. She looks like she's smarter than me.


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## SueC

frlsgirl said:


> So you have the donkey's in the same enclosure as the horses? The mini foal across the street from us recently got weened from his mom. It was really sad for a while so they put a mini donkey in with him. The donkey follows him around just begging him to be his friend and he's like "you are not my mom and you never will be" lol. Poor little donkey. How come Mary Lou has a beard and the others don't? A different type of donkey?


I'm not sure if the word "enclosure" is apt. Our two smallest paddocks are 2ha each, the large common is 8.5ha of pasture, and 50ha of bush with accessible tracks through it from the pasture; and we often leave everything open. We very rarely shut any of them into just one compartment - which would still be 2ha. We have three domestic herbivore species running together - cattle, donkeys and horses - plus on a daily basis, kangaroos and emus sharing the pasture. They can pretty much organise themselves and choose who they want to hang out with. I find observing their choices very interesting! 

Sometimes this happens between Sunsmart and the cattle:






He seems to be a wannabe cow horse. :rofl:


Mary Lou is an Irish Longhaired Donkey. Sometimes she has a long fringe, sometimes sideburns, and she always looks like a yak!


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## SueC

gottatrot said:


> Can this one talk? I am thinking she can, even if you've never heard it. She looks like she's smarter than me.


Hello, @gottatrot!

We think she can! Her repertoire was covered in a recent article in an Australian magazine, which I posted a copy of here:

http://www.horseforum.com/member-jo...ys-other-people-479466/page34/#post1970510903

Donkeys are very, very smart - we were very impressed (had these since 2012). They are real "thinkers" and problem-solvers. And Mary Lou is probably the smartest donkey in our lot; Don Quixote is the most cunning! ;-)

I gather you grew up very close to animals - and therefore get their body language.


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## SueC

_The 40+ group is a lovely bunch of people and we talk about all sorts of things. Recently it was nutrition, and I'll re-post something I contributed on this journal, because food discussions are always welcome! 
_
Hello everyone! :wave:

I'm not quite caught up yet but have been following your nutritional discussion with great interest and I agree that refined sugar and flour are big problems in the huge quantities in which they feature in the modern processed diet of a lot of Western countries.

I spent my first 11 years in Europe, going backwards and forwards between Germany and Italy, which are are also genetically my ancestral tribes, so to speak. So, I had been a big fan of Mediterranean eating - and then we moved to 1980s Australia. Back then, in the place we landed in Western Australia (it wasn't multicultural Sydney, which I enjoyed living in for a couple of years in my 30s), just to give you an idea, you couldn't get decent bread, >90% of bread sold was white sliced spongy stuff in plastic bags that didn't even have a crunchy crust, let alone decent, nutritionally valuable ingredients; and you couldn't get olives unless you went to a specialist deli, and when I made a pizza for (non-Italian) school friends they said, "What's that green stuff?" (oregano) and "Where's the pineapple?" LOL

Australia has a lot of monocultural broadacre farming and back then was all about wheat and sheep, and beef. Nobody seemed to have heard of rye or barley or millet etc, nor did they want to eat oats. There's a lot of gluten intolerance here which we think is basically due to gluten overload and eating that's too monotonous. I'd been used to eating as much rye and oats and rice as wheat and wondered about the wheat monomania. These days I am fortunate to be able to get good stoneground wholemeal wheat (old strain), spelt and rye, and I bake all our bread, but bread isn't the centrepiece of our diet, even though it's mostly wholemeal.

When we moved to our small farm I started a permaculture F&V garden 7 years ago and now, like the Mediterranean cultures, we eat lots of whatever is in the garden at the time. This is the first time in my life I've been able to have a garden like this.


Christmas Mandala VIII – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Mixed Mandala Bed – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Corn, Spaghetti Squashes and Tomatoes – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Tomatoes and Rhubarb – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


I get my vegetables as seeds from an heirloom seed supplier (old varieties; a lot of F&V these days is bred for high sugar content and shelf life, not taste and nutrition) and have a little greenhouse for starting the more vulnerable of these:


Mini-Greenhouse At Christmas – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


The parsley, mint and spring onions are going crazy and it's tomato season, so I'll make tabbouleh tonight and we'll have a mountain of that on fresh wholemeal pita, with cubes of seasoned lamb, Greek yoghurt and sweet chilli sauce.


Lamb, Tabbouleh and Flatbread – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

The silverbeet is going equally mad so I'm making a lot of gozleme at the moment - a Turkish thing which is like a cross between pocket pizzas and stuffed pancakes - filled with silverbeet and feta, with the pockets pan-fried in olive oil. A herb and tomato salad goes well with that. You wouldn't believe how much silverbeet can be stuffed into gozleme: I had trouble fitting the huge bunch I brought in into the sink to wash, and all of it, once steamed and squeezed, fitted into 6 pockets with the cheese and seasonings. This much silverbeet - the amount in that huge green bucket:


Kitchen Snapshot I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


We also get lots of beans and potatoes:


Home Grown – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

The beans make an excellent mixed salad - friend's recipe is in the Flickr caption (click on it) if anyone wants it, we were mad about this salad in the summer just past:


Trudy’s Bean Salad – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


We also grow and eat a lot of pumpkins:


Turks Turbans and their Uses - Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr



Harvest Table – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


The fruit trees are starting to give us respectable yields, so we're eating a lot of apples at the moment and after a bountiful summer I've got lots of frozen steamed peaches, plums and nectarines (no sugar) which will go into fruit crumbles (made with oats, nuts and a little honey) for our hot winter breakfasts when apple season is over. 


Satsuma Plum Harvest I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


The cherries don't make it to the freezer yet, but one day! 


Cherry Harvest I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Just starting to get berry harvests too, and those things also freeze well and make the most delicious instant ice sorbet when blended with fresh orange juice. Pure fruit sorbet!

As you can see, I'm totally food obsessed and we've turned into a good pair of hippies these days. It is actually such a nice thing to have a food garden, and yet for so much of my life that wasn't practical. It's great to be able to put roots down in a place, after gypsying around half my life.

Speaking of food, now I'd better go and feed old Romeo his big breakfast bucket.



Hope everyone has a great day and that you all enjoy your food!


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## SueC

Had a good ride on Sunsmart yesterday evening. Home-made marzipan with coffee for afternoon teatime gave me the impetus to pick up the newly sharpened hoof rasp and take 3-4mm off his hooves and mustang roll them again, as the boot fit had been a bit tight last time I used them. Then of course you try the fit (good to go), and then of course you ride around all your farm tracks, including the rocky ones in the forest, because you can. That's a good 40 minutes; I can feel a longer outing coming on again shortly - having found the back gate key again after temporarily displacing it.

In boots the horse becomes completely surefooted and balanced - no "ouch" on winter-softening feet from knobbly tree roots, gum nuts and rocks, so the horse is completely confident on the terrain and gets very keen on upping the tempo. I find it interesting that he never does a disjointed canter when in boots, but occasionally goes disjointed when not in boots. I blame that, by the way, on the fact that the horse, who is not a natural pacer, was in pacing hopples for a decade while in harness training - he never did learn to pace evenly (because he's a trotter only), but he did learn to canter disjointed because of the hopples; so early on in his saddle re-training I spent a lot of time cantering him correctly on both leads and teaching him to do smooth correct flying changes under saddle on a suitable twisty-turny trail, where it comes naturally to a cantering horse.

I say under saddle, because every horse already knows how to do flying changes in the paddock. It's also interesting that Sunsmart rarely canters disjointed in a paddock. It's a learned response to working with humans, so what starts in harness can be transferred to working under saddle, and that's where you've got to help the horse understand that it's not wearing hopples anymore.

I also think it's really interesting that when I was riding Chip, who was "ambidextrous" - an equally good trotter and pacer - he never did canter disjointed; in part because he was mostly harness trained without hopples, due to being a natural pacer, and because when he wore hopples he didn't try to canter in them because he could pace and found that comfortable. Here's Chip again, at my parents' place, photographed at age 25 a few years ago:










Chip is the one retired socially isolated stallion I could never get out of the place; my father wouldn't let go of his stable star. A little while after retirement from racing Chip started self-harming - spinning in circles and biting his own flanks bloody. He has huge scars on his flanks from doing it and as far as I know continues to do it, but I've not seen him in over two years as I find witnessing that too distressing, especially as I can't get him out of there. During his working life, he was an immensely cheerful and enthusiastic horse, always full of life and looking for fun things to do. Because he was a stallion he wasn't allowed to run in a paddock with other horses, but during his working life he ran with other horses in training and racing, which gave him a herd and social experience of a sort, and he had lots of close attention from humans, and lots of track training and trail riding.

And retirement meant that this highly intelligent, colourful, humorous horse who had so loved experiencing the world (he actually used to neigh when he saw the horse float come out of the shed and load himself with eager anticipation of an outing) spent day in, day out locked into a small sand yard with no grass and no company, just hand feeding four times a day and lots of standing around bored with nothing to do, and pacing up and down fencelines obsessively because he couldn't get out. So he started self-harming. I'm personally already alarmed for the social, mental and emotional welfare of a social animal when I see it pacing up and down fencelines with staring eyes and a hopeless expression, but how anyone can not wake up to the urgent need to enrich an animal's living conditions and socialise it when it starts taking big chunks out of its own sides is beyond me.

I would have loved to have done this for Chip, but this was not to be, and he's now in his late 20s and a completely changed horse from the one I used to ride. It is very, very depressing - he's the one stallion I could not get away to our place. He would have loved it here. One issue that was always brought up was "But I can't geld him this late, what if he dies?" - which was a silly argument, because the three others were gelded in their teens and recovered fine. We have a horse specialist friend from Denmark who saved my Arabian mare's life back in 2008 (he was doing a locum in Australia) after another vet incorrectly stomach tubed her. When discussing the topic of gelding older stallions, he said to me he'd seen this resistance many times before: "Sue, this is about the owner, not the horse or the insignificantly increased anaesthetic risk. It happens when owners have trouble distinguishing their horses' gonads from their own."

This was the same guy who wryly observed to us, after working on TB studs during breeding season, that the TB industry needed a "walk-in automatic horse mincer" - in part to simplify and automate the inevitable end-of-life for most of them, and in part because he was fed up with putting so many horses down. We suspect he was watching Wallace&Gromit, the episode where the "baddie" hijacked the sheep and had this machine where sheep went in one end and cans of pet food came out the other:











Returning briefly to the topic of riding, our farm trails are getting a bit overgrown lately, and it's quite an experience when Sunsmart wants to go for a fast run through the twisty-turny sections, with the brush coming up over our heads right and left. :rofl: Another thing we need to look at fixing up. Inspired by so many people on HF who have trail photos with their horse ears in, I just might take the phone on the next on-farm ride to document those farm trails with Sunsmart's ears in. 

PS: This is a gum nut!  It's bigger than a walnut and is the fruit off the Marri tree (_Eucalyptus calophylla_ if you're a lumper, _Corymbia calophylla_ if you're a splitter!). Lots fall to the ground, and it's not nice for horses to step on them!


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## SueC

On a different note, when we had to put down Sunsmart's mother last November, this time we did an open burial in the middle of our bushland instead of digging a pit. This is the common method of dealing with large herbivore carcasses in our local area - we have cow graveyards in the middle of our bushland from the previous owner. It was the start of summer; we had a look two months later, and everything was down to the skeleton already; just the odd bit of fur remaining on the long bones.

Today we decided to retrieve the skull and one of the hooves, for anatomy purposes. I've long cleaned up roadkill and paddock skulls etc for anatomical demonstrations; we have a cow skull, but never had a horse skull. This is the first time I've retrieved bits from an animal I knew personally, and there was this strange _Hamlet_ moment:

_Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow_
_of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath_
_borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how_
_abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at_
_it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know_
_not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your_
_gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,_
_that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one_
_now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?_
_Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let_
_her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must_
_come; make her laugh at that. 
_

My husband actually_, _if he could have his wish, would want his skull to be used as a bookend in a fine library when he no longer has need of it. That, indeed, would be completely apt in his case.

The reason for retrieving a hoof is that it shows most excellently the articulation of the distal digits with the hoof capsule. I'd seen it a hundred times in anatomical drawings, but to hold it in your hand is a real _aha_ moment. It taught me something.

The veterinary clinic sent me a card after she was put down, with a packet of native Everlasting seeds:












That was a nice touch. I will scatter half in her area, half in my Arabian mare's once the season actually breaks for real. Not that this seems to be happening at the moment...


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## SueC

@*gottatrot* said something really lovely the other day on her journal, related to the loss of a horse. So I'm going to quote her here, and also copy over my response to it. It's a funny thing about getting older - I'm seeing different perspectives these days, including about death, in the context of nature. Brett was saying, it's like the acceptance stage of grief, but on a wider level... and not like that Dylan Thomas poem - you know, _Rage, rage against the dying of the light..._

Quote:
Originally Posted by *gottatrot* View Post 
_Sometimes I wonder why I don't feel sad more often about losing Halla. Last night I was looking at the stars, and I was thinking that when you see a shooting star, the feeling you get is excitement over seeing it rather than sadness that it lasts such a short time. I think that is how Halla was. She burned so bright in my life, and burned out fast, but I am just glad to have had the glimpse of that brightness._

That's a lovely way to think about it. My worst horse loss was a 32-year-old Arabian mare I'd had for 31 years and trained on my own from the time I got her as a yearling; she was literally my best buddy from middle childhood right through to middle age. A couple of hours after she was put down (pedunculated lipoma interfering with intestines) and we'd buried her and I'd tended to all the other animals, I had a chance to stop. I sat on the grass and looked at the setting sun and was acutely aware that this was the first time in over three decades that I was breathing and she was not. It was a physical change to the universe for me very like the moon being taken from the sky.

But above all it's life I celebrate, her life, our lives, life in general. We had to put down Sunsmart's mother (28, pituitary tumour) last November and she actually had an open burial in the middle of our bushland, because it was summer and it's so much easier for the nutrients to go back into the ecosystem if you don't bury them under a heap of soil - and since we don't do chemical euthanasia, it's not going to poison the scavengers either. And somehow I take comfort in the building blocks of a lovely animal at the end of its life making the grass greener and the flowers brighter and giving birds the power to fly, etc etc. There is something really profound in that, in the whole cycle of nature. And those shooting stars you saw remind me that we are all stardust - the elements that make us up were created by dying suns.

And that process is also amazing:


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## frlsgirl

I thought of you the other day; the neighbors mini horse now has a mini donkey friend and it appears to be a good match:


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## SueC

Ohhhh, @*frlsgirl* , aren't they lovely!  Thanks for the photo!

Despite all the challenges, by the way, you and Ana are looking great in your photos!


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## SueC

Long time no post, and I'm going to whinge a bit in the middle because I've been prevented from riding etc. Ready? ;-)

Three weeks ago, Brett and I did a much-needed hazard reduction burn on our southwestern property edge, where our 50ha on-farm native vegetation conservation reserve has a dangerous border with another 50ha patch next door that was bought, back in 2010, by an absentee owner who completely neglected fire management and firebreaks, so it's a tinderbox waiting to go Black Saturday with a lightning strike. So we've been run off our feet dealing with that - weather conditions were right for our burnoff not to jump into the dangerous block next door, and we had to work through the night to make sure this was so. Then monitoring the fireground for days afterwards, because even though actual flames had ceased, there's still smouldering logs to monitor and flare-ups from embers to watch out for.

Two days after the last flames from the original burn, we had a flare-up next to our central track, where embers had ignited a few unburnt tea-trees, which burn with great heat and set a eucalytus tree on fire, and a burning branch from the crown dropped into the unburnt vegetation across the track. We got there within minutes, but considering wind conditions called in the bushfire brigade, with whom we both volunteer, to help put it out, which they did, but you should have seen the flames in the middle of the swamp when it went through a section that hadn't burnt in over 20 years - skyhigh. We wouldn't have tackled that particular section until after our break of season - it's still so dry - but oh well, it's done now.

And then last Thursday we had a catastrophic fire start 8km east of us, and boy were we glad of the newly burnt buffer between it and us. Brett was on the evening/night shift with the brigade at one point during the fire emergency, which received national wall-to-wall coverage.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-...ning-lives-and-homes-amid-major-storm/9797968

A slideshow explaining our approach to fire management at our block here - scroll for captions, then just click the arrow to proceed to the next photo:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/14289226306/in/album-72157687658557055/

Last night, Brett came home with a brown envelope after checking our mail, and it wasn't _Grass Roots_, an Australian self-sufficiency magazine I've written for for seven years. (Unlike other magazines, this one doesn't come in plastic, and we can re-use the envelopes!)

It was _Australasian Poultry_ magazine - two contributors' copies, and a cheque. Big surprise! I'd completely forgotten about the Mountain Corn piece Megg, the GR editor, had requested for her other magazine. So that's why another brown paper bag!

We've been so run off our feet with our hazard reduction burning and the fires in general that we're exhausted. And of course, a whole lot of things decided to break at once while this was going on - ants in a powerpoint, guest compost toilet fan packed up, our compost toilet wasn't draining properly so I had to deal with the cartridge, a bore-supplied garden tap started leaking at the base but we couldn't switch the pump off to fix it during the fire so ended up with a mud puddle to wade through, main fence energiser unit broke (ants got in) and is still at repairs, backup unit mysteriously didn't work so the dairy steers, who were at first placated with plenty of tree fodder, started noticing the fence was down and Thursday night were in my vegie garden eating the silverbeet (!!!) and trampling things; we herded them back out and then Brett had to stand guard over them so they wouldn't come in again while I managed to get the backup unit going at last. Various bits of fence to repair after all that anarchy. Various deadlines to meet in all of that, and the 100km/h winds we had during the nationally broadcast fire emergency in the local area blew my little greenhouse apart, ripped its cover, tipped out all the trays and blew down trees everywhere, necessitating chainsawing and fence repairs.

So, I've not ridden Sunsmart in two weeks, because I've been resembling a zombie, and he probably thinks he's retired, but today might be the day I can heave myself back on. Whinge whinge whinge!

And of course all four horses' hooves were due for trimming right in the middle of all that, and I just haven't had the energy because of all this, but when that unexpected cheque arrived in the mail we rang Greg Coffey, our farrier who usually visits once a year in the middle of summer to help me out (he's retired) and asked him if he wanted some money, and yes he does so he's coming out to trim the horses next week, thank goodness! Hooves are still pretty hard due to the ongoing dry conditions, and I feel like I've been steamrolled, so how lovely it is that here's one thing I won't have to do this time around, and I can catch my breath a bit. (Takes Greg about 15 minutes a horse; me, I take an hour per horse and then my back won't straighten properly for half an hour because of being tall and a pre-existing injury...)

Wonderful swap - I got to sit down for an hour and write about something interesting, and it's going to save me four hours of hard labour.

Fingers crossed for that ride! :cowboy:


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## SueC

Oh, and 40+ & K&K are huge sanity savers for me. I really needed a laugh and 40+ is providing abundantly at the moment, I'll link right to the middle of all the fun in which I landed after checking back in post-fire:

http://www.horseforum.com/horse-talk/2018-horse-talk-mature-people-over-790241/page20/

I really recommend also going back to the language videos various people posted here; so funny:

http://www.horseforum.com/horse-tal...ure-people-over-790241/page16/#post1970544747

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:


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## bsms

You asked me earlier about ants and I didn't answer. Last year, in July, ants got into our air conditioner and totally fried it by short-circuiting various relays with their bodies. The repairman hadn't seen it before. He called his boss to consult. The boss said it happens sometimes. Some ants just seem attracted by electrical circuits. We now keep the area around the AC treated with ant-killer. It was a $400 repair bill.

Before entering the military, I studied biology. Wanted to move into range management for a masters but ran into that Great Limiter: NO $$$$$$. Even 40 years ago, the consensus was that controlled fires were needed. It is just that fires are like some horses - not fond of staying controlled! Your story reminded me of a visit to a farm in Idaho that tried a controlled burn. Except some sparks got into an area with lots of fuel. I was in that area and suddenly flames exploded, shooting up as high as the telephone poles. I have no memory of going over/through a 5' barbed wire fence to get to open ground, but I did. Something about enormous flames just behind you that makes a person suddenly athletic!

Luckily, that section was surrounded by the farm's plowed out ground, a road and some railroad tracks. The fire department - all volunteers - same out and helped. Rural Idaho 40 years ago, so no one got too upset.


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## SueC

Hooray! :happydance:
I finally got to ride! :charge:

So, Sunday. Early morning spent proofreading and then sending a manuscript on installing a recycled kitchen, for _The Owner Builder_ magazine. In short: We began with a recycled kitchen bought serendipitously for $2,000 at a local auction, and modified it to raise the benchtop 10cm above standard height so we don't ever have to stoop anymore when cooking. We refinished the benchtops and made inexpensive new kickboards out of rough jarrah facecuts obtained for $5 a board at the local mill. Rustic timber cornice and architraves were made from the same inexpensive but beautiful material. The pine corner units and pine panelling were stained to match, as was the square pine post with which I closed the gaps between the cooker and the cabinetry. The cypress pine pantry door we made nicely matches the island benchtop patch (just visible in the foreground) Tim so ingeniously made to close the gaping hole that had housed the benchtop cooker in the kitchen's original home. Creative tiling and the texture paint help to make everything glow. It's just the right kitchen for our strawbale farmhouse.










I'd worked on that piece on and off for two days and it was good to get it sent, after the fire-related busy last three weeks outlined last page. This is article three for this magazine; the first was on our house build and the second a tour of our interior. The editor does such a fantastic job of laying out the text and photos; magnificent!

Bill came at morning teatime as usual, and I made rye waffles with our own peach sauce and cream for everyone. I threw two smallish Pennsylvania Crookneck pumpkins into the oven, and started some pizzas. Once the pumpkins were done, it's a piece of cake to turn them into pumpkin soup - they basically self-peel, and only have a seed cavity at the bottom of the pumpkin. 

_Some_ of this year's pumpkin harvest; Dutch Crooknecks and even longer-necked Tromboncinos at the back of the table, Potimarrons front left, Painted Mountain Corn in the middle, Tromboncino zucchini front right:




We had salami & onion pizza and a potato pizza today (yes really!) - this is a photo from 2017 which shows the first type in front, and a pumpkin, ham & capsicum pizza at the back.




We then showed Bill the pilot episode of _The Prisoner_, an English surreal, satirical sort of _Pleasantville_ x _Brave New World_ x _James Bond_ from 1967. It's really excellent, filmed in colour even though half a century old, and set in the beautiful real location of Portmeirion in Wales:










Both Portmeirion and the show are on this page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmeirion


We had coconut cake I'd made in the morning for afternoon tea, and after that I went out to feed the horses. Bill came to look, and said to me, when he saw Romeo's bowl, "Who gets this?" - and, "No wonder he's still running around at age 33 even though he has lost lots of teeth." He also said, "When that horse goes to heaven and you eventually follow him, he'll be waiting for you there to show you around." To which I replied, "And then he can take me on rides for the rest of eternity!" :rofl:

Romeo and his twice a day bowl:




Romeo, who's allowed in the garden due to his teeth, having a kip on the front lawn a couple of months ago:




After cutting everyone some tree lucerne for an evening supplement (after their hard feed), Bill drove back to town and I saddled up Sunsmart for an evening ride around the recent fireground. He'd had one short outing at the start of our controlled burning, where he had shown great interest in the burnt section the moment we came to it. (The donkeys, when we let them out after the fire, immediately started licking the ash to see if it was tasty; and told us they prefer carrots. They're so food driven!) Today I showed him the whole lot, including the burnt swamp and the south-east neighbour's small burnt section.

When we trotted up to the end of our central sand track, we startled the donkeys, who like to go walkabout on the farm bush tracks (they are so adventurous, and do this much more than either the cows or the horses). When they heard my voice, they slowed and turned around. It was time to get off for me anyway, so I could give them a scratch and a hello. They were grazing in the small "secret meadow" there on the south boundary.

We now have a new gate directly between us and the south-east neighbour; currently it's in the form of a live electric line at around 10kV. Sunsmart was a little wary of the clicking tape and that I was going to touch it, but then he does know I'm the electric gate opener at home as well. I'm sure he was aware though, from the sound, that this was a particularly hot wire, which it is.

I have permission to ride next door, but previously had to go around through the forest and along the road to get to the far gate to do it, i.e. traversing sharp rocks in sections, so only with his Renegades on! With the new gate though, I can do big long barefoot rides, as no rocky forest trails are involved - it's all sandy valley soil, woodland, pasture, and firebreaks. So I did a sandy loop with him at the neighbours'. The donkeys were so funny, they followed us at a gallop on the other side of the fence, throwing their rear hooves up in the air and generally larking about. Soon I left the fence line though, and we waved them goodbye.

The bush next door was mostly burnt 4 years ago (except the small section that burnt week before last, which hadn't been burnt in 10 years or so) and looks lush and green, with lots of bush grass and young bushes and trees, as well as the ancient eucalyptus trees, paperbarks etc which dominate the woodland. I promise I'll take off-horse photos sometime soon and show everyone!

We went past a soak and a dam, and Jess jumped with delight into both of them - total water fanatic, much to Sunsmart's puzzlement. He's long gotten used to the loud splash she makes from out of view when we ride past water - "Ah, here goes Jess again!"




This is Jess on a recent coastal walk, finding a suitable pool:




This is Jess shepherding ocean waves, getting ready to sprint alongside as they break along the shore:




We came out along the south-west neighbour's fenceline, where a group of young Angus and Friesian steers were hanging out at the boundary. (We've just got new neighbours that side, and they're really nice, just like the south-east neighbours - which is great after the grizzly bear we all had to suffer who owned it for seven years before that and was really un-neighbourly.) We trotted back to our own boundary and I got off to deal with the 10kV line. Sunsmart was going, "OK, just be careful, and don't touch me with that whatever you do!" We said hello to the donkeys again, then rode back home via the newly re-made swamp track - no more getting hit in my face with tea-trees when we gallop along that trail! Sunsmart also liked the improvement; he doesn't particularly like bush-bashing either. He also liked the extra oats he got after riding.

So nice to be on the horse again! :cowboy:


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## knightrider

Love this whole post! Photos are gorgeous!


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## bsms

SueC said:


> ...Bill came at morning teatime as usual, and I made rye waffles with our own peach sauce and cream for everyone. I threw two smallish Pennsylvania Crookneck pumpkins into the oven, and started some pizzas...
> 
> We had salami & onion pizza and a potato pizza today (yes really!)...
> 
> ​


One question: If *that* is "morning teatime", how come y'all don't look like hobbits?










Of course, back in the 60s, my uncle had a 4,000 acre farm in Indiana. One morning, when we were visiting, I asked my aunt why my uncle ate such a huge breakfast. 

"_I suspect the fact he's already worked for 4 hours has something to do with it..._" :wink:​


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## SueC

:rofl: That's so funny, @*bsms* !

Probably the reasons we don't look like hobbits are...

None of us were fattened up as children, but had old-fashioned active childhoods and didn't live on junk food. You lay down a certain number of adipocytes as a kid, and the number of them doesn't get smaller unless you get liposuction down the track. The more adipocytes you have in the first place, the harder it is not to fill those guys up with fat - since they send "feed me" messages to the brain. That plus bad food habits created in childhood are a real handicap a lot of young kids are saddled with from the beginning these days.

On our farm we don't have a tractor or a ute, so we do a lot of things by hand - lots of walking, wheelbarrowing, scything, shovelling etc. We're basically medieval peasants with internet access. I am responsible for keeping 12 donkey hooves and 16 horse hooves shipshape (except when Greg comes out to trim the horses in mid-summer, or when I really have too much on). Also for pole-sawing and feeding out tree lucerne and fodder acacia to the cattle and horses during top-up periods like just now (still not much pasture), doing fence repairs, running the orchard and vegetable garden, doing general maintenance, and exercising the dog and Sunsmart. And when we've done our chores and have energy to spare, Brett and I love to go on long walks on the coastal and mountain walk trails around here for fun (with a backpack full of food).

Bill, who visits Wednesdays and Sundays, is 84. He grew up around here and later returned to live in a caravan in the bush (excellent self-taught naturalist!!) and act as neighbourhood watch and do contract farm work like fencing around Redmond. On top of that, he'd ride his ancient bicycle from his camping spot to the highway and back to keep in shape - that's a 30km run. These days, he does laps with his bike around suburbia on a daily basis, and an early-morning jogging lady has taught him how to stretch pre and post exercise! 

We do all our meals from scratch, increasingly with materials grown on the farm. We have loads of fruit and vegetables, almost all grain products wholemeal, and considerable amounts of full-fat dairy plus we include eggs, meat, fish, olive oil. We bake our own bread and avoid eating processed and refined foods like the plague, although we make the odd exception for potato crisps or corn chips (great with sour cream). Good-quality dark chocolate is full of antioxidants and eaten regularly in small quantities. We also eat far less sugar than population average (e.g. I don't make jam because it's 50% added sugar, I make fruit sauce from whole fruit, maximum 10% added sugar if that; halve or less the sugar in cake recipes, add none to pancakes or waffles because the fruit sauce goes on top anyway, etc).

So our food is full of actual vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, essential fatty acids, etc, all the things stripped out of the modern processed diet. So the food is really satisfying and fills us up and fuels us for hours, giving us the energy to go out and do more stuff. Just like food is supposed to, really. I think healthy weight is about eating nutrient-filled foods and being active, not counting calories. If you eat right, you'll want to go burn off energy because you'll feel full of beans. 

And both food and outdoors activities are a really enjoyable part of life...

Bummer about those ants in your AC! We had been spraying both the fence unit and the powerpoint after past incursions, and we religiously spray our inverter and other electronic parts of our off-grid electricity generating system - that would be one hell of a bill if they got in there. Must have forgotten to do the last spray topup on the first two items... we now have it in the diary and on the computer so we're reminded to do it on time, like worming the dog...

Hope you get some nice trails in over the coming week! :cowboy:


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## egrogan

I needed your kitchen inspiration this morning. Our new kitchen is, practically speaking, in worse shape than we thought from the few times we'd visited before moving in. The oven completely died the 3rd time we used it, and we've got mice eating everything that's not in glass jars! The kind of problems that come up when a house has been more or less empty for an extended period of time, as ours has been...We always knew the kitchen would be our first renovation project, but looks like the timeline is going to be accelerated. We are also planning to use a lot of recycled/reclaimed materials and I loved seeing what you've created!


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## SueC

_A while back I wrote about why I chose Sunsmart as my follow-up horse when my Arabian mare retired. It was on this thread: http://www.horseforum.com/gaited-horses/prejudice-against-gaited-horses-788519/

I'm "reprinting" it for my journal. The question was about gaited horses and aspersions cast on them, and how to find the right horse.
_
It's best not to listen to hot air. A good horse is a good horse not matter what the breed, and you can find a good horse in any given breed. Look at what characteristics you want though, and go with that. It's a bit like getting married. :wink: Do you want a horse that likes to take it easy and prefers to take things slowly, that you can simply relax with on sedate rides? Or do you want something with a lot of go because you plan on getting some adrenaline rushes? :wink: How much riding experience do you have? What is your own temperament like, and how well do you stay glued to moving objects? Are there health issues to consider for yourself? What does a compatible horse look like for you personally?

Like in marriage, appearances can be overrated, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The breed is less important than the individual. There's so much variation in each breed, in terms of temperament etc. Ride ride ride the horse before you commit, and see how you do together.

I spent most of my youth riding trails, endurance and basic dressage with an Arabian mare who was excitable and "all go". They say pets are like their owners, and sometimes I laugh thinking about that - e.g. my dog is definitely crazy, but good-crazy!


Dog Entertainment I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

And our donkeys are such personalities.


The Three Stooges? – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

My husband and I derive much joy from the particular personalities of our companion animals. It really pays to get compatible personalities!

When my Arabian mare retired, I was heading for 40 and decided that my next horse had to be very solid and well balanced, and carry me effortlessly (80kg of gear and rider combined plus I'm very tall). I'd had a couple of falls with horses (I rode a number besides my own mare), and wanted the one to take me into middle age to be as fall-over-proof as possible, but still the sort of horse that could move - so no Clydesdale, much as I love Clydesdales! :smile: As most over 40 would understand, we no longer have illusions of immortality or invulnerability, and it suddenly became ultra important to be on a horse that wasn't accident-prone.

I'd been looking sideways at one for ages that I'd known since birth. I thought he was just the ticket - marvellous work ethic, great endurance potential (I'd seen him effortlessly run lap after lap of sand tracks in harness training, like a Roman chariot horse, and after each lap go, "Another lap? Sure thing!"), very solid and muscular, and wide as a boat. And when he retired from harness pursuits, I put my hand up, and re-educated him to saddle. I remember the very first time I trotted him, around that very same sand track, deliberately shifting my position far right and far left till I was nearly hanging off him, to see how it affected his balance, and it didn't deter him one bit from travelling in a straight line, or affect his gait. Excellent! These days of course he would perceive even subtle shifts in weight as aids for moving differently, but at that early stage this had not been taught to him, so I could run that test.


French Trotter Influence - Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Better still, he was equally happy to really run, or to drop back and relax. I liked that Zen-ness in him. He loved to work, but back then, the moment work was over he didn't want to know you. That's another story, but that was mainly due to the way he had been kept completely socially isolated from weaning (because a stallion), had no grazing and was a very frustrated horse. So he was gelded at age 11, and when I took him down to the South Coast I socialised him gradually with other horses, and showed him what pasture looked like, and did a dressage and trails program to keep him entertained. A decent life goes a long way to making a horse happy, and this one is now so laid-back and relaxed nobody would recognise him from his harness days - when he was wont to attack all human beings and other horses over the bars of his cage, and made a miserable face unless you were taking him out for work.


Sue and Sunsmart - Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

You probably figured out I like puzzles, but then with your occupation you would be doing lots of puzzles yourself. :wink:

As for breed, Sunsmart is by an American Standardbred stallion (and that breed is related to Morgans etc); out of a French Trotter cross (French Trotters were bred mainly from Thoroughbreds, Warmbloods, Carriage and Draught horses). Many people turn up their noses at "those horses" but it tells you more about those people than the horses! :smile: He's from a trotting line so not a pacer. I love his wonderful effortless ground-covering trot (and yes, he has a lovely soft canter too, and a mean gallop). I'd also ridden a horse in endurance in my 20s who was "ambidextrous" - could trot like that, or pace, as required. I've never had an issue with gaited horses.

To sum up, I wouldn't exchange my horse, or my husband, for any other individual, and that's a nice place to be in. Wishing you lots of fun and success with your horse shopping! :smile:


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## SueC

It's time for a song. That's because I love lots of things in life and would find it tedious to journal monomaniacally about horses. I can't do it, not for fun anyway; I can write in an integrated manner or not at all.

I like lots of different sorts of music; it's actually easier to list genres I don't like, which are basically most Top 40, rap, most pop, most heavy metal, cheesy sorts of Country & Western, and the cheesier sorts of folk music (there is great folk music as well). I'm not very fond of opera either, although there are a few exceptions - spine-tingling pieces I love to bits.

Here is a song which I love _everything_ about. The first version is deliberately audio only and HQ. Hope you're hooked up to good speakers; you really need the bass right for this one.






And just as an aside, the intro to this would be superb for a medley for Freestyle to Music. I'm not a dancer myself, but hearing music like this always makes me think of dancing to music with my horse, and plotting medleys and moves.

It's a funny thing; I started liking this band when I first heard _In-Between Days_ - though that wasn't actually until about 1987, so two years after release. I just looooved the intro then, and I do now; it's an unusual song, and especially in the candypop 80s it really stood out as authentic:






Of course, my first loves back then as a 16-year-old were U2, The Waterboys, serious things like that, as delineated from the me-me-me 1980s stuff and the endlessly nauseating synth-based plastic type material. Indeed, Perth radio station 6UVS-FM, run out of a local university, specialised in alternative music, and both Brett and I grew up with that as an important part of our lives, even though it would be nearly another two decades before we would meet. They played Echo & The Bunneymen, Siouxie & The Banshees, The Triffids, Lou Reed, The Cure, The Smiths, U2, XTC, David Bowie, later on Bjork, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, that sort of thing.

They also had a request show (yes folks, this is before YouTube, before iPods, before music on tap at home), on which you could request alternative songs. The other great thing you could request was that they smash a Top 40 tune you hated live on air - this is back in the days of vinyl singles; CDs were only just appearing. Vinyl makes a pleasing crunch when crushed on air. You can't get physical with music like that anymore. Common "please smash this" requests included Jason Donovan, Michael Jackson, Kylie Minogue, Wham!, George Michael, Billy Ray Cyrus (whose "Achy Breaky Heart" was surely a crime against humanity), and that sort of thing.

You could also send in projects; I remember sending in a photo (from a newspaper) of Michael Jackson dancing with his hands suggestively in his pants pockets, to which I'd added a speech bubble, "Oh no! Where are they?" - and I'd written a little 500-word story to go with it, which was duly read out on air, under my pseudonym of _Skippy the Bush Kangaroo_ so I wouldn't be found out. I was 14 or 15 at this point and completely delighted that the university students were reading out what I'd written. They actually played the Skippy soundtrack in the background while reading out my piece. Someone else had sent in "100 Things I'd Rather Do Than Listen To A Jason Donovan Record" - one of which, memorably, was "Rub _Drano_ into my buttocks." It was all great fun.

But I've digressed. Back to _The Cure_: When _Lullaby_ came out, I was mesmerised, and still am, except over the years I discovered depths to this piece I'd not plumbed in my youth. It didn't mean I was a huge fan of the band, not yet; I was going through this puritanical, ascetic sort of stage, and didn't know how to let my hair down, or how to appreciate pure fun. That didn't fully blossom until my mid-30s, and I met Brett and his huge music collection, amongst them lots of things by The Cure. So then, I got into their music in a big way, and also into other things I'd never heard of before, in Brett's musical dowry (parallelled only by his extensive literary dowry, where he, for example, introduced me to Haruki Murakami).

Back to _Lullaby_: I love the wonderful way the instruments come together at the start of the song, the almost Japanese quality to the main melody, the breathiness of the words, the evocation of a child's nightmare (Robert Smith, the dear, was afraid of spiders and had recurrent nightmares about them as a young child, and was channelling this), the black humour, the sheer _theatre_ of this song. The more I listen to it, the more I like it - and if a song can do that, that's a huge accolade - for familiarity not to breed contempt, but new discovery.

I see human beings as being like trees with their annual rings - inside of you is every year of your life; if you go deep into the centre, you'll have your first day at school, and further on, earliest memories like learning to walk, becoming conscious of a self, I've even got one of kicking my legs as a baby and this sort of befuddlement trying to work out how to operate them. I remember when I stopped clenching my hands in my sleep; discovering you could open your hands like a flower. That you should walk heel-first and roll, rather than flat-footed. That looking into the sun gave you black spots in your vision.I can go back to every ring and feel what I felt, see what I saw, smell what I smelt, hear what I heard - it's so amazing that we can store all that. It's like going into the Pensieve in Harry Potter - travelling back in time and being there and witnessing it.

So I can really appreciate that aspect of _Lullaby_, and indeed of other songs like _Into The Heart_ by U2. This is a really early one many people don't know, from their first album, and it's magnificent:






I'm really grateful for art, for music, for literature, for the people that make these things, that help us to be human, and to live our lives in meaningful ways.

In my youth I was a bit uncomfortable with stage make-up and theatrics, now I really get it, and enjoy it. So of course, I've also appreciated David Bowie's work more the older I have become. Indeed, Robert Smith got invited to play live at Bowie's 50th birthday concert; interesting symmetry. Also, Neil Gaiman, Tim Burton, all those people whose artistic work we like who we found out later were influenced by The Cure... it's really interesting to observe this web, this interconnectedness.

Here's a nice live version of Lullaby:






The Cure really reminded me of my own European-ness at the core; this music could _only_ come out of Europe, and resonates with that part of me. Over the top I'm clad with Gondwana, with ancient landscapes, flora and fauna, with a burning sun, a crystal sky, with droughts and flooding rain. And here's an Australian song that really captures this:






Ah, music - what would we do without it. And the only way I'm going to stop writing is by promising myself to revisit this topic another time!


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## SueC

Music is too good a subject to drop, so I'm going to do some open journalling on it here. I kept actual paper journals – one jumbo one for each year, anything goes for topics – just for fun and reflection, from middle school through to my late 30s. Then I decided to write out in the open instead, and since then have been producing pieces for various magazines, and participating on forums and blogs. I started this online horse journal because horses figure in my life in a big way again, but there will be a bit of a music focus for a while, between other, more horse-related posts. 

In the 1980s, the small Celtic countries/localities of Ireland, Scotland and Wales produced remarkable “big sky” bands with a cinematographic, rousing sound that immediately conjured wild landscapes in the mind of the listener. Their music was a much-needed breath of fresh air in the 80s synthetic candypop days. They were the clever, capable, muddy working sheepdogs amongst a crowd of manicured, fluffed-up toy poodles.

I'll start with a little collection of things from Scotland.

_Note: This kind of music really doesn't work on tinny computer speakers; the music is built on bass and drums and needs a full dynamic range to do it any sort of justice. Good headphones are fine, but actual decent speakers allow you to pick up the vibrations with more than just your ears - a better experience._


Big Country got a lot of international exposure as one of the bands espousing this “big sky” sound. The first tune typifies this. It also makes a good anthem for serious endurance riders, with its feet-stomping drumbeat and _four __h__undred __m__iles/ without a word until you smile/ four hundred miles/ on field__s__ of fire_ chorus. @*phantomhorse13* , this could be for your mental soundtrack when you go on those long loops through amazing countryside! These are the types of tunes that carried the Scots into battle.






For sunny days and flat roads, you might like _I'm Gonna Be (500 miles)_ by fun Scottish outfit The Proclaimers. _Come A Long Way_ by another Scottish group, Simple Minds, suits a variety of landscapes and was on my mental playlist – you know, DIY Brain-FM – when I was endurance training back in the day. If you have a mental playlist too for your long rides, do tell!

Moving on from the feet-stomping _Fields of Fire_, we go to a contemplative piece on the textbook cycle of violence and neglect. It's apt that Big Country covered this topic, given the awful statistics on alcoholism and domestic violence in Scotland (and Ireland, and Australia, and many other countries) – and many people's personal experience of dysfunctional homes. Ugly topic; beautiful, heartfelt song. The gorgeous, almost fairytale guitar melody in the middle sections speaks eloquently of the hope unhappy young people hold onto to get them through, often dashed by bitter experience as the cycle repeats itself after the typical early big romance.

The instrumentation of this piece is pure genius all around – the words say much, the music says far more than words can ever express. Music is a language without which we would be mere babbling poltroons.






You can see why Stuart Adamson used to say, “We're musicians, not pop stars.”

I'll include this last track because this wonderful singer/guitarist died far too young after battling Scotland's endemic generation-to-generation alcoholism for much of his early life. His marriage fell apart, and so did he. His now-grown daughter, Kirsten Adamson, says this song means a lot to her. Recounting her father's storytelling when she was little, she cites the lines _so let me fill my children's hearts/ with heroes' tales and hope it starts/ a fire __in them so deeds are done__/ with __no vain sighs__ for moments gone._

It's a beautiful song about trying to be a decent person, and trying to live a worthwhile life.





 
Rest in peace, Stuart Adamson, and God bless.


More from Scotland soon.


----------



## SueC

In postscript to that section, I've been going through Big Country albums since writing last, and have one particular song to add because the structure just mesmerised me. If you listen just impressionistically, it's not necessarily a song that stands out; but if you deconstruct it, then it gets really interesting.

The track is a Steve Lillywhite production, and has his fingerprints all over it. Lillywhite also produced the first three U2 albums, which are characterised by a predominance of just three instruments – drums/percussion, bass, and guitar – plus vocal. It's an exercise in how much you can do with these basic instruments, and it turns out that you can do a multitude of amazing things if you're inventive. I'm really attracted to that kind of pared-down, “unprocessed” approach, and quite a few UK and Irish alternative bands at the time were just working with these basic instruments, yet doing incredible soundscapes. I think it makes people more experimental with what they have, rather than trying to add in something else.

_Steeltown_ is a track that is layered into three different, repeating sections instrumentally. It starts out with drums, the bass pulsing a single note, and the guitars making atmospheric sounds. In the second section, the guitars pick up a melody while the other instruments continue much like before. In the third section, the guitar melody is the same but its sound changes, and the bass now follows the same melody as the guitar, which seems to suddenly really bulk out the music. It's a very striking effect, and very effective to build complexity like this. The vocals also sandwich over the same melody, but only for part of it, letting the guitars finish off each phrase. The sections then repeat.

_Good speakers needed for doing this deconstruction! Tinny computer speakers not suitable..._






Good music actually lends itself to that kind of deconstruction – it makes you listen again and again while focusing on each particular instrument in turn, and other aspects of the track – and exploring these things adds immensely to my enjoyment of music.

English songs that would go comfortably under this same general musical umbrella as the Scottish tracks I've been discussing include _How Soon Is Now_ by The Smiths, thanks to arresting guitar work by Johnny Marr, who was clearly experimenting with this style of playing, and is probably also influenced by Pink Floyd here. It's not typical of their songs; mostly they play happy upbeat tunes with depressing or satirical lyrics. I'll include this song here, rather than in the English section I'll get to later, because it fits so well here.


----------



## bsms

I listened with tinny speakers. After a few decades on the flightline, my ears can't distinguish between a live performance and a "Close & Play" record player. No regrets, though. The years in F-4s and F-111s were worth it. Good thing since it isn't likely to get much better.

Maybe that is why I like music with a strong beat. I need to be able to hear it through my shoes...:wink:








​


----------



## SueC

Wow, was that a fad? Did it sound terrible?

The nice thing about drums-and-bass-as-foundation music is that you can hear it with your whole body when you have good speakers, and this is like an added dimension to the music, and involves not just your head and your heart but also your visceral self, your instincts etc.

It's a real shame what has happened to the dynamic range of CDs since the whole MP3 phenomenon. I always hated compressed, MP3 versions of tracks, they are skeletal and anaemic. When you google "The Loudness Wars" there is a good explanation of this sad trend, which is to do with the mainstream obsession of making things as loud as they can possibly be - which means remastering is often done to make it "louder", and loses information, subtlety and dynamic range as a result. If you're an actual close listener to music, it's robbery. New CD remasters almost always sound worse than the ones from 20 years ago now.


What happens if you take your shoes off? ;-) 

I've noticed that suspended timber floors make better acoustic environments than concrete floors, for that reason!  You're basically standing on a speaker extension!


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## gottatrot

I always think it is interesting to learn what music people like to listen to. Sometimes it is predictable but you really can't tell just by looking at a person or knowing their age or background. Some people are also very eclectic in their tastes. Some very quiet and gentle people listen to very heavy music, and some loud-mouthed abrasive types like very soft music.


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## bsms

The Close & Plays were one step up from dragging a sewing needle on the record. In fairness to CDs, though, I remember listening to my first CD. It was strange listening to a recording without the 'snap, crackle, pop' I was used to with records. By my teens, I tried to take care of my records...but they were easily damaged. 

My Dad probably had worse hearing than I have. He started flying in P-47s in WW2, flew bombers in Korea and died flying helicopters in Vietnam. But he loved music. Saturday afternoons were when he recorded records onto tapes - and at the time, that meant playing with speakers and recording with microphones. But that way his LPs were only played a few times and he was fanatical about protecting them. The tapes - the big reel-to-reel machines - let him listen without worrying.

For the younger folks, they looked like this:








​ 
They'd have friends over for spaghetti, beer and listen to music like this playing on the reel-to-reel...while we kids watched and listened. To this day, Trini Lopez to me means spaghetti, people telling jokes, drinking beers and spoiling any kids nearby:


----------



## SueC

gottatrot said:


> I always think it is interesting to learn what music people like to listen to. Sometimes it is predictable but you really can't tell just by looking at a person or knowing their age or background. Some people are also very eclectic in their tastes. Some very quiet and gentle people listen to very heavy music, and some loud-mouthed abrasive types like very soft music.


Yes, it's interesting, isn't it? I think knowing what a person likes to listen to, and to read, tells you more about them than their CV.

When I was in my mid30s I looked around and tried to work out what all my diverse friends and people I liked hanging out with had in common. It wasn't formal higher education, it wasn't cultural background, it wasn't age, gender, sexual orientation, not even which side of the political divide (which is easier when you're neither really). But all of them really, really liked to read, and all of them liked music - what type of anything wasn't so important, it was just the interest. This sense of fascination with things, with the world and with being alive. The wanting to know, wanting to learn, wanting to experience, wanting to understand, wanting to see things from other perspectives. Wanting to really be alive, and to live the life we're given.

What sorts of things do you like to listen to, @*gottatrot* ? Will you post us a sample? I'm rather enjoying running what @*bsms* posted on the speakers while typing this; it's like community radio posting clips!


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## waresbear

I'd post mine but not everyone enjoys AD/DC and Disturbed. Great thread btw!


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## SueC

This is for @bsms , our little online community's experienced fighter pilot! (So that makes Mia totally logical, you know!)






This song always gives me goosebumps. They've actually done a really nice job on the clip too.

I've only ever been in passenger planes or light aircraft. Hands down what I like best about flying in a large modern passenger plane is lift-off. That moment after they taxi down the runway and stop and engage their engines, and everything is still and quiet for a moment and you're holding your breath, and then that phenomenal power with which it starts to move again, that huge kick forward, as if you're a tiny speck of dust on the surface of a cannonball that's just been fired. Just that massive, massive momentum.

What's that like in a fighter jet? I mean, far less mass, but much more acceleration...

When you're a passenger in a commercial aircraft, after you've flown a few times and have gotten somewhat over the "Oh wow, I'm flying high up in the atmosphere in a hollow metal tube" thing, the three most interesting things are take-off, turbulence, and landing.

Don't see that much from a side window. Pilot's view must be spectacular, especially when closer to the ground...

Our neighbour built his own kit aircraft, a two-seater, just for fun. Took him over 10 years, he says. I've been up in it and seen our farm from the air. He has a landing strip roped off from his cow paddock, and as you come in to land you are very conscious of the barbed wire fence you pass over very low, on the way to the start of the landing strip. 

I could never be a pilot, because I get motion sick on light aircraft if they start flying in circles, which is a real bummer because it meant people haven't been able to fly loopings or upside down with me on board either. We had an aerobatics guy teaching aeronautics at the first high school I worked at, and he was offering to take anyone on staff who wanted to experience that, but I got sick just on his whale watching social flight before that, when he started to spiral to stay near the whales. That was the first time I turned green on an aeroplane, sadly - it's just my darn semi-circular canals being too sensitive.

On the up side: On that trip I was so shockingly nauseated I was sure I was going to throw up, and the front-seat passenger was laughing at me! "Haha, look at you all pale and quiet!" I was just praying to please hold on to my stomach until I was off the plane. After an interminably long time, we finally landed, and I clawed my way off the plane, and immediately lay down flat on my back on the side of the runway while everything spun around me. Amazingly, I didn't throw up, but gradually got better and better, helped by the cool wind and lying perfectly still.

But, the guy who'd made fun of me had raced past me after landing and vomited expansively all over the bushes! :rofl: Har har, poetic justice!


----------



## SueC

waresbear said:


> I'd post mine but not everyone enjoys AD/DC and Disturbed. Great thread btw!


Feel totally free! Just tell us what it is you particularly like about it! Educate us!

I actually really enjoy having people explain what it is they love about things I personally don't. It allows an intellectual appreciation, even if the aethetics don't line up for me!

Speaking of AC/DC, did you catch this wonderful moment at the Winter Olympics? Not a fan of the music, but loved everything about this, including, in this specific context, the music. Spunky girl! Hat totally off to her!






This isn't the WO performance, but it's the _complete_ performance online! 

Re the music, on an aesthetic level I can appreciate some of the spiralling guitar work, but I think their singer sounds like a constipated hundred-year-old garden gnome who has chain smoked since he was ten! ;-)


----------



## SueC

And now for something completely different: Bach's _Toccata & Fugue in D Minor_. It's already superb as an organ piece (you can look it up easily enough if you've not heard it), but you know what? When it's played on a violin, it _smokes_! 

Here's a 16-year-old girl playing it on her violin. She originally did it as a pop fusion. If you can't stomach the pop section when it starts, fast forward to 2:47 so you don't miss the best bit! 






It also works well in a classical setting:






That's so much better than when the violin is made to go "eeek, eeek, eeek" in the back of an orchestra. If you're going to make your violin go "eeek, eeek, eeek" at least do it with panache:






Ah, that wicked E-string! :rofl: I watched the Australian Chamber Orchestra do the entire suite at our small town hall in Albany a few years back. It starts like this:






That's all nice and spooky, but of course all of us in the audience were waiting for _that_ scene. And when they got to that point, and paused momentarily to look at each other and synchronise, they were all cracking up laughing - but played it perfectly! And the audience were all laughing riotously at this point. :rofl:


----------



## waresbear

I will SueC when I am on my laptop, haven't figured out how to post links on my phone 😜


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## frlsgirl

If you saw my playlist, you would think I'm bipolar:


18 and Life by Skid Row
Chandellier by Sia
Round Here Buzz by Eric Church
Moonlight Shadow by Mike Oldfield
Beautiful Trauma by Pink


----------



## SueC

@*frlsgirl* , I think one of the really positive spin-offs from the way music has been delivered since the early 2000s is that people's tastes are broadening, and this "generation gap" thing in music is becoming less distinct. I remember being 13 and sitting on the school bus and all of us giving the bus driver hell and laughing because he was playing The Beatles. He was unfazed by our youthful ignorance and laughed harder back at us. But back then, anything that wasn't from the last two years was considered "for old people" (over 25 :rofl. Kids generally wouldn't listen to anything their parents liked.

In part, for our generation, the inferior sound of the old recordings was a factor - the snapcracklepop and lack of dynamic range of worn records and tapes respectively. CDs were just coming in. This detracting factor to pre-mid80s music has been much reduced with cleaned-up re-releases of things from the 1950s, 60s, 70s. And by the early 2000s, when the high schoolers were doing their music projects for my English class, they were amazing me with the eclecticism and broadness of their tastes, and by saying things like, "Dad had this in his collection and I really love it!" That's been so great.

I do lament that the concept of an album is taking something of a back seat these days. :music019:
Want to play us something?

@*knightrider* , I didn't musically experience the 60s, which I lament. Did you? And if, can you give me some anecdotes?

@*waresbear* , my hubby has some heavy metal in his huge and broad collection, and was making jokes about throwing Tool in there to up the ante. Looking forward to your DJ spot. Meanwhile, here's a heavy metal piece as transcribed onto four cellos, which I love to bits:






Isn't it funny when the long-haired fellas start flopping their hair about when they are really getting into it? My semicircular canals would never permit it, I'd be needing a bucket after 60 seconds of such enviable abandon.

Brett says that at that point the head-floppers could have been substituted with Muppets. I asked him which ones, and he said it didn't matter! :rofl:


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## waresbear

A Simon & Garfunkel tune by a heavy metal band, quite intriguing...


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## knightrider

Wow, music in the 60's! I was a teenager then, and that music was super important to me. I will try to limit so as not to bore anyone. My favorite song then, and stayed my favorite for about 40 years was Love Child by Diana Ross and the Supremes. I found it so incredibly powerful. Of course, I taught kids from the roughest neighborhoods you can imagine when I graduated collage in 1970, so I loved those "love children" so much.






I loved everything Motown, the Marvelettes, Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding, Will You Love Me Tomorrow by the Shirelles.

Within a month of graduating college, I bought myself a horse. I had sold my teen horse love to go to college (bought him back when he retired). When I was a kid, whenever we moved, my parents made me sell my horse and then let me get another one wherever we moved to. It tore me to shreds to have to sell. So when I bought this unbroken two year old (wild as the west Texas prairie), I swore that no one would EVER make me sell him. I let myself love him as much as a human can love a horse. He was everything I ever dreamed of and more. He was beautiful, incredibly talented, and when I picked him out, everyone told me he'd never amount to anything, so I had that going on as well. One day, in the prime of his life, I let my brother ride him. He fell off and Cyclone was hit by a car and killed. I was devastated. Driving home from watching him die, this song came on the radio, by the Supremes, "Touch Me in the Morning". The song was written for me. I still cry whenever it comes on the radio.

https://www.google.com/search?sourc...-ab..0.13.1302...0i131k1j0i10k1.0.zeR6KkM1rNY

As a young pre teen, I loved the novelty hits like Purple People Eater by Shub Wooley and Monster Mash by Bobby Pickett

I loved everything by Karen Carpenter--what a voice

I like Frankie Valley and the 4 Seasons, Neil Diamond, and a hundred more.

Drug songs worried me. I liked the songs, but drugs exploded in about 1967. Suddenly all the young people were experimenting with drugs. I saw drugs destroy a lot of people I cared about. I found the songs intriguing but frightening. I had big dreams and goals of saving the world, so I wasn't about to get mixed up with drugs.

Mellow Yellow by Donovan, White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane, Lucy in the Sky by the Beatles (I loved the Beatles), Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix. Anything by Janis Joplin was creepy to me. I liked Just Dropped In to See What Condition My Condition Was In by First Edition, but worried about the message. I liked Kicks by Paul Revere and the Raiders and She's Come Undone by Guess Who because it showed how dangerous drugs could be.

I loved all kinds of show tunes, but that's enough. I'll stop!


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## knightrider

Oops, I picked the wrong version of "Touch Me in the Morning." The one I picked didn't have the last verse, which really fits for a horse and rider. Here's the full version.


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## SueC

waresbear said:


> A Simon & Garfunkel tune by a heavy metal band, quite intriguing...



Indeed! Wow! I've always liked the original; this is an excellent version! It helps that the lead singer's voice is really in the basement, and that he's doing a bit of a mix of singing styles on this track. And what an arty clip; I'd always had the tendency, as a young person, to underestimate the intelligence and creativity of people playing heavy metal, and that was so incorrect in many cases - a lot of these guys are really articulate when you hear them interviewed, and are highly accomplished musically.

I think the thing I generally dislike about the heavy metal style - although it wasn't evident in your Disturbed track - is the lack of space in it; that it's often reminiscent of a sort of artificial earthquake that's just going to make your ears fall off. Interestingly, that's also very similar to the reasons I don't like a lot of opera, as a genre. And it's also a problem in many symphonies, to me.

Thanks for that track!  Ever seen these people live? What are your favourite concerts you've been to?


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## waresbear

Best concert? When I was a teen, and they had festival seating, Alice Cooper!!!!!


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## waresbear

SueC honestly, I like all types of music, except country not so much, some old stuff is awesome though. I would consider AC/DC classic rock, and I did see them in concert about 20 years ago. Very good show, but a super huge venue which I don't like anymore. We don't go to many concerts as we live too far away, but when we lived in Vancouver last year after hubby's transplant, we went a lot of small venues. A fellow lung transplantee is a local crooner and took us everywhere that had local talent.


----------



## SueC

knightrider said:


> Wow, music in the 60's! I was a teenager then, and that music was super important to me. I will try to limit so as not to bore anyone. My favorite song then, and stayed my favorite for about 40 years was Love Child by Diana Ross and the Supremes. I found it so incredibly powerful.


Great lyrics. It's good when people write really meaningful songs. :dance-smiley05:



> Of course, I taught kids from the roughest neighborhoods you can imagine when I graduated collage in 1970, so I loved those "love children" so much.


...why do I spy a parallel between this and your work with Isabeau? ;-) And why are the difficult things so often the most worthwhile?



> I loved everything Motown, the Marvelettes, Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding, Will You Love Me Tomorrow by the Shirelles.
> 
> Within a month of graduating college, I bought myself a horse. I had sold my teen horse love to go to college (bought him back when he retired). When I was a kid, whenever we moved, my parents made me sell my horse and then let me get another one wherever we moved to. It tore me to shreds to have to sell. So when I bought this unbroken two year old (wild as the west Texas prairie), I swore that no one would EVER make me sell him. I let myself love him as much as a human can love a horse. He was everything I ever dreamed of and more. He was beautiful, incredibly talented, and when I picked him out, everyone told me he'd never amount to anything, so I had that going on as well. One day, in the prime of his life, I let my brother ride him. He fell off and Cyclone was hit by a car and killed. I was devastated. Driving home from watching him die, this song came on the radio, by the Supremes, "Touch Me in the Morning". The song was written for me. I still cry whenever it comes on the radio.


That's such a sad story. :hug: I'm so sorry about that. Poor Cyclone. :-( You actually got to him after the accident?

No wonder you still cry whenever you hear this song...

I'm also sorry your parents made you part multiple times from your four-legged besties.

And since this is like the _Truth & Hard Stories Café_, just letting you know I kind of know how it feels. When I was 9 years old, my parents bought two horses - one of which they said they were buying specifically for me to ride - a huge chestnut French Trotter mare, well-trained in basic dressage and sold specifically as a child's riding horse because of her character, and the fact that she'd been so maternal to her foals, and to the owners' grandchildren. She and I got along famously, and she very much filled the emotional gap I had in my life from having a difficult relationship with my parents (the word _relationship_ is really a misnomer) - she had mothered all these foals, and she seemed to see that I was kind of orphaned, and she really, really adopted me. We were inseparable. When she figured out I had trouble reaching her back (16.2hh mare), she would lower her neck for me to hang across and then gently elevate it so I could slide on her back for riding bareback. I don't think anybody had trained her to do that, I think she just worked it out. And I could ride her anywhere, in groups or alone, and she'd take care of me. (There's a few photos of us back in this journal.) She'd slow down to let me rebalance if she felt me going out of balance. And this wasn't a plodder type horse, this was a mare who had raced in her youth, and who loved nothing better than to stretch out her legs and do her unbelievable flying trot, that felt like floating on a hang-glider. She was adventurous and spirited and loved to go far and wide.

Alas, I had her for little over two years before my parents took her off me because they had suddenly got the notion that they wanted to breed racehorses. And here's what I didn't know, and only learnt much later, because I was test riding the horse in an indoors arena when my parents had this conversation with the previous owner: The reason she was being sold as a child's riding horse was that she had a difficult birth with the last foal and the supervising veterinarian strongly advised against breeding her again, as there was a high risk she would not survive. So it turns out my parents knew this, but they bred her anyway. She had another foal, and bled out immediately after the birth. Noone could save her. I watched her life drain away. She was just 15. I really can't, to this day, understand how anyone could knowingly do something like that. Take a supposed gift horse off a child and tell her, "Well, you didn't pay for her, so she's not really yours." And breed her even though they knew the veterinary advice. Most unbelievably uncool. I ride her great-grandson now, but much as I love him, I wouldn't have traded that mare for anything. Or risked her life for what seems to me to be sheer vanity.

I noticed you appear to appreciate good voices. So here's one of my all-time favourite female voices - and she's just as stratospheric live. Here she's singing in Scots Gaelic about love and loss. Today, this can be a requiem for those horses we've lost.









> As a young pre teen, I loved the novelty hits like Purple People Eater by Shub Wooley and Monster Mash by Bobby Pickett
> 
> I loved everything by Karen Carpenter--what a voice
> 
> I like Frankie Valley and the 4 Seasons, Neil Diamond, and a hundred more.
> 
> Drug songs worried me. I liked the songs, but drugs exploded in about 1967. Suddenly all the young people were experimenting with drugs. I saw drugs destroy a lot of people I cared about. I found the songs intriguing but frightening. I had big dreams and goals of saving the world, so I wasn't about to get mixed up with drugs.


Ha! You and me both.  In the mid-to-late 1980s, the majority of my classmates were doing one thing or another at least recreationally, but they always knew better than to offer me any. Most of all they did alcohol - it's a "cultural" thing in Australia to binge drink - and that just repelled me, the idea of drinking myself legless. I couldn't even see how that could be interpreted as fun - I could be perfectly silly without chemical assistance and without stressing my liver. ;-)

How's the world-saving going for you? ;-) Unfortunately, this was a teenage goal I've never managed to accomplish. :rofl:

But here's a song I just know you will enjoy, about the 60s and saving the world. And just to warn you, our young Kate Miller-Heidke is classically trained... :rofl: ...you'll love the lyrics.









> Mellow Yellow by Donovan, White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane, Lucy in the Sky by the Beatles (I loved the Beatles), Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix. Anything by Janis Joplin was creepy to me. I liked Just Dropped In to See What Condition My Condition Was In by First Edition, but worried about the message. I liked Kicks by Paul Revere and the Raiders and She's Come Undone by Guess Who because it showed how dangerous drugs could be.
> 
> I loved all kinds of show tunes, but that's enough. I'll stop!


By all means, go on!  This is wonderful! And it seems I have some homework! ;-)


----------



## knightrider

This music sharing is so much fun! Thank you for introducing me to such interesting music. I LOVED the Sounds of Silence by Disturbed. That was great. I was absolutely crazy about the Simon and Garfunkel version when it came out. I was working on a pen and ink and watercolor book on Elizabethan horses at the time. I called it "Hoofbeats Through History". I worked on it for hours listening to the radio hoping to hear "Sounds of Silence".

At the same time there was another song, "Christmas in the Jungle" by Derek Roberts, which I couldn't get enough of at the time. The young folks who were being sent off to die in Viet Nam were pretty much opposed to the war, while my parent's generation was completely in support of it--stopping Communism, don't you know. Turns out, the young folks were right all along, but that's another story. 





 
A few years later, my brother got sent to Viet Nam and came back very damaged and different. He never really recovered. A few years later, my dad, who worked as a civilian for the Navy doing submarine communication research, had a "higher up" for dinner when my brother happened to be there eating too. The "mucky muck" began bragging about how great the war in Viet Nam was and what a good thing it was. My brother leaped up, knocking his chair to the floor, and began screaming, "You weren't there! You didn't see it! You weren't there! You don't know!" The tears were streaming down his face and he was hysterical. My parents faces were completely white. They never supported the war again after that. It was the only time my brother ever talked about Viet Nam. To this day, he refuses to say anything about his experiences there.

@SueC, that Karen Matheson song was so beautiful and haunting. Loved it. Also loved the Politics in Space. I have really enjoyed the song sharing!


----------



## SueC

Yeah, isn't it interesting how often you can discover something brilliant through other people, rather than searching catalogues or listening to the radio? I think this is fantastic. I'm listening to a lot of music and getting some context! 

I also really like a lot of Simon & Garfunkel besides _The Sound Of Silence_ - particularly _Scarborough Fair_, _Slip Slidin' Away_, _Bridge Over Troubled Waters_, _50 Ways To Leave Your Lover_; and their version of _Silent Night_, with the carol in counterpoint to a recording of a typical awful nightly news broadcast - that was just brilliant; and such an effective way to do a protest song.

Speaking of, as a child/teenager of the 80s, we were growing up with a nuclear cloud over our heads, so this was my favourite protest song of those times:







I was going to ask you - it seems to me, as a person who didn't live through the 60s and just looking back at that, reading about it, some of the music - that this was probably the last time in history that in the West you could have held a realistic hope that there was the possibility that some really fundamental things were going to get better, that social injustice and environmental damage just might be seriously dealt with (Rachel Carson's _Silent Spring_ had just come out), that there would be a change of heart. Many people were taking to the streets, many people were engaged and taking on the status quo. It just seems to me there was a crossroads and it could have gone one way or the other. And instead, of course, we got the 80s! :rofl: Money money money, me me me, superficiality, more Joneses and consumerism...

As a person who lived through it, how accurate would you say that view is? Am I just looking through rose-tinted spectacles; romanticising it? Or did you feel there was some hope for Western society?

How's your brother these days?


----------



## SueC

In postscript to _Seconds_, to give people of other generations an idea of what it was like to be a teenager in the mid to late 80s, I pulled out a poem written as a classroom exercise at the time. I was 15; we'd read a poem which was about a romantic relationship falling apart, and a bit twee. The exercise was: "You've got 25 minutes, write a poem of the same title, structure and rhythm as this poem, but about a different subject; use the refrain throughout." Well, there was _Seconds_, which I can see really influenced that poem, and at school we'd just seen _Threads_ (cheery movie but one all of us should be aware of), and Pink Floyd's _The Wall_, with Bob Geldof shaving off his eyebrows and sausages coming out of machines. So this is what came out. Brilliant English teacher, by the way!


*DON'T WORRY, EVERYTHING'S GOING TO BE ALRIGHT*

Don't worry
About what the paper says
Darling
Don't be such a mess
Everything's going to be alright
Just trust me
And every bomb I make will have your name on it
Don't worry
If the rocket silos cover the countryside
Everything's going to be alright
The molecules you're made of
Will happily return to the atmosphere as vapour
Don't worry
If your hair falls out
Everything's going to be alright
Soon the biomass will be replaced by a dustcloud
And nobody will complain anymore
Don't worry
About the stupid Communists
Everything's going to be alright
They too are made of molecules
Which can't resist our great invention
Don't worry
If your skin peels off in great chunks
Everything's going to be alright
You'll be stuck in your fallout shelter
Eating jellybabies to remind you of how the world used to be
Don't worry
When you see a child's face all ploughed up
And it has no strength left to cry
Everything's going to be alright
If things get too bad try euthanasia
But don't let us catch you, suicide is illegal
Don't worry
About radioactive rain
Everything's going to be alright
The streets will be covered with refuse
If any streets are left, that is
Or if there are unblinded eyes
After that skywide lightning
Left to see them
Don't worry
About your baby
When it is born with one leg
And goes into convulsions after delivery
Even your milk will be radioactive, but
Don't worry
About what you will do with the bodies
Of your brothers and sisters
When they have safely died in the shelter
You won't have the strength to bury them anyhow
So don't worry
Ultimately the pain will cease
Why worry darling
Why should people survive anyway
So goodnight darling
Dream of the sky
Everything's going to be alright
Don't forget to say goodbye
Everything's going to be alright


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## knightrider

Wow! What a powerful poem! You were quite a writer at 15!

I think it depends on where you were living and coming from about the 60's. I was born in Washington DC, so I was in a hotbed of protests and conflict. There was this huge sense of betrayal by "adults" who insisted they knew best and we were wrong. For the first time ever, the Viet Nam war was being filmed as it was happening and we were watching it every night on our TV's. We could see thousands of Americans and South Vietnamese being slaughtered to take a "hill" which then had to be retaken a month or two later with more thousands slaughtered. For a hill? News people were filming and photographing torture and murder done by our troops and yet the adults insisted it was all for the best. We thought, "How can you SAY that?? Can't you see what is happening? We can!"

And yes, we really did think that it was the "Age of Aquarius", that we knew better and could do better and make it better. I have a feeling that the hog farmers' kids in Iowa did not feel that sense of urgency that we did. In 1969, I had a summer job on a playground in Dallas, TX in the middle of a black enclave on one side and Hispanic enclave on the other. I spoke Spanish, having lived in Ecuador and Puerto Rico, and my partner, who was black and male, and I put those two groups together, made a swim team, put on a play, and a whole bunch of other activities that, at the time, brought the two warring factions together. We thought we were on our way to bringing peace and harmony to the world, our small section of the world.

There really was this sense of hope that our generation was going to get it right. We had such power, shutting down campuses, stopping traffic on Rt. 1, surrounding the Pentagon. And Martin Luther King was our hero, and he was making such strides too. Everything was coming together.

People are bemoaning how terrible the political climate is currently, and it is terrible; but they have forgotten how polarized it was in 1968 when the National Guard fired on protesting college students at Kent State, killing 4 and permanently disabling, among others, a professor who was just walking to class. There were groups like The Weathermen who were bent on destroying the U.S., making bombs and plans to blow everything up. There were race riots in all the major cities, fires and shooting and killing. It was a terrible scary time and we thought if we could just get rid of the idiots over 30 (not by killing, not me! I didn't think that at all--I meant by voting), we could straighten it all out.


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## SueC

Thank you very much for that amazing summary... wow, what a life you led as a young person! :clap: In the 80s, protesting was more of a minority hobby. There was so much complacency. Our leaving yearbook listed the life ambitions of our cohort, and it's full of, and I'm not exaggerating, "I want to move to Paris and get rich!" - "I want to get laid as much as possible!" - "I want to be a millionaire by age 25!" - "I want a Ferrari."

Interestingly, in the late 1990s (Howard era) there was a home renovation craze in Australia - doing up your bathroom, changing your kitchen, redecorating - and Hugh Mackay, one of our social researchers/analysts, wrote a book called _Advance Australia Where_, looking at this era. His hypothesis about all that redecorating was that Australians had kind of shrugged their shoulders en masse, felt they couldn't influence what was going on politically (because once they're voted in, they do what they like and you're stuck with them for four years, and the other side isn't much better), so as a human reaction you change the things you feel you can - like your bathroom. :rofl:

It must have been so amazing to live in the time of Martin Luther King. I was first made aware of this to us historical figure through music I was listening to, and what artists were saying about him. I remember an interview with Bono, where he was asked about philosophical influences and talked about Gandhi and MLK. I had a day off school - teacher development day - a couple of months before I wrote that poem, and spent it at the university library. I hunted down a copy of _Strength to Love_ there and sat down in a cubicle and started on page one. And I read and read until I was hardly breathing. I sat there all day and read it from cover to cover. I completely forgot to have lunch. My brain, which had just gone formal operational, was buzzing and reeling and doing somersaults in my head. So many amazing ideas, such eloquence, such a fantastic way to look at things - you know, this was the Reagan era I was reading it in, Thatcher had been in power a long time in Britain, the Cold War was in full swing, and to read this... it was sense, it was inspirational, and it was so _mature_ and _intelligent_ compared to all that rubbish coming out of the politicians' mouths. And this book had a tremendous influence on me and gave me such hope.

And you were actually there at that time in history, seeing it unfold!


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## SueC

The musical theme will now be briefly interrupted with an actual horse-related journal entry! ;-) (...but everything is so unbelievably intertextual...in books and in life...)

On the 40+ thread, there seem to be a few of us who can get so busy with our workdays that we may not have anything left in the tank to ride. So I mentioned to the group I might have to start riding before doing chores. Unless I get me one of these saddles:





















But to be honest, when I feel like that, nothing is more inviting and wished-for than our lovely, soft, cosy, inviting bed. I sometimes have midday siestas in bed with my pyjamas on just so I can say hello to it again. This may sound funny, or slothful, but I've found that when I do a lot of physical work, coming in at midday to have a nice shower, followed by a totally relaxed break, actually improves my productivity. It's so much easier to get up and jump into a work programme when you know you can return in the middle of the day. And I'm an early bird anyway, up with the sun, and down not too long after the sun.

Because in Australia, we're just a week off the shortest day of the year, it is starting to really push it to ride in the late afternoons, which is also horse and cattle feeding time - and at the moment that involves mineral-supplemented bucket feeds for the horses, and the cutting of lots of tree fodder (tree lucerne & acacia) for everybody, with a pole saw. It's easy to run out of light, or for it to be too cold at the end of the day to come back with a sweaty horse, even if I rug him. So I'm making a conscious effort to do some serious riding in the mornings, or early afternoons. One issue there is that in winter, the horses seem to take their one serious snoozing break around mid-morning when the day has warmed up and there is sun. The whole lot of them sunbake sleepily under the big redgum tree for at least two hours, and I'm not riding a sleepy horse.

This morning, it was overcast, there was an icy wind blowing, and I had a visitor, so no morning riding - but that was fine, since the place to be was in the nice warm house, whipping up some food. I tend to have cooking frenzies in icky weather - it means I don't have to cook when the weather is good. So this morning, while chatting to my visitor, I made a big apple and blueberry strudel - no added sugar, just loads of cinnamon, lemon zest, and chopped almonds and brazil nuts, rolled by magic trick into a thin sheet of what's essentially noodle pastry. You use a large teatowel to roll out the pastry, deposit 1.5kg of fruit filling on it, and use the teatowel to help roll the thing up. Brush with melted butter, into the oven, and just over half an hour later - heavenly, with lots of leftovers.

Since the oven was on, I also made a quiche based on a Swiss recipe, with my own oatmeal shortcrust, and a filling involving bacon, topped with a mixture of egg yolks, Greek yoghurt and grated cheese, through which you fold beaten eggwhites. In-between I was attending to the twin tub, because we had a basket of laundry to do. Here's a wash day photo, not today's, as we don't normally photograph this, but an early use of the laundry a few years ago:


Sue in Completed Laundry - Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

That was before I installed the overhead storage:


Spot the Frog – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

The frog, by the way, is peeping over the top of the basket top left in the photo. 

After pegging everything out on the line, we actually got a bit of sunshine, so spent some time in the garden, collecting manure and doing a little housekeeping in the fruit and vegetable mandala. Mid-afternoon, Brett came home from work and we all had strudel while watching an episode of _Wonderfalls_. Great little series, about a girl from a very conventional middle-class family who's got herself a philosophy degree and now works in a souvenir shop and lives in a caravan... and statues and toys start talking to her when noone is looking, giving her advice on how to live her life, with hilarious consequences. (We also love _Dead Like Me_, by the same writer/producer.)

Then the visitor departed, I fed the animals, and actually had time and energy left for a ride! :cowboy:

We did what I call the fireground loop - along the recently burnt areas, including at the neighbour's through the new connecting gate, which gives me an hour of barefoot trails - no rock outcrops - yay! Not that I mind putting the Renegades on, but sometimes it's great not to have to chuck on anything except the saddle and bridle, and be off in five minutes without having to bend down! _Och aye_, middle age. ;-)

I was too rushed for time to do it today, but I solemnly promise to ride earlier and take along the phone next time so I can actually show people these trails, complete with horse ears.  It's particularly interesting at the moment, because the season has finally broken - reliable rains set in two weeks ago, about two months late - and this means the burnt areas are already starting to regenerate visibly. The bush grasses are starting to push green stalks through the ashes, and the surviving understorey is putting out new leaves. Come springtime, lots of new plants will germinate. I'm going to enjoy being able to post photos of what that actually looks like - and revisit that periodically with a camera. The Australian sclerophyll is like a Phoenix - it rises from the ashes...provided you don't incinerate the hell out of it by letting uncontrolled fires develop in it, in long unburnt vegetation. Then it's bleak - burnt wildlife, dead landscapes that take a long time to recover.

The horse is enjoying the new trail additions through the new gate - he loves to explore - and getting less nervous about the live electric line I have to move out of our way, since I've reliably prevented him from getting hurt by it. Once out of there, we said hello to the other neighbour's cows, before riding a nice loop which included going along the top of a dam wall. The dog was enjoying her run and swim as usual, and a few kangaroos were about. Sunsmart gave a couple of snorts and launched into a gallop for the sheer fun of it on a nice sandy section on the way home, and I had to keep my wits about me through the twisty-turny sections at speed. Nice flying changes, horses do them so well in those situations. Back in through the gate, we trotted home, showed the poddies where we'd put the tree fodder, and then headed for the tie-down to untack and rub down. Followed by some extra oats for the horse to say thankyou and inject some extra joie de vivre.

:apple:

Sunsmart on a recent autumn morning:


Sunsmart and Sunlight V – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Sunsmart and Sunlight III – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


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## knightrider

Since you were interested, I have a last little bit of history. I was living in a foster home close to Washington DC when Martin Luther King did his March on Washington in 1963 and gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. Since my foster family was liberal, they were very much in support of King's goals, and my brother and I begged to go to the March on Washington. My foster parents almost let us go, along with my foster brother and sister, but when they read that violence was planned (it didn't happen), they changed their minds and did not let us go. I wanted to go very very badly. I could have been there! Instead we watched every minute of it on TV, wishing we could have been there.

My mother, who was far far from liberal, did a tremendously brave thing, for which I will always honor her. After King's murder , Washington DC erupted in horrendous riots and violence. I had a black "Little Sister" downtown, of whom we were all very fond, along with her brother and her mother. We often did things with them, went to their apartment, and had them at our house. Because they were literally stranded in their apartment, with fires and gunshots all around, my mother drove on two occasions to their home in a very dangerous area of Washington DC to bring them food and supplies. She literally risked her life, a white woman traveling alone (I was in college at the time) in a neighborhood of rage and fury towards whites.

In 1968, just months after King's murder, I did go to the Poor People's March in Washington and heard Coretta Scott King speak, along with Eugene McCarthy and Ralph Abernathy and some other speakers.

And in 1971, I went to New Orleans to the NAACP annual conference and got to meet Rosa Parks, Ralph Abernathy, and Jessie Jackson. And from there, I stopped doing the big stuff and just concentrated on my own classrooms and families. I felt I was more effective loving one (or 10) families at a time. Turns out that wasn't all that effective either, but I gave it my all.


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## SueC

Thank you again for those recollections, and for showing me the world through your eyes.

Macrocosm, microcosm. I also moved more towards the microcosm the older I got; in part it's that you start to see the cyclical nature of things, or patterns repeating, or seeing that real change for the better doesn't seem to happen often or to last long in bureaucracies, larger organisations, societies... in part it's not wanting to deplete your energy... and maybe that as humans we are geared socially for smaller tribes rather than larger ones. Grass roots movements still have my support and my hope.

On the other hand, despite all that, there was so much worthwhile that happened in the trying, and positive changes on smaller levels, but lots of them, when I look back at my own efforts. I'm sure you can see that too in your own life, having taught those children, having been in those moments. They say if you shoot for the moon and miss, you'll still be amongst stars! 

Very best wishes!


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## SueC

In this post, I'm continuing that little tour of Scottish "big sky" bands. This time, I am looking at The Waterboys.

This is the first thing I ever heard by them...and I was impressed...






In 1985, this band had a lot of commercial exposure and success with _The Whole Of The Moon_, off _This Is The Sea_, which is still one of my favourite albums, full of wonderful material. It's hard to pick one; here's the opener:






I remember hearing an interview with Bob Geldof in the late 1980s where he was bemoaning what Mike Scott did next - go to Ireland and get happy. :rofl: I don't quite share Sir Bob's opinion. Yes, _This Is The Sea_ was a fabulous, fabulous album, but you can't always stay the same, life is a journey. At this point, Karl Wallinger parted company with the band and went on to found the excellent World Party.

Another thing was a factor here, and I think it stood The Waterboys in really good stead artistically. Every time the band was on the verge of mega-fame, Mike Scott did a disappearing trick - after the breakout album _This Is The Sea_, to Ireland to become immersed in folk music; later on, to Findhorn, an intentional ecological/spiritual community in northern Scotland.

U2 went the other way after _The Joshua Tree_, and I feel they lost something really important in the process, to do with authenticity and being a human with bare feet on the earth. Fame creates this bubble, and these days, much as I like Bono, and find he still has interesting things to say in interviews, I never quite get the feeling that he's living on the same planet as me. His bandmates do better there, presumably because they've not had the same blinding spotlight on them and may have been able to live some semblance of a normal life occasionally. So, I can completely understand why Mike Scott would go off radar at strategic times to avoid creating such a situation.

I also actually really liked the resulting album, _Fisherman's Blues_, and the infusion of traditional instruments into the sound of The Waterboys. It's excellent too. How can I pick between chocolate and macadamia if both are delicious? Why not just broaden the taste, and enjoy both?

The songs on this album are very musically diverse; it's not possible to pick something typical of its sound. Instead, I will feature one of my all-time favourite incidences of setting poetry - here, WB Yeats' _The Stolen Child_ - to music. It gave me goosebumps when I first heard it.






This Yeats poem also inspired Keith Donohue to write a novel of the same name, which I enjoyed very much and still re-read.

Diving deeper into traditional Irish folk music, the next album, _Room To Roam_, would have given poor Bob Geldof conniptions. I just laughed, and tapped my feet to tunes like this:






Besides, I think the lyrics are very much giving notions of class and high society the finger, and saying we're all human beings. The collaboration of Sharon Shannon, one of the world's coolest accordionists, with this band at this stage also introduced me to another musician I enjoy to this day, and have had the pleasure of seeing live in Albany only a few years ago.

With _Dream Harder_, the sound did a u-turn back to guitar-driven rock, but by this time all the original members had left the band! :rofl: I'll leave anyone interested to look that up, and just throw in a fun tongue-in-cheek tune:






Mike Scott has been extraordinarily productive musically, and there will have to be another entry on his solo work following this album, before a return to _The Waterboys_.


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## SueC

I haven't died; I'm just doing a lot of visiting other people's "houses" at the moment, where there are scintillating group discussions going on. Here's a re-post of something on riding Trotter breeds, from here:

http://www.horseforum.com/member-journals/why-i-gotta-trot-645777/page205/#post1970555803

I'm just going back to the topic of encouraging hindquarter engagement in young riding horses, doing a bit of thought-sharing. I'd previously said that all the harness-started Standardbred and /or Trotter breed horses (or crosses of these) I've personally ridden have never been lacking in that department. If they don't engage their hindquarters, they can't do what they do in harness. And that I've often thought that it's an advantage for them to have had so much athletic work before ever being asked to carry anything on their backs. They're already strong, fit and know how to move, before being asked to bear weight.

You've all seen this photo of the French mare:











Her hindquarters here are already starting to drop, and her hind leg is starting to swing very wide, and the tail going up like a flag, and she's not even trotting properly yet - but she's totally planning to, and soon! :smile: I have very few riding photos from my childhood; it never really occurred to my parents to take photographs of what I was doing. They did have several cameras, and had lots and lots of photos of what _they_ were doing (there are literally hundreds of my father jogging or fast-working horses around a track, or racing with them), so most of the photos of horses and me from childhood were taken by third parties (in this case actually my brother, who had a camera and liked to tinker), or the occasional one under duress from them if I made a big song and dance about it.

So I don't have a photo of doing a flying trot on that mare, but have found some photos of a French trotter with similar action to hers to give you guys an idea:












I am totally not a fan of the fixed headcheck in harness racing horses; French Trotter Ourasi here is wearing one and unfortunately this means he has a very restricted head carriage, like that particular dressage horse @*bsms* posted on his thread earlier; obviously restricted in different ways, but both very restricted. If you must use a headcheck in harness racing, the running headcheck is much safer (imagine falling with your head tied up like that, and I've seen race falls many times - the horses can't balance themselves to help break their falls when the head is tied rigidly, by the back of the bridle and frequently via a really narrow additional overcheck bit, to the top of the driving saddle). With a running headcheck, the reins themselves go through rings to raise the rein angle upwards; sort of like a running martingale but with opposite action.

It's a great photo of the flying-trotting action though, with the enormous reach of the hind leg stepping far under the horse, and the amazing engagement of shoulders and hindquarters - these horses are truly 4WD racers. It's a really really stable trot to ride, like floating along on a turbo-charged cloud.











Same horse in the paddock:











With his trainer:











And on his 31st birthday:












When you ride that trot mounted, at top speed it looks like this:











Well, when race jockeys do this; obviously I ride in a different position, and with that kind of trot on that mare I was posting it and leaning slightly forward. The above photo is of Standardbreds in a mounted trotting race; they have a slightly different action. The old-fashioned French Trotter, like Dame du Buisson was (the breed has been much diluted by loads of Standardbred blood in the past three decades, which I think is a shame, because the real French Trotter was such a distinctive horse) - the action at the flying trot involved really dropping the hindquarters, flying the tail high, going very base-wide at the rear. Great fun to ride, and addictive. You ride with other breeds and the others start to gallop, and your horse just goes _whooosh_ and trots with huge, effortless ground-eating strides. :smile: And of course they can canter and gallop, and do advanced dressage like @*Fimargue* 's example, and they are great jumpers, and smart, and adventurous, and sure-footed, and about as unflappable as a horse can get.

Here's Albatross, grandfather of both Sunsmart and Julian:












This is a pacer line Standardbred, so he's not trotting in this photo - although many good pacers are also good trotters. Julian is a natural pacer (i.e. it was in his natural repertoire in the paddock from the time he was little - and he's not related to Dame du Buisson) - but he's also a fabulous trotter. Here's Julian pacing when he was training on track:












Dame du Buisson was a real pure-trotter breed horse, and Sunsmart inherited this trait and much to my father's frustration, would never learn to pace. But what a trotter! At a time when there were no trotting gait harness races in Western Australia. Sunsmart carries himself more like Albatross though, he doesn't drop his rear end down like his great-grandmother (although his mother did). And even in his first year of saddle re-education, which is a completely different sort of frame, he was always so, so comfortable to ride when trotting; it's like sliding along frictionless on glass.











He flies his tail just like his great-grandmother did, if you compare it to the first photo - even though his tailset is a little lower.

Like every off-track harness horse, he had to get used to the idea that his head would no longer be forced upwards when he was running, and his head carriage was coming along nicely considering he still had much of his initially upside-down neck (post-racing) here. He's leaning very very softly on the bit here (harness horses seek contact with the reins), and he's lip-flapping with his bottom lip, which he always does when he's relaxed or up to something or wants more carrots. It makes hilarious sounds when he does it _in extremis_ - flub, flub, flub, flub, flub! I'm letting him find his own balance, and keeping contact really really light.

You can kind of see his neck here, taken on the same day:












His neck development 9 years later is really interesting:





I think it's been really informative for my own horsey education to re-educate a horse that came from a completely different discipline. I also really love riding engaged, forward horses.


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## frlsgirl

Since we are still talking about music; I found this little gem; fast forward to about 4 minutes 50 seconds and get ready for goosebumps:






I'm totally obsessed with the song and her voice; that's Sara Evan's sister Lesley; I don't know if Sara Evans is known in Australia? Anyway, before she got really famous, her sister Leslie used to live in Oregon and we ended up going to the same church; that's where I heard her sing for the very first time and was just totally blown away by her voice.


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## SueC

That's a really really lovely voice, with this amazing edge to it. Thank you! 

Sara Evans may well be known in Australia, but I live with my head under a rock most of the time, you know! ;-) What a cool story though that you knew the singer from before. Just one of those nice little touches in life. 

I was going to ask you a question, since you ride a Morgan! Do you prefer Ana's trot to the average other horse you've ridden? Which horses had the best trots (by your particular definition) in your experience; was there any correlation to breed and/or type(s) of equestrian pursuit the horse was trained for? How do they compare to the trots of the various riding school horses you rode in Germany, for example?

We were discussing natural trotting ability / encouragement of hindquarter engagement at @*gottatrot* 's journal very recently (about here: https://www.horseforum.com/member-journals/why-i-gotta-trot-645777/page205/), with cool clips and observations from various people, and my own thoughts about that in this discussion kind of started because @*Fimargue* (who lives in France) reminded me of French Trotters and I rode one in my childhood for just over two years, and it made me think about it. @*egrogan* posted some lovely footage there of Morgans trotting in a road race, and a photo of one in a cart, and they definitely look like decent trotters to me compared to the average riding horse these days. Morgans of course were part of the foundation genetics for the American Standardbred, just like French carriage and all-purpose horses contributed to the French Trotter originally. The fastest of those progenitors went on into the specialist harness racing breeds; which in my experience (with old-style STBs/Trotters) often make excellent all-round riding horses as well, with the right training.

I'm also interested in how you would assess your mare's back at the trot in terms of stability (lateral as well as vertical, if you want to be really nitty-gritty) and comfort for you as a rider, compared to other horses you have ridden. I've got a hunch that the amount of / types of movement in the back would probably run along a normal distribution and that breeds purposely bred to be good trotters would come in at the lower movement end of that distribution, but that's only a hunch based on personal experience of riding a variety of breeds and horses. You input on this topic would be really interesting to read! 

Going to translate something German from an alternative riding school in Germany, written in 1982, as a project here soon. Found it in an old "Reiterhandbuch" and it's fascinating. The riding school is still around, although the founder died a couple of years ago. There's so many ways to do things, and some suit some horse-rider combinations more than others. The photos are great; we'll have to scan them in. Good thing it's raining and I'm confining myself mostly indoors to nip a cold in the bud...

Alles Beste auch für Ana!


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## SueC

If anyone wants to reply to anything from before this big series of picture posts I am about to make, just quote and post, and we'll all know what we're talking about! 

Recently, the Australian magazine _The Owner Builder_ featured the story of our house build, and the editor did an amazing job with the layout and the selection and juxtaposition of photographs. I have been sent the pdfs of the two feature articles to share with anyone I want by email. But, I can't reproduce the pdfs online, for obvious reasons.

Still, because there has been some interest in this from various people, I'm going to post the original text and all the published photos here on my journal, and a few extra ones as well. It's really funny, when an article like this appears in a national magazine it really gives you the bends, looking back at all the blood, sweat and tears for five years on the one hand, and seeing the condensed printed version of the process.


*PASSIVE SOLAR OFF-GRID STRAWBALE ECO-FARMHOUSE*​ ​ by Sue Coulstock, Redmond WA​ 


​ 
We built a house because we had to. The houses for sale we had viewed were overpriced and poorly designed and constructed, like the majority of modern Australian mainstream housing. So we started looking for vacant land. The Legoland of Australia’s mass-produced recent suburbia, where affordable building blocks may be found, held no appeal for us at all. We had an average budget and were interested in growing our own food, keeping some livestock, and reducing our environmental footprint.​ ​ The rural-urban fringes of this country are lately home to “lifestyle subdivisions” which usually amount to nothing more than super-sized suburbia at super-sized prices. The same problems exist, but they are bigger. The “lifestyle subdivision” is the natural habitat of even larger poorly designed houses, even more cars and car spaces, the seemingly compulsory fossil fuel powered ride-on mower, and space for a boat and other gadgets with which the Joneses may compete with one another.​ ​ 5-acre blocks in these estates were upwards of $350,000 where we live, which is near Albany, the regional centre of the South Coast of Western Australia. A real estate agent laughed at me when I said I was looking for a properly rural block at less than $300,000. Alas, we ended up finding a 62 hectare farming title in a peaceful valley within 25 minutes of town, for less than that cited limit.​ ​ ​ *The Budget*​ ​ Owing to having paid off our first (modest) mortgage by our late thirties, we were able to buy our land outright and there was even some change for improvements like internal fencing, a water tank, a 5 x 8 m shed kit, plus $30,000 to kick off our house build with the required earthworks and slab. It had dawned on us that we would have to owner-build to get something decent within our budget, as we were unwilling to borrow more than $220,000 for the house build, and this had to include an off-grid solar electric system, which came to around $30,000. We did stay within the limits of this budget, but like most owner builders, we also used much of the spare incoming money during our building years for our project, and of course saved a great deal of cash by doing a lot of the work ourselves.​ ​ ​ *Cutting Our Teeth*​ ​ As neither of us had prior building experience, we cut our teeth by owner-building the farm shed. We paid a contractor to pour the slab and footings, then proceeded to erect the metal frame and sheet the sides, with some help and advice from experienced neighbours to get us started. A professional was called in for roofing (returning down the track for the house roof and carpentry). When we were done, we had acquired such a loathing for working with metal that we scratched our initial plans to keep things simple by going straight on to building a kit home out of similar materials. We had almost ordered the kit, but then decided that you only live once, and that we would therefore build with strawbales.​ ​ ​ *Why Strawbales?*​ ​ We had seen strawbale houses on _Grand Designs_ and in _Owner Builder_, _Grass Roots_, and various other alternative publications. Their aesthetics had always appealed to us. We were also interested in environmentally responsible building, and strawbales have low embodied energy and unsurpassed wall insulation value. Furthermore, natural building materials like straw and its partner, lime plaster, don’t adversely affect indoor air quality like many synthetic materials do.​ ​ Also I was confident about working with bales, having frequently handled and stacked square bales in my youth during meadow hay harvest. What could be more agriculturally evocative than building with strawbales and using fencing wire for compression? The familiarity with those materials was a definite advantage.











*Federation Inspiration*​ ​ As a young person I had once lived in a Federation era house in lovely Hobart. This house made a lasting impression on me. It had one decent living area, one decent dining area, one spacious kitchen and several generously sized bedrooms. Rooms were neither too small nor too large, the ceilings were airy, and nothing was unnecessarily duplicated. The house had been well designed and solidly constructed, and I wondered at the madness that had overtaken the Australian housing sector since then. Many modern Australian houses are oversized, uninspiring, unhealthy to live in due to toxic building materials, and environmentally unsustainable. Floor plans advertised in newspapers are filled with duplicated living spaces, and few building companies appear to have heard of passive solar design, nor can their floor plans usually be rotated north in any meaningful way due to unsuitable glazing and room arrangements. With that mentality, it is unsurprising that Australia now has the highest per capita energy use in the world.​ ​ ​ *The Floor Plan*​ ​ When we sat down to draft a floor plan, there were a number of priorities. The building had to be passive solar, so that it could be a naturally comfortable house year round instead of relying on artificial heating and cooling. It had to be sensibly proportioned like that Federation house in Hobart, and it had to work as a farmhouse. We also wanted a non-toxic living space, and a high degree of bushfire resistance.​ ​ I started by looking at existing examples of passive solar design on the Internet and in alternative and owner building publications. Traditionally these are rectangles, which is functional but a bit sad if in your romantic heart you are drawn to _Lord of the Rings_ dwellings, Gaudi, turrets and gargoyles. We eventually settled on a modified rectangle: A rectangular open living-dining area with a kitchen in one corner as the heart of the house, and with bedrooms and utility rooms (which can afford to be a little cooler) arranged in an elongated U-shape behind it. Essentially I cut-and-pasted ideas from various designs into a preliminary sketch of a house that might suit our site.​ ​ Our floor plan has our master bedroom on the east side, to get the morning sunlight but not the afternoon heat in summer, and together with the office this forms a separate wing. The carport is on the west side, to reduce afternoon heating and double as a porch on which to leave outdoors shoes. The main entry is through the corridor in the western bedroom wing, with a toilet and laundry right by the door so that when you are working outside, you don’t have to trudge dirt back through the whole house to get to the loo and a basin. Also the laundry doubles as the room in which to leave dirty work clothes. The western bedroom wing is separate from the main living area and private wing and would work equally well for children’s bedrooms or a farmstay wing.​ ​ We decided on a south-facing skillion roof for simplicity and bushfire safety considerations, and because it allowed us to have an airy raked ceiling with highlight windows at the top, from which warm air could be vented in summer.​ ​ We nearly ordered a Colorbond kit house for our floor plan before fortuitously deciding to switch to strawbale construction. In the process we also decided to cut out an unnecessary section from the centre of the house, and replace that space as an attic over the master bedroom. This gave us a little eyrie that functions as a lookout tower and quaint spare room. Also, together with the highlight windows in the living area, it vents hot air on summer nights, creating a draught that draws in cool air from the southern ground level windows.​ ​ Wet areas in strawbale houses are sometimes made entirely from conventional materials to simplify matters. This can create an appealing “hybrid house” – ours has zincalume back corners. Two very useful resources for our hands-on owner-building were Brian Hodges’ book “Building Your Straw Bale Home”, and Andrew and Gabriella Morisson via strawbale.com, their instructional videos and correspondence.​ 


​ *Our Off-Grid Eco-Farmhouse*​ ​ Brett and I were interested in owner-building an eco-house at the small end of the conventional size range, so that we could have farmstay guests in our home and so that the project would showcase and promote quite a few smart design features that would suit ordinary Australian houses: 


​

 Passive solar and bushfire resistant design.
 A coloured and sealed mass concrete floor which is the big solar heater and battery in our passive-solar house. It picks up the northern sun through the French doors from autumn to spring, and radiates the heat back all night to keep the house cosy. The eaves exclude the high-angle summer sun. There is no north-facing veranda to interfere with this process.
 Superinsulation – R4 tightly fitted, no-gaps ceiling insulation plus an R1.5 thermal blanket under the reflective zincalume roofing, and superinsulating reflective plastered strawbale walls which also add tonnes of thermal mass to the inside of the house to further reduce day-night temperature variations.
 Low-e window glass reduces _heat_ (long-wave radiation) transfer into and out of the home, but lets through light (short-wave radiation) – direct sunlight hits the floor autumn to spring and is converted to heat. The windows are set in timber to prevent the thermal bridging of metal frames.
 Windows that facilitate cross-ventilation, including summer venting of hot air through highlight windows sitting at the walltop adjoining the raked ceiling.
 Ceiling and pedestal fans to aid air movement in summer.
 Extensive use of recycled materials for fit-out (kitchen, bathroom cabinetry, curtains, much of the furniture).
 Waterless composting toilets to return nutrients to fruit trees instead of polluting oceans and waterways with them. These also save upwards of 30,000L of drinking water a year per house from being flushed down the toilet. Current Western practice is to waste nutrients that have gone through humans and then try to replace the soil losses with synthetic fertilisers, instead of closing the cycle organically.
 Self-sufficiency in water via rainwater tanks and greywater recycling to the garden; self-sufficiency in renewable electricity via an off-grid power system.
The budget for this project was just under $250,000 – building remotely is dearer than building in suburbia; high ceilings and sustainable technologies add substantially to initial cost. We have three bedrooms, two bathrooms, an office, and a single living/dining area and kitchen in a total of 163sqm of floor space, plus a 30sqm attic for extra flexibility. The rooms are all comfortably sized – neither cramped nor cavernous. High raked ceilings are our spatial luxury, making the house airy and light-filled, and helping it stay cool in summer.​


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## SueC

(Well, I've got to say, the font and layout are a bit of a dog's breakfast in this "reprint" because of incompatibilities between my formatting and HF software; but that's about as good as I can make it in the 20min editing window, otherwise this would have a nicer, larger font, proper superscripts, and the bulleted list wouldn't be so higgledy-piggledy!  Here's a photo of where we lived for three months from lock-up stage to the stage where one bedroom was habitable




*Building The House*​ ​ Since our building experience was so limited, we decided to outsource the structural foundations of our build, and got in various contractors recommended to us to construct the concrete slab and post-and-beam frame and fully roof and gutter it. They did a splendid job, and we had plenty left to do ourselves.​ ​ The first milestone for us was building and compressing the first six courses (2100mm) of our walls, which took us four weeks fulltime. Filling in the tops of the walls took as long again, since we have very high walls in some places, and working at height always takes longer than working at ground level. Also, wall tops often require you to bundle up straw biscuits to fill up any remaining spaces.​ ​ We chicken wired uncompressed sections, door and window reveals, exposed timber and around power points and light switches, but not the compressed wall sections (they don’t need it), before making a start on the mammoth job of plastering. Completing the scratch coat and the exterior brown coat was our first priority to achieve good weatherproofing and remove the fire hazard. Next on the list were the interior ceilings and internal plasterboard walls. We engaged a professional to handle the wet areas and the massive living area ceiling, and to flush all the plasterboard we had already installed ourselves.​


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## SueC

Brett was back at work at this point, so I did a lot of painting and tiling during the week. We continued to plaster in dribs and drabs when both of us were on-site together, and gave serious attention to installing a recycled kitchen and making one bedroom habitable so that we could move in. This happened in March 2013, thirteen months after we had started laying strawbales. As all owner builders know, there are mountains of work left to do after achieving bare functionality in a house, so we chipped away until all the interiors and the long-sidelined exterior finish coat were finally completed in late 2016. By that time, the house looked completely at home in the surrounding landscape and there was a garden filled with bird and insect life where once there had been plain pasture. The farm was also looking lovely, as we had planted thousands of native trees and extensive fodder hedges to create windbreaks, wildlife corridors, and stock shade and shelter in-between bouts of building.


























​​


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## SueC

*Project Evaluation*​ ​ It’s been a long ride, but we both agree that the house we now live in was worth the blood, sweat and tears. In fact, we can’t think of any other five years of working hard which made such a huge practical difference to our lives. We now have a lovely, comfortable house that is naturally cool in summer and naturally cosy in winter, and apart from four 8.5kg LPG camping bottles a year for cooking, has no ongoing fossil fuel inputs in its operation. Wood use for heating is also minimal: We only run our wood heater two evenings a week on average in winter, mostly to boost the solar hot water via its wet back, and the wood we use is just dropped branches from firebreak clean-ups. We have no electricity or water bills, only $100 for bottled gas a year, and the council rates. Our modest mortgage repayments cover all the infrastructure we needed to be fully independent from external suppliers of water and electricity. And at the same time, our house is a personal, lived-in work of art. We think that’s a pretty good result, and we could never have afforded such a gem of a house if we hadn’t owner-built it.

Of course, if you are going to owner-build, you may need to plan ahead for increased expenditure on hair dye down the track – in really bad cases, perhaps even budget for a toupee or a wig!​ ​ 













You can check out our build and farm in more detail online (www.redmoonsanctuary.com.au). I will follow up next time with an internal tour of the finished house, and some reflections on the process of owner building and the environmental performance of our house.
​ ​


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## gottatrot

Very unique and beautiful! What a huge project.


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## frlsgirl

SueC said:


> I was going to ask you a question, since you ride a Morgan! Do you prefer Ana's trot to the average other horse you've ridden? Which horses had the best trots (by your particular definition) in your experience; was there any correlation to breed and/or type(s) of equestrian pursuit the horse was trained for? How do they compare to the trots of the various riding school horses you rode in Germany, for example?
> 
> We were discussing natural trotting ability / encouragement of hindquarter engagement at @*gottatrot* 's journal very recently (about here: https://www.horseforum.com/member-journals/why-i-gotta-trot-645777/page205/), with cool clips and observations from various people, and my own thoughts about that in this discussion kind of started because @*Fimargue* (who lives in France) reminded me of French Trotters and I rode one in my childhood for just over two years, and it made me think about it. @*egrogan* posted some lovely footage there of Morgans trotting in a road race, and a photo of one in a cart, and they definitely look like decent trotters to me compared to the average riding horse these days. Morgans of course were part of the foundation genetics for the American Standardbred, just like French carriage and all-purpose horses contributed to the French Trotter originally. The fastest of those progenitors went on into the specialist harness racing breeds; which in my experience (with old-style STBs/Trotters) often make excellent all-round riding horses as well, with the right training.
> 
> I'm also interested in how you would assess your mare's back at the trot in terms of stability (lateral as well as vertical, if you want to be really nitty-gritty) and comfort for you as a rider, compared to other horses you have ridden. I've got a hunch that the amount of / types of movement in the back would probably run along a normal distribution and that breeds purposely bred to be good trotters would come in at the lower movement end of that distribution, but that's only a hunch based on personal experience of riding a variety of breeds and horses. You input on this topic would be really interesting to read!


I'm going to try to answer all of your questions; maybe a couple of videos would be helpful; Ana's trot has changed quite a bit as both her and I have become more educated. Her trot has changed over the years but her trot also changes within each ride; she can start out kind of hollow and high headed and as we start suppling exercises she gets softer and everything becomes a lot smoother. These are clips through 2017; her trot is even better now - I attached a picture from last weekend. The quality of her trot is heavily influenced by the rider; if she's forward enough, is the rider sitting upright enough to encourage more sitting on the hind legs versus running, and his the energy created recycled properly through a solid outside rein, versus more stretching forward and going onto the shoulders.











Ana can still do that typical Morgan "road" trot; mostly it happens when she becomes unbalanced after missing a canter transition; it feels pretty horrible, like a sowing machine. I don't think she likes it either as she becomes very stiff and flustered.

In regards to lateral stability, her trot is extremely even which is what I assume you mean by lateral stability; she is not very laterally supple, especially at the beginning of our rides so we do a lot of suppling and inside leg to outside hand to encourage softning of the rib cage which then leads to a better trot.

The best trot I've ever ridden....hmmm...I can tell you I don't like the way Quarter horses trot, just very downhill and unpleasant or at least that's been my experience with the ones I've ridden. I'm not super picky when it comes to trots unless it's just awful like with the QHs; I'm more picky about canter as it just takes more coordination from the rider. I rode a Trakehner Lippizaner gelding for a year before I got Ana; his trot was pretty awesome, smooth yet swingy and engaged. Of course Ana's is my favorite  I hardly remember specifics about my riding days in Germany; just that I had a blast and got to ride a lot of awesome horses; my favorites were CoCo (Holsteiner) and Tora (Welsh X) and then there was Lucifer a big black German WB; I think he was a Hessisch WB? He was a dream horse; and I felt very special that I was allowed to ride him in lessons; they eventually pulled him out of the the lesson program because he was too special and talented to be a school horse.


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## SueC

frlsgirl said:


> I'm going to try to answer all of your questions; maybe a couple of videos would be helpful; Ana's trot has changed quite a bit as both her and I have become more educated. Her trot has changed over the years but her trot also changes within each ride; she can start out kind of hollow and high headed and as we start suppling exercises she gets softer and everything becomes a lot smoother. These are clips through 2017; her trot is even better now - I attached a picture from last weekend.


That was excellent editing to produce that comparison, both between years and as a session progresses. The slow-motions are particularly useful. Racehorse trainers (not my personal cup of tea, but I had it by default growing up) slow down their videos to analyse gait interference etc - which is then addressed at trimming/shoeing; altering angles and weights slightly to give slightly different trajectories.

It must be very satisfying for you to see the progress you and Ana have made. She's particularly good just now, isn't she? She's got a much happier head carriage now compared to the previous year, and that's not always an easy road particularly in arena riding.

That's a lovely photo from the weekend.




> The quality of her trot is heavily influenced by the rider; if she's forward enough, is the rider sitting upright enough to encourage more sitting on the hind legs versus running, and his the energy created recycled properly through a solid outside rein, versus more stretching forward and going onto the shoulders.


Yeah, that's why beginner riders usually suffer at the trot, along with their horses - one unbalances the other in this vicious cycle.

Just thinking here, you and Ana are basically doing gymnastics together to improve how each of you carry yourselves when you're in combination with each other. And that's the sort of thing that makes any of us stronger, more supple, more balanced etc - to exercise our bodies, whether via gymnastics, or skiing, or martial arts, or Pilates, or yoga, etc etc if we're humans, and also various different kinds of activities if you're a horse, especially one that is expected to carry a rider.

The interesting thing for me was riding a French Trotter for the first time when I was 9 (I had her for two and a bit years). The trot was out of this world compared to that of the riding school horses. You could carry a glass of water. It was so soft and comfortable and powerful, and effortless. This mare had started in harness as a young horse, and learnt to race at this gait. Because this was in Germany, she had also had basic dressage training for exercise even when she was a broodmare for five years (the owners had an indoor arena, and very good students came to exercise the horses because this way they rode for free and the owners got their mares exercised, win-win). So, she did everything a riding school horse was able to do, and more, and had an amazing trot and a soft canter to boot. And, I enjoyed the "lift-off" experience of having her trot flat out at race speed on the trail when there was a nice open track with good footing.

Sunsmart is her great-grandson, and also has a lovely soft engaged trot. He doesn't drop his hindquarters at lift-off like his French ancestor (his mother did though, deja vu!) when he trots super-fast on a good trail, but it's always comfortable and floaty. Not a falling-apart, running away type trot like you get in riding horses who aren't ready for extended trot yet.

He too had a lot of harness training first, and I wonder how much that is a factor, because then these horses are pretty strong and fit to begin with (if you re-train one to saddle), and have worked out their feet. And how much it's a breed thing. I'd say it's a combination of that and other factors, like practice, types of exercise undertaken under saddle, rider weight, rider balance/style etc.

This was Sunsmart less than a year into his saddle re-education, and I was pretty happy with that, given how upside-down he had been as a harness horse (because he didn't want to pace, he's a trotter, so he got put into pacing hopples and had his head elevated, which did all sorts of things to the way he carried himself, but by the time this photo was taken he was looking so much better, and enjoying his new work).









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/horses/photos/img_3348.jpg

He was so relaxed, flying his tail like the French great-grandmama used to, and even flapping his bottom lip! He also does this when he wants more carrots, but it generally means he's happy to be doing what he's doing, or anticipating something good.

He much prefers riding to being asked to learn to pace. :rofl: He had about as much chance of pacing as my Arabian mare. 

It's interesting the roads we take in our riding lives. The roads can be very different in places, but there are often things in common.




> Ana can still do that typical Morgan "road" trot; mostly it happens when she becomes unbalanced after missing a canter transition; it feels pretty horrible, like a sowing machine. I don't think she likes it either as she becomes very stiff and flustered.


Yes, I know that kind of trot! :eek_color: Rrrrrrr-rrrrr! Even a trained trotting breed can get a falling-apart type running trot when flustered or unbalanced (and it closely matches my own human running technique :rofl. I'm surprised you liken that to a typical Morgan "road trot" - what's her fast trot like on a long straight stretch with good footing on the trail? I've never ridden a Morgan, but of course STBs are descended partly from them. And a lot of the old-type STBs (with actual necks!) have really comfortable trots when ridden.




> In regards to lateral stability, her trot is extremely even which is what I assume you mean by lateral stability; she is not very laterally supple, especially at the beginning of our rides so we do a lot of suppling and inside leg to outside hand to encourage softning of the rib cage which then leads to a better trot.


Her trot these days looks like a very comfortable ride. You look well matched and happy together too. And man, if I actually do my Pilates I carry myself so much better for the rest of the day too! 




> The best trot I've ever ridden....hmmm...I can tell you I don't like the way Quarter horses trot, just very downhill and unpleasant or at least that's been my experience with the ones I've ridden.


I wonder if that's the show breed QH (which seems like it is bred to have next to no impulsion), or the working type QH, or both? I've never enjoyed seeing QHs in the show riding ring. They look so listless compared to the types of horses I enjoy riding. Like they're on sedatives, or don't really enjoy moving, or perhaps aren't allowed to. Sort of like a "safe" rocking horse to ride.

With many breeds, including the Arabian, the working strains are (unsurprisingly) much better athletes than the showring strains.

Morgans have a good reputation. What do you like best about your Morgan? (More than one thing allowed! ;-))




> I'm not super picky when it comes to trots unless it's just awful like with the QHs; I'm more picky about canter as it just takes more coordination from the rider. I rode a Trakehner Lippizaner gelding for a year before I got Ana; his trot was pretty awesome, smooth yet swingy and engaged. Of course Ana's is my favorite


Of course!  Our favourite horse is a bit like our favourite jumper. It's sooo comfortable for us, and so familiar!

Which is why I should be saddle educating Julian around about now - to have a few more challenges as a rider, by not riding a horse I can ride backwards in my sleep. ;-)




> I hardly remember specifics about my riding days in Germany; just that I had a blast and got to ride a lot of awesome horses; my favorites were CoCo (Holsteiner) and Tora (Welsh X) and then there was Lucifer a big black German WB; I think he was a Hessisch WB? He was a dream horse; and I felt very special that I was allowed to ride him in lessons; they eventually pulled him out of the the lesson program because he was too special and talented to be a school horse.


I remember you posting a photo of Tora!  Welshies and Welsh crosses are so spunky, in general. I got taught to ride bareback on a Welsh pony at age 9, by a girl my age who was at the same agistment centre as our two horses back then. She was doing all sorts of tricks with her horse. We had walked together out to a field - she, her horse, and I - and she did a lot of bareback stuff and then raced up to me, got off her pony, handed me the reins and said, "Now you!"  After initial apprehension, I much enjoyed the experience - indeed, I went back and applied the new skill to the French mare (who was much taller, so harder to get on and further to fall from :rofl.

Lucifer sounds really interesting. I don't suppose you have photos?

My early riding memories are being dug up at the moment because I'm translating a piece about an unconventional riding school from German to English. Makes me compare and contrast! 

Thanks for taking the time to share your impressions, and your clips and photo!


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## frlsgirl

Wow amazing work you did with Sunsmart; looking really good for less than a year after re-training.


Sadly no pics of Lucifer; that was back in the day before cell phones and selfies 


Since you were asking about the "road trot" - here is a video from Nationals; this is the "Park Saddle"class; It's very extravagant to watch but the horses just seem so stiff and wound up.








This is more my style; a Morgan competing at the highest level of Dressage:









My personal favorite (not a Morgan, a Welsh Cob):








What do I like best about Morgans? Hmmm, we just fit well together size wise; they are so versatile and they are like dogs trapped in a horse's body; just so loyal and loving, and oh so pretty to look at. Most like Ana, are very confident in themselves and don't care that they might be the smallest horse in the class, they just puff themselves up and parade around the ring like they own it.


It sounds like you had a lot of cool riding experiences in Germany; Learning to ride bareback is the best way to go; if you can hang on bareback then you'll be totally fine once the saddle comes on. Just watch out for turning corners, I would always slide off in the corners.


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## SueC

Oh, that Welsh Cob, @*frlsgirl* - magnificent! Thanks for posting that one, I'll be re-watching that a few times when I want to watch something beautiful. I don't often see modern dressage performances that have me jumping up and down with enthusiasm (more into classical dressage), but that's a wonderful performance, and what a great horse! And did you see his face at the end, when he gets his pats? "Yes, aren't I clever!" That horse has a ton of personality, and he moves beautifully. Fabulous trot and so elastic. 

The last performance that made me jump up and down like that was this one, many years ago - and I don't watch a lot of this stuff because I kind of live with my head under a rock! ;-) Danish mare Blue Hors Matine. It was just that giant personality of the mare coming through, and how she literally seemed to dance to the music with intent. Which, by the way, I've seen horses do too, quite spontaneously. I've seen horses enjoy music, even the various groups of cattle we've had come running from the other end of the field to line up along the fence if I've put some jigs and reels on loud with the windows open, and they get these expressions on their faces and make wide crinkly eyes. Julian's mother used to come and put her head on my free shoulder if I played a jig on a fiddle in her paddock, and just breathe slow long breaths at me!






(Click the YouTube hyperlink in the corner if it won't play embedded!)

No question about it though, the Welsh Cob has a better trot, from my perspective.

The black Morgan is a beautiful horse and doing well. I do wonder why the majority of people riding Freestyle to Music choose such elevator music to perform to, when there is so much scintillating and amazing stuff that could be used. I had to turn down the volume to be able to watch that one. (Brett was saying, surely they could have put a section from _Back In Black_ into that medley! ;-)) The Cob and the Danish mare, that was better music.

I'm sure you've seen @*Spanish Rider* 's clips of her lesson horse Presu on her dressage thread - that's another horse that had me jumping up and down with enthusiasm. That's the kind of dressage I like! 

Bareback corners - yes, it's a worry when you think you're going one way and then for some reason, like a kangaroo, the horse decides at the last minute to go the other way! :rofl: Then you better have long legs, and the horse a good mane to use as a "Jesus handle" (which is what people here jokingly call the grab handles above windows in cars, that passengers of some drivers hold on to whilst blaspheming).

That Morgan saddle class - eeeeek! I couldn't watch more than 15 seconds of that, poor horses - that was so artificial. They used to make Hackneys trot like that by putting weights on their legs. Compare that to the road trot videos @*egrogan* posted recently at @*gottatrot* 's journal; world of difference and not in a good way, for me.

Thanks for your comment re Sunsmart; he looked shocking in harness at the racetrack. Not all STBs do, but he was objecting to the idea of pacing and was stargazing so badly when in hopples that you could tell who he was from 500m away with 20 horses training on the local track. His neck wasn't just held up high and stiffly, it looked curved upwards and the whole horse looked out of balance. When he was doing rounds of the sand track at home in harness, without hopples, trotting and cantering, he didn't look quite as bad, but it was quite a challenge to communicate to the horse that he didn't have to jam his neck up, when I first started riding him. And when he understood that, he was so happy. Lovely soft connection to the bit, and like most ex-harness horses, really seeks connection with the reins. I was looking for how he _wanted_ to move, if humans didn't make some kind of difficulty for him. And he's a horse who really loves to move, which makes things so much easier.

Morgans, like Arabians, clearly subscribe to the motto that good things come in small packages! ;-)

I really doubt the Morgans in that first video enjoy moving like that. What do you think? I mean, they don't adopt that when free in the paddock. But dressage horses often do replicate some of their dance moves in the paddock.


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## Knave

I love the house! It is beautiful. Just wow!

Now, I don’t find quarter horses boring to watch at all! Then again I am biased, but I have to say that I have never ridden more athletic horses than the quarter horses. However, I have been around mostly the hot bred quarter horses. I worked for an Arabian ranch where the horses were also talented athletes and had won many things. I would put those particular horses into a similar category as the quarter horses, but I still don’t think they were as strong of athletes as some of the best quarter horses who competed in the same events. 

Then again, with any breed the slow classes can be like watching paint dry. Lol


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## SueC

Knave said:


> Then again, with any breed the slow classes can be like watching paint dry. Lol


:rofl: And there's the crux of it, the very kernel of the problem! 

Nice to know working-bred QHs have spark!  We only see the boring show classes here in Australia.


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## Knave

Oh, slow classes are no fun. Well you saw the video of Bones as a baby, and you saw the pictures in the introduce your horse section I’m sure, but here is a bit more to show his range and spark.

Forgive me in jumping, for I know nothing of it and am just learning for fun with him. Bad idea as he learned to jump out of the corral. To top it off he goes to work in spring and fall and is a rock star there.


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## SueC

That looks like great fun! And I've just seen your handstand on that other thread! 

:rofl: Are you creating a monster?

Hint: Before you start jumping bareback, check your horse doesn't have high withers! :rofl: Made that mistake once as a kid and couldn't walk properly for days.

Oh yay, hooray, today might be the day... I've been semi-languishing / holidaying indoors for days trying to ward off a cold, and didn't get the coughing/sneezing bit thankfully, but had sore muscles (my typing muscles were not affected), headaches, chills. And it's a sunny morning here, the horse is at hand, I'm feeling better and my husband said to me this morning, "Make sure the first thing you do today is ride, before any chores make you run out of steam!" 

And he lent me his new compact iPod so I will be taking photos on horseback today.

PS: Bones looks fabulous. Is he a QH?


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## Knave

Oh that sounds like fun! Yay for a morning ride before chores.

Yes! I have created a monster. lol. He kind of started off a bit of a monster though. He is just super busy minded. He can go and go too, and working I have to monitor how far he pushes himself because he never seems to tire. Irritating when he’s hot... but he’s very personable and fun. 

Many of the quarter horses I have known, although not as odd as him, are pretty handy and a bit hot. (I say a bit, and my first horse that my name was on the papers of, when I started team roping, had to be cut off the box when she high centered herself.) I guess Australia doesn’t use them much though hu? People who would use them use their stock horse breed right? 

I love your horses. They must be so fun at that trot.


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## Knave

Oh, I didn’t answer; yes he is a qh. Most everything in my world is. We have Zeus of course (the fjord), but that is because we are trying something different out for my littlest to start. 

I did jump bareback, but he tends to overjump like crazy and I felt like I was going to fall off since I roach his mane. Lol

The headstand is just one of the tricks! I have kept him slow though because I am just starting on him and don’t want to overwhelm.


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## SueC

Knave said:


> I did jump bareback, but he tends to overjump like crazy and I felt like I was going to fall off since I roach his mane. Lol


I refer you to this thread:

https://www.horseforum.com/horse-talk/falling-off-nerds-789799/

I'm sure you can make valuable contributions to the group research! :rofl:


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## bsms

No one will ever accuse me of being a dressage rider, and I've only ridden QHs a handful of times. But Jean Claude Racinet was a dressage rider. One of his books was "Racinet Explains Baucher". He said when he came to America to give some clinics, he assumed QHs would be horrible at collection. However, he said they generate so much power from the rear that they collected nicely - although their conformation made it hard to look at them and SEE the collection.

My first fighter was the F-4 Phantom II. I got to fly in the back seat in the late 80s. Most of the jets had Vietnam time on them. Anyways...the standard joke about them was that they proved a brick could fly if the engines were big enough! Maybe that applies to horses, too!









​ Internet photo. All mine were liberated from me by one of the movers when we returned to the US in 1992. This was a drone, flying the final USAF F-4 mission 27 years after my last flight in an F4. ( Phantom's phinale > U.S. Air Force > Article Display ) It shouldn't fly, but when the engine is big enough...:thumbsup:...could be a QH slogan.​


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## frlsgirl

Some horses, especially stallions and mares, love to show off and seem to know that they are being watched or evaluated. My friend in Arizona has a horse who has refused to leave the arena after he was eliminated from competition. A handler had to walk him out of the ring. 

In regards to Quarter Horses, I just remembered this cute little QH mare “Tinkerbelle” that I loved to ride especially her canter. I don’t remember her trot though. But that’s the only QH that I enjoyed riding

I don’t know that all Morgans dislike moving in a high headed extravagant way; I just think that people have used artificial means to make them over the top extravagant and I’m sure that has its physiological and psychological consequences.


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## SueC

Man, @bsms, that thing looks like a space shuttle! - By "liberated" do you mean lost, or stolen? Either way, how ungood is that.

My Arabian mare was a show-off, @frlsgirl. Whenever she was led around in public, she'd arch her neck and walk big and make eyes at everyone. And her trot would be a levitating trot. Very funny. She even did it at age 27 and managed to come third in a large all-breeds 5 years+ halter class at our local agricultural show. We went there just for fun because she was looking so fabulous for her age. The best bit was getting the judge to guess her age when she tied the ribbon on. She was astonished! Guessed her to be late teens.


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## bsms

By "liberated, I mean every photo I had involving flying disappeared between when I watched it being boxed up leaving England and when I unpacked the boxes in Texas. ONLY the flying photos. Someone had gone thru them and taken what they wanted. Nor could I file a claim since pictures, by themselves, have very little cash value. All of my F4 pictures gone. Lots of good memories, just no pictures.

;>(


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## SueC

That's really shocking, @bsms. And why I've not clicked "like".

When we moved to Australia, a box of my favourite fairytale books from childhood went missing. It was the only box that went missing out of the whole consignment. My parents shrugged their shoulders and blamed the transport company. But it was in a locked container, and who would take foreign-language children's books? Since I no longer assume my parents were scrupulously honest with me all my life, I think the more likely explanation is that my mother liberated it, and gave the contents of the box away to people she knew with young children. I'd packed it myself, but presumably she thought I was too old for fairytales at that point. I'm only guessing this because it's consistent with them giving other things of mine away subsequently without asking. Since I hadn't bought it, having no earning capacity as a child, I think they felt I didn't own it, really. Just like their explanation with the French mare.

/end grrrr.


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## SueC

OK, here it is: My first attempt at a photoessay on horseback. As promised. Because the weather was lovely and sunny, and I did finally get that ride in today after days of languishing mostly indoors trying to ward off a cold. Wore a thermal top plus that warm zip-up endurance vest I received last year as a treat, to make sure I stayed warm. Turns out that vest has equipment pockets, which came in handy for that compact iPod Brett lent me for the purpose.

The problem was, the screen brightness was turned down and all I could see when snapping was the horizon and, if lucky, the horse's head. This is not what I call photography: Just semi-random pointing and clicking. But, I'm not going to carry my Canon Powershot with its big lens around on horseback. So here's what came out on what I call the "fireground loop".









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_014.JPG

I am including hyperlinks to the photos in case anyone is using Firefox or Chromium etc and can't see non-https photos embedded. In which case, just click to view. We decided we weren't paying an extra $50/year to add the "s" to our source address.

So this was us just after I'd gotten on and crossed into the 58ha part of our property we refer to as "The Common" - 8ha of pasture along the road, 50ha of nature reserve with internal and peripheral tracks. Cattle, donkeys and the other three horses were all out there today. We also have a 4ha section with shelter belts, fenced into two large grazing paddocks and two small utility areas, which are our "inside" paddocks.

So the first thing we ran into was a traffic jam! 









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_015.JPG









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_018.JPG

The chestnut part of the traffic jam is Sunsmart's uncle, Chasseur; the bay with the blaze and socks is his half-brother (same sire) Julian. The woodland area on the horizon left is Sleeman Creek Nature Reserve, which we may also get around to documenting in this manner soon. But that's not where we were heading today. We turned right, headed around the back of the house, and got on our on-farm nature reserve's central sand track:









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_019.JPG

We mosaic burn this reserve, because Australian sclerophyll vegetation is adapted to fire and to patch burn it encourages biodiversity and decreases fire risk. This year, we had a larger than normal burn area because for the last two years, early season breaks didn't allow us to burn off our targets in the permitted time of year. We burnt 4ha along a dangerous border with a long-neglected property to our south-west that's a tinderbox waiting to go up, and then had a flare through the centre swamp of our property, around 10ha, half of which hadn't been burnt in 20 years and had become dangerous. The flames were over 20m high when that long overdue section went. This was six weeks ago; reliable winter rains set in three weeks ago, and the bush grasses are already sprouting back. By springtime, the surviving understorey will be back in leaf, and there will be masses of native seedlings growing.

The brown leaves are burnt leaves, which the trees will replace. The green patches are unburnt patches. The dog is in her usual position when Sunsmart and I are riding at a walk: Ahead, and telling us, "C'mon!!! Run!!!"









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_020.JPG

This 800m track to the back of the property runs near the valley floor, with forested hillsides rising to the right and left. We are riding through the sparse woodland at the edge of the swamplands in the valley floor, to the left. The trees are eucalypts, the understorey here is mostly tea-trees, banksias, Christmas trees, and over 200 other, less dominant species. Kangaroos, emus, bandicoots, possums, and masses of reptilian, bird and invertebrate life calls this place home.

The next photo a little further up the track shows more of the recently burnt areas.









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_021.JPG

Next photo shows our southern boundary. The southwest neighbour is the gate on the right, the southeast neighbour the small gate on the left.









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_026.JPG

The small gate was installed during the recent burn-offs. I've had permission to ride on that property for years, but never a direct access gate from our own place - I used to ride around to get to their roadside gate. This meant crossing rocky areas for which the Renegades need to be on my horse. With the new gate, I can stay in the sandy valley floor and therefore have now got an hour's worth of barefoot trails direct from home, which is really fabulous.

Since neither of us can jump this gate, I have to get off. The next photo is from next to the horse before getting back on. We are now on the neighbour's side of our boundary fence. We are approaching the centre of the swampy valley floor; several hundred metres ahead, you can see the forested, rocky hillside rising up.









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_030.JPG

We turned right before the ridge, and got this photographic masterpiece:









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_032.JPG

You can see how swamp rises into forested hillside on the left. The next photo shows how lush a valley area is four years after a burn, despite the fact that we had one of the driest summers and autumns on record this year. This section is coarse grasses and sedges, not tea-trees.









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_034.JPG

The next photo is a bit blurry because I'm still getting used to doing this on horseback, but I include it to show the newly burnt ground behind the green patch in the foreground.









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_035.JPG


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## SueC

The unburnt and burnt patches adjacent to each other have this pattern because the newly burnt area didn't burn when our neighbour burnt it four years ago. So this time, it caught, while the last-burnt area didn't.

The dog is keen to have her swim in the stock dam coming up in the middle distance. This one:









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_041.JPG

If she sees water, she's in it with a splash. Sunsmart hates getting his feet wet, and her enthusiasm for fully body immersion used to astonish him. Now, when he hears a loud splash ahead, it's just, "Oh, here goes Jess again."

We followed the track out to the pasture, and turned left on it:









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_043.JPG

Lots and lots of pasture. Our neighbour has an Angus stud; the cattle were elsewhere today in this enormous paddock, probably on the other side of the bushland somewhere, or perhaps hiding in it. It's unusual not to see them, but we'll get a photo next time.









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_048.JPG

We were now heading back in the direction of our own property, due north and straight into the sun, which is near its lowest angle of the year and so the pictures heading in this direction aren't very clear.

Have readers from the US noticed how inverted we are compared to you? And not just physically on the globe. It's winter here when it's summer in your part of the world; the sun is in the north, not the south, and to really put the cherry on the cake, where we are is exactly 12h out of phase with HF time. We're 12 hours ahead.  So your morning is my evening.

And here we are, back at the connecting gates.









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_049.JPG

Here I am off the horse, and angling for that 10kV electric line across the gate. Our neighbour's fence energiser is very high-tech and services over 30km of fence. These lines keep the cattle off the gates.

Line restored, gate closed, and about to get back in the saddle!









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_051.JPG

Sunsmart is _so_ furry in winter, despite rugging in cold and/or wet, windy weather. Brushing this lot out will be fun in spring. The birds will be happy to have abundant nest lining.









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_052.JPG

We are now heading along our south boundary fence, towards our swamp track. I was unable to get a clear photo of it heading north because of the glare, so I did one looking back, before we came back out into pasture.









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_056.JPG

You can see the edge of the burnt swampland centre right. This was the part that burnt hot this year, skyhigh flames, because unburnt for 20 years and really, really dry and dead after a super-dry start to the year. The area we are standing in was burnt four years ago and is nice and green. There are wonderful scented boronias nearby that depend on mosaic burning so they don't get choked out.

This part of what we call The Common is referred to as the Middle Meadow. It is sheltered by bush on three sides and grows lovely strawberry clover right into summer, along with annual and perennial grasses. When everything else dries up, this pasture will still be holding out and green.









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_071.JPG

Turning left at the end of this, we can see the house and the internally fenced paddocks with their shelter belts in the distance:









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_075.JPG

And out there, we met Romeo. When I asked Sunsmart if he would like to stay and graze with him, he said yes please, so I got the tack off. I do this sometimes when he's not wearing boots and he's not particularly sweaty. So I lay down on the grass in the sunshine and took this concluding photograph:









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_076.JPG

I hope you have enjoyed this little tour of the Australian bush and prime grazing country here in Redmond!


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## SueC

It's good for our emotional health to tell our stories, even the horrible bits that normally get hidden. To safe people of course. Or to out it to the public when we're ready. Because they are our stories, and if people had wanted to be remembered better, perhaps they ought to have acted better instead of expecting us to cover up for them.

Some back story came out here for me, and you can see why:

https://www.horseforum.com/horse-ta...ple-over-40-a-608370/page1058/#post1970537153

Lovely group of people, and so many people also have stories like that.

Also here:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-journals/why-i-gotta-trot-645777/page202/#post1970554529

Excellent group, that, and amazing posts all around on life and the universe.

Thank you, everyone from these little sub-communities - for making each others' lives better.


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## SueC

So here's how this journal perhaps should have begun in the first place, if I'd said everything I was thinking. It's a sort of potted horse history that came out on an Introduce thread recently, when I was typing in that little box. And I thought I should have it here, really!

From:

https://www.horseforum.com/horse-talk/introduce-your-horse-pictures-791281/

OK: Horse history going back nearly four decades, so this is a "cup of tea or skip it" type post. 

Because I loved all of them.

This was my first horse, a French Trotter mare, born in Orne, Normandy:
















http://coulstock.id.au/photos/1983.jpg

And even though I'd journalled here for years, until this month I'd never told this part of the story. And now I have, initially just to friends, and because crap happens to loads of people I'm OK with posting this on the open forum now, and if any of you need a







because it's reminding you of something sad, I have lots of them to give away to anyone who needs them. And I know lots of people need them, because of the way human beings can be.

So this is how it was: When I was 9 years old, my parents bought two horses - one of which they said they were buying specifically for me to ride - this huge chestnut French Trotter mare, well-trained in basic dressage and sold specifically as a child's riding horse because of her character, and the fact that she'd been so maternal to her foals, and to the owners' grandchildren. She and I got along famously, and she very much filled the emotional gap I had in my life from having a difficult relationship with my parents (the word _relationship_ is really a misnomer) - she had mothered all these foals, and she seemed to see that I was kind of orphaned, and she really, really adopted me. We were inseparable. When she figured out I had trouble reaching her back (16.2hh mare), she would lower her neck for me to hang across and then gently elevate it so I could slide on her back for riding bareback. I don't think anybody had trained her to do that, I think she just worked it out. And I could ride her anywhere, in groups or alone, and she'd take care of me. (There's more photos of us back in my journal.) She'd slow down to let me rebalance if she felt me going out of balance. And this wasn't a plodder type horse, this was a mare who had raced in her youth, and who loved nothing better than to stretch out her legs and do her unbelievable flying trot, that felt like floating on a hang-glider. She was adventurous and spirited and loved to go far and wide.

Alas, I had her for little over two years before my parents took her off me when we got to Australia, because they had suddenly got the notion that they wanted to breed racehorses. And here's what I didn't know, and only learnt much later, because I was test riding the horse in an indoors arena when my parents had this conversation with the previous owner: The reason she was being sold as a child's riding horse was that she had a difficult birth with the last foal and the supervising veterinarian strongly advised against breeding her again, as there was a high risk she would not survive. So it turns out my parents knew this, but they bred her anyway. She had another foal, and bled out immediately after the birth. Noone could save her. I watched her life drain away. She was just 15. ( I was 13 and had just returned from a school camp and missed the birth by half an hour but was present for her demise.) I really can't, to this day, understand how anyone could knowingly do something like that. Take a supposed gift horse off a child and tell her, "Well, you didn't pay for her, so she's not really yours." And breed her even though they knew the veterinary advice. Most unbelievably uncool. I ride her great-grandson now, but much as I love him, I wouldn't have traded that mare for anything. Or risked her life for what seems to me to be sheer vanity.









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/SE...du_Buisson.jpg

I bought an Arabian yearling after selling a lot of my valuables and begging a chores mortgage for the rest, because I never wanted to have a horse taken off me again like that again. I wanted my name on that piece of paper. I trained this horse up completely on my own (my parents were busy with more important things and thought what I was doing was a mere hobby and unimportant). We started like this, because the only reason I could afford this horse was that she was so young and there was a severe drought that made her half-price:









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/sn...ue_in_yard.jpg


Soon things looked better:
















http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/SE...ti_Waroona.jpg

By age 4 I was training her in endurance, in our abundant state forests, as well as dressage, in the back paddock. She was only 14.2hh but Polish/Crabbet bred so coped fine with the fact that I grew out to 5'11". This is us just before our first short-course, junior endurance ride when I was 15:









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/sn...ue_in_yard.jpg

She won her first-up ride and was best conditioned too. That's because we spent hours riding in the forests when I was a teenager, and because the horse, whom I affectionately referred to as Snowstorm, loved nothing more than running at her lovely floaty trot and soft canter for hours - and being allowed to race flat out up sand hills!

The next two are just after she set the club record for 25km at a ride in the Darling Range - she did it in 56 minutes, and we'd actually done 3km extra by taking a wrong turn!

















http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/sn...king_ahead.jpg










http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/sn...zy_horizon.jpg

She was also excellent at gymkhana games:









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/sn...sue_riding.jpg

This was here at age 27:










http://photography.coulstock.id.au/g...s/img_7581.jpg










http://photography.coulstock.id.au/g...s/img_8253.jpg

By this time, my husband and I had her agisted on the South Coast. Less than two years later, we were able to buy a farm here and build a house on it - out of straw - which is so apt if you already love horses - and when we were building, we had to keep the horses away from the house. Romeo (I'll introduce him later) ate part of our dining room once, when we were building!



More on that here if you're interested in the building method and more photos:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-jo...post1970558119

The mare spent her last three years with us on our farm, free-ranging with her friends and getting lots of TLC, before passing on at age 32. By this time I'd trained up a replacement riding horse who was also her best buddy here - and I'll have to put him into a separate post so I don't break the forum or something with a super-long post... 

...and I've already had to economise on emoticons to be able to post this... sigh...


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## SueC

When my Arabian mare retired, I was heading for 40 and decided that my next horse had to be very solid and well balanced, and carry me effortlessly (80kg of gear and rider combined plus I'm very tall). I'd had a couple of falls with horses (I rode a number besides my own mare), and wanted the one to take me into middle age to be as fall-over-proof as possible, but still the sort of horse that could move - so no Clydesdale, much as I love Clydesdales! As most over 40 would understand, we no longer have illusions of immortality or invulnerability, and it suddenly became ultra important to be on a horse that wasn't accident-prone.

I'd been looking sideways at one for ages that I'd known since birth - _and_ he was a great-grandson of that French mare, Dame du Buisson, with whom I'd had to part company involuntarily. I thought he was just the ticket - marvellous work ethic, great endurance potential (I'd seen him effortlessly run lap after lap of sand tracks in harness training, like a Roman chariot horse, and after each lap go, "Another lap? Sure thing!"), very solid and muscular, and wide as a boat. And when he retired from harness pursuits, I put my hand up, and re-educated him to saddle. I remember the very first time I trotted him, around that very same sand track, deliberately shifting my position far right and far left till I was nearly hanging off him, to see how it affected his balance, and it didn't deter him one bit from travelling in a straight line, or affect his gait. Excellent! These days of course he would perceive even subtle shifts in weight as aids for moving differently, but at that early stage this had not been taught to him, so I could run that test.

Better still, he was equally happy to really run, or to drop back and relax. I liked that Zen-ness in him. He loved to work, but back then, the moment work was over he didn't want to know you. That's another story, but that was mainly due to the way he had been kept completely socially isolated from weaning (because a stallion), had no grazing and was a very frustrated horse. So he was gelded at age 11, and when I took him down to the South Coast I socialised him gradually with other horses, and showed him what pasture looked like, and did a dressage and trails program to keep him entertained. A decent life goes a long way to making a horse happy, and this one is now so laid-back and relaxed nobody would recognise him from his harness days - when he was wont to attack all human beings and other horses over the bars of his cage, and made a miserable face unless you were taking him out for work.

This was Sunsmart less than a year into his saddle re-education, and I was pretty happy with that, given how upside-down he had been as a harness horse (because he didn't want to pace, he's a trotter, so he got put into pacing hopples and had his head elevated, which did all sorts of things to the way he carried himself, but by the time this photo was taken he was looking so much better, and enjoying his new work).









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/g...s/img_3348.jpg

He was so relaxed, flying his tail like the French great-grandmama used to, and even flapping his bottom lip! He also does this when he wants more carrots, but it generally means he's happy to be doing what he's doing, or anticipating something good.

He much prefers riding to being asked to learn to pace.







He had about as much chance of pacing as my Arabian mare.









I like the way he has developed as a horse: Photo one from the day of the early beach ride above, photo two nowadays:









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/g...s/img_3295.jpg



If you're wondering why he's called Sunsmart, it's because from the time he was newborn, he would always find himself shade to rest in - and at the time, Australia had the "Slip-Slop-Slap - Be Sunsmart" campaign. I actually named him. Here is an early shot of us together:


French Revolution 14/11/1989 - 2/11/2017 by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

He was such a funny-looking thing:



And he grew into such a lummox. This is him with his mother and uncle in 2015:



Here's a fun clip of Sunsmart discovering cattle at our place in 2010:





 

About to head on a trail:





As for breed, Sunsmart is by an American Standardbred stallion (and that breed is related to Morgans etc); out of a French Trotter cross (French Trotters were bred mainly from Thoroughbreds, Warmbloods, Carriage and Draught horses). Many people turn up their noses at "those horses" but it tells you more about those people than the horses! He's from a trotting line so not a pacer. I love his wonderful effortless ground-covering trot (and yes, he has a lovely soft canter too, and a mean gallop). I'd also ridden a horse in endurance in my 20s who was "ambidextrous" - could trot like that, or pace, as required.

More about French Trotters, STBs and crosses of these here:
https://www.horseforum.com/member-jo...post1970555819


Our most recent arrival here is Classic Julian, an Albatross grandson like Sunsmart, whom we could offer a space after Sunsmart's mother died last year. Poor thing had been bored to death retired in a little sand run by himself, and had spent 15 or his 17 years solitary. He now lives in our herd, and this was the day he came:





 

All three in the clip are late-cut stallions, gelded after age 11, so they're a bit more dramatic than the average horse. Julian is loving it here - he's such a clever horse, and really enjoys exploring, and socialising, and discovering new things.

We also have Romeo, our equine Methuselah (and Julian's uncle - his full sister Classic Juliet produced Julian), whom I rode as a young person and who was an excellent jumper:



He's nearly 34 and has a free pass to our garden. He thinks it's a great place to camp out, and he knows exactly where we live. That French door is like his personal Weet-Bix dispensing hatch!

To complete the menagerie, we also have donkeys and a dog. Love the lot of them:



The Three Stooges? – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr



Dog Entertainment I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Phew! Anyone still awake?









Time to go riding!


...which I did - the first "photography ride" above these posts! Images and some text were recycled... That's a good nutshell though.


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## gottatrot

I love all the pictures of your Arabian mare and love Sunsmart too. 

I'm ignoring everything you said about your decision to get a safer horse when you were close to 40. I'll be 41 this year, but I plan to get one more hot Arab mare to complement Hero after Amore passes on. Then after those two age out, I'll consider going for my safer horse.


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## SueC

:rofl:, @*gottatrot* ! I understand exactly why you would say that - I like challenges too. But I also have a back injury to take care of, and I want to ride till I'm at least 80!  On horses that really move!  And be able to walk normally etc. And I know I'll have to educate a couple more if I'm going to ride till I'm 80... no hidden surprises when you educate them yourself...

Congratulations on getting to your 40s and the League of Wisdom. ;-)  Best time, I really think!

Love your horses too, and how you work with them, and how you think about life. :gallop:


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## knightrider

> The chestnut part of the traffic jam


I laughed out loud when I read that!

Wow, I should read more of the "over 40's" thread. Such interesting stuff that I am missing. I am SO far over 40, I didn't think I belonged there. But I am definitely "over 40" so I guess I can.

I surely do appreciate what all of you have written. I am the youngest of three, and my second brother is only a year older than me, so I never expected my parents to take pictures or take much interest in me. Besides, my mom was quite mean, and I liked to stay out of her way as much as possible. My brother was like a twin to me, and he took very good care of me.
@gottatrot, I had to smile at your thinking you'll get your last hot horse at 40 and then slow down. I bought Chorro as a yearling when I was 57, and he was listed as temperament 7. He was a crazy stallion, and I told myself a thousand times, "What were you THINKING, getting a hot crazy stallion and trying to break him at your age!" But we got the job done, and now he is so good, I can put (braveish) beginners on him. (Don't worry, I got him gelded at age 2) Then, at 63, I bought Isabeau, who reared and came over on her riders when they asked her to do things she didn't want to do. What WAS I thinking? Actually, I thought it wouldn't be that hard to "fix" her. I'd fixed lots of other problem horses that weren't that hard. But she was/is a real piece of work. And last, at 68 1/2, I got Acicate, who reared and then landed in bucking. Again, I thought he wouldn't be that hard to "fix," and for the most part, he wasn't. I imagine Gottatrot, you'll still be looking at hot horses at 68 too. It's hard to give them up after riding those kinds of horses all your life.


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## SueC

Dear @knightrider, you'll still be over 40 when you're 100! ;-)

I want to tell you guys (or y'all, it's more inclusive and I like how it rolls off the tongue) this funny thing I read about ten years ago. There was this lady competing in dressage in her 70s, and doing very well, but she was losing her eyesight to macular degeneration. When she was asked what she would do if she went completely blind, she said, "Then I can always be a judge!" 

I'm glad you had a decent brother, @knightrider. :hug: I think we're all having a sort of _me too_ moment in history. And it really is so much better when you don't sit on it.

And there's so much good stuff to read around here. I don't get around to half the stuff I want to, and it keeps growing. Bit like the time I sat in that university as a teenager having this realisation that I couldn't even read half the books that were in that library alone, if I lived to 100 years!

And I fully intend to ride rocket horses till I'm at least 80. Just not rocket horses that are even slightly prone to falling over! :rofl:

You're such a fabulously cool person, @knightrider. Definitely an excellent role model. I feel privileged to know you, and also some of the other very fine folk here. That includes you, @gottatrot! You're the sort of people who really improve the lives of other people just by being who you are.


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## SueC

Alternative dressage hero!


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## Knave

I’ve seen that before! I love it!


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## gottatrot

SueC said:


> Alternative dressage hero!


Round him up!! (Can that horse get "un" round?)


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## SueC

gottatrot said:


> Round him up!! (Can that horse get "un" round?)



Not unless you ride him 6h daily along a soft beach, and keep him on dry poor grassland the rest of the time. With vitamin/mineral mix and enough roughage of course. :rofl:


And then he might still be roundish from all that riding!


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## SueC

*FLOWER MEMORIALS*

The week after the chestnut mare was put down last November, Mt Barker Veterinary hospital sent a card and a packet of wildflower seeds – now that was a great idea. When my Arabian mare was buried back in 2014, I'd wanted to plant a beautiful tree on top to mark the spot, but the cattle found any human attempt to grow a seedling tree irresistible and promptly removed anything like that. We considered rigging up a small temporary electric fence, but then needed the back-up energiser unit to do exactly that around our new solar bore. What to do?

Wildflower seeds – so obvious in hindsight! So when they sent that packet of Australian Everlastings, I planned on splitting the seeds between the two grave sites when the winter rains set in. And now they finally have.










So yesterday was Flower Memorial day. In the early afternoon, I packed the old dinner fork I use for planting out seedlings and seeds in the vegetable garden into my pocket, along with the seed packet, and told the dog we were going for a walk. This is when a lovely thing happened.



Julian, who had been grazing with his herd, saw we were leaving and made a beeline straight for us. He and I greeted each other, and then he decided to tag along! He simply came walking with us, at liberty, away from the pasture and the other horses, around behind the house and onto the central sand track that leads through our bushland conservation area and down to the gates with our southern neighbours.










It's a really special thing when a horse just decides to go for a walk with a human and a dog. Julian, of course, loves to explore and at 17 is the youngest member of his herd – and with a lifetime of being locked into his loose box and small sand run by himself day in, day out until he came here last November, he has a lot of lost time to make up for. When he first arrived, he fell in love with all the space of his giant natural playground, and thrived on being social in a herd – but would leave the grazing herd to walk here and there and sniff this and that and do big exploratory loops around the place, looking with great interest at various things in succession. If I came out of the house to do some work in the treeline, for instance, and the herd was a collection of little dots grazing at the far end of The Common, pretty soon a bay horse with a blaze and socks would be heading in my direction to come and see what I was doing, and just to have a “chat”.



It's moments like these that I have treasured since we bought this place in 2010 – horses very much set free at our place, with 62ha to roam, watching them enjoy this and each other day in, day out, and that they are always choosing to take the time to come and touch base with me. If I want the horses and they are far away, I just call them, and then come sounds of distant thunder that soon distinguish into hoofbeats, as the group comes running up like a bunch of racehorses, which of course they all are. It's a spectacular sight to see them running like this.



So today, Julian accompanied me halfway to my first destination up the central sand track, and I was chatting to him and showing him bush grasses he could eat, and he was looking at me and sniffing things I held out to him and putting his muzzle softly against me from time to time, the same way a friend might put his hand on your shoulder occasionally. I explained that I was going to put flower seeds in the ground for the girls, whom he both knew by sight from back in the old days. It doesn't matter that they don't get all of what we say to them, because they get so much from it – and they learn so much about you when you chat to them. They enjoy it anyway, playing their ears at the sound and looking at you with those little pleasure crinkles around their eyes, so I tend to tell them things.


French Revolution 14/11/1989 - 2/11/2017 by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Halfway to my first destination, there was a sudden and alarming ruckus coming from the local access road, and Julian took to his heels. He wasn't particularly alarmed – this horse was never very spooky – but racehorses seem to enjoy having excuses to run, so off he went at speed, back down the sand track to the pasture. I was left with a smile on my face at this little interlude.



Five minutes later I turned left onto a little bush track. Soon I was on charred ground with large bones scattered around. The fire came through here in May when it flared into the swamp, but you can still see the spot where we laid the chestnut mare on the earth the day she died. Where her belly was there is a flat patch of manure, and into this I planted some of the flower seeds. Most of them, I planted in a number of scattered clumps around the area where she had lain. And as I was making the little grooves with my fork and scattering seeds and tamping moist earth back over them, I talked to the mare. Obviously she couldn't hear me, but that's not the point. You know how they say, Write a letter to someone who has done bad things to you expressing all you feel and then don't send it, this was for you? It was kind of like that, but also a nice thing to do in her memory, to tell her what I would tell her if she could hear me.


French Revolution 14/11/1989 - 2/11/2017 by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

So I told her I was glad I knew her, and glad to look after her for the last three years of her long life. Glad of the freedom she had here, and the friendships, and the room to roam. Glad she was re-united with her only foal here for her last three years, and their enjoyment of that reunion. I told her how she'd helped Sunsmart over the loss of his first best buddy, the Arabian mare, whom I was going to bring the other half of the seeds. How it was the grey mare's passing that made the room for us to retire her and her brother, and how her own passing had made a space for a horse who really appreciated it – Julian, who'd come halfway to her grave area with me just then and who is now walking where he chooses and no longer lonely in his new life. How death was sad but made room for more life, and how she was going to make flowers bloom, and if this seed packet didn't take, I'd bring out more until they did. How she had made the birds fly when she died, and stopped living things from being hungry.



And I thanked her for looking after the herd as lead mare after the herd was bereft of their original lead mare, and for producing Sunsmart all those years ago and looking after him, a wonderful horse who takes me places on his back and has had all sorts of adventures with me in the wider world for nearly ten years. How I was taking good care of him and always would. And that I missed her, and her lovely personality and her friendly cuddles and nuzzles, and scratching her itchy spots. 



How I missed the grassy smell of her breath when she sniffed my face, and her bright chestnut shape so like her French grandmother's, and that floaty trot and the way both of them dropped their hindquarters and went base wide when really gathering speed. How I'd loved to watch her doing that in the paddock, and how it had reminded me of my first horse whom I had lost in great sadness and much too soon a long time ago, but whose death had allowed them to live in turn. And how there was always life, and how even in death you are part of that life, a physical part of it in other living creatures, in birds and flowers and butterflies, but also in all the legacies you've left behind and in the minds and memories and lives of those who knew you, whom you are still affecting. How she had contributed even to the culture of her herd and changed it in ways that still persist with her gone. How her friendliness and affection towards others had softened the whole lot of the boys I was left with. And how when I was thinking of her, I was thinking good things.



I then took my leave and continued on the central sand track to the back of our property, and turned left along the boundary, and left again into a little area where we had buried the Arabian mare. On a patch of raised dirt there, I made her a sort of headstone of flowers while I talked to her about her life and times, and life in general, and thanked her for being my childhood companion and being my friend right through to middle age, my longest-standing continuous friend, over three decades of friendship and adventures that had given me such freedom in difficult times, and that I was so glad to have brought her home for her last three years, to freedom and friendships, and if I had to bury her, to have buried her at home, where I would always live and where I'd like to be buried myself alongside them.



Then the dog, who'd been watching me planting, wagged her tail and started digging a hole, which made me laugh. She also does this in the vegetable garden when I'm planting out, or harvesting potatoes. “Look, I'm helping!” And when I laughed, she wagged her tail more and started digging very theatrically, with sideways glances in my direction, and I laughed even more, and she started making assorted growly noises while digging furiously. I went over to her and thanked her for her contribution, let her sniff the seed packet, which she did with great interest, partly backfilled her crater, and then scattered the last of the flower seeds in that loose earth before covering them lightly with more earth. The dog and I had a cuddle and an impromptu game, and then we both went on our way, walking a loop of bush tracks and enjoying each other, the sun and air, the ground beneath our feet and the sky above and the life all around us.











http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/6748072-3x2-940x627.jpg










_To see the other forms of life to which our girls are now contributing out on the conservation reserve, here is a selection of beautiful flora and fauna amongst which they now are:_

Red Moon Sanctuary Flora and Fauna







_A song which conveys what I wanted to with these words. If the embedded video doesn't work, click the direct YouTube link._


​


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## Knave

Beautiful


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## frlsgirl

What ^^ Knave said. Wiping tears away. What a great idea to plant some wildflowers.


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## egrogan

@*SueC* , I missed the tribute to the chestnut mare when you first posted it, but I too was fighting back tears (and I am not a crier!)

What a lovely memorial for a lovely mare.


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## SueC

@Knave, @frlsgirl, @egrogan - thank you for your kind comments. :hug: Everyone who loves also has to deal with loss as some point, and I hope that what I've written will give some comfort and catharsis to others who have faced loss, or fear facing losses. I also sent it to my _Grass Roots_ editor subsequently because the Australian GR community is almost entirely animal mad. My editor's favourites are chickens, turkeys, anything poultry really, and sheep; and as the old Yorkshire saying goes, everyone who has livestock will at some point have dead stock.

Bob Geldof wrote in one of his songs, "Mortality is a small price to pay for existence." I've learnt that it's better to really witness and celebrate the shooting star and all that it leaves in its wake after it goes out, than to stress out about the fact that it's going to go out - do that and you miss the present by contemplating the future which hasn't arrived yet, and you miss the light of the moment.

Wishing all of you and all of your four-legged friends long and happy lives with the sun shining on you.


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## SueC

Well, I picked a fine time to ride today. That will teach me not to check the radar immediately before riding in our South Coast winter. I'd already checked it first thing in the morning, the forecast was scattered showers. By the time I went out the sun was shining and nothing particularly black was approaching on the horizon, so I took the rugs off the horses (except old Romeo) for the first time in two days - a storm front prevented it before - and bid them all enjoy the fresh air and sun on their skin. And then Sunsmart and I went riding. :cowboy:

Ever noticed how horses are so much better at weather forecasting than we are? Sunsmart was going, "Hmmmm, I don't know. Are you sure about this?" And I blithely told him, "It'll be fine. We'll get a little drizzle, and it will clear up again."

:rofl:

I am sitting huddled in front of the fire with the laptop, and with two meals and a hot chocolate inside of me, and am only just getting warm again.

Here are some photos of winter in our region. Depending on your browser, you may need to click on the links to see them. In Pale Moon, you should see all of them.

_Another hack I've recently discovered if you can't see the photos in Firefox: Try hitting "Quote" and then the *back* button top left in the browser menu, and the photos magically reveal. Until you refresh the page! 
_








http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_5198.jpg









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_5278.jpg









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_5286.jpg

And people from abroad say, "Oh, I don't know what you are worried about, you don't have snow or blizzards!" :rofl:

They've never experienced the bone-chilling nature of the winds blasting straight from the Antarctic. I grew up in snow, till I was 11. I never got this cold in snow - all you had to do was keep moving. I also never got this cold when we were climbing Cradle Mountain in the snow on our earlier adventures:









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/cradlemnt.jpg









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_4013.jpg

Yes, well, our winter does look rather more innocent than this, but this is deceptive. Let me just lull you into a false sense of security again with a few more photos of our South Coast winter:









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/stirlingsfront_01.jpg









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/stirlingsfront_02.jpg









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_5622.jpg

Brett in the foreground there leaning against the rock with the beanie pulled low.

...so, as I said, I went riding. :cowboy:

As we got to our central sand track, the drizzle set in, and I said to my horse, "Isn't it a good thing neither of us will dissolve? And that you look like a grizzly bear this winter?" The horse, obviously being better informed than me, was still going, "Hmmmm, special-needs monkey, I don't know, you seem too chirpy to me for what's coming."

By the time we were in our neighbours' place, the drizzle turned to rain. I cheerfully opined, "That's OK, Smartibartfast, it will blow over soon!" And off we went down the neighbour's central swamp track. The rain got heavier, and we started diverting to the various cow paths in the bush to get a bit of shelter. And so we went on, wending our way. The saddle was now wet, my cotton-elastane riding pants were wet, my polypropylene long-sleeved thermal sleeves were wet; thankfully I was wearing the waterproof Storm-Tech endurance vest a kind soul from the US sent me as a present last year, so at least that part was dry. As was my head, under the helmet; although it was dripping from the visor in a steady stream.

It dawned on me that we weren't going to get that extended ride to Verne Road and all around today. _Finally the monkey gets it_, thought my horse, audibly, as I turned him right towards the stock dam and the road home again. As we came out on the unprotected hillside, a howling blast with a fetch of several miles nearly blew us away, and angled sheets of rain were patterning the wide open sky. "Shall we run home?" was my enquiry to my steed, who obliged, clearly thinking colourful thoughts about the whole matter.

And so we ran home, our speedy return only broken briefly by the necessity of dealing with the hot wire and swinging the access gate shut again. All the while I was conjuring up for him what a nice extra meal he would get for his troubles today and how I was going to towel-dry him and rug him again so he wouldn't chill.

Julian and Chasseur were expecting us at the pasture end. "You gonna open that gate back to the inner paddocks? You got our rugs anywhere?"

It took only seconds to get the saddle and bridle off Sunsmart, turn him loose, and get three bowls with an extra hard feed for each of the dears - a litre of oats and half a litre of cubes each. I had a trilogy of grateful dining guests (Romeo was still having his extended breakfast in the garden) whom I towel dried and re-rugged in turn. I was dripping like a drowned rat and cringing against the icy, wet Antarctic blasts while my teeth chattered.

Chasseur and Julian, like many horses from the racehorse breeds, both lack the genetics for a decent winter coat. Chasseur is in summer coat year round, Julian makes very tiny seasonal adjustments, and so both of them are dependent on being sheltered from wind and rain. Both of them were just beginning to have muscle shakes, but the hard feed and rugging nipped it in the bud. And then, and only then, was it my turn to do something about the state I was in. I hung my saturated clothes off the undercover line, ran into the house, towel dried myself frantically, got into my thick thermal mountain climbing pants, fleece-lined booties, a dry top and jumper, and quickly made a fire while re-heating some Seafood Spaghetti we'd made last night, with our own tomatoes and herbs.

Owing to the state I was in, I added two hunks of mozzarella to the top to melt into the dish as it re-heated, and ate my lunch. However, it was clear the horses weren't the only ones in need of an extra hard feed today, so I had some supplementary kangaroo stew, and a hot chocolate for afters. Then I finally felt comfortable again. 

Yes, well, I really should have listened to my horse. :rofl:


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## gottatrot

SueC said:


> Ever noticed how horses are so much better at weather forecasting than we are? Sunsmart was going, "Hmmmm, I don't know. Are you sure about this?" And I blithely told him, "It'll be fine. We'll get a little drizzle, and it will clear up again."


My sister and I have a favorite quote from the movie Sense and Sensibility: "You always say it's not going to rain, and then it always does!" She uses it to point out my overly optimistic nature.



SueC said:


> As we got to our central sand track, the drizzle set in, and I said to my horse, "Isn't it a good thing neither of us will dissolve? And that you look like a grizzly bear this winter?" The horse, obviously being better informed than me, was still going, "Hmmmm, special-needs monkey, I don't know, you seem too chirpy to me for what's coming."


"Special-needs monkey." :lol:I know that's what my horses think of me sometimes too.



SueC said:


> As we came out on the unprotected hillside, a howling blast with a fetch of several miles nearly blew us away, and angled sheets of rain were patterning the wide open sky. "Shall we run home?" was my enquiry to my steed, who obliged, clearly thinking colourful thoughts about the whole matter.





SueC said:


> And so we ran home, our speedy return only broken briefly by the necessity of dealing with the hot wire and swinging the access gate shut again.





SueC said:


> However, it was clear the horses weren't the only ones in need of an extra hard feed today...


Ha ha, this entire post was great!! I can so relate. Especially to the "monkey" trying to convince the skeptical horse, the "oops, now we run for home" (which by the way, I believe horses completely understand and I've never had a horse take advantage later if we've had to run for home to avoid a storm or get to work on time). And needing "hard feed" after!!


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## bsms

SueC said:


> ...The horse, obviously being better informed than me, was still going, "Hmmmm, special-needs monkey, I don't know, you seem too chirpy to me for what's coming."...


I've noticed Bandit dislikes - is bothered? - by seeing humans walking along the road. It isn't that he is afraid OF them. More like he is worried FOR them. In his heart, I think he believes humans aren't competent to leave our 'corrals' without an equine supervisor.

He is obviously aware that his senses of smell and hearing are far superior to mine. I think he views a human walking around on their own the way I would if I saw a blind man, cane-less and without a dog, feeling his way across the desert with his toe. He is slowly getting used to the idea it happens, but he seems to think, "_Special-needs monkey, if I find your horse, I'm going to kick his butt for letting you wander around without him! He needs to buy you a leash AND USE IT!_"

PS: People talk about horses needing to trust our judgment. Bandit is OK with my judgment. It is my awareness he questions! Once he knows I'm eyes-on, and thinking about something, he's pretty good at listening to my suggestions - after all, he's a grown horse and not some baby, so they are SUGGESTIONS - about how to handle it. But until he knows I've seen it and processed it...well, he has to handle things alone.

And the thing is, he's right! I can't chase him around a small corral and change his mind. Every time we ride, he has repeated examples of my near total - by horse standards - lack of awareness of my surroundings. *He's not "spooky". He's just smart enough to know I'd blunder into trouble without his help!*


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## bsms

BTW - I couldn't see your pictures, SueC, until I posted a response. Then the pictures appeared like magic!

Also: In Wyoming, they talk about a "Lazy Wind". A lazy wind can't be bothered to go around you, so it just goes through you! And if the Lazy Wind is carrying rain...


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## SueC

bsms said:


> I've noticed Bandit dislikes - is bothered? - by seeing humans walking along the road. It isn't that he is afraid OF them. More like he is worried FOR them. In his heart, I think he believes humans aren't competent to leave our 'corrals' without an equine supervisor.


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

All the best comedy is based on underlying truth. That's why I love dear departed Dave Allen, bless his soul.






In all seriousness, it really is such a pity that many people working with horses just don't get this - just don't understand their perspective as a sensible prey animal and excellent observer or nature, but rather treat them as ignorant and wayward children you couldn't possibly learn anything from. Which, by the way, is also an underestimation of children, including very young children. 

PS: I always include hyperlinks to http:// photos now for direct viewing in case they draw an HF blank in someone's browser. I still think $50/year for adding the "s" is too steep... And as you've found out, the photos all show up in reply mode anyway. 

@gottatrot : :rofl: I can always tell when people have spent many years in nature on horseback!


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## frlsgirl

I was told to watch the cows in the pasture; if they are laying down it's going to rain. If only half of them are laying down it's going to be partly cloudy 

Lovely scenery in Australia; I would love to visit this place one day (it's on my bucket list) but it probably won't happen until I'm retired.


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## gottatrot

frlsgirl said:


> Lovely scenery in Australia; I would love to visit this place one day (it's on my bucket list) but it probably won't happen until I'm retired.


You should go, it is beautiful! I think I neglected to answer when @SueC asked me about visiting - you just reminded me. 

We only visited Western Australia, and landed in Perth. We visited a lot of the coastline, a bit of the interior, and went as far south as Esperance and north to just above Exmouth. We went in 2014, and were there about two weeks. 

Highlights were seeing koalas in the trees, beautiful cockatoos flying around, riding horses in Kalbarri, the beautiful beaches, cliffs, rock formations, the color of the soil and sky, the smell of the Eucalyptus trees, emus and kangaroos running across our path. Feeding dolphins at Monkey Mia. It was beautiful and amazing country.

Two pieces of advice if you visit: it can be colder than expected from the photos. In Esperance and some other places it was very windy and a jacket was useful (in April). Also _do not_ try driving at night, because the kangaroos are impossible to miss, even if you drive slowly and carefully. We hit one with our rental car, which not only took out the electrical and got us stranded overnight in the outback, but also was very sad since we killed it.


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## bsms

I visited Darwin years ago. The RAAF had just received F-18s and we got to go fly against them for a couple of weeks in our F-4s. 12 hour work days, so we mostly saw that part of Australia from the air. But it was a good reminder at just how BIG Australia is! It is like someone from England visiting Boston and thinking they have "seen America"!








​ 









​We did get to visit Kakadu National Park - for one day. My sister-in-law now lives in Melbourne...maybe we'll make it for a visit someday.​


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## gottatrot

bsms said:


> But it was a good reminder at just how BIG Australia is! It is like someone from England visiting Boston and thinking they have "seen America"!


That must have been incredible, seeing the country from the air. Darwin is difficult to get to, way up there.

This reminds me of running into a tourist from Italy at a truck stop in Nevada. He was confused by the row of coffee dispensers and the cup sizes. Apparently he was used to small shots of coffee, so we explained there was a lot of water in it, which was why the cups were so big. 
He was asking how far it was to Yosemite, and we said maybe two hundred miles. It was funny to see him processing that distance, he said, two..._hundred_? But we explained that would not take very long, on this type of road and the speed he could drive.
DH said that distance would cover a good portion of Italy. 

In Australia we could drive more than a hundred miles without seeing a building.


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## bsms

We once had a German exchange student stay with us. My kids introduced him to a glorious concept: "Free Refills". He had a soda. 8 times. Then learned what happens when you drink 8 medium sodas in a row...

Good thing the restroom was free, too!


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## SueC

I'll tell you all a joke the Germans tell about the Americans.


A Bavarian dairy farmer was hosting weekly farm tours for interested people, and one day a Texan turned up. The tour progressed rather quickly around the Bavarian guy's 100 acre dairy farm, back to the milking shed. At this point, the Texan spoke up. (And the original joke has him speaking this in really bad German, which makes it funnier.)

"Back at home, on my ranch, if I get in my car in the morning and start driving around the perimeter, I'll still be driving around my perimeter at nightfall, I won't be anywhere near the farmhouse yet."

And the Bavarian makes a sympathetic face and says, "Yeah, I had a crap car like that once too!"


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## SueC

No riding today, unfortunately, as my day was bookended by town visits. So, Jess and I walked around Lake Seppings:



















Here's a view of where it sits in the coastline:










It's a half hour walk, and I often do this walk in between dropping Brett off and my own town chores. Today was haircut time for me, so my vision has now noticeably improved. There is this saying I love:

_We are only a haircut and three meals away from savagery._

After that, I bought Romeo a new winter rug. His old maroon one is now nine years old, and didn't re-waterproof properly for this season because the fabric itself is too weathered. Old rug:



This is the catalogue photo of his new rug. I'll have to get a photo of him wearing it soon!










We'd had two real cold fronts come in this week, with lots of rain and icy winds, and I had noticed on an under-rug temperature check that Romeo's hip bones were cold because of water seepage - the muscles themselves were warm. Still, he's 33, it may well be his last winter, and I want him to be toasty warm, including the hip bones, all winter.

I put the rug on him for the first time at evening feedtime. Ten minutes later, the temperature check showed everything warm underneath, including the hip bones. Lovely! 


@*bsms* : Never mind the bathroom, how's his pancreas? :shock: 

Ah, you've been to Darwin! And Kakadu, that's a good spot judging by the photos! I can't stand hot weather and have never been north of Yanchep on the West Coast, or Newcastle on the East Coast. But Brett and I have been to Tasmania, a temperate island state with vast wilderness areas, many times!

Did you catch that travel series where Stephen Fry was driving through the whole of the US, every state, in a black London taxicab? That actually made me realise that the real US is very different from what we generally see portrayed on TV, which is mostly focusing on cities and towns, and lots of ugly concrete jungle images with traffic jams and overhead power lines and billboards. Landscape-wise, it's actually got vast amounts of amazing scenery, and it's very diverse. One of the things that we really enjoyed about the series _Breaking Bad_ was the way they captured the beauty of the arid areas of the US. I also see that on your hiking photos and clips!

Great comparison map. I actually didn't realise Australia was basically the same size as the US, I thought we were smaller!

@*frlsgirl* : My husband is forever saying that about cows and the weather! :rofl: We find having our own place with horses on it rather restricts our travelling these days; but we're OK with that for now. However, we are now in a position to host friends, so when you get around to your bucket list you can come and stay with us too, and get a bit of a horse fix to tide you over on your travels! 

@*gottatrot* : In 2014! Now I will need a TARDIS. Glad you enjoyed Western Australia, it does have some pretty spectacular scenery, and amazing flora and wildlife. I actually remember the most about coming back to Australia after months working in the UK back in 1998, stepping off the plane and being hit with an overwhelming smell of eucalyptus in the air.

You don't notice it as much when you're always exposed to it. Sort of like, I can be baking something and go outside for half an hour, and on returning to the house I go, "Mmmmmh, smells like a bakery!" even though the smell was actually there before as well.

A trick for the kangaroos: There are special ultrasonic whistles you can get to attach to the car, which repel kangaroos. We've not hit one since using them, more than ten years. It also helps to sound your horn when travelling through kangaroo areas in twilight hours.


*General question*: A friend of mine went on student exchange to the US in the late 1980s and said there was cheese in spray cans in the US. Is this for real? And if so, what on earth do you do with it?


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## SueC

Here's a little translation project I've been working on, about an alternative riding school in Germany that started in the 1970s. It's from a 1982 Riding Handbook I bought as a young rider. (_Reiter-Taschenbuch 1982: Der Nachschlagkalender f__ür alle Pferdefreunde_, Ennslin & Leiblin, Reutlingen, Germany)

If your browser doesn't display these photos, _Pale Moon_ will; or your can click on the hyperlinks to see the photos at the source.



*WOODEN HORSE, NECK RING AND 400 SLIDES:
LEARNING TO RIDE IN REKEN
*
_by Christa Schütt, 1982_

Learn to ride in 11 days!

When I heard of these courses for the first time, I shook my head mockingly, felt superior and grumbled, “Rubbish!”

Back then, I could look back on fifteen years of riding experience – not bad. Despite this, I still didn't imagine I _knew_ how to ride (and anyway, who exactly may claim that they _know_ how to ride?). So why should a raw beginner take less than two weeks to achieve something that had taken me years? That couldn't be right. There had to be a catch, because even my friends and riding colleagues were saying, “It's just not possible.”

And yet I kept hearing about these 11-day courses. I saw photographs of the wooden horse “Hector”, of neck rings, and of riders sitting on horseback in a slightly strange position, grinning merrily into the camera. I read enthusiastic testimonials from people who had been to Reken; and critical, sometimes even malevolent, comments from the circle of equestrian experts.

Where there was so much praise and condemnation, there had to be something going on, I thought. In any case, these conflicting comments piqued my (already well developed) curiosity. I made a snap decision to enrol in one of these 11-day courses, and in April 1980, I drove to Reken in order to get to the bottom of this.

“Ursula Bruns Centre” was my destination.

My very first look at the grounds told me that this would be a different experience to all the other riding courses I had ever done. And those were quite a few.

In Reken, there were no long, manicured stable rows, no asphalted parking lots, no grand painted signs to greet the visitor. Instead, there was a welcoming committee of horses.









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_01.jpg

On my arrival, an assortment of all sizes and colours were standing, lying and moving around the yard. There were at least twenty horses and ponies, curiously looking in my direction, as I walked between them to sign in. Because there is no other way onto the property except through this yard. So whether it's wanted or not, every course participant has close contact with all the horses from the very first minute. 

*Day One* began with an extensive conversation, to which all participants and the entire “crew” contributed, and which was enjoyed all around. In this friendly, relaxed atmosphere, inhibitions were starting to fade away, long before the actual lessons.

Everybody in the circle was encouraged to introduce themselves, relate why they had come to Reken at all, where their own problems and difficulties lay, what was hoped for and expected from the course. Whenever the well threatened to dry up, Ursula Bruns (referred to as UB, which she prefers and which is practically a livestock brand) helped it along again by asking targeted questions. At the end, everybody knew a whole lot about everbody else, and the crew had found salient starting points for successful work with this particular group.

Following on from this ice-breaker, we hiked all around the property, in order to inspect the premises. The riding centre consists mostly of grazing fields, exercise yards and walk in/walk out shelters, distributed in a well-planned, thoughtful manner. Areas central to the riding course are the arena, the oval ring, the slide room and the “landlubbers' exercise area” - a concrete slab with a roof over it.

In the arena, we were introduced to “our” horses – in snaffles, curbs, bosals, halters, neck rings etc. Each one had the headgear, bit and saddle that it liked best. - At this point, even the dullest person would have noticed that horseriding lessons in Reken are unconventional, and not “Scheme A”.

Our first meeting with a horse's back was very funny. It was _not_: “This is how one gets on, this is how one sits, this is how one holds the reins, and now go to it!” The first “ride” – as almost everything in Reken – was very different from practices elsewhere.









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_02.jpg

There were ten of us in the course, and we were now divided into two groups: The big ones and the small ones (or alternatively, the long ones and the short ones!). Each group got a horse to practice with. It looked like this: One person led the horse by the lead rope on its left-hand side, one person walked on the right with their hand in the halter, one person was was lifted on the horse's bare back, and the two other people in the group walked to the rider's right and left, offering moral support. - I know, this sounds pretty laughable, and I felt very silly during this initial exercise. But one must not forget the fact that Ursula Bruns developed this method for absolute beginners with no previous contact with horses – and for the often totally tense and nervous riding school casualties. By which I mean no adverse commentary on _good_ riding schools! How important and how right this “group game” is for a complete beginner becomes really obvious when you see tense muscles relax, fearful faces begin to beam, and the enthusiasm with which the exercises are then carried out. In this half hour, the foundation stone is laid for the most important thing of all: Trust in the horse!









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_03.jpg

In the afternoon we assembled in the “landlubbers' exercise area” to learn special gymnastic and stretching exercises with which we would begin each day from then on. All these exercises were directly related to horse riding (but we only really noticed this later), and they were incredibly enjoyable. Here, and elsewhere, we laughed and joked while simultaneously working with great dedication.









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_06.jpg

Following on from this we went to the slide room, for a presentation on grooming. When we stepped back outside, the horses were awaiting us at the tie-downs, and everybody had the opportunity to put what they had just learnt into practice. And that was the end of Day One.

Was that all? That was all – but it was really a huge amount. Crossing the horse yard many, many times, sensing horses before, behind and next to yourself. Leading horses, touching them, caring for them. Sensing their warm coats under your hands and against your legs, a little fear still mixed with the comforting feeling of their gentle movements. A whole world, for a beginner.









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_04.jpg

On *Day Two* everybody, including the complete beginners in the group, was much more courageous, and the continuous exposure to horses had become normal. On this morning's programme was a slide presentation on “spring cleaning” your horse – especially important for horses with 24/7 access to the outdoors. This included correctly picking up horse feet, and the care of hooves. Next we heard about correct haltering and leading. And as always in Reken, after watching the slides, everything was immediately tried out in practice.

Following that, we made acquaintance with the two wooden horses, Aphrodite and Helena. These two are indispensable in Reken. Patiently they stand on their thick wooden legs and accept the mounting attempts of “newbie” riders. Which living horse would develop their endurance?









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_07.jpg









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_08.jpg









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_09.jpg









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_10.jpg

In Reken, the method for getting on a horse is different to the standard method taught in traditional German riding schools. Instead of facing the backwards, one faces in the same direction as the horse. The left hand takes reins and mane, the right hand stretches over the top of the horse to grasp the top part of the right saddle flap, and in constant body contact with the horse one slides over and lands unbelievably gently in the saddle.









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_05.jpg

I had more difficulty with this exercise than the beginners; after all, I had mounted differently for fifteen years. How happy and thankful I was for Helena's patience! A living horse would have suffered considerably from my practice runs.

Only when the whole group had mastered smooth mounting were we let loose on the horses. Under the supervision of our instructors Maria and Berndt and additional helpers from the “crew” we practiced with laughter and pleasure – and very seriously all the same. And the horses, who had been spared the worst, stood quietly and nicely for us.

A long presentation on putting a saddle on correctly, and saddles in general, concluded the day. Had I really come to ride horses? It kind of didn't look like it, but this didn't bother me at all. I was even more curious than on the first day to discover the system of instruction utilised here. So patience, patience!


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## SueC

http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_11.jpg

*Day Three* brought the first lesson in the oval ring: Walking on and halting with the neck ring. Everything was recorded on the video camera (which from this point on documented everything), in order to be re-played on the big screen later. With the neck ring too I had far more difficulty than the beginners, who didn't need re-educating. How difficult it is to forget and leave behind prior education for a few days!

 
I swore to myself quietly and with determination; and, driven by ambition, tried to discover the knack behind this darned neck ring equitation. (More on that in the appendix.)

 
The most important lesson on *Day Four* was cueing by shifting your bodyweight; beginning on the wooden horses (of course), then in the ring, with horses “bridled” merely with a halter and lead rope. Our practice game was riding around drums, to the left, to the right – a real slalom. Even a water obstacle at the finish! Slight pulls on the lead to the right, taking the body along into the movement – astonishing, one got around the drum. Now the same thing, but to the left – it worked. With this important experience of success, we went to lunch.

 On *Day Five*, we (finally?) worked on real riding: Trotting (in Reken, posting the trot and to two-pointing the canter and gallop are standard) on the wooden horses until the movements were learnt, then in the oval ring. For me, the enthusiasm with which complete beginners (who hadn't even dared to touch a horse five days previously) went to work on this was fascinating – as was how easily and quickly they synchronised with the movements of the horses.









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_13.jpg









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_12.jpg

 In the afternoon, the first canter (half a lap of the oval ring) was on the agenda. It was the same experience as in the morning: How is this possible? A total of less than three hours on horseback and cantering without inhibitions, _without hanging in the reins_! Absolute beginners!

 I will break off my detailed report on this course now, otherwise this entire Rider's Pocket Book will only be about Reken. But I do wish to draw some conclusions here.

Firstly I wish to admit that I didn't drive to Reken without a fair bit of skepticism. I observed the course, as well as the horses, the educators and the participants, critically and with open eyes. I was more than ready to identify and reveal every weak point – but I couldn't find one.

 Many things that I saw made me think, and in the positive sense. There is much that I will surely take home with me and apply, as well as pass on. Even without wooden horses and video cameras, which in the BB-method are an integral part of a thorough education.

The name “BB-method” wasn't pulled out of a hat. Ursula Bruns and Inge Behr have for many years developed, tried and tested that which they teach on a myriad of beginners, studying the results and the successes. The first seventy participants had to certify in writing that they had never, ever ridden before.

 Ursula Bruns also calls this method “easy riding”. It is easy in every sense: Easy for the body, head and hands of the rider; easy in the method of instruction; easy through the merriness, the laughter and the cooperation of the group; easy through the infinite patience of the educators and the amount of time everybody has for everybody else; easy because of the highly educated horses that never spend much more than one hour a day in riding lessons; easy because you learn to _see_, and to recognise your own and other people's mistakes; easy also because everyone in the crew strives always for people to _understand_ why they are doing certain things a certain way.

I am sure I saw this course from a different perspective to the average participant. I had come with the firm resolution to write about it. Especially the two absolute beginners in the group were under my keen observation. The progress they made in a matter of days was remarkable.

Day 1 – first meeting, Day 3 – first riding, Day 5 – first canter, Day 8 – first jump, Day 9 – trail riding on local trails. And none of this on blunted school horses which had become numb and apathetic about riders' aids. All the school horses in Reken respond _only_ to the right aids, as taught to them carefully and with love during their saddle education. They are not stubborn, they are very careful with their charges.









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http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_15.jpg

Thanks to 24/7 access to the outdoors and their large social group, the horses are all laid-back and relaxed, but wide-awake under saddle. It is great fun to ride in Reken. And it is great fun to learn to ride in Reken; we continued to acknowledge this to each other with beaming expressions.

When we left the riding centre at night, this was not the end of the working day for the crew. They sometimes sat together for hours still, talking about the day. Every weakness still needing remedy, every problem experienced by a participant was discussed. How could one explain mounting better to X, how could one show correct riding of the canter more clearly to Y. Questions about questions.
 
Without this openness to constructive criticism and self-criticism, the teaching/learning system in Reken would perhaps be only half as successful. Where there is so much reflecting and thinking through, something reasonable simply has to be the result. And it is!

 And if you've been to Reken, you will know a whole lot (more) about horses, their behaviour, and their needs afterwards.









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_16.jpg


*Appendix 1 – The Oval Ring in Reken*

Egg-shaped, 18m wide, 36m long, 2.5m wide track. Fenced to the outside with posts and rails, approx. 1.3m high; track delineated on the inside with small plastic posts and plastic chain, approx. 0.6m high.

The horses can stretch out to canter the long sides without being tempted to race. They can turn around comfortably. And, of especial importance, cornering is completely eliminated on this track. The horses move evenly and with concentration on the given track. 
*








*http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_16b.jpg*


Appendix 2 – Ursula Bruns*









 
Ursula Bruns passes on her expertise and experience (gathered on 2000 horses across 4 continents) with full and open hands. She makes no ivory tower out of it.

She wants to include horses in the environment – not to encapsulate them in closed stable blocks and arenas. Ursula Bruns specialises in fostering a real partnership and complete harmony between the horse and the recreational rider.

 That an 11-day course in horse riding will not allow one to be a perfect rider is patently clear. But, the practical outcome of being able to ride _securely_ through the countryside on schooled horses with an educated leader at all paces was definitely achieved.

 The knowledge that is passed on in Reken is a foundation; a basis on which everyone can build for themselves.

 Because they now know what it's all about.

 
_Translator's note __(from SueC)_: Ursula Bruns died in 2016, but her riding centre still exists more than 36 years after this article was originally written, and you can look it up here:

Reit-Zentrum Reken: Reitkurse Freizeitreiter: Anfänger, Fortgeschrittene, Wiedereinsteiger 

I was ten years old when I first read this article, and riding a French Trotter mare. As a young rider, I was really influenced by these ideas, which were borne out both with my own continuing experience with horses, and by my formal academic study of the Biological Sciences – particularly animal behaviour and physiology. As a nature buff from birth, I simply loved my coursework and was awarded the best graduate prize for my degree programme back in 1991. Everything I learnt, and continue to learn, I integrated. Other people with whom I feel a great kinship as a natural science specialist and general human being include Jane Goodall (of course), her equine colleague, Marthe Kiley-Worthington, and _*anybody*_ who approaches horses with respect and love, has an open and enquiring mind, self-educates broadly and deeply, thinks things through very carefully, continues to observe, experiment and learn (including from mistakes), likes to collaborate with others, will not be contained within a box, and never thinks they have “arrived”. There is a significant number of people I've met on HF who fully answer that description, and as a geographically isolated person living in the Australian bush away from everyday contact with other riders, I am very grateful for these people, and my contact with them. 

 Now I just wish I had a TARDIS and could ride with _y'all_. 

 Two longer appendices to follow, probably next week!


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## SueC

:cowboy: This last post ended up posting three times in a row, mysteriously!

Some of the hyperlinks also didn't end up working, so just insert the jpg numbers you want into the URL of the last one that works. With all the kerfuffle of a mysterious triple post to remove, I couldn't get to fixing that in time!


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## SueC

End of transmission for now and thoughts welcome! 

Personally, I learnt in a more conventional riding school as a child, and ended up with a good foundation, but I do think this alternative method is better for horse and rider, and especially for adult learners who have never been on a horse before. I like the way these people build skills step by step, and before people even get on a horse.

I also really like that their horses are never locked into stable blocks, and that they have a relatively large social group.

And just in postscript, I was really amused when I realised that the Reken mounting method is exactly what I do, and that I've been doing it since I originally read this article. I now remember trying it out as a kid after reading the handbook, and finding it easier on the horse and on me than the original method taught to me in my riding school, which involved facing backwards and swinging your leg to get momentum up, and twisting in mid-air.


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## bsms

​ 

Never tried it, myself. Not because I consider it beneath me. I actually LIKE Red Baron pizza and Double Cheeseburgers from McDonald's value menu (2 cost $3 and fill me up). I spent 2 1/2 decades in the military. I have no illusions about my culinary tastes! I just have never felt a need to try cheese in a can.

Read the first post about Reken. I think my dislike for how riding is often taught bothers a lot of people. I suspect many on HF have given formal lessons. Many certainly are passionate about TAKING formal lessons, weekly, for years. I suppose if I had sunk $10,000+ on weekly lessons, I wouldn't want to hear some backyard rider telling me I had wasted my money!

But riding a horse basically has two aspects: balance (staying on and moving with the horse) and psychology (understanding the horse). The first should not be that hard. Really. If someone offered private lessons in bicycle riding, and told students they would need YEARS of regular lessons to learn to balance on a bike, we would all laugh ourselves silly and call them charlatans!

Now, suppose everyone who wanted to ride a bike wanted to ride like this:






I think we will all grant someone doesn't just buy a bicycle and start riding like that! But most people don't want to, either. At the recreational riding level, bike riding just isn't that hard, and neither is learning enough to safely and enjoyably ride horses at the average recreational level! Not in terms of balance.

Psychology? The lessons I took ignored that aspect. Almost no books on riding discuss it either. 

*How do you motivate your horse to want what you want?*​
The standard answer seems to be "Carry a crop. Beat him if he doesn't." :evil:

Seriously, so many books and videos and articles all seem to boil down to that. Make doing what you want less objectionable than doing anything else. "_Make the right thing hard and the wrong thing harder!_" *Let the horse choose the path of least misery.*

It seems it is all rooted in fear - OUR fear. And from the first post, it sounds like that is part of what Reken was trying to do - to remove the fear of horses. We fear, so we control OUR fear by insisting on total control of the horse. We solve our issues of worrying about what the power of a horse might do to us by insisting on total domination. Body control. How often have I read or heard that we need to be able to control exactly where the horse puts every foot - as though that is possible, let alone desirable?

I think a vastly better approach is trusting the horse. Yes, the horse will sometimes act in unhelpful ways. A huge part of learning to ride ought to be _"How to stay on and not loose your cool when the horse does something unexpected"_! But traditional riding is geared to preventing the horse from EVER doing anything unexpected, so the rider won't NEED to ride anything out.

I just did a picture search for "horses proper riding position". These were on the first page of results:








​ 






​ 
That is so obviously the correct way to sit on a horse - who isn't moving! It is an OK way to sit on a very predictable horse. But it seems obvious to me that it is NOT the way to sit on a horse who has a mind of his own. It is like standing in the back of a pickup. Standing straight up IS balanced, as long as the pickup never moves. Once it starts moving, changing speeds and changing directions, it is OBVIOUS the "rider" cannot just stand straight up!

It seems to me someone having FUN on a horse figures out balance on their own fast enough. Provided no one teaches them bad balance first.

I have fond memories of a guy who came out for his first ride. He had never touched a horse before. His friend rode Bandit. He rode Trooper while my daughter rode Cowboy. He got 5 minutes of very basic instruction, including to drop the reins if things went too far wrong. Then the three of them went out. When they returned 3 hours later, he had done W/T/C on paved roads, dirt roads, trails and off trail. No one told him he needed 6 months of weekly lessons, minimum, before riding a good horse outside of an arena.

He also watched his experienced friend have a few issues with Bandit, learning the importance of working WITH the horse instead of IMPOSING on the horse.

Personally, I think that is how people OUGHT to learn to ride. Go out with friends, on an exceptionally sane horse, and learn to trust the horse. I think we TEACH fear, and then teach domination to control the fear we've taught.

< / rant >. Thank you, SueC, for providing a place to discuss things. Even if I am totally wrong, discussing it cannot be. How else can I learn? How can anyone, if we cannot discuss ideas freely?


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## egrogan

bsms said:


> At the recreational riding level, bike riding just isn't that hard, and neither is learning enough to safely and enjoyably ride horses at the average recreational level! Not in terms of balance.



Confession.


I've never ridden a bike.


:hide:


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## bsms

I spent many hours riding my bike. It was my escape. My Mom didn't worry about me going bike riding, although I didn't tell her I was sometimes riding 20+ miles...

Although she did have to take notice when I was 7 and tried to ride my bike off the roof of our house. Tried? I did ride it off the roof of our house! But the landing sure hurt!


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## SueC

I think that's a really good point about fear and control, @*bsms* . Conventional riding schools may work better for children than for adult beginners in part because children weigh less and bother horses less when they are unbalanced, and in part because children are often so delirious just to be on a horse's back, and so lacking in a sense of their own mortality, that they tend to have less fear than beginning adults do.

The very first horse I rode for my first lesson was a nearly 17hh Warmblood mare called Viola, who was a head-tosser on account of being uncomfortable in a snaffle - and who had wounded lips at the contact points, and should have been bitless at least until healed, and then tried in something different. I was barely nine years old and a bony little lightweight. Once I actually figured out a way to get on her back, I had a brief fright at how high up I was before falling off again within the same minute, as the mare trotted off tossing her head. Well, I do remember that hurt, but I got falling off out of the way in Lesson One, and the devil you know is less scary than an unknown devil. I was helped to the top of that horse again this time (probably just to ensure I got on again ASAP and didn't get much time to be apprehensive) and all I distinctly remember after that is how disappointing it was to trot, because of how rattly it was!

I was still a pretty green rider when I started riding the French mare less than half a year after starting lessons, and I think it was being on this fantastic horse that got rid of any last vestiges of fear to do with riding. I learnt to trust horses...

I also rode many hours on her by myself through the countryside, and later with my Arabian mare. I didn't tell my parents where I was riding to, or the distances. As far as they were concerned, I might as well have been doing laps of their farm, which I didn't like to do as it was consummately boring compared to proper exploration of the real world.

By that time, I no longer had a bicycle, because my father thought it was "dangerous" to ride bicycles around in Australia - even though he'd been fine with it when I was 6, and 7, and riding to my primary school in Europe like every other kid...

I got another bicycle donated to me as a mid-teen by a classmate who took pity on me. There was a hell of a row about it but nothing they could do because the bike wasn't kept on the farm. ;-) Funny you should talk about control... and funny how I have observed that *people's psychological pathologies tend to transfer into their behaviour to horses and humans alike.
*

@*egrogan* , I see you skipped the intermediate step and went straight for the gold standard in transportation! :cowboy:


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## SueC

@bsms, this reminds me of Expandafoam:










Except it doesn't seem to expand. Is it any good for fixing punctures?

Here's someone who mistook Expandafoam for hair styling mousse!










The luminous source and further information here:

Eastern European woman 'confuses builder?s foam with her hair mousse' | Daily Mail Online


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## egrogan

bsms said:


> It seems it is all rooted in fear - OUR fear. And from the first post, it sounds like that is part of what Reken was trying to do - to remove the fear of horses. We fear, so we control OUR fear by insisting on total control of the horse. We solve our issues of worrying about what the power of a horse might do to us by insisting on total domination. Body control. How often have I read or heard that we need to be able to control exactly where the horse puts every foot - as though that is possible, let alone desirable?
> 
> I think a vastly better approach is trusting the horse. Yes, the horse will sometimes act in unhelpful ways. A huge part of learning to ride ought to be _"How to stay on and not loose your cool when the horse does something unexpected"_! But traditional riding is geared to preventing the horse from EVER doing anything unexpected, so the rider won't NEED to ride anything out.


I had to marinate in this part a little and come back to it, because it hit a little close to home. I am a somewhat nervy rider. Thankfully I have kind, forgiving horses who are easy to be around. But I have to admit that sometimes when Fizz (or Izzy in the past) gets my anxiety hormones pumping, I have reacted out of impatience and fear. I've jerked on a rein. I've given a hard poke in the ribs with my heels. And those reactions are about me feeling out of control and taking it out on them. I'm not proud of that. When _my _brain stays in the "thinking" zone, it's no big deal if Fizz tries to back up as evasion. I wait her out, let her circle once in the direction she thinks she wants to go, and then ask her again. Every time I've ever done that, she goes where I ask. It's when she is backing in a place that scares me (into another horse on a narrow trail, down a drop off) that I try to growl at her or give her a kick, and that just makes her back up faster. 

I of course beat myself up overanalyzing these moments after the ride, and try to understand what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid of falling because it hurts, sure. For a long time, I was terribly afraid of the horse falling _on _me, and that happened this winter when Fizz fell on the ice. It _was_ as scary as I imagined, but we fortunately both walked away (even though my legs were shaking!). She wasn't doing anything wrong though, and there was nothing that I could have done differently when that happened. 

What I can't understand for myself is why sometimes she does basically the same exact behavior and it pumps up my anxiety while other times I can just laugh at her, roll my eyes, and keep going. Maybe it's ultimately unpredictability that is the most anxiety producing thing for me. It's hard for a control freak to suddenly end up feeling out of control...

@*SueC* - I thought you would appreciate this little wonder of nature unfolding in my yard and pasture. In the past week, these brilliant little wild strawberries have appeared everywhere. They are very tiny- maybe the size of a currant or small raisin- but they are the most _strawberry _strawberries I have ever tasted. You only need to eat one or two of them to be filled with the taste of strawberry long afterwards, like you ate a whole box of the stuff you get at the supermarket. They are hard to see down towards the ground under the long grass, but I have been walking around with my eyes to the ground to try not to miss them!


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## bsms

There may be fearless young riders, @egrogan. I doubt many adults are. I did a LITTLE riding when I was 20 and don't remember any fear...but age teaches us our mortality. It teaches how much things can hurt. When Mia was scared, she lost all thought of her surroundings. Stuff right in front of her? Yes. But things to the side or behind? She'd be backing fast toward a 10' drop, and I learned to pull HARD on the left rein (she turned better left) and spin her to face the cactus or drops she was about to take us over. THEN she would stop. I never had time to be scared DURING, but afterward?

I've jerked reins, cussed up a storm, kicked, had tantrums even. Mia scared me a lot of times. I don't think anyone behaves very admirably when scared. Maybe heroes do, but I wonder. When I was shot at (badly) over Iraq, I wasn't afraid. It was like being in a movie to me. I was curious about the ending, but not afraid. Over time, I realized that was a liability. Not something to admire. I read too many accident reports of guys still troubleshooting as their aircraft hit the ground. People would wonder why they didn't eject. Toward the end of my career, I understood. They were too much like me, curious about the ending but not really responding with an APPROPRIATE sense of fear. It is a flaw.

Horses are different. Horses have scared the daylights out of me, although bad things always seem to happen so fast that I mostly end up being afraid at the memory. And in the memory of my fear, I let anger take over. In my case, even after there is no reason for it. But riding has scared me more than I ever was flying.

What I heard during lessons and read in books seemed to focus on my controlling my horse, that where he puts his feet and how he moves is MY responsibility. I think that is a false teaching. And since it is false, it creates a disconnect that causes me fear. Because I know, in my heart of hearts, I cannot truly control any horse. I now think my responsibility is to try to teach him, incrementally, how to handle more and more things. My job is too keep him from being overwhelmed until we both have both built up to handling the problem.

I understand when people say you cannot trust a horse. But I also understand I must trust my horse. I'm not certain how to reconcile the two, though...


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## SueC

These posts are just amazing reading, @*bsms* and @*egrogan* . Thank you for sharing those experiences and thoughts. Chores to do and sun is shining, so goodnight to my US friends now and sleep well, and dream of nice rides! :cowboy:

PS: We had wild strawberries in Europe and it's exactly as you say, @egrogan! Enjoy enjoy enjoy!


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## SueC

This poem seems pretty topical here, so I thought I'd post it.


*The Road Not Taken*
_Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963_

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

_From The Poetry of Robert Frost by Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem._


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## frlsgirl

You're supposed to spray the cheese on crackers. Since I'm lactose intolerant and can only eat real high fat cheese, I've never tried it. I imagine it has a lot of of chemicals in it and is probably not good for you as is the case with most processed foods which are in abundance in the US. I suppose my German heritage is coming through here, we love real food 

Oh thank you kindly for the invite, I'll be sure to stop by if I ever get to that item on my bucket list.

We have a lot of barn sitters in the area who cover for barn owners when they go out of town; but give your remote location it's probably not that accessible to you.


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## SueC

@*frlsgirl* , maybe when we no longer have a special needs horse, we can travel again with a sitter. 

For the last four years we've been doing lots of TLC for our ancient gelding Romeo (almost 34) - those twice a day huge bucket feeds to mix up and get the moisture just right, for which he comes into our garden and then stays as long as he wants, and making sure he has the right rug on for conditions, since he is like a hundred-year-old human and needs help with regulating his temperature. But he's so happy, and still in reasonable condition, so we can't bring ourselves to put him down, not while he is still going around with a big smile on his face.

And that smile just got bigger because we bought him a new snuggly winter rug this week. The old one was getting leaky and worn, and I noticed he had cold hip bones under it. The new rug doesn't let a drop through and the quilting is super fluffy, so now everything is extra toasty, and he loves it! He's such an expressive horse. He's always putting his head on my chest for a big bear hug and he's a big cuddlebug. Just loves being brushed, and turns this way and that to tell me where he'd like more brushing.

Such a character. And he's always going around the house windows looking into them to see where we are! :rofl:


Morning Pleasantries I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Morning Pleasantries II – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Morning Pleasantries III – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

So what sorts of cheese can you eat? Is mozzarella too lean? Is Parmesan OK? Swiss cheese?


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## SueC

*A Walk With Julian*

Julian has been with us for over half a year now and is doing very well. He loves all the space and his social group, and actually grazing fulltime! He also loves discovering new things in this world. That's why he is always looking around at this and that, and going up the tracks a fair way by himself, and further if his friends come along.

It's also why he followed Sunsmart and me up the central sand track a few weeks ago when we were riding - with Chasseur in tow. A noise at the end of our track startled them so they ran back that time. Ongoing readers of this journal will know that he followed me up the track recently when I was going to the horse graves with flower seeds:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page56/#post1970562513

He's constantly coming up to us to check out what we are doing when we are outdoors. Here, the donkey girls decided to join in:



So this is a photo of an ambidextrous, simultaneous ear scratch for Julian and Mary Lou, with Sparkle saying, "I'm here, what about me?" and the dog hovering jealously in the background - sometimes you'd have to be an octopus...

We have a long weekend this week, and this lovely sunny morning, Brett and I were embarking on a walk around the farm trails with our dog, when Julian intercepted us with interest and exchanged pleasantries. On the spur of the moment, we decided to take him with us. I just clipped him onto the dog lead and off we all went, up the central sand track into our bushland reserve, and I was explaining to him that today he'd get to see the very end of the track, and the secret meadow there near the gates, and then we'd take him around the swamp track, which he'd never seen before, and then he'd know where these tracks led and how to get back to the pasture, for any private jaunts around the place he might be planning.

The donkeys do it all the time, but the horses haven't gone right around to the back of the property and around the swamp since my Arabian mare died. Julian, however, has been very interested in the tracks, and on several occasions has led at least one friend nearly to the back gate before coming back the same way, presumably because his best friend Chasseur is too chicken to want to explore where all these bogeymen surely live in the bush.

Julian himself was an unflappable yearling, and when he was a young horse in racehorse training, the first time he saw an emu, he tried to race it down the training track (where it happened to be running too) instead of spooking away from it, and that was always his standard reaction. I co-educated him in long-reining and cart breaking, and later strapped him for races, when back visiting at my parents' place on holidays or weekends. I even picked out his name, simply because it was such a logical suggestion that it just stuck: Classic Juliet's son, and Romeo's nephew, simply had to be Classic Julian. And after all, Julian Lennon's _Salt Water_ was getting a fair bit of airplay back then, so that kept this lovely name floating in the foreground of the names memory.

Names had been a bit of a sore point. My parents had named a mare Teen Force, for goodness' sake, like some kind of 1970s adolescent superhero gang, or a teenage boy band. And ridiculously, their most successful horse, a lovely chestnut stallion whom I refer to as Chip, they registered as More Chips. But then, Australian Standardbred names are often nothing to write home about; they are frequently mis-spelt homophones or weak puns, like Hezavillain, or, from a current race programme, Tellmetoattack, Ella Gant Player, Gotta Xcellerate, and Hy Leexciting - have you ever heard so much tripe not coming from a parliament? Has it never occurred to these people that horses are beautiful creatures and shouldn't be stuck with such tacky monikers? That they deserve _real_ names, not the best efforts of a drunk Scrabble party for people who failed spelling?

So anyway, Julian came walking with us today, and he's such a good horse - walked along exactly next to me, no pressure on the lead at any point, calm and companionable and very interested in his surroundings. It reminded me of the times I led him around the warm-up track at the races, which is what I used to do when he came off the horse float and needed to stretch his legs for a bit before tacking up for the race. I was there the weekend he won his first race, at his second start. I actually am not a fan of horse racing in general, I like more complex and communicating equestrian pursuits rather than just going around a track as fast as possible, which seems such a hamster wheel to me. But I love the horses, and Julian was and is no exception.

Julian is just such a pleasure to work with, and so interested in working, so we have decided to take him along regularly now, twice a week at least, when we walk the dog. He enjoyed his discovery tour today, and when we came out on the Middle Meadow from the swamp track, and he knew where he was again, I unclipped him, and he was aware that I had, but he just kept walking with us, dropping his head to graze every now and then while we waited in the sunshine keeping him company. That's what he does, if there are people he doesn't run straight back to the herd, even though he is herd leader and really loves his best buddy, and likes all the others in the horse-donkey group.



I'm playing with the idea of saddle training him; that's no big deal with an ex-harness horse who's been there, done that, and I think he would enjoy the outings. Only thing is, I don't have time/energy to ride two horses really. Maybe I could if I got up earlier. Anyway, taking him on regular walking tours of the surrounding areas will be an excellent start.

I'm so glad he is not alone in this sand hole anymore:











Now he's got grass and space and friends all the time.





And I'm so glad about that.  I don't know if many people understand the sheer pleasure of just having horses _around_, that's not dependent on riding them or winning prizes. I do love to ride, but love having them around even more, sharing our space.


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## SueC

Image location for sand hole photo, for those whose browsers aren't showing it:

http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/julian_grumpy.JPG


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## Knave

I love that! It is so beautiful where you are. Bones and Zeus are both that way. They are a pain when you are catching other horses. Lol

I often leave Bones loose in the yard to do chores with me. He is happy to just hang around with people. He loves everyone.


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## gottatrot

An old horse like Romeo is a real treasures. Such wisdom in those eyes.

So many people miss out on the best part of horses - just being around them, as friends. Old people have much to offer us, as do old horses. 

I've always liked the end of the Robert Frost poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." 



> The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
> But I have promises to keep,
> And miles to go before I sleep,
> And miles to go before I sleep.


Since we have dark and deep woods, I'd often say these lines to my horse when turning back through the forest during a good ride.

I agree very much about horses needing real names. I've probably mentioned that my friend's horse Nala's real name from her racehorse days is Fema, as in "Federal Emergency Management Agency." Seriously.
I think it's cute my other friend named her horses Braveheart and Cassanova.


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## Knave

Oh, I was thinking of you today and your old man. Have you heard the song “Leave him in the horse trap?” I know it’s a different style of music and he’s never seen a branding, but I think you may like it. My big girl sang it once, and I loved it.


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## SueC

Hello all!









There's a new person on HF this week _y'all_ might want to meet, if you haven't already!

You're going to love her, and you'll be so lifted by her story.









She's huge fun to chat to, and on maternity leave and feeling like a beached whale on the sofa with 6 weeks to go until the big day, so came to HF this week to say hello because the whole beached whale/sofa thing is getting old.

And you can all crank up your grey matter to make brilliant suggestions for how to ride independently, and care for a horse in general, without arms.

And I think she's totally capable of doing it, it's just working out ways around things.









https://www.horseforum.com/new-membe...sweden-792067/

@*bsms* , you can show her your Australian saddle, and anything else that helps keep a person on a horse...

Lots of love to all of you









Even the ones who are a bit cringy about all the :hug: business! :rofl:


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## bsms

^^ When my grandson is ready for bed, he gets a kiss from my wife. He gets a handshake from me. That's touchy-feely enough. And men don't cry, although some get some dirt in their eyes when watching Old Yeller.


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## SueC

For @*bsms* , an early song from one of our favourite bands! 












By the way, children are miming this song while the band appears as shadows!








...click the direct YouTube link if it won't play embedded! ;-)


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## SueC

Well, I finally got to ride to Verne Road yesterday, after my ill-fated attempt last week:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page57/#post1970563855

Ha! I noticed all the photos from http sites are showing up in Firefox again, but is it permanent? I know not. I shall keep hyperlinking http photos when I use them, just to make sure. Anyway, if you didn't see the gorgeous landscape photos from our region in this post, maybe go back and look...

Oh yeah, and also all the photos are currently back in the Reken Alternative Riding School translation, which makes it much better reading. Let's see if it lasts! 

So, riding! :cowboy:

This time when we rode out, the weather was perfectly sunny and clear, and all the cattle were out in force. One of the neighbour's Angus herds was running along a bush track with their half-grown calves, and Sunsmart decided he'd run along the sand track we were on, parallel to them, first at his flying trot, and then cantering off with abandon when we entered a curve in the track, hell-bent on overtaking the herd. - It's more biomechanically efficient for horses to canter than trot when there's curvature and deep sand, blah blah and all that. Soon we surfaced on the open pasture and the other neighbour's fenceline, and on seeing us, his little herd of Friesian and Angus yearlings came running up to the fence, and then alongside. None of this fazes Sunsmart, except that there's a fence and he can't go chasing after them if the mood is upon him.

We went up the fenceline to the Verne Road gate, with a slightly curved detour around a very suspicious-looking old loading ramp. @*bsms* has read Tom Roberts and gets how this works, and indeed, when I agreed that the horse could swing away slightly, by the time he had done the first half of the intended semi-circle deviation, he was actually running back to the scary object again under his own steam with curiosity replacing suspicion, and even wanted to stop and sniff. :rofl:

From the gate corner we turned about 45 degrees and had a lovely upslope canter to the edge of the woods, which we followed along to the home gate, and from there back to our place. Lovely, sunny, fun ride, and I'm heading out there again this afternoon while this glowing weather lasts. The mid-winter pattern here is typically two days of storm front and rain with howling gales, followed by nearly a week of clear, calm, sunny days after frosty nights. This is my favourite time of year.


*Update On Horse "Walkies"*

Julian went happily along on Tuesday with Jess and me, and I showed him the swamp track walking south, as opposed to walking north, which was his first experience of that track. And, as you all know, walking along a new path in the opposite direction to the first encounter is not an "old hat" thing for a horse; if the horse is suspicious, it will be suspicious all over again, until it repeats a new path from the _same_ direction.

Jess got super-excited and went crashing through some undergrowth where Julian hadn't seen her, and he did something quite uncharacteristic for him, namely this:









http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZFKPApU2Feo/TnouyqTcpLI/AAAAAAAAB9A/f8SOlbPs1UE/s1600/tw+pony+spook.JPG

It was _exactly_ that sort of spook. :rofl: I put the lead rope around the front of his nose and continued on merrily, and he settled down and started enjoying the jaunt with us. I had the dog distracted by getting her to carry a ball-and-rope toy instead of trying to herd the horse, which she will otherwise try to do when I take a horse for a walk on the lead.

At the end of the swamp track, I let the horse look around at leisure, and he said, "Oh, I know the way that goes to the right!" And I showed him the way to the left, due east, up the hill to our eastern boundary, which he hadn't walked before.

In fact, that was the first time in his whole life so far, all his 17 years, that this horse has ever gone up a hill.

They don't call West Australians "sand gropers" for nothing. From Perth all the way up and down the West Coast is a deep, ancient coastal sandplain, and it's a mostly flat sandplain at that, except for the Spearwood and Quindalup dune systems within cooee of the coastline. Julian grew up in a flat area, trained on a flat sand track and flat clay fastwork track, and took excursions to flat racetracks. He was never ridden (that will likely change, I can smell it), so never got into the dune systems close to the farm I grew up on.

And so this lovely horse got to experience what it was like to go up a steep hill - for the first time of his life! He was kind of, "Oh wow, it's really hard to walk along here!" He also was encountering ironstone country for the first time in his life - i.e. _rocks_! It's OK when I'm just walking a horse on a lead, but I don't put them through it when they have to lug me around, then Sunsmart is in Renegades or I am off his back walking with him. Owing to our climate and pastures, the horses' feet don't get hard enough most of the year to handle the quite sharp and plentiful rocks in the ironstone ridges without getting painful stone bruises sooner or later, or taking off big chunks of wall.

I found that Julian, who has much bigger feet than Sunsmart's Size 2 Renegade feet, even though he's a significantly smaller horse, was handling the rocks very well. Bigger, very round, comparatively tough feet, and far lighter in build than Sunsmart; the horse was happy, and learnt about negotiating rocks.

He also saw, along our eastern boundary on the ridgetop, the neighbour's gravel pit, then the bull paddock with a young bull standing half asleep, various old farm implements, tree stumps, and an old shed; that and the forest fascinated him, and then we turned the corner at the main road, back onto our pasture, and he knew exactly where he was again. I unclipped him, and as last time, he chose to walk back companionably with me, rather than immediately storming off back to his herd.

So guess what happened this morning? Brett and I went walking with Jess - it's Brett's morning off, since he has late shift - and took Julian with us on the lead, and Chasseur (AKA Mr Buzzy) came along with us just like that. Sunsmart, who has more porcine inclinations, was busy with Romeo's table leavings when our ancient gelding decided he was done with breakfast, and probably didn't even notice that two horses went missing, being tuned with rapt attention to the food channel.

Chasseur and Julian are best buddies, and Chasseur has followed him before, when he was following Sunsmart and me riding.



Left to right, Sunsmart, Julian, Chasseur!

More Julian and Chasseur best-buddy photos:


Julian and Chasseur at Morning Feedtime – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Early Morning Equine Visitors To Our Garden – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Horses Enjoying Tagasaste I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Horses Enjoying Tagasaste II – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

With Chasseur running loose and ahead of us once we got to our western forest boundary, which neither horse had seen before, I had to warn Brett that Chasseur was likely to come bounding back unpredictably when he got too uncomfortable with his own courage - watch out for it, divert to the undergrowth trackside if he does, and you won't be having close encounters with him at speed if he turns into a chicken. Interestingly, he didn't really do that today, he was more like, "Oh look, it's a trotting track!" and off he went, trotting off with his base-wide trot, ahead of us, until he got to the rocky section. Then all five of us ambled on happily to the southern boundary, and both horses experienced for the first time in their lives what it's like to negotiate a steep-ish _downhill_. And Chasseur is 24 years old!

At the bottom of the hill, they were in familiar territory, at the end of the central sand track and near the boundary gates with our neighbours. I unclipped Julian and waited to see what the horses would do. Often, new horses take to their heels down the familiar track and back to the pasture, once they recognise the track, but not these today - Julian was far too curious, and Chasseur very influenced by him. So, they just looked around a lot, at the cattle on the horizon in the neighbouring properties, and all around in general. They sniffed the grass on the little "secret meadow" in that area, and went exploring to the edges of the bush. This went on for a fair few minutes, and it looked like Chasseur wanted to head up the hill again, which I really didn't want him to do unsupervised at this point, on account of barbed wire fences in the forest boundaries, combined with possible spooking accidents. So I simply called Julian, who came to see what I wanted, and Chasseur followed along, and I walked down the sand track for a few steps with them, and then clicked my tongue in the "go" cue these horses know very well from racing, and off they went trotting down the sand track together, single file as if in training (the track is plenty wide for two horses), and Brett and I went the other way, due east, to our eastern boundary to continue our dog walk.

When we eventually came back into the Common section of our pasture, the horses weren't back, which I found unsurprising. I'd said to Brett, "I bet Julian is going to turn left near the house, and go up the western track to the far boundary!" (Our block is T-shaped.) The horses often go there as a herd on their own accord, and return along the forest-pasture boundary, on the other side of the polybraid fence, catching some grass at the forest edge and just getting a change of scenery. And they must have done either that, or come into the pasture and turned around again, because that's exactly where I saw them twenty minutes after we were home. It made me smile. I think those boys are going to do a lot of private walking along the tracks soon. Julian is quite irrepressible! 

PS: Indeed: As I sit in our office, the ground is vibrating and the thundering of hooves may be heard. They're all off again!


:gallop::gallop::gallop:


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## SueC

bsms said:


> I spent many hours riding my bike. It was my escape. My Mom didn't worry about me going bike riding, although I didn't tell her I was sometimes riding 20+ miles...
> 
> Although she did have to take notice when I was 7 and tried to ride my bike off the roof of our house. Tried? I did ride it off the roof of our house! But the landing sure hurt!


OK, I've decided to confess. When I was about four years old, in kindergarten, I remember getting on a chair, standing on it, imagining there was a big ocean, and diving off head-first - making a hard landing, and on top of it I got yelled at by the kindergarten teacher for being stupid.

I couldn't swim, but I'd seen the platform diving at some swimming championships on TV, and I've always had a good imagination.

I was not wearing a helmet.

This might explain _everything_! ;-)


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## SueC

*More Horse Walkies With Bonus Donkey And Monkey Antics!*

Julian is getting so keen on this going walkies business, he's looking around for me and saying _C'mon!_, and if he can't find me, he goes off on his own on the tracks closer to the house and around the pasture, if he can't interest any of his herdmates in coming along. So I guess we'll be taking him walkies with the dog again this morning, when I have finished this entry and dealt with the horse rugs.

Sigh! I can see I'm not going to get out of saddle training this one, and at my ripe old age! When I rode Sunsmart on Thursday, he came gallopping after us - "_Where are you going? Where are you going?_" but Chasseur called so piteously from the pasture he didn't come with us that time. I forecast the time will come when that won't stop him anymore!

Yesterday I had one of those days where I was just mincemeat, and had a big afternoon nap. (Too much late-night Wimbledon and too many brain high jinks!) I finally was properly functional again by 4pm. The dog had been my loyal companion all afternoon. I had brought in her pillows from her sofa because I thought the bedside mat was too uncomfortable for the dog's lengthy self-imposed supportive nursing role - normally you can't get her indoors in the daytime, because she considers her role to be supervising the livestock all day long, making sure they behave etc. She watches them like a shark, and generally only comes in at night, when she signs off her fulltime occupation.

But she clearly believes in carer's leave, because if she thinks I'm looking peaky, she decides I need supervision and nursing and the livestock can just go jump meanwhile. Brett hypothesises that she is looking after her prime asset, the source of so much food, affection and play, without which her life would become dire (and I ask, _Are you projecting, darling?_ ;-)). So she goes from doing this:


Jess and Murray Grey Steers – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Staring Out The Herd – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Dog and Donkeys – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Herding Dog and Cattle II - Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Herding Dog and Cattle III - Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Herding Dog and Cattle VII - Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

...to _this_...


Origami Dog – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

So the dog was extremely delighted to see me get up, and trying to herd me out the door. I was muttering, "_Pants!_ I need my pants!" and she knows that word, and that it means the monkey will be going outdoors, so she was gambolling around me, wagging her tail furiously and sniffing the pants approvingly as I was putting them on. And I asked her, "Do you want a _walkies_?" - which sent her jumping up and down like a kid on a trampoline. _It's Christmas!_ And I said to her as she was at my heels herding me out the door and making sure I went the right way, "How about we take Julian _walkies_ too? _Ba-doom, ba-doom, ba-doom!_" (in imitation of hoofbeats) 

Julian was waiting at the garden gate. _Is it bucket o'clock yet?_ And I said, "Soon, but we're going _walkies_ first!" I clipped him on the lead rope, waltzed him past the other three horses waiting in a tight grazing group for _bucket o'clock_, and asked, "Are any of you coming?" - but no takers, too close to food time. So it was just Julian, Jess and me, but that's good company all around.

Jess, by the way, is named after the female dog in the iconic Australia/NZ farm life cartoon books, _Footrot Flats_ (if you've never read any, here's you next birthday and Christmas present!).



















...and also, there's just a touch of the song _Bonny Jess_ in her naming - Jenny Thomas' gorgeous version! (She also did the violin track for the Shire theme for _Lord Of The Rings_!)

If you've got a Spotify account, you can hear it here:

https://open.spotify.com/track/1LT8WTfBadNerbA7oM2bwq

Anyway, so the three of us went walking down the central sand track, and as I was actually feeling somewhat energetic after my lengthy afternoon nap, I thought today would be a good day to teach him to trot on the lead - something he's never done before. He'd always walked on the lead, and done everything else in harness. Here's a photo from his harness days:









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/horses/photos/img_3889.jpg

Initially I just tried tongue-clicking and sort of passaging next to him and slightly ahead of him, but he just looked at me funny, so I added some pressure on the lead rope and intensified my tongue-clicking and whirled the end of the lead rope behind my back and beside him, and he got the idea. Instant warm praise - "_Ooooh, you're soooo clever, yes you are!_" and a little neck-cuddle, which had the horse pricking up his ears, making luminous eyes, and preening himself - and end-of-lesson. Half a minute of settled walking, rinse, repeat, and it didn't take him long to get it.

The funny thing was, on his first few attempts, with the lead rope pressure, he was actually _pacing_! As in the photo above. He associates pacing with work, and with the initial head pressure, this was clearly work. Julian is a natural pacer, meaning he's had this gait from birth, but also an excellent trotter; and like many "ambidextrous" harness horses, he will tend to trot on sand and soft footing, and pace on firm surfaces. If you ride one of these (Chip was the same), you can ask for a trot or a pace depending on your rein cues - more head up cues for the pacing, more head down cues for the trotting, until it just becomes a sort of telepathic communication between you and the horse. And I really have no idea why so many people in Australia seem to fuss about the notion of riding a Standardbred, and I think it's little to do with the horses - they're super - and more to do with the complaining people's limited riding and saddle training abilities, because really competent riders don't have an issue with these horses. And even competent very young children can handle these horses just fine. They don't say, "Oh blah blah, it's _only_ a Standardbred!" - which I think translates to, "I have a bad attitude and I suck as a rider!" 

Sunsmart less than half a year out of harness was looking and riding lovely already, nearly ten years ago:









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/horses/photos/img_3348.jpg

And some snooty-brigade local riders on Warmbloods would say to me, "Oh, what a cute horse, what is he?" and then deflate and make snooty faces when I told them he is a French Trotter/Standardbred cross. Oh, only a Standardbred! Australians are so funny. @*gottatrot* may find this interesting (unless she already knows, and I wouldn't be surprised) that her late Halla had a namesake once who was a German Trotter (with a French Trotter mother and Standardbred father), and on the Olympic showjumping team.

I'll put that on another post, because I am falling foul of the 15-graphics rule again, _oh no_!


----------



## SueC

_...continued... _;-)

About Halla:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halla_(horse)






If the clip won't play embedded, click the direct YouTube link. It has a nice story and lovely old jumping footage at the end.


Returning to Julian now, soon he was trotting enthusiastically next to me for longer periods, and I was getting puffed. (Horses, and dogs, are great personal trainers!) I was saying to him, "Yes, we monkeys really do suck at this compared to you lot, why do _you_ think we're so closely associated with you horses!"









And we had a great time. At the end of the sand track - which looks like this - images borrowed from first photographic expedition with Sunsmart recently:









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_019.JPG

(That ride and more photos were written up here: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page55/#post1970559673 - and all the photos are now showing!)









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_026.JPG

So at the gate end, Julian wanted to look around, so that's what we did. (And these are Sunsmart's ears, obviously, but he and Julian are half-brothers on the sire side.)

I don't get people who have to be drill-sergeant Nazis with their horses, and control their every move and if possible, their every thought. It leaves the horse completely out of the equation, and treats it as a mere vassal. They come from a position of "I know better than the horse" - presumably as part of the common view amongst humans of humans as the very crown of creation - and actually, no, they _don't_ know better. Horses are wonderfully at home in nature, and fabulous guides of humans in their world, if we'll let them show us. They see things we don't, hear things we don't, feel things we don't, know things we don't, until they share that with us and teach it to us and we can see, hear, feel and know it too. Yes, I teach my horses things, but not as much as I've learnt from _them_.

Interestingly, when I was competing with my horses, none of the drill sergeant brigade ever beat us (although good horsepeople and their charges did, and I them, as with any good competition) - it just doesn't work as well when it's not a two-way partnership, and a true symbiosis featuring the combined talents of both species, and wordless, almost telepathic instant two-way communication, and the synergy and _joie de vivre_ that comes from all that.

I'd love to hear from @*Knave* about this, since she does amazing things with her rock star Bones and clearly needs to communicate with him very quickly in their work! I really do value everyone's input, go right ahead, but mention @*Knave* here because I can't help but wonder when I see those photos, and the expressions on her face, and Bones'!









Just look here, it's so _wow_:

https://www.horseforum.com/horse-talk/introduce-your-horse-pictures-791281/page6/#post1970558739

Julian and Jess and I much enjoyed our walk. Julian is a very "talkative" horse, always sort of conversing with you about what's going on around you, and he's so happy to see the world, and what's in it. And this is what it looks like, looking back at our swamp track after we've walked it:









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_056.JPG

So much to take in and be happy about, for a highly clever, highly exploratory horse who was locked into a stable and little sand yard day in, day out, and alone in his run, for most of his 17 years. And now he's sniffing different bushes, experimentally licking up ash from a recent fire, nosing tree bark, looking this way and that, stopping to have good long looks with crinkles of pleasure under his eyes, expressing an interest in following little cow tracks. I encourage him to sniff things, he still thinks he shouldn't do that because it's "not allowed" when working, but I've always negotiated about that with my horses, and invited them to explore and examine.

And that does not mean that the horse and I can't do XYZ precisely when we need to focus on a particular task, either. My horses have always known the difference between just spending time hiking together and comparing notes, and doing a work task that has to be precise.

We soon got back to the Middle Meadow:









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/20180625_071.JPG

At this point I unclipped him, as always, so he can graze a bit as he goes along and explore more fully and choose what to do. So far he has almost always stayed with me, and we've meandered back together, but the other day when Brett and I were walking Jess, with Julian on the lead and Chasseur following free, I'd encouraged both horses to return to the pasture by themselves via the sand track, and clicked my tongue at them to get them trotting off together. (See post #597 above!) And today Julian was very happy and full of life, so I suggested he might like to run off, which he did - fell into a joyous gallop and went around a great big loop to the east, before heading west again, kicking up his heels, towards his horse herd. And when I eventually caught up with him, he said, "_Now is it bucket o'clock_?" and it was, indeed!

But there is a little postscript to this, which I will borrow from the post I made to the 40+ group yesterday, and it involves the donkeys:


Cute Donkey Antics IV – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

_
Those pesky mirror neurons in social animals! If we make braying sounds, our donkeys bray right back. They know we're talking to them, since they know we don't habitually bray at each other (honest!







). If I say "A-chooo!" when my dog is excited about something, she actually starts sneezing, and my husband says, "Can you stop teaching her to do that? I don't want dog germs everywhere." And then he always gets a lecture on how the dog is healthy and de-wormed, and how studies show that children raised with pet dogs have better immunity, and he says his immunity is just fine, and I say, "Fine, so what are you worried about?" Marital ping-pong!









And this evening, I was having fun with the donkeys. I squeaked a rusty "Eee-aw" at them as I passed them in the far pasture dog (and Julian) walking, and they snorted back in greeting. I then made a big song and dance imitating a dressage horse doing passage and going by them in a circle and then heading home, and the donkeys started bucking and trotting along behind me. So I started skipping, and Don Quixote totally lost it and fell into a bucking canter and hee-hawed at the same time, which they also do in a group without my evil influence, when they go "cracker-donkey" together. Social animals really are such fun!
_
The original post also includes tips for handling annoying relatives, which you can read here if you also possess such things:

https://www.horseforum.com/horse-ta...ure-people-over-790241/page54/#post1970569097

If you too are plagued with such trials,








to you. There's always room in our little family at Red Moon Sanctuary, if you'd like to acquire us as extended family!










PS: I've got to stop editing now, Romeo is neighing at the open French door and wants to go out. Looks like this:


When Horses Know Where You Live - Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


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## gottatrot

Great story and video about Halla, thanks for sharing. What a great horse! She sounds rather like my Halla - a bit opinionated but sensitive and courageous.

So cute about the donkeys. I started playing with some social animals last night, since I wanted to trim the goats and they seem to feel getting caught is quite negative. They are only handled once a month when I trim their hooves. So I started playing and backing up, then running forward to push my hands against the goat heads. They soon were rearing up, galloping around and head butting each other. The only problem was that there was no "off" switch for the play, and when I was trying to trim one goat, the other one kept playing and butted me twice, quite hard! I've known for many years that you don't turn your back on a sheep or goat, and especially never bend over.

When I took my two horses on a walk, we ran into some elk with babies but everyone was very mellow so they didn't exit when they saw us come into the field, but everyone just grazed together. I think it is interesting how one elk will "babysit" and have all the babies while the others do other things. The smallest female had all six babies tagging along with her.


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## SueC

:dance-smiley05: Oh, that's all so cute and lovely, @gottatrot!

Have you seen this?






Or this? :rofl: The facial expressions are priceless!







Will you be milking any of your goats?

Have fun hoof trimming. I've got to do 6 more donkey hooves today!  Hope you have a good night shift.


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## SueC

By the way, @gottatrot / all, I've just watched the follow-up interview in German with the rider looking back at that point in history, and talking about that horse. He's got some really interesting things to say, about Halla, horses and animals in general, and I'm happy to translate if anyone requests it!


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## Knave

@SueC it is funny that you mentioned Bones when talking about letting a horse think for themselves. He truly exemplifies that concept. 
Also, I 100% agree that a horse who thinks on their own will beat the horses who don’t in competition, but that is in the competitions I have participated in. 

Bones was sold to me with very few rides and almost no groundwork. It took only a couple of day of working with him for the trainer who had such high hopes in his breeding to decide there was no way he would be his great stud horse. So, he was cut (or not fully, but that’s another story) and sold to me. He had a few issues, but one of the main reasons he did not like him was his dullness. I was taken with his movement and friendliness and I bought him.

It is an odd thing that such a hot bred horse is spectacularly dull. It could relate to the other issue he has, but in any case he actually is extremely dull. That being said, I found he is also a very talented athlete once I started teaching him things. He is overly ambitious too, and very emotional.

He is super smart, so once he understood the tasks I gave him he excelled. At only five this year, he can read a cow when we are working much better than I can. For example, when we are preg checking cattle, Bones and I are in the back pushing them into the chute. They don’t like being preg checked, so they will get on the fight. He knows when they are bluffing and he can push them in, but unlike most super aggressive horses like him, he also knows when they don’t see him and will hit him, so he makes sure he catches their eye and if not he sidesteps before he gets hit. 

When helping someone start a colt I don’t have to even ride him. He reads what that person is doing and needing from that colt. He’ll fall behind just a few steps to slow them down, or he’ll push in front to break them loose. I am never lacking amazement at how smart he is.

I have seen other people try and ride him, and if they don’t let him think it is a wreck. He is kind, but confused and they are so rough because he is dull. I won’t let those types on him anymore. The kids though he is amazing for. He helps them do what is in front of them.


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## bsms

SueC said:


> ...I don't get people who have to be drill-sergeant Nazis with their horses, and control their every move and if possible, their every thought. It leaves the horse completely out of the equation, and treats it as a mere vassal. They come from a position of "I know better than the horse" - presumably as part of the common view amongst humans of humans as the very crown of creation - and actually, no, they _don't_ know better. Horses are wonderfully at home in nature, and fabulous guides of humans in their world, if we'll let them show us...


Here is some perspective on it from VS Littauer, writing in "Schooling Your Horse":



> The Mental Part of Schooling - Cooperation
> 
> Any schooling is a course in physical and mental education. The latter has to be brought to the point where the horse understand signals and responds correctly to them. Any great rider, whether a High School rider or jumper, naturally seeks to influence the cooperation of his horse which enables him to turn the forceful aids of early schooling into merely light signals. On the higher planes of riding this is so, no matter what the game is, and the difference will lie only in the degree practical for a specific type of riding. But it does not obtain on the lower levels. For instance, my teachers of 40 years ago never used the word "cooperation", their favorite terms were "discipline" and "obedience". Instead of my own stock phrase "and now leave your horse alone", I always heard, "don't be a passenger, ride your horse".
> 
> Probably due in part to the continued importance of cavalry throughout the 19th centaury, and the constant constraint which cavalry formations imposed upon the horse and rider [Note: Littauer served in the Russian Cavalry, including the front lines in World War One], *the belief that good riding consisted in general of the mastery of the horse by force, applied through the technical dexterity of the rider's legs and hands, remained unshaken for many generations*. Today (*1956*) [Note: Before I was born!] the ideal of many of us is the cheerful cooperation, in hacking, in the hunting field or over obstacles, of our partner, the horse. Depending on the individual ability of the trainer, on the mental and emotional make-up of his horse, etc, this ideal can be attained in varying degrees.


Consider the "Charge of the Light Brigade" - 7 minutes exposed to fire BEFORE engaging, and equally long in retreat:








​ Picture from Wiki, along with this quote from a survivor:



> The first shell burst in the air about 100 yards in front of us. The next one dropped in front of Nolan's horse and exploded on touching the ground. He uttered a wild yell as his horse turned round, and, with his arms extended, the reins dropped on the animal's neck, he trotted towards us, but in a few yards dropped dead off his horse. I do not imagine that anybody except those in the front line of the 17th Lancers (13th Light Dragoons) saw what had happened.
> 
> We went on. When we got about two or three hundred yards the battery of the Russian Horse Artillery opened fire. *I do not recollect hearing a word from anybody as we gradually broke from a trot to a canter, though the noise of the striking of men and horses by grape and round shot was deafening, while the dust and gravel struck up by the round shot that fell short was almost blinding, and irritated my horse so that I could scarcely hold him at all.* But as we came nearer I could see plainly enough, especially when I was about a hundred yards from the guns. I appeared to be riding straight on to the muzzle of one of the guns, and I distinctly saw the gunner apply his fuse. I shut my eyes then, for I thought that settled the question as far as I was concerned. But the shot just missed me and struck the man on my right full in the chest.
> 
> In another minute I was on the gun and the leading Russian's grey horse, shot, I suppose, with a pistol by somebody on my right, fell across my horse, dragging it over with him and pinning me in between the gun and himself. A Russian gunner on foot at once covered me with his carbine. He was just within reach of my sword, and I struck him across his neck. The blow did not do much harm, but it disconcerted his aim. At the same time a mounted gunner struck my horse on the forehead with his sabre. Spurring "Sir Briggs," he half jumped, half blundered, over the fallen horses, and then for a short time bolted with me. I only remember finding myself alone among the Russians trying to get out as best I could. This, by some chance, I did, in spite of the attempts of the Russians to cut me down.


Riding like that, in formation! while being fired at with cannon all around...is there any doubt why the cavalry of the day emphasized total control on one's horse?

But isn't it equally obvious that no one in my lifetime has ever needed to do so? If Littauer, who had seen combat while mounted, could adjust over 60 years ago, what excuse is there for someone who has NEVER needed anything like that to mindlessly continue that approach to training?


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## SueC

Thank you for that, @bsms.  It's always interesting to read the material you bring to the table, and your own reflections on it. Food for thought for me, and thinking is a good thing!

I'd say horse-riding isn't the only human pursuit where that phenomenon applies, either. I think this is a more generalised problem - sticking to particular models and ideas like they're an infallible religion and like critical thinking is some sort of blasphemy (and too much effort ;-)).

Things that work in Situation A don't necessarily work in Situation B. Things that work in Situation A are not necessarily the best things for that situation either just because they work - maybe there are better ways that would work better, etc.

_The Blind Men And The Elephant_ all over again too.


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## SueC

Knave said:


> @*SueC* it is funny that you mentioned Bones when talking about letting a horse think for themselves. He truly exemplifies that concept.
> Also, I 100% agree that a horse who thinks on their own will beat the horses who don’t in competition, but that is in the competitions I have participated in.
> 
> Bones was sold to me with very few rides and almost no groundwork. It took only a couple of day of working with him for the trainer who had such high hopes in his breeding to decide there was no way he would be his great stud horse. So, he was cut (or not fully, but that’s another story) and sold to me. He had a few issues, but one of the main reasons he did not like him was his dullness. I was taken with his movement and friendliness and I bought him.
> 
> It is an odd thing that such a hot bred horse is spectacularly dull. It could relate to the other issue he has, but in any case he actually is extremely dull. That being said, I found he is also a very talented athlete once I started teaching him things. He is overly ambitious too, and very emotional.
> 
> He is super smart, so once he understood the tasks I gave him he excelled. At only five this year, he can read a cow when we are working much better than I can. For example, when we are preg checking cattle, Bones and I are in the back pushing them into the chute. They don’t like being preg checked, so they will get on the fight. He knows when they are bluffing and he can push them in, but unlike most super aggressive horses like him, he also knows when they don’t see him and will hit him, so he makes sure he catches their eye and if not he sidesteps before he gets hit.
> 
> When helping someone start a colt I don’t have to even ride him. He reads what that person is doing and needing from that colt. He’ll fall behind just a few steps to slow them down, or he’ll push in front to break them loose. I am never lacking amazement at how smart he is.
> 
> I have seen other people try and ride him, and if they don’t let him think it is a wreck. He is kind, but confused and they are so rough because he is dull. I won’t let those types on him anymore. The kids though he is amazing for. He helps them do what is in front of them.


That is such an interesting horse portrait, @Knave. I've had to read it a couple of times, because of reconciling the word "dull", which in Australian usage is synonymous with stupid, and also boring. And clearly Bones is neither of these - he's clever, and super-interested in his environment - plays with balls etc, remembering an earlier clip you posted on another journal. I am guessing you mean "dull" as in flat / not hot / not speed crazy? But perhaps you can explain how _y'all_ use that word where you are (which is not the Deep South, I gather, but I've recently adopted the phrase because it is more gender inclusive than "you guys" and sounds sort of cute! )

It's so interesting to hypothesise about horses and riders based on their body language and facial expressions! Your horse _looks_ like he is thinking very carefully. You _look_ like the sort of rider who encourages him to do that, and you _look_ like you see him as your partner, and not your chattel. (And since I've gotten to read more of what you say, and talk to you more, I've also seen that reflected in the words you choose and in the attitudes you express.) I've got a question for you... how common is that approach to horses in your circles? Are you in a minority, or in a significant chunk, or in a majority there, in your riding circles?

What's your own feeling about what sort of riders / horse pursuits you see more of your own type of approach in?

Do you meet many "drill sergeants" in your part of the world? Do you see any association between that and insecurity as a rider / person? Obviously, world view will influence it, education/self-education, etc etc. And one thing that I've found is that a person who bullies other people is also almost always a person who bullies animals, and vice versa. These are just my own impressions / field data; I am very interested in other people's impressions and data!


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## Knave

@SueC I said dull in reference to a lack of feeling. I can see where it would be a bad word choice as there are so many definitions! 

So, I mean that he doesn’t respond easily to leg or hand pressure. He can ignore it completely until it has gone too far. I have to ride him as if he were super light, which is counterintuitive, but it works. He maintains a level of lightness by doing that and allowing him his own though. That is why I said it was odd for such an athletic horse. He is not slow, and he even gets fairly hot if not managed well. I believe the lack of sensitivity relates to the fact that he is a self-mutilator. This means he has imaginary stud fights sometimes. It’s very dramatic. I know, it is odd, but aren’t we all? Lol. Definitely not any of the other definitions of dull... they wanted me to put him down for it when I brought him home and learned of this bad attribute. However, he has never progressed but actually improved. He also would never do such a thing with a person there.

Let me think for a minute before I answer your next question.


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## Knave

Okay, there are a few drill sergeants at competition. In reining it benefits them to a degree, but in cutting and cowhorse it is a negative. A cutter or cowhorse will definitely score much better using its own thought process. I would go so far to say high level cutting horses will always think for themselves. Rodeo competitors, as far as the ones I’ve completed against, do not have the option of micromanaging their horses, so all of them think.

Now, the cowboy horses I have been around seem to always be given ample opportunities to use their minds. That is not to say that everyone is good to a horse by any means, but in working situations a person does not have time to always micromanage their horse.

Oddly, the more insecure of a rider in a working situation, the more a horse is given opportunity to make its own decisions. If someone doesn’t care to use horses for more than just work, they own horses who are well broke to do their jobs. These horses are safe and experienced. A horse like Bones, when I put a child on him in a working situation, will pay attention to the task at hand and make adjustments for the child.


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## Knave

Oh, also, wouldn’t you bet that more of the reason that Bones was sold to me cheap was because of his special trait? Lol


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## frlsgirl

Awww 34, that is like a very elderly man! Glad that Romeo is still thriving under your care.


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## SueC

We are too, @frlsgirl!  He loooooves his new extra-cosy rug. His smile is twice as wide since he got his upgrade, and he is very energetic and naughty! :rofl:


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## SueC

*Special Birthday With Didgeridoo, Chocolate Marzipan Log and Mountain Climb*

So guess who had a special birthday today? Brett, of course; and he's currently on a fortnight's holiday, which is great, and one of our traditions around his birthday, which also falls mid-winter, by which time of the year we are ready for a break.

Brett requested a marzipan log, so I made one the night before. This is simple to do and so much better than commercial, terribly sugary marzipan. Simply heat up about a metric cup of honey in a glass mixing bowl in the microwave until warm and runny, stir in 400g of finely ground almond meal (commercial fine meal is the right consistency), add enough rosewater and brandy to be able to knead it into a pliable dough, then shape into a log on some baking paper. Sit it on a tray, stick it in the freezer until the surface is cool, meanwhile melt some good dark cooking chocolate in the microwave (use the same bowl, less washing up). Use a spatula to cover the top and sides of the log with it, return it to the freezer until set, turn it over and coat the underside with chocolate. Then stick it in the fridge until ready to cut and eat.

This morning started like many mornings do at our place. I am an early bird and therefore the resident morning magician, while Brett is a night owl and therefore the evening elf. So in the mornings, I spoil Brett and do the tea and breakfast in bed, and in the evening, when I am pretty useless after dinner, I get to go to bed and read while Brett washes up and brings me cups of tea and whatever little treats he thinks I need. It's a really lovely arrangement.

When I woke, Brett was comatose as usual, so I made the tea. He generally has plain green tea in his giant soup mug, while I generally have green jasmine tea in mine, with a spoon of our honey and a large amount of milk (don't tell the tea police). By the time that was ready, Brett was just starting to make random waking-up noises. The sun wasn't up yet, just a little of the first light, so it was still quite dark. I wished him a happy birthday, slid his first present - a didgeridoo wrapped in paper - under the bedcovers and challenged him to take off the paper and work out what it was by feel alone.

This kind of challenge is always intriguing. At first he was sure it was a poster in a tube, then he realised the tube was made of wood and the inside hollow. When he figured out that it was a didgeridoo, he laughed and said it was the most unusual present anyone had ever given him. He liked the traditional dot painting on the surface, but expressed skepticism about ever learning how to play it. He did think it was useful for whacking intruders over the head with, in any case.

This is what the didgeridoo, an ancient woodwind instrument from the Australian Aboriginal culture, sounds like when it is played well.






Here's a local young Albany artist playing didj and other instruments - this one I actually taught English to at St Joseph's College back in 2008, so I have the same sort of pride about seeing what he has grown into as a chicken might have when it's had a turn sitting on some eggs that were communally hatched! 






As usual, click the direct YouTube link if clips don't play embedded.

I gave Brett some clapsticks to go with it, also to work out by feel under the bedcovers. He guessed those immediately, and said these were definitely suited to his musical capacities, as was the triangle.

Next was his Australian barometer. It's just a board with a piece of string hanging off it and some writing! Now it was daylight, and I handed it straight to him for evaluation. 










Various other bits and pieces followed, along with breakfast in bed. I slipped out to feed Romeo between courses, so we could leave reasonably early on the mountain climb Brett had requested for his birthday.

Last year, after climbing Mt Toolbrunup together, he had a small party in the evening, which was sort of a joke with some neighbours collaborating. Everyone had dinner, and I'd made Brett a birthday cake - chocolate cherry tart with a chocolate-almond crust that year. Usually I just put one big candle in the centre; this time the neighbours had pooled proper birthday candles, which I put surreptitiously on the cake and then brought out, with the joke that there were six qualified volunteer firefighters present (ourselves included) and therefore we could take the risk.





Also present at that little get-together last year were two anklebiters, the descendants of two of the volunteer firefighters. These clever and imaginative children entertained us and we them. At one point I presented them with a Tromboncino pumpkin (trombone-shaped heirloom) and art materials, and they made it into a character with a face and curling ribbon for hair and a stripey long sock for clothing. They later took it home to present to their parents and at show and tell at their primary school, where it made quite a splash before their mother turned it into soup. 

That evening, the children also taught our dog to play with party balloons, which she'd never seen before. And ever since then, balloons are her favourite toy. She is very careful not to burst them, holding them by the knot or very delicately in her mouth.





She does all sorts of crazy things with balloons, but her favourite is the one hung by a string from the ceiling fan which she can bop into the air with her nose. She likes it best when everyone else joins in and takes turns, and will look suggestively at us like in these photos if she wants us to play.





Jess was in for a treat today because she was coming mountain climbing with us, and it was a double treat because it also involved a lengthy car journey, and of course she loves going around in a car. After we finished our breakfast and packed some food and a thermos of tea and brandy, I took the rugs off the horses and we were off.



We wanted a mountain to ourselves, and because it is still school holidays here, we actually had to drive to a quite remote one to get our wish. Mt Trio and Mt Hassell were both taken, so after having a coffee (and true to form, reading a dictionary for entertainment - today it was an Australian slang dictionary, vastly amusing) at the Bluff Knoll café, we headed out to Stirling Range drive for a half-hour trip on an unsealed road to get to Mt Talyuberlup. Here's Brett the birthday man, 45 today, totally not showing it, and ruggedly handsome!



Next photo, he is helping set up our usual pre-walking Brett&Sue snaps.



Then we had a birthday smooch - because one may still kiss the bride ten years later!



This next one is a funny blooper, because we misjudged the automatic timer.


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## SueC

We started the Talyuberlup trail after that. Unfortunately I had to have regular rest stops, because I have been in winter hibernation and am not at peak cardiovascular fitness right now. Brett caught me laughing here because it was so funny to be surreptitiously photographed while I was playing with my own camera!



But he also took a photo in the other direction to show the view back towards the car park, at this early stage of our climb.




Due to sub-optimal fitness levels, I needed a little nap by the time we got to Lizard Ledge about halfway up.



Jess and I had a cuddly moment while I was getting my breath back!



This is Brett at the Talyuberlup spire, near the top of the mountain.



And here am I having _another_ little rest on the way to the cave on this special mountaintop. I really must get back to boot camp! I was rolling my eyes and saying I never used to have to stop this much, except the time I had just recovered from bronchitis, which Brett countered by telling me it was not a race and that half his workplace wouldn't make it up this mountain, including people in their 20s.



After a bit of scrambling on all fours, we did make it to the cave entrance. Jess, who had to be boosted up the really tall ledges at times, looks super cute here, so I recommend enlarging by clicking on it repeatedly until you can see her facial expression!



About to scramble up further:



This is me in the base of Talyuberlup cave:



This is an impressive cave, which was such a wind tunnel today we didn't take any photos while in it.  I will make up for this deficit by presenting earlier photos of this place, from past climbs. This is the view out of the cave on a nice sunny day when you get to the other side of it. It's a spectacular view across to Mt Magog, which you can walk to across a saddle from this peak on a day walk, but you have to go down some hairy cliffs first (and we used to do this for the first couple of Brett's birthdays we had together, when we did slightly crazier things). This scenery has always reminded me of _The Lord Of The Rings_...









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_2784.jpg

When you turn right coming out of that cave, you see this:









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_2780.jpg

A scramble path takes you to the summit of Talyuberlup, which is actually on top of that cave from before! The dog was a total trooper on her first experience of those sorts of rocks and gradients. We boosted or lifted her the few times she needed it.

And then we were happily at the top! It was under 10 degrees Celsius up there, and with a gale blowing to bring it to just over freezing, so we were happy to shelter in the little stone circle up there for snacks and brandy tea.



I'm finishing the photos with two lovely shots Brett took from the summit today.





Today, we told Jess she had now become an honorary mountain dog! Going down the steepest ledges was more difficult for her than going up, so I went ahead, we had the dog in the middle, and Brett was leading her from the back, so whenever she was having problems I could just lift her down to a better spot. She very quickly understood this teamwork, as is usual for her with any kind of teamwork - typical Australian Kelpie, stock dog supreme.

We had an hour's drive home, and then I immediately fed and rugged the horses, and cut some fodder for the cattle, while Brett heated up our dinners - tasty leftovers from yesterday (I usually make extra portions for later): Veal schnitzels with smoked ham and melted mozzarella on top, in a white wine and cream sauce, with mashed potatoes and peas. I then made strawberries in warm, sweetened red wine with a dollop of cream for dessert. The dog had a super-bowl of her fish kibbles, a raw egg, some milk, some vegies, a dob of peanut butter which she loves, and olive oil for Vitamin E and essential fatty acids after the day's climb, and retired happily to her sofa after that.

We had a hot bath with lavender oil in it to soothe our muscles, did a few muscle stretches afterwards, and climbed into the nice warm soft bed, which feels so marvellous after a day in the mountains.

And may there be maaaany more!


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## Knave

What beautiful photographs of a beautiful place!!


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## gottatrot

The hike looks so amazing, and gorgeous views! Love the way the rocks are - so massive and varied.

I was thinking of you a couple of days ago, when my sister asked me to go pick wild huckleberries with her. It is a banner year and even though they are small berries and usually you only find a scattering, we picked 8 cups and only walked about 100 yards to get them.








I was wondering what you would make out of the berries.
Myself, I wouldn't make anything, but luckily my sister is the one who brought them home and dropped off a couple pieces of pie the next day for me, still warm from the oven. 

We often only find the red ones, but this year there were lots of blue ones too. 
One of my friend's horses loves huckleberry branches and will eat them when we ride through the woods.

My sister said her friends were going on about thimbleberries they'd found, and we did find some of those too but agreed they are tasteless, similar to salmon berries. 
They look like raspberries, but barely have a taste.








These are salmon berries.









We joked that the next thing we'd hear is about how great salal berries are. 








Salal berries are what we always have people eat as a trick. "Have you tried the salal berries? Pick some, aren't they wonderful?" Then you see if people will actually say they are good just to please you. They are fibrous like bread and the only taste they have is a bit salty. 

Of course the most abundant berry we have is blackberries, and the massive sticker bushes take over and try to drown any vacant property. I was reading that you have blackberry issues in Australia too. They do taste good, though!


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## SueC

Hello, @*Knave* and @*gottatrot* ! The South Coast is really spectacular and is one of the reasons we settled here. Talyuberlup is a wonderful mountain; did you pass through the Stirling Ranges and do any climbing when you were in Western Australia in 2014, @*gottatrot* ?

Today we went walking in Frenchmans Bay after a visit to town for boring business.










This is the first beach of the walk; you go down a steep wooden staircase to get to it. At the end of this beach you can either go around the rocky point we've called "Pirate Cove" (because it's very _piratey_), which involves a little bit of climbing, scrambling and rock-hopping, or take the boring route over the access road, and then down to the next beach. We had to go the boring way today because it was high tide and because you're supposed to give muscle microtears at least 48 hours without strenuous / high-load exercise to heal up quickly - and of course we were in the Stirlings less than 48 hours before this. :rofl:

Then you descend down another staircase to the next beach, which ends at the old whaling station. From there you walk back. The water was so clear today; the waves breaking looked glassy underneath.

There's great rocks in Frenchmans Bay:





The dog loves rounding up waves:



We often say to each other that we need to get to a local beach at least once a fortnight for a walk!


This evening for dinner, we had _toad in the hole_ - anyone familiar with that dish? It was great, and we had a lovely garden salad on the side...


Those look like lovely berries, @*gottatrot* , thank you for posting! I've never had huckleberries; but if your sister baked them into a pie, I'm sure they must be tasty! The thimbleberries sound all sizzle, no steak.  (Sort of like many Australian politicians, who are also said to be _a few sheep short in their top paddock_!)

And fancy you playing a practical joke with salal berries! :rofl: This actually reminds me of a time in a real Italian pizza restaurant, which served some pizzas with whole hot green chillies on. There was a table full of tourists next to us, including this sort of chest-beating he-man who'd probably only ever had pineapple pizzas out of packets before. And when their pizzas arrived, he-man was enquiring what the green things were on his table mate's pizza, and was told they were green beans and delicious and he should try them. He popped a whole one in his mouth by itself, chewed...and sort of exploded... :rofl:


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## SueC

Since there is currently a dog theme developing here, I'm going to copy over some other dog posts I made elsewhere this week, on "love or conditioning" (it's more complicated than that), and on our 40+ social thread, because it turns out a friend has a wolf cross! 

Our dog (the one on the right) does this:



She stalks waves and then, as they start to break on the beach, chases them along at top speed. I have great photos of this but not yet online, so I might have to work out how to use the attach function for the first time to fandangle some into this thread later.

It's sheepdog instinct, bred into them, just the same as she expresses with actual stock:













We've never taught her any of this, it's all natural aptitude / interest / sheepdog OCD!

But does she enjoy these things? Oh my gollygosh yes!


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## SueC

Some photos of Jess doing her wave stalking / rounding up, straight from our computer (instead of hosted photos already online).


Attached Thumbnails


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## SueC

Attached Thumbnails


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## SueC

(In response to a friend telling me about her wolf cross on 40+)

This is such a wonderful story and of course I'd love to see photos! How extraordinary and amazing! I have a real soft spot for wild canines. In Australia, some people keep dingos and dingo crosses, but it is officially illegal. Dingos are great canines though, as wolves are. The Australian kelpie has a significant amount of dingo blood in the original breeding, and you can really tell, both by their physical features and their behaviour.

I'll post some photos of dingos and of Jess.

















































I've never had a working line Kelpie before, and this dog is very different to other dogs I have known - yet similar to her Kelpie friends, like Max next door!









First of all, she has a lot of _very_ strong instincts to do with the natural world - navigates it like a fish in water. She knows to keep away from the striking distance of kangaroo claws or emu feet, and unlike many dogs, gives snakes a wide berth. Once I accidentally dropped her lead next to her on a walk and it coiled up, and the dog automatically leapt up and sideways like a cat in one easy big bound, away from the "snake", and then continued completely unruffled in a forward direction, just as she does around real snakes. _Sproing_ and then ignore. And the way she navigates rocks and mountains and water confidently but carefully and simply doesn't get herself into trouble in nature is so reminiscent of wild dogs.

Also, she has pack bonded with us like no other dog I've ever seen; yes, we walked a Border Collie for many years for a neighbour and he got very bonded with us, as did the farm dogs when I was a kid, but with Jess it is a bond that is intensely about teamwork and looking out for each other. She will "herd" me in the right direction sometimes, for example the front door when we say "_Walkies!_" and she's finished jumping up and down like a kid on a trampoline, and she actually wraps her tail around me and gazes up repeatedly from beside me, "_Are you coming? This way please!_"

If Brett wants to take her walking, the dog will do her trampoline thing and then come looking for me and try to point me in the right direction for action. If I don't go, she will lie down near me and sigh dramatically and generally let Brett walk on his own, even though she really likes him. But, she doesn't want her pack split up on a walk, and doesn't want to go without me.

When we visit neighbours, she can be loose but no matter where we end up in someone's house, our dog will be right outside the nearest door or window, lying down waiting, and making eye contact if there is an opportunity.

She is totally crazy about any kind of team games with us. Ball-throwing, soccer, catch, stick retrieving from dams, rope-pulling with _grrrrrrr_ from both sides, balloon games, anything at all. She knows where the balloons are kept and if one bursts occasionally (she is very careful, so it's not more than once a week), she will immediately go to the cupboard the balloon packet is in and stand there wagging her tail and looking at me.

She has learnt more vocabulary than any other dog I've ever known, and will bring any different toy just by its name, not because we've trained her explicitly but because we've just named the things whenever playing with them, and she has picked it up. We have to spell things like "c-h-e-e-s-e" to each other now, so we don't disappoint the dog.









The dog knows my schedule and appears to be wearing a wristwatch. "Dear Sue, isn't it time for X now? And then Y? Aren't you running a little late?"









Wild dog traits include a propensity to howl often: At dawn and dusk she joins in long and loud with the kookaburra calls, and if we make kookaburra sounds she also howls!







Also she will preferentially poop into bushes or bush grasses, leaving scats off the ground, like foxes do - not on the ground. If on the beach she always heads for the dune vegetation if she has to go, and conceals it in a bush, off the ground. After that, she scratches up the dirt so it flies around for metres, mostly back in the direction of the poop. She never, ever just poops onto a path, or sidewalk, or open ground.

She is extremely alpha and confident, and although female, raises her leg to pee, like many wild female dogs do as well. She's only around 20kg, but would undoubtedly tear apart anyone who tried to harm me, or die trying. Generally though she is very friendly to people. She won't approach them unless they approach her - and then if they are friendly she is friendly back before returning to us. She gives people with bad vibes a wide berth, but is always between me and them and makes pointed looks at them to let them know she is on guard, with a little silent teeth-baring if she considers it necessary to give a warning.

It is from the dingo that Australian Kelpies (which also have lots of Border Collie in their lines) initially got their outstanding physical capabilities for running and endurance in hot Australian conditions that didn't suit the European sheep and stock dogs. Working kelpies on stations easily clock 60km of running daily. My kelpie never tires of running; and she outdoes even my horse most of the time - his advantage comes when he sprints up a hill after half an hour of trotting and the dog running huge loops to smell everything as she accompanies us, but it won't take her long to catch up and be ahead again, and my horse, although ex-racing and very speedy, can't beat her on a sprint at the start of a ride.

Quite a dog! It's a shame dogs have such a short life span, because I surely would love to have her around for the rest of my days.









Would love to hear more wild dog idiosyncrasies about Tiwes to compare notes further!









Oh and a link about the cross-legged dingo in the photo above, who lives with people:

https://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern...ay-adventures/


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## Knave

She looks like a lovely dog! My little dog, who came from the pound, thinks he’s a coyote and loves to howl with them too. He’s terrible to run with them though and has been lucky I’ve caught him before he was eaten a couple times. He thinks he’s super tough. He is super tough, he can run with a horse for miles on crooked legs and never complains, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t even make a snack for the coyotes.


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## SueC

Oooh, what a cute dog!  Great colour! Any idea what might be in him? - And that's a Border Collie or BC X jumping up on Bones and you?


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## Knave

The pound said he was a Norwich Terrior. I am not so sure, but whatever he is I really like him. The border collie is my husband’s dog. He is a very good dog and a very bad puppy all rolled into one. 

He also loves to chase water, and often ends up in my garden with me yelling before I noticed he was there. He eats my irises off and chews my drip lines and I think he found himself dinner in the trough which the fish live in. At the same time he minds really well and is becoming a good cow dog. He’s very aggressive but he listens to commands. He seems to like everyone too, which I appreciate. 

I usually complain to my husband about him, but he’s developing a soft spot in me.  He makes me laugh a lot of the time, and he makes me proud when I watch him work.


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## SueC

@Knave, @bsms, and any other dog people - would be interested in whether you know any working dogs that need to be tied up / confined out of sight of livestock because they are so obsessed that they don't eat and just become shivering messes otherwise? Came up on another thread. I have to admit I've not seen much of that here in WA - and when I have, it was mostly with dogs that were confined to kennels when not working and didn't get to see much else - or town-kept animals that didn't get enough exercise and mental stimulation. Are there now genetically hard-wired (rather than environmentally produced) pathologically OCD stock dogs, cases you've seen?


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## SueC

_This is in postscript to the beach walk we did on Thursday (https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page62/#post1970572205).

...and our dog's wave-chasing photos here: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page62/#post1970573363

It's a reflection on our dog's choices down at the beach.

_Our kelpie is a great herder but not super obsessive - neither with waves nor livestock. Same with several friends' current and past kelpies, and some trial dogs I knew years ago. They take their herding and protection roles seriously, but are multifaceted dogs. All of them live integrated into their human families to a greater or lesser extent (some are indoors dogs, some outdoors dogs, even a caravan dog!), and all of them have off-switches if you ask them to do something else. Starting up the ute or tractor always takes them away from any self-imposed stock duty!







_Sproing_, where are we going?

Jess wave-chased when she first got down to the beach yesterday, then looked at me, "_You gunna_?"







- so I joined in for a bit, which made her redouble her efforts. After I stopped, she naturally broke off to go exploring in the dunes for a bit, and to sniff for hidden messages on the beach (_weemails_







). She periodically went back to wave-chasing, and when Brett and I sat down on a dune at the walk's end to look at the view, she came and sat with us, and then started rolling on her back making funny noises and looking at us.

She then discovered by accident that she could go sliding down the dune wiggling on her back with her four feet in the air, and started _wagging her tail_ while upside-down halfway down the dune, and wiggling harder. When the downward motion stopped, she gave us a look, wagged furiously, ran back up to us, crashed over, started rolling again, and quite deliberately wiggled herself all the way back down the dune to the beach, making growly noises and wagging all the way.









These types of animals always seem to end up with me!







She was an ultra-aloof dog when we picked her up from the farm dog rescue, by the way. A townie had gotten more than they could handle with her after watching _Red Dog_ - and the rescue guy said this problem of kelpies ending up in shelters before they were a year old had doubled since that movie.










If significant numbers of herding dogs are indeed becoming genetically pushed into the direction of pathological OCD (as a lot of show horses are getting pushed genetically into traits considered desirable by some humans, which are really undesirable for the animal itself, causing anatomical deformity, lowering of intelligence, proneness to various illnesses and malfunctions, etc in the name of breeding fashions) then I think it would be great if people drew a line and stopped deliberately breeding for those extreme traits. (i.e. actually thought and cared about the ethics).

Speaking of, rain has stopped and time to walk an impatient kelpie who has pointed this out to me!


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## bsms

SueC said:


> ...Are there now genetically hard-wired (rather than environmentally produced) pathologically OCD stock dogs, cases you've seen?


I haven't met one. Nor would one be tolerated on a sheep ranch. An obsessive dog who won't stop working sheep isn't working them, but harassing them. You shoot dogs like that.

Australian Shepherds and Border Collies have become favorites of the agility dog sports. There are breeders who now breed for agility and obsessive behavior instead of breeding for herding. The Australian Shepherd has largely been ruined by AKC recognition and by agility sports. It is a great breed of dog but I fully understood why a good breeder of herding Australian Shepherds refused to sell me a pup - there aren't enough well bred Australian Shepherds left and the few good ones cannot go to non-herding homes.

The Border Collie people in the US are still fighting to keep them genuine herd dogs, but there are a lot of disreputable breeders who breed them for agility sports. The AKC now registers Border Collies. The AKC Border Collies are heavier boned, stockier, fluffier - wouldn't survive on a working ranch. And the AKC doesn't support herding ability, only looks.

The Border Collie War: ABCA vs. AKC

How to choose a Border Collie | American Border Collie Association

I haven't read it, but I've heard it is a good book:

The Dog Wars: How the Border Collie Battled the American Kennel Club

I owned a Border Collie from a farm in England. She had tons of herding desire. Watching kids play soccer was torment for her. The kids OBVIOUSLY needed someone to take charge! But...she would sit, trembling sometimes but sit, and watch a match. The one I have now is positively LAZY unless there is something worthwhile to do. Then he gives it his all, but his all at 10 is slowing down. He is a mother hen sort of dog, infinitely patient with little kids. He sleeps in the room with the grandkids now and will be lost if they move to California. I've never met a dog who was so patient and caring for kids.

The English bred Border Collie with our youngest, 20 years ago:








​
In case you haven't noticed, the whole "off switch" thing gets my blood up! I'd shoot a Border Collie who didn't know how to stop. I'd also consider shooting their breeders. Not really, of course, but a really good beating would be in order. :evil:


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## Knave

Like @bsms, we will not tolerate a dog that actively moves livestock when not asked. If a dog bites horses or another animal in the pen it would get a pretty severe warning, because another bite of a horse would end with the dog being shot. Other people will let their dogs bite a horse, but that is their choice.

Now, that being said, we had a dog when I was growing up called Buster. He was a spectacular cow dog. I remember that we could stop and eat lunch and he would continue with the cows on his own. He knew all the drives and he loved nothing more. He was always with the horses and roping stock at the house until he was old. He didn’t move them, but he stayed outside the corrals and ran from one side of the pen to the other. That was what he did whenever he was home. He only came in to eat.

When we roped he had to be tied up. It was the only time he required it, but he did. Dad locked him in the garage once, and he literally ate a hole through the door to get back to roping. After that he tied him with a chain, and the dog would make his mouth bleed trying to chew the chain when a calf was let out of the chute. 

He was such a good dog. He was a family man too, and my brother and I always took him with us for things. My brother, much older than I, taught him to pull wood to the wood box, which I later used to have him pull me on roller skates. He knew all the words to be controlled. He went on my rides with me when I was a little girl. I had the paint horse, and I would ride him bareback pretending I was an Indian and that the dog was my wolf. I spent so many hours playing games with him. 

His biggest downfall wasn’t the ocd, but it was heat strokes or epilepsy. When working very hard days he would lay down and have a seizure. Eventually we would see him again, because he knew the trails and he would find us. People wanted to breed to him, as he was such a good dog, and many puppies were out of him. They all became good dogs with epilepsy. I believe people finally decided they must stop breeding that line of his children. Those dogs didn’t live to a ripe old age like he did, because the epilepsy was worse in further generations.


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## SueC

See, @bsms, I actually think you've got more patience with people like that than I do, because nowadays I'd put the lot of them through one of those Dr Who classic series annoying human compost units in order to lighten the burden and to make them into something actually useful for the planet. :evil:

Thank you very much for your informative post, I needed some insights into this. It really is shocking how humans manage to spoil everything - well, some humans. And ironic that the term _animal_ is used as an insult for humans.

I am going to dig a moat around our farm and put hungry piranhas in it and just have a drawbridge, I think. :angrily_smileys:

That's such a lovely dog, super photo - and the larval human isn't bad either! ;-)

@Knave, thank you for that lovely post. Buster sounds like such a character. I also think it's an interesting parallel that you and I both pretended to be Native Americans as children. I wore moccasins everywhere when I was in primary school, carved my own bow and arrow with a hunting knife, made a headdress out of strips of cardboard with those tubes in, into which I put feathers I'd collected outdoors. I practiced walking silently in moccasins and being respectful of nature. I was never the cowboy when kids played cowboys and Indians. I didn't have a wolf or a paint horse though! 

And I was in Europe. Funny, that!


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## Knave

That is funny @SueC. Many of my friends now are Natives. Of course, they are not the olden day Indians you and I pretended to be. 

Now, I am fairly dark skinned from being part Portuguese. One of my sister-in-laws isn’t particularly fond of me. I was roping one day and she yelled out that I was an Indian correct. I said no and continued roping. She proceeded to argue with me, but whatever. It was funny. Also, I didn’t know at the time that she wasn’t particularly fond of Natives either. 

What she completely missed in her insult was that the Natives from our area I know are amazing ropers. They are children growing up with a rope in their hand or a basketball. What a complement!


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## SueC

@Knave, have you ever been tempted to lasso your SIL? And perhaps drag her a little to teach her some manners?

I also hear there's a good trick involving honey and ants... ;-)


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## Knave

Hahahahaha! @SueC I just decide to think it’s funny more than anything. Once upon a time I let it bother me. She is getting a bit softer towards me, but still she doesn’t enjoy my company by any means. lol. She really is a beautiful girl. She looks like Taylor Swift. It is funny to have Taylor around saying snippy things.


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## knightrider

Recently I saw a movie that I just loved. Came out in 2017. It's called _Wonder_ and the only really famous star is Julia Roberts who plays the mother. I think you would like it. It's about a boy who is born with Treacher Collins Syndrome. Lots of plastic surgeries later, he kind of has a face, but he has to deal with a lot of obstacles in his life with courage and compassion. The movie also follows the members of his family and close friends and how they are impacted by his disability. My description doesn't do it half justice, the movie is so well-done. I got the book and read it after seeing the movie. It is one of the rare times when I thought the movie was actually better than the book--the movie tightened up the plot in just the right ways. If I ever see that movie for sale anywhere I will buy it.


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## SueC

This sounds great, thank you, @knightrider! 

I don't know if Brett will watch it, so this might have to be for a girls' night! :rofl:


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## SueC

And now an update from our farm in Redmond.

Rain. Mud. Puddles. More rain. Gumboots. Splish splash. More puddles and mud. More rain with gales. Horses snug in their rugs grazing.


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## SueC

And now a little laugh for anyone reading, because I don't have any riding reports just now with all this rain and mud (but I am hopeful for this afternoon).

Online, you get to meet quite a few needles in the haystack, for various reasons. Brett and I actually also met online many years ago, discussing books and astrophysics and how to make a really good hot chocolate etc. And once I heard his voice on the phone, that was pretty much it for me.  For him, it was my description of making hot chocolate by heating up full-cream milk in a cup, with a piece of glacé ginger in it, and then adding Continental Drinking Chocolate (low sugar, stratospheric cocoa), natural vanilla, and a little shake of cinnamon. On actually meeting up, he says what got him into trouble was my French Provencial Chocolate Cake, plus (I quote) _your alluring female form _(he was female-starved and hadn't had a really excellent chocolate cake before),_ your lovely smile, your beautiful eyes, your cute nose, your book collection, etc etc etc...
_:loveshower:

In person he impressed me immensely with his object-holding capacities (champion tomato holder), luxuriant crop of dark hair, 1000W smile, demeanour around books, his book-reading voice when he read things to me, his ability to eat copious amounts of my food without turning into a blimp, his unparalleled (by any previous date) mountain-climbing abilities day after day, his interest in anything and everything in the natural world, etc etc etc. Oh, and my horse liked him too! 

So one thing led to another.










And we are even happier now, after being married for 10 years, 5 months, and 24 days today. This photo is from last week:




This month has been a very happy month, as I have also formally made two lovely adopted sisters on HF: @Knave, my lovely horsey sister from America who does even crazier things with horses than I do and I love it, and who keeps a wonderful journal here, and is a real trooper in all sorts of ways.  And @louiseh1985, my new Scandinavian sister who thinks outside the square on a daily basis. Louise and husband Per are as delightfully crazy and naughty as Brett and I are and have very similar weird brains all around, which makes for the most ridiculous ideas, as well as language play in several languages. :happydance:

Louise has a thread here:

https://www.horseforum.com/new-member-introductions/hello-sweden-792067/

She and Per are currently holidaying with good friends. Brett and I made this cheese story for them yesterday, going walking, as you do (we make up lots of stories just walking), because of all the Nordic mythology we couldn't help discussing. You'll all recognise the format for the joke; it's used frequently, and I first saw it used for this purpose in immunology - can't find it online, might have to scan it later...

Anyway, the cheese story.

In the beginning, there was the void. And God said, _let there be cheese_, and there was cheese. God saw that the cheese was good, and made more cheese. And behold there was Gouda, Wensleydale, Gruyère, Cheddar, Camembert, Mozzarella, Havarti, Parmesan, Feta, those little BabyBel things, and all manner of cheese.

And God created man and woman to eat the cheese, and he created a garden for them to dwell in, and he called it the Garden of Edam.

And God made a Gorgonzola tree in the garden, amidst all the other cheeses. And he said to the man and the woman, You may eat of all the cheese in the Garden of Edam, but you shall not eat of the Gorgonzola.

But the man had a snake, and it was a naughty snake, and it spoke to him and said, _Come on, eat the Gorgonzola already!_ And the man did, since he always does as his snake bids him. And his breath stank of Gorgonzola, and the woman was displeased.

But not as displeased as God, who came walking into the Garden of Edam for a visit, sniffed the man, and grew wrathful. And God said to the man, _You reek of Gorgonzola! You have done wrong and will be cast out and you can make your own bloody cheese!
_
And God cast out the man and the woman and destroyed the Garden of Edam with so much heat that it became a giant fondue, which God hauled off to Valhalla, where Thor was very happy about this gift, filled the molten cheese into kegs, and said _Skål_ to all the Viking Warriors. The End.











To which our new Swedish family sent us this link:






:rofl:


----------



## SueC

Hooray! I got to ride!









The weather has been dire for days; finally we had a reasonable day. As I type the rain is pouring down again as the next cold front bears down, but today was a mostly clear and rain-free day. Brett and I got a whole heap of work done: First of all, he wheelbarrowed the ready-to-use compost from the old compost bay while I prepared the ground around our three target trees: Two cherries - a Stella and I think a Sunburst (but the label is in the orchard and I'm not going out to check!), and a Santa Rosa plum - all these were put in last year, and the ground around them isn't great. So although we gave them lots of compost when they were first planted, and they grew well, we added another two wheelbarrows full each in a large saucer shape (extending past the drip line) we'd made in the ground around each tree. The saucer shape is to help keep the irrigation water in the root zone in summer.

We even had leftover compost for the two hazelnut trees put in last year - a wheelbarrow each (and this isn't a gardening wheelbarrow, it's a proper large concreting wheelbarrow). This is a great time to give compost to the deciduous fruit trees because their roots are dormant, but it won't be long before bud burst now, and they're going to appreciate all the nutrients for their new growth.

This was the group of new trees at the start of last spring, when we last gave them compost after putting them in (with compost) mid-winter.



The three trees in the foreground were the target trees today; the back two trees - an almond and a Mariposa plum - still need doing. The caged tree is a seven-year-old dwarf Morello cherry which has been yielding abundantly for two years. Last summer:





We were just delightedly eating them by the bowlful any time of the day and night, we looooove cherries! Also I made Bohemian Cherry Strudel and Cherry Clafoutis several times - wonderful! And this summer, the Stella and Sunburst should be yielding for the first time. Delicious times ahead!

Other chores included cleaning out one of the big bathtubs the horses drink from in the upper paddocks, because it had a dead bird in it. This was the shallower bathtub, which has never had a bird fatality before. We will now be making a brick island in the tub, like we have in the deeper one already, so birds that can't reach the rim when the water level drops can get on the bricks and fly out.

Then it was manure collecting (Brett) and mowing (me) to start a new compost heap in the empty frame. Brett also collected lots of dry leaves from the bush to start it off at the base, so it can aerate and drain. I made pasta for lunch, using the last of our home-grown fresh tomatoes - they're getting a bit dire in the cold and I'll be pulling the remaining plants up to put in brassicas etc (we still have bags and bags of frozen tomatoes for sauces). It was an onion/garlic/tomato/feta/olive sauce with a bit of chilli, on a bed of fettucine, with parmesan on top; accompanied by a huge salad made from red mustard leaves, mizuna and parsley in a lime juice and mayonnaise dressing. It's the salad on this plate:



The potato dish on this plate is what we had for dinner - a form of Potato Roesti, specifically baked potatoes sliced and then pan-fried with onions and diced salami, with cheese, eggs, pepper, salt and lots of caraway seeds. Right now I'm having a fruit salad Brett brought me - half an apple, a banana and a mandarin, chopped up and with lemon juice and plain Greek yoghurt and a handful of almonds. So delicious!

In the afternoon we also dealt with the compost toilet cartridge, which we tipped into the new compost heap once it had a thick layer of leaves, followed by a layer of horse and cow manure, and a layer of lawn clippings on it. It's a big 850L cartridge, but we only let it get half full before emptying, as it's easier on us. It's a mix of what is politely called humanure in GR circles, plus toilet paper and chaff - you put a bucket of chaff in the cartridge when you start again, and a cup of chaff down the loo every time you do a Number 2, so you get the carbon-nitrogen ratio right for composting. I used a garden fork to work the contents into the lawn clippings, then Brett tipped on another barrow of mixed manure, which I worked into the humanure layer and grass clippings. Another grass clippings layer on top to cover it; then more animal manure next time and so forth.

Is it icky? Well, I'm so used to mucking out, and it's not that different - although human manure is far ickier than horse manure, about the same as pig or dog manure, and I'd probably gag if it was the guest toilet cartridge, because we're always more disgusted with other people's body products than our own, whatever the form it takes. But the point is, humans are sitting at the top of the food chain, and their manure contains lots of nutrients that should be recycled into the biosphere to grow food, instead of sent down a sewer and then into waterways or oceans, where they cause all sorts of problems. This is something modern Western humans are getting very wrong; the Chinese are much wiser about it, I don't have to explain this concept to them. It's hot composting, followed by compost worms, so no issue with ick or pathogens in the mature compost.

Here are the two compost bins, left and right, last summer:



A raised rhubarb bed in the middle, also carrying tomatoes, and several olive trees in front of the tree lucerne hedge which is high-protein stock fodder, winter nectar for our bees, and habitat for happy birds. A young apricot tree in front of the left-hand-side compost bin; a crazy young Granny Smith apple that decided to yield in its first summer here (it likes the compost), and pumpkin vines of course.

It's all about this:



That's an espaliered dwarf Jonathan apple, which is producing tremendously for its size. It has a Lady Williams neighbour. We also have non-espaliered apples - Granny Smith, Sundowner, Cox' Orange Pippin.

So blossoms should be out within a month, for another cycle in the orchard!

All afternoon I was saying to Brett, "My carrot for all this is that I want to go riding!" - and after feeding the horses their hard feed in the late afternoon, and sticking the other three's rugs back on, Sunsmart and I had a jaunt around what I call the Fireground Ride, which was documented with photos from horseback some pages back in this journal. It was mostly trotting and great fun. Julian and the donkeys followed us to the start of the central sand track, and then veered into the forest. At the neighbour's place we had a lovely ride through the swampy flats and woodlands, before emerging in the open pasture, with the other, smaller neighbour's 30-odd cattle silhouetted against the hilltop along their fence, mooing excitedly when they spotted us, so I mooed right back at them, and they kicked up their heels and followed along on the other side of the fence.










When Smartie and I got back to the electric line and boundary gate, the donkeys were waiting in the Secret Meadow, having obviously decided to follow us up the central track. They showed great interest in the gate, but I kept them on our side, then mounted up again and returned home via our Swamp Track. Jess was ecstatic, having already had a walk with us in the morning, but she much prefers rides as the horse runs so much faster than I do! 








Right now, said dog is curled up on the sofa under a pile of pillows, giving a soft snore occasionally, her belly filled with kangaroo meat, fish kibbles and whatever she gleaned from _Café Romeo_ when I fed the old horse in the garden this evening - he drops a bit and she eats some.

She's looking very like this, except this evening only her nose is sticking out!



The horse too was well cared for after the ride and went away with an extra feed in his belly, his rug on, his ears scratched and a big thank you for the ride.









And now it's time for a hot shower for me, and the pilot episode of a crime series set in Greenland and featuring Dumbledore and Dr Who No.9 that Brett wants to show me!









Happy Friday to everyone who's still in the middle of it! :wave:


----------



## SueC

Oh no! :icon_rolleyes:

We have just returned from the hospital, where I spent the evening having my foot looked at, X-rayed and even CT scanned while having a nice social time with the medical staff, who were all really sweet and helpful. And ahem, the middle three metatarsals of my left foot are fractured, and we're hoping that the ligaments aren't torn off the bone; won't know for sure until the CT images are processed but probably OK as the fractures are relatively simple and only one is displaced - the M.4, by 2mm.

This looks enormous on the X-ray, but apparently they don't worry much until you have a 4mm displacement, those are the surgical cases. So I am going to have a knobbly M.4 from hereon in, I'm afraid. 6 weeks in a moon boot and on crutches before I can start trying to bear weight on the foot again - the break is in the arch, and you really want it to heal uneventfully.

Apart from that we had a lovely day. It's Sunday, which is when Bill comes over to have Sunday lunch with us (and morning and afternoon teas either side). Brett and I lit a little bonfire in the early morning, to burn a stack of fodder tree branches from last winter. When Bill arrived we had morning tea and a good yarn (Australian slang for conversation, we also use the term chinwag!).

We had obtained a _real_ chicken from the heritage free-range chicken producer at the Saturday farmers' food market yesterday, and had roasted lemon chicken for lunch, with crunchy roasted potatoes, peas and a garden salad. The chicken was so delicious. Commercially bred, industrially raised chickens are mutants that have trouble walking because their skeletons can't support their mutated over-large muscles, so they have arthritis from the time they are babies, and we just refuse to buy commercial chicken on ethical as well as taste and nutrition grounds. We'd rather eat decent chicken twice a year than industrial chicken twenty times a year.

I put together an apple/pear/berry/cinnamon/almond strudel for afternoon tea, and went to mow some lawn to work up an appetite and get clippings for the compost.

Bill left after afternoon tea (the strudel is wonderful!), and there was enough light to ride, so after feeding them evening their bucket feed, I saddled up Sunsmart and planned to head out to the Fireground Loop. However, I only got as far as behind our house, to the start of the trail. It was very windy with another cold front approaching, and I was a little distracted, and the horse a little jumpy because of the wind. He gave a little jump sideways at a walk, and I quite unbelievably lost my balance and fell off him to the left. It was an uncomplicated, low-speed fall from which you'd normally land flat-footed on both feet, or you'd roll over your backside.

And I've never actually fallen off this horse before out riding - I've only fallen straight off the other side a few times when mounting him bareback with too much momentum.









So here's a first, and I had to do it properly apparently. I just landed on my left foot the wrong way and immediately heard a gunshot sound, accompanied by a disconcerting _pop_ in my foot, and I was thinking, _Oh shiitake_, because everyone who has broken bones talks about that sound!

I'd never broken anything before other than my nose, and it's been 26 years since my last significant horse-riding injury where I fell with my horse into a gate and bent the steel pipe with my tibia just under the knee - ouch! They needed a pipe bender to straighten the gate out again, but miraculously nothing in my leg broke, I just had massive bruising, including a bone bruise under the periosteum just under my knee, which was, as typically happens, subsequently invaded by osteocytes and made a bone bump just under my knee.

Anyway, I'm back in my bed with warm milk, food and paracetamol, sporting an astronaut boot.

I'll write more later, including about a song I made up when I got my X-ray results.

Sympathy is welcome.  The worst thing is that I really won't be able to get around not riding my horse for 6 weeks minimum... :evil:


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## greentree

Oh, my gosh! Bless your heart! It sounds like such a lovely day.....until. Why is it those simple things.....I had a Pillon fracture on my pinky finger from hitting it on my horse’s neck landing a jump. Complete with surgery and PT, it seemed like quite an ordeal for a pinky finger, and it kept me away from riding WAY too long.

Take care of yourself, and heal quickly. Hugs.


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## SueC

Thanks very much, @greentree, and :hug: back. Yep, those bones in the extremities can be tricky. I'm not too uncomfortable anymore now though with the foot immobilised and my husband being a good house elf!  I've got lots of plans for how to deal with the injury and still get around; it's just the lack of riding in the next six weeks that especially hurts...


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## frlsgirl

Oh my gosh, you met your husband online as well? I met my husband on a dating site although it was more or less by accident; we ended up becoming phone friends and talking about our horrific dates; he lived in Colorado and I lived in Oregon so were outside of the normal "range" that we both selected for potential dates; I can't remember why he even clicked on my profile but we ended up talking every single day and then decided we should just meet in person; that was January 2005 and we've been together ever since.

Glad you finally got to ride but yikes about your foot. That must hurt!


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## Knave

Oh I’m so sorry! Now you will be like little girl stuck on the ground. What a crazy thing!! You must have landed just perfectly wrong I guess. 

I hope that Brett takes good care of you and that the time flies quickly.


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## AnitaAnne

Oh my! Of all the freaky things to happen! There are so many little bones in the foot and it hurts like Hades when one breaks a bone in there :frown_color: 

Were you wearing a sturdy boot at the time? 

Did they tape the toe to the next one for support? 

Be very, very careful not to stub your toe. The walking boot should help with that. 

:hug:

Hope it heals very quickly and without complications.


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## knightrider

So, so sorry this had to happen. And such a freak thing too. A long time ago, I was jumping my mare in a riding arena the day before a show, so the jumps were nicely set up but no one around. I did not know that in the 50's and early 60's, someone had the bright idea of putting down used heavy motor oil in the arena before every show to keep down the dust. As the years went by, the oil underneath the sand made the arena very slippery, and when I was jumping, my mare slipped and fell on me, crushing my left foot. It was broken in 6 places, but they could not cast it for 2 weeks because the foot was all covered with bloody cracks. The doctor said it was the same thing as if someone had stepped on a grape. I had 4 breaks in the big toe alone. It was no fun. Then it had to be in a cast for 8 weeks because of not being casted the first 2 weeks. I learned to ride with only one stirrup (can't get a casted foot in a stirrup) for a very long time.

I don't know if this story makes you feel better. I hope you are feeling better. As soon as I got the cast, I rode with the cast. You should have seen me crutching down to the barn with a bareback pad under my arm and struggling to tack up with crutches. It was a mess. Best wishes for a speedy recovery. ((((Hugs)))))


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## SwissMiss

Oh no! Apparently you hit your foot "just" right :sad:

Hoping for a uncomplicated, speedy recovery :hug:


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## SueC

Thank you, all. :hug:

@*AnitaAnne* , it's the metatarsals, which is the long bones that make up the arch; the toes are just fine (other than the little ones have been banana bent since childhood from shoes that I outgrew and weren't replaced soon enough to give me room to grow _grrrrrrrrrr_). And yes, fracturing bones in the feet does hurt; I'm not a screamer but I was like an ambulance siren for about an hour after the initial fall, especially whenever I tried to move. I was behind the house so I could do that loud owl-call thing where you blow into a cave made by your hands and alert Brett, because I couldn't have led the horse back to the tie-down and I didn't want him rolling with the saddle on.

Normally when you hurt one foot you hop on the other, but this was out of the question as the impact shocks through the body from hopping produced unbelievable pain levels in the broken foot. I went back on all fours to avoid that. Brett doesn't know how to untack, so I kind of crawled to the tie-down, supported myself into an upright position on the post, slid up the stirrups, and undid the girth so Brett could take the saddle away; also I took off the bridle. Then came the immense fun of rugging the horse in his brand-new purple rug which was already to hand over the tie-down - all the straps needed adjusting as this was the first time he wore it.

The horse knew something was wrong with me because of the intermittent yelping and ongoing hyperventilation, and nosed me with concern, and when I patted him he gently pulled on my sleeve, one of the playful antics in his repertoire. I went to sit down a minute on the grass when Brett untied the horse, and he just stood watching me. He was still watching with puzzlement when I left the scene on all fours again. In the house, we tried to ice the injury but that was too painful to do, so Brett just drove me straight to hospital.

Re the footwear, not implicated; hiking boots. Would have needed unyielding metal soles to prevent the metatarsal fracture, and this would probably have led to an ankle fracture instead. I was clear of the stirrups immediately also, it's autopilot for me to lose my stirrups when I realise I can't stop a fall. I do have what a physio friend calls ballerina feet - I can easily hyperflex at the ankle and through the tarsals to make my foot totally vertical, like a ballerina _en pointe_. Anyway, I caught the top of the foot on the ground when landing and it just went crunch. Completely freak landing, just one of those things. The radiographer told me lots of people get this kind of fracture slipping in the bath. :shock: :hug:

Yep, @*SwissMiss* , I did indeed hit it "just right"! :rofl: Can't complain too much though; the medical staff were going, "26 years since your last significant riding injury? Wow. We see horseriders in here all the time!" Hopefully it will be another 26 years before the next significant one. ;-) :hug:

@*Knave* , now I can be a _real_ sympathy aunt from across the Big Pond for your little girl. She may well beat me in the race to get back on a horse! If the surgeons get the whole of fat Elvis first attempt, well, skin repairs far quicker than bone, and especially in a young growing person.  I send a big :hug:. You can tell her that my foot feels like a giant toothache except when it is perfectly still, and ask her what she'd liken the pain of her injury to (and does ice-cream help?). 

@*knightrider* , re: _As soon as I got the cast, I rode with the cast. You should have seen me crutching down to the barn with a bareback pad under my arm and struggling to tack up with crutches. It was a mess. Best wishes for a speedy recovery. ((((Hugs)))))_ From one horse fanatic to another: :rofl: :rofl: :hug: ...don't think my brain isn't doing consistent background crunching on how I can get back to riding before the astronaut boot comes off!  I can't help myself. I do have to make sure that if I do anything drastic like that, I can't refracture the same bones in case of another fall, because the blood supply to the metatarsals isn't that fabulous and if that happened, my walking could well be compromised long-term. Anyway, yes, that portrait of you racing back to the barn on crutches had me in stitches and made me feel better - aaah - the shared insanity! ;-) Your injury though, OMG! Your poor foot! :hug: Did it get back to 100% good post-injury, or is it a reliable weather forecaster now?

@*frlsgirl* , we weren't going to meet in a pub! :rofl: How lovely that you found the right person and have been together so long as well! Hope your gluten problems are getting better. Our GR editor has gluten intolerance and I can send many easy, outlandish, yummy GF recipes both savoury and sweet should you need any inspiration! :hug:


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## Knave

She said it is akin to when you cut the circulation off of a body part and you first remove the rubber band or string or whatever you did it with and press on it.


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## SueC

Eeek! Sending lots of well wishes! :hug:


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## Knave

I forgot to add that she was very sorry for what happened!


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## SueC

Thank you!  And you can tell her I really don't like Elvis and want to beat him up, but not until after he has been removed! ;-)


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## knightrider

@SueC., as you thought, that foot is a good predicter of bad weather on the way. But it looks pretty good. All the bones healed straight. I loved/hated your description of getting your horse untacked and rugged. So hard and bad and sad, and yet so well written.

When I got my foot crushed, I was miles from anywhere and knew I'd have to get home somehow. Funny thing was, my knee was also injured and it hurt so bad, I didn't realize my foot was hurt that bad. I climbed on something somehow and got back on my mare and rode home with my foot out of the stirrup. Yes, the foot started hurting for sure on the way home.

At the bottom of my pasture at the gate to the trails was a railroad track. The trains only run twice a day--once during daylight, once in the night. They are coal trains hauling coal to a power plant, long and slow. Just as I got to my gate, a coal train came through . . . and it was a looooong one. I waited and waited and waited for that awful train, my foot and knee hurting so badly. I don't remember how I untacked, but I do remember no one was home at my house and I called my neighbor and good friend to drive me to the hospital. By now I was really really REALLY hurting. She took her time picking me up, and when she got me, she brought her DOG! Who leaped and jumped all over me lying in the back seat wondering if I was going to be in heaven soon. And on the way to the hospital, she stopped off at a house to drop off a child who had been playing with her daughter. I can laugh about it now, but I really wasn't happy with my friend that day.


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## SueC

Oh my, @knightrider , you really must write your memoirs, you've had such a rich tapestry of life and you have such great photos! You know, the accident did make me think, because what if it had happened miles out? My horse does stay with me, and I think the only logical thing would be to somehow get back on the horse, pushing off on a pulpy leg if necessary, and do what you did. I can't imagine how painful that would have been though, and the bloody train as well! :shock: And yet here you are, and back on the horse a few weeks after that too! 

On a lighter note, you might enjoy this little ditty I made up after seeing my X-ray and while waiting for the CT scan. Brett was sitting next to me, and I couldn't get over the fact that I'd fractured _three_ bones, and I was also terribly bored waiting for the next scan. And what do you sing when you are bored and in pain? _99 Bottles of Beer_ - do you know that one?






Except I changed the lyrics to:

_Ten very nice metatar-sals, ten very nice metatar-sals,
If three of these metatarsals were to break
You'd still have seven very nice metatar-sals!
_
You have to do some clever meter adjusting when singing this one! Brett was moaning in embarrassment as I sang my tune and covering his head. :rofl: The doctors liked it!


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## SueC

And @knightrider , who can forget this scene? :rofl:






Serious continuity error - a horse doesn't just run around with a halter and lead rope conveniently attached, especially after being set free...


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## mmshiro

SueC said:


> Oh no! :icon_rolleyes:
> 
> And ahem, the middle three metatarsals of my left foot are fractured, and we're hoping that the ligaments aren't torn off the bone;


See? Should'a worn a helmet! :tongue:


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## SueC

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: @mmshiro!

And thanks for visiting me "in hospital"! ;-)


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## AnitaAnne

This is so wrong of me; but the visual imagery of you crawling on all fours trying to untack your sweet horse while he looks at you in confusion has me :rofl::rofl::rofl:

Then you have a brilliant DH that has been around these critters of yours for how many years and he doesn't yet know how to take off a saddle? :dance-smiley05:

Y'all are _killin' me_ my gut hurts so bad :rofl::rofl:

Only horse people would take care of the horse who is FINE yet totally confused about why you are finally walking on four legs (as any decent mammal should) before considering treating the injured human :mylittlepony:

Plus the medical staff are amazed you haven't had an injury for 26 years! :rofl::rofl:

But really I am very sorry this happened and hope you recover really soon. But you make it sound so dang funny!


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## SueC

@AnitaAnne, it actually is funny! :rofl: And painful at the same time, but funnier than it is painful, and I expect the pain will taper off over the next week if I behave myself. 

And your last post had me :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: all over again, which is so good for my endorphin levels! :happydance:

We've just ordered this:










Wonderful Scandinavian honorary family Louise, who has no arms and is hellbent on riding a horse independently as well as everything else, sent through a link to an Australian distributor of this engineering solution this morning so that I can walk the dog and groom and feed and rug and unrug the horses and do my gardening over the next six weeks, with hands free and my spine supported evenly and so without having to have a back operation as follow-up as well! And I'll still be using most of my leg muscles normally. 

Now I'm going to be a pirate. I will need a hat and an eye-patch to complete the costume.










I'm sure it'll come in handy again sometime in the rest of our lives too! :rofl:


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## SueC

AnitaAnne said:


> Then you have a brilliant DH that has been around these critters of yours for how many years and he doesn't yet know how to take off a saddle? :dance-smiley05:


To be fair, I still don't know how to programme a computer either! inkunicorn::blueunicorn:

Brett is _wonderful_ - he is my on-tap graphic designer, IT support, photograph curator, cultural explorer, does over 90% of all the washing dishes in this house and lots of other things. And he toils at the coal face four days a week to keep me in the standard to which I have become accustomed. 

And he does know how to rug and unrug, and he frequently feeds Romeo for me in the mornings just to give me a break, and he's come such a long way from when we first got Sunsmart down to Albany in 2009 and he famously and memorably said, "I'm never going to be on the same side of the fence as _that_ monster!"

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

This was him aboard for the following Halloween. It was a one-off, but competently done, just like fudging Middle Earth into the photograph! :rofl:


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## SueC

AnitaAnne said:


> Only horse people would take care of the horse who is FINE yet totally confused about why you are finally walking on four legs (as any decent mammal should)...










































> ...before considering treating the injured human :mylittlepony:


:happydance:

I have to go to something called _fracture clinic_ at the hospital on Friday morning! I think I'd better book _ruptured diaphragm clinic_ as well! :dance-smiley05:

Oxygen! Give me oxygen! :rofl:

And maybe some morphine! :rofl:


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## AnitaAnne

Maybe he was thinking WOW, momma is much shorter than I thought when she isn't constantly rearing... 

Aye, aye Captain iWalk; I am off to bed matey...


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## SueC

Sleep well!  Zzzzzzz!


*Exhibit A*: (<24h post-fracture..._the original hydrostatic fracture bandage!_ Rainbow colours yet to come.)


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## gottatrot

Aww so sorry about your foot. Very glad you have good support and hope you have some good pain medications too.


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## SueC

Paracetamol, laughter and hugs, @gottatrot, and sleeping when I can at the moment!  That fall was very similar to the one you posted off Hero recently, except I landed with my foot at a bad angle! _Rrrrrrrrrrr_!


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## SueC

Brett just said to me (while bringing me strudel and cream), "You've only got yourself to blame. After all, you were the one who broke the Number One Rule of Horseriding."

"And what's that?" I enquired, eyebrows raised in puzzlement.

"Don't fall off!"

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:


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## gottatrot




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## SwissMiss

SueC said:


> Brett just said to me (while bringing me strudel and cream), "You've only got yourself to blame. After all, you were the one who broke the Number One Rule of Horseriding."
> 
> "And what's that?" I enquired, eyebrows raised in puzzlement.
> 
> "Don't fall off!"
> 
> :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:



mg: are Brett and my DH twins? Or one and the same?????
I can totally hear him saying that :rofl:


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## SueC

It's just the Y chromosome, @SwissMiss! ;-)


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## weeedlady

Sending sympathy from Ohio! oh, and your cherries are beautiful.


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## frlsgirl

Well at least you got your husband trained well, bringing you yummy desserts.


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## SueC

Thank you, @*weedlady* ! :hug: Is Ohio good for cherry-growing? You'd have enough chill there, I think? Yeah, we love cherries... good thing we got to put the extra compost on the new cherry trees before I had my accident. They'll be flowering before I'll be walking like a normal person again! What have you been up to? Are you getting more horse-time in now? How are Raven and Tucker? Any exciting summer riding?

@*frlsgirl* , this is a good point!  I was pretty useless yesterday, except for reading and typing. Brett goes back to work today, vacation over - what a way to end the vacation... :rofl: So until my peg-leg gets here, I'll be on crutches, which really limits what I can do outdoors, but I'm thinking of crutching to the farm dam today as it's good weather, sitting on the wall and throwing the ball for my dog, who's had no walks or rides since my foot broke. Also I'm going to use the office chair to scoot around the house, and bake some bread, and try to get back into as useful a state as possible.

:gallop:

Last night the signals I was getting from my foot morphed from intermittent sharp toothache type pain to a dull, depressing ache, which was actually worse, but this morning it's good, and I'm basically pain-free as long as I don't move the astronaut boot around too rapidly (and obviously no banging into things). I've also slept completely through the night, which is great. Part of the trick to that was to take off our normal heavy cotton coverlet, and substitute an unzipped sleeping bag, shiny side down and tucked into the bottom of the bed, as bedding. This is a light material, and the shiny side is very low-friction, so you can turn in your sleep without the big astronaut boot being caught in the sheets and causing a burst of those cartoon pain stars that yank you from your sleep, and at the same time you are snug and warm.

This is a fabulous bone healing guide, showing the three stages of healing on a timeline, and the nutritional factors that need to be present at each stage for optimum healing.






I'm in Stage 1, which is inflammation and cleanup, since bones bleed into the surrounding tissue when breaking. The repair stage doesn't start until about Day 4 - that's revascularisation, and laying down protein fibres which will form the basis for the new bone matrix, which eventually gets mineralised in Stage 3. And it's interesting that some of the nutrients needed for optimum bone healing are notoriously deficient in the average Western diet.

I don't have the average Western diet, but it will still help to focus on getting plenty of Vitamin C, Vitamin E, general antioxidants, and a constant supply of all essential amino acids for Stage 2 in particular, but starting now. With protein, it's making sure I have decent protein at _every_ meal so that the requisite building blocks are freely available, instead of bottlenecking the healing process.

Vitamin D is actually an issue I need to address for the ossification stage in particular. I will actually supplement here, as well as make sure I get enough skin exposure with sunshine whenever I can, since the naturally formed version of Vitamin D in the skin is actually superior to the supplemented form (and will be used preferentially). You can see how this can go by the wayside if people get more housebound with an injury, or if it's winter as well.

Also super crucial is that the bones are totally immobilised during the first two stages, and that I have no accidents, falls etc that compromise any of the baby connections the broken bone ends will be making to each other. At the same time, I have to be as active as possible and get my circulation really working on a daily basis, both for optimum bone healing and for not losing more fitness than I absolutely have to.

This will be much easier when my peg-leg gets here, but today my goal is to leave the bed as much as possible to scoot about indoors on the office chair doing various chores, and to have that on-crutches expedition to the dam wall to play retrieving games with my bored dog who is also in need of exercise (and who has been carrying her balloons to my bed and throwing them in the air :rofl. I still have to come back to bed in-between to elevate my leg to facilitate drainage of the inflammatory swelling. In coming days, I will increasingly substitute the sofa for that and leave my dodgy leg on the armrest for extra elevation.

So that's Day Two coming up! And this morning's challenge will be to take the rugs off the horses for the sunny day ahead. I will be using extra carrots to help immobilise the horses during this procedure. When I am not injured, one big carrot inserted into a horse's mouth buys way enough standing-totally-still time to unrug in a jiffy. I may need two until I have my peg-leg!


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## SueC

*De-Rugging on Crutches!*

In short, not recommended. 

It's not so much actually taking the rug off the horse, as transporting the rug to its hanging place on crutches. That's far too risky for a fall, because you're not hands-free and the rugs are long, heavy and awkward.

My usual technique for carrying all four rugs back to the shed is to fold each one twice lengthways so that they are long and narrow, and put two evenly across each shoulder, one on top of the other, and put my hands up on my shoulders on top of the rugs, and then I can walk comfortably and not lose any rugs, even though I look like a walking rug rack!  It's then a simple task to load them directly onto the hanging rope in the shed by flipping the back parts forwards over the rope. After that I can spread them out if I want to.

I can't carry rugs in this manner without the hands on the shoulders, so I tried carrying just one folded up like I usually do, then draped around the back of the neck. It slips and falls when you move, because the shoulders round down on crutches and because of the hopping motion. You can't drag the rugs, because it's not good for them and because you might trip over them. My best compromise was to fold the rug up compactly and jam it under my arm, but this interferes with your motion and also the rug tends to unfold, and then you have to gather it up again.

All of this is too much mucking around and possibly getting unbalanced, and though I got the job reasonably done today, I won't be doing it again until I get my hands-free peg leg. Good thing my husband is a competent rugger / unrugger; we'll work as a team until I'm a pirate.

The horses are 75% unrugged. No issue with old Romeo as he left the garden after breakfast; he snorted once when he saw me coming down to the gate on crutches, but once I let him sniff the crutches and gave him a scratch, I could undo all the buckles and snaps without trouble. I stowed the rug on a carport seat for tonight.

No issue with Sunsmart either, and I showed him the crutches before I worked my way around him. The other two were very snorty, although Chasseur settled quickly and had a scratching session from me, and was then 100% OK about my funny way of moving around him. Julian however was too nervous for me even to be comfortable attempting to un-rug in the open paddock. It was far too likely that he was going to take off mid-procedure and then I'd have a horse gallopping around with a flapping rug which would probably get destroyed in the process. So, he's staying rugged today, and that's OK because although sunny, it's cool and windy and he's only wearing a lightweight waterproof combo - like Sunsmart's - both are "hot" horses and good doers and don't need much fill. Romeo and Chasseur are the two oldest horses, have always been lean types, and don't overheat easily, so they are in thickly quilted warm waterproof combos, which keeps them cosy in winter and in good condition. (A combo is a rug with a neck covering worked into it.)

Hope you have enjoyed this adventure from Temporary Crutchville! Go out and enjoy your rides, all ye who are currently not incapacitated! :cowboy: 

And if you're currently incapacitated, you can have a virtual coffee here!


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## SueC

*Horizontal Leg-Up Time*

I think I've achieved all the physical goals I set myself for today, and any more would be overdoing it - the body has to get used to a new way of doing things. The pectoral girdle in humans isn't made for significant weight-bearing, and even circus artists have to work on their tricks sensibly, gradually building up any strange demands on the body. 

:mylittlepony: :welcome: :music019: :charge: mg:

The de-rugging experiment described in the post above would have been enough to give me a good cardiovascular workout for today. The three younger horses were under the big tree across the paddock and I chose not to call them in because they were resting sedately and I didn't want to get them stirred up. This, of course, increased the transportation distance for the two rugs I did manage to remove, and ended up being the most time-consuming and sweat-inducing part of the whole exercise. I ended up leaving them over the tie-down in front of the shed, instead of on the hanging rope in the shed. This increases unnecessary UV exposure and therefore fabric damage, but will be OK until my peg-leg gets here.

After that I was definitely ready for a bath, but the neighbour's dog turned up. He and Jess are both (de-sexed, platonic) friends - two kelpies who love to run, play and tease each other. Max occasionally turns up if his master is away in town and someone else in the family lets him off the chain. He's a one-man dog and only stays reliably home if his master is home. Said person thinks he will take the dog to town from now on, like we do, to prevent him from going walkabout. Anyway, I couldn't have a bath until the neighbour had collected his dog, but I was hungry and made myself an early lunch of Sunday leftovers - tomato soup, a chicken leg, baked potatoes and gravy, with a big mandarin after and several cups of green tea.

This was my first scooting-around-in the house-on-the-office-chair practice session. That went well and is much more fun than crutches, and it's very safe, but you really have to mind that you don't turn and bash your trailing-out astronaut boot on something, because that could be painful, and possibly damaging to the incipient bone repair. (I scoot by kneeling on the office chair with the bad leg and using the good leg for propulsion.)

The office chair scooting allowed me to work comfortably and safely in the kitchen, and to scoot cups of tea back to the bedroom without spilling anything - a no-can-do on crutches. I also put on a ryebread. Unfortunately I was out of sunflower seeds, but I found pepitas and also put in lots of walnuts, which are great for supplying essential fatty acids, Vitamin E, various minerals, and some good protein. The flour I use is 1:2 to 2:3 stoneground local rye flour to sourdough rye premix - if I only want to use the stoneground rye, I have to do an overnight fermentation.

Of course, I had to open our new bag of rye flour just today, and this comes in 12.5kg bags, which was a bit of a hoist with the scooting technique, but not too bad as long as you watch that your back is nice and straight when lifting from your office chair base! :rofl:

After that, Max was collected and I decided to go out again to do some games with Jess off the dam wall, while getting some Vitamin D from the lunchtime sun.



It's a good place to throw tennis balls and ball/rope toys a long way for her to retrieve. It was funny because she kept expecting me to throw a stick in the dam for her like we do in summer, but I really didn't want a wet dog in the house afterwards. So she had to go the other way. On the way back, I collected some loose tree-guards that the wind had blown into the bushes on the edge of our nature reserve. That wasn't too bad because I could slip them over my arms to carry them.

The crutches (free hospital loan here in Australia) actually aren't too bad as crutches go; they have soft hand grips and movable arm rings, so you can let go of a crutch and it will be suspended off your arm for opening doors etc. They're fine for up and down stairs...we have stairs up to our toilets as they are compost toilets, so I get practice on stair technique several times daily...



...and I will have to keep using them for that for the next six weeks. These crutches are OK for up and down hills too. You just have to watch them on hard floors so you don't slip taking oversized swings.

Coming back in from the dog games on the dam wall, I was sweaty again and definitely ready for a bath. Normally I shower, but that's too dangerous at the moment because it would be done with the broken foot bare and you could slip, so I'm having baths, which is nice anyway. You have to take huge care getting in and out of the bath so you don't bang your broken foot or fall on it again. I can sit on the tiled platform behind the back of the bath before rotating my feet out from that stable surface.

Another alternative we have explored is for me to use the guest shower cubicle, which I tried yesterday. It has a tiled non-slip floor, whereas in the ensuite we have a combined bathtub/shower I won't be standing in with a dodgy foot. The cubicle also has two solid walls to brace against, but disconcertingly you need crutches to get in and out, because of the shower base, which has a tiled raised edge you have to hop over. These are photos from when I first made and tiled that base:





We are playing with the idea of bringing a plastic chair into the shower cubicle so I can get my astronaut boot back on before leaving the shower cubicle, because I absolutely can't afford to fall accidentally on my bare broken foot again for at least six weeks. It wouldn't be brilliant to take a fall in the boot either, but far less risk of re-breaking in the boot. (The problem with any weightbearing on broken metatarsals, boot or not, is that they are in the arch of the foot and weightbearing deforms the damaged arch. The boot gives the foot some cushioning and stability, but it is not like a cast.)

Anyway, Jess is happy that it's my left foot that's out of commission and that my right can still be used for scratching the loyal hound when I'm ensconced in bed and she is keeping me company:



That's the update from Temporary Crutchville. An afternoon of paperwork is on the menu now!

Greetings to everyone reading. inkunicorn:


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## SueC

*Exhibit A Day 2*: Bruising just beginning to appear. When the real rainbow colours start I'll explain why that is, because the science for that is very cool...


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## SueC

An astronaut boot from various angles. Keeping your legs really elevated for good lymphatic drainage!


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## egrogan

For the rugs, can you get a sled that you could pile them up on and drag back where they need to go? Or a wagon? Thinking a little plastic sled would be much lighter.


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## SueC

It's all going to be fixed when I get my peg leg, @egrogan! 


https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page66/#post1970577963


Hands-free mobility aid for lower leg fractures. Friend of friend did all the normal household stuff, shopping with trolley pushing, plus dog walking with it. Hoping it will get here by Friday...


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## knightrider

Have thought a lot about your injury with reference to Louise on Horse Forum. How debilitating for Louise if she should break her foot! She must be very careful with her feet, which can be so prone to injury (hands too, but really feet). I am certain I have broken every toe by getting stepped on or crushed at one time or another. I think you had planned to do some foot training to get more flexible and do what Louise does to a limited extent. Now, all that is on hold. Lousy luck for you.

When I was young, my brother, my best friend, and I had pinch battles with our feet which I always lost badly because I have very little flexibility with my feet, no matter how I practiced and tried. My best friend was really skilled at grabbing me and my brother with her toes and giving us a good pinch. She could pick up things with her toes and toss them. I imagine if she lost her arms, she'd be fairly proficient. I can't even pick up a dirty bra with my toes. I tell my toes to move and they say, "Nah."

I am feeling sad because we have a number of folks currently on Horse Forum who are struggling with injuries, and some of them are at very inconvenient times--like right before a big life change. I hope everybody heals quickly with a minimum of discomfort!!!!


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## SueC

Dear @*knightrider* , Louise said she once had to have one of her legs cast because of ligament damage from playing soccer, and that it was most inconvenient not to be able to use all her toes _fully_. It never fails to amaze me how adaptable the human body and brain can be; and if someone can live well and be completely amazing with just two appendages instead of the usual four, it puts my temporary incapacitation into incredible perspective. I am learning to scoot around inside the house on the office chair. The dog thinks it is amazing fun and keeps bringing me balloons! 

Thankfully I still have one good foot to train presently, and I'm probably right-footed anyway! ;-)

I am sorry to hear about other people's injuries at the moment. :shock: As I was for what happened to your poor foot and knee...and I laughed at how you rode anyway, you crazy person! :dance-smiley05:I also have this tendency in me, just I'm probably presently a little older than you were when you did your awful grape squashing scenario, and therefore feeling a little more careful than I used to when I was a whippersnapper! :cheers:

Please extend my well wishes to everyone you know who is struggling with injuries at the moment. inkunicorn::blueunicorn:

I am so aware that a big part of the reason I can laugh about my injury scenario is that I am well supported by a lovely husband and friends at this time, and that in Australia I'm not going to be a cent out of pocket as a result of an emergency injury and all its follow-up, it's all covered under our Medicare levies, so I'm only dealing with physical stress instead of compounded financial and emotional stress. Also I'll be able to do pretty much everything except ride my horse once my peg-leg gets in!

On which topic I was sent this:







Sending you lots of good wishes!


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## SueC

*Day Three *(only 39+days to go!)

Statistically, my bones are just beginning to heal, starting with making new connecting blood vessels and protein fibres between the broken ends. That's why I am having high-quality protein at _every_ meal, and supplementing with Vitamin E and C on top of our usual healthy nutrition featuring lots of now increasingly homegrown fruit and vegetables, plus wholegrains, meat, fish, eggs, full-fat dairy etc. We avoid refined carbohydrates such as white flour and sugar (not completely, but mostly), trans-fats, fake packet foods etc, and we bake and cook everything from scratch, and enjoy doing so. This is what it looks like:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/albums/72157687753093115

Don't let anyone tell you that healthy food doesn't taste great! And we do this on half the average Australian grocery budget per capita.

In Australia we are part of the _Grass Roots_ community, a bunch of nature-loving, DIY-orientated, low-footprint, creative people who are loosely grouped around a national magazine, which like this forum is very much a mutually supporting community, but on _paper_! :clap: So, this is completely normal for a GR type person - both the way we live, and the personal openness we cultivate - the attempt to be fully human, rather than a persona. For GR, I also write on lots of different topics, and enjoy reading the contributions of others.

Brett knows I love tangelos, and brought me a huge bag of them from town after his first day back at work, to aid the bone mending. Great that it's tangelo season at the moment, it's my favourite citrus fruit, and our own tree is still small.

Today was the start of three days of forecast wet blustery weather, so I got some boring tax paperwork completed, and will be using the next couple of days to edit and finalise another magazine article - this one on living off-grid, a bit of a technically orientated article for _The Owner Builder_, for whom I've written some articles on installing a recycled kitchen and building our strawbale eco-house in recent months.

We're an environmental open house, and a good technical summary is here - in the drop-down menus under "_Sustainable Features_" - although the main blurb on the bottom left is woeful (we didn't write it and we both abhor poor grammar etc, but unfortunately you can find it quite commonly on a lot of Australian websites :icon_rolleyes:...one of the reasons I've hung around HF is because the vast majority of people here seem to care about their language use ).

https://sustainablehouseday.com/house-profile-view/?house_id=38556

So that's what I'm writing about this time, with a broken foot and in bad weather, which is OK really!










I love working with this editor, she is so ultra professional, and has an incredible eye for presentation. I also love and support independent publications just like this one!

Because I did the equivalent of over 1000 pushups yesterday going around on crutches, my pectorals are a wee bit sore and I've been letting them have an easy day today. My typing fingers are just fine. :smile:

The horses were self-exercising whenever there was a rain break, in their rugs! Typical off-track racing breed. They thundered past the garden several times today, heading out to the sand track on adventures and coming back later. They've got miles of tracks here to use as they please, which is super considering I won't be riding Sunsmart or continuing to work with Julian for a while.

All we had to do was feed them their bucket feeds this evening (and ancient Romeo in the morning too); because of the woeful weather they were in rugs all day. They pretty much self sustain on pasture most of the year so we feed no hay, but some added tree fodder at certain times.

I've finally got a photo of Romeo in his brand new rug, which is keeping this 33yo veteran nice and toasty as we speak! Two photos actually; and then a few photos of the others - Chasseur (green rug), Julian (maroon), Sunsmart (purple), and the dog watching them graze this morning.


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## weeedlady

ummmmm, Why are your horses and their blankets so clean? My blankets are only clean when they come out of the washing machine. One day on the horse and they are filthy again.


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## SueC

Hello @weedlady! :wave: ...three of the rugs are brand new this winter, the green one is only two years old. (The maroon rug came with Julian late last year, and is less generously sized than I like - and I've only just started rugging him in it, before he was in an older, bigger, neckless rug I had.) The 7-to-9-year-old rugs I replaced for Sunsmart and Romeo looked pretty beaten up.

Our horses roll in sand holes, which in winter aren't very dirty, just sandy, with pale sand - they don't roll in mud. If Sunsmart, Julian or our dog Jess roll in winter with their dark fur wet, they get up looking like a lamington! 










If the horses sandhole-roll in rugs, they also just get light sand stuck to them, which falls off as they dry, and then the rugs get well washed by the winter downpours on a regular basis anyway.

Occasionally the horses / rugs get fresh cow pats stuck to them if the cows poop in the rolling hole, and then I have some cleaning up to do! :shock:

Does machine washing affect the waterproofing qualities at all? And...you must have a huge washing machine! :clap:


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## weeedlady

^^^ regular washing machine, one blanket at a time works ok. It's probably not good for the machine or the blanket


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## SueC

*Day Four* (only 37+days to go!)

I had my first night without paracetamol, and that went fine. Some ache returned this morning coming back from the loo (it's so wonderfully focusing to go up and down five steps on crutches en route our throne! :rofl, not because I'd bumped it or anything - I actually think it's because it's at or approaching maximum ballooning, and just having the foot below me for a little while made it cramp. It resolved when I re-elevated the leg. Later on I just scooted around on the office chair to make honey cluster muesli in the kitchen for our breakfast - with lots of cinnamon, almonds, brazil nuts, and coconut, and served with raspberries, grated apple and yoghurt. It's Thursday so Brett is working on computer things at home today, he's finishing a website that's taken him forever. Tomorrow he has a day's leave to take me to fracture clinic at the hospital, as I can't drive until I'm out of the boot and the fracture is healed.

They are trying to get me to take a weight-bearing X-ray to eliminate Lisfranc injury, but there is no way I'm going to be able to do that for a while, and especially bearing all my weight on the broken foot, as needed for that diagnostic. It's quite counterintuitive that they ask this, while also telling you absolutely not to bear weight at all other times. I am of the philosophy that when your body is telling you not to do something, you don't. Pain is there for a good reason: To tell you what you can and can't do until you get better. Now I recognise that sometimes you have to break through pain in physio etc, but not at stages when you have broken bones in your body that need to heal up. I am not compromising the healing process by bearing weight at this point, for whatever reason. And anyway, the radiologist says that you shouldn't do it if it really hurts, so that rules me out. Plus, you can't operate during the hugely swollen phase anyway.

What is a Lisfranc injury? Basically, it's when in addition to any other damage, you've also displaced metatarsals sideways in relation to the tarsal bones. It mostly shows up immediately on ordinary X-rays, but according to the ER doctor, around 30% do not show up until you get CT scans and load-bearing X-rays. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisfranc_injury

The CT scan showed no abnormalities to the bony alignment of my foot, other than the 2mm displaced M-4. The other fractures are closed and have remained aligned. I actually found out that one of the reasons some bones can stay aligned after breaking is because the periosteum (tough membrane around the bone) often doesn't rupture on the compression side of the fracture.

I have a courtesy copy of all the hospital paperwork. There was one little mistake on it, which was actually down to me. When they asked about medications, I only told them which ones and not why. I winked and said to the marvellous young lady ER doctor, "Low-dose HRT and half-dose Lovan. Typical menopausal woman drugs!" She laughed and recorded it, but jumped to the conclusion that I have depression - fair enough, that's the statistically most likely reason for Lovan, particularly in 40+ women. But I don't have depression, I have cPTSD!

_Lovely nature photographs will now be interspersed with the text to break it up and to show that the world is still a beautiful place if we can have eyes to see it, and put in the miles to seek it!
_








http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_2587.jpg

The two can happen for similar reasons - crappy upbringings, bad experiences with human beings especially in formative years, lack of warmth and nurturing and bonding to a stable, loving caregiver. I did actually have undiagnosed depression at age 21 for about a year, because I was in a really bad spot - it was a reactive depression to the circumstances at the time. It wasn't picked up because I remained so functional as a university student at the time. None of my academic grades were affected, just some of the practical components involving face-to-face work. I would do my reading and my written assignments and then I'd be out like a light the moment I finished, whether it was 6pm or 11pm. I'd spend half the weekends asleep if I'd finished all my assignments. My brain was basically fully focused on getting through the university courses and that was that, then there was nothing left, I'd just switch off. I think it was a self-protective mechanism - had I thought about things, it would have compromised my studies, which were my passport to the future.









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_2479.jpg

And I actually think that is how the cPTSD my brain was wired into from babyhood (and I didn't formally know about until a couple of years back) affected how a reactive depression would look. If you have cPTSD, you are completely focused on long-term survival when you are young. You have to be, because a part of you recognises that you are extremely vulnerable and you won't have much help, and none at all in some respects - even as other parts try to maintain an illusion that everything is fine, or not so bad, after all people have it worse in Romanian orphanages, and starving in Ethiopia, etc.









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_2553.jpg

Human children are wired to love, trust and depend upon their parents, and almost all of them who ever lived would prefer to think they have done something wrong and that they are the problem, than that the adults they have landed with don't know how to love other people, or how to nurture children, or how to be really responsible. If part of you keeps thinking it's your fault, you have the illusion that things can change, when _you_ discover the magic formula. If it was your parents, you couldn't change it, only they could, and that leaves a child too powerless over the situation to be fully accepted. (The same driver is behind many abusive "romantic" relationships, and many adults find it difficult to walk away. A child can't generally walk away from the very people it depends upon for survival. What you often get is a very sad form of Stockholm Syndrome.)









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_2577.jpg

Why am I making this distinction between depression and cPTSD? Well, because it needs to be more in the public awareness, and because all emotional health conditions (that's a more accurate description for those two than "mental health issues") need to be more talked about, and less hushed up and stigmatised. People sharing their stories has been so helpful for me as a human being, and in turn I share mine. It's not a secret. And it shouldn't have to be, for anybody. It's better out than in, in many cases - better with sunlight on it, than hidden in a dark corner while we put on a stage persona. I'm a pretty integrated person in my 40s, and I wasn't in my 20s.









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_2652.jpg

Complex PTSD is like the war PTSD or other traumatic event/time frame PTSD, except that cPTSD happens when children are very young and consistently exposed to violence between their caregivers and from their caregivers; physical violence, emotional violence, and for some of my friends with these kinds of backgrounds, even sexual violence towards them as children. These children never have a home environment that is emotionally or physically safe for them, nor a healthy loving relationship with their primary caregivers - the home itself is a war zone they are born into. Unlike children born into healthy families in war-torn countries, these children don't have the buffer of a safe family between themselves and the war, so it's actually worse.









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_2583.jpg

Typically you grow up hypervigilant (since you need to take care of your own safety from the time you start to think), conflict feels dangerous, and as a young person especially, you tend to have some specific difficulties relating to other people (because your earliest bonds were trauma bonds instead of healthy bonds). People from these environments tend to either repeat the cycle and become violent with others as soon as they find people smaller and weaker than them somehow (or animals), or they go the other way early on and become people that can be walked on because that's what they are used to, and will put other people's concerns above their own, even to their personal detriment, and try to save everybody and everything, and end up with all the unwanted puppies in the world etc. ;-)









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_2695.jpg

If you're tending to the latter category as a young person, it's a bit of a lengthy process to learn healthy self-love, instead of self-loathing (or narcissism, if in the former category). It's actually been pointed out that _love thy neighbour as thyself_ points to exactly that: You're not worth more, you're not worth less, love as a principle applies to yourself and to other people equally. It's the petrol that needs to be in everyone's tank.









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_2780.jpg

I always found it helpful to think of my brain as a horse from a place where it had bad experiences, that I needed to re-train, get the trust of, help enjoy life again, etc. It's funny how helpful that shift in thinking can be, compared to just being annoyed about certain aspects of your bad programming, for which you are not to blame, but for which as an adult you are responsible to work with.









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_2784.jpg

This is a big topic, and I'm all written out for now!  I'll return to it some other time. I'm comfortable discussing this stuff, and questions are always welcome. I don't expect people to share the same way back if they have a conversation with me about this stuff, because this kind of thing is often so uncomfortable, and was for me for so many years. But it's reading other people's similar experiences, and how they dealt with those and with life, that was so super helpful to me when I started grappling with this stuff, and I'm now well able to share my own.









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_2923.jpg


Lots of  to all reading, especially people who've seen dark things (and I think realistically that's most of us). :hug:


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## gottatrot

A beautiful and very interesting post! Thanks for sharing/educating.

Your horses look great in their rugs. :smile:


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## SueC

Here's a great feature article about childhood trauma, which a very good friend sent me - it tells her story, and explores the wider context. Thanks Elizabeth! 

https://www.bendbulletin.com/home/6...auma-can-lead-to-long-lasting-health-problems

Elizabeth is a writer and to me she's like the Frank McCourt of the American dysfunctional childhood experience. Her writing is like the Pensieve in Harry Potter - you fall into it and then you're actually _there_, in that moment, that place and time, with her. You can sample her writing, and her photography and visual art, here:

https://borninprovidence.com/


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## knightrider

Wow, just wow. Thank you for sharing. Lots of good insight and lots to think about . . . for me. I really appreciate your writing.


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## SueC

It's taken a while, @knightrider! :rofl: But thank you, and also to @gottatrot; I think it's important to give back. People are sort of the best thing and the worst thing - the best people help you get over the worst ones. :hug:


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## SueC

*Exhibit A* *Day 5*: It's hard to see in this light, but the bruising appearing and going up all the toes does a marvellous job in simulating a cyanotic appearance at present - except all the toe ends are pink, above the creeping blue! Not cyanosis though, just bruising beginning to surface. That little scar on the top above the tarsals I acquired in my very first month in Australia in December 1982, swimming in the Canning River and getting cut by a shell!


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## SueC

*Day Five* (only 37+days to go!...and sorry I didn't remember how to count yesterday ;-))

The reason I've not written this yet and am still up at this ungodly hour is that I am distracting myself because of fairly large pain levels for most of this evening between my left knee and toes. Everything is just cramped up and miserable. The day didn't start like this, but we had to go to town for fracture clinic and shopping, so I didn't get to have the leg elevated again until late afternoon, and it was killing me coming home in the car.

At home since the accident I've been horizontal unless I'm up and about, so my foot doesn't balloon further and my muscles stay stretched out. I think that's the way to do it: Up and about as much as works, otherwise horizontal - no standing, no sitting - nothing that prevents the drainage of that internal wound in my foot.

The other thing that was crappy is that my leg got cold when I got home, because no longer jumping about as actively - making dinner etc. It seems that lots of muscle and bone injuries feel so much worse when cold. Things got better when I went to bed with the electric blanket warm against my sore leg, but I'm still waiting for the cramping to stop. :icon_rolleyes:

It was bucketing down when we drove into Albany this morning. We just made it to the hospital in time for my appointment, but they were running 45 minutes late and we had things to do, so we went to see our farrier friend Greg, who trims my horses once a year in midsummer when the hooves are like marble, and on other occasions if I have an injury that prevents me trimming the horses myself. Greg also buys his honey from us and needed two buckets, because he had family including grandchildren over and they were all besotted with our honey, so that he was running out! He's near the hospital, so we did a drop-off and he invited us in for coffee and a yarn - after an amused, "Now what have you done to yourself, Sue!" :rofl:

Greg is an excellent storyteller and has so many amusing stories. He also wanted to know all the details about my little mishap, and was very intrigued by the incipient peg-leg, pirate hat, inflatable parrot etc. He told Brett that the sooner I got on the peg-leg, the better, and then I'd be whizzing around again as usual. Greg related an ankle fracture he once incurred when felling a tree, and it turns out he also scooted around the house on an office chair during his rehabilitation.

:cowboy:

All too soon we had to get back to the fracture clinic, where I was very pleasantly surprised by the young orthopaedic specialist called Sean, who really knew his stuff and was funny and personable. (Not all medical honchos know their stuff, but this one did!) The upshot about that weight-bearing X-ray is that if you do have a Lisfranc injury and you can establish that within a fortnight of injury, all he has to do is use his special wizz-bang cordless drill and a few screws to fix things into place, and then he can extract the screws again later. If you operate later than that from injury date, you're likely to need other sorts of hardware installed, and it's not likely that everything will be removed again. So, better outcome with early diagnosis.

He also assured me that just now, all I basically had was a giant blood clot and that everything was quite flexible and rubbery, and that I didn't have to worry about the new growing protein fibres etc because they were very elastic at my stage of the injury - it's only later that it becomes more disruptive. So what it really comes down to is, I can gingerly test my bare foot on a surface on a daily basis, and if it becomes good enough that I can stand one-footed on it for long enough to take an X-ray before next Friday, we could either cross the 30% maximum chance of Lisfranc off the list or deal with it straightaway.

It's always so great to be able to have a good discussion about a practical problem with someone else with a really huge science bent. I asked him as we were leaving if he'd heard of Noel Fitzpatrick, who does the same job as him, but with animals and collaborating with tertiary research institutions to pioneer new procedures to help animals, that will start to filter up to humans. He hadn't, so we had a quick chat about Oscar the Bionic Cat and the deer-antler-inspired bone implant that allows a prosthesis to be attached directly to the bone stump of an amputee's leg, without causing bone infection. Cats are light, of course, but it's a fascinating story:

















We parted with smiles all around, which is a nice result from a trip to the doctor's office. Then it was time to do some grocery shopping, and I felt like some exercise, so I went in with Brett and we did a team shop. He drove the trolley, I hung on to the shopping list; I could only retrieve light items, but we worked out a really fun technique where I would point at something with a crutch if I wanted it in the trolley! 

Crutches are like dogs: If you have them, many people will greet you, and some come up and talk to you! There was this elderly gentleman with snow-white Gandalf hair who gave me an impish smile and said, "What if I run you over with my shopping trolley?" And I beamed back and replied, "Then I will hit you with my big stick, and notice I have _two_ of them!" And he and I just went :rofl:, as did a number of other people in the aisle. 

At the deli counter, a sweet person called Jane asked, "So what did you do?" and then showed me her wrist and told me she had fallen out of a tree when little and broken it very badly, so I said, "I see you had a proper childhood! You've not really lived unless you've climbed trees!" Jane then told me she loved horses, and hadn't ridden for years, and we let her know how to find us if she wanted to visit. I winked and said, "If I like someone, I let them ride my horse; and I'm not going to be able to ride him myself for a while!"

I've never had such a sociable grocery shopping before! People were chatty with us around every corner. Brett even knew some of them from his work.

Brett suggested to me that if down the track shopping got lonely for me, I should just roll out the astronaut boot and crutches again, and get all this bonhomie going again! :rofl: And he said, "I hope I never break anything in my leg! I don't want to talk to people when I'm shopping!" So I said, "Well, that's easy, just put on a scowl if that's what you want, and turn up your misanthropic aura to full volume! And anyway, what _do_ you want?" He replied, "To get home to my sofa and read a good book!" :rofl:

Oh no, it's O God o'Clock! (thanks @frlsgirl !) The aspirin and heat treatment seem to have settled things, so I shall attempt to get some sleep. Good thing tomorrow is Saturday. I'll have to put a sign up: _Do not wake the patient before 10am!_ inkunicorn::blueunicorn:


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## Knave

I am sorry about the pain! I am glad you liked your doctor though. Little girl’s ortho was nice enough too and actually showed horses, but crippled his mare which he blamed to poor bloodlines and discontinued his riding career. 

A trip to my grocery store is the same! You don’t have to break a leg and Brett would hate it. It is a nice store now that it found its new location. Everyone knows everyone, so you best plan a long trip to town if you have to go. It is nice and everyone has a story to tell and a hello. Of course this is if they like you, if you run into someone who isn’t a fan there is still a hello but it is more growly and awkward. Brett could try to be like that. Lol. It makes people avoid certain isles and try to not make eye contact.


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## SueC

@Knave, I'll post those cultural exchange links here for you this morning! 

The first one is about Redmond:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redmond,_Western_Australia

The hyperlinks in it are worth following, particularly the Albany one - our regional centre, 25 minutes from us. It's very pretty, and has a fair amount of history and lovely old buildings - and a breathtaking coastline.

If you image search for Redmond, Western Australia the funny thing is you'll get a lot of photos we have taken, because we are the biggest posters of photos from Redmond. 

But the easier way to get to our photos is:

Red Moon Sanctuary


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## Knave

Beautiful @SueC!!!


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## SueC

@Knave, I nominate this little town as the Australian twin of your little town:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeehan,_Tasmania

About the same population, established about the same time, and it also has an opera house!  And it's such an isolated little town in an old silver mining area with big hills all around. Your town immediately made me think of this town, which Brett and I have been to as part of our many travels in Tasmania. Lots of similarities - just vastly more rain and not as cold!

Brett and I love Tasmania and nearly moved there - it's a little island state to the south of Victoria, across the famous Bass Strait. It's got gorgeous mountains and coastline and huge tracts of wilderness, and we love hiking. You know what? I just got an idea. I wrote about one of our holidays there for _Grass Roots_ earlier this year and I'll zap that into here with some photos soon, and then you can see it too!

Since I can't ride, I need to find some other fun things to do. One week down, five to go - can't wait to ride again!

:cowboy:


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## SueC

*TASMANIA BY CAMPERVAN*​ ​ by Sue Coulstock, Redmond WA












Tasmania is a real jewel of a place for anyone who enjoys nature. It is the least deforested state of Australia and one of the few places on Earth that still has vast areas of real wilderness. There is mountain range after mountain range, all of them spectacular in different ways, and the coastline is gorgeous all the way around. It is a bushwalker’s paradise. If you could live for a thousand years and walk every day, you could still be walking new tracks in Tasmania that had you oohing and aahing and happy to be alive.​ ​ Hobart and Launceston are cities on a human scale, sitting in sublime landscapes in which they seem only to be an afterthought. The architecture and parks are pretty, many people have lovely gardens, and there are a plethora of bookshops and places of interest to enjoy. You can breathe fresh air even in the city centres, and there are always natural landmarks to steer by, so it’s hard to get lost driving. The concrete monstrosities that infest so much of mainland Australia haven’t made many inroads into these cities, in part because of comparative economic poverty, which has kept the place rich in other and more important ways.​ ​ Tasmanian farming is on a completely different scale to mainland farming. The fields are smaller and there is more diversity in the landscape. Volcanic soils in the north are rich and chocolatey and grow amazing potatoes. Things can change drastically just around the corner, at any corner. You see old livestock breeds all over the place that are hard to find on the “North Island”, as Tasmanians like to call the rest of Australia. There are lots of curves in the roads and lots of uphills and downhills. Little churches jump out at you, Gothic graveyards invite a visit for reflection. Place names make you laugh: Penguin, Nook, Nowhere Else, Promised Land, Snug, Flowerpot, Electrona, Paradise, Bagdad, Tomahawk, Lower Crackpot.

​ Brett and I had our first holiday in Tasmania in 2007, and after that we couldn’t stop going back. Early on in our marriage we were farmless and very free to travel. If we had two weeks off and a little money for plane tickets, we said, “Let’s go to Tasmania again.” On our first trip to the Apple Isle we hired a tiny yellow car whose gearbox went “clunk” every time we shifted into third gear, stayed in little chalets and walked over 200km of magnificent tracks in two weeks. In 2009 we went in our own car for an extended working holiday and packed a tent into the back for camping trips. Once we just spent a fortnight going around in a campervan. This was great fun, and we’d do it again in a flash.​


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## SueC

If you live all the way over in Western Australia, like we do, it’s not economical to drive your own car across the Nullarbor to visit Tasmania just for a short holiday. There are reasonably-priced plane tickets to Tassie now, booking specials or stand-by seats on a no-frills airline. If you can schedule it, fly on the 13th of the month, it’s heavily discounted due to people’s superstitions.​ ​ If you have to fly in, you will need transport. A bicycle tour could be just the thing, perhaps with camping equipment in panniers. If you specifically want a walking holiday, motorised transport is helpful, and a campervan is your transport and accommodation in one. So for our Easter holidays in 2009, we hired a little campervan. It was small enough to manoeuvre easily and handle well on the road, yet we slept and ate in it comfortably. The back of the van contained a sink, pantry, small fridge, microwave and gas rings, and a comfortable double bed with a storage loft above where we kept our suitcases, toiletry bags, towels, jackets and backpacks. Living in a small basic space is a good exercise: It hones your organisation and creativity, and helps you focus on the things that really matter.​ ​ It was great to have everything with us on the road and to never have to unpack and repack every time we changed bases, and so handy to be able to stop and make a coffee anytime, get changed anywhere, and have a bed with you in case you get deadly tired in the middle of the day and need a power nap – as does happen when you have a walking holiday. Once we drove up Mt Wellington after an overnight snowfall there, took in the views, and made a snowman. When we got hungry we cooked a hot lunch right there on the mountain, before going outdoors again for a long hike in the white wonderland. The next morning, we were walking on a sunny beach in our T-shirts. That's Tassie for you.​ ​ Tasmania has amazing produce, with which you can stock your campervan fridge to become your own roving restaurant. This is a fun and economical way to eat wonderfully well while sampling the local wares. We often had local mueslis with yoghurt and fruit for breakfast. Favourites on the lunch and dinner menus were steak sandwiches with caramelised onions, mushrooms and capsicum, and loads of fresh salad vegetables; eggs scrambled with mushrooms, tomatoes and handfuls of parsley on local sourdough bread; avocados and lemon on rye bread; pasta with mushroom, olive, feta and tomatoes; microwave jacket potatoes with mozzarella, parmesan and rocket; substantial salads; and our post-big-walk “resurrection soup” made with chicken stock, soup pasta, parsley, and slices of cheddar cheese added at the end until it just blends. These kinds of meals are straightforward to prepare when in a campervan – you can leave your baking and complicated cooking for when you get home.​ ​ Snacks are easy: We were buying marvellous apples, cherries, berries, peaches, etc, all over the place including roadside stalls. The Hill Street Grocer in West Hobart, our favourite shop in the world, sells exquisite fruit and vegetables, cheeses, memorable nut mixes, and a wonderful taramasalata which is great for dipping crunchy fresh celery in. We raided the Sandy Bay German Bakery repeatedly for their great bread, pretzels, nut horns, beestings, and other delicious morsels. We often ate wholemeal toast slathered with butter and gorgeous leatherwood honey. So you can see it is very easy in Tasmania to stay fuelled up for walking four to six hours a day on its fabled nature trails. The food and the walking go hand-in-hand, and allow you to come away from your holiday toned and glowing, with serious improvements in fitness and endurance, and unforgettable memories of adventures in scintillating landscapes.​ 
​


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## SueC

When travelling by campervan, we would overnight in trail head car parks so we could head out on a day hike straight after breakfast. Good toilet etiquette is paramount in the bush: Take a trowel and bury absolutely everything under the litter layer away from footpaths so it can compost away invisibly. It is amazing how many people seem to be unaware of this courtesy to nature and other walkers; don't be one of them. Don't wash your hands in the campervan's kitchen sink afterwards either, as we've seen people do. You can use a simple water bottle turned into a tap by your spouse, or hand sanitiser if you prefer. When you need to do laundry or have a hot shower you can stay in a caravan park. We tended to do strenuous day hikes every second day, and drive to a caravan park after. Next day we would sightsee and do shorter walks and then stay in the bush somewhere.​ ​ Our favourite overnighter was in a layby off a tiny country road in northern Tasmania. There was a field of cattle next door and tall forest everywhere else. We had driven in at sunset, very slowly because there was so much wildlife crossing at that time – the sheer amounts reliably stagger mainlanders. After dinner and lights-out we lay snuggled up in the dark listening to a cacophony of sounds from insects, frogs, birds, bats and various marsupials, and looked out of the van windows at a crystalline Milky Way, far away from big-city light pollution. To us, as to many GR readers, those are the true riches of life!
​


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## SueC

More photos:


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## SueC

More photos:


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## SueC

Originally written for _Grass Roots_ No.247 June/July 2018.










http://redmoonsanctuary.com.au/images/grass_roots_magazine_247.jpg


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## Knave

That was great! It does seem like a little twin historically! I love the picture with the creek.


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## SueC

Since gory photos will follow, and this journal has been moving fast, I would just like to advise visitors that there are *stacks of gorgeous photos of Tasmania on the previous page!* 


Foot hurts so writing late again. :music019:


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## SueC

*Exhibit A* *Day 7*: The swelling was actually down a bit this morning around the forefoot section, but the colours are now starting to come out. The third photo was taken with little light, so that the pattern of the bruising shows better. The breaks of the middle three metatarsals happened about a third of the way along the bruise from the edge of the pad of the ball of the foot. The junction between the metatarsals and the tarsal bones can be felt as a bump if you run your fingers along the top of the foot from the toes towards the leg. My three middle metatarsals broke close to that junction.


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## Knave

It’s becoming pretty colors! Lol. Actually I am quite sorry and I hope that it hurries and heals.


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## SueC

*Day Seven* (only 35+days to go)

Until the very end of the day, this had been a good day. There was very little pain in the foot itself and I was up and about a lot. However, when doing up an electric gate handle this evening during bucket o'clock, I somehow got the full 7kV at which our fence is running - this isn't just a shock, it's a real kick backwards, and because my peg-leg hasn't arrived, and I'm still on crutches, the fence kick threw me backwards and I rolled over my bad foot again. :eek_color: 

I was wearing the astronaut boot, of course, and you are not supposed to be able to break or displace anything further even when taking a little fall in this boot (no such guarantee falling from a height, like a horse or a ladder or a roof...). Still, as Murphy had it, I rolled over the top of the boot, which only has soft strapping and velcro instead of sole or rigid side struts, and it yanked at the injury, which according to the orthopaedic specialist currently consists of broken bone ends wrapped in a giant blood clot with new blood vessels and very elastic protein fibres starting to form between the broken ends.

My M-2 and M-3 are unlikely to displace from a yank like this, as the periosteum on the compressed side of each of these fractures is still intact and the broken ends are therefore completely aligned, and have a little support. My M-4 break, however, is displaced 2mm, and I am apprehensive about knocking it further out of alignment. I guess the next X-ray will show if that has happened.

At any rate, after tripping backwards, I had a few minutes of ambulance siren level pain again for the first time since the initial injury, and even with painkillers and anti-inflammatories it's still a mixture of toothache and shooting pains. I'd actually gotten past the toothache stage, into intermittent shooting pains, last night - as Stage 2 (repair stage) of fracture healing gets underway. And now, it's a mix of the two. :evil:

Speaking of the next X-ray, it was looking promising this morning when I tried the foot out on the ground (Photo 1) and found I could put it into light contact without pain. Before Friday, I'd like to be able to give them that load-bearing X-ray to either rule out Lisfranc injury entirely, or be able to address it early. Fingers and toes crossed. And I can indeed move my toes freely in all directions again on the injured foot, which is progress.

Apart from that, it was a really good day. The weather is still cataclysmic, with record low temperatures, high winds and torrential rain that has gone on for five days. There is snow on the Stirling Ranges just now:










More on that here:

https://thewest.com.au/news/severe-...-years-at-bluff-knoll-in-albany-ng-b88916087z

Near our house, everything is mud, and you'd be indoors apart from animal feeding anyway on days like that, which has been one consolation for me: I have only missed two potential riding days since my injury. Also, it means we've not had to take rugs off or put them back on.

Bill came at morning teatime as usual, and Brett made the hot drinks while I prepared a joint of kangaroo for our Sunday roast. I am quite happy with the office chair scooting inside the house; the knee of the bad leg is on the chair, the good leg does propulsion and direction changes, and you're standing evenly from the knees up with your hands free.

Once the roast was in the oven, I made a French Provencial Chocolate Cake (if anyone wants the recipe, just let me know), which is flour-free and comprised of hazelnut meal, dark chocolate, butter, vanilla, brandy, coffee and eggs in just the right proportions. Meanwhile, I boiled French (Le Puy) lentils for a lentil, beetroot and feta salad with spring onions, parsley and a lemon juice, mustard and olive oil dressing. I also put halved, purple-skinned potatoes in the oven to roast. Brett prepared the coleslaw while I went out to hang the washing on the undercover lines.

Yes, this was my first wash day since the injury, and I managed it mostly on my own, apart from Brett carrying the basket out for me. My trick: Go outside on crutches, then use a plastic garden chair as a faux Zimmer frame to get around (you are then able to drag the basket), and when you get to the line space you're hanging in, you put your knee on the chair for support and work with hands free. In the laundry itself, I worked off the office chair, same as in the kitchen, and could scoot around from A to B.

Then we served up and had a scrumptious and healthy lunch. I tried sitting at the table but because of my extended foot-below-body time that morning found I could not get comfortable, and sat legs stretched out on the sofa with my plate in my lap instead, and a heat pack under the left calf which is starting to knot and cramp from being unable to stretch out and do its job this past week. Muscles really don't like this.

After lunch, Brett made us more tea, I made a fire in our wood heater (since the gas oven, which heats the whole living area during cooking, was now off for the afternoon) and we had delicious squares of chocolate cake. We then all watched an episode of _Pushing Daisies_ together, followed by a long chat. Bill left at 5pm and we fed the horses.

I had a nice warm bath to try to soothe the foot after knocking it around during the electric fence incident, and went to bed to read and do emails on the laptop. I am hoping I'll be able to sleep in a little while when I return into the nice warm nest from my little stint making this post in our office. If not, Brett has put Jonas Jonasson's _The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared_ on the e-reader for me for middle-of-the-night pain distraction without partner disturbance. Looking forward to reading that one. There's also some nice Lindt chocolate I can put on the bedside table. Hmmm, starting to sound good! This is me preparing to leave the office!
Good day / night to all! :gallop:


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## SueC

Knave said:


> That was great! It does seem like a little twin historically! I love the picture with the creek.


This one?










This was in the Mount Field National Park. A lot of creeks in the high-rainfall parts of Tasmania look like that! The tree ferns are incredible, as are the luxuriant mosses.

It does have leeches though! I'd been familiar with leeches that get onto you in rivers or lakes, but these ones drop off the trees at you! :shock: And you don't necessarily know they are there. When we were changing leader on one of our walks through such valleys, I passed Brett and he said, "Sue, your pants leg above your boot is dripping with blood, have you hurt yourself?" Not that I was aware of, but there was a lot of blood! A leech had crawled up my leg past the boot and thick walking socks and under the pants leg and had a feed on me. As they use a local anaesthetic I had no idea, and of course they also inject anticoagulants to keep you bleeding so they can have a nice big easy meal. We had to put on a compression bandage to stop the bleeding, and even that took hours and soaked the whole bandage with blood. Interesting experience. Worse things happen at sea! ;-)

Beautiful spot!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Falls


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## gottatrot

Today I had DH remind me with the satellite map where we went when we were in WA. 
Too bad I didn't know you back then, we were so close to you!
We drove through Albany. 

I was remembering a few things... It was very green and beautiful, with open fields and forests. On the coast it was very cold and windy, which we hadn't thought of. I can see why your horses wear blankets in the winter. 
We saw dozens of kangaroos in that area - do they go hopping through your yard? Do you see them on rides, and what do the horses think of them?

We saw cockatoos sitting on the road like we'll see crows or seagulls over here. I told my husband we could NOT hit a parrot with the car or I'd die. 

It surprises me that you eat so much fresh produce. That was one thing we remarked about, that in restaurants and grocery stores there was not a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables available. It was difficult to find a green salad on a menu. We also were surprised when we ordered milkshakes. Where we live, a milkshake is very thick, mostly ice cream and sometimes you need a spoon. In WA when we got milkshakes, the emphasis was on milk. It also was surprising to get a slice of beet on a hamburger.
Breakfasts were reminiscent of Irish breakfasts, except with beans and tomato added to the eggs, sausage and potato. Big mushrooms too. 









We've been to a lot of beaches, in Ireland, Iceland, Canada, all over the U.S., Japan, but WA had the whitest sand we'd ever seen. It was incredible to stand and view where two oceans met (Indian and Southern). We also did the treetop walk in the Valley of the Giants. You live in a beautiful and unique place!


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## SueC

gottatrot said:


> Today I had DH remind me with the satellite map where we went when we were in WA.
> Too bad I didn't know you back then, we were so close to you!
> We drove through Albany.


Argh! In retrospect! You would have been no further than 30km from us at that point and if you came in on the Albany Highway and we were at home, just 15km! And if we happened to be in town on the same day, we could have walked right past each other in the street!

But I think you said you came through in 2014 sometime - April that year I lost my Arabian mare, and you know how that goes. I might have been a bit disconnected for a chunk of 2014 as a result. Since you're a horse person, I might have lost my public stoicism and cried on your shoulder and made a sorry sodden mess of your T-shirt as a result. ;-) You never know with us part-Italians. The dam wall can be very easily broken with the right sounds. ;-)



> I was remembering a few things... It was very green and beautiful, with open fields and forests.


This suggests to me you visited sometime after late May that year. That year started with one of the worst summer droughts in a long time, and things didn't start greening up until May.



> On the coast it was very cold and windy, which we hadn't thought of. I can see why your horses wear blankets in the winter.


Albany is notorious for its Antarctic blasts. Lovely pure air, but the wind chill is incredible - and when it rains when that wind is going, it can set a 500kg healthy, well-fed horse shivering uncontrollably in 10 minutes without a rug. They call it a "Sheep Farmer's Warning" - expect lamb losses from hypothermia etc, loss of some large livestock in unsheltered paddocks. Neither Julian not Chasseur have the genetics for a proper winter coat and wouldn't survive a South Coast winter unsheltered - their winter coats are short and lack the waterproofing layer, so are wet through in a minute and then the wind chill would destroy them. Amusing when you think there was a rugging thread on HF at the time (I was a new member) and some characters insisted I was sissifying my horses by rugging them. Here we call it good management - it's nice if your horses are still alive and well in the morning, and it's great if they are comfortable and don't have to eat your out of house and home in a desperate attempt to stay warm. Some people really don't understand our climate! :rofl:

This was June 2014 at our place, with a storm approaching. The donkeys go to their shelter when things get bad. I rug the little blind piebald one before severe weather too. The little horse to the left is a Caspian mare we looked after for a bit after my Arabian mare died.



By early September it looked like this here:






> We saw dozens of kangaroos in that area - do they go hopping through your yard? Do you see them on rides, and what do the horses think of them?


Lots and lots all through our area, in paddocks and bushland, on our farm and all around. They are a bit nomadic and like to range through quite an area, but it would be a rare day we didn't have at least half a dozen roos in the bush on our farm, sometimes two dozen. They are shy and come out at dawn and dusk especially to graze in the pasture when they think nobody is looking.

Here's a little doe we managed to photograph at our place:



This is a boomer we met walking; typical macho chest. The males keep growing slowly all their lives and can stand well over 2m tall when older.



I see kangaroos and emus all the time riding here; it's not an issue unless they leap out in front of you without warning. Because I ride with a dog, this no longer happens - the dog scouts about 20m ahead and is onto it before the rest of us, and this warns the horse too.

So these days, if my horse is startled, it will be because a bird is flying up really close by! :rofl: Sometimes ground quail who are perfectly camouflaged and make this loud whirring sound even though they are really tiny! Here were two coming into our back garden last year. We have 50ha of native bushland right behind the house, and that's connected to 100s of ha of bushland on adjacent properties, so lots of wildlife.




Photo gallery of our on-farm wildlife and flora here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/sets/72157632759314682

Coast and mountain walks nearby:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/albums/72157633353858911




> We saw cockatoos sitting on the road like we'll see crows or seagulls over here. I told my husband we could NOT hit a parrot with the car or I'd die.


Were they the green "28 parrots"?



They are so common here a lot of the farmers call them "flying rabbits" - but they are pretty.

I really love our black cockatoos:



They make the most amazing wild calls, it gives me goosebumps. We have some nesting at our place.




> It surprises me that you eat so much fresh produce. That was one thing we remarked about, that in restaurants and grocery stores there was not a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables available. It was difficult to find a green salad on a menu.


Yeah, we're a little atypical in that regard! We've really been able to ramp it up since growing our own, but the farmers' markets are often good. Nothing like in Europe though! Does Oregon have much European influence? French Canadians, for instance, have that rich fresh produce and good food tradition passed on through their ancestors. Anglo cuisine, well... not known for its fresh F&V fetish.




> We also were surprised when we ordered milkshakes. Where we live, a milkshake is very thick, mostly ice cream and sometimes you need a spoon. In WA when we got milkshakes, the emphasis was on milk. It also was surprising to get a slice of beet on a hamburger.
> Breakfasts were reminiscent of Irish breakfasts, except with beans and tomato added to the eggs, sausage and potato. Big mushrooms too.


Yeah, there's enough protein on that plate, but it's vastly underdone with fresh vegetables. Typical Anglo-Irish traditions. Me, I'm part-Italian. ;-) Brett is actually totally Anglo-Irish by ancestry, and it's a real miracle he developed a penchant for lots of fresh F&V very early in life. But, true to his Irish grandfather, his _favourite_ vegetable is the potato! Not without lots of greenery though...

Beetroot on hamburgers is a very Aussie thing, and something I've really taken to. And I always order my iced chocolates "without ice-cream in it, just use cream on top". Loooove straight whipped cream.




> We've been to a lot of beaches, in Ireland, Iceland, Canada, all over the U.S., Japan, but WA had the whitest sand we'd ever seen. It was incredible to stand and view where two oceans met (Indian and Southern). We also did the treetop walk in the Valley of the Giants. You live in a beautiful and unique place!


Yeah, we do... but if you head back to the Southern hemisphere one day, make sure you go and see Tasmania too! And obviously you'd be warmly invited to stay with us, and hopefully I won't have any broken bones! ;-)


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## gottatrot

SueC said:


> But I think you said you came through in 2014 sometime - April that year I lost my Arabian mare, and you know how that goes. I might have been a bit disconnected for a chunk of 2014 as a result. Since you're a horse person, I might have lost my public stoicism and cried on your shoulder and made a sorry sodden mess of your T-shirt as a result. ;-) You never know with us part-Italians. The dam wall can be very easily broken with the right sounds. ;-)
> 
> This suggests to me you visited sometime after late May that year. That year started with one of the worst summer droughts in a long time, and things didn't start greening up until May.


I would have been very sympathetic, but that would have been the wrong timing because I think we were in your area at the very end of March and early April 2014. 
It looked green compared to a lot of areas we saw, but I think there was just a little rain right as we were coming through. It rained when we were in Pemberton, right before Albany, and we were saying we'd brought the rain since they told us it had not rained in a very long time. 

A trucker told us that was probably why we hit a kangaroo with our car up north, because the green shoots sprang up along the roadside and the kangaroos were out everywhere eating. 

We did see the green parrots, and the black cockatoos, and also some gray cockatoos were common with pink heads but those might have been farther north. 
Beautiful pictures! I love your wildlife.

Our climate is comparatively mild, but with all the rain horses can have issues without blankets also. If a horse is wet all day and the wind is strong, a horse can get chilled even at 8 degrees celsius. I've noticed they do better unblanketed when it is colder and dry than they do when it is a little warmer and very wet/windy. 
But also using breathable rain sheets when it is 13 degrees celsius but raining 90% of the time for a week is very important to prevent rain rot here. It aggravates me when people will not put blankets on horses because it's "not natural." 

In Oregon if you don't have a garden, you should at least say you're growing herbs in your kitchen window or something. Sustainability, organic, community farms, recycling, all of that is very popular. At work if you have a pop can in your hand you must explain out loud that you are planning to bring it to recycle later. People are culturally pressured to cut down on plastic, ride bikes, and downsize. Not a bad thing. 
So every town has a farmer's market, and people bring produce and eggs to work to share. 
I have a lot of plants in my sun room, but nothing edible. I get credit for having plants, but a black mark for not growing edibles, so I have to mention my parents have a big garden that I can get vegetables from. 

Beer is the popular thing now, although we don't like it ourselves. "Craft beer" is everywhere and small breweries with hundreds of varieties. It's sort of aligned with the natural movement somehow. People have lots of tattoos, color their hair bright colors, drink craft beer, grow massive beards, recycle, eat organic, and drive hybrid cars. That's Oregon.

Someone recently told me that she lived in Austin, Texas and Portland, Oregon. She said in Austin people exercise constantly, but it seems like a competition to see who can get the most fit. She said in Portland people also exercise constantly, but it seems like they are doing it to get to work without using resources.


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## weeedlady

enjoying this very much. Thanks @SueC and @gottatrot for sharing not only photo, but insights into your local culture. This is great. I live in Ohio.....we are boring, I think.


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## SueC

@gottatrot, if you came to Albany via Donnybrook - Pemberton - Walpole, through the forests and along the very edge of the South Coast, that might explain why you thought it was very green. The forest is always green, and the Karri areas didn't get as little rain as we had, and as further inland had. Driving along the Perth to Albany Highway there would have been lots of old crop stubble and dead pasture, but our trees at least are evergreen.

There is a funny local saying about Pemberton - "When it's not raining, it's dripping from the trees." They get almost twice the annual rainfall as we do in Redmond. The fronts coming from the Southwest start dumping as they cross the West Coast and run progressively out of steam as they head east. We love getting to the Karri forest for walks, these trees are so lovely, and did you notice the odd smell of the forest as you went into the Valley of the Giants? It has been said to resemble tom cat urine, although personally I don't smell it that way; it's just a weird peppery sort of smell and it comes from one of the understorey plants that's only associated with the Karri tree.

The Pink and Grey Galahs are more inland generally, but we occasionally get a pair of them visiting our place for a while - hard to say if they are tourists or escaped cage birds. They are very pretty though.

I like the breathable rain sheets and rugs; many people buy the cheaper rugs that aren't so breathable, but you know, I get 7-8 years out of a good-quality rug if I look after it, and re-waterproof it yearly once it's 2-3 years old. So, I really think that's good value - the cheap ones don't even last half that time, and are therefore more expensive per unit time of service than the good-quality ones. Also, their fit, straps, buckles and clips aren't as good. False economy is a strange thing.

Because our rainfall is frontal, the horses can generally be out of their rugs in the daytime during the sunny in-between weather, waiting for the next front, and this helps their coats to stay healthy, and to prevent rain rot. Because it's very windy here, rugs also dry quickly once the rain stops falling.

Rain rot is something I occasionally see in my horses when they are very very old, but only around the cannons and the backs of the ears - and funnily, vinegar and even peppermint mouthwash seem to stop it in its tracks if you get to it early. Also, Vitamin E and carotene appear to be protective, as is general green pick. We feed a vitamin/trace mineral supplement tailored to compensate for trace element deficiencies in the soils of Western Australia, which are ancient and very leached.

Do you have nice fertile soils in Oregon? Your geology is a lot younger than ours and that should help your farmers. I've got to say, the way you describe Oregon culturally sounds so nice. It's nothing like that in Western Australia - it's very consumer driven and egocentric here and a lot of people don't care about the wider community or the planet; many people just throw their rubbish out of the car window and many don't bother separating their rubbish from their recycling, and dump rubbish in recycling bins, which spoils the whole batch for recycling. There was community outrage in Albany recently when the Council introduced fines for people contaminating recycling bins - hate letters to the editor etc. Well, I say, don't fine them, compost the ******s instead. :evil:

We're not fans of beer either - it's OK for making some gravies, but as a drink, I don't know, it smells like socks that have been in gumboots for too long. We like sharing a cider between us after doing solid outdoors work on a summer afternoon. In winter we sometimes have sweet tea with brandy, which is a European quirk I brought with me. And I've got a good dessert recipe for strawberries in red wine! 

I don't know what it is with the beards, they are definitely making an international comeback. Even some of the tennis players have them now! It's handy, because I can refer to one of them as "the French Beard" and the other as "the American Beard" and then Brett and I know exactly who we are talking about.

But these guys here really do beards with great panache!

https://www.worldbeardchampionships.com/


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## SueC

@weedlady, isn't Ohio in the neck of the woods Mellencamp was singing about when the farming families were having troubles? I love the _Scarecrow_ album! And a few of the subsequent ones too. I love the cultural exchange we're having here too! :happydance:


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## egrogan

I always feel a bit of a personal challenge when I meet people who don't like beer- there are so many different styles and varieties now, I can often find something that appeals to people who have had bad beer experiences! 

@*SueC* , if you like ciders, a lot of the fruit based lambics might be something that tastes good to you. Lambics have a Belgian origin, and can be a little tart and "funky"- some sweeter, some more sour. Lindeman's is distributed internationally, and comes in cherry, raspberry, peach, or pear. It's a little effervescent, a little sweet. The internets suggest it is available in Australia. We don't get a lot of Australian beer distributed here so I don't know of any more local brewers that may have something similar. 

I tend to gravitate towards the true Belgian beers (lambics being one of several styles I like), although we have some American brewers who are trying- with more or less success!- to brew in the Belgian style. 

Another style that's really come on in the past year or so, is the gose. It's got German roots, also a little sour, sometimes even a little salty. It may also have some fruit added. @*gottatrot* , apparently gose is booming in Oregon!

So yes, I can admit to being a bit of a beer nerd, and like to help other people experience my enthusiasm! But I feel about wine the way a lot of people do about beer- it just makes me eyes glaze over, and tasting most of it makes me relish the satisfaction of a nice cold glass of water :wink:


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## SueC

Dear @egrogan, are there any beers that don't have at least a faint reek of smelly sock to them? Because that makes it such a non-starter for me automatically... We've got some boutique homebrew here someone gave us made with our honey...Brett opened a bottle and it still doesn't convince him about beer so I used the rest to make Welsh Rarebit. We've got another bottle in the pantry and if you were any nearer we would gladly bestow it upon you, since you could appreciate it properly (and probably also give us a really interesting sort of wine-taster's analysis, except a beer-taster's if you know what I mean...)

:cheers:


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## egrogan

@*SueC* , it's a fascinating question. Because of the smelly sock problem, I despise most cheeses (except mozzarella, which most "real" cheese people would say tastes and smells like...nothing). But I don't get that at all from beers, even traditional beers. Do try a lambic, I don't _think_ you would get dirty socks from it, even though it comes with the label of "funky."

Just this weekend I had a beer made with the nootka rose by a brewer from Washington state (in @*gottatrot* 's part of the world) who focuses on seasonal, herbal brewing that reflects French/Belgian traditions. All those great hipstery ideas blended into one beer :wink:! It was a nice example of a GOOD American-produced Belgian style beer (too often American brewers make everything taste like a slightly altered pale ale with a different name). It was a saison/farmhouse ale (my favorite style). I'd say it was a "beer-y" beer, in the sense that you got more grains/malt than honey/fruits, but to me still a bit sweet and refreshing. Probably would "smell like beer" when you popped the cork though, so not sure it would be something you'd enjoy.

I would _love _to try your honey beer @*SueC* ! Sad we're not closer...


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## weeedlady

@SueC Ohio is on the eastern edge of the midwest farming belt. Central Ohio had lots of family farms, now bought out by big corporations or turned into housing developments . Southern Ohio is on the edge of the Appalachians. Lots of hills and "hollers" now mostly just subsistence farming and hidden patches of marijuana. My Dad's people are from Southern Ohio. 
I'm in NE Ohio. We are in a more industrialized area. My town, Akron, was once recognized as the Rubber Capital of the World. I grew up with smoke and carbon black in the air. Dusting the furniture was interesting-black dust. Now most of the rubber shops have moved away. Now "we" like to think of ourselves as the Polymer capital of the world. The University of Akron is a leader in Polymer research and development.

We have nice parks and trails- much of the towpath along the Erie Canal is now hiking/biking trails. Cleveland has an amazing network of bridle trails in what they call the Emerald Necklace (a circle of greenbelt and parks that surrounds the city and it's suburbs). We have the world renowned Cleveland Orchestra and the Akron Symphony. We have Lake Erie. We have museums. We have forests. We have wineries. So I guess we are not REALLY completely boring, are we?  Just not exotic like you are!

@egrogan re: beer. I am not a beer lover at all, although my son has introduced to a few that I've decided I like. Stouts and Porters- the ones with out that bitter hoppy taste- those I enjoy. IPA's - not at all.
I on the other hand love my wine. Zinfandel, Cabernet, big red blends. Or Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Grigio, white, dry and crisp. Nothing sweet!.


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## knightrider

> it smells like socks that have been in gumboots for too long.


HA Ha! I love it! I always say that beer tastes like horse pee. People ask me if I've ever drunk horse pee, and I say no, but I can smell it, and that's what I think beer smells like.

I love reading about the cultural characteristics of your areas. N. Central Florida is very different from other parts of Florida. It is more characteristic of the deep South, which can be a little scary--Deliverance and that sort of thing. We have backwoods type ******** and very narrow minded bigots. And, part of the dichotomy of the South--people who stop whatever they are doing and give you anything you need. Southern hospitality is for real. I think the people here are the warmest and friendliest I have ever known. (Except maybe Russia--but that's another story). Also the most closed minded and accepting of violence. All in the same person.


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> @*SueC* , it's a fascinating question. Because of the smelly sock problem, I despise most cheeses (except mozzarella, which most "real" cheese people would say tastes and smells like...nothing). But I don't get that at all from beers, even traditional beers. Do try a lambic, I don't _think_ you would get dirty socks from it, even though it comes with the label of "funky."
> 
> Just this weekend I had a beer made with the nootka rose by a brewer from Washington state (in @*gottatrot* 's part of the world) who focuses on seasonal, herbal brewing that reflects French/Belgian traditions. All those great hipstery ideas blended into one beer
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ! It was a nice example of a GOOD American-produced Belgian style beer (too often American brewers make everything taste like a slightly altered pale ale with a different name). It was a saison/farmhouse ale (my favorite style). I'd say it was a "beer-y" beer, in the sense that you got more grains/malt than honey/fruits, but to me still a bit sweet and refreshing. Probably would "smell like beer" when you popped the cork though, so not sure it would be something you'd enjoy.
> 
> I would _love _to try your honey beer @*SueC* ! Sad we're not closer...



Now isn't that funny, @*egrogan* : Smelly socks cheese vs smelly socks beer. There is no cheese in the world I've come across so far where the smell has put me off eating, even though I understand there is usually a bit of smelly sock to it, particularly with Parmesan, which is one of my favourite cheeses in the universe! :loveshower: I love gnawing on a block of it, not just sprinkling the grated stuff on my pasta and sometimes into my mashed potatoes. Cheese! Full of high quality protein, bone building calcium, and general supercalifragilisticness... not to mention the various diverse flavours produced by the various fermentation bacteria. :music019:

Beer is, well, wet and smells of smelly socks, but a different kind. You got me thinking about this now! I'd say cheese generally has the smell of comparatively dry, healthy feet that have been in cotton or bamboo socks in a pair of Birkenstocks all day. Beer, on the other hand, has this aroma of socks that an infantry unit wore on a forced week-long march in the tropics without ever getting to take their boots off, shower, or get into fresh clothes, where half that infantry unit has untreated trench foot as well. mg:

Our varied perceptions of reality as humans are so interesting. I don't think any of us see, hear, taste, touch, smell, the world the same - and we're all just trying to process a complex reality through a bunch of fairly rudimentary neurons. Our human Venn diagrams generally have some overlap through which we can relate to each other. inkunicorn:

Brett is somewhere between you and me on the beer spectrum as well as the cheese spectrum. You're a beer fanatic with a low cheese tolerance, I'm a cheese fanatic with a low beer tolerance (except in Welsh Rarebit, and some kinds of gravy), he's not really either. He says he can tolerate the odd beer, but much prefers cider, which he says is made of apples, whereas beer is made of chickenfeed (his words). He also has a really restricted cheese enjoyment from where I stand - anything overtly fungal makes him run for the hills, whether white mould or blue mould or any other colour, intentionally in the cheese or not (but wants me to stress that he adores mushrooms...I do too).

Brett particularly wanted me to raise the culinary possibilities of cheese-infused beer, and beer-infused cheese. He personally suggests the following craft beer: _Roquefort Lager - The Worst of Both Worlds _
:cheers:


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## knightrider

> Roquefort Lager - The Worst of Both Worlds


Thanks for the day brightener! I laughed out loud!


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## SueC

weedlady said:


> @*SueC* Ohio is on the eastern edge of the midwest farming belt. Central Ohio had lots of family farms, now bought out by big corporations or turned into housing developments .


That is so sad, and also happening in Australia. Prime dairy country now covered in the super-sized suburbia of "lifestyle estates" where fuel-guzzling ride-on mowers cut what actual herbivores used to live off. Around our district, taxpayer-subsidised ******** plantations planted fence-to-fence on erstwhile family farms no longer supporting families or producing food. Woodchip production for making newsprint that's mostly rubbishy gossip and advertising and most of which doesn't even get recycled, but ends up in landfill, even in this day and age - to enrich corporations, including with working folks' money without their say-so. A rural community slowly bleeding out, and through dumb government policies we've lost our pea processing facility, wool manufacturing, dairy processing, a vegetable cannery, our fish cannery, even our local beef abattoirs - our cattle now go on a four-hour road trip to large abattoirs near the capital city, and this means South Coast farmers can't profitably market our own beef directly to local customers, they just have to sell the cattle to the big guys at the weekly stock action.



> Southern Ohio is on the edge of the Appalachians. Lots of hills and "hollers" now mostly just subsistence farming and hidden patches of marijuana. My Dad's people are from Southern Ohio.
> I'm in NE Ohio. We are in a more industrialized area. My town, Akron, was once recognized as the Rubber Capital of the World. I grew up with smoke and carbon black in the air. Dusting the furniture was interesting-black dust. Now most of the rubber shops have moved away. Now "we" like to think of ourselves as the Polymer capital of the world. The University of Akron is a leader in Polymer research and development.


The Appalachians sound so interesting! The walking is supposed to be great. Does it not have a vibrant community - is it a backwater / drugville?

Growing up with smoke...ever read any Jeannette Winterson? She grew up in industrial northern England. _Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal_ is a fun read, and a serious one too.




> We have nice parks and trails- much of the towpath along the Erie Canal is now hiking/biking trails. Cleveland has an amazing network of bridle trails in what they call the Emerald Necklace (a circle of greenbelt and parks that surrounds the city and it's suburbs). We have the world renowned Cleveland Orchestra and the Akron Symphony. We have Lake Erie. We have museums. We have forests. We have wineries. So I guess we are not REALLY completely boring, are we?  Just not exotic like you are!


:rofl: Exotic just means it's not from your part of the world, no? ;-)

I will give you that Australia is a really ancient landscape with some really ancient surviving flora and fauna, and that's really cool, but you have a lot of wilderness areas in the States too, no?

The trails sound great. Here in big wide Australia I have to trespass through plantation land to ride to the state forest, which I do with great stealth. ;-)

Wine: Love cooking with it! Don't like sweet wines, or paint stripper sorts, but will occasionally sip a nice mellow red! With cheese, of course...

:winetime: Have an excellent day, @*weedlady* , and thanks for painting your local area portrait! Zzzzzz for me now. ;-) Hullo to Raven and Tucker!


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## Knave

I also loved the cultural exchange. The pictures were again breathtaking. I cannot believe the birds and I am so jealous you get to see that that I might be a bit green! Just wow!!!

I was expecting you to tell about your new leg though @SueC. What happened with it? Did it work? Did it make a parrot fly to you?


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Brett particularly wanted me to raise the culinary possibilities of cheese-infused beer, and beer-infused cheese. He personally suggests the following craft beer: _Roquefort Lager - The Worst of Both Worlds _
> :cheers:





knightrider said:


> Thanks for the day brightener! I laughed out loud!



Once I got over gagging, yes, it was a good laugh! :grin:
There is this though, described as the "most Maine of Maine beers"- lobster infused beer!





SueC}[QUOTE="SueC said:


> Our varied perceptions of reality as humans are so interesting. I don't think any of us see, hear, taste, touch, smell, the world the same - and we're all just trying to process a complex reality through a bunch of fairly rudimentary neurons. Our human Venn diagrams generally have some overlap through which we can relate to each other.


Totally agree. I do laugh how silly beer culture has gotten, with people taking a page out of the wine world..."this is complex and flowery, tasting of mountain hillside sprinkled with fairy dust and butterfly poo to give it a unique cloudy appearance and slightly harsh mouthfeel..." Silly silly. But all in service of trying to put words to something that defies language in order to connect our experiences with other people trying to do the same.


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## SueC

Dear @Knave, the peg-leg was supposed to be couriered here by August 3 and tracking showed in crossed the Nullarbor in a plane in the first 24 hours, only to spend a week sitting inexplicably at the courier's depot in Perth, the state capital, 4 hours from here with trucks going daily. :icon_rolleyes:

I emailed a complaint, and inexplicably the peg-leg turned up at the Post Office today instead of the Albany depot of the courier company. Seriously weird. But at least Brett could bring it home this evening, and I shall be assembling it first thing, hooray! :happydance:

I so want to walk my poor long-suffering dog! Bad enough that there is no riding of either horse or bicycle, but at least I'll be able to sedately walk the dog!

Will post a road test report tomorrow. ;-)

Hope your medical path will smooth out ASAP and :hug: to you and little girl!


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## Knave

@SueC I am glad it arrived at least!!!

Yes, I am trying to be more calm about it now. Yesterday I called the original doctor to see what I should do. Nothing to be done but wait for the insurance company... they would cut more out if I wanted in the meantime.

No, I don’t think they realize how far it has gotten since then. It grows and is different constantly. Today, the obvious growth, seems to have reached the joint of the toe, and it makes a person wonder if she will be able to keep the toe. Some of the good skin is starting to split where it has stretched too far. She says she can feel Elvis internally to the base of the toe. I really hope it does not go into the foot.

School starts again in a couple of weeks. I don’t think I can send her at this point. I hope something is done before then. I am trying to let go and let God.


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## knightrider

Oh, @Knave, I am so sorry about your little girl. I was so hoping it would be resolved . . . and quickly. How heartbreaking.

I also got on Horse Forum while dinner is cooking to see how the new peg leg worked. But I guess we'll have to wait until tomorrow. Best wishes for a very successful ambulation.


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## SueC

Thankyou, @knightrider!  :hug: I'm AM/PM reversed with you, exactly 12 hours ahead of forum time, so I was merely dreaming about the peg-leg assembly overnight. ;-) Brett has fed old Romeo already this morning and I'm expecting a visitor today, so I shall ease into piratehood indoors, make a few quiches and soups and a bread and butter pudding, and all going well, can feed the horses on my own tonight...and go for a walk after! :loveshower:

Louise has already road tested the model and reckons it's a piece of cake!


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## SueC

*YES!! PIRATE SUCCESSFULLY UNRUGS HORSES AND CARRIES RUGS!









*
We have liftoff! Assembled the peg-leg this morning and took it for a test drive. At this point I am using my left crutch as a training wheel as well, since three points offer more stability than two if I should get unbalanced, and falling over still isn't a good idea at this stage. Getting unbalanced is a particular issue because I have to negotiate uphills, downhills, slippery grass, sticky mud, deep puddles, uneven ground, and the antics of large animals. And erm, electric fences! :shock:

Anyway, although ambulation isn't quite as _elegant_ yet as I had hoped, it _is_ definitely ambulation. :winetime:

I can stride along of sorts, and I am hands-free! The "training wheel" crutch can just hang by its armband when I'm not walking, or if I'm in a stable place, can be put down.

It just so happens that this is the first sunny, dry day after nearly a week of foul weather, and that I happened to have the peg-leg for it. So I armed myself with three humongous carrots. Romeo had already been unrugged as he left the garden after his senior breakfast earlier and had chosen to join the donkeys in the Common.

I went down to the Common gate, which I keep closed at present because I don't want the steers in the upper paddocks just now. And then I called the horses, who were at the far side of the upper paddocks. It's really convenient to have horses that come when called, especially when you have an injury to nurse.

It's hugely windy today, which makes for jumpy horses, so they were milling a little when they first got to me after trotting in. I jammed a giant carrot in each mouth (it's such a funny scene, three stationary horses with noses sticking out in anticipation, like three baby birds in a nest sticking their beaks out hopefully when the grasshoppers are being allocated) and began unrugging. For a horse, pretty much everything else in the world stops when it has a giant carrot in its mouth. I like my horses to have a nice carrot every day, and if it's rugging season, I will administer this carrot at an opportune time, because they stand stock still in fierce concentration when they are busy with a giant carrot. :rofl:

I was able to whip off Chasseur's and Sunsmart's rugs very quickly; they noted my weird new appendage, but evidently thought it was more acceptable than their monkey hopping up and down on two silver sticks. They'd already been used to my crutches for a week anyhow, but you could just tell they were happy that I was now ambulating again instead of hopping about. Horses really don't like abrupt movements.

Julian, who is the newest fellow here, was a little too nervous for my liking to unrug him at liberty, so Bill came down and held onto him for me for a minute. You can completely tell he rode as a young man, and I mean really rode - he's 84 and grew up when horses were a way of life, not a hobby. It's that combination of taking charge of the horse, but supporting him at the same time. "Whoa, stand still now. Yes, thaaaaat's a good boy!" with a smile in his voice for the second sentence. He was rubbing the horse's nose, and the horse was nuzzling him back. Then the rug was off, he told him again what a goood boy he was, and let go of a happy, reassured horse, who hung around anyway to keep chatting.

I then opened the Common gate, and for the first time in nearly a week, the horses could get out to the other 58ha of the property - having been confined to the upper 4ha during the torrential rain and gales we've had these past five days.

The donkeys came up, I took Sparkle's rug off, and all seven equines hung around Bill and me grazing near the gate. They all like a bit of contact from me at that time of day. Sparkle wanted a good scratch, and Romeo came and lined himself up near my free arm. As I was scratching him with my right hand and Sparkle's ear with my left, he began nuzzling the little donkey along her back as well. Nice cosy scene. _A family that grooms together blooms together._ :rofl:

As is my wont, I moved along all the individuals and gave all of them some personal attention, several times over. Julian got used to seeing my pirate leg and everyone else not reacting to it, but relaxing around me, and getting their little scratches as usual, and responding to that with the usual pleasure and reciprocation. After a few minutes of observing this, he was far more relaxed about the whole thing himself. Horses are nearly always observing and processing what's going on around them, and it's always a good idea to give them lots of unobtrusive exposure to something new, when they are feeling comparatively safe in a familiar environment and situation.

When everyone was happy, we closed the gate. I collected up the rugs in my usual manner - fold them up lengthways twice, hang them off my shoulders each side, walk to the hanging point. It feels marvellous to be able to carry things again. :happydance:

I'll be able to feed the horse unassisted again this afternoon.  And when Brett comes home, we're going to walk the dog down to the south gate and back - I am so missing the bushland, and walking our tracks. This is going to be fabulous - and the dog will be delighted as well. 
:cheers:

This is what the peg-leg looks like:










More info here:

https://iwalk-free.com/

This device turned up in a tiny little box and was easily assembled. It is beautifully engineered and put together, and so easy to adjust to size. No wonder it's won awards. Sometimes people really do come up with a great product that's been one hundred percent thought through, and it's such a pleasure when that happens. Some really clever clogs developed this little gem.


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## SueC

Quote:
_ it smells like socks that have been in gumboots for too long._




knightrider said:


> HA Ha! I love it! I always say that beer tastes like horse pee. People ask me if I've ever drunk horse pee, and I say no, but I can smell it, and that's what I think beer smells like.


Isn't that fascinating? Whereas I tend to get a note of orange juice when I smell horse pee. Not beer. It's really interesting how we're not smelling exactly the same things, not tasting exactly the same things. I think it's in part variations in the basic sensory equipment and brain processing, sort of like playing a CD on different stereos, and I have a hunch that, for taste and smell, it's also in part our bodies changing the signals to alert us to what we need nutritionally and what we need to avoid, which is also going to vary from person to person, and according to circumstances. Of course there's other factors as well, like habits and addictions and illnesses.

It's the same with colour perception as well. My students would frequently say to me, "Wouldn't it be great if we could just swap bodies with a friend for a day? Try out different bodies? Compare how it feels and what we see, smell, taste etc?"

Brett once introduced me to a short story about what might happen if people had an extraordinary sense of smell. It's very amusing, and I found a link for anyone who wants to read this short story:

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Coffin Cure, by Alan E. Nourse


Loved your local area description, thanks so much! 




> (Except maybe Russia--but that's another story)


...please tell... pretty please with cherries on top... :smileynotebook:


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## SueC

A little musical interlude... us big Cure fans finally got around to getting a copy of the _Disintegration_ album about a month ago, and it's been getting a lot of airplay at home. It's a total gem of an album - we already knew a lot of the songs from _Live in Paris_, and these guys are wonderful live - and it's been just lifting me into the stratosphere... it's so wonderful when music can do that.

This is _Plainsong_, which is so beautiful and majestic, in the same sort of way an Arvo Pärt composition is. It just goes to the core of me and reminds me what a big and wonderful thing it is to be alive. And The Cure also have the _loveliest_ concert crowd... 






Click the direct YouTube link if there is trouble playing it embedded. ;-)


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## SueC

...oh yeah, this is what I meant by Arvo Pärt... turn it up _loud_!






Click the direct YouTube link if there is trouble playing it embedded.









PS: This is, to me, the musical incarnation of standing barefoot in the middle of a massive, massive thunderstorm in some amazing desert landscape, and just looking at the light and feeling the sound in your bones and the raindrops on your skin and your hair standing on end.

Brett loves this too, but describes this as "raw nihilistic existential terror"! :rofl:

A friend from Sydney couldn't stand this, said it was _completely_ depressing! :rofl:


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## SueC

*Exhibit A* *Day 10*: The swelling is rapidly disappearing, and we're now getting lots of emerald green. Nearly time to talk about why you get all those rainbow colours when your bruises start to clear! ;-)


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## bsms

Some times you go a day without reading and find a thread has taken off for the hills! I drink 1-2 beers a year. I gather Germany keeps their good beer and exports the stuff that isn't good enough to keep. The Philippines takes the opposite approach, I'm told, exporting OK beer and keeping...stuff. One evening in a bar, my squadron mate was making a face at his San Miguel beer. "_Why not just drink ****?_", I asked him. "_Pretty sure this is cheaper_," he replied!

I refuse to look at pictures of injured feet. My left foot is still causing me problems and I don't want it to start imitating what I'm seeing!


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## SueC

The other day, on another thread, I posted this link to a set of jokes that make Brett and me laugh like no other jokes we've ever heard, in part because they are so completely outrageous:

Musician Jokes

With all this talk of beer, here's a similar beer-related, chauvinistic thing, which can produce shocked exclamations when reading (_Whaaaaaaaat????_):

Why Beer is Better than Women

Some people actually think like this, you know!!!


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## SueC

bsms said:


> I refuse to look at pictures of injured feet. My left foot is still causing me problems and I don't want it to start imitating what I'm seeing!


How did your foot injury start, @*bsms* ? You'll have to forgive me if you've already presented x-rays etc, my brain is calcifying a little. I do remember some talk of, was it plantar fasciitis? In any case, that you have a chronically sore foot at the moment.

For your foot to imitate my foot, you'd need to fall on it at a pretty unusual angle, or drop a really heavy object on top of the arch!


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## bsms

I stepped on a rock while jogging in the desert. X-rays showed no injury. Everything I'm experiencing is consistent with plantar fasciitis, which can happen anywhere on the foot. I'm wondering if the fascia grows OUT, starting at the heel and moving toward the toes. Right now, the spot that gets stabbing pain sometimes has gradually moved from the ball of my foot almost to the base of my toes.

I'm thinking it might be like when Bandit does this:








​
The damaged section just eventually grows out and disappears. Until then, he's tender. He's had this happen 3 times in 3 years. My accident-prone horse! I suspect he'd tell me to just limp sometimes until it stops hurting, which is my game plan right now.

I used to do weight lifting with barbells. I've switched to rubber bands. I'm a bit accident-prone too, and would much rather drop a rubber band on my foot than a 30 lb piece of metal! Your foot is...er, um...colorful...but if I want color on my foot, I'll use paint! ;-)

PS: "A frigid beer is a good beer." :rofl:​


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## SueC

...but not in England, apparently; there they like their beer warm, I've been told! :rofl:

Stepping on a rock while jogging (and I'm going to assume you _were_ wearing jogging shoes), that's such an entirely banal thing that you wouldn't think it could possibly do any damage...kind of like falling off your horse at a walk :rofl: (How is that even _possible_, I don't have narcolepsy!)

On a social thread, a member described how his wife broke bones on just a standard dismount gone wrong:

https://www.horseforum.com/horse-ta...0s-thereabouts-655873/page375/#post1970578119

Very freak, both instances, and can happen anywhere, not just horse-related.

And don't we all wish we had more exciting, compelling reasons for our injuries! Instead of these lame duck reasons.

Brett's brother got plantar fasciitis from stepping off a camel. I thought that was a good one; camels lie down before dismounts! And his one _had_, standard tourist camel ride. :rofl:

You were describing a sort of conveyor belt fascia, which reminded me of the method by which snails get food down to their stomachs even though they don't have peristalsis!  AFAIK, connective tissue is a matrix that gets repaired in situ. It may be that the stress point kept moving outwards from the original injury, since repaired areas can be temporarily stronger than adjacent areas...just speculating. One idea that would explain your observation. Another is that someone has your voodoo doll and is stretching its left foot on a regular basis while cackling evilly. :eek_color:

That's a good one, that hoof photo. Sunsmart does exactly that forging in the paddock (saving up took too long :rofl, and then people think he had a sole abscess, though he really didn't! He'll catch himself in the heel, and look like that photo of Bandit's foot - except he doesn't have such lovely mustang/desert feet.

Someone once told me that if you build your fences out of high-visibility polybraid, and fill in all bog holes in the paddock, and safety cap all star pickets, and worm and vaccinate regularly etc etc etc, then the horse will simply dig a hole in the paddock and return to accidentally fall into it...


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## SueC

*Day Twelve* (only 30+days to go)

We have had so much rain that our 120,000L tank overflowed. Last time we checked the tank was only half full! The overflow outlet dumps the water right into the passageway between the tank and the shed, and we usually prevent this situation by draining the tank out through the stock tank outlet into the paddock before it gets full. We'd no idea we had had THAT much water, but we had five days of pretty solid rain, the one dry sunny day, and then another wall-to-wall day of rain yesterday.

So now we have a quagmire all around the tank. And try getting through that on a peg-leg or on crutches! :eek_color:

Well, I do, but the quagmire sucks at you. The peg-leg doesn't have a snowshoe attachment, and if you go on crutches you're just skewering the mud. Interesting. It will take a few days to dry out, but meanwhile imagine a bubbling swamp with boghole mud you sink ankle-deep into, and have to move over at a certain minimum velocity not to get stuck in. :rofl: And this now, of course.

This was the winter we were going to a) get a round gutter for our water tank - inexplicably they don't come guttered, and the tank manufacturers don't think it's necessary to gutter them retrospectively either, but the rain simply sheds off the tank roof and into the surrounding walkways and garden, and it's a pretty big roof; and b) hire a Ditch-Witch and do some necessary drainage works around our walkways and upper driveway; plus c) get a truckload of gravel and dump it all over problem spots afterwards. Hmmm, we'll see what we can do with my leg incapacitating me for wheelbarrowing or driving any machinery (let alone riding, humph!). Might take a little longer. I actually enjoy physical work...

Because of the quagmire, this morning Brett fed Romeo for me; and then the sun came out and we went for a walk down the sand track with me being a pirate. It was so lovely to be back in the bushland. Right after we had gotten on the track, I said, "You know, that's further than I managed to get with my horse 12 days ago!" :rofl:

We went out to the first gravesite because I wanted to check whether any of my flower seeds had germinated (https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page56/#post1970562513) - you have to turn off halfway along the track, and follow an animal track into the bush for a bit. The peg-leg is super on the flat sand, but needs attention when going through scrub - you don't want to tangle and trip. Things went fine, however. And yes, there were Everlastings growing all around, nearly 10cm tall and nicely bushy after just 6 weeks since they were little seeds. So this spring, we will get these:










We headed back home, completely unaware of the time, hurling tennis balls with the throw-arm for the dog and enjoying the sun on our skin. Our rude awakening came when, back in the house, we saw the time - I still had to bathe and wash my hair before the hospital appointment at 11.10am, and we were going to be late!

There was no way I could skip the bath - one thing people don't generally tell you about fractures is that you'll get really, really stinky for the first couple of weeks. You'll be doing a lot of sweating for a number of reasons - pain, moving about in new ways that are like a gym workout, waking up overheated because of weird metabolic fluctuations. (As an aside, I was completely flabbergasted by information about the calorie demand of fracture healing - one source said that calorie requirements in people with multiple long bone fractures - femur, tibia, humerus etc - can go from 2500 calories/day to as much as 6000 calories/day for the first couple of days - a figure no doubt compounded by metabolic changes due to the associated stress as well.)

And not only will you be sweating for various reasons, but that sweat will carry the peculiar and unpleasant odour of stress and disease. You'll be in new pyjama pants and tops every night because of how smelly they get; it's quite disgusting!  So, because I don't want to inflict that on the general public, or those nice doctors who have studied for so many years to help people like me, or indeed my own sensitive nose, that bath was non-negotiable - and bathing with a bare broken foot is not something you can rush in any way without inviting re-injury. So, I had a leisurely bath with the necessary 100% mindfulness of not doing anything that could hurtle my broken foot into a solid surface, and washed my hair, and smelt and felt so much better after that.

We had let the hospital know we were leaving late, but they are usually running much later than their patients are. It was the same today; in fact, we had to wait for over two hours! Good thing we had packed a picnic lunch - we were feasting on potato salad, quiche, chocolate, nuts and fruit. Brett lamented at length that he hadn't brought a thermos of tea as well. Typical Englishman DNA, can't survive more than an hour without craving the ceremony and comfort of his tea, albeit mostly green tea... which is why the hospital cafeteria was out of the question for making up the deficit...

You're supposed to have your injured leg elevated - well, try doing that in a waiting room. After an hour, my foot was really lamenting its poor drainage position, and I discovered that my elbow crutches make really good injured-foot-elevators: Just pop your astronaut boot straight on the rubber handle. It's also really stable, as well as really high - and stretches out all those cramped-up muscles as well. I'll post a photo of this little life hack at the end of this entry. Anyway, this was a blissful discovery, although it earnt me dirty looks from a real estate agent who was in the same waiting room with his wife (whose hand fracture was easy to elevate). So after a couple of his disgusted stares at me, I simply looked him in the eye and turned on my teacher look, the specific one with the emphatic eyebrow raising that I used to give to people who were looking about instead of at their papers during tests and examinations. That stopped him dead; no more evil eyes at me after that, but a few bits of muttering disapprovingly under his breath, which I followed up with the kind of look you give to students who are being rude. It really is quite amazing how body language can be so effective you don't have to say a word. I don't know what Mr Real Estate's issue was anyway; other than he seemed to think I should have suffered in silence as my foot ballooned from not being elevated instead of using a crutch in such an _unseemly_ manner. I bet he plays golf, has a stock market portfolio and watches _Australian Idol_.

There were also charming people waiting, including a gorgeous little girl around 6 years old with a cast on her broken arm, who told me she broke it playing soccer. _"No!!"_ I said. "_That just shows you how dangerous soccer is_!" And she laughed. I just _had_ to ask her what you get when you cross a sheep with a kangaroo. (A wooly jumper, of course!) This was a high-energy little girl and she did not like waiting for hours! Also there was a very elderly woman who caught my eye and gave me a huge smile - probably because Brett and I were so smiley and cheerful ourselves. That smile lit up her whole face, and I smiled and winked at her, which made her smile more.  I am sure this cheerful interaction caused Mr Real Estate's stomach acid to spike; he himself was sitting for hours not saying much at all to his wife, but taking charge of all her medical paperwork...

Eventually we were seen (well, I and my personal situation assistant ). We'd wondered if we'd get the bright patchwork shirt or the beardy face, and we got the beardy face. His name was Zac, and he was a very pleasant young man, and happy to see a person with a fracture who wasn't carrying 20-40kg of excess weight (AKA most middle-aged Australians). That's just about the worst thing for fracture healing and rehabilitation... We had a good chat about what I could and could not do for the next fortnight, and why, and he was very happy to know I was exercising as much as I could, otherwise had the leg up, and was cranking up general antioxidants (blueberries, plums, other highly coloured F&V), Vitamins C, E and D (natural and supplemented), and having complete protein at every meal, etc. He thinks I'm going to get a very good outcome, although we still don't know about Lisfranc and follow-up surgery because I still can't put even the weight of just my leg on that foot sitting down, so no weight-bearing X-ray yet. Maybe next week, we'll see. Anyway, routine is to see an orthopaedic specialist at injury, one week after, a fortnight after, and then six weeks after to assess how well the callus has calcified - and for that length of time you're in your astronaut boot. Waiting aside, I've been really happy with the level of medical care I have received with my injury. Everyone has been excellent.

After that, we went down to the harbour foreshore to walk the dog a little. I was on crutches, the peg-leg was at home, having already had a walking outing today, and I felt like swinging along on crutches for this one, because it's much faster than the peg-leg, and because I needed some cardiovascular and core exercise, and by golly does it give you both of those in spades. You don't get nearly as far on crutches as on a peg-leg, but you can have some speed over a short distance.  Then you have to stop because of your hand-bones and because you're too sweaty and exhausted!

Four photos from our harbour walk / swing... the first two show that life hack of how to elevate without a footstool in public; please note that I was trying to impersonate a pirate for the second photo, but clearly I still need that hat and that inflatable parrot. The third is a point-of-view shot from me, and the last from the end of the walk. I think I'm going to have arms like a rower by the end of all this...


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## bsms

It isn't often someone makes a 2 hour wait in a hospital waiting room sound interesting....:thumbsup:

Haven't been riding Bandit. We've been getting much needed rain in the mornings and heat in the afternoon. The days it hasn't rained have been the days I had appointments in town. Bandit still has a very small mark on one knee. Both bite marks (he got an additional one on his leg) are good to go.

Reading @gottatrot's post about needing horses...I think I'm atypical for an HF member. I like horses well enough, and I've certainly learned a lot from being with them! But I don't crave them.

I've mentioned the guy who told me the only bit I needed was a solid-shank, low port curb. We talked a while a couple of weeks ago. He & his first wife loved horses. They owned up to 16 at one time, usually had a dozen, and spent much of their free time riding across the desert. He had a trailer with living quarters and they would travel around the US so they could go trail riding all over.

After 50 years, she became very ill. He mostly rode his remaining horses on their own property. After she died, he sold most of them and kept two. Then decided he didn't ride them enough and sold them. He remarried. She doesn't care about horses and he doesn't feel healthy enough to ride. Pity. I'd love to go for a ride with him. I'd love to pick his brains about riding horses in the desert. I'm curious but feel it would be wrong to ask: _Does he not miss riding? Or does he miss it too much to want to spend time with my horses?_

I suspect not having horses would leave me in between. Missing them some, but ready to snatch a ride if offered. I'll probably always miss Mia. Can't say I have near the emotional attachment to my current horses. They are three good horses in their own right, but it isn't the same.


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## SueC

Sounds like a really interesting old guy to talk to, @bsms! Those people are like walking encyclopaedias. 

Yeah, reading that at @gottatrot's journal and what you've said here, I actually don't think I'm that horse crazy on the continuum. If the pattern follows a normal distribution, I'd be in the top half, but not in that narrow section near the end. I love horses, but no more than I love my dog and less than I love Brett. I kind of have a generalised affinity with animals, even though of course I'm an omnivore and as such also eat them, and as that's generally how it goes in nature, I don't do much hand-wringing about it - but I do have a lot of strong feelings about food animals having decent lives and humane deaths.

In the years where I just had a retired mare at my parents', I travelled, worked abroad and interstate, started learning a musical instrument and discovered a lot of hiking trails, and a great passion for hiking in the mountains and other fabulous scenery, which I love just as much as when I used to do endurance training and riding on my Arabian mare, and which from a personal fitness point of view is a better use of my time (but that's not the only consideration, of course, so I still ride).

The basic problem for me is that I'm so interested in so many things, and that there's only finite time and energy. Beats me how anyone ever gets bored (except in queues, when you didn't bring your e-reader etc). I am acutely aware that saying yes to one thing automatically means saying no to something else. Since I acquired Sunsmart in 2009, I have made no further progress with my musical instrument, and it hardly comes out of its box, for example. OK, so there was also that we built a house and that took up so much time and energy for 5 years, and then there's the whole permaculture garden and food growing and bee keeping and that I'd really like to get some chickens and a house cow and get into cheese making, and that I love writing. _Maybe_ if I make an effort I'll be able to put the fiddle back in the routine, but there's always such a queue for my time and energy... and too many things at once overload the system.

I don't regret that we live on a farm or that I have horses - I love having them around - but we've also made a conscious effort to set up our farm so that we don't have to spend more than half an hour, an hour tops, dealing with routine horse care, feeding etc, and also so that we can walk away for a weekend or a week and just leave them to it (barring Romeo of course, our geriatric feeding case). I saw the complete obsession horses were for my father and how he had no other life after he started with harness racing, and that really repelled me. He spends four hours upwards daily just walking horses into and out of stables and paddocks, hand-feeding four times a day, mucking out and repairing things they break. If I spent four hours with horses daily, I'd like that to be quality contact time, riding or hanging out, not doing all this extraneous and joyless stuff. Which is actually also such unnecessary stuff, if you set your operation up right. That's why I love permaculture as a principle - you actively avoid getting on a hamster wheel, by letting animals do what they naturally do instead of you doing jobs for them all day - and then both species will actually be healthier and happier. Ditto with plants and gardening - monocultures are silly and labour intensive; permaculture mostly looks after itself, and you still get to eat well. It's great.

I love to ride, and I love Sunsmart, and having Jess along and getting fun and exercise, but for me riding is part of a bigger picture of getting out into nature which I love, and it's no greater a passion than reading books or writing stuff, or being open to great music and art and drama, or going hiking, or growing our own food and creating lovely meals, or just hanging out with my husband playing silly-******s or doing intellectual and language gymnastics or weird storytelling, or having great interactions with other humans. I've never, ever been a one-track person; quite the opposite, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I simply can't confine myself to one thing, which is also why I probably have the most unusual horse journal here! :rofl:


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## gottatrot

bsms said:


> It isn't often someone makes a 2 hour wait in a hospital waiting room sound interesting....:thumbsup:


I agree!

It is my belief that it is important to be a well rounded person. If you are too obsessed with one thing, you risk making yourself unhappy. There's a difference between having a passion, something that gives you a thrill that never goes away, something that feels right for your soul - versus being selfishly obsessed with something to the exclusion of other people who care about you, especially if it only benefits you. 

Smart people will have a lot of interests, because you can't do the same thing all day each day. Wise people will invest in relationships with family and friends. I believe my DH could happily travel the world on his own, but then he would miss out on the comfort of a home life, and relationships with his family. My interest in horses is strong enough that I could have tried for the upper levels at something, but I know that would require sacrificing the happiness of a well rounded life. Perhaps even an obsession is more fulfilling when it is given a room in the house of your life, rather than having it take over all the rooms. 
Maybe you can need something, without having it need to be everything. 
Those are my ponderings...:smile:
I love hearing about your well rounded life.


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## SueC

Wow, @*gottatrot* , that's an excellent summation! :clap:  :happydance:  :clap:

Yeah, completely agree, and love this part:



gottatrot said:


> My interest in horses is strong enough that I could have tried for the upper levels at something, but I know that would require sacrificing the happiness of a well rounded life. _Perhaps even an obsession is more fulfilling when it is given a room in the house of your life, rather than having it take over all the rooms.
> Maybe you can need something, without having it need to be everything. _


In a way, I think you have to be very secure in that way of being, to do that kind of Renaissance approach to life, to be a well rounded person with lots of different interests and skills - because in the modern world, you're pointed in the opposite direction: If you want to excel, you're supposed to pick one thing and pursue it with more and more tunnel vision, and to become such a specialist that you've little idea how the rest of the world operates, and then you're _Professor World Expert on the Toenails of an Obscure Brazilian Species of Skink_. You can see this in the horse world as well. And people forget about the big picture. I like detail, but only in relation to how it fits into the big picture, as a sort of puzzle piece to try to fit into the whole, and then to see what it adds to it - rather than taking that single puzzle piece and framing it on your wall and building an altar under it for people to genuflect to.

And I think you're very like that too, and so is @*bsms* , and so is @*Knave* , and so is @*Hondo* , and so is @*louiseh1985* , and so is @*knightrider* , and other people with whom I'm commonly interacting on these journals. (I'm sorry if I missed your name, please feel free to add yourself and welcome , just giving examples here of people I've gotten to know a little better through their writing.)

And Brett is totally like that, and one huge thing I completely adore about him is the breadth of his interest and the depth to which he knows about the many things he is interested in. I've never met a more imaginative, stimulating and fun person than him, and he did _not_ go to university, he did some graphic design and IT qualifications at technical college, and in his spare time he reads and self-educates and reflects, and has done that from the time he was a kid. The learning has never stopped. He is infinitely more interesting than many people you'd meet in academia, who are full bottle on something that may well be interesting to learn about, but once they've emptied that bottle, that's it, pretty much, and that's so...hollow, and sad, and boring really. Like they are living as a sort of cardboard cutout.

There are of course also people like us in academia - people interested in the big picture and many different things. Brian Cox springs to mind; Brett and I both adore this guy. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cox_(physicist)






And here's a TED talk that's very topical:

https://www.ted.com/talks/brian_cox_why_we_need_the_explorers

And we looooove David Attenborough.  And many many other people like this, in the sciences, in philosophy, in art and literature and music, even engineering and architecture (the odd one ;-)) - so many just wonderful people, who are excellent and passionate and inspirational and just really decent people as well, and who make Brett's life and my life so much better just by who they have chosen to be and what they do with their lives, and how they treat others.

:apple:

A passion is a very life-affirming thing. An obsession destroys life - the life of the obsessed person, and the lives of people around them.


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## Knave

This group of posts really makes me think. Horses are definitely my passion. Bones is my friend too and I love him. My family comes first though of course. 

I tried to think about if I am well rounded though. I don’t know that I am. My life is so much in a specific kind of bubble I guess. I know a lot about cows and horses, some things about hay, but not as much there anymore because little girl has asthma and can’t be in the fields. I know the things I need to know to live the life I do. 

I love yard work and have a nice garden. I don’t have anything I milk this year, but I usually do and now have a heifer calf that will be milking after another year. I have chickens too. So I guess I know things about feeding my family.

What I don’t know are the things outside of my bubble. I don’t know the things that most everyone on here knows. For example, the most I know of art are the paintings the girls and I do when we are hanging out and the music on the radio. I get nervous around people too, and I rarely leave my little area.


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## bsms

I thought it was Denny Emerson who wrote a book about what it took to become a top rider. Although maybe not since I can't find it mentioned online. Whoever it was, they said someone serious about becoming a world-class rider MUST sacrifice everything else in their life toward that goal. Others WOULD have the athletic ability AND make the sacrifices, so it was unrealistic to think you could get my on athletic ability alone. That is the way it is in many things. 

As a WSO, I spent much of my adult life in fighter squadrons. The very best fighter pilots tended to have multiple divorces. You could be very "good" without sacrificing your family life, but not "best". As a WSO, I had a natural gift for looking at a 2-D radar display and "seeing" things in 3-D. I was very good naturally. *But thank God I was passed over for promotion* (my big mouth - imagine that!), and THEN stayed in! I did a lot more flying, eventually was promoted, but I was forced to admit I needed my FAMILY far more than I needed a CAREER! I think men are particularly susceptible to that error. Lots of lonely 60 year old guys because of it. I needed to get slapped in the face, so to speak, to escape it.

Don't think it matters to horses. Mine have always judged me on my "try", not my "succeed"! If Mia had looked at me analytically, she'd have hated me. A big part of what attracts me to horses is their forgiving nature. :thumbsup:


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## egrogan

This book I think @*bsms* ?

I feel like a faker in most of my horsey life, to be honest. I didn't grow up around them. My parents didn't take my kid obsession with them seriously (mostly because they couldn't afford it, I get that). Even though I got back into them as an adult, I feel like there's so much I don't know and just don't have enough time to learn. 

I think I'd call them a passion though. I am fortunate that my lovely husband was willing to help fulfill that by agreeing to move where we did. Since we had the flexibility to live really anywhere in Vermont, it definitely feels like a dream come true to live in this very horsey location. They do fit in well with other things that I enjoy, so that's good.


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## bsms

egrogan said:


> This book I think @*bsms* ?


Yes. I read it years ago so I hope I didn't mis-remember it!

I was planning on a short ride with Bandit this morning. I just was about to mount up when Cowboy came strolling out! Had my cell phone so called for backup - no one. For 15 minutes I tried calling family while sort of blocking Cowboy from strolling elsewhere in search of food. FINALLY got my wife - she had been in the garage doing something - so she came out.

By the time Cowboy had a halter on him, I had lost enthusiasm for riding. So my wife and I walked them around the block. The horses didn't mind us walking beside them instead of being on their backs! I understand an older neighbor who doesn't ride, but walks her horse regularly. Kind of expensive compared to a dog, but they can be very companionable on a stroll. She's afraid of being hurt riding alone in the desert, but finds her horse an relaxing companion on a walk. That...makes a lot of sense. To people on HF, I hope. Not to many others, but non-horse people are kind of odd anyways.


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## SueC

*Day 14* (only 28+days to go)

After a lunch of wholemeal macaroni with a delicious tomato, bacon, mushroom, olive and feta sauce, and a garden salad of mustard greens, fennel and parsley with a lime and mayonnaise dressing, we did a much-needed Sunday afternoon constitutional. We even got 84-year-old Bill, our usual Sunday guest, to come along - well, number one, he still rides bicycle laps for fitness on a daily basis weather permitting, and number two, I said he'd be faster than me with my peg-leg, which is true because it really reduces your stride length and you sort of have to hobble along. _Arrrrr arrrrrr._ And he said he'd come just to see the spectacle, and we did a nice 2km loop of our farm trails - the sand track to the back of the property, and up the hill and around the western boundary in the forest. Brett had the camera, because the wildflowers are starting to come out, and took some photos of us as well. Plus amazing orchids.

Bill, who grew up in this area and knows the place like the back of his hand, showed us where all the survey pegs were hidden and told us where all the hidden tracks were, and the history of the area. He was looking at the saw marks on various old tree stumps and telling us which ones had been cut for railway sleepers and which ones had been milled subsequently. Also the fire history of the area. Amazing.

Attached Thumbnails    


Please note I am wearing my _hyggebukser_ (hello Louise! :wave: ) - the comfortable quirky pants that make you feel better at home but are definitely not formal wear. These ones are my Pippi Longstocking pants. They are really pyjama pants, but because I don't have my pirate hat yet, I've got to have _something_ quirky.

Anyway, I'm a pirate on L-plates, as you can see, and have to earn my hat first. The peg-leg still needs adjustment, as you can see by my super-wide standing stance. The problem is that even though this leg is supposed to fit people up to 198cm tall and I'm only 180cm, I still have to use it in learning configuration - peg-leg shorter than good leg - simply because there are no further holes for extension. I have very long legs, and my femur is actually longer than any other person's I have met, including a lot of high school basketball teams with young guys a head taller than me. The tibia is also long, though not quite as above-average as my femur. This makes me an effortless walker and I love hiking, but I am going to have to take the drill to that peg-leg tomorrow morning to give me an extra hole so I don't have to hobble. It should be OK even though it will reduce the strength of the equipment slightly, but it's rated to take up to 125kg, and I'm 75kg, and unlikely to carry heavy loads.

Even in learning configuration and wide stance (it does narrow a bit when walking as opposed to standing), it's far, far better than either crutches or scooting around indoors on an office chair. Indeed, from today I am going to use it indoors as well - it had been outdoors only because of the mud and how dirty the foot got, but I'm going to keep a series of rinsing buckets and an old towel by the door so I can transition it to indoors use as well. It's really easy to put on and take off.

A couple of other troubleshooting points for me:

1) My last really significant horse riding injury 26 years ago left me with a bony bump just under my left knee (I got trapped in a gateway with a a closed gate with my Arabian mare, with my knee behind the fence post and the horse panicking and running forward, and then, because my knee was stopping us, falling sideways into the steel gate on top of me, so my leg was between the horse and the gate in the fall. They needed a pipe bender to bend the gate back into shape. My leg was amazing colours from ankle to mid-thigh for a month, but no bones broken. Just a huge bone bruise under the periosteum at the contact point, which ossified, giving me a permanent souvenir of the day as a bony bump that makes kneeling on hard surfaces impossible; too painful on the point pressure.) I need to either cut a depression into the padding to admit this bump, or install extra padding, or both - because it's a pressure point that makes my bone ache after a while.

2) The strap around the top of the leg irritates the tendon that runs up the top of the inner thigh. Extra padding needed. I've been wrapping a thick sock over the problem area, but am going to find some spare sheepskin today.

I think I'll be able to get a better fit that way. It's a pretty cool device and so much better than everything else I am using.

More good news is that my foot is feeling a lot better and I can wiggle my toes now without feeling like I am stepping on broken glass. Can't bear weight yet, but today for the first time the injured foot can support the weight of the leg under the office table as I am typing. (Usually at the moment I'm horizontal on the sofa with a laptop when I need to use a computer.) That's progress.

Two weeks down, four to go - if I don't have a Lisfranc ligament injury. And I can just tell that I shall be learning to mount my horse from the offside when I get back to riding, because the injured foot isn't going to like having that much pressure on it immediately, and anyway, a good rider should be able to mount from either side, is what the old instructors used to say. I'll just have to explain it to Sunsmart, who's rather missing his riding too at the moment.

:cowboy:

Feeding, rugging and unrugging AOK with the pirate leg, and will be trying to get back to gardening tomorrow!


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## Knave

I love the pictures! I am glad the leg is working out too, and hope your adjustments only make it better.


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## SueC




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## SueC

@Knave, I hope you had a good Sunday! 

When I was reading your first post on top of this page, it got me thinking! (_Oh no_! We're all making each other _think_! :rofl



Knave said:


> This group of posts really makes me think. Horses are definitely my passion. Bones is my friend too and I love him. My family comes first though of course.


I think you've just summed up how most of us feel. I like that you've mentioned friendship in relation to the horse. I think that's really true, and goes both ways.
:apple:



> I tried to think about if I am well rounded though. I don’t know that I am. My life is so much in a specific kind of bubble I guess. I know a lot about cows and horses, some things about hay, but not as much there anymore because little girl has asthma and can’t be in the fields. I know the things I need to know to live the life I do.


You strike me as a well-rounded person, and also a very busy person! You're bringing up two girls (private anthropology experiment ;-)) as well as dealing with farm life, which has a never-ending to-do list. You like to read, and you write beautifully: You've got this Cormac McCarthy-esque horse journal written in third person that's giving me a real sense of place and a real sense of humanity. The sparse and understated beauty of the style reflects the sparse and beautiful environment I see in the photographs, and the lyricism to your prose is lovely and brings everything to life.

But here's the funny thing: To us we're just us, and it's generally in others mirroring back what they see that we can get an extended understanding of who we are and how we can better fill our place in the world. Introspection - and I did a lot of it in my teens and 20s and filled thick journals with it year after year - only tells me about what I think and how I feel, and can uncover some things that I was hiding from myself to survive. A solitary journal is also a good tool to practice writing and careful thinking, and for humour, for book and music and drama reviews, for observation and for analysis of the wider world, for particular projects in your life, etc (Thoreau, Darwin, Cook etc did fantastic logs of what they saw and thought, for example).

But it's solitary, and it's in the interactive aspects of life that other brains than ours come into the picture, and that we bump up against other molecules in the bucket we are floating around in. :rofl: Whether face-to-face or blogging or open journalling, but we all need something like that, especially if our jobs don't involve much face-to-face with lots of different people. Teaching was fabulous for that - so many really meaningful interactions on so many different levels, and you could just see the energy multiply amongst the participants - not just learning curriculum, but in the human and fun and deeper aspects of your interactions. And now I'm stuck in a cow paddock with some very nice equines and a great dog, and a marvellous big piece of wilderness right behind our house, and a really wonderful other human being, like some sort of primeval Eden...and I still need human community to be fully human.

So I too am in a sort of bubble, @Knave, and trying to push the boundaries of that bubble. I think there are a lot of rural people here on HF journalling and on social threads because of the relative isolation of rural life, or of modern life in general. Tell you what, I really love this community journalling thing, where everyone gets to look at what everyone else is writing about, and to talk to each other about it, it's great! 



> I love yard work and have a nice garden. I don’t have anything I milk this year, but I usually do and now have a heifer calf that will be milking after another year. I have chickens too. So I guess I know things about feeding my family.


What breed is your heifer, @Knave, and how did you pick her out? Are you interested in cheesemaking? What sort of goats do you have? I had a Saanen for a couple of years when I was a teenager, milked her and made cottage cheese with herbs, but I have this dairy fetish and have already put word out to the local dairies in case they have an underperforming commercial cow with good manners. I really wanted an Illawarra Shorthorn and spent ages looking for one - a gorgeous Australian heritage dual-purpose breed - lovely red coats and work very well for our environment:

https://www.roysfarm.com/illawarra-cattle/










I'd have to import one from the Eastern states though. Scratching my head about it. I prefer heritage breeds to high-production breeds. I'd not mind an Ayrshire either, that should do well at our place too.



> What I don’t know are the things outside of my bubble. I don’t know the things that most everyone on here knows. For example, the most I know of art are the paintings the girls and I do when we are hanging out and the music on the radio.


But that kind of art is also art, and also wonderful!  If I had kids making art, I think I'd not give two hoots about Picasso while that was going on. Not that I give that many hoots about Picasso anyway! :rofl: I sometimes used to supervise art classes when my colleagues were unwell, as a sort of internal reciprocal thing, and I used to just love seeing what the kids were making, and asking them about it! It was great! And on the whole, far more interesting than what you see in an average art gallery. Although the Tate in London is pretty fabulous, but kids' art is so fresh and alive!

And singing along to the radio, that's fun, especially when there's several of you!



> I get nervous around people too, and I rarely leave my little area.


I used to get so nervous around people as a late teenager and in my early to mid 20s that it made me want to hide. It was a combination of things and not the way I had been at 15, 16, when I had a really stable and encouraging social environment that worked, thanks to my senior high school and some wonderful teachers and fellow students. All that ended just like that when I entered university and was split off from that nice group; university seemed to be all binge drinking for most of my new compatriots, and I just wasn't comfortable with that scenario, and still am not. The Chinese and Japanese students were great though, and a few of the mature age students: A few people I could connect with!

I didn't really stop being nervous around people until I started teaching at high school, which is such an immersion, sink-or-swim environment, and you have to swim _furiously_! I really sucked at the first few practical rotations in my Grad.Dip.Ed. (in parallel, undiagnosed reactive depression and breakup of first serious and increasingly dysfunctional live-in relationship, so not exactly a good place to be trying to work with people from) and lost a lot of confidence, but struck gold in my last one when my supervising teacher was actually the same guy who'd taught me Biology at high school, and he knew me very well and had an excellent sense of humour, and I just completely relaxed in that environment and let my hair down, and suddenly I could work with a crowd, just like that! (I was also out of that relationship by then, and feeling much better.) Just off the energy and encouragement of Mr Ron Turner and the whole fun and wacky Science department of the erstwhile Mandurah Senior High School. Other humans can make or break you in many situations, and I have a really high regard for good mentoring - we all need it, at least in our younger stages. :happydance:

I think a lot of us will underestimate our own loveliness and skills and capacities unless other people remind us of them.  It's always so much easier to see that in other people than in yourself. Unless you're a total narcissist and think you're so much more wonderful than everyone else etc, and there are people like that too!


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## SueC

Fun interlude. A Talking Heads song like you've _never_ heard it before!  Our lovely Kate Miller-Heidke, who is _such_ an imp!






Click the direct YouTube link if it won't play embedded!


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## bsms

I was always trying to prove myself in the military. I retired just as we got horses. I think a big part of what Mia gave me was her acceptance largely regardless of my faults.

People talk about horses trusting humans, and how a horse who trusts a human won't spook. I don't believe that. Bandit, for example, is well aware that he smells things I don't. So if he smells something that scares him, he'll point it out if possible. If time & space doesn't permit, he MOVES! Mia was somewhat different. When startled badly, she dumped much of her awareness of what was around her...including that I was on her back. I think she just forgot I was there.

Or if she was aware I was there, then again...something scary, my rider didn't notice, so Mia the Trustworthy must save us both! And when I tried whipping her butt viciously because I was new and experienced people told me all I needed to get her sorted out was a bigger whip? She didn't blame me. I don't think she even knew I was the one whipping her! In her own way, she was incredibly trusting. She just sometimes forgot I was there. Or if she did remember, she sometimes accepted that she had to run for both of us because the monkey sure couldn't run fast!

But if I rode wrong? If I bounced too much, or gave conflicting cues, or had poor balance? Not a problem. As long as I was trying, she accepted my attempt. "Reward the try" is how some horse trainers put it, maybe because they learned it from a horse first!

I didn't ride Bandit today. I almost did, near sunset. But it was such a calm evening! A quail strolled past me, unconcerned. The horses were in their corrals, acting relaxed. If I had taken Bandit out, I think he'd have made an honest attempt at pleasing me. But then I found myself asking what I had to prove. The world just felt at balance. Why disturb it by making Bandit do exercise, just so I could say I didn't skip the day's ride? What would the point be?

THAT, I think, is the result of horses changing me.

@*Knave* , I don't know if you are well-rounded. Heck, I don't like "round" applied to horses, either! But you come across as well-balanced, which is better.


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## SueC

That's lovely, @*bsms* - thanks for sharing that with us! 

Horses really are so many things rolled into one. Personal trainers, friends, hiking buddies, Zen masters, trauma therapists, dancing partners, superhuman antennae, fellow _hygge_ appreciators, rocket transport with liftoff... (who will add to this list? C'mon, there's more! ;-))

Try paying for all those separately. ;-) And people think _horses_ are expensive! :rofl:


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## gottatrot

bsms said:


> I don't know if you are well-rounded. Heck, I don't like "round" applied to horses, either! But you come across as well-balanced, which is better.


This is great.


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## SueC

Isn't it? I'm going to be adopting "well-balanced" myself from now on, because it's much better. Good thing @bsms hasn't copyrighted it! ;-)


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## Knave

@SueC thank you! My heifer is actually kind of an oddball. Her mother is a Jersey x Milking Shorthorn. As they were AIing the milk cows around here they ran out of semen. So, they borrowed some left over angus semen in an effort to just get her bred. She is a beautiful heifer. She has enough of a beef cow look to her that I think her calves may be able to hit a truck with the other beef calves as long as I breed her to an angus bull. I know she’ll produce less, but I am okay with that.

I love everything you wrote and it gave me a lot to think about.
@bsms thank you. I really like that concept or well-balanced. I like what you wrote too. I am the worst for trying to prove myself, and I think that I also appreciate the relationship I have with horses for many of the same reasons.


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## Knave

Oh, I forgot to mention that I did have a lovely Sunday. We didn’t do much at all, which is the way I like my Sundays. Husband and I went on a ride out in the brush. We were loping down the road when we realized the old dog had stuck with us, and so we slowed down and walked along. She usually turns around when we go somewhere she thinks will be too far. It ended up being nice though, just walking along. Bones was a bit up still, but it was good for him to have to control it instead of use it.

Then I watched Netflix, and napped. Lol. It was a nice lazy day. The girls even laid around most of the day. Little girl ripped a chunk out of Elvis when she rinsed him off (he’s very touchy lately) but oddly after it eventually stopped bleeding it almost looked better missing a piece. She had a very good attitude again. I was sad for her because her sister was invited to go on a big trip to ride roller coasters this weekend. She had tears in her eyes but she said all of the right things. She is trying very hard to be a good and kind girl through all of this.

I had to edit just to add this picture of my beautiful little heifer that my Aunt sent to me. She is who owns the cow and she is this amazing homemaker and mother. She had me milk for her when she was gone and I loved having all of the milk! It was very different than my goats, although my goat Eunice, who was a rotten animal, produced two gallons a day at her heaviest!


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## SueC

I like the cow and the calf, @Knave! Amazing how dominant the Jersey genes are in that Shorthorn cross. Is she half/half, or more Jersey than Shorthorn? Anyhow, the calf is half dairy breed, half beef and as you say, should still be fine for a house cow, plus her 3/4 beef calves should fit in with what goes on the truck.

Our neighbours here have an Angus stud, and have run a small amount of other breeds, like Salers, Murray Grey and Limousin. They were thinking about using one of their Murray Grey orphan heifers as a house cow at one point, even though considered a beef breed. Robyn said there were good dairy genes in Murray Greys as well, from a house cow perspective. If you don't need much milk, you don't necessarily need a dairy breed.

Are you going to be able to share milk with a calf on, with your heifer, or do you need more milk than that?

Counting down the days here until little girl's surgery. We want her to get better ASAP.  Please send hugs from us.


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## SueC

*Day 16* (only 26+days to go)

Today was an inevitable town day. It had taken me months to get an appointment to be seen by an ophthalmologist, and I wasn't skipping it just because I have foot fractures. It is, however, funny when you go into an eye specialist's place with a broken foot sporting crutches. People seem to think you've come to the wrong place! :rofl:

I capitalised on the wide eyes of the receptionists by saying, "Ah've coom about me broken foot" in a Yorkshire accent, before laughing at the joke with them. Dr Offerman turned out to be a neat, very polite man with a bearing halfway between that of a forensic expert and a physics researcher. My problem is that I've had a really irritating foreign body sensation in my right eye for over two years now, but neither my GP nor the optometrist could find one. I used to get a few ingrown lashes in my mid-30s which created similar sensations until ripped out. Whatever it was had been waking me up in the night during REM sleep, when the eyes move rapidly under the lids - the sense of irritation of moving the eye even slightly under closed lids is huge, and REM isn't slight movement.

No foreign body was found, but blepharitis was present (which would also be the case after a long-standing foreign body somewhere near the lids), so we're treating that. The hypothesis is that my right eye isn't producing enough lubrication at present and this causes the lids to rub painfully and get irritated. Dr Offerman wrote down a suitable over-the-counter lubricating eyedrop for day use, as well as a gel for night use, to deal with the irritation. He also said that this condition benefits from having lots of fish oil in the diet, so I'm taking fish oil capsules for at least 6 weeks (which will also help bone healing ). I'm very happy when doctors have a clue about nutrition and don't just rely on pharmaceuticals! We'll see how it goes, and I get reviewed in 6 weeks.

On the plus side, apart from that I have very healthy eyes, normal pressure, nice retina - and I actually saw my own retina too while he was looking at it!  Considering that glaucoma runs in all the women amongst my relatives, it was nice to have no signs of it.

The weather was rubbish, and Bill was giving me a lift back home - Brett had brought me in on his way to work. He simply swapped his midweek visit from Wednesday to Tuesday this week. I always do a lot of cooking ahead when Bill is over, and then we do a lot of sampling, and Bill gets to take slices of newly made cake home. Our kitchen is the heart of the open living area, and when you're working at the main bench, you can converse easily with people sitting at the dining table. Cooking is the sort of work I can do while still being good company. It lends itself to a good chinwag.

Today I made a very eggy coconut cake, and a Thai-style pumpkin soup with seafood mix, using the last Turk's Turban, which I oven roasted first. See below for what these look like...



That was our first big haul of this both decorative and super-delicious variety, four years ago. It really is fun to grow your own food.

For those wondering why I was using crutches, I use the peg-leg specifically for walking and outdoors work. If you have to sit down a lot or climb in and out of cars, and you're not walking far, or carrying anything, you're better off using crutches.

Speaking of the peg-leg, yesterday it got another good airing. The weather was highly suitable for a lunchtime walk of our bush tracks, much to the delight of the dog. I got a good dose of Vitamin D at the same time, as the sun was out, and I was out for nearly an hour. It was only a 2km lap, which normally takes 20 minutes, but peg-legging is a lot slower than proper striding walking, plus the last 500m of the walk was across the very bockety middle meadow. Peg-legs perform well on level surfaces, but aren't great for uneven ground, or bush-bashing (though they at least give you that option).

The stance was still a bit wide on the photos I posted yesterday, because the gadget needed adjusting; much better now. I am now consciously catwalking (crutch leg placed almost in line in front of the other foot) to get the right alignment instead of duck-waddling, which is so inelegant.







To some degree though, because your peg-leg isn't jointed like a normal leg, you do have to raise and lower and rotate your hip as needed to compensate, especially if you go over bumpy ground. And you have to consciously work towards an even swing of the arms, which is sort of an exaggerated power-walker swing at first.

It's great to have weight-bearing exercise for the top half of my dodgy leg - so from the knee upwards, I won't be losing muscle, or bone density, from the enforced changes to normal body use while my fractures are healing. And I can groom, feed, rug and unrug the horses independently.

I'll take some more foot photos soon. The bruising is starting to clear, and I can actually touch the poor thing again (but not over the fracture area :shock. I can also put some weight on the heel again, and today I had lunch at the table, with my foot flat on the floor. Progress!


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## Knave

@SueC I like your pictures! I am sure you made everyone laugh with your pirate joke!

Thank you for the well wishes for little girl. I am counting the days too. She had a good day yesterday though.  She seemed happy all day.

The cow is half and half. She is very big in person, so that is something that gives away her cross a bit to me. She is a first year herself. Her mother was such a nice cow that she raised not only the family but six calves last year! I think that my calf will be able to keep her own calf plus one and raise us even with the angus in her. I hope not to be wrong, but I am feeling fairly confident about it. My nasty Eunice had meat goat in her and was a spectacular milker. Her personality left a lot to be desired, but the calf seems very sweet and like she wants a friend.


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## SueC

A while back, I did a couple of entries on building a strawbale farmhouse:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page53/#post1970558119

Looking back, it was a very mad thing we did to build our own house, but it was also a very very good thing, because we love living in it. Brett always says he has amnesia from all the emotional trauma of being a first-time builder and all the stress and privations of our building years, and therefore can't remember much of actually building the place. :rofl: The poor dear. He's so Gothic (but has a strange antipathy to hair product :rofl.

Anyway... here's the follow-up article to the one hyperlinked above: What does the thing actually look like inside? It appeared in _The Owner Builder_ No.207 June/July 2018, and while I have the pdf of the article, unfortunately it's too large to attach here. Lynda does such a fabulous job of the visual presentation, whereas all I can give you here is the bare bones original text and photographs!










*STRAWBALE INTERIORS* ​ By Sue Coulstock, Redmond WA

When you build a strawbale house, there are many options for your interior aesthetics. The common denominator with that style of building is having visible strawbale perimeter walls, usually either earth plastered or lime plastered. You can add pigments to your plaster if you want particular colours, but one thing you should never do is paint plastered strawbale walls, because it interferes with the breathability of the wall and can lead to condensation in the straw, which must be kept dry.​ ​ Most people who build strawbale houses love the ambience of super-thick, naturally plastered walls, but you do get some strange exceptions. I’ve heard people ask whether you can gyprock over the interior strawbale walls so you can have a “normal” interior, and wondered why they don’t just build a “normal” house instead. In order to preserve the straw and eliminate fire risk, straw must be properly plastered.​ ​ We lime plastered our walls. Using a spread of sand grain sizes in the mix, we essentially made a version of limestone, and kept the colour natural. In order to avoid stark whiteness, we put some golden sand into the mix as well, and kept our proportions constant for a consistent off-white colour. The finish coat was floated off with flexible pool floats, which gave us a hand-textured rustic finish that also drew the lime, rather than the sand, to the exterior “skin”, giving us a tough finish that doesn’t shed sand.​ 

Lounge Facing North – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Lounge Facing North-East – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Lounge Facing East – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Open Living Facing North-East – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr
*

Strawbale or hybrid interior?*​ ​ Many people who build strawbale houses want to achieve a uniform interior and plaster their internal walls the same as the strawbale walls. Sometimes all the interior walls are strawbale too, but usually people use conventional interior walls as they are narrower and take up less of the slab. There are a number of ways in which timber framed internal walls can be set up for plastering; one involves straw stuffed between mesh that’s then plastered, another is a variation on wattle and daub. Building friends nailed up special boards that could take lime plaster. These are ways of achieving similar wall finishes throughout.​ ​ Brett and I went with a hybrid interior. The house was already a hybrid externally, with two zincalume back corners where the wet areas are located, so why not continue the theme indoors? With one caveat: In the living area and bedrooms, we still wanted to feel surrounded by straw, so we built some strawbale internal walls in the right places. This also led to increased privacy and noise reduction indoors. Our living area and two of the bedrooms have three strawbale walls and one conventional wall each. ​ ​ Instead of making other types of walls blend with the plastered strawbale walls, we wanted to turn them into features – let each material take its own pride of place.​ 

*Colonial style face brick wall*​ ​ The back of the living area is brick and done in a colonial style to fit in with the idea of a timeless farmhouse rather than an obvious new build. An Australian _Nectre_ oven – a heater, oven, cooktop and hot water booster in one – sits straight against this wall, whose thermal mass helps produce a more even and lasting heat release from the wood fire. No special hearth is required – both the brick wall and the exposed coloured concrete floor are fire-resistant materials.​ ​ 
Lounge Facing South-West – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Nectre Wood Heater/Stove/Oven Against Interior Brick Wall – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Old Map With Rustic Frame – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Numbat & Native American – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Dining Area Facing West – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


North Garden Through Dining Window – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Kitchen / Dining Facing West – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Autumn Sunlight Heating Dining Floor – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


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## SueC

View East Through Dining AreaWindow – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Curious Donkeys – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


North Wall of Open Living Area – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Niche in Strawbale Wall – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Painted Glass Sunburst Window – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Painted Glass Frog & Swamp Window– Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr
*

Plasterboard walls* ​ The timber kitchen is built into a plasterboarded corner. We chose a strong sunny citrus paint for a warm feel, partnered with green backsplash tiling with red accents. The paint has a strongly textured finish to harmonise with the textured feel of the lime plaster in the adjacent and opposite walls.


Kitchen – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Cow Clock – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr
​ 

Lizard Tile – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


In each of the three bedrooms and the office, we have one plasterboard wall. We decided to make them stand out with bold colours and to use them as gallery walls for easy picture hanging.​ 
In the master bedroom, we chose a deep red colour which creates a marvellous partnership with the dark timbers of the rustic architraves and cornices, and the glossy white painted doors, and the chocolate-coloured carved wood wardrobe set against that wall. This wardrobe, an auction-house treasure, was the first physical piece of our house. It was in the garage of our rental while we were drawing up plans.​ 

Master Bedroom I – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Master Bedroom II – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Master Bedroom III – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Morning Sunlight On Lime Plaster Wall – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

​ The three lime plastered walls in the bedroom create a feeling of serenity and simplicity; the feature wall adds a dash of warmth and beauty. Lampshades and bedside mats pick up the red theme, as do our framed wedding photograph above the bed and a print we picked up in an art gallery in Hobart. Curtains and bedspread echo the creamy whites of the lime plaster. This limited colour palette is very restful, and lets us fully appreciate the play of the morning sunlight in the room when we wake up.​ 
Morning Sunlight – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Light Picture On Strawbale Wall – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr​


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## Knave

It really is spectacularly beautiful. Definitely worth the amnesia.


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## SueC

Continued from: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page76/#post1970586413


Morning Sun – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Grazing Horses Through Bedroom Window – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Light Picture On Ensuite Wall – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Ensuite – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Door Frog – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

In the guest rooms, we have used a bushland green as the plasterboard wall colour, to reflect the woodland behind the house and the Australian bush in general. The south-facing room has a quilt and floor rugs in warm inviting colours, since it gets no direct sunlight. Because this room only has two strawbale walls, we wanted another type of wall here as well.​ 

Green Feature Wall in Bush Room – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Bush Room I – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Front Guest Room I – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Guest Bathroom – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


*Rustic timber wall*​ ​ In the office, what to do about the second conventional wall had been simple. We built the ultimate feature wall for bibliophiles – a built-in bookshelf. 


Built-In Bookshelf Now Occupied – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Aerial Shot of Brett in Completed Office – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

For our back guest room, we thought about how we could best evoke the Australian bush, and could not go past rough-cut jarrah facecuts from the Redmond sawmill, at $5 a board. We spent several afternoons hanging the boards at the scratch coat stage, and plastered the board sides into the adjoining strawbale wall during the subsequent shape and finish coats for a neat join. The boards were hung raw, with any bark edges left on, and have imbued the room with a wonderful natural timber aroma.​ 

Jarrah Feature Wall - Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Bush Room Detail – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

We had some spare straight-edged boards at the end of this project and sanded and varnished them for kitchen kickboards. I used a table saw and a thicknesser the neighbour brought over saying, “Here, try this!” to make a matching experimental rustic architrave for the pantry door and was hooked. We bought more facecuts and continued the theme with rustic architraves, skirting boards, and cornices throughout the house. We screwed them on and left the zinc-plated fixings unconcealed because we liked the raw aesthetic, rather like studs on denim. Also it means you can take them off easily if you ever repaint your plasterboard or refinish your timber.​ 

Farmhouse Kitchen – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Then I started making rustic picture frames and magazine holders out of offcuts from making all these other items. It’s funny how one thing leads to another, and how the rustic timber wall ended up influencing the materials used in the rest of the house. To bring the farmhouse aesthetic firmly into the mostly plasterboarded main entry corridor, I made a rustic hall stand out of beautifully coloured and patterned leftover jarrah strips and board offcuts, and some old splintery packing pine that had come with the roof sheets and had weathered from an ugly orange to driftwood silver lying in the grounds for five years.​ 

Rustic Picture Frame – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr
​


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## SueC

Homemade Rustic Magazine Holder – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Read Ye Whenever Possible – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Finished Rustic Hall Stand – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


*Arty extras*​ ​ Like many strawbale afficionados, I’ve read a lot of books on strawbale houses, and ogled at the lovely artistic finishes some people have achieved: Incorporating glass bottles into walls, shaping the plaster into sculptural forms (as in pargetting), including bits of broken tile to form feature wall mosaics, and so on. We were first-timers, though, and our build was already huge and complicated without these fairytale additions, so we went with plain lime plaster finishes inside and out. We do have truth windows (framed areas of straw which is otherwise behind the plaster, see below), and niches based on Gothic arches.​ 

Bush Room II – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Front Guest Room II – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Truth Window Being Plastered In - Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

We got enough breathing space to apply the decorative tile idea to the carport, which had some little gems showing fish, chickens etc floated into the red concrete before it set. 


Inset Tile in Carport - Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr



Inset Tile in Carport Concrete - Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

I also made some painted glass windows while the house frame was being put together; an alternative to stained glass that anyone with patience can do without expensive equipment. The step-by-step how-to was written up for _Grass Roots_ 215 and back issues are still available (internationally, just find their website). 


Painted Glass Sunburst Window – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Painted Glass Frog & Swamp Window– Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr
​ Other arty things that found a natural habitat in our house include a numbat painting on a pillow by friend and former colleague Penny Elliott, and a Native American painted by Brett’s grandfather.​ 

Numbat & Native American – Completed Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

​*Exposed coloured concrete floor* ​ This kind of floor is made simply by adding pigments of the desired colour to the final loads of concrete that go on the slab – in the factory, not on site – and then sealing with a solvent-based product if depth of colour is desired. Water-based products are less toxic, but don’t bring out the colour nearly as well – so if you do go for solvent-based sealer, seal well before you live in the house to let the product off-gas.​ ​ We love our simple, beautiful, easycare floor. Its deep reddish-brown, earthy colour complements the other main materials in the house – lime plaster and timber. Only the (tiled) bathrooms and laundry have any additional floor covering. This represents a huge time and money saving compared to conventional finish floor materials and installation.​ ​ If you live in an area with cool winters, the top reason to go for an exposed dark-coloured concrete floor is because it is the best kind of solar battery you can have as a floor, provided your glazing, eaves and house orientation are properly designed to make use of it. From autumn to spring, direct sunlight falls on our floor through four French doors in the house’s north face. The added dark pigments help the floor absorb this direct sunlight, which is turned into stored heat that is radiated back to the house 24/7.​ ​ I walk barefoot on the floors in our north-facing rooms most of the year around and generally find the temperature very pleasant. We did not insulate under our slab because the ground temperature in our area doesn’t get cold enough in winter to warrant it, and the ample winter sun heats the slab nicely. As a result, the slab is free to lose heat directly by conduction to the far cooler than air temperature ground below it in the summertime, which helps the house stay cool.​ ​ Carpets and timber are insulators, so to top the slab with those would greatly impair its thermal performance. Even tiling would weaken the absorption of sunlight into the floor. Our tiled areas are in south-facing rooms, where they don’t impinge on thermal performance.​ ​ ​ *Closing reflections*​ ​ With our build, we wanted to show that you could have an eco-house a family could live in comfortably and fairly conventionally, if they would bring back their expectations to good basic rooms only, in a smaller overall floor space, and using about the same amount of electricity as their grandparents. Isn’t it ironic how reducing your ecological footprint is mostly synonymous with returning to the more modest consumption patterns people had in the past? Appropriate passive solar design brings interior comfort without energy-gobbling heaters and air conditioners. And the smaller you can make your house, the less you will wish for house-elves or lottery wins, and the more you can get back to meaningful basics in your life.​ ​ ​ _*Links & Resources*_​ ​ *Great Southern Concreting*​ Super job on our house slab, including recessed corners for the compost toilets, a coloured concrete top layer for an exposed sealed finish floor, and collaborating on decorative tilework in the carport slab.​ _0428 927 158 _​ ​ *Albany Allway Roofing*​ Excellence in roofing and carpentry. Proprietor Chris Newton and his crew built us a solid roofed structural frame for our house, and solved many building problems for us along the way.​ _0417 386 911_​ ​ *Neil Manuel, Farmer and Strawbale Supplier*​ High-quality oaten and barley straw; specialist supplier to many WA strawbale builders.​ _0429 626 043_​ ​ *Swan Point Bricklaying Services*​ Peter McArtney did a beautiful job creating a colonial-style wall out of Boral Handmade _Woodbridge_ face bricks under trying circumstances with the generator malfunctioning.​ _08 9846 4211_​ ​ *Elijah Forrest Plasterboard Services*​ Did main ceiling, wet areas, all flushing. Excellent scribing job to fit enormous raked living area ceiling snugly into strawbale walls. ​ _0429 353 143_​ ​ *Great Southern Solar*​ Very professional supply and installation of our reliable off-grid system.​ _08 9848 1369_​ ​ *Great Western Plumbing & Heating*​ Wonderful service and lateral thinking from Tony Kittlety.​ _08 0941 6422_​ ​ *SolarOz*​ Excellent range of wholesale price solar hot water systems. Our Sydney tube system, including delivery, was under half the price of an equivalent unit from WA suppliers.​ _SolarOz | Solar Hot Water Systems Australia_​ ​ *Snowballs Auctions*​ Source of quality pre-loved components like our second-hand timber kitchen, ornate carved wardrobe, dining suite, mirrors etc.​ _Snowball Auctions - Albany Western Australia._​ ​ *Metro Ceramic Tiles*​ Supplied gorgeous and affordable Italian floor tiles for our wet areas and kitchen splashback.​ _08 0942 9909_​ ​ *Nevilles Hardware & Building Supplies*​ Excellent for bagged lime putty, fixings, wood finishes, special timbers, old-style door furniture and general advice. Stock _Haynes_ paints and varnishes.​ _98425333_​ ​ *Bunnings*​ Discounted supply of Earthwool insulation, tiles, paints, doors, tools etc. Supplied our _Stegbar_ cedar French doors and windows via special orders.​ _www.bunnings.com.au_​ ​ *Bohdan Dorniak & Co*​ Having “by strawbale architect” stamped on your house plans can be helpful if you have a conservative council. Our alternative materials owner-building application passed quickly and without a hitch.​ _Bohdan Dorniak & Co. Pty. Ltd._​ ​ _Sue has a B.Sc. in Environmental Science and Biology and worked in research and education before owner building. Brett’s background is in Graphic Design and Programming and he has also been a Bushfire Brigade volunteer for 30 years. Both won top student awards for their tertiary qualifications and dreamed of living in a library one day – a dream now fulfilled._​


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## SueC

Knave said:


> It really is spectacularly beautiful. Definitely worth the amnesia.


Thank you, we are very happy with how it turned out, it's so serene and cosy at the same time. I think yes, totally worth all the blood, sweat and tears of five years of our lives; we'd never have been able to afford to buy something this nice pre-made, plus this kind of thing actually can't be pre-made, you really do have to do it yourself.

We both learnt so much, and got very good at things we'd never done before (although that took time and involved frustration and grey hairs and therefore increased expenditure on hair dye!). And now we're kind of living in our own artwork, as well as in a house (neither of us had ever had a house of our own before...Brett had had a small duplex unit in the city). It was done on a shoestring, but of course we put in most of the working hours to build this house (contractors did the structural basics, and sometimes we got help in when we needed it, like for the kitchen remodelling, but mostly it was just us on site).

As we started this project at around age 40, we could joke about our midlife crises taking a more useful form than a red sports car! :rofl: However, I think I had my midlife crisis early turning 30 rofl and was cool after that, and Brett isn't the sort to have a midlife crisis.


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## SueC

Speaking of midlife crises at age 30, I can't help but think of Robert Smith, who even at 25 was saying, "I'm getting too old to be doing this sort of stuff!" and who was panicking at 29 about producing a masterpiece by age 30, and made the album _Disintegration_ in that spirit. :rofl: I'm sorry, but it's hilarious. And then when he was turning 40 and had just done the wonderful _Bloodflowers_, he was going on about how surely this was going to be their last album. 

We did recently dive a bit more into the catalogue and Brett got us _Disintegration_, which is currently occupying my brain (since I'm a little more restricted to indoors than usual). I posted a link to the wonderful track _Plainsong_ here:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page73/#post1970583197

Today, I'm going to post something dark and beautifully written - the title track. As always, if it won't play embedded, just click the YouTube link directly. That link also has the lyrics, which are worth reading.






Relationship disintegration, personal disintegration, either, both, something else - the beauty of a song like this is that you can read it in so many different ways. This one, for instance, can be read as a doomed personal relationship or as an addiction metaphorically presented as a relationship, and using the imagery of a relationship.

I remember saying to a writer friend of mine who's also a big fan, "Don't you think it's so amusing that Robert Smith has written so many songs about painful relationships, and specifically that he's written _Disintegration_, and yet he's been married all his life to a girl he met in high school drama class and whom he clearly adores?" :rofl: 

It's a nice love story:

Seriously Ruined: Just Like Heaven | Robert Smith & Mary Poole










Who doesn't like a nice love story? There's a few more like that, but it's nice to see it in the notorious music industry.

Anyhow, at the time my friend said that The Cure was all theatre of human experience. 

This is a great award to get:







And this is just for fun, because I love silly as much as I love serious.


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## egrogan

As always, the house inspiration is a big pick-me-up. I love the straw windows, what a great touch. I also loved the tile details. One of our favorite tile makers in the US is Derby Pottery in New Orleans. They make all the tiles that are placed on the street intersections throughout the city, as well as beautiful decorative tiles. We had some custom number tiles made for our last house, and I am planning to get my lovely husband some new ones for our current house this Christmas. Nothing like a little touch of New Orleans charm in the middle of a brutal New England winter! :wink:










Two nasty house surprises this week. First was that the non-working oven is _hardwired through a conduit from the kitchen downstairs into the main electrical box??? WHYYYYYYYYY _would you do something like that?? So we can't even just pull the oven out and plug a new temporary electric one into a wall outlet. Instead, we tried to pull out the heating element, thinking that maybe if we replaced that part we could just get the oven working again and not even buy a new one until we do a more extensive renovation...but the heating element is _welded into the back of the oven _so it really can't be removed and replaced. What in the world was going on with this oven?!

Second was that the well was installed in a way that would be "totally illegal" today. It took excavating to find a massive 200 lb concrete lid that is mysteriously sitting over the well head 5.5 feet below the ground? The pump needs replaced, but the people who showed up to do it had no equipment to move the lid out of the way to get to it, and ominously warned that with the lid pushed back and all the rain we're getting, it could flood the huge hole and back up into the house flooding the basement.

_One of our lovely ladies staring off into the abyss..._









Good news is that my lovely husband recently got a new tractor, so I guess in addition to using it to spend quality time with the horses, he'll be able to get the concrete lid off and out of the way to give the well guys access to try again on the well pump next week...









This is going to be one of those houses where we realize that in addition to doing all the cosmetic stuff on the cheap, the former owners ignored major systems issues too. I can't fathom how people operate this way, it's against our very nature to do that.


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## Rod

SueC said:


> Horses really are so many things rolled into one. Personal trainers, friends, hiking buddies, Zen masters, trauma therapists, dancing partners, superhuman antennae, fellow _hygge_ appreciators, rocket transport with liftoff... (who will add to this list? C'mon, there's more! ;-))


Work partners- We simply could not have run the ranch we did without the hard work our horses put in with us. 

I like your posts about your straw bale house. When we moved from Salt Lake City to Southern Idaho 36 years ago, we looked into building a straw bale house. One was being built in our area and I visited the job site several times. The construction method was much different than yours. They stacked up the straw walls and built the roof directly on top without any other support. Then they hooked up a bunch of guywires with turnbuckles from the roof to the concrete slab and tightened it down (and covered the walls in plastic). Their plan was to let it settle for two years with occasional tightening of the turnbuckles. After a year and a half, one side had settled more than the rest and they tore it down and built a conventional stick built house. I thought the construction method was a little 'hinkey' and we didn't want to wait for two years so we wound up buying a little farmhouse originally built in 1919. It's been a never ending remodeling project, but it's home. Your house turned out very well. I am glad it was successful.


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## SueC

Hello @egrogan! :wave: 

Always lovely to hear from you! I've had to laugh at your new avatar photo, it's so funny!  I trust you are enjoying the experience of living in a horse paddock. It's all looking so great in your photos and reports.

By the way, it's falafel weather now and the chickpeas are already waiting for the day, and I'll let you know how that goes. I'm confident it won't be mush this time.



egrogan said:


> As always, the house inspiration is a big pick-me-up. I love the straw windows, what a great touch. I also loved the tile details. One of our favorite tile makers in the US is Derby Pottery in New Orleans. They make all the tiles that are placed on the street intersections throughout the city, as well as beautiful decorative tiles.


I had to google this, I had no idea. How lovely!










Thanks for the link; that's something we don't have in Australia, which is a country that doesn't seem to bother to manufacture much - why manufacture when you can sell wool and grain and ore, they seem to think. Europe of course has great traditions around making things, and I miss it. Maybe that's another reason we just had to build our own house. Nice to see there's a good manufacturing tradition where you live! I love carefully made, quirky stuff.

Glad our building experience could inspire you. We loved watching _Grand Designs_ right until we started building. :rofl: Then we banned it from the viewing repertoire. It got to the point we would scream and change channels if we saw a building programme! :rofl: After we finished the place, we slowly lost our weird reactions to that, and are now happy to watch that stuff again. The human mind is such a funny thing.




> We had some custom number tiles made for our last house, and I am planning to get my lovely husband some new ones for our current house this Christmas. Nothing like a little touch of New Orleans charm in the middle of a brutal New England winter!


That looks so unbelievably cosy! With winters like that, you'd need it to be, right? On another thread we were discussing the Danish concept of _hygge_. Actually my first primary school teacher taught us so much about that. We used to often have to go through almost knee-deep snow to get to school around Christmas, and it would still be dark, and she actually would start by lighting candles in the classroom and have us sitting on the floor and burning fir branches, which smell like incense, and tell us stories, or get us to tell stories. It was wonderful! 






















> Two nasty house surprises this week. First was that the non-working oven is _hardwired through a conduit from the kitchen downstairs into the main electrical box??? WHYYYYYYYYY _would you do something like that??











When we had our house wired, I had to actually check everything because it became quite apparent that the electricians had a very leisurely attitude to safety standards they were supposed to be meeting. Amongst other things, I found they'd run a cable in direct contact with the copper pipe that goes between the hot water booster jacket of our wood heater to the tank of the solar water heater on the roof. It's not just a metal pipe, it's a metal pipe that gets _hot_ and that runs through a hall cupboard (on the side wall inside), where people can touch it.

When I pointed this out to them, they said it wasn't a problem because the cables were heat rated. I said, 1) what about if rodents down the track strip the insulation on the 240V cable? and 2) this is actually against the safety standard in our country's building code (as an owner builder I had to check all this stuff and make sure things complied). And they kind of went, "Oh, never mind the building code, there's a trip switch in the fuse box!" Sigh. That doesn't mean that you can ignore the building code, or that you should do stupid stuff if you can avoid it. It was actually pointless arguing with them, so I went up in the ceiling myself and put a big ceramic fence insulator between the electrical cable and the copper pipe. :evil: I should have reported them to the electricians' professional body for this and many other highly stupid things, like placing the earth peg into permanently _dry_ ground under the eaves - I moved that too.




> So we can't even just pull the oven out and plug a new temporary electric one into a wall outlet. Instead, we tried to pull out the heating element, thinking that maybe if we replaced that part we could just get the oven working again and not even buy a new one until we do a more extensive renovation...but the heating element is _welded into the back of the oven _so it really can't be removed and replaced. What in the world was going on with this oven?!


"_Me fix it! Me can weld!!!_"












> Second was that the well was installed in a way that would be "totally illegal" today. It took excavating to find a massive 200 lb concrete lid that is mysteriously sitting over the well head 5.5 feet below the ground? The pump needs replaced, but the people who showed up to do it had no equipment to move the lid out of the way to get to it, and ominously warned that with the lid pushed back and all the rain we're getting, it could flood the huge hole and back up into the house flooding the basement.
> 
> _One of our lovely ladies staring off into the abyss..._


Hmmm yes, the joys of home ownership! :rofl: Hilarious chicken.


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## SueC

> Good news is that my lovely husband recently got a new tractor, so I guess in addition to using it to spend quality time with the horses, he'll be able to get the concrete lid off and out of the way to give the well guys access to try again on the well pump next week...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is going to be one of those houses where we realize that in addition to doing all the cosmetic stuff on the cheap, the former owners ignored major systems issues too. I can't fathom how people operate this way, it's against our very nature to do that.


Well, that's the same way we feel - and in Australia, that attitude we dislike is called "_she'll be right_"-ness, and it's a national characteristic worn with apparent pride.







Grrrrrrrrrrrr. Before we bought and built out here, we made some offers on houses in a little coastal village. Only problem was, they were all asking new-house prices for things that had been unbelievably neglected. Decks rotten from lack of oiling / sealing, balconies dodgy for similar reasons, saplings growing from gutters, peeling paint, leaky pipes, shoddy gappy insulation installs, don't even look at the electrical wiring etc etc etc. So we always offered new house price minus whatever it would cost to fix it. No takers, which was lucky because it put us on the path we're now on.

Now one thing has me vastly puzzled: How does one have quality time with the horses, with a _tractor_???
















Sending you good vibes for your renovation and safety projects! Eventually you'll get it all sorted, and it will really feel like home then.


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## SueC

Rod said:


> Work partners- We simply could not have run the ranch we did without the hard work our horses put in with us.
> 
> I like your posts about your straw bale house. When we moved from Salt Lake City to Southern Idaho 36 years ago, we looked into building a straw bale house. One was being built in our area and I visited the job site several times. The construction method was much different than yours. They stacked up the straw walls and built the roof directly on top without any other support. Then they hooked up a bunch of guywires with turnbuckles from the roof to the concrete slab and tightened it down (and covered the walls in plastic). Their plan was to let it settle for two years with occasional tightening of the turnbuckles. After a year and a half, one side had settled more than the rest and they tore it down and built a conventional stick built house. I thought the construction method was a little 'hinkey' and we didn't want to wait for two years so we wound up buying a little farmhouse originally built in 1919. It's been a never ending remodeling project, but it's home. Your house turned out very well. I am glad it was successful.


Hello Rod! :wave: 

How's retirement? Got that new horse yet? ;-) You know we're all going to enable you if you're leaning towards getting a new horse! :rofl:

:cowboy:

Thank you very much! We're glad it turned out too. I have a very good imagination for all the things that could possibly go wrong, which was massively helpful during building. Plus I don't do "_she'll be right_". 

You are describing load-bearing construction, which can be successfully done if done right - you can pre-compress with machinery etc, and then the settling time will be just a couple of months. The settling more on one side than the other sounds like either inconsistent stacking, or rodents, or both. There's a couple of successful load-bearing houses around here, but we wanted to avoid complications, plus this is a winter wet zone and we wanted a roof over our straw walls immediately, and before they were weatherproofed with the plaster. We've seen so many people tarp walls that aren't under a roof, and then have to re-build whole walls that got wet inside. That wasn't our idea of fun, so we went with the safest possible method we could find.

I hope your house came out all right too! It's no fun fixing other people's neglect etc. Photos always welcome, although I get that some people prefer to be really private online. (For me that's kind of pointless, since all the house photos I share here are already online as an educational tool, plus all over a couple of national magazines since we started this whole thing. But that's OK, because other people doing exactly that was what even got us to the starting line for building our own, so we like to share in turn.)

Happy riding, and have fun with the GDs!


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## Knave

I thought you would appreciate the over abundance. Lol


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## SueC

OK, now the real reason I switched this laptop on just after 5 in the morning (_yegads_!!!) and went to my journal is because I wanted to have a good whinge. I was pleasantly diverted by some correspondence, but I'm now ready to have that whinge! :angrily_smileys:

Fractures are so high-maintenance! :evil: At 5 in the morning, I wanted nothing more than to be asleep, curled up around the warm shape of my husband, when my body started ringing a little fire alarm. "Animal protein _now_! Animal protein _now_!" Sigh. It's a very unpleasant sort of fire alarm, not like general hunger; it has a faintly sick tang to it, and a very unique kind of gnawing sensation. And I know that the body is already scavenging amino acids by breaking down its own muscles etc when it gets to that point, so that's not good.

Between me and animal protein was actually giving up my cosy horizontal position without weeping, trying to get on crutches in that delicate semi-comatose I-woke-up-far-too-early state without falling over, and hopping with their aid into the office, where they could be exchanged for a more comfortable conveyance: The office chair, God bless and keep it. Knee of dodgy leg on that, snuggle into the backrest, use good leg for propulsion, steering and braking, use hands to avoid colliding with solid objects.

This got me to the kitchen in comfort and safety. Now I sure as ice in Antarctica wasn't going to boil eggs at 5 in the morning, so I re-heated some of the big stash of Thai-style pumpkin and seafood soup made the other day, and ate cheese and crackers while waiting for it to heat without exploding all over the microwave (seafood mix is very _explodey_, so you have to use the medium high setting and wait longer). Then I grabbed the bowl and scooted on the chair until I reached the bedroom. Warmly re-installed between the sheets, I ate my strange pre-breakfast and read previously mentioned pleasant correspondence etc while the fire alarm sensations slowly diminished.

Perhaps it wasn't such a great idea to have three slices of coconut cake for dinner last night; it clearly wasn't adequate for current repair requirements. But I'd had one of those days where the fractures just caught up with me. Much as I like to carry on as normally as possible, yesterday was a day where my body said, "Please do not get up today!" And these days, with the wisdom bequeathed by long experience of what happens if you don't listen to your body, I actually don't argue too much when that happens. I did a couple of useful things, like make warm honey and hazelnut cluster muesli for breakfast, served with hot plums from the summer stash in jars, and scoot that and tea to the bedside tables, where an exhausted husband was curled up in foetal position under the blankets 20 minutes after his alarm for his early shift had gone off. The tea and fragrant breakfast just floating to him was a humane way of getting him into a sitting position.  He's had a hard time of it too with this fracture business - disturbed sleep, extra chores, re-negotiating his schedule to be able to ferry me to fracture clinic etc.

But after that, I actually had a mostly horizontal day - apart from horse feeding. I did _not_ go on a one-hour peg-leg walk as originally planned; instead I listened to my weary body and rested. My broken foot in that astronaut boot feels very like a baby bird not ready to come out of its shell; it _likes_ its shell and feels safe in it. I read a lot, watched interviews, journalled, drank a lot of green tea, made cheesies at intervals (toasted bread drizzled with olive oil, with Italian herbs, ham and cheese, grilled until bubbly and served with tomato sauce for taste and lycopenes), scavenged leftovers from the fridge, and tried having little snoozes. My body is actually quite sore. Arm and shoulder muscles got over it fast from the beginning, helped by Vitamin E; it's more bone aches - the fractures obviously, but also the hand bones from using crutches, the shoulder joints from bearing full weight, my hip joints from not walking normally, my left knee from kneeling on it so much when on the office chair or in the peg-leg. Muscle cramps from not using my body in the normal manner, but that's getting better (my left calf was killing me all first week).

When Brett got home, he smiled and made approving sounds and brought me more tea.  He said, "This is completely normal, you should be doing more of it when you have broken bones! Don't feel bad about it. I know what you're like, and it's great you're doing so much and getting as much exercise as possible, but you also need extra rest. So just listen to your body. And listen to the husbandly wisdom of Brett, who's got some good ideas sometimes!" inkunicorn::blueunicorn:

(He hides emergency chocolate in the attic in case we run out in the pantry! He stashes potato chips secretly to surprise me when we watch a movie. He says, "Here's a book I got for you! Here's a CD you're going to like! Do you want anything from iTunes? How are your podcasts, have you got enough?" )

It's funny, it's only my second completely horizontal "bleh" day since my accident 18 days ago; my first was the first 24 hours. I've had a lot of half-days reading in bed or sitting on the sofa with my foot up, but not total losses on the productivity rating. :rofl:

But I wanted to whinge this morning, because even though this is a far easier injury than many others would be (try ligament damage, at least bones usually heal AOK), there are still times in-between my enthusiastic problem-solving and carrying on doing, when I can no longer sell it to myself as a sort of temporary playground fun, and it really strikes me that it's _such_ a royal pain in the posterior, and so _tiring_ and uncomfortable/randomly painful. And I _really_ miss riding. And walking like a normal person.

Well, I'm glad I got that off my chest. :rofl:

So that's a whinge from me about a relatively minor and inconvenient ailment which is expected to heal 100%, and for which I am far better equipped than the average person in terms of body shape, fitness levels, and attitude. I honestly don't know how people do it if they're carrying 20kg too much, or unfit, or can't normally do pushups or get off the ground hands-free, or don't eat properly, or are elderly and/or frail - that'd be a real killer then.

How would they even bathe? That's only just safe for me, and I really had to work on it. You can't shower, because you can't stand on the broken foot. You could sit in a shower chair, or you can take a bath. Tried the shower chair; most unpleasant and dodgy too. The problem with the bath, with the fragile baby bird out of its little egg for it (you can't leave the astronaut boot on), is getting into and out of the tub without squashing the baby bird, which your body is quite prepared to use instinctively for an emergency, even though you know it can't. So I sit at the edge of the tub and swivel over - there's that precarious moment when you don't have your good foot on the ground and you hope your handholds don't fail. Once the good foot is in the tub, you're halfway to Rome, but you have to lower yourself so carefully to avoid skidding and slamming your baby bird into the tub wall.  Takes all the Pilates training I had, being steady on the one foot and lowering your bodyweight on it in a super-controlled manner, and holding on with both hands ready for aversive action in case that good foot slides, and reminding your brain that the baby bird is off limits for emergency braking. (It's like teaching yourself that you must not swerve on the road when a kangaroo crosses, despite your instincts - that's how people slam into trees.)

Anyway, I guess most people simply would have to use that shower chair, or have sponge baths, or go to special facilties with grip bars built in etc. Makes you think. I'll never look at people in splints and casts in quite the same light again, now I've lived in that world. There's a lovely lady at fracture clinic who has an ankle fracture, in a hard cast, and she's in a wheelchair because she's carrying at least 40kg too much, and currently can't even use crutches. I can't see how she would slide around in an office chair, or get into a bath, or be able to wear a peg-leg. And I don't say this with any judgemental forehead-wrinkling, because the obesity epidemic is a really complex one, and the way our modern society operates makes it so hard for a lot of people to do healthy things when all this unhealthy stuff is so pushed at every corner and the dealers deal their non-foods legally and in broad daylight and often with the approval of various so-called health organisations. Plus, if you didn't come out of childhood lean, you've already got so much stacked against you. That's a whole separate rant though, and I've already reached my daily quota!


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Now one thing has me vastly puzzled: How does one have quality time with the horses, with a _tractor_???



Hahaha, he is not a horse person at all so he thought it was great fun that when he was mowing around the outside of their field, they followed him all along the fenceline to supervise what he was doing.


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## SueC

PS: Just fed Romeo, took all the rugs off for the day's reprieve from rain (more rain tonight), horses all happy and Julian was able to be un-rugged without someone holding him because he's gotten over the pirate leg thing. The whole lot of them has gone into their adventure playground (the 58ha common) with big smiles on their faces this morning. And I've got a smile on my face because the pressure points on the peg-leg weren't hurting, so I can go for a walk with Brett this morning! (it's his day off)

@*Knave* , that looks very productive! Are those tall sunflowers, or Jerusalem artichokes? Do you get a lot of wind where you are? (We have to stake our taller sunflowers, above 1m tall, or the wind will get them eventually.) ...sunflower seeds are great to feed to animals - chickens in particular - have you got any trick for taking the hulls off so people can add them to bread, breakfast cereal etc?

We grew these lovely red sunflowers last summer, I'm putting them in again this year:


Prado Red Sunflowers I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

This was a nice variety too:


Citrus Surprise Sunflowers I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

We have a couple of heritage seed suppliers in Australia we use. @*egrogan* posted me a link to an American heritage seed catalogue recently, and I love it, it's in her post back here (and lovely photos of beans etc!):

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page47/#post1970533279

With all that horse manure, and with a garden, we'd be mad not to grow vegetables!  It also given us a new sort of relationship with our horses. Here's them actually helping to feed us! :rofl:

I have a silly joke for you, about these people who bag up excess horse manure (how can there be such a thing???) and give it away to gardeners. So a gardener was picking up a few bags of manure, when a child at the non-gardening horse property asked, "What do you do with it?"

"Well, we put it on our strawberries. It's great for that!" replied the gardener.

"That's strange," said the kid. "We put cream on ours!"


I see you've got zucchini! They can become a summer gardening plague in Australia, and now I just have two plants a season. Still gives me plenty to grate and freeze in ziplock bags for the off-season. And are those Pennsylvania Crooknecks? Can't quite see, necks seem a bit short but same general shape. What variety of corn have you got?

Hoping to get in the garden today. My body is far more promising this morning about such an idea.  Have a lovely evening. Sending good vibes for Friday! :hug:


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## Knave

Those red sunflowers are beautiful! Yes, mine are sunflowers and I have no tricks sadly. Our wind is bad here, but this variety is especially tough. My aunt used to plant sunflower houses for the kids, and I used to copy with this mammoth sunflower. They had so much fun: I finally started leaving the ones up we don’t use and watching the birds eat in the winter makes me happy. I am not happy when they eat my seeds I plant, but you win some and lose some right? 

Zucchini is a plague here too. I shouldn’t plant so much of it I know. Little girl makes all kinds of sweets with it and it seems once it starts there is some sort of side with it at each meal. I don’t know what the yellow stuff is, I can’t remember what I bought, but I have been cooking it swapping back and forth on my zucchini recipes and it is good.

A lot of stuff was killed in a freeze and by the birds stealing.


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## SueC

I lost a bed of potatoes to an early autumn frost in March. We're not supposed to get frosts that early! The tops all died back, but there might be enough seed potatoes left for them to have another go in spring. I really do wish we could grow potatoes for more than half the year, but the frosts say no.

Birds - we have to net all the fruit trees, and the tomatoes - and even netting the tomatoes, the little birds kept finding ways to slip in; I'll have to do it with ground overlap and tent pegs next year to stop the pilfering. I don't mind sharing a little, and it was a hard year for the birds this year, so I let a few plants go a bit.

Does the frost kill your pasture too? (I mean before your snowy season... do you have much pasture through the year? What do the cattle eat in winter in your area?) Here, hard frost makes the Kikuyu die back - a perennial creeper grass from Africa, widely used for permanent pastures. The annuals are OK with frost but don't grow well until temperatures come back up in spring, so if you lose too much kikuyu you're de-stocking. Had to sell an unfinished lot of steers to a feedlot last winter, because a record frost really killed the vast majority of the kikuyu. They would normally have finished on the spring flush and been sold between October and December - we sold them in May, and just kept the yearling heifers, who were smaller and whom we were able get through with tree fodder (tagasaste, acacia) and to finish on the spring flush the next year around.


Murray Grey Yearlings with Tree Fodder II – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

More cattle / tree fodder pics here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/albums/72157685278767293

The tree fodder is a really good source of protein and roughage for our stock both in the summer drought and in the mid-winter pasture slowdown. It's a bit labour intensive, but it makes good sense and the cattle do well on it, so we don't need to cut hay, or buy hay in, in ordinary circumstances. The horses love it too.


Horses Enjoying Tagasaste I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Horses Enjoying Tagasaste II – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


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## Knave

You always have the prettiest pictures! 

We have to feed hay for several months each year. Our cattle are turned out the first of April and brought back in the beginning of November. We are able to graze the pivots then for the amount of time that there is feed and it is not burried in snow. Usually mid December we drive the cows back to the ranch (it is a terrible cold day of work. I’ve done it at -20 a few time and it is miserable. Some areas the horses are on ice and either way it is cold cold.). They are fed then until April when they are pushed onto the mountain.

They say to not plant a garden here until June 1st. Sometimes it freezes after that, really until the 15, and sometimes even later. Then gardening is finished by the end of October.


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## SueC

Sheesh, that's like the Tasmanian highlands! :shock:










We liked this place we drove by on our walking holiday... 5 month gardening season if lucky, but soooo pretty!


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## SueC

*Exhibit A* *Day 19*: This is what it looks like now. The last photos I posted were 9 days ago, here: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page73/#post1970583223


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## SueC

*Day 19* (only 23+days to go)

Sunday will be the probable halfway point for bone healing; there is a new floppy connection made of a protein matrix, which will be ossified over the next three weeks or so. And then we'll see. I still can't stand on the thing, but I can take the leg's weight on it when sitting now. So we still don't know if there is Lisfranc ligament damage, and the reason they're a bit worried about it is because of the bruising in the arch at the bottom of the foot. If that happens, they'll have to put some metal in my foot.

Having said that, the one time I sprained my ankle badly (same leg, dismounted accidentally onto a rolling rock), my arch looked about the same - I just bleed spectacularly I think. And three broken bones pump out a lot of blood at the time of injury, and that stuff has to go somewhere. Gravity decrees some of it will go down, of course.

Other than that, it's feeling much better - it doesn't hurt if I accidentally knock the astronaut boot on something, or if I am skipping on my good leg without crutches, or when I'm peg-legging cross-country and that vibrates the broken foot. (In fact, that's supposed to be good for making a stronger matrix more quickly now.)

After yesterday's restful day, I was full of beans and decided to bring the peg-leg indoors, do the washing (including the bedsheets and floor mats - and at our house we hang everything outdoors to dry in the sun), and vacuum the whole house. That worked fine, and now we can have a comfortable weekend in a clean house, without Brett having to start his weekend by cleaning up the place. I fed the horses and even did a little socialising with them in the paddock this evening, before running a bath and floating in it blissfully.

It's quite amazing how much dead skin builds up on an injured foot - there is even a layer of something on the toenails! :shock: In normal use, a foot is constantly being abraded by socks etc and by brisk towelling, so dead skin doesn't build up so much. My dodgy foot has had neither since it broke. It's now getting to the point where I can touch the skin on it comfortably - I just can't press on the injured bones, or twist the foot. Anyway, floating in the bath you can carefully rub the dead skin off it. It's a really weird feeling, like fine sandpaper coming off under your fingers. I wonder what happens when people are in hard casts; they must have sludge in those by the time the six weeks are up... :shock: And the smell must be shocking. 

I'm a huge fan of these removable splint arrangements. It's good to be able to wash properly, and to air out the skin sometimes when you're just resting safely. I can do that more and more now, but always on top of the blankets, never below...the pressure of bedding is enough to deform the foot and hurt. If I want the bare foot to stay warm, I can throw a light fluffy bit of knitwear loosely over the top, that's about it. What I can also increasingly do is flop my foot around underwater in the bath. It doesn't hurt, it actually sort of feels nice to be able to do _something_ with it!

Sunsmart sniffs my peg-leg in the paddock and looks enquiringly at me. I've told him it wasn't his fault; it was a totally freak thing that happened, and that we're going to be mounting from the offside for a while when I can ride again!

:charge:


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## Knave

Oh, and now I feel bad for Sunsmart! I’m sure he is sad. I never had thought about him in all of this. 

Your foot looks so much better too!


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## SueC

This morning's ABC article on animals having fun:

Why do dogs stick their heads out car windows? - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)


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## bsms

Nice to see someone say animals can do stuff for the fun of it!

Hope the foot heals well. I bought a pair of Nike Pegasus shoes - my main running shoe for decades - but my foot was still sore. I swapped out the liner with a sports shoe insert which offers a LITTLE arch support - and have jogged a total of 50 minutes in the last 2 days without pain. Getting back to full speed may take a while. I broke my ankle in high school. It ached during thunderstorms for about 15 years, then the aching went away. Hope that doesn't happen to you! I was a military brat, though, and the military hospital was barely competent.

They had a power outage so there were two doctors viewing my X-rays in the hall (windows for light). They had been telling me to "just walk on it" for 15 minutes. Then a young enlisted guy walking past glanced over and said, "_Wow! That ankle is broken in three places!_" 30 minutes later, I was in a hip cast...


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## SueC

mg: Did you ever read "All Creatures Great And Small"? James Herriot was a pilot during WW2 and tells similar horror stories of, in his case, a military dentist, nicknames "The Butcher" in Chapter 3 of "Vets Might Fly". 

But also I think your shocking portrayed situation is often replicated in general hospitals too. There's a young fellow at the stock-feeds who broke a hand bone playing soccer, and they didn't X-ray him in ER in our local hospital last year. They just said it was soft tissue damage, and to rest it. Didn't bother checking! As it turns out, he broke a bone whose blood supply is badly compromised when it breaks, so it will basically rot unless you set it properly. And that's exactly what happened. They only X-rayed him 6 months after his fracture, and by then most of that bone was gone - and now he needs grafts and will never be the same. And it's in his right hand, and he's right-handed. :evil: I want to hit them. I taught this bloke and he was a really really nice kid and is a really nice guy. He's had so much downtime from work and over a year of pain, and all of it totally unnecessary, as will be his compromised outcome. Grrrrrrr.

And then there was a girl I taught who ended up going out with our house build's main carpenter's offsider, and she had an accident, fractured ribs, punctured lung! Our ER wanted to send her away with two panadol. :evil: They didn't want to X-ray her either, but her BF stood his ground and refused to leave and pointed out she had trouble breathing and surely had fractured ribs. They then implied that he was belligerent and must have broken her ribs himself if he was so sure. :shock: But the rude, cavalier ******s did finally X-ray her, and "Ooops!".

Many stories like that. So when I went off to ER with my foot and was sure it was broken, we were preparing ourselves for a possible unwillingness to X-ray. Brett said, "Just scream really loudly when they touch you, and keep on howling afterwards, it will increase your X-ray chances!" But as it turned out, that was completely unnecessary - when a lovely young doctor called Phoebe heard me talk about the gunshot sound I heard in combination with a disconcerting pop in my foot just before I was basically floored with pain, she said, "Right, X-rays!" They were 100% professional and sweet with me, thank goodness, every single one of the many staff I met that night. No theatrics required.

Yeah, I reckon some good arch-support insoles will be the go for me when I walk again - I can't imagine it will be pain free for a while when I start. I already have high arches so they will benefit from support. Thanks a million for the tip, I sure can use any tip from anyone who's lived through similar stuff!


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## gottatrot

Agree that you really need to advocate for yourself in the ER, and if it takes moaning and groaning, do it!
My friend's husband broke his hand very badly and the doc said it would definitely not need surgery so she asked for the X-rays, sent them to another doc and they told him to go to a hand specialist right away. He needed a long and complicated surgery and the specialist said he would have had difficulty using his hand without it.

When I broke my nose in my 30s, the ER doc told me that a lot of people don't really notice their nose is crooked until they get a hard blow, but it really was always like that. I'm really not a vain person, but my friends and DH noticed right away my nose was pointing to one side, and I think perhaps even a dense person might notice that trait when looking in the mirror. The ER doc said the nose doctor probably wouldn't want to see me for a few days anyway. So I called the next morning, and the ENT said to get in ASAP. He wanted to fix it before anything started to solidify. 
Yes, it was broken. I knew it was, because I'd never had a nosebleed since the last time I broke my nose at age 10 or so, despite many hard hits. The first surgery they cauterized many vessels. This time my nose bled so I figured something had really shifted inside.


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## SueC

Well it's time for my cynical joke about doctors, I'm sure you'll all appreciate it! 

What do you call a medical student who gets 50% in their final examinations? - _Doctor_!


OK, now I've been promising this follow-up translation project for a while, and here it _finally_ is.

mg:

Was it really that far back? Ha! Six weeks ago, I posted a little translation project which dealt with an alternative German riding school in the 1970s and early 1980s (which is still going today, but my material on it was from their early days in 1982, and encompassed some of the mainstream reactions to alternative ideas for getting people started with horse riding).

It's here:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page58/#post1970565347

I now have for you the self-portrait of one of the founders of this riding school. Ursula Bruns was nearly 60 when she wrote this in 1982; she died in 2016 at the age of 94. Like Australia's Tom Roberts, she was a generalist and a self-educator who had a breadth and depth that are rarely seen in modern equine sports specialists, and I really love what she had to say about horses and riding. This is not just a woman from another era, an era when horses were still a way of life for many; this is a woman who travelled the world and learnt from many different people and cultures, and rode many different horses in many different ways. I think there is great value in hearing these voices, especially for the modern rider, who can benefit from a bigger picture.

Next post! Hope you enjoy. I think this was a life well lived. 

:cowboy:


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## SueC

*RIDER PORTRAIT: URSULA BRUNS (1922 – 2016)
*
(from _Reiter-Taschenbuch 1982: Der Nachschlagkalender für alle Pferdefreunde_, Ennslin & Leiblin, Reutlingen, Germany)

_Photo 1_








http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_17.jpg

When I was six years old, I knew without a doubt that I wanted to ride – preferably all the time. I had never sat on a horse. I also didn’t know anybody who had ever sat on a horse.

When I was twelve years old, I had sat on a pony at a fair, knew all horse books on the market (the two dozen that existed), collected horse photographs cut out of newspapers (nothing else existed), had been to an equestrian event (the only one in a 300km radius) and aggravated my father’s nerves with the wish to climb on the old grey horse from his firm on Sunday mornings.

When I was fourteen years old there was no holding back: I rode everything that had four legs – big horses, little ones, fat ones, skinny ones, old ones, young ones, lazy ones and hot ones. When I wasn’t riding, I was on my bicycle on my way to farmers, bakers, milkmen, coal haulers (who all still had horses back then); to beg and to negotiate (“I will ride Laddie to his pasture every evening and clean and oil his harness every Saturday – word of honour!”), or to carry out my promises, which mainly meant grooming horses and cleaning tack (and I had to do both, or I wouldn’t be allowed to ride).

I learnt the Low German dialect, and learnt to do farm work, and found a friend who was just as horse crazy as I was, albeit with the advantage of very accommodating parents, so that she mostly bunked off school. (Later she became a famous circus rider, learnt four languages on three continents, rode in races and was the first female riding instructor in her country!) I, on the other hand, had to be outstanding at school, otherwise riding was forbidden. But somehow the days seemed to be longer back then – how else could we have trained Thoroughbred crosses for saddle races, and Trotters for harness races, on top of everything else, and even been pretty successful at it? 

Of course, most of our access was to horses that created difficulties for other people. However, I can’t recall a single fall in my teenage years.

When I was seventeen, the war broke out. When the men had left, my friend took on a whole rural riding school with 80 horses and turned farmhands into mounted soldiers (who were subsequently no longer required). I worked 12-hour-days (with two hours there and two hours back on the train), and at that point did not manage to ride much. Sometime in these early years I sat for the riding instructor examination, just on the side, because I knew two things for sure back then:

...I would never ride in competitions
...I would never give riding lessons

Neither had anything to do with my love of horses and riding. It gave me indescribable joy to dawdle through nature on horseback, to observe wild and domestic animals, to chat to farmers, to ride mares to stud (horse trailers didn’t exist; we rode 50km to stud, 50km back), to visit the farrier, to harness up draught horses for harvest and participate in the work. In short: Riding was always a part of my life, instead of an occasion for ambitions. And I didn’t want to teach, because even back then I wasn’t fond the military tone. I found riding bright and beautiful and saw no good reason for letting myself be shouted at, or for shouting at other people.

Now I am 58 years old and I still haven’t participated in an equestrian competition. And when I think back on almost 50 joyous years on horseback, I always get sad when young people ask me, “No showjumping, no dressage competitions? Well – what on earth _did_ you do with horses for all those years?

Well – what on earth _did_ I do?

* * *​
During the war I acquired, for 300 Deutschmarks, a broken-down bounty horse, rehabilitated her with great care, and rode her over hill and dale and the many natural obstacles then in the landscape (Photo 1). _Chérie __lived to age 30; what I experienced with her became fodder for my first book, called __Obstacles for Huberta__. _ 

After the war I made acquaintance with Icelandic Horses (Photo 2) and and wrote a book about them: _**** and Dalli and the Ponies_. Hundreds of thousands of children read it, and after this I made two films: _The Girl from Immenhof_ and _Wedding at Immenhof_. One of the wildest female riders back then was Heidi Brühl, twelve years old. The professional riding world declared that I was completely insane: “No German man of honour would ever sit on a pony,” they opined heatedly. These days, almost as many horses under 147.5cm as over 147.5cm are ridden here; and no sensible person is disturbed anymore to see adults riding Norwegian Fjord Horses, Connemaras, Haflingers, Icelandic Horses or finely built Arabians – and this has absolutely nothing to do with honour either.

_Photo 2_








http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_18.jpg

The films created a bit of a stir; I received multiple invitations to Iceland and in the early 1950s criss-crossed this still very primeval land on horseback (Photo 3). Icelandic farmers taught me to ride the tölt with my legs extended far forwards – these days we know this isn’t necessary. The tölt is a fourth gait - additional to walk, trot and canter – which does not bump, does not jar the rider, has the horse gliding along as if on roller bearings, infinitely pleasant for the sensitive rider, effortless for the schooled horse. It was one of the great and joyous revelations of my riding life, and has remained so to this day.

_Photo 3_








http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_19.jpg

In the next years I got Sóti and Héla, two of the most exciting tölters in Iceland. They not only thoroughly taught me this new gait, but also showed me emphatically that horses don’t like locked stables, but love to range on pasture in any wind and weather, and that they need company to be happy, and that even when provided with a comfortable walk in-walk out shelter, they still like to stay mostly in the open even in winter. Since then, all my horses have lived like this – all breeds, even Thoroughbreds. (Sóti died at age 32, Héla is now 33.)

New gaits (Photo 4), keeping horses outdoors, fun without competition ambitions, riding on robust, cheerful horses – more and more people were interested in this; and so in 1958, together with a partner who thought similarly, I started our own magazine that reported on such things, helped out with practical tips, and today (_1982_) has 15,000 loyal subscribers: _Freizeit im Sattel_ (_Leisure Time in the Saddle_). And I wrote horse books – 42 to date, always about horses that I sought out, found and rode all over the world. First of all I went to South Africa on a cargo ship, and there drove 20,000 miles all around the countryside in a rickety VW. The farmers were friendly and inviting and allowed me to experience a new highlight in the saddle: The tölt of the Boer horses, the Basuto ponies, and the magnificent American Saddlebred, imported from the US. Their gait is called “triple” and “slow gait” and “rack”, but the step sequence is the same as the tölt.

_Photo 4_








http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_20.jpg

If at the time I believed the tölt only existed in Iceland, I now learnt differently, and spent the next 15 years chasing this gait all around the world. I rode Tölters in Burma and India, in Persia, Morocco, sub-Saharan Africa, and Central and North America. In Photo 4 I am riding Mattie Haynes, a brilliant young Saddlebred mare, at a “slow gait”: The left hind leg is firmly on the ground, is just transferring the weight to the left front leg, the right rear leg takes over next, followed by the right front leg. Rider seat and position are a bit different compared to when trotting.

In Egypt I learnt to love the nimble, hardworking Nubian donkeys in cross-country expeditions lasting weeks; in northern India I rode water buffalo and yaks, in the Middle East lovely racing camels, in Burma and Ceylon elephants. In South Africa an opportunity arose to ride an ostrich (Photo 5) – a somewhat precarious matter, because it only has two legs and lowers its rear end when running. With one’s own legs hooked under its wings from above, one sits on a slide made of rock hard, slippery feathers. One cannot steer. The ostrich sprints off, one hangs on as long as possible, and one is eventually deposited into the veldt, at a speed of 50km/h. It is interesting, but one does not have to repeat the experience in order to remember it…

_Photo 5_








www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_21.jpg

It got very exciting when we – six riders with two native guides, fourteen horses, eight mules, tents and baggage – were the first Europeans to explore, on horseback _and_ on foot, the Lesotho highlands on the southern tip of Africa, altitude 3000-4000m. Freedom, solitude and wide open spaces under a burning sun; surefooted, tough Basuto ponies, heartfelt camaraderie between black and white: Can riding possibly be more fulfilling than this?

In Lesotho, which has hardly any roads, there are many thousands of ponies, which are still the main means of human transport there today (_1982_). And everywhere I spoke with people about their horses, about riding, about the importance the horse assumes in their lives; and I recorded how much more horses can be than mere sporting equipment who have been drilled for the “most noble” pursuit of international equestrian competition. In every country I found another way to ride, and to sit, and to work with horses or to find amusement with them – and wrote it all down in the thick, colour-illustrated _Zauber der Pferde_ (_The Magic of Horses_).

_Photo 6_








http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_22.jpg

At the same time I had to keep changing my riding style, because “the only correct way to ride” doesn’t exist, and only people who are ready to learn from others will be offered good horses to ride abroad (Photo 6). And so, in the mountain country of Cameroon, in honour of the king, Arbu Armaro of the Fulani, I was the first woman permitted to ride their wild Fantasias, racing slack-reined and at full pelt over rock-hard, thorny tracks (Photo 7), heading straight for the king who was sitting with serene stoicism amongst his twenty wives and his children. The horses came to a halt with a single cue from the reins, only about a metre away from his throne, like an equine wall, legs rammed into the dust – and every time I was in a cold sweat: What if my horse didn’t stop?

_Photo 7_








http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_23.jpg

When the festival days and their accompanying excitement were over, I was presented with an honorary spear (Photo 8) and had made many friends amongst the tribal Africans. The rides worked out because I did as I was advised: Sit really relaxed, in a floating balance, don’t touch the reins, let your legs hang long and loose. This contradicted everything I had been taught, but made riding wonderfully light, and the faces of the horses showed that they were satisfied with this riding style.

_Photo 8_








http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_24.jpg

Different countries – same customs – but another seat. In Morocco the stirrups were strapped very short, the knees projected forward, and the rider’s posterior was pressed firmly against the high wooden cantle of the saddle (Photo 9) – but they ride the same Fantasia, again with slack reins and with the same anxious prayer that the completely unfamiliar steed might be well-trained enough to slide to a stop at a single light contact with the reins; because again we were racing at breakneck speed towards the highest ranked personages in the country! The riders all participated with wild enthusiasm, not because they wanted to win – this is not a contest – but because they were interested in improving their own skills, and the ridability of their horses. Because this too must be emphasised: When it comes to the quality of gentle education, I have experienced pleasant surprises throughout the world. How else could I have entrusted myself to thousands of horses that weren’t riding school horses or tourist horses, but exclusively privately ridden, very individual, and very differently schooled, generally hot-blooded horses?

_Photo 9_








http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_25.jpg

In Chad I made a friend when I helped a deserted stud manager whose staff had all disappeared amidst the chaos of tribal warfare to exercise stallions that had been tied in their stalls for weeks (Photo 10). This was a bit exciting at first, but three days of lungeing calmed them. The ravages of the war had destroyed all the fences, runs and paddocks. 

_Photo 10_








http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_27.jpg

_Haute école _on an imported Andalusian in Arizona (Photo 11) – one takes it as it comes. The young stallion was now ridden Western style and had become miserable. When I permitted him to move as he had learnt to in Spain, he responded withpalpable relief and soon carried his body in the manner for which Andalusians have been bred for centuries: With his hind legs well under his centre of gravity, his forehand light and proudly raised, and responding to one-centimetre-aids on very long reins.

_Photo 11_








http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_28.jpg

Can fine-tuned cooperation really be achieved without a bit? In the 60s I heard much about the bosal and the hackamore and decided to try them (Figure 12). I bought an imported, well-trained Appaloosa mare complete with bosal and mecate (rope reins) made from cow- or horsehair, and much to my amazement, I discovered that, without metal in its mouth, my horse responded in a much more light and friendly manner, and promptly answered my every weight cue on its back. (I’ve personally never experienced a bolt with a bitless horse!)

_Photo 12_








http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/image_26.jpg

An aluminium donal was worn by the nine-year-old purebred Arabian who helped me to my only competitive success of my equestrian life – a 4th place in one of the most difficult 100-mile endurance rides in the world, held in Arizona, USA. It was a huge surprise to me that my first attempt at this sport got me into the Top Ten. What allows me to wear the silver buckle we earnt with pride is that I was personally even able to bear up for 160km of riding in one single day – and that I managed not to hamper my horse too much, so that it passed the veterinary inspections in the evening and on the next morning as fit and healthy. This is a sport that totally puts the burden on the rider – he/she must adapt to the horse, ride it very lightly, care for it thoroughly, and forget the self in favour of the welfare of the horse, so that riding takes on a new meaning: To be a rider here means to practice self-discipline. If there is the smallest thing wrong with the horse, it will be eliminated in one of the vet checks. Whip, spurs, duress – here they would ruin everything…









http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/book/cover.jpg

Even with this (provisionally) latest great passion I’ve discovered in the saddle, all compulsion falls away when enjoyment sets in. For a few years now, we have been turning the fast harness trotters from the racetracks into horses that under saddle move gently, smoothly and proudly, and can tölt. The big brown horse on the cover of this book moves with a very upright self-carriage on loose reins, plays eagerly with the his short-shanked curb bit, lets himself be conducted with two fingers, and really swings along at the tölt, offering exquisite enjoyment for the sensitive rider, who in turn sits very relaxed and upright, with very loose legs and a very yielding hand – and enjoys it! No rush, no tension, never a fight with the horse – this is how I remember the best tölters from around the world, and this is how I ride them now at home.


* * *​

So this – this, and much, much more like this – is what I have done with my long riding life, in which I have participated in neither competitive showjumping nor competitive dressage. I was curious about horses, curious about other ways of riding, other ground under the hooves, other weather, other humans, other customs around the horse, other delights in the saddle. It meant nothing to me whether the horses were very tall, very refined, and very sensitive (I rode many of those), or if they were sturdy, plump, and close to the ground (I rode lots of those too); and what was _totally_ irrelevant to me was to score victories (excepting over my own fears).

Fears – you heard right. I had lots of fears in the saddle, because I was constantly riding horses totally unknown to me – 2000 on 4 continents – which had been ridden differently, and didn’t know my cues. This is why I was always careful, and listened intently to what the horse, and its owner, were saying to me. One learns infinitely much like this – not least of all, that through riding horses who were often greatly loved and valuable with great care, one can make life-long, real friends of their owners.

For riders today (1982), it is much easier to get to know the world of horses: One can take riding holidays everywhere, and have a sniff across the borders to see what the neighbours’ horses are doing. And I think one can’t make too many excursions to the _others_, in order to grow out of bias, one-sidedness and narrowness even in one’s horse-riding.

From these experiences of a long and varied riding life I eventually developed, together with a pedagogically trained and similarly thinking colleague, a modern method for learning a lighter, more empathetic form of riding, which I now teach at my small centre in Reken, Westphalia. With this, I became untrue to my second big life resolution – never to give riding lessons… however, in favour of lessons in which there is _never_ any shouting, but instead a lot of laughter.

​


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## SueC

More on Ursula Bruns here:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_Bruns

Rebellin und Reformerin*| PferdeWoche Online

Online translation tools are available for these. The second link is a lovely article looking back on her life, which I may translate properly as another project if anyone wants to read it without being put through the Google translate language murdering facility. ;-)


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## Knave

I really liked that! What an interesting woman.


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## SueC

Knave said:


> You know what @*bsms* , I tend to think humans are seriously convinced they know more than they do in all topics. I think that styles come and go as well. For example, in reining the slide stop has changed over the years I have been a part of it. When I was a small child a horse slid with its head up. Now, those horses who won many things and were athletes just the same, would be looked down upon in their stop because the style now has a horse drop his head down when he slides.
> 
> Things change and everyone jumps on a boat and says this is the way it must be done. Now, like you, I’m fine with “If you want to be competitive this is the way you have to do it,” but I’m not okay with believing it necessary or harm to a horse to do otherwise. We overthink and underthink and the whole time refuse to think.
> 
> I do like @*SueC* ’s translation as that woman was purely open minded to different cultures ideals. We all have a tendency to lack that, which is okay, but I get annoyed when one person says that it has to be this way and another says it has to be that way. I honestly don’t even know if collection honestly helps a horse. It makes it look nice and stylish, but I’m not sure the horse cares either way. There are times it is good for them to collect in preparation for something, which is what collection is, preparation. I don’t walk around prepared all of the time. My horses can move however they please when they are doing their job as long as they are doing it (with a few exceptions in certain circumstances).


I thought this was worth duplicating from elsewhere and bringing here. I think that's so spot on.

And also - in human sports, nobody expects a ballet dancer to train exactly the same way as a footballer, etc etc - although some aspects will help both. And noone will expect one ballet dancer to train exactly the same way as another, even - because we know that different people have different bodies and respond differently etc, so you have to tailor your training to that, and change it with the circumstances.

I think that's so true about fashions too. Very little of that seems real when you think about it. Fashion just creates demand for a product that can be sold. It's not necessarily quality or practical or ethical.

How does that old saying go? Many roads to the mountaintop. Choose your donkey, dismount it at the summit.

I think it's important that people learn to work in harmony with a horse. But often I think the horse is being asked to work in harmony with the person and their ideas and there's not too much going the other way. And also there isn't just one way to work in harmony with a horse and make it enjoyable for both sides. But often, the "correct" way as proclaimed by various "authorities" on the matter is just myopic and actually isn't necessarily enjoyable for the rider, or the horse; certainly not for every rider or every horse. I'm surprised we even have to state something so incredibly obvious.


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## SueC

Thanks a million, Cherilyn!


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## SueC

We just checked _First Dog On The Moon_, and once again this is spot on:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/23/the-cruel-truth-about-the-brumbies

:clap: Sad but true.


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## SueC

A couple of observations on bone fractures, for a first-timer in fracture land!

It's been funny with the bone fractures; I always used to imagine that once a broken bone is stabilised in its splint or cast, it would feel pretty much OK.







But you get all sorts of weird pains after the initial pain of breaking the bone wears off. You get the sort of dull throbbing pain you get with bad bruises, multiplied by ten. It comes and goes, and is especially bad if you don't keep your leg warm. You get a sort of toothache type pain on and off, and most unusual of all, you get these random shooting pains as if someone is putting an electrified corkscrew into a voodoo doll!







...I really need to find and neutralise that voodoo person!!!









Mostly this was going on at night, which is so perverse. So I went against my usual "no laptops in the bedroom in the evenings" rule, just so I could distract myself when one of those pain variants woke me up. (I did have the screen brightness down to minimum because I want to reduce the light-induced disruption to the Circadian rhythms.) Writing in particular is very effective at that; I just can't concentrate on podcasts or music when I have pain. The e-reader worked well sometimes as well - and after a while, you can nod off again.

Day rest and laughter have been good compensation!









Oh yeah, a milestone: The day before yesterday, my foot started telling me it really wanted to come out of its protective shell when I was reading in bed, so that's been happening - it's been getting air, and getting wiggled. And last night was the first night I slept without the astronaut boot on! :clap: Couldn't quite do it bare though - I wrapped it in a thick, wide elastic bandage from ankle to the start of the toes, to give it a little rigidity against bedsheets and possible impacts with husband feet or the foot of the bed. That worked OK, except it was uncomfortable on its right side - I may yet go back to sleeping with the boot on, at least on and off. My foot can't get yanked in it, or bent too much.


Meanwhile, the horses: :runpony:

The weather is cold and wintry, so most of the time the rugs are staying on at the moment. When I let them into the common in the morning, the whole lot of them hang around me for a bit of hobnobbing, which is nice. They're sniffing my pirate leg etc. They're all used to that now, but completely aware that I'm not 100% just now, like they are about Sparkle's blindness. They show concern and extra affection and make allowances. I suppose I've known three of the horses since birth and Romeo since he was 3, but even the donkeys are behaving like that around me, and we've only had them since 2012!

Wednesday means Bill will be here soon, I will be doing a cooking-ahead blitz, and when Brett comes home early in the afternoon we will all be watching something funny together. We're out of _Pushing Daisies_, I'll see if I can get Brett to bring home _Dead Like Me_, which is great! :rofl: That or _Going Postal_...

PS: Brett reckons I should wrap my foot in the purple horse bandages for Friday's fracture clinic, and neigh at the staff. :rofl: Silly silly. I'm still really lame on my nearside hind leg though...


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## gottatrot

SueC said:


> They're sniffing my pirate leg etc. They're all used to that now, but completely aware that I'm not 100% just now, like they are about Sparkle's blindness. They show concern and extra affection and make allowances. I suppose I've known three of the horses since birth and Romeo since he was 3, but even the donkeys are behaving like that around me, and we've only had them since 2012!


It makes sense that horses would understand lameness, even in others, very well.


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## SueC

:rofl: 

Very true! _...but what's that alien holding onto your leg, monkey?_


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## SueC

*POSTMODERNISM - GET THEE HENCE!*









http://brett.coulstock.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/19nb_dragon_large.jpg

A while back I started a music theme in this journal, because I no longer keep any sort of journal apart from this one - I gave up my lifetime tradition of journalling to fill paper volumes at the end of 2013 and made a conscious decision to concentrate on writing as a non-solitary activity, but to try to write in little communities and also via magazines in newsagencies (I do several related to DIY, self-sufficiency, life on smallholdings etc). I discovered HF in 2014, and also for a while did comments on places like _The Guardian_ and _Patheos_. That became a bit old, so these days I do HF and go to various favourite blogs. I've got to say, strong caveperson inclinations aside, that the Internet, much as it mostly is a cesspit, is in other ways really fabulous. Library at your fingertips, being able to talk to interesting people from all around the world etc. :happydance:

I love horses, and I love writing - but I love writing (and reading) about all sorts of stuff and would feel really deprived if I had to confine myself to horses. It would be like having to confine myself to science, or food, or the arts, or navelgazing, or DIY, or any of the many things that really interest me (well, not so much navelgazing at 40+) - it would be so, so, so _dull_.

Indeed, the way to really get to know people is to converse with them on a whole swathe of different subject areas on anything and everything. In order to get to know my students at the start of a year, I used to give them a voluntary multi-page survey on their likes, dislikes, and opinions etc on various diverse topics, that they could spend half an hour doing in class, and take home for further time if they wanted. You could always hear a pin drop, and even the ones who hated writing got so absorbed in this survey. I was basically asking, _Who are you? What matters to you? How do your think? What do you feel? What do you think is really important?_ _What do you think is funny? Why do you think it?_ - with various engaging jump-off points - and usually nobody asks you that in education. Or in life, really, except your real friends and, if you're lucky, your family. (I'm really lucky with my husband in that regard, which makes up for the complete black hole around that in my childhood.)

There's always such a great yawning deficit of people sincerely asking those questions, and caring about the answers - well, that's something we really can change with our own lives and chosen approaches. I used to just love reading through those surveys, and it made me so aware that I was dealing with real human beings in the classroom who were much bigger than the subject areas I was teaching, and really enthusiastic about teaching them and learning things from them and engaging with them; and when doing curriculum (or asides :rofl it also allowed me to hook back into their interests and personalities and who they really were.


Returning to music, the intermittent music theme in this journal first began here:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page49/#post1970550429

Yesterday, Brett and I had an interesting conversation on postmodernism, and I wanted to capture some of that, and expand on it. That's his artwork above, by the way; he did the covers for _19 Nocturne Boulevard_ for a long time, before it wound up - we started building our house! ;-) It's not from an https address so may not embed, hence the hyperlink to the direct location if that's going to happen. (I love my clever, arty, multidimensional, encyclopaedic, funny, kind, cuddly, impish husband! )

And really, that's postmodern art right there, it's a cut-and-paste of pre-existing elements, which are then altered in line with the tastes of the artist. And I actually love that piece visually. But a lot of postmodern art just cuts and pastes pre-existing stuff and adds nothing useful to it. That's the kind of postmodernism I don't like; it's like a colouring-in book, and so devoid of originality and authenticity.

Which brings me to music. I'm listening to a lot of Cure interviews, and general interviews, at the moment, spanning the 80s through to now. I found Robert Smith's recent comments on "Do you listen to new music?" really interesting; it's at 6:09 here:






For those of you unfamiliar with Robert Smith, you'll have to get over the fact that he's wearing stage make-up - he does get interviewed pre- or post-gig a lot, so that's par for the course - _and_ that he's wearing stage make-up in his 50s, when it's no longer sexy and many (especially younger) people think a person should retire to their armchair and slippers and pipe and some knitting maybe, and have no business being in music, or being taken seriously. Of course, that's just superficial claptrap - a human being is a human being, and their soul is their soul, and what is lost in physical aesthetic quality is often more than made up for by the broader and deeper view a self-educating and alive person will have as they get into their middle years and beyond. And _that_ is actually a very acute and lovely sort of beauty. Think Gandalf for a moment, as your antidote to youth culture. And let me just cite again from _The Velveteen Rabbit_:

_“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit. 

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.' 

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?' 

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.” 
_― Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit


So when I'm listening to Robert Smith's response to the question about the role of new music in his life, I'm getting a lot of _my problem is that the cupboard is full to bursting of good things that mean lots to me_ _already_ _(and I'm not throwing anything out)_ vibes. And I had to laugh at the idea of personally transferring 15,000 tracks from CD to your iPod. :rofl: That's like having to write lines in detention!  I also had to laugh about him having this compulsion to listen over and over to the same thing sometimes, to really get it. I do that, with reading books, with discovering new music. I can't do it superficially if it really interests me. Unless it's non-fiction, or B-grade or worse fiction, I take ages to read a page in a book...and more so if it's complex writing - I want to think about _everything_, the overt meaning, the subtext, the imagery, the settings, the characters, their relationships, the historical time, the connotations, the implications, how it relates back to my own life and to other things I've read and seen and heard, what music goes with this, etc etc etc. I actually write complex writing much faster than I read it! :rofl:

Oh and if we can at this point put a few stereotypes to bed, I just wanted to draw attention to the fact that quirky Robert Smith and his lovely quirky wife whom he met in high school drama class when they were both teenagers have just celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary earlier this month!  As someone in Internetland said about it, "I find it easier to take songs about love seriously when the person singing about it has been happily married for a long time!" (...even if their lovesongs often have an element of _The Wiggles_ about them; indeed, Brett has said for a long time that Robert Smith is really the charcoal black Wiggle!)

...and on one Gothic site (and The Cure are not Gothic, just have some stylistic elements from that) that referred to this anniversary I saw, _This is our royal wedding_. :rofl:











I'm always, always going to exult and applaud when I see respectful, affectionate relationships that are really working, and actually get the "relate" in the word "relationship" - whether that's people's pair-bond relationships, or parent-child relationships, or great friendships. :happydance:

Growing up in a family where my parents basically "played house" and sort of stage-played a successful marriage while in private disrespecting each other intensely and engaging in (to a young child unbelievably scary) emotional and physical violence and neglect with each other and their offspring - a family which had no idea how to even _spell_ "relate" - a family that was not a safe and nurturing place for _anyone_ - I've spent most of the rest of my life addressing that deficit. You can all imagine - many even know from similar experiences - the negative aspects of that at the time, and the negative implications for adult life. But at the same time there are actually a lot of positives that can come out of having to struggle with that sort of stuff. Finely honed analytical thinking, empathy for others, interest in social justice, deep appreciation of good things, really valuing decent relationships in my own life and other people's, gallows humour, broader humour, a real ability for laughter and joy. To quote a famous poem:


*On Joy and Sorrow*
_Kahlil Gibran_

 Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that  in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. 

Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed. 

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.​








Kamilah, Kahlil's mother. Painting by Kahlil Gibran ​
from Kahlil Gibran On Joy and Sorrow

... have to break this post in case it "oversizes"...to be continued...


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## Knave

I love this. Also, I realize I am interrupting and I apologize for that, but I never told you that I love The Velveteen Rabbit. I always have. When I was very little it was gifted to me along with a stuffed rabbit. The rabbit was special to me only because of the story. Even tiny I thought that the story was beautiful.


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## SueC

You're not interrupting, dear @Knave! This is just knitting. :rofl: And now _you_ are doing some of the rows of the scarf, and welcome! The scarf is already longer and more multicoloured than Tom Baker's. :rofl: It will be exhibited in the Museum of Oddities one day. And while we're here, let's make a nice patchwork quilt! ;-)

Yeah, it's such a great book. I first came across it in the true story written by the mother of a wonderful, very young girl who got leukaemia and eventually died from it. When she had chemotherapy and her hair fell out, they re-read _The Velveteen Rabbit_ together, and the little girl said, "I'm becoming real." And I cried, like I always do when I read stuff like that. It's such a beautiful, beautiful story, and stories can be so extraordinarily powerful.  They can help you live, and they can help you die.

I always welcome commentary and interaction, even "in the middle of"! :hug:

Hope you guys and Squidgy are going well!


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## SueC

...so getting back to telling postmodernism to _get thee hence_...

At this point, I'd like to just reiterate an idea I have about human beings. I see human beings as being like trees with their annual rings - inside of you is every year of your life; if you go deep into the centre, you'll have your first day at school, and further on, earliest memories like learning to walk, becoming conscious of a self, I've even got one of kicking my legs as a baby and this sort of befuddlement trying to work out how to operate them. I remember when I stopped clenching my hands in my sleep; discovering you could open your hands like a flower. That you should walk heel-first and roll, rather than flat-footed. That looking into the sun gave you black spots in your vision. I can go back to every ring and feel what I felt, see what I saw, smell what I smelt, hear what I heard - it's so amazing that we can store all that. It's like going into the Pensieve in Harry Potter - travelling back in time and being there and witnessing it. (Not _all_ of it, but a whole lot of it.)










So with that in mind, you never really lose all the things you were, they are still there - although I've been conscious of that, and open to that, for a long long time, even as a 15-year-old I could see the layers going all the way back to the beginning; and some people deliberately choke all that down instead as they trade what they see as childishness for what they see as "maturity" (and is really narrowness, and a form of _immaturity_ and incompleteness) - and for some people, apparently, a lot of memories get "pruned" in the re-networking of the brain during adolescence. Brett's theory about me is that I kept a lot more of it than usual during the adolescent pruning process because I had strong associations with it, and because it was meaningful to me, and so I'd think about it, and keep it in storage.










Be that as it may - when you have access to all of that, you also have access to being able to interrelate with those layers in other people. Plus, you know instinctively how to relate to a 3-year-old, an 8-year-old, a 13-year-old, a 15-year-old. You remember how it felt to be in your 20s, all the angst and despair of that if you came from a difficult beginning, and the glorious ridiculousness of waking up on your 30th birthday feeling strangely old. You can just go back and feel what that was like. Of course, we don't all have the same lives, but it gives a lot of access to commonalities. The more points are still with you, the more can go into the overlap section of the Venn diagram when you relate to others. And the points of difference, the points not in that overlapping section, are often especially interesting.

How's that so far for a journal entry whose main intended theme is actually postmodernism, and music? :rofl: This happens, though, because these topics get you thinking, and flying off in all sorts of directions, and I really like to fly actually, it's very _elevating_!  And more to the point, actually edifying. Even if it's really hard to sit quietly and type after the first two hours - here my broken metatarsals are coming in handy, as they are quite complementary to this activity. As well as elevated above the level of the keyboard! :rofl:

 
_To see this photo you must be logged in! _

(Well, not quite that elevated just now, just on a stack of pillows, and I'm now officially out of the astronaut equipment while resting on a horizontal surface.)


OK, so now I'd like to hook back into the _my problem is that the cupboard is full to bursting of good things that mean lots to me_ _already_ _(and I'm not throwing anything out)_ idea. I'm in my mid-40s and I'm really feeling this. The house is filled with books, shelves and shelves of books; and shelf after shelf of CDs, and of DVDs of really excellent, thought-provoking, humanising drama.










See that glass-fronted piece of furniture on the rear left? The top section behind the glass is full of books too, and the bottom has our DVDs. And there's more books here:










The bottom right section is stacked with a really interesting little publication called _The Scots Magazine_ (hello @Caledonian! :wave, going right back from recently to the 1980s, and would take me years to read cover-to-cover. I got them at auction for $5 for the whole collection, and love to dip into them. On the left-hand side half hidden by the flue is a little shelf unit with some overflow CDs. Most of the rest of them are on the office bookshelf, along with some of Brett's huge graphic novel collection... (these days occupying the entire third row down, and the middle section in front of the Harry Potter door has its own slide-in bookshelf to be able to house _more_ books...and please note the emergency chocolate dead centre in the display, under the melting clock...)










...the first of which he ever lent to me, when we started out, was Neil Gaiman's _Death: The High Cost Of Living_. Excellent... like _Neverwhere_... like Haruki Murakami... like lots of things my husband introduced me to... he's an excellent cultural curator! 










The point of these photos is to illustrate that I am already in a situation where I probably couldn't read all the books on our shelves I've not yet read in the rest of my lifetime. Brett has read most of them; his graphic design job and very solitary habits permitted him to do far more recreational reading than I did in my 20s and 30s. I'm playing catch-up, and am a far slower reader. Also we get things in from the library, and there's a lot of stuff we read on the Internet. Plus I also like total silence and space from that sort of input, and outdoors activities etc. So with that, and with music, you tend to become really selective, because otherwise you're just going to turn into a giant migraine headache and explode unhygienically all over the place.


I'll just contrast that with being a child in the 1970s and a teenager in the 1980s. Music was really new to me; I didn't come from a particularly musical household. Nobody played a musical instrument, nobody sang; but at primary school in the 1970s, I had learnt to play recorder and to sing, simply because the option was there and I jumped on it. My parents encouraged none of that, just my teachers; and I loved music, and from an early age music could make my hair stand on end, or soar me into the clouds, or make me cry. This means I have "one of those" music-sensitive brains, which I read a study on recently and which apparently not everybody has. If you regularly respond like that to music, you're an outlier - and oh yeah, enjoy! 

In my household though, I had my ears bashed off by my brother in the adjacent room playing _Kiss_ and _Deep Purple_ and other car-crash-imitating drivel like it at such screeching, aircraft-lifting-off volume on his mega-powered latest, greatest hi-fi unit that when we were still in Germany, the walls used to shake and the neighbours used to complain. My parents did very little about it; my mother wrung her hands and said it was my father's job to discipline him - she'd never heard about the fuse box apparently, that's what I would have done in that situation, or a magic disappearing act of the equipment while he was at school until he showed more inclination to consider the needs and feelings of others. I remember that one of my teachers lived next door and one day she simply came in, went to his room and asked him what on earth he was doing and didn't he know other people in the neighbourhood weren't in raptures of ecstasy to be hearing his selection of music for kilometres from the epicentre. And miraculously, the noise stopped for a couple of hours, and I could do my homework in peace for once.

Of course, the reprieve didn't last long. I had little means of getting peace and quiet in my room. I had no radio or stereo of my own, just an old mono cassette recorder cast off from my brother when he was still in primary school himself, and a single tape of ABBA someone outside the family had given me. It wasn't really my thing either, and it certainly couldn't compete with the cacophony from the adjacent room; in fact I couldn't even hear it as more than a tinkle when my brother was so generously playing his selections to the whole suburb.

But one day, a relative - an older niece who'd just gotten married and whom I've never seen since her wedding day because my family simply dropped contact - after talking to me, gave me an old electric organ she had learnt on to take home with me, and I was delighted! Of course, I didn't get any lessons, but my friend Nicole was taking piano lessons and passed a little of her keyboard skills onto me, and we'd ad-lib little funeral marches for butterflies together - which totally infuriated my brother. Please understand we didn't do it to infuriate my brother, we were just playing, and the organ wasn't that loud, but I now actually had a bargaining chip, because my brother detested the sound of it. (Such karma! :rofl 

When we moved to Australia, I finally got a battery-operated pocket radio. ...do you know how ironic all this is to me, looking back at it from my 40s? What a huge double standard there was in that household? I am now aware my parents were loaded, my brother had every latest thing in personal stereo systems, massive speakers, and several expensive cameras and lenses - my father had whatever he wanted, including a racing yacht and lots of technical equipment... and I had a screechy old mono tape player, and a _battery-operated_ mono radio, in 1984 for heaven's sake, and was exceedingly grateful to finally even _have_ a radio, because I actually wasn't materialistic, or feeling entitled (I always felt unworthy) - but, every one of my school friends was better equipped, no matter how lowly the salaries of their parents. I was basically Cinderella in that household, and I didn't even know it - there were bigger fish to fry, greater holes than the merely material.

If I held that pocket radio really close to my ears on high volume, I could hear a little of the music being broadcast by various stations above the din from my brother's room. It wasn't very conducive to careful listening and reflection; but that year and the following we had a teacher who let us take turns to choose our own music in art class - both radio stations and cassettes (yes people, this is before CDs), and so I actually got to listen to something other than my brother's music, or my father's music (he was into jazz which was OK, but also Donna Summer which I intensely disliked, that whole disco thing was just _bleh_ to me).

Brett is making commiserating noises in the background! :rofl: And I'm going to have to take a break and continue later, I'm actually crosseyed from writing so much.


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## gottatrot

> Be that as it may - when you have access to all of that, you also have access to being able to interrelate with those layers in other people. Plus, you know instinctively how to relate to a 3-year-old, an 8-year-old, a 13-year-old, a 15-year-old. You remember how it felt to be in your 20s, all the angst and despair of that if you came from a difficult beginning, and the glorious ridiculousness of waking up on your 30th birthday feeling strangely old. You can just go back and feel what that was like. Of course, we don't all have the same lives, but it gives a lot of access to commonalities. The more points are still with you, the more can go into the overlap section of the Venn diagram when you relate to others. And the points of difference, the points not in that overlapping section, are often especially interesting.


I love your writings, so much food for thought. I think this is why I am not very good with children, because when I am with them I empathize too much and become a child, so there is no adult left in the room. Why would I want to be an adult to them? I remember well what it was to be a child. I'm very good with very old people, because although they can be similar to children in many ways, I've not been an old person so I don't know what it is like. So I can make an old woman eat something and take a shower, but not a child.

Enjoying your musical history too. I feel sorry for your childhood, but also I do believe that sorrow and joy are both part of a rich life, as your quotes say.

My life with music is strange...my dad was a music major in college and my mom a professional pianist and organist. Everyone in my family had to sing (publicly), I play piano and violin. Not so great at piano, I can play not-too-difficult sheet music with practice, but have played violin for some events. But my parents became involved on the fringe of a somewhat mild cult, and so modern music was deemed bad, and we only listened to or played older music, classical music or hymns. 

My DH comes from a family that loved music, but only popular, cultural music. But they listened to everything over the decades. So he has educated me on all the different types of modern music, and groups and artists. When young, I had to sneak out to the car and listen to the radio if I wanted to hear different music, and it wasn't that I didn't appreciate classical, but I liked other music too. There are so many people who want to perform and be heard, but I was not a performer so it was not my favorite thing to play the violin or sing in front of a crowd. 

For me, with my background, I don't want to limit myself on what I enjoy, or what I find beautiful. To me music is art, and sometimes it's funny art, and sometimes it's so beautiful you want to cry, but sometimes it's the cleverness or uniqueness of it that draws you in. I find that many people limit themselves to one type of music, often based on their values. Some I know will only listen to folk music, for example. I'm not saying this is wrong, but I personally would be missing out if I didn't try to listen to the strange and wonderful things my DH tries on for size.


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## SueC

*Late erratum:* The organ-bequeathing relative was my _parents_' niece - so my _cousin_. And no, I don't know her, or where she lives, just her name and that she seemed nice to me, and actually interested in talking to me despite being older - I only recall seeing her on her wedding day, and how my father called her groom a _blowhard_, and how he mocked people who were enjoying themselves, and how I had the distinct impression the only reason my parents took that organ home for me was because it would have looked bad if they hadn't. I remember that her name was Felicitas, don't know her surname - we had very little to do with my father's side of the family, excepting my paternal grandfather, whom we saw once or twice a year, if I recall correctly.

We saw more of my mother's side - a half-sister and her family, and my maternal grandmother, who is the only person in my childhood with whom I had a significantly _warm, affectionate, no-strings-attached, mutually respectful, normal_ sort of relationship, which even included making cookies together, knitting, handicrafts, games, crosswords, conversations about all sorts of stuff, and laughter. And that's despite the fact that she was said to have been a lousy mother herself. All I can say is that she was a top-notch grandmother, and that I missed her when we came to Australia. I only saw her once more, when she flew out to see us for a couple of weeks when I was 15; but we wrote letters to each other constantly until she died in 1997, ironically just before I'd scraped the money together in my mid-20s to make it back to Europe. All other members of my birth family at various times went back to Europe, before that. I was the exception. And I wonder why. And why I still know basically nothing about the whereabouts of most of my relatives in Europe...


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## SueC

gottatrot said:


> I love your writings, so much food for thought. I think this is why I am not very good with children, because when I am with them I empathize too much and become a child, so there is no adult left in the room. Why would I want to be an adult to them? I remember well what it was to be a child. I'm very good with very old people, because although they can be similar to children in many ways, I've not been an old person so I don't know what it is like. So I can make an old woman eat something and take a shower, but not a child.
> 
> Enjoying your musical history too. I feel sorry for your childhood, but also I do believe that sorrow and joy are both part of a rich life, as your quotes say.
> 
> My life with music is strange...my dad was a music major in college and my mom a professional pianist and organist. Everyone in my family had to sing (publicly), I play piano and violin. Not so great at piano, I can play not-too-difficult sheet music with practice, but have played violin for some events. But my parents became involved on the fringe of a somewhat mild cult, and so modern music was deemed bad, and we only listened to or played older music, classical music or hymns.
> 
> My DH comes from a family that loved music, but only popular, cultural music. But they listened to everything over the decades. So he has educated me on all the different types of modern music, and groups and artists. When young, I had to sneak out to the car and listen to the radio if I wanted to hear different music, and it wasn't that I didn't appreciate classical, but I liked other music too. There are so many people who want to perform and be heard, but I was not a performer so it was not my favorite thing to play the violin or sing in front of a crowd.
> 
> For me, with my background, I don't want to limit myself on what I enjoy, or what I find beautiful. To me music is art, and sometimes it's funny art, and sometimes it's so beautiful you want to cry, but sometimes it's the cleverness or uniqueness of it that draws you in. I find that many people limit themselves to one type of music, often based on their values. Some I know will only listen to folk music, for example. I'm not saying this is wrong, but I personally would be missing out if I didn't try to listen to the strange and wonderful things my DH tries on for size.


Oh, wow! Thank you for your thoughts and recollections, I loved reading that and bits of me went, "Bing! Bing! Bzzzz!" in response! :rofl: I think it's so true that the less narrow-minded people are, the more types of music they will love... and that you can enjoy different types of music for different reasons.

How nice that you play! I tried piano at 23, when I first had a decent salaried job and could first afford lessons. It was fun, but I really have trouble doing two different things with the two different hands on the piano, plus I couldn't afford a piano, so I stopped taking lessons when I moved out of the houseshare with a piano as part of the deal! :rofl:

At 27, I took up violin and had lessons for two years solid; basically Suzuki Method to start with, and getting into some really nice aspirational pieces. I had less trouble doing different things with the left and right hand there, as these things are so different it's OK - the left hand is doing all the nitty-gritty stuff and all the actual notes, and the right hand is just bowing, so that's fine. I'm not a performer when it comes to music, and didn't want to be. I sang in a choir, that's the sort of social musical experience I really enjoyed, and I'd not have volunteered to solo in a hundred years - I do my solos in the shower, thank you! :rofl: 

Or in a nice echoey room when I'm alone, although my husband loves to hear me sing _Summertime_ and has encouraged me to sing to him. But I basically played music and sang for my own pleasure, and found it therapeutic. I think if I'd grown up amongst musical people things would have been different, but I don't have any regrets (and I completely overcame that stage fright_ to teach_, anyway). I think the reason musical performance was so knocked out of me is that my attempts to sing and to dance in my early childhood and preteen years were shamed by my parents, who put me down when they saw or heard anything like that, so I became a very stiff and quiet child when I was around them, and carried a lot of inhibitions forward from that. Ironically they always went out dancing... 

At school it was different, while we had encouraging teachers in Year 1/2, but a Year3/4 teacher used to humiliate our singing (and indeed the smallest of our mistakes in anything), and that was the end of my wanting to sing unaccompanied in front of other people for a long long time. I still went back to recorder lessons with my Year 1/2 teacher though, so I didn't lose playing music entirely.

I sometimes think there should be a nice hot spot in hell for adults who like to humiliate children, and who get off on hurting their feelings and clipping their wings. I made sure I wasn't that kind of adult, and to be the kind of adult it had helped me to be around, when my turn came to work with young people.


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## SueC

*Clarification for late erratum:* :rofl:

There's a problem with only having a 20-minute editing window at the end of a solid day's writing, when you no longer see clearly.  It's probably obvious from the context, but when I said:

...my maternal grandmother... is the only *person* in my childhood with whom I had a significantly _warm, affectionate, no-strings-attached, mutually respectful, normal_ sort of relationship, which even included making cookies together, knitting, handicrafts, games, crosswords, conversations about all sorts of stuff, and laughter.

What I meant *precisely* was:

...my maternal grandmother... is the *only adult from my family* in my childhood with whom I had a significantly _warm, affectionate, no-strings-attached, mutually respectful, normal_ sort of relationship, which even included making cookies together, knitting, handicrafts, games, crosswords, conversations about all sorts of stuff, and laughter.

My aunt and I got on OK, but didn't have enough one-on-one time to have the kind of relationship I needed to open up and be confident and for it to be nearly as significant to me as my relationship with my grandmother. I was her only granddaughter - she had five grandsons - and she always took a lot of time and care with me (and with the others too, she was always surrounded especially by my cousins as well, and she laughed and fooled around a lot). We had a pretty special relationship, and I was happy in her presence.

I wanted to be more specific about this - and also of course mention once again that I am really really grateful to the many excellent adult role models I had outside of my own family - some wonderful teachers, and some wonderful people in the general community (though I was moved around too much as a kid to have consistent and ongoing relationships with any of them), and a whole bunch of people who simply wrote books, made music, painted paintings, and inspired me with their work, and with the things they would say when interviewed. Especially in my very isolated teenage years, it was writers, musicians and artists I didn't even know in person and some of whom were no longer alive, and a handful of teachers whom I obviously did, who saw me through.

And my acknowledgement list would be janglingly incomplete if I didn't mention that whatever your thoughts are on religion and the existence or otherwise of God, when you read the gospels you get one heck of an amazing role model for how we should be human... for presenting a dazzling light in a dark dark world, and an excellent take on what you're going to come up against in society, and how to speak up about it, and deal with it.


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## SueC

...returning to my reaction to music as an adolescent, eventually getting back to my problem with much of postmodernism, and following on from this post:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page80/#post1970589861

In view of the distinct limitations regarding musical library or equipment, and initially only having that old 70s mono tape recorder and a battery-operated mono radio that crackled fiercely and maddeningly over much of the Perth (120km away) radio station output and drained its batteries while producing little recognisable music, I heard a considerable amount of my "music allowance" during our aforementioned middle school art classes (contemporary 80s from the kids, 60s and 70s from the teacher), on the big orange school bus (either the radio or The Beatles on tape, and the bus driver laughing at us over our infantile objections and saying he was educating us about real music), and on TV. This is before MTV; and the majority of Australian kids watched the pretty lame _Countdown_, which concentrated heavily on Top 40 and on lip-synched "live" performances. Later there was _Wavelength_, which was a bit better, and the actually very good late night and pretty alternative _Rock Arena_ on the ABC, on which I saw REM (_Can't Get There From Here_) and the B-52s for the first time (_Rock Lobster_, haha, and I liked both, but that was 1986 and I'm getting ahead of myself, but here they are anyway, just to stuff up the chronological order!).











But in 1984, I was 13 and watched _Countdown_, like most of my classmates. My mother actually bought me a few music magazines on request, saying she wanted me to be normal and this was normal for a teenager, and also supported my having some kind of music to play for myself, and a small plug-in stereo radio/cassette player. My father at that point was having all sorts of problems about me showing an interest in music he didn't approve of (i.e. anything that wasn't in his own narrow collection of jazz and Donna Summer, or at least sounded something like it), and male adults that weren't him. There was an incident involving a blood nose after I put up some posters in my room; the specific ones most objected to were the "perverse" Boy George, and Marilyn - notable gender benders of the New Romantic movement, whom my father roundly denounced as "poofters" - and his homophobia and denigration of other people really annoyed me. I was starting to ask questions, and he really didn't like that. My mother actually for some reason started liking Boy George as well, officially because he had a good voice and was kind, which was true, and possibly also because it really got up my father's nose. She started buying any magazines with Boy George interviews in them, and yeah, that really annoyed my father, and there was a small window of time where I actually had a quasi-relationship with my mother, over this.

The biggest impact that was made on me in 1984 though, while watching _Countdown_, was this, which was completely out of left field, totally unlike anything I had seen before, and was lucky even to have made it onto such a lamentably mainstream show:






This really hit me... here were a bunch of very serious-looking people, with a lead singer whose anger was _constructive_, who was serenading an assassinated civil rights leader and talking about love in a completely non-romantic, non-sexual, non-idiotic way... I'd seen lots of anger before, I saw it daily in my birth family, but not anger _on behalf of someone else_ - just anger about people not getting their own way. And there was a dignity to this I'd not seen before. And that way of talking about love, outside of the usual hackneyed context, was something I didn't usually see.

It's funny for me, to look back at this clip now... U2 really were a wonderful young band back then, and from the 1990s on it was never the same for me - that's when postmodernism heavily entered the equation, with this band as well as the 90s mainstream. This was something quite unlike anything I'd ever heard before.

The reason Countdown played the clip was that U2 were touring Australia at the time, and they gave an interview on this show, which was my first close encounter with the Irish accent - at first I couldn't work out where they were from, and then they mentioned it, and I'm going, "Oh, that little island off England!" And the next total surprise to me was that they didn't just _not_ drone on inanely and behave like entitled lunatics like a lot of the Countdown interviewees who thought they were such cool rock stars, and had the IQ of a boiled crab. They talked politely, intelligently and seriously about music and about social issues, and actually _thought_ about what they were saying, you could hear it in the way they answered the questions, in their not rushing over things, in the tones of their voices, in the words that were carefully chosen; and you could see it in their faces. So yeah, that made an impression on young me: This is how I wished people would discuss things, but at our house there was just yelling and screaming and swearing and cursing and threatening and throwing stuff and hitting and kicking people whenever someone had a different thought or opinion to someone else.

That clip got played quite a lot on _Countdown_ that year, so inevitably my father saw it, and lampooned and ridiculed the band, and "the way that guy is screaming (!!!!) and hopping around like a lunatic" - he _was_ hopping around, but that didn't mean he was a lunatic, I'd seen that in the really considered, balanced interviews in which this man had shown a lot more caring and concern for other human beings than I'd seen my father show in all my life up to that point. And there was such a world of a difference between constructive anger and destructive anger, between passion and denigration.

I find it so interesting though that he had no objections whatsoever to Madonna's much-played _Burning Up_ clip, which showed her writhing around on the ground suggestively in flimsy clothing calling for the urgent attention of her remote beloved. I guess that was women in their rightful place, someone who fitted into his scheme of things. Gender benders didn't, and neither did any man who expressed himself emotionally in any way other than to yell, bash someone up or shoot someone, because he'd watch hundreds of hours of that on TV and just laugh. But if Bono wanted to express distress over the way the world operated, that was not OK, and he would mock him by making monkey noises; and any man wearing any sort of make-up or not having a short business haircut was a "poofter". Sophisticated, no? Sheesh, imagine if Marilyn Manson had been around back then and had ended up on my wall - I'd probably have gotten broken _bones_ over that!

In view of the blood nose type incidents, I was learning to keep my thoughts more private in those days, and that year our English teacher introduced us to journalling: Part of our assessment was free writing about anything that tickled our fancy, in our own journals which we were encouraged to decorate the covers of to personalise them. And that's where all this hypergraphia began, because suddenly I could express my unspoken thoughts and opinions and feelings freely on paper, and my English teacher didn't give me a blood nose about it, but an A+. Wow! And I hid that journal from my parents, guarded it jealously, almost to the point of _My Precious_ssss! :rofl:










And so began my rather serious relationship with writing. :rofl: I'd always enjoyed writing and been good at it, but this journal was nirvana, and completely and forever cranked up my output. By the time middle school ended, there were no more assessed journals, so this is what I did: Buy the two biggest exercise books available at the time, join them together, give them a fancy cover, and write in this chunky, inviting volume with all these beautiful blank pages purely for my own purposes for at least an hour a day - something I continued to do until 2013.

...bedtime for now... destination postmodernism will continue tomorrow... and I'll leave this today with some of my favourite clips from those early music video days.


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## Knave

I once had a very good English teacher too. I cannot remember if it was English or Creative Writing where she talked about freewriting. We were all on the computers and allowed to type about whatever we thought, and then we deleted it!

Something bad happened before that, and it had been on rerun through my head. Over and over I played the stupid scene. Freewriting helped me to deal with it. 

It is interesting what an impact a good teacher can have on a child.


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## Caledonian

Hi SueC :wave: 

That’s some collection. I think we’ve got a few of The Scots Magazine in the archive at work but I tend to visit their website and social media. I particularly love their ‘coosday’ with all the hairy Highland cows on the site that shouldn’t be mentioned.

I love music, it allows me to switch off when my brain’s going around in circles. I don’t have a talent for playing instruments, as I’m missing the focus and patience to practice for hours. My attempts to learn the guitar, chanter and lap harp were pitiful :music019: 

@*Knave* - I also find that writing something down gets it out of my head. It’s as if recording it somewhere else allows me to stop thinking about it. :smile:

You’re both right about teachers, they can make or break a child. I've seen some truly awful ones through my work.


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## SueC

@*Caledonian* , hi! :wave:

Yeah, music and writing are both really good forms of stopping your mind going around in circles. Music can be like a form of meditation if you focus fully on it and sort of forget your thoughts. And I can't think of a better way to stop thoughts going around and around than putting them down in writing - that formalises and expresses your thoughts; you're thinking out loud on paper so to speak, and it's out and done.

Something funny that's happening as I recall that early period of my life: It's as if I've opened a drawer, and looked at a file, and a whole bunch of other files just fell out. I'm remembering things I've not remembered for many years; whole classroom scenes, what we were painting, what was playing on the classroom stereo. When we were experimenting with the Impressionistic style, I painted the Dingle Peninsula out of a book, and a classmate called Fran painted tall ships on high seas. I liked her painting and distinctly remember this. I remember a whole bunch of names and stories they told and things that happened, like the time I found half a cow's teat in a beef pie from the school lunch van. I'd only been in Australia for about two years, didn't often eat pies, and asked if this was normal. :rofl: 

Nothing would have surprised me. People said, "What is oregano?" You couldn't get decent bread, just the wobbly white presliced stuff that tastes like a dish sponge and promotes constipation. And Vegemite, I mean heck, what was the idea of that? To cover up the taste of the dish sponge? Australia was definitely not a fresh food nation. It's much improved now, at least you can get the ingredients, and thanks to immigrants from all over the world, the food is frequently great in Sydney and Melbourne, but @*gottatrot* was still noticing the lack of salads etc when she visited our regional area in 2014.

I've got all this old footage squirming around just because I've opened that drawer... it's like a background channel at the moment. It's highly distracting, considering I want to get to postmodernism without weeks of detours. Bill, who is 84, is always telling me that it amazes him how clearly he can recall his own childhood, like it only just happened. The children of the classmates I am remembering will be older than we were back then, but it feels like a reality just behind a gauzy curtain from me. You can have really fresh memories of people who no longer exist, places that were knocked down, and it's strange.

Ditto on the awful ones, @*Caledonian* . I have come to think people like that are their own karma.

@*Knave* , it's great you've got some good memories of teachers and useful things you learnt from them.  I gather freewriting is like stream-of-consciousness?


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## SueC

The Internet comes up with the most minute stuff. Brett was wondering what the set list was from the Cure concert he went to more than ten years ago, and found it online - he says people chronicle all sorts of things like that. So I dug around for that first U2 interview I saw, referred to a little earlier, and five seconds later - there it was!






I'd not seen this since I was 13, and it's amusing to look back on it, now I am over three times the age I was and twice as old as U2 were then. You sort of get the temporal bends. Awwwww, were they endearing back then! I actually have to admit I like them better in that young and comparatively unspoilt stage than I do now - well, at least as far as Bono is concerned, who stopped giving me the impression a while ago that he occupies the same universe as myself, or that he belongs to the same species as me. Not so back then.

By the way, that's not the case for all musicians who went from relatively obscure to popular. Pink Floyd, Tom Petty, David Bowie, The Cure, many others actually, when you hear their more recent interviews, they come across just fine, and are still definitely sharing both the same universe and the same species.

Discussing this with a friend recently, she speculated it might be the difference between doing your own washing, weeding, vacuuming etc, or outsourcing this. :rofl: Other hypotheses on this strange phenomenon are always welcome!


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## SueC

As mentioned in the last instalment of this... _thing_ I'm writing, my mother's intercession got me a little $20 plug-in stereo radio/cassette player, which I remember was red and I plonked on the middle of the little cane table in the window recess. $20 was actually a fair bit of money back in 1984, but it's interesting that my brother had stereo gear worth many hundreds, possibly thousands, of dollars. I say this not in jealousy but just shaking my head over how things went down in my birth family - Brett and I could never conceive being either so over-extravagant with the one or so over-cheap with the other, had we had children. Neither is good; in combination and juxtaposition it is far worse, and decidedly unbalanced and unhealthy.

I think it was more than the Golden Child / Scapegoat scenario, which applied in many other ways - my brother was terribly rude (e.g. constant cursing with particular relish for swear words related to reproductive organs and intercourse; saying things like, "What crap are we eating today?" to my mother at the dining table with no repercussions other than shocking her), and slacking at school, and went through a stage where he wouldn't wash. He didn't offer to help with any housework, he was a little entitled prince - doubtless made that way by my parents - but he could do no wrong. I was generally polite (but shouted during the general mayhem of family life, and especially when I was insulted or unjustly accused), a straight-A student, always helpful around the house and later the farm - but I could do no right, and was openly portrayed as "the difficult one" and "rude" to visitors, and all my many achievements at school were completely downplayed and hidden. One look of exasperation from me was often enough to get me slapped in the face.

Classic Golden Child / Scapegoat (with a big fat opposite-sex-children-as-emotional-spouses-for-disgruntled-parents complication and all that entails), but I really also smell so much misogyny in the way my birth family was run. My father, when he worked in computing, used to think his paid work was the real work, and that my mother didn't really do anything except spend "his" money. He had Penthouse posters up in his home office which really embarrassed me when I was a pre-teen, and as an adult looking back I think that was completely inappropriate, both to me and to my mother. I also think it's so ironic considering his later violent response to my rather innocuous and fully-dressed pop star posters. My father definitely valued men's work more highly than women's, and in a nutshell just embodied this odious white male privilege that's much talked about these days.

I remember one memorable time when I was in my 20s and visiting, and my father and his best friend were sitting at the table together calculating how many hours of service they could have got from prostitutes and house cleaners had they not gotten married, with the interesting (and vastly inaccurate) assumption that they could have spent half their salaries on these had they not married. They were always saying, "Once you are married, your dollar is only worth 50 cents." It was really disgusting, and I was expected to laugh at it. And although my mother generally treated me with either hostility or indifference, and we've never had a good relationship, I really really felt sorry for her being married to someone who would say things like that, think things like that, and feel it would have been better had she left him. Just to balance things up though, nobody should imagine that my mother didn't also constantly strike below the belt and say horrific things. The lack of respect was mutual, and created a hell for everyone in the house.

A word about marking achievements: Normal people put their children's school merit certificates and prizes on the family fridge, and display their artwork and photographs of their children in prominent spots in the house - this did not happen in my birth family. Looking around the public areas of the house, you would have thought I did not exist. All my art and all my school achievement prizes were stacked out of sight in a drawer in my room - you'd come home and show them something, and they'd say, "Yes very nice, now put it away in your room, pass the butter please." When I won ribbons and certificates competing with my mare, they went up in my room, which is kind of fair enough. What is strange though is that you could never walk into my parents' house without going past my father's sailing trophies prominently displayed in the entrance corridor, and that he had a whole wall in the lounge dedicated to the framed finish photos of his harness racing wins. And because that's how I grew up, I didn't see how unusual and indeed terribly selfish this whole thing was until much later. I think my father thought the house belonged to him alone.

That's how it goes with stream-of-consciousness writing; you'll be describing some physical fact, and then as a result go into detour that explores why. I'll break this piece here and get back to music in my next post. But this is my story, and after many years of hushing it up, I learnt that it is mine to tell, and that if people had wanted to be portrayed better they should have behaved better, instead of relying on others to cover up for them. This is far more honest than the terribly edited and sanitised version of family life with which I began this journal in 2014, given I was writing in a public place. And yet, when you look at the kind of abuses going on every day in many people's families and workplaces, I think we need to be telling these stories, and breaking the conspiracy of silence that allows this kind of abuse to fester. We've got to stop covering up, and we've got to stop turning a blind eye - both in our private and public spheres.


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## SueC

We have them in Australia too, @Caledonian - even one of our neighbours has a bunch, which really spun out our horses at first! :rofl: The donkeys, being donkeys, were simply curious and amazed.


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## Caledonian

Those cows are such characters with their hairy faces!


I would’ve thought that Australia was one of the top nations in the world for eating fresh food. Since Neighbours hit our screens in the UK, it’s always been portrayed as a healthy outdoor-life sort of nation that seems to go hand in hand with good ingredients. 


I remember my school meals were awful (banana and strawberry custard, tapioca pudding ugh!) but a I’d have been put off pies for life if I’d found a cow’s teat.


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## Knave

Yes @SueC it was stream of consciousness writing. She was a great teacher. She let me read her novel that she was trying to get published and gave me some rather deep and thought provoking books to read as well. Her husband was also a teacher, and a very good one. He taught math, and I absolutely loved his way of teaching. He wasn’t particularly friendly, but he was a very good teacher. The school had budget cuts and they were one of the pairs to leave my senior year, so I was stuck learning calculus in two hours with the help of a friend going to school to be a math teacher, to teach to my classmates. I believe the school lost a lot when they cut those two. I also do not believe I was made to teach anyone anything, but I digress.

I love the cows. I think my cow horses would panic if they saw one of those. Lol.

One night the horses were running and crashing in the way that brings you sitting straight up in bed. We went out and there was a beautiful white heifer in our yard. I scolded the horses for being so scared of a cow, when they are in fact cow horses. We ran the heifer out of the yard, but after about an hour of sleep she was back and the horses were crashing again.

She was such a pretty heifer. I was teasing that she was a ghost cow and my horses were really going off their rocker. I was afraid they’d run through the fence. Snorting and pounding hooves and crashing into each other and the dust was hanging in the air so you almost couldn’t see through it in the moonlight. 

Husband was throwing a fit. He didn’t like being woken in the middle of the night, and we couldn’t leave her as our horses were having a breakdown. We ran her all the way out to the closest range. He bought random cattle and the brand we didn’t know. She was an oddity though. I doubted she was his, as he doesn’t feed very well and his cattle are poor. I’d have noticed her like a sore thumb. I never have seen her again. Maybe she really was a ghost.


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## SueC

@Knave - spoooooooky!

Had your horses ever seen a white cow before?

One of the biggest off-his-head spooks Sunsmart ever did with me was when I had just started saddle training him; and it was because the neighbour's paddock, which had always had bay and black horses in it, suddenly had two grey horses in it which he saw from a distance. It was especially weird because he actually did know a grey horse back at home (although he wasn't friends with it yet at that point!).

We ended up discussing spooking, and that spook, on this page a few years back - I've just gone back to it and it's an interesting page!


https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...nkeys-other-people-479466/page21/#post7653002



@Caledonian, that pudding sounds _dreadful_! I need a projectile vomiting emoji. _Neighbours_ doesn't really reflect reality in Australia very much; and I would hazard a guess _Monarch of the Glen_ isn't all-encapsulating of what really happens in Scotland either! ;-)


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## SueC

*Exhibit A Day 26*: As usual, Exhibit A on the left, control group on the right. ;-)


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## Knave

Actually the worst part of it was that they had seen white cattle. I get that horses who haven’t tend to see them differently... this is why I was berating them about it while trying to push the ghost cow. Lol. I wouldn’t blame them if they saw one of those hairy critters.


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## knightrider

We used to have Brahma cows which are often white, so we had lots of colors in our herd. Good thing our horses were used to all the colors. We had a black Angus bull, and then later a polled red Angus bull. Brahmas do well in Florida where it is so hot.

My horse trainer friend, who lives on the edge of a huge park, has a white deer for a pet. She rescued this doe when her mama was killed. Our horses are used to seeing her white deer roaming around from time to time, but I can imagine horses that are quite used to deer, freaking out at seeing a white one. She has a brown regular deer that she also rescued. She keeps bright orange collars on them, hoping that no one will shoot them. Deer are not very good about staying where they are penned.


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## SueC

*Day 26* (only 16+ days to go)

My ultimate girl tip for this week is: Should you for some reason find yourself having to hop around on one foot a lot, make sure you are wearing a bra first! 

I am now doing quite a bit of hopping on one foot for short distances, because I can't be bothered with any of the three conveyances (office chair, crutches, pirate leg) some of the time, now that my broken foot has stopped complaining about being jiggled.

The other excellent development this week is that my foot is changing its tune. It used to go, "_I'm happy in my shell. I'm happy in my shell. OMG what are you doing? Don't take me out of that shell!_" - its favourite thing was to hibernate safely inside the astronaut boot. A couple of days ago, it changed its mantra, and when horizontal and reading I heard, "_Can I come out please? I need some air and I want to wiggle a bit._"

That evening, I decided to try sleeping without the astronaut boot, and my foot sighed relief at being able to feel the bedsheets against its skin, and being able to feel the skin of the other foot resting against it. It was a bit iffy about lying on its right side, but totally comfortable on its left.

I've been sleeping barefoot ever since, and each night the foot is becoming more normal in that particular context. It's doing a lot of stretching and wiggling now, and has even resumed its snuggly relationship with Brett's feet. It's quite wonderful to be getting pure bliss sensations from this foot again, after all the pain signals it sent on and off for three weeks.

The boot is now mostly a daytime, outdoors thing. I can now put significant bodyweight on the heel of my bare foot, and the weight of my sitting leg on my flat foot. This morning was another milestone - the foot went into its woolly soft-soled indoor winter house shoe/sock for the first time since the accident. I had a matched pair again! 

It was bone fracture clinic again this fine Friday - we had the first appointment, at 8am, so no waiting. My allocated orthopaedics specialist is young, beardy and fun, and his name is Zac. Brett and I always enjoy chatting to him. He's happy with the progress of the foot, and says he had a chat to a senior orthopaedics colleague, who thinks the chances of my having Lisfranc ligament damage are minimal. We still can't do a weight-bearing X-ray to confirm, but I will be getting a general X-ray of it at the next checkup in two weeks, to see how well the bones have mended. We won't be getting Zac that time, as he's off on holidays to Disneyland in Orlando, Florida, where there is a particular ride that he's going to go on.  So if any of you in Florida see a friendly young Aussie beardy orthopaedics man floating around, say _G'day_!

On the doctor's advice I'm trialling compression tubing around the foot, put on first thing in the morning, so I can spend more time up and about without it ballooning. We had it in the first-aid equipment in our backpacks anyway, it's handy for snakebite and sprains. It should help!

I said to Brett this morning: When I am finally able to walk normally again, the first long hike I want to do is the Kalgan River. Spring is approaching, and it will be bursting with wildflowers, and also the dog can swim. Looking forward to it! 

Happy snaps from the Kalgan in recent years just for fun:


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## SueC

Knave said:


> Actually the worst part of it was that they had seen white cattle. I get that horses who haven’t tend to see them differently... this is why I was berating them about it while trying to push the ghost cow. Lol. I wouldn’t blame them if they saw one of those hairy critters.



I found that so strange about Sunsmart too during that incident in 2009 - he knew a grey horse from birth, and then freaked about seeing two in the distance in a place he'd not seen any before! :rofl:


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## SueC

@*knightrider* , you're in Florida - been to Disneyland?  I'm afraid Brett and I are rather grouchy like that and probably wouldn't, we'd be muttering "Tourist Trap! Kitsch!" Would you rather be riding? ;-)


Speaking of Disneyland, in my music researches this week I came across a funny anecdote of the lead singer of The Cure taking a crowd of little nieces and nephews to Disneyland as a treat, and being stopped by Minnie Mouse for an autograph! :rofl: The children were really impressed by this. :rofl: "Minnie Mouse knows our uncle?"


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## SueC

*This Morning's Photos From The Paddock! (There's A Pirate In It!)*

It's a lovely sunny Saturday morning, and Brett and I have just been for a walk / hobble down the sand track into our nature reserve, where we visited the burial site of Sunsmart's mother to check on the progress of the Everlastings I planted there two months ago:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page56/#post1970562513

They're going well; we also found the mare's pelvis (the bones in the boneyard end up scattered all over the place and there's at least three adult cows there too from before we bought the place in 2010) and when I picked it up I was struck by the thought that the aperture in the middle was like the entry door Sunsmart had into the world when he was born. It was the first obstacle he crossed.

We can remember all these things with love; I personally think there is nothing at all disrespectful about an open burial in nature. The architecture of the bones has its own sort of beauty, as has the concept of returning to the earth and becoming other living things. It's a lovely spot, and I wouldn't mind being there myself one day.

Anyway, before we walked, I took rugs off horses; and then they wanted some "scratchies". Brett didn't have his camera, but he did have his iPod, so we have some low-definition paddock photos to share from this morning. The horses are moulting; Sunsmart in particular is highly wooly and shedding enough to make thousands of cushiony bird nests this spring! 


Plans for the rest of the day: A lovely steak sandwich with melted cheese, egg and fresh garden greens, and a side of caramelised onions, mushrooms and capsicum. Mustard, mayonnaise and tomato sauce of course. Then out into the garden to finally plant some seedlings and pea seeds in the sun. I'm good enough to get out of the peg-leg and into a normal kneeling position for planting now, with the astronaut boot on! Dr Who and perhaps The Prisoner in the rest intervals. A concert video tonight when it's dark.


Hope everyone out there has a great weekend - and please ride for one minute on my behalf today! :loveshower:



:cowboy:


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## gottatrot

That was a good post about spooking, I liked this part you wrote:


> People imagine horses will start to do pretend spooks just to get people off their backs. Well, maybe with some people they do - maybe due to saddle/weight/comfort issues that need addressing, or maybe because they have Neanderthals riding them and don't really enjoy their company, or because they're getting hurt with insensitive bit handling (unsteady hands, grabbing, etc). But I've not had any problems with horses being encouraged to pretend-spook by reverting to work on the ground in iffy situations. I do it as a standard procedure. Horses, if they trust you and see you as an ally/protector, tend to calm down when you're on the ground right next to them, and you very much lower the risk to the rider, however seasoned. Eventually horses extend that belief in your magic bogeyman-banishing powers to having you on their back as well.


I've noticed the same thing. I'm not saying there are no horses that pretend spook, because I met one horse that would be pretend lame at lesson time only. However, I believe people often think their horses are playing games when they're really just spooking. 

The discussion about white animals brings to mind an entertaining thread with a video involving a white donkey and a horse that spooked at it.
https://www.horseforum.com/horse-riding/spooking-how-do-you-deal-757609/page3/ 
A couple years ago at the barn on a very dark night I was still hanging around and petting my horses when I heard galloping hooves coming down the hill. The person feeding the horses had forgotten to latch Badger's gate, and I saw a flash of white go by and as I went to get him I said, "I'm so glad it's you!" because Badger is white so I could actually see him in the dark. :smile:


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## SueC

Thanks!  Also for the clip link - now wasn't that an interesting discussion that followed!  And so much of it was dogma versus careful reasoning. I used to give up on threads like that because it was like bashing your head against a wall while simultaneously pulling out your nose hairs. Kudos to yourself, @Hondo, @Caledonian and a couple of others for your considered contributions. I really dislike people who are always "right" even when they are not, can't admit when the evidence doesn't match their ideas, show little respect for others, and who never use the word sorry, at least not sincerely. I grew up with a houseful of them and have had quite enough of it for one lifetime. :angrily_smileys:


*Random great thing*: Today I was able to put our normal bedding back on the bed! Previously it had been too heavy and "sticky" for my injured foot; we'd had to replace the heavy cotton coverlet with a lightweight synthetic sleeping bag that was unzipped into a doona shape, with the shiny, low-friction side down so my foot wouldn't get trapped by it. It is _so_ nice to be back in proper bedding - and how lovely are freshly washed, sundried sheets that had a little lavender oil in the rinse water...


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## SueC

One day, I'll get to postmodernism and why I generally disliked its effect on music! I'm just picking up again directly from this post here:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page81/#post1970589933

...which was the last in an already long series, but hey, this is about music, growing up, and standing in the middle of your life looking back at it all from a far better place. 

Some time after the red plug-in stereo radio/cassette player, at around 14 years old, I was actually given a very good stereo to use in my room, which was passed down from one of the males in the family (the ones entitled to buy/have bought for them brand-new ultra-expensive stereo equipment). This one had wall-mounted speakers about 30cm tall, and a really decent tuner with a good aerial, so I could finally pick up the remote Perth radio stations without all that horrible crackling, and back then we did have two very good stations: 96fm (classic rock and new contemporary material) and 6UVS-FM (alternative/indie/sometimes plain weird). I also later on got a CD player that was hooked up to the tuner/amplifier, and started out a small CD collection (I had maybe a dozen by the time I was 16).

A sort of funny story about this: I discovered headphones at 14. They had so many advantages. If I played my music on speakers, it wouldn't be too long before people (especially my father) were coming into my room, criticising my taste, aping the singers, jumping around doing caricatures. Saying, "Excuse me!" didn't really work, and "****** off out of my room!" would have got me a lecture on how I didn't own the room because I hadn't paid for it, and how I was living on their largesse, or even a fist in the face for not respecting my elders and betters, like that memorable (seared into memory, actually) time when I was 13 and committed the crime of putting up a Boy George poster in my room, and didn't back down and apologise. (A lot of people coming out of these circumstances have trouble with identity; it was sort of the opposite for me - it seemed to show me who I actually was, from the time I was three and insisted on tying my shoelaces myself, to my mother's annoyance - she likes kids best when they're totally dependent and don't know how to say "no" yet, or how to state opinions and preferences.) Anyway, at around that age I started keeping things that were really important to me emotionally to myself at home, and sort of hoarding them up like secret treasure. My music, my journal, my books. And I spent a lot of my daytimes riding for hours through the state forests on my own, or taking long walks in the country, or going down to the riverbank to sing little songs and look at the reflections in the water.

I only played the radio on speakers, and softly, doing homework etc, and then, if anyone complained about my taste, I could say, "It's the radio station; here's their phone number if you want to take it up with them."







Headphones made me really learn about music, and learn to listen. When you really really focus, you hear so much, and notice patterns and structure and counterpoint, and why things were done. You can vary your focus with each time you listen to a song, in so many ways, and discover universes in a raindrop. It's also a workable form of meditation under circumstances like that - headphones are quite noise cancelling when people are screaming in the house, and listening like that really turns off the monkey chatter in your own brain. (I suppose I could have gone down other roads, like Death Metal or dancing naked to AC/DC, and I can see why people do!)

And now I'm _finally_ getting to the funny part. Phew! The funny part was sitting crosslegged on a mat on the floor in the dark in my room at age 15 with my headphones on, discovering alternative universes, alternative ways of thinking etc, when the door opened and the light got switched on and it was, "The family_ (BTW that's parents and eight-years-older, bullying, golden child brother with the sadistic streak) _are concerned about your behaviour. You're spending hours alone in your room in the dark instead of socialising with us. It's not normal. Are you experimenting with drugs?"
























If any of this is overly familiar to a reader, one of the best online resources I've found on dysfunctional families is this blog:

https://littleredsurvivor.com/

Cherilyn is single-handedly writing the definitive textbook on _Narcissism 101_ and how to emerge from the fog of such a childhood and find your wings. Also strategies for dealing with people like that, and learning to see the patterns. I've never read better material on this subject, and wish I'd had this resource as a teenager. It would have saved me so much head-scratching, confusion and thinking in circles. Cherilyn personally escaped from a religious abusive family, and has developed an authentic form of Christianity for herself, but I don't think she's at all preachy and it shouldn't be too annoying if you're agnostic etc.

And something else from many many pages back in this journal, which slots in very well chronologically and has a very amusing ending:


I started liking this The Cure when I first heard _In-Between Days_ - though that wasn't actually until about 1987, so two years after release. I just looooved the intro then, and I do now; it's an unusual song, and especially in the candypop 80s it really stood out as authentic:





 
Of course, my first loves back then as a 16-year-old were U2, The Waterboys, serious things like that, as delineated from the me-me-me 1980s stuff and the endlessly nauseating synth-based plastic type material. Indeed, Perth radio station 6UVS-FM, run out of a local university, specialised in alternative music, and both Brett and I grew up with that as an important part of our lives, even though it would be nearly another two decades before we would meet. They played Echo & The Bunneymen, Siouxie & The Banshees, The Triffids, Lou Reed, The Cure, The Smiths, U2, XTC, David Bowie, later on Bjork, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, that sort of thing.

They also had a request show (yes folks, this is before YouTube, before iPods, before music on tap at home), on which you could request alternative songs. The other great thing you could request was that they smash a Top 40 tune you hated live on air - this is back in the days of vinyl singles; CDs were only just appearing. Vinyl makes a pleasing crunch when crushed on air. You can't get physical with music like that anymore. Common "please smash this" requests included Jason Donovan, Michael Jackson, Kylie Minogue, Wham!, George Michael, Billy Ray Cyrus (whose "Achy Breaky Heart" was surely a crime against humanity), and that sort of thing.

You could also send in projects; I remember sending in a photo (from a newspaper) of Michael Jackson dancing with his hands suggestively in his pants pockets, to which I'd added a speech bubble, "Oh no! Where are they?" - and I'd written a little 500-word story to go with it, which was duly read out on air, under my pseudonym of _Skippy the Bush Kangaroo_ so I wouldn't be found out. I was 14 or 15 at this point and completely delighted that the university students were reading out what I'd written. They actually played the Skippy soundtrack in the background while reading out my piece. Someone else had sent in "100 Things I'd Rather Do Than Listen To A Jason Donovan Record" - one of which, memorably, was "Rub _Drano_ into my buttocks." It was all great fun.

To be continued!


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## knightrider

@SueC, Disney is pretty fun. Both my in-laws worked there for years so we always got free parking and free passes. Disney treats their employees like "family" so there are lots of perks like extra parties, gifts, free food, and stuff. Also the negative "family" stuff like lousy pay and some in-fighting. Both my in-laws loved working for Disney as the people were treated like they mattered.

I almost wrote in asking which ride your friend especially wanted to do, as I am familiar with all the Disney rides.

I personally actually prefer Universal Studios to Disney. It's a little newer, cleaner, faster . . . and there is HARRY POTTER land, which is way way way too much fun!!!! It is SO well done.

And, yes, given the choice, I would a thousand times rather have a long long ride through the hills in San Felasco than a day at an amusement park. But they are pretty fun, in their own way.


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## SueC

Well, @knightrider, if I ever find that TARDIS and end up in your neighbourhood, I'd be happy to go to Disneyland with you (and obviously riding!). Sometimes you'll do with an interested friend something you wouldn't necessarily do otherwise, and it can broaden your horizons and can even be fun!  My husband, who is a growly bear, is growling, "I'd rather shovel manure than go to an amusement park!" :rofl:

Harry Potter land sounds very interesting - I do love the books, they're so well written, a fairytale for an age.

Isn't it great when workplaces treat people as if they matter! My husband's workplace is like that, and this is worth much more than many other considerations.

How are your horses going? Are you writing up any more of your current adventures in your journal? I'm missing the photographs too! Hope you have a great weekend. :hug:

:cowboy:


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## Knave

@SueC we went to Disneyland once. It was really fun and I loved it! It was bad timing because the lines were long, but it really was a memory I’ll cherish. The girls and I do a thing when we wait for the school bus. It is called “three things.” We each tell two happy moments from the day prior and one random happy memory. The Disneyland trip has come up many times in different little moments.
@knightrider I loved your journal. When you were writing in it often, when I first was on the forum, I would look forward to every update.


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## SueC

Something from the present day: A while back, Brett bought the _Trilogy_ live concert DVD, and I held off watching it until I was reasonably familiar with _Disintegration_, which Brett presented me with a couple of months back. _Trilogy_ is The Cure in Berlin 2002 playing three of their albums back-to-back in the same night - namely _Pornography_, _Disintegration_ and _Bloodflowers_. Hmmm, I wonder if I can cite that first album title or if it's going to be picked up as a "bad word". It's an _interesting_ choice of album title for sure, but as far as I can see (I've not picked up all the lyrics yet on the first listen) is really pornographic only in the metaphorical sense that we see in an expression like "food porn" - it's an album that's really gone to town on the kind of dire poetry that's written by angsty 21-year-olds - and I was once one myself, but not listening to The Cure at the time! :rofl:

Tonight, we gave the concert film a spin. The very first line of the very first song, _One Hundred Years_, was, "It doesn't matter if we all die," and I said to Brett, "Well, that's a good start!" :rofl: I wrote poetry in my early 20s to get through some of the worst experiences of my life, and I remember one that was titled _Rearranging The Deckchairs On The Titanic_. I remember another that ended with the line, "O thy life is exiled from thee." :rofl: I'm laughing now because I can. At the time I could not. But anyway, I get it.

From an online review: 

The first track off of 1982’s _Pornography_, The Cure open up their gothic “piece de resistance” with an innovative wildly flanging guitar, and African polyrhythmics. Smith’s opening words: “It doesn’t matter if we all die” are a sampling of the bleak existentialism and in many cases pessimism that will dot the album. The song is about the drollness of post industrial life and at some points a parallel to the book _1984_ by George Orwell in allusions to police patroling streets under the night and shooting rebels down.


In making the film _Trilogy_, Robert Smith looked back in his early 40s on his life's artistic work and picked three albums of The Cure's umpteen that meant the most to him. One from his early 20s, one when about to turn 30, one when about to turn 40. And then they played the whole thing live from start to finish.

We don't have the first album in the trilogy, but know some of the songs off it from various live albums we do have. Because that's one thing about The Cure: They are an excellent live band and you don't get disappointed by the playing or the singing, which is how it often unfortunately goes with modern bands. I found Simple Minds shocking live, for example - mostly because of out-of-tune singing. I think Bono used to sing much better live before _Rattle&Hum_; their live stuff used to be better than the studio versions, and now it's the other way around.

Capercaillie, a Scottish folk/indie band, whom I saw about ten years ago in Albany and then again more recently, are 100% superb live. I remember holding my breath when Karen Matheson was about to sing her first line - and yes, she sounded wonderful, it wasn't a studio trick, taking the best of ten attempts or whatever. She really sounds so gorgeous it almost brings tears to your eyes in thankfulness that something can be so good. All the instrumentalists in Capercaillie are consummate musicians as well.

And that's the thing about The Cure - they are so supremely competent as individual musicians. You can really see that in a live performance, and you can see how they put it all together, which is fascinating. I get the same sort of fascination when I watch a good string quartet. It also got me when I saw the Australian Chamber Orchestra perform in our Town Hall in 1999, when our Richard Tognetti, and the whole lot of them actually, were all under 35. I remember how they looked at each other during certain parts of the music where they needed to start simultaneously, or when they needed to work in closely with each other, and the smiles that you'd see on their faces when it worked out.

And it was exactly like that watching _Trilogy_. It makes you really aware how much goes into a great live performance, how in sync people need to be, and the amazing teamwork this actually is. We finished Part 1 tonight and just watched the two first songs off _Disintegration_ as well, as I am really enamoured of these particular two, they've rapidly become two of my favourite songs ever.

The Cure has a stage presence like Pink Floyd: A whole bunch of ultra-competent musicians playing very earnestly and without shenanigans. And watching this concert, I was aware that this evening, parts of my brain were activated that haven't been since I used to play violin, before we built our own house and started running this smallholding! :rofl: I was saying to Brett, "They have so much space in their music, yet within each space they are so busy. They're not doing solos and instead building up unbelievable textures by the way they work together with their instruments, all this point and counterpoint, all this n+1, n-1, n+7, n-5 type melodic variation you see in composers like Bach. It's really excellent, just wonderful."

I actually don't have much specialist music terminology, I'm just describing it with ordinary words; a person who did would say to me, "Ah yes, we call that XYZ." I do remember that early on in the Suzuki method I learnt that you could play a note as one long unit, or instead you could do, for example, staccato bowing and break that same note up into four units taking exactly the same amount of time, and that really did something to me! I always preferred these variations. Have a look at this piece, which just encompasses what I'm talking about, and so much more... the best bits seriously are the fast staccato bowing bits, they just _buzz_, they're totally on fire. The non-staccato sections are necessary at the very least to remind you of how great the staccato bits are! :rofl:






And how about this piece? This is the sort of thing that first made me realise violins don't have to be tedious, and go _eeeek-eeeek-eeeek_ in the back of an orchestra. _All_ these sounds from the one little solo instrument!






This guy also rocks it:






And while we're on this topic, if you've not seen this yet, you possibly don't know what string instruments can do:






If any of these don't play embedded, click the YouTube link instead.

You see how this goes? You just go from one thing to another once you get started. I'll therefore cut short my little review of the first part and a bit of Trilogy, and just leave you with a sample. 






There's ordinary music, and there's music that makes you realise how miraculous it is to be alive.


----------



## SueC

...and speaking of classical music, here's an old joke that's still floating around:

*Schubert's Unfinished Symphony*

The president of a large managed health-care facility also served on the board of his community's symphony orchestra. Finding that he could not go to one of the concerts, he gave his tickets to the company's director of health-care cost containment. The next morning, he asked the director how he enjoyed the performance. Instead of the usual polite remarks, the director handed him a memo, which read as follows: 

The undersigned submits the following comments and recommendations relative to the performance of Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony" by this city's symphony orchestra as observed under actual working conditions. 

A. The attendance of the conductor is unnecessary for public performances. The orchestra has obviously practiced and has the prior authorization from the conductor to play the symphony at a predetermined level of quality. Considerable money could be saved merely by having the conductor critique the orchestra's performance during a retrospective peer-review meeting. 

B. For considerable periods, the four oboe players had nothing to do. Their numbers should be reduced, and their work spread over the whole orchestra, thus eliminating peaks and valleys of activity.

C. All 12 violins were playing identical notes with identical motions. This is unnecessary duplication: the staff of this section should be cut drastically with consequent savings. If a large volume of sound is required, this could be obtained through electronic amplification, which has reached very high levels of reproductive quality. 

D. Much effort was expended playing 16th notes or semi-quavers. This seems an excessive refinement, as most of the listeners are unable to distinguish such rapid playing. It is recommended that all notes be rounded up to the nearest eighth. If this is done, it would also be possible to use trainees and lower-grade operators with no loss of quality. 

E. No useful purpose would appear to be served by repeating with horns the same passage that has already been handled by the strings. If all such redundant passages were eliminated, as determined by the utilization review committee, the concert would have been reduced from two hours to about 20 minutes, resulting in substantial savings in salaries and overhead.

In fact, if Schubert had addressed these concerns on a cost-containment basis, he probably would have been able to finish this symphony!


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## frlsgirl

As usual I’m several posts behind but wanted to comment on the sundried bedding: in Germany we used to hang bedding out the window every morning; it would help fluff up the down/feathers in the duvet and pillows. When it was time to go to bed, there was no trouble falling asleep surrounded by all that fluff. I don’t think people do that anymore as most folks have changed to synthetic material. 

So I can only imagine how magical your sundried bedding must have felt! Glad the foot is progressing to proper bedding.


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## SueC

In postscript to what I wrote above, here's the opener off _Disintegration_, which is just magnificent; and not until I saw it live did I realise a few things:






Before I saw this, my mind was kind of going, "Oh, nice guitar work, very low register, bit unusual, be interesting to see what sort of guitar they used." Hello! :rofl: If someone had prompted me a bit I'm sure I would have realised, but the bass guitar is such an underutilised instrument and you really rarely hear it used to work a serious melody, with these slightly bent notes as well like you hear in blues guitar. With a violin, you can slide a note from one side to the other as you don't have frets and therefore no pre-compartmentalisation, and so that's fun. Conversely, it also takes you ages to learn to play a clean scale :rofl: - those notes could be _anywhere_, and you better watch out if the temperature or humidity change drastically, because then these notes won't be quite where they were before. Oh, and your strings are constantly being pulled out of tune as you are playing, particularly if you're really hacking away with a vengeance, so you have to stop and re-tune at intervals - _such_ fun! :rofl:

(When you play piano, the notes are totally pre-compartmentalised, and if the notes are off, the only person to blame is your piano tuner.)

Disclaimer: I have never played or even held a guitar in my life and don't know to what extent frets pre-compartmentalise notes - whether they are a visual guide or actually raised. But...I've just gone away and read the very interesting Wikipedia article on guitar frets and what they do, and yep, standard frets are actually raised... and not like the single little ribbon of masking tape your violin teacher will put on the underside of the neck of your violin to give your stabilising thumb a rough home in first position so you don't go completely mental.

Also if you play pizzicato (pluck the stringa instead of bowing them) you can bend the notes a little by being slightly brutal about it, by putting a little too much force into the pluck. And I've just learnt from Wikipedia that this is also the physical process behind how guitar blues notes are bent. To drive myself mad, I've just listened to the bass on _Plainsong_ umpteen times to work out if the notes are really being bent or if it's an illusion, or possibly a delusion of mine. On the full stereo system it sounds really bent to me. On tinny computer speakers you can't hear a thing. Maybe I need to clean out my ears.

On the subject of using the bass guitar more like a "normal" guitar, I'd already looked at Big Country and how they created their sound; that's back here:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page50/#post1970551039

One of the great things that happens when you play notes so low down on the scale is that it really solidifies the sound, to my ears. It's very very grounding, and I generally like a lot of low-register stuff in a musical composition, whatever the genre. I noticed last night on the Cure concert film, in the first part of the trilogy where a lot of the songs were unknown to me, that the drums and percussion are frequently very low-register there as well, compared to "standard." And conversely, a lot of contemporary music, especially from the 80s on, was really lacking in those notes, and the more lacking it was in that, the more I disliked it. That stuff just seems to teeter annoyingly somewhere in a narrow stratum in the air above you, as opposed to being here on this earth with you.

So you can probably imagine that one of the things I was frequently doing on the violin is playing a tune 4 notes down or 8 notes down (which in violin first position simply means going one string down, or two) and saying, "There now, that's so much better!" Jude Iddisson, my longest-serving teacher, used to laugh and say, "Are you sure you don't want to play viola? You actually have long enough fingers to do it, you know!" And I used to say to her, "A viola is just a violin with an identity crisis. It can't decide if it's a violin or a baby cello, and covers neither instrument appropriately. The violin gives me plenty of low notes, it's just that hardly anyone seems to want to use them. God bless the G-string! And while the E-string is not my favourite thing in the universe, I like just having it there, for occasional variety and so I can slash away at it when the mood is upon me, in unsound imitation of the Psycho shower scene."

That's this one: :rofl: (If you're going to make your violin go "eeek, eeek, eeek" at least do it with panache!)





 
Ah, that wicked E-string!







I watched the Australian Chamber Orchestra do the entire suite at our small town hall in Albany a few years back. It starts like this:





 
That's all nice and spooky, but of course all of us in the audience were waiting for _that_ scene. And when they got to that point, and paused momentarily to look at each other and synchronise, they were all cracking up laughing - but played it perfectly! And the audience were all laughing riotously at this point.









Right, that's enough, and I'm getting Brett to put the laptop in the attic this fine Sunday morning, where I can't reach it with my broken foot at the moment; just to force me to have a day's break from writing. I'm really warming to this theme, and then it becomes dangerous to have an easily accessible laptop you can get comfortable with, because you'll look up and the day is gone and you've got a visual migraine.

Speaking of, I'm throwing in this completely insane music video from 1983; which after watching the two last Cure songs featured in this thread you'd hardly believe are the same band. It's a shame it's such low-quality visually, but it is totally hilarious. Guess who had drama lessons and got egged on to do crazy things? :rofl: Brett and I were asphyxiating particularly over the taxidermic cats on the piano. If anyone finds a higher-resolution version, it's recommended...






And to close off today's madness, here's something very similar from the classical world:






I wish everyone a fine Sunday and will be back after an unspecified interval...


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## knightrider

Fun music discussion. Thank you so much.

Sorry to change the subject, but has anyone heard from Louise? I imagine her baby is due about now. She's probably very busy, but I think about her often.


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## Knave

I haven’t @knightrider, but I think @SueC has. I forgot the baby should be due!!! Yay for babies!


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## SueC

knightrider said:


> Fun music discussion. Thank you so much.
> 
> Sorry to change the subject, but has anyone heard from Louise? I imagine her baby is due about now. She's probably very busy, but I think about her often.


She's going well. Had a very cultural and hygge holiday and would you believe is painting rooms within a week of due date!  You could always try pinging her a greeting! 

And here's a booklet of 10 complimentary subject-changing vouchers for you! ;-)



frlsgirl said:


> As usual I’m several posts behind


Unless you enjoy something that evolves like _War&Peace_, in all honesty there is too much here for staying "up-to-date"! :rofl:



> but wanted to comment on the sundried bedding: in Germany we used to hang bedding out the window every morning; it would help fluff up the down/feathers in the duvet and pillows. When it was time to go to bed, there was no trouble falling asleep surrounded by all that fluff.


And were you dreaming of _Frau Holle_? :dance-smiley05:

Mmmm yes, proper down is so lovely and I've not seen any of that (just so-called "down" which actually includes flight feathers with big feather stalks that come through the liners and stab you ) since moving to Australia.



> I don’t think people do that anymore as most folks have changed to synthetic material.


Yes, quite horrid. :frown_color:



> So I can only imagine how magical your sundried bedding must have felt! Glad the foot is progressing to proper bedding.


Nothing beats sun-dried. And thank you, I am too! inkunicorn:


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## SueC

*Day 29 of bone mending*; 13+ days to go. My "how well did it heal?" X-ray is in 11 days and I'm getting lots of calcium, antioxidants, Vitamins C, D and E as well as regular animal protein. With any luck, by that time weight-bearing will become not just bearable, but advisable. It will probably take a week or two to walk without limping again from there. I'm pretty good at basically rollerskating on my office chair perched on the knee of my dodgy leg and using the other for propulsion; it gets me around the house and I can do pretty much everything I like to do in the kitchen from that perch, but it's not nearly as much fun as this:










I swear that's going right back on the list when my foot can stand up to it. I am in serious need of some physically produced speed - whether that's running, cycling, rollerblading or horse-riding, you know, culminating in a nice gallop up a long sand hill. (Not a particular fan of motorised speed.)

The funny thing is that the astronaut boot is so similar to my rollerblading boots that I keep thinking of my favourite place to do this particular form of motion - namely, on the pictured share path between Middleton Beach and Emu Point in Albany. It's in the foredunes and much more fun than flat skating; it's got little and bigger uphill/downhills, especially nearer the far end, and some of the downhill speeds get quite hair-raising, hence the helmet (that and sharing with dog walkers).

:charge:

Last night the horses weren't rugged at night, apart from Romeo - spring is on the way. This morning I actually got near the lot of them with my grooming kit and scrubbed away at my three at-liberty volunteers (Julian is still thinking about it but sooner or later he'll fall under the spell too :rofl. Sunsmart is the biggest shagpile of the lot of them and his hair is coming out by the bucketful.

Right now I'm in the middle of baking; I've got hazelnut scrolls shaped and rising for a while, and rye/sunflower bread in the breadmaker. After this little interlude I have to turn into a pirate of the vacuuming kind, and then I hope to get in the garden a little before feedtime. The days are getting longer, so that's helping.

And a music post next...


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## SueC

Well, there's another example of what was having a big impact on my brainwaves the other night. The whole experience of immersion listening to _Disintegration_ over the past month and then starting on the live film the other night has actually had the result that I've got my violin back out after a long, long break due to house building...and have re-bonded with it.

:music019:

I initially learnt on a Dolfin starting in 1998, because I sure as hell wasn't buying a Skylark - that's too much like a cat being strangled. :eek_color: :hide:

When I ran into real limitations on that, mainly to do with sound quality after getting to a reasonable level of proficiency, I'd just met Brett and he loudly cheered me on to buy an intermediate Eastman with a lovely tone (_and_ it smells nice :smile, without any plastic components, and strung with Dominant strings. It's pointless playing an instrument whose sound you don't love. And the sound of this one I really do love.

https://www.eastmanstrings.com/andreas_eastman_vl305

For a while there was a bit of trouble tuning the Eastman; the wooden pegs were really slippery and often unwound while the instrument was in its case, and I find it really tedious to have to re-tune a violin from scratch on wooden pegs that are going to keep slipping anyway. So eventually I sent it in for a service, so to speak, and although I drew blanks from the people who looked at it, whatever the reason, when I tuned it up yesterday it not only stayed in tune for the whole rediscovery session, but was still basically in tune this morning - I only had to touch the fine adjustments. Hooray.

People occasionally ask why you bother playing an instrument if you have no intentions of performing in public, or ambitions to be some kind of musical wunderkind (or should that be _wunderfossil_?). Do any of you sing in the shower just because it's lovely? Do you love the sounds reflecting back at you off the tiles that you can pitch back to? Does it make you happy? Well, the same reasons apply for my violin.

I love music, and apart from being great fun to play once you get past the scratchy stage, it also really made me appreciate music even more as a listener. As well, it does amazing things to your brain connections to have to find notes and put them together. It's a great sort of science experiment too, working out sound for yourself from first principles, and there is one more thing for me - I find it a very accessible form of meditation.

I've never been able to just sit and focus on my breath, it mostly drives me crazy and makes me want to go out and run intervals. This was particularly the case up until about age 40, soon after which I discovered that my brain had a typical complex PTSD pattern (wiring from growing up from the time I was born in a family that was an all-out war zone), which explained all that raw restless energy and the propensity for waking up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat with my heart rate sky high as if injected with adrenaline that I'd had all my life, for no apparent reason. It seems to me that brains like that need a _doing_ form of meditation, like horse riding or abseiling or music.

And from the time I learnt where those notes were in first position, I was practicing like a person possessed on weekends, sometimes totally forgetting to have morning tea. :rofl: I had to cut my fingernails ultra short because otherwise you don't hit the fingerboard vertically, and because they grow so quickly in me, I had to keep filing them down every couple of days!  

Right now, I've got those short fingernails again - if you ever want to forensically determine if someone regularly plays violin, look for telltale shorter nails on the fingers of the left hand (because the player can't be bothered keeping both sides short between trimming) and for calluses on the apices of the fingertips on the left hand. I'm currently building those up again and am at the sort of pre-blister stage - metal strings are pretty rough on your skin, even if they do have a synthetic cat-gut imitating core. When you start again, your playing time is limited by having to back off before you actually blister; in a week or two your skin thickens up.

I've got all my old sheet music out again, and with great amusement am reading all my little comments written on the pages and dated. It's like an archaeological dig right back into my late 20s! :rofl:

The great thing is that while I have to go right back to Suzuki Volume 1 when starting again after a long break from this instrument, I don't have to go back to the first half of that book. I'm never, ever playing _Twinkle Twinkle Little Star_ again; I'd rather play scales, and that's saying something! :rofl:

On my couple of re-starts on violin, I've always gone straight to _Perpetual Motion_ and taken it from there. It's the first thing that's not twee in Suzuki Volume 1; it just plays with the beauty of very simple melodies that you just vary and repeat variations of. It's actually really meditative, and as mentioned, I like the echoey variations best where you're not long-bowing a note, but doing short return strokes that break up the note. And from the beginning, I started playing that staccato in preference to as written, until my violin teacher at the time (not Jude) said, "Could you _sometimes_ play it like it's written? That's a skill too, you know!" 

On that page I saw today some notes I'd written, of things I was playing with at the time, in addition to the set practice pieces...because as you learn your basic way around an instrument, you start to think of all sorts of melodies you just might be able to do a bit of.

_Erin Shore_ (an Irish tune)
_Tom's Diner_ (Suzanne Vega)






Instrumental reprise:






Riff from _Every Day Should Be A Holiday_ (The Dandy Warhols)
2nd violin part from _Fiddles on Fire_ (because it sounds better than the 1st violin part, it's a sort of melodic and rhythmic counterpoint)

_Teardrop _(Massive Attack)






_Tubular Bells_ (Mike Oldfield)
Also playing with Cure's _Lullaby_
_The Three Sunrises_ (U2)
_How Soon Is Now_ (The Smiths)
_Cashen Bay Strand_ (Cactus World News)
_Tomorrow Wendy_ (Andrew Prieboy)

...which I just have to throw in, it's spine-tingling...






_Great Song Of Indifference_ (Bob Geldof)
_Shake Off The Ghost_ (Simple Minds)
_Cursuum Perficio_ (Enya)
_The Sun In The Stream _(Enya)

_



_
_Raggle Taggle Gypsy_ (Waterboys)
_Fisherman's Blues_ (Waterboys)
Violin bits from _You Made Me The Thief Of Your Heart_ (Sinead O'Connor)

Speaking of, if you've never heard that one before, this is one of the most hair-raising and haunting songs I know, and it's actually not that well known because it came from a movie soundtrack... it's a grown child singing to their dead parent.






Wow, that's quite a playlist - music really does something to me... there is just so much great stuff if you dig a little.

I think this will have to be continued another time. 

Best wishes to everyone!


----------



## SueC

The animals all know that their monkey is temporarily indisposed. I've just been out to feed Romeo and to let the other horses into the common for the day, and they are so solicitous around me, like they are around their own kind when one of them is injured. They're ready to engage in banter, and to dispense affection, and all of them sniff at me with this "How is she?" concern. It's all very sweet. 

Even the dog has changed her whole daily routine this past month. She seems to think that nursemaiding her indisposed monkey takes priority over supervising and shepherding the farm stock, and spends a great deal of time in the house with me. If I'm in bed, she brings me party balloons and says, "Let's play!" :rofl: That dog. I am making dumbbell shapes for her at the moment with two semi-inflated balloons knotted together, and she picks this up and races around the house with it, comes back to me, throws it in the air, throws it at me so I'll bounce it back to her... like a doggy version of volleyball, except with lots of colour and altitude.

Last night I was having a bath, and this time I couldn't tempt Brett into it, he was on the Dr Who Forum! :rofl: Also he argued that he was clean enough already. There was great truth in this; he'd merely had a day at the office and is the most non-stinky person I've ever met - he virtually never reeks from his armpits, even after a day's mountain climbing in summer, and doesn't ever use antiperspirant deodorant. If _I_ try that, and go about my normal activities, I smell within half a day. There is this hypothesis that antibiotics in childhood can alter your normal gut and skin flora towards the less than ideal; and I was forever on antibiotics at kindergarten age due to (non-calorie-deficit) failure to thrive related infections. Brett wasn't on antibiotics very much at all. Not that one swallow makes a summer or anything, but without any question, it's the microflora on and in you that breaks things down that can be more or less smelly depending on the products they make, but also of course on the substrates you feed them.

Anyway, bathtime is fun now that my foot doesn't hurt as long as I don't bash it into something. I'm quite enjoying splashing about, and because there's tiles and glass all around my splash zone, I can splash to my heart's content, and this really intrigues the dog. The whole concept of my taking a bath intrigues her. She's constantly in any sort of water outdoors and was very surprised to find, after I broke my foot and stopped showering, that I share her hobby, albeit not outdoors. So she'll stand at the edge of the bath with her nose poking over and wagging her tail, and I know she'd like to join me, but hey, I bathe to get clean, and not to get dirtier than I started out! I let her drink some of the water - I bathe in plain sun-warmed water from the solar heater on the roof - and when she gets all hyper-excited and barky, I say, "Where's your _ballooooooooon_?" and she rushes off to find it, and comes back throwing it into the air, into the bath, and racing around so much that she slides all over the place and all the floor mats ruck up. :rofl:

And Brett will call from the office, "Sue, are you egging the dog on again? And should she _really_ be in the bathroom?" :rofl: And I say, "But you wouldn't join me today and she's keeping me company!" and play the broken foot card. :rofl:


Dog Entertainment I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


----------



## SueC

More violin thoughts. :music019:


Skip this unless you are really interested in obscure musical ruminations. I've written this to get things clear in my own head. *Warning: There is not one single equine referred to in this post! *

I'm going to pick up from this from the last music post:

On my couple of re-starts on violin, I've always gone straight to _Perpetual Motion_ and taken it from there. It's the first thing that's not twee in Suzuki Volume 1; it just plays with the beauty of very simple melodies that you just vary and repeat variations of. It's actually really meditative, and as mentioned, I like the echoey variations best where you're not long-bowing a note, but doing short return strokes that break up the note. And from the beginning, I started playing that staccato in preference to as written, until my violin teacher at the time (not Jude) said, "Could you _sometimes_ play it like it's written? That's a skill too, you know!" 

I'm a first-position, non-vibrato player, and have never really enjoyed vibrato anyway to listen to, especially on the high notes, where it makes the fingers down the blackboard experience worse for me. That's not to say there isn't good vibrato, especially on the cello. And that's not to say that one day, perhaps in my 70s, I might decide to learn third position and vibrato after all, but for now I am content.

And how could I not be, when I really enjoy the tone that can be produced very plainly... and when there is _double stopping_! Now there's a bit of magic. On a violin you can play on two strings simultaneously; the bow is pretty happy to sit on two strings at the same time. To triple stop, you need a bit more dexterity than me, and perhaps a flatter bridge.

If you think playing an open string on a violin can make a loooooovely tone (as long as it's not the E-string :rofl, then when you start to double stop you're in for a real treat. There's something so mesmeric and beautiful about two strings half an octave apart "singing" together. It's like putting together melody and harmony in choir, just _wow_! :dance-smiley05:

I can now see why it is that watching a particular concert film woke up sleeping parts of my brain this week and got me thinking violin again. It's really because there is a lot of similarity between the textures being created in that concert, even though it's a different musical style, and the kinds of things that I really enjoyed as a violin learner. 






We've had this one before a couple of pages back, and because you can see people actually putting it together in this one, I decided to repeat it instead of put in the studio version with the official clip that has people in a snowy landscape with incongruous palm trees that induce cognitive dissonance.:cheers:
Plus I think the live version actually does it better. Big compliment to be able to say that... :thumbsup:

I'd like to draw particular attention to the instrumental interplay here at the beginning of the song. What you've got here is a simplicity and beauty to the melodies, with enough space in the mix to hear them; and complementarity, and progression, and call-and-response, and lovely variation around basic themes, and everything just hanging together so well like an organic whole. It's not one person or instrument standing out from everyone else; there's an equality to this, with everyone contributing things of similar value, and there is a synergy to the way this works out. It reminds me very much of choir practice. And it's very, very, very beautiful.

Those melodies could be coming off bell towers, and the tone of everything is just so lovely. It's like a conversation without words, but in a language that says so much more than words.

As I said, I lack much of the musical vocabulary and training, I'm simply observing and trying to think it through. Here are two ideas I find interesting, from Wikipedia:

In music, *imitation* is the repetition of a melody in a polyphonic texture shortly after its first appearance in a different voice. The melody may vary through transposition, inversion, or otherwise, but retain its original character. The intervals and rhythms of an imitation may be exact or modified; imitation occurs at varying distances relative to the first occurrence, and phrases may begin with voices in imitation before they freely go their own ways. 
Imitation helps provide unity to a composition and is used in forms such as the fugue and canon. 

The hyperlinks are live and the rest of that article is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imitation_(music)

...and...

In music, *counterpoint* is the relationship between voices that are harmonically interdependent (polyphony) yet independent in rhythm and contour.[1] It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradition, strongly developing during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period, especially in the Baroque. The term originates from the Latin _punctus contra punctum_ meaning "point against point". 

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpoint
Warning: The rest of this linked page is pretty mind-blowing and requires a lot of digestion. Now I know why people study music as a three-year degree! ;-)

Anyway, those two ideas relate to what I've been trying to articulate, and what I've been feeling and noticing.

Because I kind of stopped listening to the radio from about 1988 onwards, I missed _Disintegration_ and the things that followed it. If I'd heard the above song on _Especially For Headphones_ two years before that, I would have been blown away even back then. I managed not to miss _Lullaby_ and that actually did blow me away, but I didn't have money for CDs at that point as an impoverished university student.

And so, with just the mid-1980s exposure to serious radio, I somehow completely missed the fact that The Cure were a very very serious band, as is so easy to do if all you're hearing is _Love Cats_ and _Friday I'm In Love_, which don't hint at the depths of these people, although _Love Cats_ did show an acute talent for humour and absurdity. :dance-smiley05:

I was mostly away on a (non-twee) classical and (non-twee) folk excursion from my mid-20s to my mid-30s, when I met Brett.  He never went away from all sorts of music, and was very keen to fill me in on what I had missed, with the aid of a huge and eclectic CD collection and an enormous iTunes library. (Plus all those interesting podcasts with which my brain was kept fed and thinking...)

So I was working outdoors with Brett's iPod, making compost or something, back in 2012, when I came across _Bloodflowers_, and listened all the way through, and then just put it on repeat. At the end of the day, Brett was saying, "So what was it today?" And I said, "_Bloodflowers_. :dance-smiley05:It's incredible!" And Mr Husband Cultural Curator said matter-of-factly, "Oh yes, it is! It's a wonderful album. And have you heard..." ...and so began my journey back into contemporary (alternative) music, not just realising that The Cure weren't just _Love Cats_ and _Let's Go To Bed_, but getting all the things that I'd missed because I was so turned off by grunge in the 1990s.

Brett says, "Well, the 80s was worse!" and I say, "No, it wasn't! Yes, mainstream 80s music was melting plastic and disgusting, like that imitation sliced plastic cheese. But grunge, that was 1) unoriginal - wall of sound had already been done by The Doors etc, and 2) mildewed, just like those unhygienic grunge artists themselves who looked like they never bathed for the whole _decade_!"

But he is right that very good alternative music was also there in the 1990s, if you knew where to look. And his Cure story is that he went to see the film _The Crow_ and was blown away by the song _Burn_, and that's when he started buying CDs from these guys. The guitars coming in at around 2:50 are extraordinary... as is the complex percussion...






The Cure, Haruki Murakami (a Japanese novelist), Neil Gaiman, noir movies, so much else... just so much was culturally added to my life through marrying this particular person. And those were just fringe benefits!


----------



## egrogan

Hi @*SueC* :wave:
I'd like to submit my application to be the next member of The Rainbow Foot Club!










Yesterday I was (attempting to) leading Fizz through a gate in our field that we almost never use, and Isabel was extremely nosy about what was going on and what magic might happen when that gate opened. I was shooing her away and not really paying attention to Fizz, and Fizz got flustered with Izzy circling like a shark and her human gesticulating wildly, and hopped right on top of me. Totally my fault, but my poor right foot took the brunt of my distraction. 

It's already feeling better so I'm sure there was no serious damage, but I just had to laugh at the string of "follow-on" injuries people on HF seem to be getting by reading posts about other's misadventures!


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## Knave

Oh no @egrogan! We need to stop following suit!!!! I am sorry.


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## SueC

mg: @*egrogan* , what is it with us people???  This photograph gets you _instant_ honorary admission to The Rainbow Foot Club. The motto should be: _Shock value, novelty and sympathy at a price_.

Feet are pretty painful things to hurt! :hug: Hope you get better really soon. Might have to wear very comfortable shoes for a while...

These things just happen sometimes to us crazy people who decide we really need to be friends with 500kg animals with hard hooves... because while erring can often be avoided, you can't be perfectly unerring... inkunicorn:

I highly recommend a nice relaxing bath just floating your poor foot in the lovely soothing water. :smileynotebook:


PS: I've allegedly got two weeks before I can try to walk, everything going well. At the moment my foot looks like something you see with a toe-tag on it in those forensics show post-mortem rooms!







Its toes sometimes turn greyish-purple and look sort of corpse-like... :eek_color:


PPS: @knightrider, Louise is feeling fine although near explosion point, and up to all her usual shenanigans. She's having a little girl!


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## egrogan

Thankfully it is summer here so I am mostly wearing very comfortable flip flops/sandals, and well broken in boots when I'm with the horses. It actually feels fine and the swelling has gone down already, so I got lucky!


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## Caledonian

Ouch! Hope everyone feels better soon. I think I'll avoid being a member of The Rainbow Foot Club:smile:. My last one was when i went over on my ankle a couple of years ago and my foot turned multi-coloured and was enormous. I couldn't get a boot or shoe on but i never thought about flip-flops.


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## SueC

I'm glad you got yourself a soft sort of landing, @*egrogan* ! 

Hello all! :wave: I hope your week has gone well, and that you're on the downhill to a nice weekend! I've been a little scarce because writing a serious short manuscript, and also reviewing a super-duper talented friend/honorary sister's seriously seriously serious, long and amazing manuscript. :happydance: Hello HRH Ms E.!!! I'm halfway now and will get more time to read your _E-book_  today! :hug: Your baby beats what's in my official and very high-quality bedside reading pile, just so you know it! :clap: :clap: :dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05:


I saw it written somewhere that multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of mental instability. Anyone got anything to say about peppering these gorgeous emojis generously all over this virtual page? ...Brett's always saying things like, "I need sunglasses reading your posts!" and "Brevity is the essence of wit!" and "I personally rather like restraint and minimalism." :rofl:


*Day 32 of bone mending*; 10+ days to go. My foot itself is anything but pale and slight, I wish it was! It's fatter than the other foot and has gone from the pretty rainbow stage of in-situ haemoglobin breakdown to that subdued, disturbing blue-grey corpse look as general subcutaneous cleanup finishes.

What _is_ slight presently is my left calf muscle - I've lost over a third of its mass in five weeks and my leg looks like a stick below the knee. Above the knee it's fine because that area is amply exercised with the pirate leg and the office-chair rollerskating, but the calf muscle's function really is to take your bodyweight while you're on the ball of the foot, and that's been impossible obviously.

Although I'm now starting dry runs with minimal weight on. Tippy-toeing and rolling back to the heel and up on tiptoes again, rinse and repeat, in sitting position. I started that just so I could get my toes on the ground again; they're floating in mid-air at the moment because of all the fluid still inflating the ball of my foot. You get a real pins-and-needles sensation putting pressure on the ball of your foot because of that swelling. Doing this little exercise makes the sensations coming from the foot when it's on the ground feel more normal again.

My allocated orthopaedics specialist is currently enjoying the rides in Disneyland, Florida and will surely be happy with progress when he returns. Apart from wincing at the pretty colours, he basically always is, because I'm a fit patient and not carrying excess weight and I'm keeping up with the good nutrition and exercise, so he doesn't have to worry about me.

This morning I actually managed to stand flat-footed on both feet (look, no hands!), giving a good impression of normality. However, 80% of my weight was on my good leg!








If I had a crane I'd be doing this:










But I _am_ enjoying everyone else's riding reports and photos on HF.







I thank you kindly for my vicarious fix.


Have a great Friday, all! 

PS: Anyone here ever been across the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado? Saw that on the Internet this morning and looks very impressive!


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## SueC

This one:










...not bad.

But this one is truly scary...











And only the Japanese...


----------



## SueC

This morning, @*Celeste* posted a lovely clip from her personal microscope on our 40+ thread. I'm hijacking it to here, it's so amazing, together with a snippet of what followed:

Quote:
Originally Posted by *Celeste* View Post 
_ @*SueC* Here are some microscopic pictures I took at work today. I think they should cheer you up. Stentors are my favorite protozoans. You might think that I am insane; then again you may not.





_ 
I trained as a biologist, and find this completely sane!









I also really think bones have a beautiful architecture and am quite comfortable pottering around the bone yard in our nature reserve - the place where the prior owner put at least three deceased adult cattle, and we put a mare we had to put down late last year. I brought the equine skull and one hoof showing the articulation to the pedal bones back before they could disintegrate, as they really are lovely specimens - and this freaks the hell out of @*AnitaAnne* unfortunately, so I hope she's got her fingers in her ears going _la-la-la_ if she started reading this. It does bring to mind that scene in Hamlet: _I knew him, Horatio!_

But, I did anatomy demonstrations for years at university, and subsequently teaching biology classes at high school.

In fact, as a teacher I used to bring assorted body parts to class; famously on one occasion, fresh equine testicles in a Chinese take-away container, because the Human Biology class had all failed their labelled cross-section of the testicle in their most recent test, and I just couldn't have that. As I was saying to them: _This is one organ that half of those assembled have, and most of the other half will have a great deal to do with at some point, so you simply can't be ignoramuses about it. _And some smartypants said to me, "You know, I _can_ drive a car without being able to fix its engine!"









But I tell you what, after the dissection demo, they got re-tested, and all of them passed, indeed the average score was great!









I've got a really beautiful shot of something microbial for you, but not on this computer. I promise I'll dig it up!


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## SueC

This was the photo I dug up for @*Celeste* , for our social thread...

This is one of the winners from the 2011 Wellcome Image Awards: _Rows of suckers on the foreleg of a male great diving beetle – the largest freshwater beetle in the UK. Great diving beetles mate underwater and the male has evolved plate-like joints on his front legs that are covered in suckers, allowing him to hold onto the female. This polarised photomicrograph (created by Spike Walker) shows a portion of the joint, revealing part of one of the two larger suckers and five rows of small ones _
_Photograph: Spike Walker/Wellcome Image Awards_

from https://www.theguardian.com/science/...-2011-pictures


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## SueC

*Day 34 of bone mending*; 8+ days to go, and a very exciting development: We went shopping, and because the pirate leg is so dirty from all the outdoors mud, I decided to go on crutches. I have been able to stand on my two bare feet unsupported and hands-free for two days, albeit with most of the weight on the good leg. Today I put on the astronaut boot for protection, because of the outing on crutches, and found that I could stand even better when in the actual boot - which I've not tried in a week because I've mostly been out of it with my feet up, or skating around in the office chair barefooted, or on the peg-leg outside.

And not only could I stand very well on both legs bearing equal weight on each _with the supportive boot on_, I could even briefly take all my weight on the left leg without issues - which means I can finally have that weight-bearing X-ray on Friday!

Walking around the shopping centre on crutches, I suddenly found myself dotting my leg down, just like a dog with an injured leg does as it gets better. At home, I discovered I could walk bipedally on crutches as long as I took the weight off the left leg with my arms on the rolling phase of the step. And then, I discovered that I could crab-walk of sorts hands-free on my two feet, with the left foot in the boot; taking most of the weight on the heel of my injured foot. I was doing this hands-free putting shopping away in the kitchen and making tea, and it's totally stable. Progress! 

I then realised that the astronaut boot isn't just a removable cast substitute that can be taken off for bathing and, after the initial phase of healing, for airing out when resting horizontally, until about three weeks in, you no longer need it for protection while sleeping, just for activities that risk banging it or falling. It is also a *rehabilitation tool for walking* - because it supports the fractures, as well as the joints and the necessarily weakened ligaments and muscles (from over a month of non-use), when you start to bear weight again. This is really clever dual-use technology.

And so today, *I've officially begun with the recommencement of weight-bearing, just phasing it in.* I find my body very good at telling me what I can or can't do; there are immediate warning signs if you're going to do something out of your scope, or if you need to stop and rest. and I'm actually just about to go horizontal before horse feeding later. Just extremely happy at this milestone! 


*






*

_Flashback: A little rest stop on the Wineglass Bay 6-hour hike on our first trip to Tassie in our first year together..._

Before grocery shopping we went out to lunch at the Turkish place on York Street. We used to go there once a fortnight when I was doing some part-time work in town for a couple of years back in 2014-2016, but got out of the habit. They're very friendly and do great food - super kebabs with wonderful sauces, and all sorts of other Turkish stuff. We even bought a Turkish bread to take home. It was a great little lunch, we've not been out to eat in several months, and it was just lovely sitting at the table holding hands enjoying being out on the town with each other. You can be ten years married and have this kind of date and both of you can still feel all tingly and glowing from having your fingers intertwined and your minds intersecting in wonderful ways. Two things are pretty clear:

1) We're not going to run out of interesting things to talk about anytime soon, and 

2) If we live to be octogenarians, we're going to be the kind that still walk hand-in-hand down the street together, and we will have twinkles in our eyes when we look at each other and remember our road together.



I am busy hatching a little plan. If it comes to fruition, we promised ourselves that we'll return to eating out fortnightly at this cosy little place with the friendly Mediterranean-culture people...


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## knightrider

What was the Disney ride your orthopaedic specialist particularly wanted to do?

My favorites are the paramecium. I really enjoyed that film clip. Thanks. Also, why don't you put that amazing photograph of the Tawny Frogmouth in your journal as well? I am sure that other people would enjoy it as much as I did.


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## Knave

I am so glad you are starting to recover in a way you can feel!

I too think I will never run out of things to discuss with my husband. We went for a ride yesterday and just walked visiting about random things. I believe I will always be able to talk to him and enjoy his company. Sometimes he makes me crazy too, but I think that is a part of the way it goes. Maybe the times that are hard, even hard because of each other rather than in spite of, build to this beautiful thing.

Yes, I loved the bird. I never knew there was such a thing. So beautiful and interesting.


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## SueC

Knave said:


> I am so glad you are starting to recover in a way you can feel!


Thank you, I am too.  It's so funny to be standing upright in the house again - I only did that twice in five weeks when wearing the pirate leg vacuuming, because the peg-leg gets too muddy in this weather to bring in without a major clean-up operation. So, I was mostly scooting on an office chair indoors for five weeks, which shrank my perspective down a little. Now everything looks different and I feel so _tall_...

How's Squidgy's healing-up going? Did your daughter need a skin graft, or was there enough skin, or are they letting the wound granulate? Is she feeling much better? Can she walk?



> I too think I will never run out of things to discuss with my husband. We went for a ride yesterday and just walked visiting about random things. I believe I will always be able to talk to him and enjoy his company. Sometimes he makes me crazy too, but I think that is a part of the way it goes. Maybe the times that are hard, even hard because of each other rather than in spite of, build to this beautiful thing.


This sounds lovely, and I especially thought that last sentence there was so true. Because we're none of us perfect, and also because generally, in the post-honeymoon phase of a relationship there can be all sorts of problems from various bits of emotional baggage, and commonly from in-laws as well, especially if you come from dysfunctional families with at least one narcissistic parent, like both Brett and I did. So it wasn't always smooth sailing for us either - we went through a really tough time on and off for the first five years - but are so, so happy we persisted in trying to work things out, because we love the place we managed to climb to as a couple, and each other like never before. Where we are now feels lovely and is very real in a way it never was before we put in the miles together. When you start out, you often see what you wish for and wear rose-tinted glasses, and don't know yourself or the other person as well as you think you do. If you can get past that and look realistically in sometimes harsh daylight and still find things to love, and new things to love, then you're really blessed I think, plus you will learn so much you didn't know before. 




knightrider said:


> What was the Disney ride your orthopaedic specialist particularly wanted to do?
> 
> My favorites are the paramecium. I really enjoyed that film clip. Thanks. Also, why don't you put that amazing photograph of the Tawny Frogmouth in your journal as well? I am sure that other people would enjoy it as much as I did.


I'll have to get back to you on the first one; I'll ask him when he gets back!  What's your favourite? (In the Oktoberfest when I was a kid, I just loooooved ghost trains.)

Celeste sure did a lovely job on that footage! :clap: There is so much beauty is the world, both macro and micro.

And because you asked so nicely ;-):

Look who visited us on our office window last year: 



This Tawny Frogmouth had landed on the window frame in broad daylight. Disoriented or taking the opportunity to eat the spiders out of the frame while it’s open? After this photo it made eye contact with the photographer (me







) and flew off into the bush behind the house. These are generally nocturnal birds. We just love them. Their camouflage is incredible, here's a photo we didn't take that shows it so well:










They disguise themselves as branches. Can you see the two in this photo?

Engaging little critters:










This farmer had an accidental encounter with this one - their story is here...

https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/...df8-1535793597


Have a great Sunday all! :hug:


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## knightrider

Both my in-laws worked at Disney for many years. I liked Space Mountain and second place Splash Mountain. My daughter's favorite was Haunted Mansion, which I wasn't all that impressed with. If I ever go back, I'll do Expedition Everest, which looks like so much fun. It wasn't there when we were going and the kids were little. 

I prefer Universal and LOVED all the Harry Potter stuff. It was all great. Even the Hogwart's Express train ride which just takes you from one Harry Potter site to the other one, was a great ride.


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## Knave

@SueC Squidgy is healing nicely I think. The surgeon was as impressive as people explained, and he was able to stretch the available skin and well as use the old cuticle to close the toe. She can walk and finally rode her bike and played on the dirt pile. She is happy and says she feels like a real person again.

Her follow up was on Friday. If you remember about her she has a phobia of things like needles or tweezers, but I had assumed it would be fine. When I have had stitches removed in my life it never hurt. I explained that to her and off we went. The surgeon was not due back in our state for another couple weeks, so his partner was to take out the stitches.

I liked the man. He came in a bit irritated because he wasn’t comfortable with the case. He read it over and showed me the new pathology, which changed the tumor to what the original pa and I believed it to be. It is still a benign thing, which is good.

Anyways, he went to take out the stitches and little girl started to scream and cry so badly her nose began pouring blood. She couldn’t pull herself back together and he was out. Lol. He got those stitches pulled and asked me to make an appointment with her surgeon as he took off out the door. He looked so uncomfortable! Maybe he doesn’t do kids, or kids with phobias? 

It would have been funny if she weren’t so truly scared. The doctor running away from her... It took quite a while for her to get over it. Then she was happy to be back to herself.


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## Dragoon

Someday she will laugh at this story! 
The kid with a phobia of doctor's tools and the doctor with a phobia of screaming kids! Hahaha...Of course they had to meet each other!

So will Squidgy still look like a squished toe? I assumed she lost the whole left half of it. It sounds like the surgeon took care to make it look as normal as possible. I'm so happy for her to feel like a regular person again! And even happier to hear that it was a benign tumor. Whew.

Awesome update!


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## Knave

@Dragoon, although she lost the left half, it really looks so much more normal than the surgeon told us to anticipate. It doesn’t catch your eye at all when she is walking around, and I am sure that she will be able to dress in a formal way with an open toed shoe without too much embarrassment. Well, I really don’t think anyone would notice at all, but I know when something is off about someone they tend to believe people see it; which is why I said without too much embarrassment.

I wasn’t worried about how it would look, but I am grateful for the job he did. After all, it is not my toe and I don’t know how she would feel about it later in life if it was very deformed.


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## SueC

@*Knave* , if there were any issues with appearance down the track, a plastic surgeon could probably use simple injectable fillers to bulk out the toe / make things even if they aren't. In case it's an aesthetic concern when she goes to her senior formal or something. It's quite routine to do that to normalise the appearance of scarring which has bits missing / dimpled etc. But because she's young and young people heal incredibly well, it may not even be perceptible. By the way, let her know I've got an outlandish toe and she can join my outlandish toe club. My left pinky toe doesn't print in the sand and doesn't seem to be connected up to muscles - it just sits there slightly above the level of the others, and I can't move it. :rofl: Outlandish toes are well known to imbue their owners with magical properties! inkunicorn:

I'm so very glad to hear that everything is going OK and Elvis hasn't just left the building but has had a proper funeral. I was having nightmares about what if it's not benign and she's going to lose the toe / foot / etc. I lost an ex-student to a lump on his ankle which his GP said was nothing to worry about and wouldn't even biopsy, and that turned out, on delayed second opinion, to be an aggressive cancer which had already invaded the marrow. Cody was barely 20 when he died, and he had been such a nice boy to teach, and later on to meet and chat to in the street, as often happens here in this small town with ex-students when we're out and about. It's like meeting my baby chickens again when they're fully-fledged birds, and it's really nice. But I'm so sad to have lost this one erstwhile baby chicken. You just want their lives to blossom, and sometimes that doesn't happen. :frown_color:

And just because I refer to them as baby chickens doesn't mean I infantilised them either; it was quite the opposite. I always saw them as full human beings, and treated them as such; I remember once going down to the primary school to baby-sit a Year 4 class for one lesson as a favour, and I did some "big kids" science with them. Next day, one of the teaching aides who had a daughter in that class told me I'd made a big impression because I did not baby her class or talk down to them. She was really chuffed too because I addressed them as "Ladies and gentlemen!" whenever I wanted their attention, and was ultra polite to them, and really wanted to hear what they had to say. Well, if you don't do these things, why would you teach? It bamboozles me. Kids respond so positively to that sort of thing, and intellectually and emotionally tend to get vastly underestimated by adults. I didn't like that as a kid either, so I took care not to repeat it.

But they still felt like baby chickens in the sense that it seemed like I was taking turns with others to sit on the eggs.  Mama Bear stuff.

Well, that's enough ramblings I think. :rofl: @*knightrider* , I remember having a conversation with you about your family working at Disney, just not the ride; I'll be sure to grill Mr Orthopaedics when he returns, and I'm also going to ping Louise to see if she's met the new earthling yet.

@*Dragoon* , agree that was a comedy situation apart from the upset little girl... for what it's worth, I always take out my own stitches, it's not hard to do and it feels better when I do it. @*Knave* , am I putting ideas in your head? :rofl:

To close, I'm going to post some songs, to go with all that cutesy couple stuff I've been writing. This is one from a band I like nothing else from, but I do like this song...






To think that I once, when this came out, thought how grown up these people were, and now they look barely out of school to me! :rofl:

Because we're currently having a Cure theme at home, I wanted to pick my favourite love song of theirs so far. I say so far, because they have one heck of a back catalogue I'm not even a quarter of the way through at this point/ It's actually really nice to "discover" a band with so much past work, in your 40s and away from your adolescence.

As equal firsts, I chose _High_ and _Love Cats_ from their list of contenders, because it's playful and carefree and I'm a late discoverer of these ideas in relation to love, which as a younger person I always used to be so dead serious about. 






_Love Cats_ is so totally tongue-in-cheek, but I used to take it seriously and really hate it when I heard it played on the radio when I was growing up, and later on too. In fact it's only this year my hair was finally let down enough to give it another spin, and I looked at it very differently then and found myself smiling as I listened.






Now it's your turn: Favourite love songs...  Post away!


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## SueC

By the way, apologies for being a bit scarce on other people's journals and my usual haunts this week, I'm working on some serious bread-and-butter writing just now and am minimising screen time. Will get back to normal when I'm done!


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## SueC

Oh yeah, and this piece always reminds me of our wedding day:


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## Knave

I am sorry you lost the student. It makes you want to pull your hair out. I worried too, but I tried my best to put it aside. I know the Lord does not give you what you cannot handle, and although I may not give the girl enough credit, it would be such a pitiful thing for a person petrified of even tweezers to end up in the hospital for their life story. It was hard as it was, I could not fathom further.

I have always taken out stitches myself too. Really, it never has been an issue. I simply wanted to do the follow up because I wanted a doctor to look at the toe. I don’t know it did any good, but husband pointed out that she would hate me instead of him if I took them out... 

I am glad that you taught the way you did. I too hated being talked down to as a child. I remember thinking the Greeks, or whatever culture I had done some reading on, had it right when they believed a child was capable of being a small adult. Lol. Now I no longer fall pray to such a mentality, because I believe children deserve protection, love, and even empathy for the mistakes that they will make because they are still learning.


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## SueC

*Exhibit A Day 37*: As usual, Exhibit A on the left, control group on the right.









Last comparison photos 11 days ago were posted here:
https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page82/#post1970590671


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## SueC

*Day 37* (only 5+ days to go)

Well, the photo comparison from 11 days ago shows a less swollen foot, but still red and inflamed, as it actually needs to be when healing up - extra circulation is required. At the moment the fracture calluses are in the ossification stage - turning into bone, which we'll see in the 6-week X-ray on Friday. I'm feeding the fractures plenty of cheese, milk, general protein, and Vitamin D, E and C supplements, and our food antioxidants are still turned up compared to our usual already high intake. So: Lots of blueberries, raspberries, green tea, red capsicum, tomato products, dark green leafy vegetables, cocoa, extra-dark chocolate etc etc etc. I think the Vitamin D is especially important - try getting enough of that for fracture healing in the Australian winter, unless you're a dedicated outdoors nudist.

The bruising on the arch of the foot is finally starting to clear - and now, if you look carefully, you can see three long finger-like patches in the bruising pattern, which correspond to the three broken metatarsals underneath. The fracture sites are just above the tarsal joints, at the proximal end of the metatarsals (closer to the toes is called the distal end). If you look at the top edge of the foot in the picture, there is a little prominence (for reference, just under the doorknob), which is where the tarsal bones end and the metatarsals begin. Work you way down along the arch from there, and the fracture of the second metatarsal (closest to the big toe) is actually right underneath the purple part of the bruise, with the adjacent fractures sweeping in a slight curve below that.

When bones like this fracture, they bleed freely into the surrounding tissue, and it takes weeks for the body to clean up the resulting rainbow colours which, by the way, represent different stages of enzymatic haemoglobin breakdown which take it from a purple/red pigment (depending on whether deoxygenated or oxygenated) through to green and yellows, as we've seen, and finally subtle browns, which are starting on the top of my foot.

The immune system is responsible for cleaning up the mess after a bleed into tissue. It's the amoeba-like macrophages (literally: big eaters!) that go around chomping on detritus like clotted blood to break it down. The green stage is due to haemoglobin being broken down to biliverdin; in the yellow stage, it's gone to bilirubin (which also turns your skin yellow if you have liver disease, or are an infant with untreated Rhesus incompatibility), and when the iron from that is reclaimed into haemosiderin by the macrophages, you get a brown colour that can look like a tan, and the top of my foot indeed has a fake tan at the moment from that (as well as reddish tones from vasodilation accompanying residual and necessary inflammation while the bone heals). The haemosiderin will be used to recycle the iron back into other useful places in the body, such as new haemoglobin, or myoglobin (oxygen storage pigment in our muscles - whales have lots of that because of deep diving and therefore have very dark meat - sprint racehorses, ditto, due to their priming for anaerobic metabolism).

So that's the whys of rainbow skin.

I am so interested in that upcoming 6-week X-ray. It's really great to have ended up in the early weightbearing group at the age of 47 not 25, and after I actually couldn't bear weight on the injured foot at all for over a month. And suddenly, this week, I started to be able to. A couple of days later, I'm walking around indoors in the astronaut boot, still pretty lame on the nearside hind leg, but able to get about on it faster than on the pirate leg. It actually feels fantastic to be on my own two feet again, and while not walking cleanly, definitely perambulating bipedally!

It's great to get the full weight back on the left tibia, which will have lost a bit of bone density from lack of use. Well, that's on its way back up as we speak - bones need compression to stay strong. The pirate leg has been vastly helpful not just practically, for hands-free upright work like horse care, hanging washing on the line, cleaning the house, but also for minimising loss of bone density and muscle tone above the knee, because I continued to bear weight on the knee the whole five weeks I couldn't bear any on my foot. And now, the astronaut boot is doing its bit to ensure the fractures, as well as the weakened ligaments in the foot and ankle from five weeks of non-use, are properly supported as I start walking again.

It's so good to get it back. Also, it's really great to be able to wear socks again at last, on both feet. The first pair on Saturday were cerise-coloured bamboo socks; today I'm wearing purple. When you first fracture your foot, you can't touch it or bend it without pain, so no socks. Well, I'm happily back in sock-land.

Outdoors, except when hanging up clothes, I'm still peg-legging to keep my foot safe in uneven terrain. It's a gradual process. I wonder if I'll be back in sneakers in a fortnight... would be surprised if I wasn't within a month.


:cowboy:


----------



## SwissMiss

SueC said:


> PS: Anyone here ever been across the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado? Saw that on the Internet this morning and looks very impressive!



Yep, been there and walked over it - quite impressive!  My DH (who is terrified of heights) had the time of his life :rofl:
This was part of our quest of following the Arkansas River in Colorado (we lived in AR during that time). Fun times!!!


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## SueC

Bwahahaha, @*SwissMiss* ! :rofl: And I reckon you would have had a pretty good chance of having been across the Europabrücke at some point in your life? Has your DH had the pleasure? My mother used to go pale crossing that one, especially in a high wind during a traffic jam, when it would swing. It's supposed to swing! :rofl: Makes it more resilient...






















Beaming best wishes to you for recovering from your affliction. :hug:

Hullo, @*Knave* , @*knightrider* , @*Dragoon* , @*gottatrot* , @*egrogan* ! :wave: Hope you're all having a great week. :charge:
And Louise had her little girl on August 31; everyone well. Her best friend had a little boy three days later.  DHs being put to good use I hear. :rofl: You may hear from her in person once she can draw her eyes away from her brand-new earthling! :happydance: I somehow don't think she is thinking about horses right now... :rofl:

A joke for you all: Why didn't Noah go fishing? ...he only had two worms.


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## SwissMiss

As long as my DH can't see the ground, he is fine. So driving over the bridge you showed is no problem.
This one? A completely different ballgame! Check it out :biggrin:

World's longest pedestrian suspension bridge opens in Switzerland: Photos and video


And since you like hiking: How about this one? It is very close to where I grew up.






Good to hear that Louise and baby girl are doing good  Yeah, don't think she is thinking about horses much atm :rofl:


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## egrogan

Uggh, I really hate bridges. Particularly the high water crossing variety. Nothing but bad, irrational thoughts crossing those. When we lived in Michigan, we had to go over the Blue Water Bridge into Ontario pretty frequently, as that was the fastest route over to New York, where we had lots of friends and family. The international border crossing is on the edge of the bridge, and the line to go through customs was almost always at least an hour, so you just had to sit there feeling the whole thing shaking with the traffic. Even worse during high winter winds. Makes me shudder just thinking about it now!


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## Knave

I think I would enjoy walking the bridges, but if I had to drive on one I would think I was going to die.


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## Knave

So, I was sitting here eating my breakfast and thinking about bridges. When I was in high school I went on a trip with my grandfather to see my uncle in Oregon and go on a pack trip.

It is one of my favorite memories. I took a mare called Runt. She was my horse, likely the best horse I’ll ever have owned, but super hot and anxious. As we first began our trip we crossed a little bridge. Ruby panicked and jumped off. I lost my packhorse in the drama. There was tall grass and a creek. She missed the creek diving into the green. Unbeknown to either of us there was a hidden stump in the grass, and she hit it hard right in the center on her chest. It threw her back.

After I righted myself and got back onto the trail she was more nervous, but the stump had been a blessing in controlling her suicidal tendencies. She was shaking all over but wouldn’t jump. Now, in Oregon in the wilderness there is some steep cliffhanger trails and I was as nervous as Runt looking down and instead of seeing the beauty of the scene I could imagine my death. Lol

So, we crossed other short bridges and she kept it together. Then, towards the end of the first day there was a real bridge. A river raged underneath and Runt did not want to step onto it. I prayed the stump would stay in her mind. I believe it did as she shook and sweat dripped from her neck and she danced across the bridge. 

After that trip I never saw the day she was scared of heights again. I could ride her anywhere and she was a cat on the trails. It was what eventually took her out of the game.


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## SueC

Knave said:


> I have always taken out stitches myself too. Really, it never has been an issue. I simply wanted to do the follow up because I wanted a doctor to look at the toe. I don’t know it did any good, but husband pointed out that she would hate me instead of him if I took them out...


:rofl: I think we have shared DNA that's a bit more recent than the Dark Ages! 




> I am glad that you taught the way you did. I too hated being talked down to as a child. I remember thinking the Greeks, or whatever culture I had done some reading on, had it right when they believed a child was capable of being a small adult. Lol. Now I no longer fall pray to such a mentality, because I believe children deserve protection, love, and even empathy for the mistakes that they will make because they are still learning.


And when you think about it, bits of that also apply to adults... But yeah, to me a good combination for dealing with children and adolescents is total respect and awareness of humanness, as well as a truckload of appropriate nurturing. Plus high expectations of good behaviour. ;-)

I loved this film:

https://iameleven.squarespace.com/trailer


----------



## SueC

SwissMiss said:


> As long as my DH can't see the ground, he is fine. So driving over the bridge you showed is no problem.
> This one? A completely different ballgame! Check it out :biggrin:
> 
> World's longest pedestrian suspension bridge opens in Switzerland: Photos and video


Wow, that one is wonderful, and I'd actually be OK on it because the sides are sufficiently high. I mostly stress when I feel someone could easily hoik me over the side of something like this. Or, when the sides are only the height of my hips. This is a really lovely bridge. And a bit more of a mouthful than this one we did regularly at Cataract Gorge in Launceston, Tasmania, when we were stationed there for work in 2009:






















> And since you like hiking: How about this one? It is very close to where I grew up.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1gkrjsG-HQ


Wow, @SwissMiss, did you give us something to look at for our morning cup of tea! :clap: I've got to confess, sheer drops make me queasy, but on the other hand it's totally safe when you're clipped into a cable like that, and I can really see the attraction of doing something like that. And such a pretty area!  I was however saying to Brett, who proposed to me on the summit of the most strenuous climb in the Stirling Ranges, Mt Toolbrunup, that it would be bad to propose on Mürren because then you probably couldn't return on an annual pilgrimage once you're, I don't know, 65+ or something... and that would be sad...

It was on the middle spire of this, very romantic... 











When watching your clip I did shudder thinking about how on earth they set up Klettersteig in the first place though... mg: 

Thankyou for posting a piece of your birthplace!


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Uggh, I really hate bridges. Particularly the high water crossing variety. Nothing but bad, irrational thoughts crossing those. When we lived in Michigan, we had to go over the Blue Water Bridge into Ontario pretty frequently, as that was the fastest route over to New York, where we had lots of friends and family. The international border crossing is on the edge of the bridge, and the line to go through customs was almost always at least an hour, so you just had to sit there feeling the whole thing shaking with the traffic. Even worse during high winter winds. Makes me shudder just thinking about it now!


It's a wonderful bridge, but I can see why you wouldn't want to be stuck on it! :shock:

It's seriously winter in that photo!  What an ice sculpture in the foreground!  Natural I think?

@Northernstar is from Michigan, though I've not heard from her in a while. She told me all about maple syrup production and had lovely Morgan mares too. Still has them I would think! 

When we think of New York, Brett and I instantly think of Suzanne Vega, one of our favourite singers...


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## SueC

*Day 40!* * 6-week X-ray and all clear for walking!
*
I'll go with the bad news first: No horse-riding yet. No heights, basically, for a bit. And I'm not buying a Shetland Pony. (But, I will definitely be pushing at this boundary when my walking gets comfortable enough. I've just asked my horse and he's missing our outings too.)

Everything else is good news. The 6-week X-rays show really good new bone formation and no Lisfranc ligament damage. I'm cleared to walk, which is nice, considering I've been walking (well, hobbling really) indoors since Saturday, just in the splint boot, no crutches, because it felt right. It's really amazing how your body will tell you what's OK and what isn't if you actually listen to it.

Those X-rays were a bit of a contortionist experience. The young radiographer was lovely and we laughed and joked a lot. She was showing me the various weird and wonderful poses I was to assume on several barefoot weightbearing takes, and I'm going, "Ummmmh, can I have one crutch in case I unbalance?" And so, I stood bearing my full bodyweight on my bare injured foot, in so-called flamingo pose, for the first time since my accident. And it didn't hurt, it was just the usual funny sensations coming from that area - pins and needles in the ball of the foot, creakiness, even crunchiness (but it's not the bones, so that's OK ;-)).

And isn't it cool that the days of film as mainstay have passed for X-ray as well as photography? Nowadays they just have sensitive plates that convert the radiation imprint into zeroes and ones that get sent into a computer for digital re-construction. So, even X-rays are digital these days.

Behind the reception desk at X-ray was a young woman who looked at my astronaut boot and said, "Ah, been there!" I had shown up at 7.30am when things aren't busy and people are happy to chat then. Turns out she fractured her ankle-bone during netball two years previously, when someone stepped on the side of her ankle as she was moving. We compared notes. She says her calf still isn't back to normal size after all that time, but she's working on it. We wished each other luck and an excellent day. 

I was way early for my 8.20am orthopaedics appointment in fracture clinic. Someone didn't turn up who should have, so the receptionist bantered with me. We're getting to know each other a little with all this going to fracture clinic - she's a lovely, very energetic, endearingly don't-mess-with-me older lady. She used to ride horses too, but life has taken her elsewhere. We ended up chatting about Monty Python's "Machine That Goes Bing" and the public hospital experience, which has been A1 in all respects for me for this particular injury, _everyone_ I've been meeting and dealing with have been top-notch wonderful and professional all rolled into one, and as we said to each other, that's often not the case. Also we referred to _Grumpy Old Men / Women_ which I've loved and identified with since my 30s and she said she formally became like that at 50. :rofl: We both swore we'd be holy terrors if we lived to be 80.

Zac the orthopaedic specialist is still enjoying Florida, so today I had a short-term young locum from Perth, resplendent in turban and jet-black beard. All three of the specialists I've seen for this injury have been Generation Y and so lovely, down-to-earth, well-mannered, and professional. The very first leaving class I taught back in 1998 was GenY and after getting to know them, I felt so happy that the world was getting a better generation than our own next, and that's indeed how it has turned out. GenX was so shiitake. Don't get me started on my leaving yearbook, on how most (but not all) of my generation answered the question of what they wanted to achieve with their lives with responses like, "Get rich," "Be a millionaire by the time I'm 25," "Get laid as much as possible," "Own a Ferrari," "Go to Paris and get famous," blah blah yadda yadda. It was all me-me-me, most people didn't appear to consider that they might have something to offer the world, that they _should_ offer the world. Oh no, the world was like a supermarket at far as most of them were concerned.


My allocated orthopaedics specialist shook my hand warmly and introduced himself, said the X-rays were great, looked at my foot, and said, "Walk! As much as you can, but sensible and not overdoing it. Build it up. No running, no horseriding yet, sorry, walk walk walk!" I asked him if I could rollerblade yet and he laughed and said to me that it's not a problem for my foot, but what he worries about is that I will feel a twinge of electric pain at some point and this will cause me to stack it and fracture something else higher up. So officially he was going to say no. I winked at him and said, "I do use a crash helmet and have full wrist protectors as well as knee and elbow gear on standard as well, so I tell you what, I'll walk walk walk on that foot this week and do a study on the assorted twinges and take it from there, maybe in a week or two...but I promise to stay in pretty flat areas, no big downhills so no uncontrolled speed..."

Next we discussed good hiking trails, since he's from Perth and would like to get out and about a little. He mentioned Bluff Knoll and I told him it's a tourist hike, Toolbrunup is the real deal, and if he wants something that only takes an hour to climb and is the biggest bang for your buck, Mt Talyuberlup is the thing: A cave on top, and when you get on the other side of that, a _Lord of the Rings_ view, a rock formation like an eagle on your right, and a little goat track between that and the cliff that takes you to the summit proper. This one:












Birthday Walk XIV by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr



...the one Brett and I climbed the weekend before I broke my foot actually... and you might have seen these photos then too.

The friendly orthopaedics fellow got me to write down the name of that one, and showed me my X-rays. He also suggested I make my astronaut boot an outdoors-only thing ASAP and start wearing supportive hiking boots indoors on both feet. He says I can walk on reasonably level ground outdoors immediately as well, in the astronaut boot, in which I will still be anywhere between 2 and 6 weeks - phase in the hiking boots as pain permits. To take crutches for the first couple of days for extra assistance, and in case I need to rest the foot on the way back. Not to do any tiptoeing on my injured foot for a bit, nor heel raises. To do range-of-motion exercises for my ankles, and that he'd tee me up with the physiotherapy team for rehab.

I'm well advised to keep using the pirate leg when on uneven or muddy ground - for my horse feeding routine, basically - for another couple of weeks. He was really interested in the pirate leg actually, so I told him the model name (it was at home!). He also told me that my foot was going to have associated swelling for at least half a year, perhaps a year - that's normal for that sort of fracture.

I couldn't make physio today or they would have sent me straight there, but Brett needed to go to work and he's got the late shift, so we arranged it for early next week, and I'll do all sorts of things meanwhile anyway.

On the way home, I did stop in at Trailblazers and buy myself a new pair of hiking shoes for the rehab, and the mountain climbs that lie beyond.  My old Keens were relegated to farm wear recently, although I did wear them in the last climb before the accident, in the photo above. I needed a new pair anyway - the soles were too worn for decent traction on rock. My last Keens were low-cut, which I prefer for most walks as I really don't ordinarily need ankle support. I have some high-cut Columbia boots for serious stuff like Cradle Mountain in Tasmania, but they're too tight for what I need to do now.

Keens have always been superb for people with wide feet like myself, and you do not need to break them in, they won't rub or blister you. I tried a few and ended up going with these:










I did actually consciously buy ankle-highs this time, because I do want a little more stability for the next six months or so, and this boot is kind of convertible - you don't have to use the top two clips for your laces if you don't want to, if you'd like less restraint.

Online review:

https://runrepeat.com/keen-gypsum-ii-mid-waterproof

That's nice, considering I bought them on foot feel and inspection alone.

Of course, the main problem with getting into the left one is pain associated with swelling, but this is not a problem if I can go straight in first thing in the morning, when the foot is almost normal. Compression tubing over the mid-foot has been helpful for reducing the daytime ballooning associated with the vertical position while I've been in the astronaut boot, but will roll inside a tight hiking boot, so I had a chat to a pharmacist on the phone earlier and she's put some ankle-high foot compression socks under the counter for Brett to pick up in his lunch break for me, so that hopefully I can convert from astronaut boot to hiking boot indoors tomorrow morning!

...and to celebrate all this I'm going to:

1) finish my Val McDermid book, _Beneath The Bleedin_g, with my foot up. It's crunch time for all my hunches for the puzzle she has presented, and the rest can be read in one little sit-down. She's a great writer (known for the TV spin-off _Wire in the Blood_) - not just a crime writer. Her characterisation, sense of place, vocabulary, and observations on the human condition and modern madness are all superb; the crime is more a background thing, just the job that the beloved detective protagonists happen to do, with puzzles to figure out... this is my favourite of hers yet... but if you want a really outlandish and superb read, I highly recommend Haruki Murakami's _The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle_:


https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/02/books/east-meets-west.html


2) Take the dog on my first official bipedal outdoors walk down the sand track and back, with crutches along just in case.


:happydance:

PS: Drove again for the first time today too!


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## SueC

Hullo @Rod! :wave: :hug:

How's your eye going? Sending good vibes from the Southern Hemisphere. I hope you have a great outcome, like @Knave's little girl with her toe.


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## waresbear

Sue I just wanted to say you and your hubby are very cute! And thanks for the birthday wishes. I had no internet at my house but we finally got new technology, Internet, yay so I will be posting more! I was really killing it with the mobile data, lol


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## SueC

...and hello @*waresbear* ! :wave: :hug:

Long time no see! How's riding? How's DH?

I was inviting people to post favourite love songs in my last set of music posts. You introduced me to some interesting stuff - like Disturbed's cover of _Sound of Silence_. So I'd be curious about your choice(s) for this category! 

PS: And awww, thank you. I guess we're both fuzzy-headed people with smiles that reach our eyes.  I think he's pretty cute!  And vice versa. Sort of mutual admiration society. ;-)


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## SueC

*The Christmas of Simple Things
*
After yesterday's post, I had a wonderful 2km walk with the dog around our west forest / sand track loop. It was a bipedal walk with one astronaut boot and a pair of crutches, used rather in the manner of cross-country skiing. I was putting both crutches down each time my injured foot was down, to take some of the weight off it during the rolling phase of the step sequence, and this allowed me to walk at normal speed again - 6-7km/h for our normal hiking walking on flat ground - we like to go at a fair clip and to really swing our legs.

And oh what an amazing feeling to be finally doing that again - taking extended steps, stretching out all the muscles in the legs and lower back in the process, and really really moving, not just hobbling along. With the support of crutches during the rolling phase, there is no limp and no pain, and the general discomfort of the foot was very much backgrounded by the lovely sensations of stretching muscles and freedom to move and to breathe, and the working up a sweat that was actually connected to speed, rather than pain or having to move awkwardly. I can't express just how great that felt.









The dog was giving me this look on the walk, "So are we back in business?" :rofl: Right now she's lying on her side within cooee as I write this, waiting for the promised morning walk - and she gave her usual melodramatic sigh as she went "on hold". I told her that her middle name is now Florence, because she has been a faithful nurse at my bedside whenever I've been horizontal since my injury; and that represents a complete break in her previous routine, which was to be the livestock guard and supervisor every minute there was daylight, and to only come in voluntarily if the weather was cataclysmic or night had fallen.

It's Day 41 post-fracture, and this morning I have reached another milestone: I have both feet back in a pair of matching footwear - my new hiking boots from last page! I've left the lacing loose over the left midfoot, but have it firm on the ankle, which is perfect for the moment. And they are soooooo comfortable - something Keen hiking shoes are well known for, and why this is my third pair already - having worn out the previous two (well, the last one is still good for around the farm, but the soles aren't grippy enough for rock faces and boulders anymore).

I've had a good walk around in them indoors and think they are just superb for this stage. The support and sideways stability (ankle roll protection) is nearly as good as the astronaut boot, but these boots are super-light and comfortable, and it's so good to have equal weight, sole thickness and general configuration on both sides, and I have made the executive decision this morning that I will be taking crutchless walks on our public road in them starting now - it's a level surface. Also I will do my physio in them.

On our farm tracks I will revert to the cross-country astronaut skiing again until I become completely limp-free and comfortable indoors and on the road in hiking boots. And from a biomechanical point of view, I'm far better set up to use both legs correctly and evenly if I am also in symmetrical footwear, instead of lugging a heavy weight on my injured foot and having my hip at an angle because of its heel height - to me, that's a recipe for back problems and for cultivating uneven walking, not for using your muscles correctly. That's also why my specialist actually wanted me to ban the astronaut boot from indoors immediately. He's just mostly concerned that my foot is properly supported - and these Keens are not ordinary sneakers, nothing like it - they're fully supportive, grip-soled, base-wide, ultra stable things made to prevent injuries on slippery rocks and uneven ground.

The indoors road test this morning was excellent - in bare feet I can barely hobble on the injured foot, in the hiking boots I can walk comfortably and dare to take weight back through the first metatarsal, which is our main weightbearer for striding walking. The other metatarsals are mostly there for stability. The reasons I can't walk barefooted are a) that I need cushioning between it and the ground, and b) that my foot needs to be supported and prevented from accidentally rolling. The main reason I instinctively take weight on the side of the injured foot barefoot rather than use it evenly I think is to prevent rollover. Well, the hiking boots really tick those boxes, which is great.

The limp when walking at present is caused in part by (probably correct) anticipation of midfoot pain through the rolling stage of the step, and also definitely in part by reduction in ankle mobility through lack of use for nearly six weeks, plus contraction and atrophy of the left calf, same reason. I've been doing calf stretches and general leg muscle stretches, and this immediately improves the limp. I can also at this point walk backwards or sideways limp-free.

And I'm dying to take this on the road, so I'll excuse myself now!  Hope everyone has a great weekend.


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## gottatrot

I know what you mean about the Christmas of simple things. Today going on a trail ride I felt like the luckiest girl alive. I have a new blue riding helmet, ate spaghetti and pizza, and it seemed like anyone with a day like this would _have_ to be extremely happy like me. If all that wasn't enough, when I went to give the horses treats after riding, a huge rainbow was stretching all across the sky. 
Some days you break your leg, and other days you have a walk and it feels like Christmas. 
Listening to music tonight, I felt like telling you that I like this song a lot by The Cure:


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## Rod

SueC said:


> Hullo @Rod! :wave: :hug:
> 
> How's your eye going? Sending good vibes from the Southern Hemisphere. I hope you have a great outcome, like @Knave's little girl with her toe.


thank you. had surgery yesterday. things went well. eye is pretty sore. I expect to do well. i'll bring you up to date in a few days when I get to feeling better. thanks again


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## SueC

Oh, @Rod, so glad to hear that the outlook is good! :happydance: 

Sorry you're sore. When you've got sore eyes, it can be good to lie down in the dark and listen to music on headphones. Are you going to have a temporary eyepatch? Then you can be a pirate like I was with my peg-leg! ;-)


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## SueC

gottatrot said:


> I know what you mean about the Christmas of simple things. Today going on a trail ride I felt like the luckiest girl alive. I have a new blue riding helmet, ate spaghetti and pizza, and it seemed like anyone with a day like this would _have_ to be extremely happy like me. If all that wasn't enough, when I went to give the horses treats after riding, a huge rainbow was stretching all across the sky.
> Some days you break your leg, and other days you have a walk and it feels like Christmas.


Yeah, it's like that, isn't it. Now we can all go read Khalil Gibran's _On Joy And Sorrow_ again. 

Your day sounds like a perfect day there.  Not many people these days seem to have the gift of finding real joy in things in life that are connected to nature and hygge and relationships with people and animals. Yet to me those are also the things that really count, and I yawn at the catalogues of advertised junk that arrive on our doorstep on a regular basis. Sometimes we go through these and just laugh at the kind of crazy stuff that a lot of people actually buy... It's really great to not take cues from the advertising world! :rofl:




> Listening to music tonight, I felt like telling you that I like this song a lot by The Cure: (Lovesong)


That one was famously written by the singer as a wedding present for his wife 30 years ago!  I think that's a nice story, and their relationship has lasted, which is also a plus.

I was reading some essays in actual publications on the music of this band recently, and you wouldn't believe the BS that people write and get paid for. Someone in a paid article (!!!) was complaining about the lack of sexually explicit lyrics from this band, and making this ridiculous leap that this somehow reflected on the repressed sexuality of the writer, or lack of maturity in that department. So now explicit language is a marker of psychosexual maturity? :rofl: I don't think so. As someone in a long-term relationship myself, who also writes about all sorts of things including the personal, but also never inflicts sexually explicit material on the public, might I suggest that this might be because some spheres of life are private and should be respected as such...

By the way, here's another song of the same name, which I rather like. This was before this particular band went all commercial - something U2 also did around the same time, and therefore lost their authenticity. The Cure laudably never did lose their authenticity, because they didn't buy into this idea that popularity is equivalent to quality. And probably because they had senses of who they were as humans in the first place, that were not for sale.






I deliberately didn't play the official music clip for this one because it is totally inane...


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## SueC

Oh yeah, mileage record for my convalescing foot:

Friday, 2km walk plus lots of incidental walking around the house and grounds.

Saturday, total 5km of walking outings plus lots of incidental walking around the house and grounds. It is super to be clocking in excess of 5km on Day 41 following triple metatarsal fractures... and it pulled up perfectly fine.

Today, 2km in the morning and will do 3km later. It was standing on it that was the killer when I was making sushi mid-morning, because it makes the foot balloon. Did you know - I did not - that not walking on your feet can cause fluid build-up? We know that in horses, the frog is so important for returning blood and lymph to the heart. But even in our soft-padded human feet, pressure on the soles encourages fluid to go back up the leg, so it you've got inflammatory swelling, walking can actually reduce that swelling. Just standing around has the completely opposite effect!


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## SueC

Big, big congratulations to Bethanie Mattek-Sands for picking up the Mixed Doubles title with Jamie Murray at the US Open. She's such a lovely zany person, and I saw her horrific on-court injury at last year's Wimbledon, where she totally dislocated her knee. It wasn't clear if she'd play professionally again, and I followed the progress of her recovery quite closely, and cheered when she reappeared on the WTA tour. Now this; wonderful, and great speech too! :happydance:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/spor...eech-after-coming-back-from-injury/111294166/

A big congratulations also to our young Aussie Ash Barty for getting to the Women's Doubles semis with Coco Vandeweghe, good luck in the final! Also well done to Jack Sock for winning the Men's Doubles final with one of the Bryan brothers. The doubles results really couldn't have gone any better in this one! 

Big cheers to young Naomi Osaka for being the first Japanese winner at the US open. :clap: :clap: :clap:


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## Caledonian

My old farrier used to say that horses have five hearts; four of them frogs.


I’ve heard of walking to get rid of fluid. The first time I experienced swollen feet and ankles, the nurse told me to walk and to keep them high when I was resting. I’d travelled about 500 miles overnight for a show and I think we’d had one break. (The horses went early in a separate truck in far more comfort than the humans). When I got out of the car my feet and ankles were like balloons. I still had to settle the horses in their temporary stables and prepare them for the show, so I was forced to limp around in barefeet. It was having to move that reduced the swelling and allowed me to wear boots.

I agree about the simple things. I leave for work quite early in the morning and I get to see the sun rise throwing colours over the landscape, clouds and mists; it’s never the same.


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## SueC

@*Caledonian* , it's a good thing that none of the horses stomped on your bare feet on top of all that, during that scenario. Because I live in Western Australia, I have often been around horses in bare feet in summertime, but thankfully never had my bare feet stood on. It's just when you were describing your situation, I couldn't help imagining Murphy chuckling to himself and saying, "How can I _improve_ on this?" 

Imagine getting economy class syndrome travelling to a horse show! :shock:

How I can tell you live in a climate that does interesting atmospheric things to a landscape:

_I agree about the simple things. I leave for work quite early in the morning and I get to see the sun rise throwing colours over the landscape, clouds and mists; it’s never the same. _ 

People don't experience that in the tropics. Not generally in Perth, Western Australia, either - although it does sometimes get winter fogs, especially in the hills. I imagine @*gottatrot* gets a fair bit of it on Oregon, too. And it's one of the reasons we love Tasmania and live on the South Coast of Western Australia.









Moody sky, Port Arthur, Tasmania.










Ruins, Port Arthur, Tasmania.










The harbour, Port Arthur, Tasmania.











Remains of convict-built church, Port Arthur, Tasmania.










Old graveyard, rural southern Tasmania.










Duck Lake, near Dover, Tasmania.










En route to the Fluted Capes walk, Tasmania.










Tasmanian central highlands.










Brett at Dove Lake, Cradle Mountain, Tasmania.










Dove Lake from Nancy's Lookout, Cradle Mountain walk, Tasmania.










Climbing Hartz Peak, Tasmania.











Honeymoon Bay, Freycinet, Tasmania.










Spring dawn over Launceston, Tasmania, from West Launceston, where we perched for a while when working there in 2009.










Moody weather, Launceston.


It's fogs and clouds and the play of light that make places really visually absorbing for us - like you say, they're never the same twice in a row. What could be more boring than endless blue skies?


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## frlsgirl

Interesting about the swelling. I’ve noticed that I’m retaining water more easily as I get older. My chiropractor always says that walking is the best form of exercise for all kinds of ailments: our bodies are designed for walking. 

Great pics Sue!


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## Knave

They are beautiful pictures @SueC! I didn’t know you didn’t get to see the sky the way I see it. I guess in my little naive brain I though we shared the beauty in the sky.

I only take cell phone pictures, but let me show you why I say look in the sky for beauty if you need a reminder.


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## Knave

A couple of my favorites for you too. I hope you enjoy seeing my sky.


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## SueC

Ooooh, @*Knave* , that's _so_ beautiful, thank you for sharing! 

You know, the sky where you are is fabulous, the play of light, and you've got a really "big" sky like over the Australian Nullarbor - but on top of that, the whole landscape just goes with it! And you must feel like you're living a bit of history with your life. Are you ever super glad you don't work in an office in the city? I know I am.

Also, your town seems friendly. Our particular community out here isn't really; although we do have one set of super friendly neighbours, and another two lots who are friendly but reclusive, so we hardly see them. We've also got some really asinine neighbours, and I'm not talking about our donkeys - the neighbours straight across the road. Once, before we had built the house and I'd driven out on my own to do some horse care, I accidentally locked the keys into the car, and of course my phone was in there too... so I went across the road to see if they would phone my husband so he could come with the spare keys. These, I might add, were neighbours we'd gone to introduce ourselves to when we first bought the place, and they'd not invited us for a cup of tea, which is very unusual for Australian rural people meeting new neighbours - we got invited in by most others, and have had them over too.

Anyway, so the woman saw me coming and rudely rapped out, "What do YOU want?" with a face like thunder. I politely explained the situation, and she said, "Well, we don't _have_ a telephone! Goodbye!" I was gobsmacked; I'd rung her a couple of months earlier, on her listed number, to inquire if any of her square bales were for sale (and had gotten an off-putting reply there too). So I just shook my head and walked along the public road for another kilometre or so to one of our reclusive neighbours, who immediately went out of their way to help. They actually had no landline, but a mobile phone - yet no reception where they live, so they drove up the road with me until they could get a signal, and rang Brett for me, and made sure I was OK. In other words, they acted like any decent person is expected to act.

Bill, who shares Sunday lunches with us on a regular basis, was born out here 84 years ago and used to be married to this person's sister, and explained that our neighbour had a screw loose and had always been that way, especially towards other women. He says that this whole area used to be very friendly, but isn't anymore - quite a few families have left as corporations bought up farms for fence-to-fence woodchip growing, and the people who have come in generally aren't sociable, or belong to fairly exclusive religious flavours who are discouraged from socialising outside their group, lest they catch something.

I used to work with the Kent River catchment community, just one river north of where we live now, when I was fresh out of university, and that was a bend-over-backwards friendly and welcoming community. Perhaps we picked the wrong locality! Be that as it may, we do have friends outside the community not too far away, and we can always host backpackers if we want to meet friendly international people. Or actually open our proposed farmstay.

Brett reckons Redmond is no different from anywhere else he's ever lived; in his words, "It was all crap socially, no different now, and that's why I'm glad I've got you, my books, and the Internet." :rofl: It is very true that apart from that Kent River catchment community and living in Sydney, where there's enough people from Mediterranean cultures to brighten up the tone a bit, I've had a very disappointing social experience on the whole in this country, compared to continental Europe and especially Italy, where I spent my childhood up to age 11. People are just so closed here and whole neighbourhoods don't talk to each other. In Italy, everyone talked to everyone, and people were always dropping in on each other. The whole neighbourhood organised get-togethers - once a year we all went up to the high alpine pastures where one of them had a tiny little cabin - we went crammed into two 4WDs, with lots of people standing on the back platforms holding on to each other as the vehicles slowly made their way along the rocky roads leading to our destination. Once there, the men got to chopping wood, carting water and general organisation, while the women got together to cook and chat in the kitchen. Then we'd have a lunch that began at noon and didn't finish till late afternoon - with the men laughing and praising the cooking to the skies - in Mediterranean countries, cooking is much appreciated rather than denigrated as "skivvy work", and men generally don't think of it as a lowly task to sneer at. These are real foodie cultures. 

I saw it again two decades later in Sydney with the Greek, Lebanese, and Persian communities. Warmth, openness, hospitality, wanting to include strangers, getting me into their kitchens to cook with them. And the local, Albany area ex-Mediterranean / Middle Eastern-origin people say to me: "Yeah, we understand why you feel this way, we find that really hard too about living here."

I've never been to the States, @*Knave* , but a friend from Sydney goes regularly for barbershop singing competitions would you believe! She said she always had a very welcoming experience when travelling in the States with her music people, and that it was much more outgoing than when travelling in Australia. (And she's in Sydney, which is a friendly spot in our country!) Maybe it's more English here, I don't know. It is very impersonal though, many people just want to be behind the idiot box when they've finished climbing their career ladders for the day, and the two main forms of accepted mainstream social interaction are drinking at the pub, and Australian Rules Football... neither of which I enjoy... so I've joined choirs, art groups etc in the past, and met some friendly people there.

Hmm. Start with the sky, get to this! :rofl:

Our sky on the South Coast is pretty spectacular too, especially in winter; in a different way. Here's some samples:


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## SueC




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## SueC

*Exhibit A Day 44*: As usual, Exhibit A on the left, control group on the right.









Last comparison photos a week ago were posted here:
https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page86/#post1970594985


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## SueC

The main thing that's obvious when you compare the first two photos is how red the foot is when it is on the ground, as opposed to in the air - the foot is still inflamed and has trouble draining, so it's supposed to be up when I'm not walking on it - and as was mentioned before, walking assists it to drain, just as is the case in horses. It's standing that's a killer.

In the up position, the foot has a far better colour because gravity is assisting with the return of blood and lymph to the heart. The whole foot is slightly brown due to the accumulation of iron compounds as haemosiderin, for recycling back into new haemoglobin, myoglobin etc. (see https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page86/#post1970594993 for more on this process) There was a lot of bleeding into the soft tissues of the foot at the time of fractures, and it takes the macrophages quite some time to mop it all up. The arch bruising is finally clearing now; I think walking has really helped: 10km over the weekend. (Yesterday I rested it for a day, 5km of walking planned today.)

If you look at the ball of the foot, you can see that this has a fair bit of fluid in it, and my toes have trouble reaching the ground. Walking is the answer to this, and it will take time for the inflammation to die down. The bones are still healing, and will be remodelling considerably for a while, which is also why it needs to be walked on now - to provide the forces that trigger bone remodelling, so it can heal up strong and in the right kind of configuration.

The skin on the ball of the foot is also showing some interesting patterns... the effect of lack of walking on it for over five weeks.

Because of the tendency for the foot to swell, I have got special socks at the moment which provide compression around the mid-foot and arch. These things have been great, and mean I can get into my walking boots without too much pain - one thing that really hurts is pressure on the swelling on top of the mid-foot, and if you can keep that in check with compression fabric, it minimises that pain, and allows you to walk more, which is exactly what you want.

The last foot fracture post here:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page87/#post1970596285

...covered the 6-week checkup. I'm now going to physio weekly and will see the orthopaedics unit again with follow-up X-rays at 12 weeks. So I think that's going to be it for a while for my fracture posts!


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## Knave

Oh, I had the longest response written and now it is forever gone. So, I will try for the general concept. Lol

I really like those pictures. I cannot capture the beauty the way that you guys can.

My town is friendly. I don’t think all of America is like where I am, but I think many rural areas probably are. Gossip runs rampant, but I believe that everyone truly cares for everyone else. They may not particularly enjoy a certain person, but I believe that they wish only for the best.

I am grateful to be living how I do. It is such a part of me. I cannot fathom living any other way. There is a song, not anyone else’s style I am sure, but it reall exemplifies how I feel. After my husband’s father passed away we heard it and both of us love it.


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## knightrider

Oh wow, love those sky pictures! Thanks for putting them up

I live near a small town in north Central Florida where the people are amazingly friendly. Unfortunately, it might not be quite the same if you are brown. That's the paradox of the South. On the other hand, there are black people in our church and they are quite welcomed and help with the prayers and take part in running the services. So . . . there is progress.

When we first moved here, this area was in an unbelievable drought and Lake City was on fire. There were fires everywhere. When we fell in love and made an offer on our place, it was lush green pasture, but 4 months later, when we arrived with our horses, it had been allowed to be overgrazed and our beautiful pastures were nothing but sand and weeds. We were coming from further south where there was no need of hay, so it did not occur to me that my horses were going to need hay.

So, here we were, first day in our new house near our new town, with no hay. At the feed store, I discovered not only did they not have any hay, but there was no hay to be bought anywhere. About 4 people at the feed store whipped out their phones and began making calls until they found me some hay, called the hay person to make sure I could get some, and gave me directions to get there. And it has been that way ever since. I call this little town "Mayberry" because everybody knows everybody and looks out for everybody. They are so helpful and kind. Likewise, the people at my church--the salt of the earth.


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## waresbear

I think this is a good one


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## SueC

Hello all! :wave: Thank you so much for posting songs etc. I've had a flat-out week and want to get to reading and listening to all this properly when I have time to sit down and pay it undivided attention. Hope you all have a nice downhill slide to the weekend!


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## SueC

frlsgirl said:


> Interesting about the swelling. I’ve noticed that I’m retaining water more easily as I get older.


For me, it's cheese! :rofl:




Knave said:


> Oh, I had the longest response written and now it is forever gone. So, I will try for the general concept. Lol


That happened to me the last time I logged on; spent an hour writing individual responses to the 40+ social thread and then lost the lot literally writing the last sentence to the last person, by accidentally hitting a fast key combination that obviously spells "obliterate"!







We have a form saver on the computer to retain the text in case the tabs are accidentally closed or the forum posting doesn't work, but it even overrode this...




> I really like those pictures. I cannot capture the beauty the way that you guys can.


If you were in this particular location, yes you could!  Because of the coastline and our proximity to Antarctica, extraordinary cloud formations happen right at the edge of sea and land, especially in winter. Then you just go out at a time of day when the sunrays are oblique and you frame your shot and just point and click. That's all. Brett and I walk a lot recreationally at those times of day anyway, and carry a camera in the backpack. So we get lots of photos like this.

And I think your photographs are of no lesser quality than ours. They are so perfectly framed, each and every one - so important in a great photo - and have the added dimension of capturing something cultural and human. Your photographs tell stories. They are excellent photographs, and we're much enjoying looking at them. The sky is amazing, and then there's all that detail below it. Like the way there is that fence done in different length uprights.

By the way, are your black uprights in the wire fences in the first photo star pickets? Are any of your fences electric?

In that first photo, you can do a Rorschach test on that cloud! I see a rooster in it. What do you see?

Are those long straight lines of cloud in the third photo the result of aeroplane vapour trails, or a natural formation?




> My town is friendly. I don’t think all of America is like where I am, but I think many rural areas probably are. Gossip runs rampant, but I believe that everyone truly cares for everyone else. They may not particularly enjoy a certain person, but I believe that they wish only for the best.
> 
> I am grateful to be living how I do. It is such a part of me. I cannot fathom living any other way. There is a song, not anyone else’s style I am sure, but it reall exemplifies how I feel. After my husband’s father passed away we heard it and both of us love it.


I can see why you do. The guitar on it is lovely and the singer has an amazing voice that makes the hair on my arms stand on end. The narration is a great counterpoint to the singing and complements it well. And they are singing about their lives, and the lives of those before them. It has a similar feel emotionally to John Mellencamp's _Scarecrow_ album, which is one of my favourite albums. It's a very different musical style, but they're talking about similar things. When Mellencamp's voice comes in on this, my hair also stands on end:






And this one is superb too:






There's another version of this on YouTube which has a collage of American images as a slideshow in the background, and that's a great collage, but I didn't want to hang it on the song for any first-time listeners out there.

The female voice in the song your posted made me think of another female voice, different in quality - sort of glassy and ethereal compared to the velvety rich earthy tones in your song - but this is a little known song, a capella with lovely harmonies, which I think you will enjoy.






@knightrider, those are wonderful stories you posted of neighbourliness and human decency, thank you so much, we need more of those in a world where the news cycle (which we 99% ignore at our house) is hell-bent on showing the worst aspects of humanity. I actually think when people tell recollections like the ones you shared, and often share, that the world becomes a better place because it energises people to do positive things in turn, and gives them hope. 

Have you had a good week? You seemed a little down recently and I hope things are better. Life can be a rollercoaster. :hug:

@waresbear, thanks for that song, it's great to be introduced to unfamiliar songs, ideas, vistas etc by other people you like. We've all got these different journeys in life, yet points of overlap, and I'm so interested in the kind of "soundtracks" we have to our different journeys.  Like photographs, it gives you an insight into another person's reality and interests. The singer in the song you posted has this lovely caramelly voice and enunciates really well, which is a bit rare. I like the simple piano intro and then the change in styles to duet; and the general idea of the song too of wanting to see beneath the surface presented to the world. 

You might enjoy this one; it's a traditional Scots Gaelic lovesong. Translations are available online; basically the singer extols the virtues of the man she is about to marry, chiefly going over his personal characteristics and extolling in particular his lack of alcohol habit!  Karen Matheson has one of the loveliest singing voices I've ever heard...







Little update on what's going on for me: I've noticed that the problem of my toes not reaching the ground easily on my injured foot when I'm barefoot is not just because of swelling of the ball of the foot; in fact it's more because of contraction of the tendons that elevate the toes, from lack of walking for five weeks! So I've been gently manually stretching the tendons on top of the foot out, with Red Tiger Balm (cinnamon oil and other nice things which help with muscular aches etc), and I keep doing that, and it's making a huge difference to my toes returning to normal. Like stretching the calf muscle.

Did 5km all in one walk yesterday for the first time since the injury - I'd been doing it in two short instalments before that. Started gardening again yesterday as well and am permanently out of the astronaut boot because the hiking boots work better for me. Indoors I'm barefoot now because it helps me feel the ground and that helps me get my foot back to doing normal contact with the ground.

Also a bee had a nice experience yesterday after nearly drowning in the dog's water bucket outdoors. I picked her out and wondered if she was even alive; she was twitching gently and I put her in the greenhouse to warm up a little to see if she'd recover. She revived a bit but wasn't well enough to fly; and with night falling and a frost forecast, I picked some lavender flowers and put her in a jar with it to spent the night indoors with us where she wouldn't be killed by exposure. I put a couple of drops of maple syrup on the flower near her and we were watching under a desk lamp. When the proboscis accidentally ended up in the maple syrup you should have seen the bee suddenly display signs of life! The drop of maple syrup was sucked up in a jiffy and the bee started buzzing excitedly and moving at about 20x the previous speed. Just a little fuel makes so much difference!

The bee then examined the rest of the area for other maple syrup drops and found and imbibed all of them. Next morning, when the sun was warm, I put the bee in the lavender patch near the dog bucket, on a flower spike, and she started to forage vigorously, with lots of sister bees buzzing beside her. She had a good chance of making it back to the hive, and even if she didn't - bees get picked off by birds all the time - she had a pretty good experience there with the maple syrup rescue and the warm morning sunlight foraging again amongst her own tribe.  

You really can't save all the drowning insects or all the lost puppies etc, but it doesn't hurt to do it once in a while.


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## Knave

I do not know what a star picket is @SueC, but they are not what comes up when you google that. They are just steel posts. We do use some hotwire. We hotwire off grass areas for the horses, and we use hotwire on areas to stop cows from crashing too tempting fences. 

I thought it was a heart. Also, yes, the lines are the trails. Sometimes it irritates me that they are in my skies, but I have decided that they really are pretty too.

I liked your music! I am glad you went on a walk too!


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## knightrider

@SueC, thank you for asking. It's been a rough summer for me--lots of family problems. On the other hand, the horses are all wonderful and bring me a lot of joy.


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## SueC

Horses are so much easier than humans, @*knightrider* ! :hug: Hope things get better soon with your humans, but sometimes I'm afraid they don't. We can only deal with our own side and not with theirs. Glad you have horses, it makes things so much easier. There are so many people who have family problems but no horses. There's something about the smell of horses and the nature of them that is infinitely soothing. And it's great when the big lummoxes park their faces against your chest for a horsey hug. 

@*Knave* , your steel posts do look a bit different to our steel star pickets, which look like this:










We use 6ft pickets mostly, which ends up in a 4ft height. I'm always curious how other people fence.


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## Caledonian

I also save bumble and carder bees from drowning in water troughs and buckets. They’re very gentle and a bumble will allow you to clap its fur while it heats up in your hand or drinks some sugar water for energy.
My work has installed a couple of honey bee skeps and I’ve had a look at installing one behind the house but I’m swithering. I was interested in the stories my mum told me about my Grandfather transporting the local skeps to the heather moors in the Highland Glens on his trucks. Apparently, they followed the tradition of telling the bees if something important happened, especially if it was a death.

Where I live, we’ve lost the neighbourliness that used to be an important part of small communities. The surrounding villages were mostly cottages that sat along the main road, then they started building houses and businesses and the area filled with commuters, tourists and students. Our population almost triples at certain times of the year. My parents talk about how everyone knew everyone, which may not always have been a good thing but, now people aren’t around long enough to create that closeness. The fields where I used to keep my horses and the surrounding ones have either been built on or are being prepared. The farm where I used to buy my hay has been sold for houses as well. I know things can’t stand still but something has been lost.

I love the music and photos. @*Knave* your photos are very good and it’s great to get a glimpse of different weather and lifestyles.
Our weather is influenced by the Atlantic and the Gulf stream, the Jet Stream above and sitting a few hundred miles from the Artic Circle. It creates very turbulent conditions.


The photos:
sunrise last week, taken before I headed into work;
a pink day, looking towards Ben More and Stob Binnein and Bealach-eadar-dha Beinn;
a misty afternoon in the same area; and,
a beach near Morar on the west coast. I used to regularly travel along the road past the beaches and I love the scenery.


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## waresbear

*SueC* not really the love song I wanted to post but I don't want to offend or scare anyone, lol!


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## Knave

Wow @Caledonian!!! Beautiful!

I am so grateful to see all the different things I get to see here!


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## SueC

@waresbear, now you've got me really curious! Pray tell... or should I say, pray post? I guess it sort of embarrasses me that I used to love The Cranberries' _Linger_ in my 20s, because it's such a dysfunctional song - I didn't realise that at the time, I was living it. :rofl: It's a very pretty song, but I wish the lyrics were in Swahili, because I just can't enjoy it when I hear the words now. Actually, the whole Cranberries catalogue is like that; the singer never appeared to outgrow codependency, and then of course she died early recently and it was probably related.

You probably know the story of Sting's _Every Breath You Take_, which he wrote for The Police in his 20s. It was tremendously popular and people thought it was so romantic, but actually it's really freaky and obsessive and fits the definition of stalking. Sting grew as a person and it embarrassed him to have written it, so he wrote _If You Love Somebody Set Them Free_ as an answer to the first song.

@Caledonian, those are gorgeous photographs, and I love the look on the page and the sound of Scots Gaelic. I worked in London for a bit in my 20s and was supposed to go on to Scotland and Ireland after, but something came up at home so I cut short and returned. I really do regret not having seen those two places for myself. The Highlands in particular really appeal to me, and the islands offshore, and the whole coastline, which I saw some of on that programme _Coast_ hosted by that gorgeous Scotsman with the lilt. If Brett and I had a TARDIS we'd be going walking / climbing in Scotland for many many weekends. ...at least we have Tasmania, which is spectacular in its own way. By the way, would be really interested in your musical leanings!


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## knightrider

Ha ha, my 16 year old daughter calls "Every Breath You Take" the Stalker's Song.


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## SueC

That's very astute of her, @knightrider; because when that song first came out, many 16-year-old girls (and indeed older females than that) were goggle-eyed about it and wishing someone wrote that about them! I shudder to think...


@Caledonian, I've dug up the only two photos we ever took of bumblebees, which aren't present in most of Australia, but have naturalised in Tasmania. This little critter was looking in the window one morning of our little perch in West Launceston when we were working there in 2009. Bumblebees are so cute!


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## waresbear

I will post the link if, anybody is offended by swearing and/or very disturbing images don't click on it. We used to work out to this song at kickboxing all the time, before I even seen the video. When I worked at a breeding farm, we used to say we are going to play the song when the horses bred. Even I find the video a bit disturbing but I like the song, I actually found it sexy, in a raw animalistic way.


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## SueC

This next one isn't a love song, it's a completely silly song and a parody of some people's attitudes. I used to use it teaching English, along with the essay A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, as examples of the writer's opinion being the opposite of their persona assumed for the piece. I've always liked this song, but a while back its writer posted the original clip on YouTube. I'd never seen it, but it's loads of fun!


From _The Vegetarians of Love_ by Bob Geldof (really excellent album!), whom you'd be familiar with for his human rights activism, organising Band Aid and Live Aid way back etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=ID&hl=id&v=NoweGN8cm5g

I really don't know why this one won't embed today; just click on the link though to watch it.

I'm just testing another fun one to see if it behaves - this is for anyone who had a weird / unpalatable childhood. You can laugh about it with this one! Great clip too.


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## waresbear

I just consider it an edgy, sexy workout song, lol. I don't like the video at all though.


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## SueC

For a minute there I was scratching my head because I thought you were talking about that little jig by Bob Geldof and I wondered just how you worked out, @*waresbear* ! :rofl:


My husband has a double album by Nine Inch Nails called _The Fragile_ and always threatens to put it on the stereo to annoy me! :rofl:

I can kind of get how some people would enjoy this - I mean, I don't like pineapple but a lot of people do!  Me personally, I'm instantly turned off by slang, anatomically incorrect references, and cliches. This song is only guilty of _one_ of them. :rofl: But you know, that's also why I roll my eyes at so-called erotic prose, because that usually involves all three, which is a triple turn-off for me on all levels of my person. :rofl: And I always wonder how it can be so popular with so many people, but then I'm a bit of an outlier in many ways. inkunicorn: Thankfully I found one of these: :blueunicorn: :rofl:

Thank you for sharing, seriously! 


PS: Look at those lips! Is he out-jaggering Mick Jagger? :rofl:


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## waresbear

Now I will post what I think is a true love song. I hate, hate, HATE country but I have been in love with this song since I was a kid...


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## Knave

My internet doesn’t prefer to allow me to watch videos today. Lol. So I’ve no idea if the music is good or not.


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## waresbear

It's all good Knave😏


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## SueC

A little more trivia: @*waresbear* , my husband instantly knew the song you'd have posted by Nine Inch Nails. He says he loves the piano bit in it which sounds like it's been played underwater, or like the piano has been sitting out in a paddock for a year in the elements - very bleak, and he likes bleak (so he loves Radiohead and Portishead and Tool as well bwahaha). He also says that this song made it into the top two of Triple J's hottest 100 songs of the year sometime in the late 1990s, second only to The Cranberries' _Zombie_.

Thomas Dolby, whose _Hyperactive_ I posted before, also had a little ditty called _She Blinded Me With Science_, which was a tongue-in-cheek anthem for me for much of my professional life, since I started as a research scientist, then went on to demonstrate anatomy and do tutorials and laboratory sessions on botany, zoology etc for undergraduate science students, and in my late 20s began teaching all kinds of Science at high school level (and English and English Literature as well, because I'm one of those weird multidimensional people they used to like in the Renaissance. :rofl. Now all of you will know the old Nokia ringtone, but probably not that Thomas Dolby developed mobile ringtones including that famous one. More here:

BBC News - Today - The man behind the polyphonic ringtone

And just because it's fun:






Imagine a Rest Home for Deranged Scientists! :rofl: I probably would have qualified. Favourite demonstrations / experiments I used to do included putting increasingly larger chunks of sodium and potassium metal into water - explosive fireworks effect with very psychedelic colours - once it actually left permanent marks on the science laboratory ceiling, much to the delight of the class, who were standing safely well back as instructed. :rofl: 

Also making hydrogen balloons, a byproduct of demonstrating metal-acid reactions. You then let such a balloon float to the ceiling of your laboratory and give a student a long whiteboard ruler with a taper candle taped on the end of it, and they hold the candle under the balloon, and wham! A fireball. :rofl: Standard West Australian science curriculum, but such fun.

Also you can put glacial sulfuric acid into pure sugar, although you have to do this outdoors and have the students upwind, because it makes really unhealthy fumes as it carbonises the sugar, which then extrudes itself lava-like but increasingly reminiscent of a poo from the beaker, and the 13-year-olds always find that _so_ entertaining. :rofl:

And then you can make crazy foam, involving a detergent solution and a catalyst, and it spews everywhere. Great fun and a little disturbing. Or you can shake cornflour up in a tin and make a simulated silo explosion with it. There are all sorts of science teacher party tricks, and whole associations and conferences dedicated to coming up with more outlandish demonstrations and student projects.

If you want to make a teabag rocket at home, you will need an old-fashioned teabag that, when you cut the top near the staple off in a straight line, unfolds into a hollow tube - so the modern crimped bags, or circular or square bags, won't work. If you get such a tube, stand it on your kitchen cutting board, and make sure there are no draughts (close the windows, turn off fans etc), and that there are no curtains nearby (seriously; one of my students once set gauze curtains alight at their home because they wanted to show their parents what they'd seen in class, but they didn't heed that warning; thankfully they put the fire out immediately). Then light the top of the tube all the way around and wait. You think nothing will happen, but it will! :rofl:

These are just some out-there fun things so the students don't complain so much about the vocabulary lists you're making them do, and all the reading and answering questions and writing essays and laboratory reports and field studies which wears them down to little skeletons, not to mention the quizzes and tests and exams and so on. But science can be great fun, as well as really excellent for helping you understand the natural world. In its heyday, classroom science in Western Australia included two laboratory sessions a week, to balance two theory sessions (which usually included short demos to spice things up). That programme worked so well, but these days, there is less and less hands-on experimental work because IT is overused in Australian classrooms and so expensive it's killed the practical science budgets compared to the 1990s and early 2000s.

If any of you remember a favourite science experiment / demo from your school days, let's hear it!


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## SueC

*First Physiotherapy Session*

This morning I had my first physiotherapy session to help me rehabilitate my injured foot. I got assessed, and shown some exercises to do to stretch out the tightened calf muscles (two - one short, one long, different stretches), and the tight tendons on top of the foot; also some balance exercises to do, and a prescription to walk on uneven ground, which I am already doing. The physio said, "You're doing 5km walks already? Excellent." She assessed my gait as well as range of motion and strength, and said, "Coming back is completely optional for you. Come see me for a final assessment in three weeks if you want to; I'll give you a take-home programme to do three times a day; more if you like."

I did opt to go back on October 1 to have a final assessment - she's predicting I'll be pretty much back to normal by then, or before. The usual back-to-baseline healing time for this injury is at least 12 weeks, more in older people, less fit people etc. I am older, but not unfit, and loooove walking. Looks like mine is going to get to that point in 9-10 weeks. It's extremely gratifying to have such a good recovery at age 47. I did pull all stops out nutritionally and in terms of exercising any way I could all along, and doing stretches for tight muscle groups and tendons etc. It's nice that it had such an impact. Brett and I hope to be back in the mountains by late spring. :happydance:

There's one really clever stretch I learnt today, where you basically sit back on your heel with your whole bodyweight. You can also do it with both legs at the same time, basically kneeling and sitting back on your heels, and stretching the feet out with the weight. You do it on an exercise mat or other cushioned surface. It lets your weight stretch your tendons, rather than expending muscular effort to do it.

Also you can measure how you're going with getting back to equal flexibility by standing with your toes near a wall and then touching the wall with your knee while keeping your foot flat on the ground. The comfortable distance between toes and wall right now is 12cm on my healthy foot, and 5cm on my injured one. Earlier this week it would have been lucky to be 2cm!

You can stretch your foot and calf stepping onto a wedge. When we did this today, I said, "Aaaaah! I know another exercise that will have a similar effect. Riding my horse - feet in the stirrup and stretching heels down." :rofl:

Have you ever noticed how much harder it is to balance on one foot when you turn your head to the side? Or when you close your eyes? Both of these are proprioception exercises I've been set. You switch off your visual input and then have to rely 100% on your internal feel for where your own body is. Even Brett was impressed with that one and is now working on getting as good at balancing without visual input as with. 

It's really interesting learning a few more tricks to deal with an injury. I've also got the feeling that this whole experience has further fine-tuned our nutrition, and made us both really serious about stretching, which I've always been a bit slack about, except during Pilates classes!


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## Knave

I had a spectacular science teacher back when I was in school. If you can imagine mad scientist meets geeky frat boy grown up... he was all dirty jokes and amazing science.

I cannot say what my favorite experiment was. I loved chemistry most, but I particularly enjoyed boiling water into ice because it was illogical. I also remember a concept in physics, which led to us chaining my truck to a metal, cemented in, like large post (I don’t know the word) to prove we could move the truck by adding pressure to the chain. Instead we tore up the post. Lol

I love science in any case, but having a teacher who actually loved it too was a high point of mine in high school.


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## knightrider

What an amazing science teacher you must have been @SueC! I'll bet you taught lots of kids to love science.

@Waresbear, I love country music. I love "He Stopped Loving Her Today." Such a great classic. Here's one of my favorites.


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## knightrider

Here's another great country song--great for working out too


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## SueC

Thanks for the songs, folks!  Will listen attentively when I get to my quiet spot for the day.

I've just got a quick question for @*SwissMiss* - are you able to do any kind of physiotherapy for your arms at the moment? Compared to your current restrictions, and the length of time that's predicted to last, breaking foot bones is a picnic. :hug: How are you going with everyday living? Have you had to come up with all sorts of crazy tricks to compensate while waiting to return to normal health?

We all need to send you lots of positive vibes. Here's some more from me: _ Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz_!




PS: On Sunday at 1pm, while I was cooking lunch, we had a *magnitude 5.7 earthquake here on the South Coast*. And we had no idea; Brett was saying, "Ah, there's the horses going for a run again! ... geez, they're taking a long time over it today..." :rofl:

Our horses frequently decide to have mock races, which take them halfway around our house and up a track into our bushland. The ground usually shakes when they do this, and you can feel the vibrations in the concrete floor beneath you. And that's why we didn't notice the earthquake, as such... :rofl: ...and why we were vainly looking for the horses while this was going on... :rofl:

Magnitude-5.7 earthquake rocks southern WA - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)


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## SwissMiss

SueC said:


> PS: On Sunday at 1pm, while I was cooking lunch, we had a *magnitude 5.7 earthquake here on the South Coast*. And we had no idea; Brett was saying, "Ah, there's the horses going for a run again! ... geez, they're taking a long time over it today..." :rofl:


:rofl: blaming your poor horses when it was mother nature rumbling :rofl:


And thank you for the positive vibes! I went to PT for a couple of weeks, but it didn't improve any range of movement, so my therapist recommended to wait until I was thawing and PT would actually improve things. Her words "I don't want you to waste your time here. You can do the same at home" and gave me a training plan. Perfectly fine with me!
Everyday things: Well, I live with side buns and low ponytails, only stretchy clothes and lots of small things that I don't even realize anymore. Raya is a good girl and lifts her feet for me to clean and rasp without having to really hold them. And for saddling I am really glad for my lightweight saddle and small pony. 

So I really can't complain too much :biggrin:


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## SueC

Is it only the upper arms that are frozen? Can you move normally from the elbow joints down?

The tricks that get played on us...


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## SueC

*Back In The Garden!*

Since one thing I can't do yet is use a spade, my husband kindly dug up some of the overgrown jungle that resulted from my inability to garden for six weeks, and even dug compost through it for me, so all I had to do is plant. So today, I've finally returned to planting: A nice double row of dwarf snowpeas; and a group greenhouse seedlings: Brussel Sprouts - first time grown from seed - more than a dozen plants - good thing sprouts freeze well! And that we can eat them en masse too! To make good use of the available space in between the baby plants as they grow to size, I've direct seeded radishes (always a winner and ready in a month) as well as coriander (for those summer salads). I'm going to re-seed the tray with tomatoes after this post! 

And do a tray of basil to go with it.









*Your Country Music Songs!*

I've got to tell you, it's not my favourite genre in general - but I can get pleasantly surprised on a regular basis. It's like Irish music - some of that is terribly twee, but some people can make it completely amazing, and I have a stash of this amazing stuff in my collection. Perhaps there are good things to be found in every music genre - although I've never heard a rap song I've not loathed, but it's debatable if rap is music! :rofl:

The worst country song I ever heard in my life was _Achy Breaky Heart_ and I think that track is a crime against humanity! 

But on the other hand, I really like Neil Young, in all his incarnations. And I already really liked that song @*Knave* posted about the branding pen, and I'm always more ready to sit down and listen if it's coming from people I already like.  OMG, I've got that running in the background at the moment and the hair on my arms just stood up again at the singing. Anyone else get that reaction to music when it really speaks to you?

@*waresbear* , country music or not ;-), that George Jones song is a real classic. Unrequited love-you-till-I-die. Awwww. Poor man. I hope he had a dog. I mean, want true love, get a dog and all that! :rofl: This singer has a nice mellow voice. Thanks for posting!  

You know, in some way thematically it reminds me of The Beatles' _She's Leaving Home_:

_Wednesday morning at five o'clock
As the day begins
Silently closing her bedroom door
Leaving the note that she hoped would say more_
_She goes downstairs to the kitchen
Clutching her handkerchief
Quietly turning the backdoor key
Stepping outside, she is free_
_She(we gave her most of our lives)
Is leaving (sacrificed most of our lives)
Home (we gave her everything money could buy)
She's leaving home, after living alone, for so many years (bye bye)_
_Father snores as his wife gets into her dressing gown
Picks up the letter that's lying there
Standing alone at the top of the stairs
She breaks down and cries to her husband
"Daddy, our baby's gone.
"Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly?
How could she do this to me?"_

_She (we never thought of ourselves)
Is leaving (never a thought for ourselves)
Home (we struggled hard all our lives to get by)
She's leaving home, after living alone, for so many years_
_Friday morning, at nine o'clock
She is far away
Waiting to keep the appointment she made
Meeting a man from the Motortrade_
_She (what did we do that was wrong)_
_Is Having (we didn't know it was wrong)
Fun (fun is the one thing that money can't buy)_
_Something inside, that was always denied, for so many years
She's leaving home, bye, bye_


That was a real classic piece of observation as well.

@*knightrider* , we did some pretty cool stuff in our science lessons, enjoyed all around, but I'm sure some of my students would have gladly reported me to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children for those vocabulary lists etc. :rofl: Your song, yes, another classic theme, and well written! Want to hear a modern equivalent that always makes me laugh and tap my toes? :rofl: 






Oh, and there's another comedic one like that, and it's even country: :rofl: Unfortunately it's audio only. Like your second posted choice, it's really upbeat and I think you'll like it! 






Yes, we admit it, we have a few country influenced albums in our collection - and I have a lot of folk music from all over the world. An Australian band you may all find you enjoy is The Audreys. I'll post a song that's kind of appropriate for a Horse Forum! 





We _love_ this album. But it's clearly very country! :music019::cowboy:


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## SwissMiss

SueC said:


> Is it only the upper arms that are frozen? Can you move normally from the elbow joints down?
> 
> The tricks that get played on us...


Just the shoulder joint. And I am lucky, there are plenty of people that have it in both at the same time :shock: Simply imagine tying your upper arm to your torso and have fun :biggrin: The loss of rom is annoying, but the real killer is the constant pain that is exacerbated by movement or vibrations. My GP was very quick to offer me "something stronger" in the pain department, which I declined. Thank you very much. I work with that stuff and know about the long-term use risk. Horse-hugs seem to work pretty well for me


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## Spanish Rider

Sue!

This is my first visit to your journal, and it'll be a quick one (too much work). However, this just came in on my FB feed and I thought of you. Have you got any Wonky Donkeys? Good for a laugh!


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## SueC

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: @Spanish Rider!

Man, that accent is edible. If my family had moved to Scotland instead of Australia, *I* could be sounding like that by now...

The kid looks like an unmotivated sort of reader! :rofl:

Got to show this to DH when he gets home this afternoon! :clap: He'll love it. I mean, we like _Green Eggs and Ham_, but this is its twin on mushrooms! :rofl:

@SwissMiss, I am sending pain reduction vibes to you presently. _Bzzzzzzzzzzzummmmm_. Yeah, sometimes your GP can turn into your friendly neighbourhood drug pusher. :rofl: Endogenous endorphins are much better - eating chocolate (Swiss of course ;-)), making things _hyggelig_, cuddling puppies or kittens or horses or DHs or other beloveds, watching comedy sketches, doing animal impersonations, you name it - we do it. Those metatarsal fractures were surprisingly painful, but the most I ever had for pain relief was two paracetamol at night so I could get to sleep early on after the accident. If I woke up in the night, I did online reading and edited some articles etc - writing seemed to background the pain very well. I'd compensate with an afternoon zzzzzzzzzzzz, which I realise is luxury, but I do work my own hours.

There's a huge spike in prescription opioid overdose deaths in Australia at the moment. The other day, I was sent a petition to sign by someone who lost a son to it, saying, "Make prescribing opioids illegal!" I did *not* sign that one, because that would be consigning terminal cancer patients etc to painful deaths. I think the answer is never to ban something outright, but to use it more sparingly and judiciously. Like antibiotics, if you want to get me on my "don't unnecessarily destroy your microbiome" and "don't speed up antibiotic resistance" soapbox... :rofl: 

Neither opioids nor antibiotics are candy, but they're being precribed as if. As are lots of other drugs. I generally personally refuse pharmaceuticals unless there is a *real* point to it for a particular condition. And I research that carefully, weigh it up, trial it to see, abandon the trial if I feel the side-effects / risks aren't worth the benefits, and go on the lowest possible dose and length of time to produce whatever beneficial effect. I'm really grateful for my education - they say that even more so than a ticket to interesting employment, its biggest beneficial effect is on how it changes how you live for the better, and lets you be very proactive about lots of things. 

Enjoy munching on your high-antioxidant Lindt. We are too!  And I'm really happy you're going on that ride. We've got a long weekend coming up and I expect to be back on the horse by Saturday. Foot is getting better daily and with the exercises my physio gave me, I should be able to mount normally within a fortnight too. She's having me do tiptoe work and heel raises off the ground and later the stairs etc, so the latter is about the same stress on the foot as mounting up.

:cowboy:

Have a brilliant day, all! :wave:


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## knightrider

@Spanish Rider, that Wonky Donkey is hilarious. I laughed so hard! Thanks for sharing!


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## Caledonian

@*Spanish Rider* – Oh that’s great. She had me laughing so much I had tears. She’s wonderful. 

@*SwissMiss* – chocolate and plenty of it. It helps with any and all ailments LOL. I’m a Lindt fan, 70% or 80% cocoa.

@*SueC* – If the ‘gorgeous Scotsman with the lilt’ who presented the programme ‘Coast’ is the one I’m thinking about, then he nearly flattened me one morning when we both turned a corner and came face to face. Only a quick sidestep and apologies stopped further embarrassment. We work in the same industry. There were mutterings at my work about trying to encourage him to back a project but with little success as far as I’m aware. 

My musical leanings? Well, I can listen to anything except rap, jazz and modern pop music. I prefer Scottish folk music, rock and anything from the 60s to the 90s. The 80s, especially, trigger a few memories, as I used to listen to the radio around the yard and I still associate some songs with horses. Phil Collins ' You Can't Hurry Love' will always be associated with a little grey Highland called Donvar.

I like the Scottish Folk bands Capercaillie, Runrig and singer Julie Fowlis. When Runrig replaced their lead singer with Bruce Guthro from Nova Scotia, I really started to listen. He’s got a wonderful voice. Similar with Julie Fowlis; her voice can give me goose bumps. 

I can’t see some of the music videos so I’m not sure if you’ll be able to see mine..

Runrig - ‘And We’ll Sing’. It’s in English rather than Scots Gaelic. 
Julie Fowlis – ‘Dh’èirich mi moch, b' fheàrr nach do dh’èirich’


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## knightrider

This morning my older teens and I were riding and we came up with a few more Wonky Donkey's.

I was walking down the rrrroad and I saw a donkey. He was dirty and ****ty. He was a skanky winky wonky donkey.

I was walking down the rrrroad, and I saw a donkey. He was pleasuring himself. He was a wenky skanky winky wonky donkey.

I was walking down the rrroad, and I saw a donkey pretending to be a snake. He was a slinky wenky skanky winky wonky donkey.


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## Spanish Rider

@knightrider ! :clap::rofl::rofl::rofl:

Now I REALLY want to go riding with you and your teens!


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## SwissMiss

@knightrider you made me :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:


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## SueC

@knightrider, :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: from me too. 

We need to continue your theme! 

_I was walking down the rrroad, and I saw a donkey pretending to be a snake. He was a slinky wenky skanky winky wonky donkey._

I was walking down the rrroad, and I saw a donkey blinking in the sun. He was a blinky slinky wenky shanky winky wonky donkey.

I was walking down the rrroad, and I saw a donkey... aw heck, I only just woke up recently, somebody else add to this please! 


Oh why can't there be real TARDISes? I'd be riding with all of you on a regular basis.  

One really great thing about the Internet is that it's excellent at finding needles in the haystack. Try finding such a cool crowd in real life in a random assortment of humans, amongst adults anyway...children and teenagers are generally more fun than adults; what exactly happens? It it the laundry and having to cook for yourself and generate an income? Is it gradual lobotomy by television? And why are some adults immune to it, and retain their senses of wonder and humour?

@Caledonian, thank you for the music; I'm now checking out other songs by Runrig. They're a real sing-along, crowd-involving band; if they ever come down to Albany we'll go see them! Capercaillie have been to Albany twice; the first gig was more than a decade ago, at the Vancouver Arts Centre, out the back on the lawn, everyone bringing picnics and picnic blankets, age range toddlers to 80+ and by the middle of the set everyone who wasn't toe-tapping was dancing. The stage was set up in front of a sweeping vista of the harbour and magnificent coastline, and I remember holding my breath when Karen Matheson was about to sing - and yes, no studio tricks, she really really sings like that, such a beautiful voice. Funnily, when I went to the loo during the set break, I accidentally ran into her there! :rofl: What a place to meet your favourite female singer. I even said so to her, it was so funny! I hoped they were enjoying their stay and if they had time, to be sure to go out to Frenchman Bay and Stony Hill. She was completely lovely and personable, and barely came up to my shoulders. 

Second time Brett was in the equation, and we took our octogenarian friend Alice as a treat, to see Capercaillie at the Albany Entertainment Centre. It was also excellent, and we bought _Roses and Tears_ right there after the concert.

Thank also for the Julie Fowlis clip. I think the one of the many reasons I like Celtic music is because of its ability to conjure up those landscapes in the sound. It's that sense of place, and connection with the earth, and with particularly magnificent landscapes at that. You can see that in a lot of the traditional music, but you know, I really hear that in The Waterboys as well, even their early material:






The first time I stood on the steep cliffs dropping down to the roaring sea at The Gap in Albany, when I was 22 (and I had never been to a place like that before), I felt like a tiny ant, and really felt the hugeness and grandeur of this universe like never before. It put me in my place as a human being, and was a wonderful feeling, and a very comforting feeling, and the song above just started playing in my head unbidden! 

These are random Internet photos of The Gap:




























When I was 22, there weren't these horrible tourist ramps, it was just the landscape and a tiny little cage overhanging The Gap. I really hate what people are superimposing on these extraordinary landscapes. Good thing there are many unsung places around here like that too where nobody has as yet put their _grrrr_ engineering.


Fast-forward over 20 years, and Mike Scott is still conjuring:






I've been very interested to discover that there is a Celtic music tradition at Cape Breton Island. Here's an interesting artist and song to come out of that:






Aah, where would we be without music?


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## SueC

And what's another thing that gets hard to live without, once you have some? ...equines of course. Horses are what's brought all of us together on HF, and then there are their long-eared, highly musical equine cousins, donkeys. Even my husband, who is not a horse fan (he says they are too big and move too fast :rofl, *adores* our donkeys.

A while back I posted the house-building articles we have in _The Owner Builde_r. I actually have spare cute donkey photos we took for that magazine - the editor loves donkeys and asked for this! 

Obviously you can't print all of them in a magazine, but no reason not to have them here. It's been a while since I posted equine photos...

And yeah, also - today is sunny so after I've done my gardening and various other chores, I'm going to clean my saddle and bridle and put leather dressing on them, and leave them out in the sun. Tomorrow I'm getting back on my horse. :loveshower: I'm still a bit lame, but he definitely isn't! :cowboy:


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## SueC

Last of these photos. Though these two are still overweight, they aren't nearly as obese as when we first got them. Spring flush is just commencing, so they will be back in their muzzles this week to slow down their hoovering.


----------



## gottatrot

SueC said:


> Oh why can't there be real TARDISes? I'd be riding with all of you on a regular basis.


I agree!! But then the winky wonky donkey lines would go on for days.


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## SueC

Is there a problem with that? :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Aside from possibly this:

:charge: :falloff: :rofl: 
Do you know what @*AnitaAnne* is proposing because due to lack of TARDIS I can't come to the social ride she is organising? She says I should put on the ride T-shirt I am ordering, and ride at the same time as them on my side of the pond! :dance-smiley05:


You realise I would have to be riding at night? :music019:

What will my husband think? That I've now finally done it and completely lost my marbles? :rofl:

Speaking of lost marbles, we had such nice shop talk on 40+ this week that I simply must link to some of the highlights about HRT and washing machines, zombie contact lenses, eye dissection accidents , wormy fish cafeteria preludes etc... a heartfelt thanks to the 40+ crowd for furnishing regular doses of endorphin-generating, diaphragm-rupturing laughter! :clap: :clap: :clap:

https://www.horseforum.com/horse-talk/2018-horse-talk-mature-people-over-790241/page98/


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:


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## Caledonian

The perfect song to go with the pictures. You can hear the waves and the vastness of the Gap in the intro alone. I’ll have a listen to more Waterboys songs.You’re right about engineering. I’ll never understand why humans need to interfere with nature. Sanitising it with paths destroys what makes it wonderful – it’s beauty and wildness. 

Unfortunately, Runrig’s last concert was in August. Forty-five years they’d been together in one form or another. My friend and I tried to get tickets but all 50 thousand sold out within minutes to people from around the world. It was held in the fields below Stirling Castle. 




I love the donkey pictures.

I linked to the 40+ thread :rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:and very scary:eek_color:. Given my age I was nodding along in agreement :clap:with most of what was said (except the eye dissection of course. I've very little experience of that:smile


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## SueC

Just in case any of you haven't seen this yet... :rofl:


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## Knave

That made the big girl and I laugh and laugh!


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## SueC

Half the fun is watching the speaker. His delivery is magnificent! The way he pauses and waggles his eyebrows and changes his intonation etc is just pure genius! :rofl:

He's performed a nice public service there too!


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## SueC

*JOURNAL WRITER MANAGES TO RIDE HORSE WITHOUT ENDING UP IN EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT*

REDMOND, WA. Rather miraculously, this morning in Redmond, one certain member of the international HF managed to ride her horse one loop around the interior track of an on-farm bushland reserve without ending up writhing on the ground, screaming like an ambulance siren, and having to be carted off to the local hospital to have three bone fractures attended to - and all this mayhem, we must add, because of riding at a _walk_.

"It's really extraordinary!" said Brett, 45, amazed onlooker. "I thought she'd come a cropper for sure. I mean, let's face it, she broke the number one rule of horse-riding on her last attempt at this sport 7 weeks, 5 days and 17 hours ago. And guess who had to help her untack her horse while she was crawling around on all fours? And drive her to hospital, and after the X-ray results came back, listen to her singing:

_Ten very nice metatar-sals, ten very nice metatar-sals,
If three of these metatarsals were to break
You'd still have seven very nice metatar-sals!_

..to the tune of _99 Bottles of Beer_... I mean, that was just so totally embarrassing for a mild-mannered, civilised English gentleman like myself..."

We managed to catch the 47-year-old equestrienne herself just after she slid happily but very carefully off her horse post-ride, landing on the right foot only, before very softly putting the left foot on the ground. "Yes!" she exclaimed, unusually _not_ jumping up and down with excitement. "Nothing hurt! Very good! Walking and trotting today because you have to start again slowly after 8 weeks off, horse and rider alike."

When asked were there any hairy moments, she said, "Two. The first was that Sunsmart was apprehensive about the place where the accident happened on our last ride, and all snorty and _Mummy-there's-a-monster-over-there_. I had my crop with me to persuade him that we were going to travel in a straight line and in a continuous steady forward motion past the imaginary monster and that I meant it. I don't need to do anything but tap him with it and he knows he can't wiggle out of it. And then when he passed the invisible bogeyman that hurt his rider on the last ride, I just told him what a _goooood boy_ he was, and he was happy. - And the second hairy bit was coming back with paddock boss Julian blocking the common gate I wanted to go through. I rode at him, he put his ears back and snaked his neck at Sunsmart, and I put on my teacher voice and waved the crop around rapidly, which made him swiftly give way, and pleased Sunsmart no end as well."

Well folks, they say that when you fall, you need to get back up again, and isn't that so true? The last word on that goes to the adorable black kelpie who accompanied them. She says: "_Woof_!"




The Original Article: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page64/#post1970577609


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## waresbear

Very nice lawn ornaments, er I mean donkeys Sue.


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## SueC

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Better than pink plastic flamingoes, don't you think?

The problem with these garden ornaments is that they eat my rosemary and my daisies, so I had to shoo them out pretty quickly after the little photoshoot!

How's the weather in Canada?


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## waresbear

Raining for 2 days straight🌧


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## SueC

Time for another DIY house stuff article "reprint".

Previous ones on this topic are here (strawbale build itself):

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page53/#post1970558119

And here (interiors):

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page76/#post1970586413


This particular one is about making a quirky budget farmhouse kitchen from recycled materials. It appeared in _The Owner Builder_ No.208 August/September 2018, and while I have the pdf of the article, unfortunately it's too large to attach here. TOB's genius editor, Lynda, does such a fabulous job of the visual presentation, whereas all I can give you here is the bare bones original text and photographs!











*CREATIVE KITCHEN RECYCLING*​ ​ by Sue Coulstock, Redmond WA​ ​ Owner building presents a wonderful opportunity to make creative use of recycled materials, and to save a bucket of money in the process. Also, it frees one from the restraints of the currently fashionable styles, to be able to create something classical, or quirky – and therefore timeless.​ ​ We were building a straw bale farmhouse on a tight budget after getting a once-in-a-blue-moon shot at acquiring a small farming block with our relatively limited means. It was do-or-die. At the same time, we needed to find a kitchen that would fit in with the straw bale aesthetic. The commonly available “on trend” kitchen styles reminded me of Star Trek sets or post-mortem rooms. Classically styled timber kitchens were potentially compatible but completely out of our budget.​ ​ Besides, Brett and I wanted predominantly re-used and recycled materials inside our house for environmental reasons. We made our farmhouse's colour schemes compatible with our existing much-loved bits of furniture and even brought our matching curtains along. These had already seen years of use but were excellent quality and had been bought for a lifetime's service, not just until the next fashion cycle.​ ​ When looking for items we need, we like to rummage through the local auction house, second-hand outlets and online classifieds as a first port of call. This is where you can find a lot of things made with attention to craftsmanship and durability, at reasonable prices. Some of them may need some TLC, but it’s generally worth it.​ ​ It was on one of our jaunts to the auction house when our build was only at the preliminary paperwork stage that we spotted an entire solid-timber kitchen with matching laundry and buffet display cabinets, in a style and with a patina that I instantly knew would suit our house, for $2000. Impractically, we were more than a year away from needing a kitchen, it was the wrong configuration for the space we had on paper, and the benches and various other bits were peeling and dilapidated, but somewhere in the ether a little bell was ringing. So we bought it, re-auctioned its electrical appliances, and then the kitchen spent many months taking up a quarter of our little farm shed, waiting to commence its resurrected life as the beating heart of our farmhouse.​


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## SueC

In early 2013, the house was at lock-up and ready to receive its kitchen, so we excavated our second-hand cabinetry from several strata of accrued mouse droppings and tried to obtain the services of a professional person to help us remodel and install it. Several tradespeople had shown no enthusiasm about working with a second-hand kitchen; one even advised us to throw our solid-wood benchtops away and start again.​ ​ And then a friend of ours serendipitously revealed that he had done a cabinetmaking apprenticeship in his youth and wouldn't mind doing a bit of extra work on weekends. Best of all, he wasn't possessed by any urges to throw our benchtops away, and was happy to instruct us so we could do significant parts of the work ourselves, in the form of homework assignments between expert visits.​ ​ After decontaminating the cabinetry and cleaning away until the parts of it that weren't cracked and peeling gleamed, we felt it was safe to bring into the house, and called Tim for our first work session. Together, we figured out which cabinets would go where and began the first task: Addressing ergonomics. The height of standard benchtops and overhead cupboards is modelled on the height of the average Australian woman at some stage in ancient history, which explains why I had spent my entire adulthood getting backaches stooping over kitchen benches, and banging my head into overhead units. In our own house, we swore we would customise the kitchen height to suit us.​ ​ So Tim taught us to make sturdy u-shaped supports that were screwed onto the bottom of the base cabinets and to which, in turn, the standard adjustable plastic legs were screwed. In case you are scratching your head: The standard plastic legs fell around 100mm short of the bench heights required, extra-long legs were not locally available, plus they cost an arm and a leg. Making sturdy secondary supports out of melamine offcut strips was a way to economise while honing our skills. There were around 40 plastic legs, so we had a hefty homework assignment in cutting and assembling.
​


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## SueC

Next session, Tim replaced some water-damaged cabinet backs with fresh melamine, and cut down the side panels of three laundry cabinets to make the correct depth for their conversion to ensuite and bathroom vanities. The kitchen base cabinets were fixed into their final positions against the two walls. The back wall was slightly too long for the base cabinets it received, so we divided the gaps each side of the upright cooker. We could cut the bench to fit exactly, since we used less cabinets than in the original configuration, so we ended up with a neat, siliconed join to the cooker.​ ​ (A little note on cookers: We are totally perplexed by the phenomenon of the six-burner, double-oven monstrosities that appear to be the new standard since the advent of competitive cooking shows. It is complete overkill for the average family, and even foodies like us who love to spend time making meals from scatch, and all sorts of culinary extras, and like to feed a crowd for fun, rarely use more than two burners at the same time, and only very occasionally all four. It seems highly wasteful to us that in one fell swoop, these appliances are now 50% bigger, use 50% more resources in manufacture, and require the heating of a huge oven every time you want to bake something. Think hard if you really _need_ this, or if it’s just another unnecessary status symbol.)​ ​ The wall cabinets were hung 700mm above the benchtops, and we decided to reconfigure a built-in wall-oven unit into a free-standing unit, placed between the sink space and the island bench. We covered its sides, top and back with pine panelling, and inserted a shelf into the central space. I tiled the base of the space to give me a spot for hot trays straight from the oven. With all the cabinets now fixed into position, our next job was to make new, much wider kickboards for our elevated base cabinets.​ ​ We had spare jarrah facecuts from our rustic timber wall project (see TOB 207, GR 217) and decided to cut 210mm widths from them to make rustic kickboards. After sanding, we gave them a single coat of marine grade varnish for protection and ease of cleaning. This highlighted their rich colours and patterns, and the lovely gnarls viewed as faults in commercial timber. After installation, we stood back for a “wow” experience - the red-tinged chocolate tones of the jarrah beautifully complemented the light-coloured silky oak of the kitchen cabinetry, and made a great bridge to our mocha-coloured concrete floor. All this for under $30 in boards and a bit of elbow grease!​ ​ Next, we turned our attention to sanding the timber benchtops, a homework project which gradually removed all the surface cracks, mouldy spots and water damage. The sink bench was so badly water damaged that it has split. We replaced the dilapidated old single drainer sink with a large new double drainer double sink, which allowed us to cut out the worst-affected bench areas – the remaining split was screwed and glued, and you can't tell. We saved hundreds of dollars by getting our sink for $200 from an internet supplier.​ ​ The island benchtop presented a special problem, in the form of an ex-cooktop hole that needed to be patched. Tim tidied up its edges, cut a patch piece from finger-jointed acacia project board, and went to work with his router on both the receiving and donor edges to make a perfect drop-in fit. The patchwork appearance of the inset acacia board is very decorative and includes light and dark tones that match both the timber colours of our kitchen.​ ​ After sanding, we finished all the benchtops with Haymes Aqualac, a water-based product which goes on easily and dries quickly. Four coats later, we had a nice, smooth, even finish, and the benchtops were ready to install. They look fabulous and were well worth the time and effort to restore them.​ ​ We had some gaps to fill in our recycled kitchen to tailor it to the space. The 300mm gaps either side of the wall cabinets were plugged with corner shelf units we made from pine and then colour-matched to the kickboards using Haymes Dexpress in Jarrah. The same product was used on the pine panelling for the wall unit and the back of the island bench, and on the timber concealing the side gaps and base of the cooker, giving the kitchen a consistent featured contrast.​


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## SueC

We made our own ledge-and-brace pantry door from cypress pine floorboards (instructions in GR 221), again featuring both light and dark tones that harmonise with the kitchen. It was logical to make an experimental rustic architrave for it from jarrah facecuts. This worked so well and looked so fabulous that we subsequently made all our house's architraves and skirting boards, as well as rustic ceiling cornices, from jarrah facecuts. They are $5 a board (approx. 280mm x 2500mm) from the local mill and go a long way. A thicknesser came in very handy for quickly getting smooth surfaces in the material, and we used 1:1 linseed oil and turpentine to dress it before hanging. You tend to get little gaps in the 45º joins with rustic timber, but black silicone fixes those and fits in with the aesthetic.​ ​ A word on backsplash tiling: Be creative; this is a thing of beauty you'll have for decades if you do it right. You can do rainbow colours or mosaics or anything you want. I had lovely variegated green floor tiles to use, but also several sheets of tiny individually patterned red glass and ceramic tiles that needed a spot in which to shine. I spent a few hours cutting the corners off my floor tiles so I could include these little beauties in the backsplash, and I'm so glad I did – my heart leaps every time I look at my lovely backsplash, which also has a few larger red tiles featuring eucalyptus leaves and goannas.​ ​ We love our earth friendly, rustic, quirky recycled kitchen, it really suits our house and we wouldn't change a thing about it. We have lasting good memories from the collaborative process of remodelling and installing it, and a unique outcome. Tim estimated that the silky oak cabinetry would have cost over $16,000 new; the difference between that and $2,000 left plenty of room for paying a professional to help us reconfigure it to our space. And wouldn't you rather help sustain a clever human being in your local community, gain skills, save money and express your creativity, than heap an additional burden on the planet by buying new?
​


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## SueC

Here I am including some of the things a kitchen is good for! ;-)


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## SueC

More food here:


https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/sets/72157687753093115


More photo albums of farm life here:


http://redmoonsanctuary.com.au/


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## SueC

For any "lurkers" who aren't logged in / aren't members yet (why not???) - you won't be able to see the attachment photos on this page, but you can see most of them by clicking on the second link in the post above and going to the "Strawbale House Build" album, to pages 3 and 4, for the kitchen photos. 


_The Owner Builder_ August/September 2018 is still currently in Australian newsagencies, and can also be ordered in electronic form from the Owner Builder website (google-able). We write for and support independent publications.


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## SueC

I've just rediscovered a song I just loved when I was 23, but haven't heard in about 20 years. This is because I had this album on cassette, and then cassette players disappeared from cars etc, and over time the cassette died too. So I stumbled across this on YouTube purely because of a reference in another song I was listening to at home which made me go, "Oh yeah, there was a song called that!" 






This musician has really really stood up to the test of time. All the best ones do.


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## Zexious

You've done such an amazing job detailing the process, from start to finish! Wow! I'm the type of person to throw money at things I'm not well that versed in, but having a hand in it yourself looks incredibly rewarding.
Of course, my favorite picture is of those cinnamon rolls... Yum! Enjoy the (delicious looking!) fruits of your labor!


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## SueC

Thank you, @*Zexious* !  As a writer, that is basically my job description. The science background helps, otherwise I'd have to have OCD to write like this! :rofl: 

I can send you the hazelnut/cinnamon scroll recipe if you want it!  If you have a breadmaker, it's dead easy to do these. The breadmaker does all the hard work. You merely assemble, slice and bake. Then, eat!

How've you been? How's your reading pile? How's you injury coming along?

Because you like emus, I'm going to find you another emu picture! 










I didn't take this one, but can't ever let an opportunity pass to remind everyone that in emus, it's the male who does all the care of the offspring. The female is depleted enough after laying those massive eggs and needs to go eat and recuperate from her task. Pretty eggs, aren't they?


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## SueC

*RIDING AGAIN :cowboy:
*
As you might have read in the "newspaper" on page 94, on Saturday morning I had my first ride since my accident. One day and a few hours short of 8 weeks to get back in the saddle, and that was considered fast - it sure didn't feel like it! Thankfully, riding itself is pain-free and feels completely fine. I don't even have to mount off a height; I tried from the ground and don't have a single twinge of discomfort from taking full weight on the ball of the foot. The only things that are still uncomfortable are:



Concussion / vibration of the foot - I can't stomp with the injured foot yet, that would kill; ditto running and jumping off it or onto it.


Full push-off with the toes in long-stride fast walking - so I use crutches in a cross-country skiing manner when we do our fitness and cross-country walks, to take just a little weight off the foot at the end of the rolling phase. That way I can walk long strides at full fast walking pace for cardiovascular exercise, without limping. This exercise takes the whole leg and foot through the normal range of motion at the fast walk. We were doing 5km fast walks like this at the 6-week stage two weeks ago, and are keeping it up. In-between, I walk crutchless and at a slower pace around the house and to do general stuff like feeding the horses, working in the garden and around the farm - and I'm doing physio exercises to stretch the muscles and tendons which were out of use for 5 weeks. I was limping quite badly crutchless at 6 weeks, but it's coming along nicely now. I'm really pleased with the fact that I've got full muscle mass back already in the calf that had shrunk down to two thirds normal - it is just less toned now than the uninjured side, but this too will come good.


Manually twisting the mid-foot in the direction that broke it in the first place. That's why I wear full hiking boots to walk around outdoors. Indoors I am now barefoot a lot to feel the ground; it helps me use the foot normally.


So the main modification I am making for riding right now is that for the dismount I am sliding off my horse in full contact and landing on my right foot first while still holding on to the saddle - and only then do I put the left foot down gently. Normally I jump off and land beside the horse on both feet, but that's going to be a few more weeks away.

Risk-wise, it's now the same as always - you can fall and break something anytime you ride. I am no more likely to re-break my healing fracture at this stage, than any other bone. Since I'd not fallen off this horse before in 10 years of riding him (not counting the occasional overshoots when bareback mounting :rofl, I don't think my overall risk of falling is that great. I think I'm at far greater risk of injury when I get in the car and drive to town - did you know a third of people in a recent WA survey admit to texting when driving? People veer all over the place, and you can no longer be confident that they won't end up in your lane in the process. Unfortunately, WA police are really slack at enforcing traffic rules, and have been the whole 36 years I have lived here. WA drivers are always speeding and tailgating - the majority of them. If the limit says 110 km/h, on the freeway almost everyone is doing 119 km/h and getting away with it. In Europe, the speed limit was the speed limit, and very few people broke it as a matter of course - and if they did, there were significant consequences.

As can be imagined, my vegetable garden was a jungle after six weeks where I wasn't gardening. So for the past two weeks, I've been getting back to it, initially removing blossoming kale plants taller than me and on enormous stalks I needed to axe down, that looked like something out of Jurassic Park. Brett is doing all my digging, compost spreading and bed preparation at the moment, the dear (because using a spade or digging fork is still a bit iffy for me); we're actually getting sunny days and making the most of it. So I'm doing a lot of weed control and planting out greenhouse seedlings that grew from seed while I was injured. This morning, I planted out another prepared bed, this time with Brussels sprouts, new kale plants (Tuscan, Scotch Blue Dwarf and Red Russian as before), very late broccolis, spring onions and celery. After that, I went riding.

Except that it's been 3 weeks since Greg came to trim (because I couldn't), so I had to do a mini-trim on Sunsmart to ride him in boots. The Saturday ride had been barefoot, but I wanted to go into the forest with him today, onto the rocky outcrops. Oh well, at least my foot didn't complain about the trimming - and the donkeys need doing too, so that's on tomorrow's list.

:shrug:

So 45 minutes later, he was finally kitted out and we were ready to roll. The dog jumped around barking frantically; I swear she has seen hounds at hunts on television sometime, the way she carries on. Because the spring flush has started, the donkeys are now locked into the driveway when their muzzles are off, and only let into the main paddocks with muzzles on the two overweight ones. This means the gates are shut, and I walk my horse to the common gate when riding to open and shut it (3 electric lines like at dairy farms).

I actually walked him around the back of the house today to the start of the central sand track, because Julian decided to come along with us, and then Chasseur came as well, and I didn't want the two of them barrelling down the track together and potentially bumping into us; but they veered right into a forest trail and picked up speed, so then I got on Sunsmart and we were off on our ride without accompanying potential complications.
:runninghorse2::runninghorse2:

We did all the main farm tracks today, and were out about 45 minutes. Sunsmart gave a few little exaggerated leaps of pure fun when cantering uphill towards the western forest track at the start - as if to say, _woohoo_! I am content to walk and trot (mind you, a trotter's flying trot is fast and firmly in the repertoire; it's no jog) while getting the horse back to fitness, but Sunsmart volunteered quite a bit of speed today, so I let him have extended canters and a short gallop as well. Not bad for a horse who's 21 and has been out of action for 8 weeks because of an injured rider.
:charge: :racing:

And a horse, I might add, who will be getting a blood test for PPID markers, plus trace element status etc, later this week, because I don't like what went on with his winter coat this year. It didn't just grow too long, it also turned yellow just before he started shedding; and this is a chocolate brown horse who nearly passes for black in his new summer coat. Plus, the coat was clumping, and shedding in an uneven pattern - very strange, he's never had that before. So considering we had to put down his mother last year due to everything adding up to a fast-growing pituitary tumour which sent her from normal to unacceptable quality of life in a few short months, I'm being extra jumpy about Sunsmart getting an abnormally long coat this winter.

I was really happy with how he rode; he was really into it, and if he does come up with PPID markers, let's hope the neoplasms are slower-growing than his mother's were, and can be managed for another five good years or so... Of course, he could have trace elements out of whack too; we use copper trough blocks at certain times of the year, and there's a lot of iron in the groundwater, so potentially this interferes with the absorption of necessary trace elements, even if they are provided in a supplement (and they certainly are). It will be interesting to see his blood panel. He'll be the canary in the coalmine for his herd, as far as possible trace element problems are concerned.

The days here are getting hot; and with all his enthusiastic running today, Sunsmart had worked up a bit of a sweat, and I sponged him down after the ride. He was clearly happy to be back in business - of course, business also includes a post-ride feed, to get a bit of salt and some more of his vitamin/mineral mix into him. Anyway, smiles all around from horse and rider today. And this rider is going to have a bath now before getting on with other work!

:smileynotebook: :apple:


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## Knave

I am so happy for you that, as little girl says, you get to feel like a real person again.


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## SueC

Thank you, dear @*Knave* ! :hug: Is the little girl completely back to normal now? How's Squidgy looking, are dressings still needed? And are you having a toenail painting party when Squidgy's skin is all healed - if that hasn't happened already? I think everyone in the family should paint their toenails in celebration, your DH included! ;-)


Wishing all of you much sparkly happiness in your northern autumn!  As the temperatures drop, the comfort foods can come out again...


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## SueC

A very good friend from the _Grass Roots_ community forwarded me something about horses the other day, which I think is well worth re-printing here. It's from the organiser of her mindfulness group, who is dealing with an OTTB plucked from the dog sales.


Hello mindful ones!

Some years ago my horse Elle was rescued from the Echuca saleyards as a very skinny and aggressive ex-racehorse. As you can imagine, Elle is pretty easily scared and at the riding workshop I did on the weekend, I was advised to relax my inner leg muscles because that helps Elle to settle and relax! Mindfulness on horseback!

Lately I have understood that when riding, if I am fearful of what Elle might do, she will become agitated and start to look around for danger. In these moments I am filling my cup with worry which also fills her cup with worry! I realised after watching The Power of Vulnerability video today that I need to allow myself to be vulnerable, trust my horse, relax and if she does spook or something then I can respond in that present moment, rather that fast forwarding and imagining she might spook.

If you’d like to watch The Power of Vulnerability, a TED Talk by Brené Brown, it is 20 minutes, here’s the link: 

https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability

I wish you well this week and that you have a chance to fill your cup with some nice messages… Here is an article about humans ‘negativity bias’ and how we can work with it.

http://www.rickhanson.net/take-in-the-good/


Kind regards
Jess.

_Image by Charlie Macksey_


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## egrogan

^^I love that whole post, as it is feels so personally relevant at this point in time! But particularly this part, I think this is the crux of where I am with my lovely Fizz right now (just have to figure out how I let go of my own worry...)



> Lately I have understood that when riding, if I am fearful of what Elle might do, she will become agitated and start to look around for danger. In these moments I am filling my cup with worry which also fills her cup with worry!





Brene Brown is a bit of a celebrity amongst the people I work with- have watched that TED Talk a bunch of times and have been doing a lot of reflection on what it means as a leader and a manager of a big team. She's a great writer too if you spend some time with her other stuff.


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## Knave

I read some of her stuff @egrogan. I had watched Warwick talk about her, and he seems so, I don’t really know the word, but I like the way he thinks, so I gave her a go. I liked the talk more than the books. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the material, but for whatever reason I couldn’t get the voice in them. Maybe that doesn’t make sense...


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> ^^I love that whole post, as it is feels so personally relevant at this point in time! But particularly this part, I think this is the crux of where I am with my lovely Fizz right now (just have to figure out how I let go of my own worry...



For the latter part, I refer you to this. It may not offer a method, just a mantra, but watching the video makes you laugh, raising endorphin levels, which in turn makes it easier to let go of worry.









Or you could try Boggart banishing techniques from _Harry Potter_! ;-) I like those.


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## SueC

Anyone feel like a Chemistry ditty? I just dug this out to share on 40+ because it was topical, and because Christmas is coming up. Wrote it as a warning for my Year 12s at the time!







It was also a way of testing their Chemistry comprehension. I don't know if the US is as bad with substance abuse as Australia, but man, the binge drinking that's mainstream here...


*CHRISTMAS CHEMISTRY*

_by Sue Coulstock née Kelly, Christmas 1999_

It’s Christmas, it’s Christmas, the Pudding is flat
Flatter than the mat on which the cat sat
With a consistency of blu-tack to the power of three
Methinks that someone forgot to add the NaHCO3
Never mind, it’s time again for the carols to sing
The reindeer bells are ringing, let them ring
Rudolf’s nose is red, and resplendently so
Too much UV, he forgot to put on his ZnO

You’ve stuffed yourself silly with Christmas fare
Roast turkey, potatoes, cranberries, pickled hare
A selection of cheeses, Christmas cookies galore
Quadruple chocolate mousse; and you kept having more
Now a complicated gut impaction has you at death’s door
You need a funnel, an assistant, and hydrated MgSO4
If your case is so desperate that even this will not do
Try liquid hydrocarbon of general formula CNH2N+2
Said liquid also applied with a funnel, of course -
That should work for you; it works in a horse

This ancient remedy having been effective for you
You feel obliged to go and party until half past two
Now post-party muscle cramps are giving you hell
You’re electrolyte depleted, so administer KCl
And try drinking some H20 for a change
Your friends, of course, may be finding this strange

Next morning, or perhaps should that be noon
You’ll invariably feel you’ve awoken too soon
So black coffee, number of teaspoons of this seven
And you might also need a little C12H22O11
Some people like to have this intravenously
But the conventional method will do for me

There are also Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs
Of course, should you be feeling as if jewel bugs
Are crawling nonstop beneath your fingernails
And your very last neurons are going off the rails
All perfectly legal, as doubtless you knew before
Found on your supermarket shelf as C9H8O4

There’s a saying about learning from the past
Else history will be the one laughing last
Alas, it is time to bring this tale to an end
And so I will be wishing you, my friend:

Merry Christmas​ 

PS: Formula C2H5OH was absent from this poem, I admit
Because the author could find nothing to rhyme with it.
However, it represents significant progress (and more)
As this author’s poems have rarely rhymed before.


*GLOSSARY FOR RUSTY CHEMISTS*

NaHCO3 = sodium bicarbonate (raising agent)

ZnO = zinc oxide, physical sun barrier found in zinc cream

MgSO4 = magnesium sulfate (Epsom salts)

CNH2N+2 = general liquid hydrocarbon formula, standing in for liquid paraffin whose exact formula doesn’t rhyme

KCl = potassium chloride, one of a number of major mammalian electrolytes

H20 = please! If you don’t know this one, where have you been?

C12H22O11 = sucrose (table sugar)

C9H8O4 = aspirin

C2H5OH = ethanol (drinking alcohol)


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## SueC

Just had a great little ride! Early morning before lots of other stuff planned on Brett's off day and just about to hop in the shower to do that...

The aim was to do two barefoot loops of the internal sand and swamp tracks at our place. (I'll post a Google view with trails soon.) Julian is always adventurous and wanted to come along when he saw us setting off - he stopped grazing with Chasseur and came towards us speculatively, so I encouraged him, "C'mon, Mr J.!" and he did - and then so did his friend, and all three donkeys - and all of us went single file down the sand track, with Sunsmart leading. Julian wanted to run, so I got Sunsmart to trot and lead the field out. 

As is the custom with off-track horses, they soon want to do some real work, so we all did flying trots alternating with fast canters. It's no problem leading out a bunch of ex-racers at liberty, as they are consummately trained in following other horses single-file and only overtaking if there is room - and they also understand to keep clear of other horses (they have it through commonsense, reinforced by training, but also by having accidents or being checked, i.e. contacting wheels or legs of other competitors). So you just don't make room but hog the centre of your track if you don't want them passing. If you decide to let them pass, you just steer your horse to the far left of the track to make way and let them go.

:gallop: :gallop: :gallop: :runninghorse2: :runninghorse2: :charge:

As I have no photos, I have cartooned this experience as best as I could - please imagine long ears and no stretchy galloping, just rocking-horse motions, for the three donkeys bringing up the rear - and the leading two horses are chocolate brown, and the third one a reddish chestnut. The donkeys got left behind soon after the horses started to get serious, but plodded on anyway at their own pace.

Towards the end of the sand track, I let the other two horses pass and then we followed them along the south boundary - Julian knew the way from our pre-fracture walks together. At the swamp track intersection he stopped - which way shall we go? Up the hill or through the swamp? So I trotted Sunsmart out on the swamp track and called the horses, who immediately followed us at pacework speed, as before (STB pacework is aerobic training at a fast trot / canter; while jogwork is jogging and fastwork is sprinting). Julian was high-jinxing so I let him and Chasseur pass, and they accelerated past me, galloping the 500m back to the meadow. Sunsmart also wanted to go fast and I let him, but towards the rough end section I slowed him to a steady canter and let the others break away - a ridden horse is more likely to trip up on rough ground. "It's OK", I said to him. "They're buddies, and I'm your best buddy, right?" 

I found the donkeys out the back of the property on my second loop, solo with Sunsmart, with Julian and Chasseur settling down to graze in the meadow after their adventure loop in the bush with us. :rofl:

Romeo, by the way, was eating at home:

:apple:


It happens now and then that horses and/or donkeys will come along of their own accord when I go riding; I'd written about it before here:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...nkeys-other-people-479466/page28/#post7928857

And from that spot:

Quote:
Originally Posted by *SueC* 
_It was so funny though, Sunsmart was doing his flying trot and his mother was sitting right behind him doing the same, and his uncle was coming up beside him pacing (he's a natural pacer), and those two were *in their paddock rugs* and doing the full racing formation thing ex-harness racers automatically do when running in a group!







_

Quote:
_I love this image _

_It was great fun, although it only happened for a short while. I'll see if I can cajole them into coming along a bit further next time, they could do with the sight-seeing and the extra exercise. The funniest thing for me, apart from that they were in full harness racing mode in their paddock rugs (I suppose the leg straps might have reminded them of hobbles







), was that they did racing formation and had those really intensely focused looks in their eyes that you see in races, and in stalking sheepdogs actually! And Sunsmart also immediately went into formation mode. You could just hear him thinking, "I'm in the lead and I'm maintaining it!" and his uncle was going, "I'm on the outside and I'm going to try to outsprint this fellow!" and mum at the back was going, "I've got the slipstream and heaven help the others if there is a gap and I can get out!"

Experienced horses really get racing technique, and these three are so funny. It's so out of context to suddenly, on a sand track in the bush, find yourself in a quasi-trotting track scenario. When my Arabian filly was young, we got her to tag along with us when we rode the mature horses, and she just ran along having fun. It was very casual. Whereas ex-harness racers just "switch into mode" in groups. The French mare (Dame du Buisson, Sunsmart's great-grandmother) did it too. If she had the lead on a trail ride and anyone came up outside her, she's get this hyperfocused expression and put her ears back and extend her stride and ask, "May I really run now?" She would also drift out to cut off the challenger unless you tracked her straight with your aids. It's serious business to them.







_


Here's a photo of Mr J. when he was still racing some years back:










It's a fun experience riding in a fast-running pack with everyone else at liberty! You really wouldn't do it unless you knew all the horses extremely well, especially if you're not riding the herd boss. One amusing aspect is that even at liberty, they are so amenable to voice cues like, "Slooooow down now!" or "Go go go!" or tongue-clicking or hearing their names. I've driven all three of these horses around the pacework training track at some stage when they were racing, and was their offsider babysitter during early harness training, and remember them all as foals.

Chasseur as a newborn a couple of hours old:










Chasseur's mother Colirini is also Sunsmart's maternal grandmother. Sunsmart's mother was Chasseur's older sister who died here late last year; this is Sunsmart as a newborn:











PS: Bwahahahaha! If my orthopaedics specialist knew what was going on here! :rofl:


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## gottatrot

> So I trotted Sunsmart out on the swamp track and called the horses, who immediately followed us at pacework speed, as before (STB pacework is aerobic training at a fast trot / canter; while jogwork is jogging and fastwork is sprinting). Julian was high-jinxing so I let him and Chasseur pass, and they accelerated past me, galloping the 500m back to the meadow. Sunsmart also wanted to go fast and I let him, but towards the rough end section I slowed him to a steady canter and let the others break away -


That sounded like so much fun! I wanted to be there! Quite funny how they will go single file.


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## Knave

I was also thinking about how fun that sounded. Even to see it would have been a happy thing!


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## SueC

It would have been even more fun if we'd had @Knave on Bones and @gottatrot on Hero with us!

Imagine this:


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## Knave

It would have been fun. Or, reality may be that Bones and Hero had breakdowns over the donkeys, then fed off of each other and it would have been more interesting to watch and less fun to participate. Lol


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## SueC

The donkeys were bringing up the rear, and I doubt your horses would have been at the rear! :rofl: So not much visual exposure, and two free horses between them and the donkeys getting rapidly left behind. Mind you, Hero and Bones might have gotten a little turbo-charged if they'd caught a glimpse of them at the back... but that doesn't matter, the sand track makes for safe galloping... :rofl:




































:racing: :racing: :racing:


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## SueC

I returned to my horizontal office (AKA bed) after doing early morning chores, with a nice bowl of chocolate and strawberry porridge for breakfast. That, by the way, for those of you starting autumn, is a really lovely, nutritious and easy breakfast:

*CHOCOLATE STRAWBERRY PORRIDGE*

Put plain porridge oats and milk in a breakfast bowl and microwave until cooked. Add a generous handful of quartered or sliced strawberries, stir through, and return to the microwave for a minute or two, until the strawberries are cooked to your liking. Add as much pure cocoa as you want, and a spoonful of honey. Stir and enjoy. For extra luxury, add a little cream.


My bowl of breakfast wasn't enough this morning, so I ate all the leftover cauliflower in cheese sauce from last night as well. We had a big day yesterday, and today will be reasonably big too once I get up. I've got a tray of spring onions to plant, some watering to do, some mowing and weed control, an article forming in my head on further donkey adventures for _Grass Roots_, some editing for my writer friend / adopted sister's supercalifragilistic book-in-the-making (hello you clever boots! :wave: ), more donkey hooves to trim, the annual business tax return to start, some cleanup to do, physio exercises, and if I'm lucky a little ride and, if there's energy left in the tank, a cross-country fitness walk when Brett gets home this afternoon.

Then it's date night - we're finally going to finish the _Bloodflowers_ concert - actually going to re-watch that section from the beginning, as it's been a while since the night Brett got too comatose for us to finish watching and had to be wheelbarrowed off to bed! :rofl: Ever notice how much closer and more treasured your relationship with your bed becomes after age 40? Last night we managed an episode of _Miss Sherlock_ (Japanese, subtitled, superb fun, and I loooooove the good manners and friendly formality of Japanese culture) before we crawled into bed at 8.30pm for some reading. Soon though, we had to turn off the lights, and we tangled up to sleep. Now that's such a luxury: Sleep is already wonderful enough, but how much better is it when you can huddle up with your favourite human being, all warm and snuggly like a litter of kittens? 

The dog doesn't appreciate the poetry - she's sighing loudly beside the bed because I'm being so monumentally boring, from her perspective. _Get up, monkey!_ :rofl: And I will, once I've committed the rest of yesterday to virtual paper.


*WHATEVER HAPPENED TO RIDING PANTS?*

After yesterday's adventurous morning ride, chores and lunch, we went to town for the afternoon. First stop: Albany Horse World for copra, crushed oats, pony maintenance cubes and *new riding pants*! It's been nearly a decade since I bought new ones, but I had to sadly retire my favourite pair two rides ago...blue-and-black subtle check pattern, 95% cotton, 5% elastane so ultra comfortable against the skin, legs actually long enough to cover ankles, which is a real issue for me... but alas, they were sagging around their now-sad, elasticised waist and had three holes that were unpatchable due to the age of the fabric. When I discovered a new hole at the crotch, I decided they really had to retire... as did my underwear actually, since it had a small matching hole, and this was a little bit embarrassing except I was the only person to see it... I went, _Whaaaaaaat?????? I should not be seeing this!_ as I sat on the bench taking off my boots. Riding does put stress on fabric in unusual places...

Anyway, I can't believe what has happened to riding pants in the decade since I last bought some. Nearly all of them are either sticky-bums or studded with bling - and some of them are _both_. Who wants to shred their saddle or nether region with bling? And I don't like sticky bum pants because I hate seams like that. Give me seam-free and just the knee section with extra fabric and oomph.

I found a pair of elasticised-waist, long-enough-legs in cream on the specials rack for $20, one size too big, but that was only around the waist and I can put a dart in that easily enough for the price (or eat lots of ice-cream this summer! ). The material wasn't my favourite - too much synthetic fibre - but for good measure, I got a replacement pair in my favourite fabric as well. The only problem is the colours - instead of plain colours, or nice subtle patterns, the fabric I wanted only came in two-tone this year - curse the fashions!

The choice was: Blue and tangerine, black and purple, blue and red. I had to toss up between the latter two - I mean, who wears tangerine, although it is a plus for road safety. Brett said, "Get the one with red in!" and that's how I went, wishing that the combination had been black and red, instead of blue and red, but you can't always get what you want etc.

Once these are washed, I can try them out. Meanwhile, I've got a comfortable but falling apart charcoal pair which used to be black once and whose legs are too short; and a cream pair I used in my last competition many moons ago, and for beach riding at the time too.


*THE THOUSAND STEPS AT SAND PATCH*

Next stop: Sand Patch, for the Wind Farm walk and the 1000 Steps. On the short drive out to the coast, Brett and I wound up the dog: _Walkies, Jess! Walkies with splish!_ (this is dog-speak for a swimming opportunity) _Waaaaalkies, yay!_ Said dog had her ears up perkily, a laugh on her face and was waving her tail in the rear-vision mirror while watching the road from her safe perch in the compartment behind the rear seats.



8.5 weeks post multiple metatarsal fractures, I still use crutches on fast-paced fitness walks, in the manner of a cross-country skier, and just take a little weight off my healing foot in the final stage of the rolling phase. The amount of weight taken off is reducing at every walk, but I'm not ditching the crutches for this kind of walking until I can speed-walk limp free. I can now walk downhill and do stairs without limping on such walks, and can walk fairly normally at slower speeds.

We've been doing 5km cross-country walks at home from 6 weeks in; and we're now transitioning back to our favourite coastal trails - mountains on the menu again a little later, but meanwhile we are aiming at the 16km undulating Kalgan River walk in the next two weeks - probably still crutch-assisted (like the walking pole thing a lot of hikers do). Then perhaps Mount Martin Botanical walk, a similar distance, rougher footing and steeper inclines. Then, if I get my wish, the Little Grove to Sand Patch section on the Bibbulmun trail and back via back roads and the Harbour, which is a loop in excess of 20km, and Brett always complains about his feet after that one! (I think new boots would fix it!)

Anyway, to start on more serious hill training, we paid a visit to the famous 1000 Steps at Sand Patch. After doing the Wind Farm loop - tame footing, concrete walking paths and boardwalks - we visited these old friends. They look like this, and this is already from some of the way down (and these aren't our photos, they are "official" photos):




















Brett was lovely and carried my crutches - the place was swarming with tourists, so we couldn't leave them at the top - and I've got no use for crutches on a staircase. The down part was easy; the back up again gives you a nice workout. Interval training for us at this stage: We stopped after every three to four flights to get our breaths back... but when we do climb, we climb fast...

This is a lovely "official" snap or Sand Patch at sunset, from the beach at the bottom:











*AND FINALLY, A RANT ABOUT SUPERMARKETS!*

We had to do some grocery shopping before heading home, and went to Woolworths at Dog Rock, which used to be fine for getting dry shelf staples like porridge oats, wholemeal pasta, Laucke's Golden Wholemeal bread pre-mix (which I mix with my stoneground wholemeal flours from Eden Valley farm), dried legumes (although I also buy these, and Eden Valley flour, and cinnamon, in bulk from a bulk food outlet), dairy foods, some top-up meat between Reeves on Campbell's superior, locally produced, locally owned offerings, and F&V we don't grow yet or don't have fresh from the garden at the time - Woolworths offer Abnormal Apples, Perplexed Pears, Curious Capsicums etc etc in bulk nets and we completely support buying non-"standard" shape/colour/size F&V, because _that's how they grow_, they're not made in a factory y'know, fellow Australian shoppers!!!

A couple of months ago, the evil overseers of Woolworths re-organised the store, mixing up all the items out of normal, rational order so that you had to spend a lot of time looking for them instead of related items being in the same aisle. They do this on purpose to make you look at more stuff you don't need, hoping to increase impulse buying of such high-profit, low-nutrient value rubbish. Statistically it works for them. People like us though run around with lists and professional tunnel-vision for the exclusion of items not on the list, cursing about the illogical order of things, waste of time and amount of non-foods on offer, and reinforcing other similar people with lists by dint of smiles, various battle cries, loud complaints about the illogical order and the evil intent of the supermarket overlords, and demonstrations of spiritual kinship.

The other evil things they have done is to cut out a lot of locally produced lines, and to stop offering the larger size packets of staple foods. So we can't buy West Australian butter at Woolworths anymore, but hey, Irish butter anyone? So we buy the West Australian, farmers' cooperative butter at alternative outlets, ditto the rosehip tea, the larger-size cream from WA companies, the Golden Wholemeal premix, and a whole growing list of other items being steadily deleted in favour of higher-profit options.

We've really been gagging at the meat section at Woolworths lately, and buying less and less there. Less bulk products, less WA products, small local producers' lines taken off the shelf. Yesterday, we found they had deleted a line of vacuum-packed bulk beef offered by a small local company, and we had a very productive fit about it. We looked at each other and said, "That's it, from now on we're boycotting the meat department at Woolworths completely, let's check out our other stuff and go to Reeves for a bulk pack of meat!"

So that's what we did. Instead of spending $60 with them to last us a fortnight, we spent $120 on a 9kg quality bulk pack at Reeves that will last us over a month, containing T-bone steaks, rump steaks, mince, beef sausages, lamb chops, a rolled beef roast and a leg of lamb, all locally produced, top quality and handled by an independent local business. We've always been happy with the meat we've bought from Reeves, but this kind of bulk buying actually makes that affordable for us, averaging at $13.33/kg. Even the shin beef at Woolworths is now $16/kg, sausages and mince $10/kg, T-bone is $30+, and it's all fattier and less tasty than from Reeves, and always has water coming out of it when you try to pan-fry. Icky.

Should have done this a long time ago, but we don't normally buy that much meat so we didn't really think about it until the supermarket forced the issue for us. Anyway, from now on this is how we're buying our meat, and eventually we will do a home kill and eat our own beef (main issue is that two people take a heck of a long time to get through 200kg of meat, but there's ways around that...).

Ditto chicken, by the way - we're completely done with industrial chicken, and next time we're in town on a Saturday, we'll buy from the heirloom meat chicken guy at farmers' market as we try to do - change of tactic though: We'll take an esky, buy a dozen frozen decent chickens, and stow them into our chest freezer at home. Several birds with one stone: No multinationals involved, good farm animal welfare, local eating, far better quality, and when you buy bulk it's affordable.

And by the way, those T-bones were super delicious last night, with sides of brown rice with mushroom sauce, peas, and cauliflower in cheese sauce. For dessert we heated up some of our home-grown, home-bottled Japanese Satsuma Plums - wonderful flavour, no added sugar or anything else - simply halved, steamed plums made at home and giving us bottled summer all winter long...

:cowboy: Have a super Friday, everyone! 


PS: Hello @*Milestev* ! :wave: Book and art nuts and related discussions always welcome here! DH and I live in a library! ;-) You'll find the start of my journal far more boring than since page 33, when I decided to turn it into a general free-for-all online journal with occasional horse references! :rofl: Is that a Friesian and is it yours? Very spectacular!


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## gottatrot

Knave said:


> It would have been fun. Or, reality may be that Bones and Hero had breakdowns over the donkeys, then fed off of each other and it would have been more interesting to watch and less fun to participate. Lol


Ha ha for sure. Still fun unless someone falls off! Even then sometimes...

Never heard of Miss Sherlock, we will have to try that one.
Sand Patch looks beautiful! How did we miss that on our WA trip?
We were interested to see there was still Woolworths, since at least in our part of the US they are an old time store that my parents talk about going in when they were young, but they disappeared from these parts long ago.

My pants also wear out completely in the crotch and inner thighs from riding. I also get holes on the legs because I snag them lightly with the rasp, then those little snags gradually wear into bigger holes. My sister thought I was making a fashion statement the other day, and I said, "Nope, these holes come naturally."


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## SueC

I had to mend my once-black pair a few years back when I got battery acid on them lugging a car battery around. That's back in the day when we used a 12V caravan pump to fill up the horse troughs in the top paddocks from the dam in the common. Only took a couple of hours! :rofl: And we always had to lug the car battery from the fence unit to the dam to do it, 200m in the wheelbarrow. Those were desperate times, as we didn't have a Golden Goose and were building. We still don't have a Golden Goose, but we do have a proper fire pump now! 

Have you seen the Japanese film _Departures_? So excellent...

@*Knave* , @*gottatrot* - if you can ever snaggle a TARDIS, you can bring your horses for some nice riding and a great afternoon tea!  Sigh. Where are those TARDIS thingies?


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## Knave

That would be so fun! I don’t know how we could get Bones and Hero on the plane though... hmmm... Not only would it be fun to ride, but eating the food you make looks spectacular as well! My husband might have to brave a plane trip to drag me home after that.


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## SueC

The advantages of the TARDIS:




You travel for free
It's bigger on the inside, so horses no problem
It can get you to your destination quicker than any plane, and then two weeks (or whatever time) later you can go back to the exact time and place you came from, incurring no loss of time in your "real" life, but having bonus space-and-time adventures on top of it









...the coolest bus in the universe...



Hello, @*waresbear* ! :wave: Are you keeping your students good and busy?


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## Knave

Ok, now that sounds awesome! I never looked up the word. Here was my pretend definition going on when I read: other countries have paid vacations. These vacations must be called tardis... lol


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## waresbear

Sue, before I forget I love that door with the horseshoes in your kitchen love love love love love! Glad to hear your lameness is on the road to solid recovery.

I had one student yesterday, who begged me to take her off the lunge line because her legs were killing her. Okay so I make her do some No Hands no stirrups and post exercises. I told her she only had to do it for 10 strides, best she could do is 6. At the end of her lesson I said okay now you get your revenge. I hopped on Scotty no lunge line, No Hands, no stirrups and I posted, then I did two point and kept him going on the rail in the arena until she told me to stop. I had to give her a ride home because her mom couldn't make it, she thanked me when she got out of the car and she said by next spring she wants to ride like me! Yeah I cried.


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## SueC

Oh, that's excellent, @*waresbear* ! :hug: :happydance:

And you meanie you! :rofl:

In Germany, when I learnt to ride, they liked to throw people in at the deep end, and you weren't allowed to complain culturally, you just had to do it or fall off!  I was 9, first lesson, group lesson, "There's your horse!" - a nearly 17hh Warmblood called Viola. I wouldn't have been 5ft yet. "Now get on!" And the stirrup was adjusted to my kiddie legs, all the way up there! _How do I do this? Which foot do I put in? How do I get my foot up there without doing the vertical splits?
_
I got on, then we walked, and the horse was head-tossing, so I lost the reins and the horse trotted with me trying to reach the reins and I promptly fell off within less than 5 minutes of riding. :rofl:

"Right, get back on! And don't fall off again!"

:rofl:

The very first time we began trotting - second group lesson, after doing the posting movements at the walk - once we had the posting sorted, they took our stirrups away for the last 10 minutes and told us to find a way to stay on. And that we needed to do this because we were beginners! 

It was a kid lesson so we actually stayed on. Children seem to be more athletic and less fearful in these situations.

I know there's some better methods - like this one, which I think is excellent for adult beginners:

https://www.horseforum.com/horse-riding/alternative-german-rider-1922-2016-3-a-793527/

...but what they did with us also worked! :rofl:

When and where did you learn to ride, @*waresbear* , and will you tell us some memories?

PS: Do you know how many people told us about that door, "You've got your horseshoes the wrong way around?" :rofl:


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## waresbear

Oh I have good stories and pictures and the whole nine yards, I'm so glad you asked without rolling your eyes. I am just about to tune up my lesson horse, so when I'm in the house and all comfy I will answer you.


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## SueC

_*Everyone*_ is extra welcome to post memories of learning to ride! If you haven't seen @*Knave* as a kid on horseback, she won the photo competition with this cute shot, which I've just stolen from the August competition page which is so difficult to get to - hope that's OK, @*Knave* ! But this is soooo cute! Do you even _remember_ your first horse ride?

______________________________________________________________________

_This mare was called Nuisance. She was my grandfather’s, and she had been a favorite of his. A mustang stud had gotten in with her mother if I remember the story correctly, and she was the result. I’m not 100% sure about that though. I heard she was a very handy mare in her day.

In any case, she was retired by the time I rode her. I didn’t appreciate her then like I do looking back. She was there to teach me to rope calves at brandings, like in this picture, and took me through many miles of work. She was everyone’s dream kid horse. _ Attached Thumbnails 


PS: Super, @*waresbear* , looking forward to it! I think we all love these kinds of stories here! 

...and you have _photos_! :loveshower::loveshower::loveshower:

Enjoy your lesson/tune-up! :cowboy:


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## Knave

I do not remember learning to ride @SueC. I do remember the first horse I called my own though. She wasn’t really mine, which was a sad fact I learned the hard way when she was gone one day.

Her name was Darcell. As a kid I associated her name with batteries. Lol. She was a half crippled ten-year-old bay mare who belonged to my uncle. I remember her fondly. Often I had the poor fat lady all lathered up at work. I remember once loping across an alkali flat to turn some cattle when my stirrup just fell off of my saddle. My dad stopped everything to figure out how to “mickey mouse” my saddle back together. 

It was her I rode for my favorite first memories. Learning what phrases meant and learning to run the side of a bunch of cows. I remember riding her being teased by my aunt and brother about how fat she was while they sang 100 bottles of beer on the wall pushing cows.

I also remember I had a favorite game. She would put her head down and let me bridle her. I would climb a fence to get onto her back and then I would lope around a pivot. The dog would come along and he was my wolf. I would fall off half way every time. Then I would lead a mile back to the closest fence I could climb and do it all again.

I remember when I first unsaddled her. I got all of the cinches undone and had no idea how the saddle would come off. She shook and it fell. I was so proud. I was bragging all about how I could unsaddle a horse to anyone who stood still. One day I got in so much trouble when my father saw me stand back and watch as she shook off my saddle. Lol

There were other horse I rode around those times. Nuisance and a horse called Buck (I have a great story about him) were two of my main work mounts. 

I still have a little trophy I won on Darcell too.


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## SueC

Just love this story!   

Just not the bit about how Darcell was removed from you. Dare I ask where she went?

I see you get your acrobat skills early in your part of the world! :rofl:

I love how your dog was your wolf. I adored wolves too as a kid, and Native Americans actually. I read avidly about both, and the Native Americans taught me so much about the earth, and respect for the earth and for living creatures, and that's become a part of who I am, and I am so grateful to them for that. I remember making feather headdresses with strips of cardboard and found feathers, and carving a spear with my hunting knife, and wearing nothing but moccasins, and learning to walk silently in them for "hunting"! I had a dog, a standard poodle nearly half a metre tall who was clipped like a normal dog not a show puff, and he was a great companion for me in all this pretending to be Native American and walking all over the countryside and the Italian mountains with him.

Have you got photos of your dog when you were little? I have some somewhere, I promise to dig mine out. @*waresbear* has an Australian cattle dog presently who's very handsome, I'm sure she'll show us some more photos! 

Here's the one of the dog and me that's already online, for now:

______________________________________________________________________

_And now I'd like to remember an animal we had to leave behind when we moved to Australia in 1982:










This was the family dog - my first ever dog. I don't think I was aware yet that the dog couldn't come with us - because he would have had to spend 6-12 months in quarantine in the UK before being accepted into Australia, and we didn't like to think of him being inexplicably cooped up with complete strangers. So, my grandmother adopted him, and he probably extended her life by years, both as a personal trainer and because she lived alone after being widowed. He was a great dog though, and I really missed him. 
_


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## Knave

I was an Indian too. Lol. The first one to ride actually.  When Pete came along it really became an even better story. Lol

I do know where she went for a while at least. She was sold by my uncle to a person from my town. She had a colt, which she came back to my house to foal. His name was Bart (which I hated, but the Simsons were cool at the time). He is huge and Roman nosed and uber talented. My uncle took him and later sold him to my aunt, and now my little cousins are learning to ride on him.


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## Knave

I love the picture of you and your dog. You just have the cutest smile.  I am sorry you had to leave him behind. I am sure that was so hard. Mine was my best friend and sole playmate. I will have to find a picture of him after work tomorrow.


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## waresbear

My family had horses since I was born, but not to ride, they had Standardbred broodmares, and then later on an Arab broodmare, just to foal out and sell the foals. My earliest thoughts were always about horses and riding. My parents would occasionally take in a riding horse if they could flip it and make some money. But if I can recall as The Story Goes, they bought a Shetland pony at an auction, and my older brother fell in love with him, so he stayed around for about 3 years before being sold. I remember that pony so well, I would sit on the fence and wait till he came near and I would jump on his back, I was about 3 or 4 years old. His name was Taffy. My brother would double me up to the corner store to buy penny candy. I got to sit on Taffy by myself, while he went in the store. One day Taffy decided he was going to go home while I was sitting on him outside the store. He tore off at a full gallop all the way home, with me on his back and a death grip on his full name, almost five blocks I hung on to that pony, bareback! That was pretty much the beginning of things to come..... I vaguely remember this picture being taken, it was one of the times that I was waiting on the fence for him to come close. I remember sitting on that pony with his wet fur and my shorts, but whatever, I'm on the pony!


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## waresbear

Fast forward to 50 years later, made sure I got a picture of my granddaughter in the same pose, okay no wet pony, no shorts but pretty much the same, lol


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## SueC

Ooooh, those photos are adorable, @*waresbear* ! I don't know why I go to jelly over photos of little kids on horses, or cute animals, but it's probably to do with maternal instincts or something. Great story about riding your pony to the shop - and that little race home! :rofl: Isn't it nice how there's another little girl riding now in your line? And @*Knave* 's two daughters both ride. It's like echoes across a mountainside.

@*Knave* , we were both Indians - figures, as adopted sisters! ;-) I wonder what it is that makes some things really catch our attention above others as children, and follow those particular lines and ideas. For me, I think the Native American culture and narrative represented something that was missing in the modern Western industrialised world. I loved spending time in nature by myself / with my dog / with my horse, and there was nobody else to speak to me in detail about nature than these voices written down in books. You could think about what they said and go out into nature and it would make sense. I didn't want to see the world as a machine, and it isn't one. I also had a wonderful primary school teacher for the first two years who showed us a lot of nature films. And, she played all sorts of musical instruments and was a whiz at teaching us maths and writing, and telling stories. 

And you were growing up on the continent where these traditions that fascinated me actually happened. Did you have much of a chance to meet many Native people where you live? In much of Australia, the Aboriginal people are so outnumbered by everyone else now that you don't really meet many of them unless you actively seek it out, and a lot of them have lost their traditions. In some rural areas though, especially up north in the tropics, there has been continuity of tradition, and people still live very close to nature, hunting and fishing and gathering still, as part of their now more mainstream lives. I know people who worked in those areas who treasure the time they had in these traditional communities.

We have two extra national TV channels here I like to watch on the infrequent occasions I actually turn on the TV set - SBS, which is multicultural broadcasting with subtitled programmes and movies from all over the world, and NITV, which specialises in indigenous people from all around the world, including a lot of Australian Aboriginal and NZ Maori content. It's really interesting to get those stories. They're a great antidote to the commodification of modern society, the franchising of everything. I hate all that sameness and blandness and stupidity about modern life. I really love diversity and complexity and different ways of thinking.










And the nobility in those faces. Like this one... from 1906...


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## Knave

Yes @SueC, some of the greatest friends of my life have been Natives. My favorite though was a girl I competed against as a young child. She was like my arch enemy, for when she showed up I had some tough competition. A beautiful girl on a buckskin horse who was good was all I considered of her. Our fathers were friends who sometimes roped together, but we never spoke.

Then one day she walked right into my life. The kids from that reservation joined our school in the seventh grade. She was a grade younger than I, so she came when I was in eight. We loved each other! We often joked of our mutual rivalry.

We fell apart after high school, as most often is the case, but when we see each other now we are always excited like no time had passed. It is easy to relate because we are more alike than different. This is the case for most of the natives that I am friends with.


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## knightrider

I am loving these stories, so I will tell mine.

Horses were my passion before I could remember. Horse was the first word I learned to spell at age 4. My parents knew nothing about horses and did not like me talking about them. They told me I was never going to get one and not to mention wanting one.

On my 8th birthday, my folks decided to teach me a lesson. They said I could get riding lessons at a nearby stable ($2.50 an hour, can you believe it?), but if I did, there would be no birthday celebration, no cake, no presents, no special meal, no friends over. It would just be an ordinary day, as the set of lessons was very expensive (so they said).

It just so happened that the available time for a lesson was on my actual birthday. So my mom took me to my very first time to ride a horse. Everything about it was perfect for me. They weren't real lessons. They were just trail rides where the guide turned around twice to say, "Keep your heels down," and "Shorten your reins." I got a palomino pony named Highsocks. When we crossed a stream, Highsocks began pawing and tried to lie down in the water. The rest of the trail string rode on without me. I kept his head up, but I didn't know how to make him go on. So there we stood in the stream with Highsocks pawing away, folding his knees, me jerking his head up and kicking him to no avail. Finally the trail group came back and the guide said, "Kick him really hard!" So, I did, and he flooshed out of the water. That ride was the most exciting wonderful thrilling thing that had ever happened to me. At the end of the ride, I couldn't believe how elated I felt.

My parents got their comeuppance. They assumed when I got home from my "lesson", that I would be disappointed there was no birthday cake, presents, or celebration. I couldn't have cared less. I was just bubbling with enthusiasm about how exciting and wonderful it was to be actually riding a horse. My parents looked at each other and said, "Oh crap. Now we're in real trouble."

When I was 12, we moved to Quito, Ecuador. The military cavalry school was just 3 blocks from our house. I used to walk there early on Saturday mornings when my family was sleeping and beg the recruits to let me ride their horses. I knew my parents wouldn't approve, so I didn't tell them. But other Americans saw me there and told my dad. I got in a lot of trouble because a young girl, especially a despised American, alone with a bunch of raw 18 year olds was not smart. 

My parents then let me join a "club" which cost $7 a month, and had 12 horses (all but 2 of them horrible) that club members could ride whenever we wanted. I had gotten a bad concussion riding a Roman nosed brute who ran away with me, stepped in a hole, and flipped with me. I was scared of horses, but never once stopped riding. When my dad's boss said, "You haven't gotten that little girl a horse YET???", I was allowed to go horse shopping. I looked and looked for months. I knew it had to be a very special horse to help me get over my fear. The minute I got on Canela (Cinnamon in English), I knew she was the one. She cost a whopping $50. We didn't know she was in foal--the sellers swore she wasn't--but 4 months later, she had a colt, which I broke and trained all myself. I was so proud of that beautiful colt. It broke my heart when we moved back to the U.S. and I had to leave my wonderful mare and fabulous colt.


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## Caledonian

My story:smile::

My parents took me to visit Welsh ponies in the fields around our home. A hobby breeder kept small herds and let his stallion, Carlos, run with the mares. Every field had mares and foals, which was a lethal combination of cuteness for a little girl. 

I’ve photos showing my parents holding me when I was about a year old and I’m absolutely entranced by the ponies standing along the fence. 

My interest grew and my parents thought that taking me to ride would either cure my interest or set me on the right path. I was three-years-old when I rode for the first time and, although I don’t remember it, I do have a small photo, which shows me riding a little skewbald Shetland. According to my mum, we walked around a large arena with a lady holding me on, as my legs were too short to be of any use. 

A few years later I was sent to a local riding school. It must’ve been a big decision for my parents as they weren’t horsey and probably knew they weren’t equipped for the sport.

My mum thinks that I was around five or six when I had my first half-hour lesson. I remember parts of it, including the brown 12.2hh pony, Frolic, learning to guide it around bollards, walk, trot and my first attempts at rising trot. 

It was an extremely strict yard where you were taught to do things a certain way and got yelled at if you didn’t meet the standard, no matter your age. I remember getting a telling off for bringing Blue out of his stable with a small stain on his white hock, another for not leading correctly and one for not laying a bed properly. Honestly, i wasn't that hopeless!:smile: It was like being in the military at times; not something you’d get away with nowadays. 

It was a huge place with well over a hundred horses in sub-yards within the main one. There were students training to be instructors, jockeys and grooms as well as starry-eyed kids like me running around. I spent my days, mucking out, skipping out, watering, feeding and leading beginners in lessons, so I guess that being strict allowed them to keep some sort of order. 

We all waited for the moment an instructor would yell ‘get your hat’ which meant you’d earned a free ride for all of your hard work. 

The method may’ve been tough but it gave me a really good grounding, although i was a bit single minded when it came to the way things should be done. I had to lose that over the following years when i worked with my own horses and other yards. 

My parents waited for a few more years until they thought I was responsible enough to handle one of my own, then they asked a friend to help us buy my first pony, which was a grey Welsh called Sasha.


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## SueC

Thank you very much, @*Knave* , @*knightrider* , and @*Caledonian* , for sharing your wonderful stories. 

I've been reading and appreciating, but not posting much because up to my ears in writing paid stuff at the moment, and editing for a dear friend, and dealing with the jungle that my vegie garden turned into when I couldn't do anything with it for six weeks because of my foot (that one simply had to drop off the to-do list at the time). And it's spring flush, so I'm mowing all the lawn areas really short to prepare for active snake season, and pruning madly growing stuff in the garden, and there's fence lines that need repairing, and weed control that needs doing around the farm, and horses shedding winter coats that line up to be brushed whenever they see me. And there's boring tax paperwork this time of year, plus Brett and I have had some lovely movie nights and music nights. 

Yesterday we had ghastly weather; rain and gales and dark all day long, like a return to winter. It was Brett's day off, so I actually put the wood fire on in the morning and we just lounged around for half a day enjoying each other, reading things, talking, cuddling, laughing, playing music. Thursdays are sort of like a mini-weekend to us, because we usually have to work on the real weekends. We were just relaxing at home and looking around us at our little home-baked reconstituted limestone on straw sculpture that we live in, and saying there was no place we'd rather be and noone we'd rather be with, and how lucky we were to have each other and that even the walls around us were made by each other's hands, with lots of love and care.



After lunch, we attempted to go for a long walk in our wet weather gear, but it was too warm and we were starting to sweat most unpleasantly into the inside of the waterproof gear, and returned after only a short loop. I hate overheating, and neither of us wanted to get saturated taking the rain stuff off. So we camped back out in the lounge with the wood fire, put on some classical music, and tended to some paperwork. I did some boring tax stuff - I'm our accountant, by pure necessity and not inclination, and don't enjoy it but someone has to do it and I've got the better maths brain of our combination; Brett does all our IT geek stuff and it's a fair trade, because I'd find that even less interesting. We had an accountant once when we started our business, but he made a number of big mistakes I was horrified to discover, and had to re-submit three years' worth of tax returns back to the Tax Department, so then I learnt how to do it myself, and the buck now stops with me.

Brett was working on his first _Grass Roots_ article on his laptop - on IT, of course, and how to navigate freeware. With the nice atmosphere and the companionable cheer, even tax wasn't so bad. The best part of it all for me is always burning all the receipts we don't need to keep. Brett thinks I'm something of a pyromaniac deep in my heart; I just find it so satisfying to obliterate stuff that has been wasting my time, from an existential perspective.

This morning I'm tending to some people stuff and emails, but will soon have to catapult out of the house to take the horses out of the rugs, and hopefully get a ride in today, now that the howling gales have abated. Then it's back to the to-do list...

I hope everyone had a great week, and is heading for a relaxing weekend!


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## SueC

One of the emails I was writing this morning was in reply to a dear adopted sister mourning the loss of a musical icon in her part of the world. From what she'd written about Kim Larsen, who died last weekend, he must have seemed like everyone's uncle to the Danes, like part of everyone's family. So when you lose someone like that, it really hits you. And I was trying to find an equivalent experience in our lives.

We were kind of hit hard by the loss of David Bowie in early 2016. He'd always looked great for his age and it was so unexpected because they kept it quiet that he had cancer. So one morning we woke up and got totally shellshocked by this news.

I was a little young to be a Bowie fan in his early career, but the older I got, the more I liked his music and his back catalogue, and the more I could see how groundbreaking his work was in the various eras, and how he gave permission for people to be different from the mainstream and to celebrate who they were. He was so influential on a lot of other artists I really really like, most notably for me his role in Robert Smith developing into the artist he did - and Brett and I are both massive Cure fans, especially of their serious things but also of their lighter moments.

When I was a kid I didn't have money for many records (yes, I was at the tail end of vinyl and my first albums were bought in that format







) and CDs, I had less than a dozen before I left school, so there were lots of things on the radio that I liked but could not add to my collection. (And yet my father and brother both had _hundreds_ of albums each...whole shelves filled with them, and decent playback systems...)

So I remember there were some songs where I would just drop everything if they came on the radio when I was doing my homework (I was very studious and did 3 hours a night in my senior years prepping for university) and sit on the floor and close my eyes and listen. And one of these was The Cure's _In-Between Days._ Other notable tracks I lovedbut could not afford to follow up on were Big Audio Dynamite's _The Bottom Line_, Echo & The Bunneymen's _The Killing Moon_, Big Country's _Chance_ and _Fields of Fire_, The Church's _Under The Milky Way_, REM's _Can't Get There From Here_, John Mellencamp's _Lonely Ol' Night_, _Rain On The Scarecrow_ etc, Split Enz' _I Walk Away_, Suzanne Vega's music, the emerging Sinead O'Connor, lots of things - plus I was starting to really like Jackson Browne and Lou Reed and Neil Young's back catalogues stretching back into the 70s.

So I loved music but had really unconventional tastes (because I am an unconventional person







) and little opportunity to explore until I left university and had a job in research, and therefore was above the poverty line students commonly contend with. I made up for some of the shortfall then, but honestly, my golden era didn't start till I met Brett in my 30s and got to borrow things from his massive music collection!







He'd been collecting for 20 years, all sorts of genres - alternative and indie, jazz, classical, trip hop, etc etc, and had been aided by having employment (graphic design) which allowed him to listen to music at work. He had many of the things I'd missed out on as a teenager, many things I'd forgotten about in the traffic jam of life, and many things which I'd never even heard of but were excellent.

He also had The Cure's _Lullaby_, which completely mesmerised me as a student and hasn't lost that effect on me nearly 30 years later. It's a track that doesn't get boring with repeated listening; in fact it's the opposite - you just go deeper and deeper into this whole universe in a raindrop. And here it was as part of the extensive dowry of wonderful music and literature my husband brought into my life.









I remember I was making compost one day out on the farm, so Brett had lent me his iPod, which I fondly dubbed Brett FM, because he's a far better DJ than anyone on the radio in Western Australia. There were playlists to sample he'd made up for me, or I could just play everything on random shuffle, or leaf through the artists and albums. And there was one album on the iPod called _Bloodflowers_, which ended up being the first Cure album I ever listened to, because it was the first one that simply popped up in my life, just like that. I knew and loved the earlier songs _Lullaby_ and _In-Between Days_, of course, and was familiar with some other stuff of theirs that the local radio stations are fond of playing - but that's not actually their best work, in my opinion; as is the case for many alternative artists who just get the radio-friendly stuff played to the wider public.

So you can hear a lot of limericks, and not be aware of the sonnets and the odes and the free verse the same people made, which can affect the core of you as a human being in a way limericks never will, even the most fun ones. I knew from _Lullaby_ that this band wasn't necessarily a bunch of himbos, but when I listened to _Bloodflowers_ my jaw hit the ground, and didn't come back up again for the 64-plus minutes it spans, and then I simply went back to the first track and started again. And I'd not done that with any contemporary music album since the iPod age began. An album without fillers, where each song is worth really listening to, and which really speaks to your human experience, is actually quite a rarity, when you look at it statistically - the tiny proportion of all albums released which fall into that category.

I was the right age for it - I'd just entered my 40s, and Robert Smith wrote these songs on the verge of 40, about 14 years earlier. I'd never heard even one song off this before, so it was completely out of the blue for me. And I think 40 is a sort of watershed for many people; statistically you're halfway through life, and you're taking stock to see if you're wasting your time, if you're the kind of person you aspired to be, if you're happy with your direction and your ideals and the circle of people around you, if your energy and creativity could be more usefully employed, if you're being hypocritical anywhere, (Well, if you're like me. Others may be more interested in whether they have accrued various status symbols, in the state of their bank balance, in the trophy or otherwise status of their spouse, in whether they have ticked their bucket list of holiday trips, etc.)

And for me, that watershed was fantastically liberating as a human being. I cut ties with a lot of toxic stuff I didn't need, and backgrounded my family of origin, who had been a huge drain on my time and especially my emotional energy for so much of my adult life to that point. I'd formally cut ties with my brother nearly a decade before, because enough had been enough (and ironically it was violence towards an _animal_ that brought me to tipping point there, after having borne it on my own shoulders all my childhood), but still had a sort of Stockholm syndrome happening with regard to my parents. So when I was in my early 40s and was diagnosed with complex PTSD (from chronic childhood trauma and violence and prolonged lack of safety and appropriate nurturing), I really re-thought everything, and re-imagined my life, and decided that I didn't owe anybody anything and could simply decide what to do with the rest of my life, according to my own values and principles, not somebody else's, and that I owed nobody an apology for that. So entering my 40s, I gave myself the gift of my own life - something people from healthy backgrounds have probably got sorted at 21 - but what proportion of the population is that...

For those of you from difficult backgrounds: Backgrounding my parents was, practically speaking, done by not visiting them anymore after the last Christmas visit we made a number of years ago. They've always felt it was my job to see them, and had all sorts of excuses for not visiting me (part of their sense of entitlement). The shoe is simply on the other foot. They've never been in the house Brett and I built together with us - they only came to look years ago when we drove up to farmsit for them, so they stayed here on their own. They've never bothered to get a professional farm sitter in to look after their place for a day or two, even to attend our wedding. And they're not in poverty. I've never actually said I don't want _anything_ to do with them anymore - I've just walked away emotionally, because that was the sane thing to do and the right thing to do, and I've stopped playing the game I never wanted to play in the first place.

Also I no longer respond to most of their inherently toxic communications - occasionally we've exchanged surface pleasantries on email, and Brett and I adopted another retired horse from them last year (our offer, our own reasons). I no longer signpost birthdays or Christmases or other holidays for them, nor do I want them signposted for me from their side, because it's been a charade all my life - the husks of these things, the surface observation with the great big yawning vacuum below, and all the pain that had to be repressed from an early age - the great big pretence of family, like the proverbial whitewashed grave, superficially civilised, but full of coldness and death and decay and horror inside.

It's funny how truly claiming your own life makes anything you do give, including yourself, a bigger gift, and an objectively more useful and positive thing. My life is so much better now, and the positive fallout on that for other beings is really pleasing to see. My life is now so far removed from all that awful stuff, and I do not wish to retain a bleed line to all of that any longer. Ten years into marriage, I now know what healthy love really looks like, what it is to be nurtured and to be respected as a human being by someone who is officially your family, what it is to encourage each other and cheer each other on, and to embrace each other in spite of our human flaws, and to work with our human flaws rather than excuse them, because we acknowledge their negative impact on ourselves and others and because life should not be stagnation, but blossoming.

To draw a line back to music, it seems I'm more like David Bowie was that way - no family in the real sense until I got married rather later in life (although I did have a really warm relationship with my maternal grandmother as a child, but when we moved halfway around the world she and I were reduced to letters and phonecalls and one single visit when I was a high school senior). I'm certainly not like Robert Smith who is from this large Catholic-origin family and has oodles of relatives with whom he's been in close contact all his life and where there is warmth and mutual appreciation and actual communication going on. I can only imagine that sort of life, and in many ways it's a safer life, and a more buffered life emotionally. To have a whole tribe, as well as your spouse.

In some ways, and from childhood, horses and dogs have often filled the gap for me as best as they could, and a good horse or a good dog is far better at that than the average human being, I think.  Having said that though, these days I have Brett, and I _also_ have a number of mutually adopted human family who are important to me, including three lovely official sisters - hello! :wave: You know who you are. ;-) And you are the sisters I never had, and such inspirational people.  We also have Bill, who is like a family elder and whom we see (and feed! ) twice a week, and who can tell all sorts of tales from his long life of 84 years.

It's a good thing this is a journal - this morning it's been a theme followed by tangents and trying to return to a theme. I can't get away with that in my paid writing! :rofl: That's why I've always loved journalling, where you can just think freely onto paper, or virtual paper these days.

I did want to tie up by returning to _Bloodflowers_. So here I was, at this watershed age, listening to something written by someone of roughly that age, and it really connected to some of what I was processing at the time, and thinking at the time. And while all of it spoke to me, the first thing to get really under my skin at the time was this song, with which I will break for today (because I have a to-do list... :rofl







And because they are so astonishingly excellent live:


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## frlsgirl

So much for getting that to do list done @SueC 

Were you finally able to leave the house after all that crazy weather to work your horses?

On a related note, it is super sad when musical icons die; it always makes me feel really old, like should I be purchasing a burial plot now? 

Speaking of musical icons and being a super old feeling 42 year old, I have 2 tickets to go see Sebastian Bach tonight. DH is trying to get out of taking me. He hates crowds, loud music...like I said we are both very old 42 year olds


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## SueC

frlsgirl said:


> So much for getting that to do list done @*SueC*


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Down the rabbit warren! :dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05:

To be fair, it only took _half_ the day, thunderstorms kept coming in making riding undesirable, and Brett always says that I am sharpening my writing skills when I have a journal binge.  (You clearly can't see the mountain of paper journals I kept from age 13 to age 42; before I decided to journal online :rofl: ...it was not uncommon for me to write for 3 hours a night just for fun and/or reflection when I was single and had time...)




> Were you finally able to leave the house after all that crazy weather to work your horses?


It was looking so promising, and then thunderstorms hung about all day grumbling and making flashes of light. I am still a little careful at the moment about riding in windy conditions or when Thor is beating his hammer very loudly. The evening I broke my foot was a windy evening, which adds chicken characteristics to my otherwise brave steed. :blueunicorn:

Oh yeah, and I'm 47 and feeling a little vulnerable after _breaking_ something in my own body... :hide:



> On a related note, it is super sad when musical icons die; it always makes me feel really old, like should I be purchasing a burial plot now?


Just donate your body to science - and let those medical students practice on something useful!  Those real estate prices are so forbidding, and who needs real estate post mortem?




> Speaking of musical icons and being a super old feeling 42 year old, I have 2 tickets to go see Sebastian Bach tonight. DH is trying to get out of taking me. He hates crowds, loud music...like I said we are both very old 42 year olds


I hope you had a great time! D'you know what, I've _always_ hated raucous crowds and overly loud music. By overly loud music I mean when it actually hurts, sets off seismographs, and it's so loud you can't hear it. Like the U2 concert I went to in 1988. Distinctly unpleasant. Other bands I've seen don't turn it up so loud and it makes for a far better experience, I think. I like to be actually able to hear the music.

Crowds are far nicer at classical and folk concerts actually. They behave like actual human beings there, instead of screaming in high-pitched glass-shattering voices and throwing their underwear on the stage...

We had a look at your video! I didn't know you were a metalhead! :wink: Because I am naughty, I will make some observations about heavy metal musicians in general. Their appearance is so predictable it's like uniform - long hair, bare chests - unless there is a beer gut to hide. And then the way the guitarists close their eyes and headbang is _such_ an _archetype_! Tell you what though, even though this isn't a favourite genre for me (Brett makes exceptions), I'd _far_ rather go see this than twee stuff or Top 40 or rap. And also I think it depends on the situation. There have been certain work situations in my life that would have made it highly therapeutic to attend heavy metal concerts in the evenings! There was even a time in my life when I wanted to come home and dance naked to AC/DC because of work - and I don't even like AC/DC, it was just the right thing for the occasion...

Actually, two heavy metal inspired things I really really like even without nightmare work situations are the outfits Apocalyptica and Rodrigo y Gabriela.












That first one is a "repeat" here... :rofl:

(Probably exceeded that emoji allowance again...let's see...)

*PS: Dear @frlsgirl , your homework is a Freestyle to Music on Ana, to a Sebastian Bach track! *:riding:


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## frlsgirl

I’ll pass on the musical freestyle assignment; I think Ana would bolt to heavy metal music 

We didn’t go to the concert. Took a nap instead and are now watching a new episode of Snake Island. You know, typical stuff that old people do 

Glad you got some work done.


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## SueC

frlsgirl said:


> We didn’t go to the concert. Took a nap instead and are now watching a new episode of Snake Island. You know, typical stuff that old people do


mg: @frlsgirl, ;-) you sound like that song _39_, you know: _ The fire's all gone out, and there's nothing left to burn..._ which always makes me go: :rofl: even though on another level it's not funny. My hypothesis is just that the writer was ascribing to the upcoming extremely geriatric threshold of 40 what I would bet was just the usual burnout anybody can get from their 20s onwards (you know, when you start having to do your own washing and vacuuming and cooking and pay your rent etc, and nobody makes you eat properly and go to bed on time).

I've been burnt out a couple of times in my life and I suppose if that happens to you in your late 30s you might incorrectly ascribe it to being about to turn 40 (=old :rofl - and if it happens in your late 20s, likewise you might erroneously ascribe it to being about to turn 30 (=old :rofl: :rofl. So I think a lot of this angsting about the decrepitudes of 30 and 40 and so forth are actually more to do with burning the candle at both ends and overdoing things and hitting the wall, rather than age-induced bodily disintegration... 

A doctor would summarise thusly: _Lifestyle diseases are not geriatric markers. inkunicorn:
_
Of course_, _try telling that to some poor bloke who's losing his hair in his late 20s...

Anyway, nothing wrong with making jokes about being creaky etc. Like, do you ever making creaking sound effects (with your voice) to accompany your getting out of a chair? We do! :rofl:

Hope you had a great night in! :clap:

PS: You can have a different homework assignment if you like. Would you be happier if I changed it to *a Freestyle to Music on Ana, to a Johann Sebastian Bach piece? *









This can be your October challenge. Horses like music. Bach has lots of nice stuff including this:






...and this:






...and so much else to choose from that won't make Ana spook! :runpony:


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## SueC

*10 WEEKS POST MULTIPLE METATARSAL FRACTURES... LEAPS AND BOUNDS!
*
I've not done an injury update for a while, and won't be inflicting more photographs on anyone. The last set of photos was just past the 6-week mark, here:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page89/#post1970598079

In comparison to that, the bruising has completely cleared, and there is less swelling and discolouration. My foot looks normal in the morning before I get up, but still tends to assume a darker colour when I stand up on it. Swelling is minimal if I keep walking on it and go horizontal when I'm not; prolonged standing is still a killer, and can make the poor thing balloon - so I try to avoid it, but sometimes I get busy making three or for things in the kitchen and only realise I've been standing an hour when my foot starts to throb ominously.

The bones themselves have healed to the point that they aren't a re-fracture risk. My left calf is basically back at normal size (but not yet equivalent muscle _definition_) after shrinking down to two thirds due to the initial 5 weeks of non-weightbearing post-fracture, and has been for a while - that's really great, because I was talking to someone rather athletic at hospital a while ago who still hadn't been able to get back muscle symmetry two years on, and it often takes a long time like that. I have no explanation why this has happened so fast for me, other than the probable role of genetic differences, and that I'm keeping an eye on getting quality protein each meal, and that I've been doing a heck of a lot of walking since the 6-week mark, including fast long-striding walking with the aid of crutches, which has put the injured limb through all the same normal motions as its twin, with just a little weight taken off at the end of the rolling phase.

I'm walking around without crutches for everything except our fitness walks, where I'm down to using them on the flat and uphill, to take ever decreasing amounts of weight off as the injured foot rolls over - I don't need them on the downhills, because the rollover is different there and you don't have to push off with your toes if you're gravity-assisted like that. It's actually amazing what I've learnt about human locomotion since I've had these fractures.

There's still a slight limp on relatively fast walking when I'm not on crutches, and the main reasons for this are:



 Muscles and tendons in the calf and foot had contracted (additionally to the aforementioned muscle atrophy) with lack of use for five weeks. One of the main things I continue to work on is stretching these out - with various postural muscle stretches, with long-striding crutch-assisted fast walking, and with physical manipulation of my foot. I use Tiger Balm Red to give it a good rubdown at the end of the day, which assists in reducing the swelling; and I also stretch the toes downwards gently to keep loosening the tight tendons on the top of the foot, and the muscles to which they attach. I'm still missing 5cm of mobility in a flat-footed forward stretch (i.e. how far forward can you bring your knee flat-footed), compared to the uninjured leg; and it's a similar story with the toes.


 The muscles in my foot and shin are quite a bit behind my calf in regaining strength. I could hardly move my toes four weeks ago when I started walking again - partly due to swelling, but also due to lack of use. I was playing "toe piano" on the ground barefoot when sitting - I still do that - or on the edge of the bathtub when bathing, to get things moving again. Now I can move them really well, but they are still not quite flexing down to their normal points yet. Of greater impact that this is that while I can go up and down on tiptoes fine on both feet, I can't do it with the whole bodyweight on the injured foot yet and the other foot up, the strength is simply lacking for that yet - while of course I can do that fine on my right foot. The prescription for that is: Tiptoe exercises using both leg simultaneously, lots of walking on uneven ground.
 The latter we love to do anyway, so today we did our first proper hill training, with uneven ground and rock faces to cross - a lovely milestone. I'll attach some archive photos we have of that walk from past walks, as we took no camera today. If you are eagle-eyed, you will see that the dog in the photo isn't Jess, but someone else's Border Collie!

Oh, and I went riding :charge: this evening because the weather was finally agreeable, and tried out my new two-tone riding pants that Brett says make me look like a superhero. :rofl: This isn't me, but this is what they look like:












*MOUNT MELVILLE WALK PHOTOS*


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## SueC

Going to town today, we were listening to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and it reminded me that this is my favourite "new band" Brett introduced me to via his iPod etc early on. Here's a few tracks. I love their energy, and think Karen O has a really excellent voice. It's really important to have people like her in noisy music.  This might even be noisy enough for @*frlsgirl* ! ;-)






There's a great iTunes acoustic version of this as well, which is unfortunately not on YouTube but well worth listening to. I love both versions of this song.

Another nice one:






Their acoustic material is sublime:











And here's Brett's favourite "new" artist I introduced him to. We both looooove this track, and the lyrics are as superb as the music. Mike Scott is very versatile, and his repertoire includes stripping paint off the walls with his music.  Turn it up loud, on real speakers.






I'm a little written out, so no musical analysis this evening!


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## SueC

Just having a fun ultra geeky discussion on K&K and wanted to put the description of my DH I gave there on my journal.

I'm not an IT geek by any stretch of the imagination, just married to one (please note that "IT geek" is just one of many aspects of his multifaceted personage; other aspects include "cultural repository", "intrepid mountain walker", "maker of the best stir fry in the known universe", "he of the fabulous telephone manner and BBC radio announcer voice", "ultra snuggly husband", "fount of amazing conversations", "consistent dishwashing volunteer" and "endearing growly bear"







). I had no idea what Linux was before I met him.










...from:

https://www.horseforum.com/horse-ta...0s-thereabouts-655873/page396/#post1970610225

...and this page also contains a great story about Japan, lovely photos, and a little review of _Miss Sherlock_, on top of all the geek stuff.


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## SueC

PS:







As we're both having an extended Sunday breakfast in bed, with classical music, many cups of tea, toast from home-baked bread, a divine fruit salad DH put together last night, the sun shining through the window and some Sunday reading on virtual paper, guess what Brett is reading? An essay called _In The Beginning Was The Command Line_. And of course it's about Linux, and OSs in general.

It's really well written actually, and has a really hilarious taxi driver analogy - Egyptian versus US ones - I'm enjoying what's being read out to me. (And in _that_ voice. Those who frequent my journal will soon get a taste of that voice, when DH has prepped a certain video for putting online... :rofl

http://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Stephenson-CommandLine-1999.pdf


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## SueC

OK, that video is ready. I promised Brett to preface it with other photographs of him and me doing silly things so that it can be seen in context. My DH is not used to letting blooper moments be used for public entertainment - whereas as an educator, I actually encouraged people to have fun with silly things I did. It keeps high schoolers awake. :rofl:


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## SueC

OK, so above: 



 Brett pretending to be a mosquito in a Tasmanian coffee shop
 Parking meter silliness in Launceston
 Statue in Launceston
 Brett pretending to be a psychopath for one of the pieces of professional cover art he did for _19 Nocturne Boulevard_ (this one was a madman story)
 Sue on a South Coast bushwalk, innocently going around with the same wombat which she waved in the face of London customs officials in 1997
 Brett petting a dog at Eaglehawk Neck, Tasmania
 ...and the consequences...
 Sue doing a cat impersonation without makeup
 ...and with makeup
Brett and the Balingup scarecrows
 We uncovered more photos like this and I'll post more later, but first the video.

This 15 seconds represents on of my most treasured holiday moments with Brett ever.  We like to play practical jokes on each other. I really didn't think this one would come off, but it did. When he was impersonating that mosquito (first photo above), I got the camera out to take a photo, and then secretly turned on the video camera function while he was thinking I was going to take more photos. So he was waiting for the shutter sound and it didn't happen, as you will see, and it took me so much effort not to burst out laughing. The moment it dawns on him what I am doing is sooooo hilarious - as is his response....  :rofl:


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## SueC

A little more of the most amusing photos of our last decade...




Sue pretending to be a bird
Brett catching snow on his tongue at the start of the Cradle Mountain walk
Pretending to fly on top of Mt Amos, Wineglass Bay, Tasmania
About to lift off on the Tasmanian West Coast near Strahan
Sue playing air keyboard in Maylands - Brett's bachelor abode
Brett doing a Mary Poppins on the Tesselated Pavement on the Tasman Peninsula in Tasmania
Blurry selfie
The old way to take a selfie
Shadow play
Nope!


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## SueC

Some more of our favourite funny photos from the last decade:




Brett doing a dance while I'm setting up the camera for one of our wedding day photos, on a side excursion to the Torndirrup National Park - we took it in turns and photographed all our couple shots on time delay
This kind of turned out like a woodland fairy
Brett the Married Man feigning imminent death towards the tail end of the two-day, overnight-camping-in-a-tent Bibbulmun Track walk we did for my 37th birthday
This is not a morning person. I am that person. Then again, I am useless after dinner, and it's kind of lucky that way, because each of us can simply serve the other in their times of mental off-the-planetness. Therefore, I make breakfast and cart it to the bed and am referred to as the Morning Magician, and Brett cleans up after dinner while I go collapse, and brings me cups of tea etc, and therefore he is officially our Evening Elf.
Peek-a-boo on a walk in the Karri forest near Walpole
Brett with his all-time favourite chocolate, at our rented abode in Robinson pre-strawbale farmhouse
Brett wearing our fake snake and my John Lennon spare pair of emergency sunglasses. We were walking with a friend who on a past walk had been all concerned about snakes for no good reason, so on our next walk together we smuggled the snake into a backpack and at an opportune moment, planted it across a path when she was on a pee break. Bingo! :rofl: After that, we took turns wearing the thing to desensitise our friend.
This was the mountaintop location we were hiking to that day: Mt Toolbrunup, and this is the very summit on which Brett had proposed to me in late 2007.
Devil hair thanks to the wind at a beach near Greens Pool
Assuming the "official biologist" demeanour with a handy prop - _Ecklonia radiata_, a type of kelp - a David Attenborough moment


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## SueC

Continuing the theme, from the archives, before we moved to Redmond...




Brett eating spaghetti we brought from home, on the evening that started a much-needed weekend getaway in a cute cottage near Walpole. We had been working extremely hard and just wanted a winter weekend with a wood fire, bushwalks and zero work.
Demonstrating the size the Tingle trees grow to in the Valley of the Giants
The wind was freezing and we couldn't wait to get back to the wood fire
Wintry barefoot walking at Middleton Beach, which was 15 minutes from where we lived in our little rental in Robinson pre-Redmond. Now it's 30 minutes away! But, we're in a little Eden of our own.
Mock binoculars. This is also very effective in the classroom, if someone is doing something they shouldn't be and thinks you haven't seen it. :rofl:
_I vant to suck your vlood!_ The Cashew Vampire, who appeared spontaneously during a pre-climbing snacking session in the Stirling Ranges
One of our favourite spots in the world - Frenchmans Bay, half an hour out of Albany on the Torndirrup Peninsula. I'd lived there in 1999, in a tiny apartment under a concrete monstrosity, but it was a great landscape. This photo was the year we'd gotten married - 2008 - so I had every reason to smile. The "rock-hopping loop" out at Frenchmans is very attractive to both of us, as is taking a break to lounge in the sun.
Clowning, same place - you know, "If I can't see you, you can't see me!"
Liftoff practice...
Adopting that silly pose you see on the shooting magazine covers, but on a rock. Motto: If shooters climbed landscape protuberances...


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## SueC

Mining the archives for funny and nostalgic things...




Brett emerging from our pop-up burrow - camping overnight at Cosy Corner Beach just to hear the ocean when going to sleep and waking up.
I did say he wasn't a morning person! This is Brett in Melbourne on our stopover to a fortnight's trail walking and mountain climbing in Tasmania - this time hiring a campervan off the plane - and this holiday was written up for _Grass Roots_ and shown here: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page70/#post1970581281
Brett contemplates getting out of bed in the morning...
At the Museum in Hobart
Brett with bat-wings? Hobart foreshore 2009
With my famous travelling wombat who's been all over the place, including to London in 1997, where he was waved in the airport officials' faces enthusiastically as I carried on about the pretty lights from above before landing. This always happens to me: Sleep deprivation leads to strange behaviour - and I really can't sleep on a plane unless they let me lie down on the floor somewhere, and only charter flights are relaxed enough to let you...
This is a REAL wombat. And it's anatomically correct...
You can see why I married this guy...
Did I mention I am crazy about dairy products and am planning to get a house cow?
You can see where this led. :rofl: Full circle to this: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...s-other-people-479466/page100/#post1970610387


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## gottatrot

I am so jealous you got to hold a wombat.


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## SueC

The wombat really didn't want to be there, he would have preferred his enclosure at this animal sanctuary (he was picked up as an orphaned cub). But, he was being passed around the group, so when in Rome etc. Very heavy, very smelly animals! :rofl:

Tasmanian devils are my favourite marsupials. They are growly, and have the whitest teeth and pinkest tongues.






This is also at a sanctuary, similar reasons - most of their animals are rescues that were injured or orphaned in the wild, and are either rehabilitated or used for breeding programmes.


Another look at those teeth and tongues from an online photo:










And the young Tassie devils are sooo extra adorable...


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## SueC

*IN THE INTERIM*

*The Garden*

Well, these past 4 weeks I have been madly making up for 6 weeks of doing nothing in the garden after fracturing three metatarsals - something had to drop off the to-do list to make up for the fact that I was supposed to be horizontal with my foot up a lot. This, of course, meant I did more writing, and had a really productive time there, hatching a little baby I sent to one of my favourite international publications - as well doing more articles for my two regular magazine writing gigs, and taking on an editing/feedback role for one of my mutually adopted sisters, who is writing something _really_ fabulous, in book format. Those two "extras" wouldn't have happened without the bone fractures, so I'm beginning to think it was worth having those fractures. And there were other good things that came out of this painful thing. inkunicorn::blueunicorn: 

As part of turning a jungle back into a vegetable garden, I've removed blossoming kale plants taller than me and on enormous stalks I needed to axe down that look like something out of Jurassic Park. Brett is doing all my digging, compost spreading and bed preparation at the moment, the dear; we're actually getting sunny days now and making the most of it. Things are slowly getting back into shape. My mini-greenhouse is now full of pots and punnets starting the summer crops before the frost risk in the open is over. This was from last summer:


Mini-Greenhouse At Christmas – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Right now, I've got six varieties of tomato seedlings just "hatched", four varieties of pumpkins starting, four varieties of cucumbers, three varieties of zucchini; several trays with leeks and spring onions, capsicum and eggplant, spinach, 5-colour silverbeet, rhubarb, herbs and assorted flowers - everything heritage and from seed. The garden itself has recently received, from the greenhouse, young Brussels Sprouts plants, three varieties of kale, broccoli, silverbeet, celery, brown onions, and spring onions. I have direct-seeded radishes, coriander and peas, and have old stands of kale, silverbeet, parsley, mint, leeks, spring onions, lettuces, mustard greens, mizuna and fennel still producing. Garlic and rhubarb are carrying on as well.

This was the F&V mandala this time last year:


Mixed Mandala Bed – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

By summer it starts to look like this - from last Christmas:


Mandala Progress – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Sweetcorn – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

The _Aquadulce_ broad beans are chest-high and beginning to keep us in lovely tender bean pods. Later in the season, I will harvest actual seed and make the most amazing lime-green hummous with it. Yesterday I cleared space for a big bed of Painted Mountain Corn that's going in within a fortnight - the progeny of the little corn plants you can see in the greenhouse photo above - these were grown from seed sent by kind _Grass Roots_ readers, because I couldn't obtain any in Western Australia, and quarantine regulations forbade Eastern states seed companies to supply me. It's wonderful corn and we love it - lower in sugar, higher in protein and antioxidants, tastier, and more frost and drought hardy that commercial sweetcorn.


Painted Mountain Corn – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

I also planted Calendula seedlings out under the lemon tree, as a companion plant - my first batch of these flowers grown out from seed. Here's Calendulas being grown under grapes in a vineyard (thank you to Pinterest):










It's a bee-attracting, medicinally useful and very beautiful living mulch.


*What The Donkey Did*

Yesterday, our smallest donkey, Sparkle, decided to jump onto my left foot when I was trimming her rear hooves. She has very small, very hard hooves, and landed right on top of my freshly healed metatarsals. :angrily_smileys: The foot is still tender, and having a donkey hopping around on it doesn't feel very nice. If you look at this donkey though, butter wouldn't melt in her mouth...


Up Close and Personal - Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

She's forever keeping me company, but definitely has a mind of her own. Before she lost her sight, her previous owner says she used to take the fly-veils off the other donkeys and run around flapping them up and down in her mouth. :rofl:


*Back To The Fireground Loop*

:charge: 

Just before lunch today, I hopped on Sunsmart, warmed him up on our Sand Track / Swamp Track loop, and then hooned down to the rear gate with him to do the Fireground Loop for the first time in over 10 weeks. We had a great time, and met some startled cows on our neighbour's block. The dog bathed in all three dams we passed and was thoroughly happy with the 45 minute outing, and she slept flat out in the sun for an hour after we came back. We need to do this 5x per week minimum as it's spring flush and I don't want my horse to put on more condition than he has already. It's that or a grazing muzzle. Or perhaps both!










A past photoessay of this trail ride is found here:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page55/#post1970559673


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## SueC

Dear Lurkers

Please consider becoming an HF member. Nobody has spammed me as a result of signing up here, and there have been no other associated adverse effects on my real life that are usually associated with the online cesspool. Indeed, I've made real friends here, and had fabulous conversations with very interesting people, and two people from here even became mutually adopted siblings. Consider this a largely pristine little spring-fed swimming hole, like this:









_Lillian's Glen, on one of my favourite bushwalks in the Blue Mountains near Sydney - photo courtesy of the ABC._


And how else will you be able to view all the attachment type photos that only show up when you are logged in?

PS: And a :wave: to anyone lurking who is an actual HF member but visiting incognito! :rofl:


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## SueC

...it's a lovely sunny day, Bill will be coming over, and much of today will be getting through the gardening to-do list. Bill has a special chair for sitting in the sun! 

*Another Fracture Rehabilitation Milestone*

There was another lovely milestone last night - I noticed just walking around in general that I seemed to be able to handle long-striding walking fine now, so Brett and I went on an evening fitness walk around the western forest boundary and back on the Sand Track without the crutches, and I did fine. I was going fast and wasn't perceptibly limping, but there was a trick to this: I had to really concentrate on the rhythm of the walking, like a metronome in my head (I've been doing that through the crutch-assisted fast walking as well), and ignore the discomfort at the rollover, which is now at an ignorable level if you say, "This is merely a bit of non-life threatening pain. It's just a sensation." And you can go all Zen about it. I couldn't do this a week ago as the pain level was too high not to limp in avoidance.


Brett was saying, "You know, this is a little bit slower than when you have the rocket boosters!" (meaning the crutches) :rofl: We'll be going for another bit of hill training on Saturday, probably Mt Clarence, for which I will need my rocket boosters, and we're aiming at the 12km uphill-downhill, twisty-turny Luke Pen Walk in the Kalgan the following week - it's always wonderful there in spring wildflower season - and I'm going to take the rocket boosters just in case, because walking crutchless in relatively smooth terrain is one thing - but lots of up/down and rough ground is quite another.

Follow-up physio was moved to coming Monday; we'll see how far my elasticity has returned by then. All in all, I've been very happy with the recovery. And I'm riding!
:charge:

*Dr Who*

:loveshower: Yes!!!!! The new series pilot finally aired, and we watched in last night - because the night before, I fell asleep straight after dinner at 8pm - told you I was useless after dinner! :rofl: So I made it up to a very understanding Brett (_Awwww, you look so cute when you're all feeble! _was what he said when he saw me nodding off ), who waited many months for this, by making last night into a pizza-and-Dr-Who night - _and_ I did the washing up when he wasn't looking (because I can multitask! :rofl: Did it while preparing dinner and making a lovely pumpkin/citrus/honey/almond cake, with our very own pumpkin, citrus and honey!).

And we both agree we love the new season already. Jodie Whittaker has really nailed this character and made it her own - the only other time I've been this extra enthusiastic about a new Dr Who was Matt Smith's debut - and they all have their good points, the whole lot of them going back 50 years (we're also watching the entire classic series in chronological order ATM and are up to the end of Peter Davison AKA Tristan Farnon from _All Creatures_, which I used to weep over as a child). The cinematography was brilliant - they must have brought some of the _Broadchurch_ crew in for that as well. The characters were all well developed, no cardboard cutouts, and no proto-companions going, "What's this?" or "Help me, Doctor!" or other such tripe which was the worst aspect of some of the pieces from the classic era, where often, the only person with a brain cell was Dr Who.

You really don't need a dumb sidekick as a narrative device. Jodie Whittaker's Dr Who just talks to herself to make various points that need to be made, and it's completely natural and believable. Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi did this as well...and if you haven't seen Capaldi as The Angel Islington in Neverwhere, go dig it up - it's an amazing piece of surreal drama...and I mean the 1996 version:






The music on the new Dr Who is the best they've ever done - not overcooked, not cliched - Brett tells me the person responsible used to do music for documentaries. I really hate it when people deafen you or try to manipulate you in a very obvious and ham-fisted way with the music on a drama production. This one gets an A+ from me. As did the whole pilot.

Of course, the gender change led to many pre-viewing ideas, like: This Dr Who will be able to multi-task! :rofl: Neither of us can believe how many people were so negative about this, it's been so long overdue, and I'd also like to see some non-Anglo-Celtic people in the role before I shuffle off this mortal coil. They've done really well to represent people from all sorts of cultural backgrounds in this new season (and had been improving that in the Capaldi era as well), and yeah, it does matter. Just ask primary school children. If you never see anyone who looks like you in your favourite adventure stories, assumptions get made that should not be made. Typically, the only people to whom this doesn't matter are the less empathetic and not overly endowed with brain cells subsection of the Anglo-Celtic culture, who can't see what the fuss is all about because _I'm all right Jack, keep your hands off my stack_ etc.


*More Quirky Archival Photos*

And now, some more of our favourite quirky photos from the last decade of our lives - we're having a lot of fun digging these up. This is a journal, and I've always had lots of illustrations, art, photos etc in my real paper journals as well...


The things you can do when your spouse is unconscious and unable to defend themselves... :rofl:
Humorous moment nearly running into the photographer AKA DH when I first got Sunsmart down to Albany in 2009 and commenced his serious saddle training
Our traditional pre-long-walk couple selfie before the 20km Little Grove to Sand Patch section of the Bibbulmun track on the coast, and then back to Little Grove via back tracks and the harbour... Note we are looking energetic and fresh here... it's mid-winter and blowing an Antarctic gale, don't let the sun deceive you...
Shadow play
...and this is us after completing the walk :rofl:
We have great relationships with books and our bed, often simultaneously 
Brett with a "Dinosaur Egg" in the Porongurup Range
Hair being blown skyward on a Stirling Range ascent
Brett being hilarious at Eaglehawk Neck in Tasmania
Brett suffering for his art. More on that later...


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## SueC

*Evening Ride With Attack Emu And Playful Donkeys*

You'd think it would be possible to go for an uneventful little evening ride, wouldn't you? I thought so too. It was windy this evening, and I'm still a little wary of windy evenings because my brain now associates these with breaking bones. :clap: Horse brains are similarly wired. Sunsmart still gets nervous at the spot where his monkey fell off, the gunshot sounds of breaking bones were heard, and then the monkey started sounding like an ambulance siren and crawling around on all fours, and the other monkey came to catch him, who has no business doing such a thing, what's the world coming to? etc etc

Alas though, it's springtime in Australia, and my horse needs serious amounts of exercise during spring flush, or a grazing muzzle, or perhaps both, not to blow up like a balloon. I'm a little freaked about the possibility he's starting to develop PPID, because he looked like a Tibetan Yak this winter and then shed out in the strangest way, with tufts remaining here and there and Clydesdale-like feathers on his feet from his carpal joints and hocks down - all unprecedented for him, and the vet is finally coming to test him next Thursday, after being up to his ears in horse stud work. Anyway, keeping him consistently exercised is really important, especially after the eight-week spell he had while my bones were healing.

So that's why I was out there again this evening. Once we got past the spooky spot with the Ghost of the Accident Past, we warmed up on the sand track - walking, trotting, some canter transitions - and had just gotten into working mode when we turned east on the south boundary and saw something very like this about 50m away and on the neighbour's side of the boundary fence:










An emu with six or seven young, stripey chicks! It's the male emu who incubates the eggs and brings up the chicks, as the effort of laying 6-12 enormous eggs in the relatively nutrient-poor Australian bush means Mrs Emu needs a long holiday to feed and recuperate and generally nurse herself back to good health afterwards. It's a nice division of responsibility that was a huge evolutionary advantage for this species. (Did I ever mention Australian flora and fauna are fascinating?)

Emus with chicks are notoriously aggressive, and it didn't help that the dog ran up to it on the other side of the fence growling and trying to assert its usual sheepdog dominance. This really infuriated Mr Emu, and he ran at the fence with his neck feathers fully ruffled making drumming sounds and looking and sounding highly dangerous. At this point, Sunsmart was getting a bit freaked out and wanted to turn for home. I turned him back again. The dog had backed off, but the chicks for some reason had run into our property and the adult emu, unable to cross easily, was getting frantic.

This video I found shows some of an emu's attacking behaviour, but this one is quite mild-mannered as he hasn't any chicks at foot:






The emu we met today was much faster and angrier and really trying to make a point.

At this stage I got off and led my horse, because I prefer a controlled dismount to an uncontrolled one, and because it makes the horse calmer if his erstwhile babysitter is between him and Any Scary Monster. The chicks crossed back to Mr Emu's side of the fence, but was he done? No, he wasn't - he was still throwing himself at the fence, about two metres away from us - and they _can_ jump fences when they really want to. At that point I got miffed, put on my schoolteacher voice and said, "Go follow your chicks, you silly emu, we're passing here whether you like it or not!" And Sunsmart very gamely followed me along, which is very commendable when you consider he's never seen an emu in full attack mode before. I think he expects other animals to do my bidding. :rofl: That voice works on Julian, so why not on an enraged emu? :wave:

Anyway, once we got around the corner onto the swamp track, all the drama was over, and I got back on the horse, praising him lushly for putting up with a _real_ Scary Monster. We walked and trotted back towards home. Instead of doing a second loop as originally intended, I decided to just run him up the sand track and back to finish the ride - I'd had enough of emus for the day. Just as we turned into the track, who should be veering up the forest track from there but our three donkeys going walkabout? :rofl:

So I said to Sunsmart, "Look, the donkeys, heeee-haw!" in case he was daydreaming and hadn't noticed them behind the bushes. Don Quixote was already halfway up the hill when he saw us, and in a playful mood. He came back down down in full rocking-horse canter, bucking and throwing his hind feet in the air. "Come on then!" said I, and put Sunsmart in a trot. And ridiculously, I had three donkeys following me single-file down the track, led by a merrily jumping Don Quixote full of mischief. Sunsmart decided it was a race and put on his flying trot. :rofl: Soon he'd left them behind, so I returned him to a walk and waited for them to catch up. Then we had another hundred metres or so of donkeys tailing directly behind Sunsmart, before we put on some speed until we got to the boundary.

Then came the interesting exercise of riding the horse back along the twisty-turny track, with incoming running donkeys that could be around any corner. Therefore, I tempered Sunsmart's evident wish to race back like this:

:racing:

I really didn't want a collision, or even a sudden sliding stop. So we trotted at a very moderate pace until we met up with the donkeys again, said hello to them for a minute, and then headed back home.

Never a dull moment, it seems...


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## egrogan

I am a sucker for little fluffy babies. What are baby emus called?


We often encounter turkeys with their poults, but their general orientation is to go the other way rather than attack. Or to hide the babies in the tall grass so that you don't even know you're close to them. Unfortunately sometimes that means an explosion of squawking, flapping turks flying right up under your nose to get to the closest, safest tree. 



Izzy has always found it a fun game to herd them around.


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## Knave

Wow! I think that would be a scary monster! I would spook as much or more than the horse I think. Sunsmart seems to have a very nice head on his shoulders as does his rider! I know I can handle the geese, but they are much much smaller, and therefor not as scary. 

Oh, the name of the thing wasn’t Van Gogh, but Salomonberry.


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## SueC

That's a fun video, @*egrogan* . Do you have a helmet camera?

I noticed that was barbed wire next to you at the end of your clip. Always makes me a bit edgy to ride along barbed wire when there are potentially spooky happenings. Horses don't necessarily see these when they jump away from imagined and real monsters. Our entire outer boundary is barbed wire - we've put outriggers with electric tape on the inside of that in the pasture areas. In the bushland it's just barbed wire. Personally, I wouldn't want to have a horse jump into any sort of fence because freaked - barbed and electric being worse for that than plain, but I've seen some pretty bad injuries from plain wire too. I think we need elastic rubber fences, sort of like the inside of a padded room at a psychiatric ward. :rofl:

Baby emus are called chicks.


I don't know what the collective noun for emus is, but aren't these fun?

_A gaggle of geese
A parliament of owls
A crash of rhinoceroses
A murder of crows
A gang of elk (apparently!)
An ostentation of peacocks
A descension of woodpeckers
A hover of trout_

More here:

https://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/resources/view/resource/4/


@*Knave* , had I not held on to the horse, I'm sure he would have preferred to run home, like this:

:runpony:

And I think I'm a bit bloodyminded about stuff like that. :rofl:

What do emus and geese have in common? - You can roast them both. 

Hope you have an excellent day! :hug:


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## Knave

@SueC I’m sure he would have, but holding himself together as much as he did in that situation deserves the pets you gave him!! 

I worry next to the bobwire too sometimes. When I was riding Keno I tried so hard to avoid it because he liked to run towards objects in his tantrums. When Bones and I went into the tall brush and he did so well the other day I was flush to a bobwire fence and worried about if he panicked and went into it. 

Little girl also worries a ton about bobwire. A kid was killed right around the time she was really starting to ride for work from running a horse through bobwire. I think I told her and asked her to be aware of it. She took it very to heart, and the couple run aways she has dealt with she was convinced were towards the fences.


----------



## Knave

For @egrogan and @SueC


----------



## SueC

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Don't you have fun ways of doing things? 


PS: Do you lot feel an affinity with hydras by any chance? ;-)












You're basically hydras on horseback...


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## egrogan

@SueC, no helmet cam, just holding the phone in video mode! Must have been a weird angle in the camera, as that actually wasn't barbed wire in that video, but smooth electric rope. That said, the woods here are FULL of barbed wire (former grazing for cows decades ago) and while I can't estimate the number of miles of the stuff hidden out there, it is sufficiently astronomical that there would be no practical way to address it all. It seems to follow the trees along the stone walls, so that is a bit of a marker to help stay off it. It's really a shame - I worry about it not only riding, but out hiking and walking the dogs, and even just letting the chickens free range. It's everywhere :sad:


My old vet had this poster in one of his exam rooms, was always a fun way to pass the time waiting for an appointment:


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## egrogan

Love it @Knave!


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## SueC

@*egrogan* , I've done one ride so far taking photos with DHs iPod actually, and found it a very fiddly and inconvenient experience - so you're doing great there! :clap: I kind of think it interferes with riding, so I've not taken it since. Maybe I will when I get back out on trails I've not photographed off horseback... 

Everything in this part of the world is barbed wire, so I carry a multi-tool with wire cutters... just in case...

I'm so glad you've settled in so nicely at your new home. The outdoors setup looks wonderful already. The time will come when your house is done too. (We still have to finish the attic interior one day! ;-) Maybe this summer.) Your horses also look so happy, and it all has worked out so well with them. A good horse will always challenge you, so don't worry too much about Fizz. Just ask @*Knave* ! 


Oh yeah, and I'm making those falafels again this coming week. Mmmm, great stuff, glad to finally have a recipe that works.


Great poster - thanks for sharing!


----------



## SueC

Oh yeah, and remember this guy? He's at it again...


----------



## SueC

OK, more funny photos: _(attached at end of post; ignore the two inserts of Cataract Gorge!)_

1. Remember that dog at Eaglehawk Neck? Brett wasn't finished with it yet...










2.Dinner at the Cradle Mountain communal eating area for campers, Christmas Eve 2009. There's a story behind this one, so you may want a cup of tea! :rofl: ...we'd spent over three months working in Launceston, Tasmania - I was doing a gig at a shocking school there, where I think they needed to fly in an innocent from interstate to fill the gap - and of course that innocent had to be a qualified Science geek. For what it's worth, 'cos I actually think they would have done better with a psychiatrist who moonlit as a night club bouncer. They sweetened the deal by arranging digs in West Launceston near Cataract Gorge. 










It was just five minutes' walk away from us, and leads down a canyon with hours of hiking!



















So anyway, I developed a blessed traumatic amnesia at the end of each working day, and we went exploring and doing local walks the minute I came home. Brett was able to work anywhere those days, off his Internet connection, and I didn't have to bring work home very often because it was a 0.8 FTE position, so I could do my prep and marking largely during school hours. Plus, there were two RE classes, which were Mickey Mouse - not heavy on assessments like Science or English subjects. The balance was a Year 10 hooligan Science class extraordinarily short on neurons, a Year 7 Maths class who did mostly Mathletics online (that's how they were actually set up), a Year 11 Biology class full of trippy, moon-eyed girls who loved hooning, chest-beating, testosterone-raddled, high-decibel boys. Jokes were made about the Tasmanian gene pool, but in all honestly, I think this was just a bad cluster...

It was a strange and very binary three and a bit months. One of the least enjoyable teaching gigs of my entire life, but every weekday afternoon, from around 5pm to 9pm (because that's how long it is to sunset in the Tassie spring), we had amazing adventures in the gorgeous Tamar valley and surrounds. I may post a special edition of photos from that time some other time, when my "funnies" selection is done (which it nearly is!). A gorge, a huge river, mountains, many bookshops and museums, lovely historical buildings, a hinterland of little villages complete with colonial chapels, amazing plants.  


And then we'd go home and I'd try to unwind enough to sleep to be ready for another working day in the Underworld. We actually bought several bottles of port wine and some Baileys that school term in order to help me switch off. I'm very chemically sensitive, so that was very effective, although I wasn't interested in adopting it as a long-term strategy. :rofl:

On the weekends we ventured further abroad, often staying overnight somewhere on the Saturday. The pay was great, so that was no issue. We'd go to Hobart for the weekend, or out to Stanley on the northwest coast, or go climb Mt Arthur or Ben Lomond, or walk in a rainforest or on the coast etc etc - but always big walks on the weekend, which is how I kept my sanity, and the stress hormones at bay!

School ended the week before Christmas, and I slept nearly two days straight. Then we cleaned up our apartment and packed for our big three-week camping trip all over Tasmania. We were actually still scrubbing and packing the morning of Christmas Eve. The weather in Launceston was warm and summery and we couldn't wait to get in the car and drive to Cradle Mountain, one of our favourite places, but too far from Launceston to have gone there for a proper hiking weekend.

We got out around 4pm and drove over four hours into the Tasmanian Highlands, and got there just before sunset, with just enough light to pitch the tent. It was _freezing_ up there even though it was midsummer. We blew up our air mattress with frigid air and had one of the shiveriest nights of our entire lives. The mattress was so unbelievably cold it just sucked out my body heat. I was having to turn every five minutes because I'd get hip cramps on the side that contacted the mattress. We ended up putting the doona and sleeping bag between the freezing mattress and ourselves, and sleeping on top of those things, in our thermal underwear and outerwear, covered in all the jackets and towels and bathrobes we found in our suitcases. We huddled together miserably and wished each other a Happy Christmas Eve.

Thankfully, we had been well fortified by good food, as the photo which triggered this memory shows. In our bowls was a really memorable Spaghetti with Baby Octopus Sauce, because we had discovered two packets of frozen baby octopus in our freezer the previous day, and I wasn’t going to waste this. So I packed a kilogram of baby octopus into a Marinara recipe. At one point as it was cooking, I remember Brett giving a stifled scream from the kitchen: “Sue! Come look, this is terrible, are they alive?” 

"Duh!" said I. "They've been frozen. How can you even think it?" but he was pointing in horror at the saucepan, and I laughed, because the cooking process was making the protein denature, which was making the tentacles contract in an eerie manner...dozens of little baby octopods all curling up their tentacles like dying spiders. So that explains his face in the photo as he was eating a serve of it 24 hours later. He was eating that _memory_, not the actual delicious spaghetti.

Please note also the wonderful salad - because dear DH is similarly inclined, we never go without fresh F&V. He actually boxed up that salad before we left Launceston.  And that's the size mug I've been drinking my Green Jasmine Tea with lots of milk and a spoon of honey from for decades, ever since I decided I could get more fluids and spend less time making tea that way. Brett converted to that size soon after. My corrupting influence!


3. This was Brett on Cradle Mountain summit less than 48 hours later. We'd had an aborted climb on Christmas morning because someone (naming no names) had forgotten spare camera batteries, and we ran out before Marian's Lookout. We were both really grumpy because of that and the abominable night we'd spent freezing our behinds off. Blessing in disguise though - we got some sleep that afternoon and by Boxing Day morning we were ready to roar up that mountain. We even took the long way home, through the Twisted Lakes, so it was nearly 12 hours of solid walking. And ahem, I got food poisoning late in the afternoon, from eating a sandwich containing contaminated salami from the Mole Creek IGA. The last two hours I could barely drag myself back to camp. I was walking on total autopilot, in a haze, and the moment we got back to the communal dining hall I collapsed in front of the fire, on the floor, and unwilling to move another centimetre. But that's another story!


4. After three weeks of camping and walking, we got on the ferry to the mainland and dawdled our way back across the Nullarbor, camping in some really interesting spots. This is Brett holding up an Apostle in the Great Australian Bight - of the erstwhile 12 Apostles (some of which have collapsed into the sea since being named).


5. Back at home in our (pre-Redmond) rental in Robinson, Brett got straight back into suffering for his art...

6. ...as you can see! (I will explain this later! :rofl

7. A friend let me ride her huge, magnificent TB in the Albany harbour during a photoshoot, but her stirrup leathers were too short for me, so I had to ride stirrupless. Good thing I went to a good German riding school as a kid, where we were made to suffer such things at length to improve our riding. :rofl:

8. Ah, to be home.  As you can see, the furniture and matching curtains has all moved with us to our own house, from this little rental.

9. Even at home, there is amazing walking, of course.

10. Brett in alpha male pose in the Porongurups, flexing his rippling biceps.










PS: @*tinyliny* , want to visit our madhouse? :rofl:


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## SueC

*Suffering For Your Art*

This is just a little post to show what Brett does with his incriminating photographs. It's for his graphic design work.

This one:










Ended up here:










http://brett.coulstock.id.au/wp-content/uploads/19nb_draculadotcom.jpg




And this:











Was to make this:










http://brett.coulstock.id.au/wp-content/uploads/19nb_wrongbob_large.jpg


A few more of the covers he did for this series:









http://brett.coulstock.id.au/wp-content/uploads/19nb_picture.jpg









http://brett.coulstock.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/19nb_dragon_large.jpg









http://brett.coulstock.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/19nb_cautionarytale_draft_02.jpg









http://brett.coulstock.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/19mn_goldenwoods_large.jpg









http://brett.coulstock.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/19NB_nakedtruth_large.jpg


__
Sensitive content, not recommended for those under 18
Show Content









http://brett.coulstock.id.au/wp-content/uploads/19nb_giftzombi_large.jpg









http://brett.coulstock.id.au/wp-content/uploads/19nb_cry_wolf.jpg









http://brett.coulstock.id.au/wp-content/uploads/19nb_fm_large.jpg









http://brett.coulstock.id.au/wp-content/uploads/19nb_cultists2.jpg









http://brett.coulstock.id.au/wp-content/uploads/19nb_the_outpost.jpg









http://brett.coulstock.id.au/wp-content/uploads/19nb_exit_strategy.jpg

...all in a good cause! (links included in case these photos don't stick!)


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## frlsgirl

Wow he’s very talented and appears to share your sense of adventure and humor: the perfect match!


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## SueC

Yes, if we'd been able to have children, we would have created monsters! :rofl:

I love his design work too, @*frlsgirl* , and he's so modest about it, like it's nothing special, but it is. On _The Picture In The House_, for instance, the background is an old print of cannibals roasting someone, but you only see that if you really look! :rofl: And that honeycomb design with the eyes and mouths, Brett was telling me he wanted to animate the design to have the eyes all blinking at different times. Imagine that as a screensaver...

The very first piece of his design work I ever saw was when we were long distance just getting to know each other as human beings, writing, having long phone calls, and sending each other parcels of goodies.  I'd sent him a little package with a few books and lemon-scented eucalypt soap and little knickknacks, and also a little bag of seashells I'd collected off the beach, as South Coast seashells are different from West Coast seashells. And then in one of his parcels soon after was a CD of Baroque music with a cover that made me look twice. Those seashells looked familiar! And that was my handwriting...but what was it doing on a CD cover? Ah, so that's what happens when you're doing a traditional courtship with a graphic designer! 

You and your DH had a similar start, from what you've said. I don't know about you, but I'm so glad I didn't just meet Brett in a pub or something (fat chance of that since neither of us go! :rofl. I'm glad we had to write and phone and send things and make an effort to get together, rather than just being able to hang out from Day One. That was such a luxury, despite also being a bit of an inconvenience in some ways... 


_(click graphic to enlarge, as always...)_


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## waresbear

Love his work!!


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## SueC

Hello, @*waresbear* !  Lessons going well, I take it.  How's DH?

It's got that noir edge to it, doesn't it?  I think the zombies holding hands are so well done. He was telling me how he spent ages colouring those and making the tattoo and getting the fingernail edges raggedy and putting stitches in - starting with a plain stock photo of two people holding hands. :rofl: And I still remember him cutting up newspapers and arranging words on the dining table for _Cultists Stole My Baby!_...

He's just shown me some designs he did for readings of HP Lovecraft.


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## SueC

*Logging An Uneventful Longish Ride*

How nice - I actually got an hour's trail riding in this morning, without any real drama - the most remarkable thing in that line was just a tiger snake on the side of the track as we were trotting along, which I saw at the last moment and could just veer the horse out of striking distance, not that they generally strike, but they will if they are startled, and we were less than a metre away from it.










Our snake didn't strike, it simply recoiled as we veered away. It's springtime, and with the warmer weather these animals are coming out of their winter semi-hibernation, to sun themselves in open places and catch frogs, mice etc. Although these snakes are very venomous, deaths aren't that common, and neither are strikes actually - over 70% of snakebites in Australia happen when people try to corner and kill snakes, and a fair proportion of the rest of them happen when people put their hands down holes etc (it's amazing what people will do!). Horses can get killed if they try to sniff at the snakes, or more commonly, when stallions get aggressive towards them and get their faces near them.

No need to be afraid of these guys, just be aware of your surroundings. Fellow drivers on the road are a significantly greater hazard to life, and far harder to avoid.

I managed to do a relatively long ride - all our internal tracks, plus the fireground loop in the neighbour's property - a good hour. We were making up for lack of riding yesterday - I was having to produce word count for an article on compost toilets, and my late morning reward was going to be a ride, but it was so overcast and I was so immersed in writing that I postponed until after lunch. And then the day got darker and darker... and come 4pm I was extremely tired from my work and not liking the look of the day outside, so I just fed the horses and went to bed after dinner.

It's light before 6am here now, and I was very pleased this morning to see shafts of sunlight entering the room as I woke up. It's amazing how that can invigorate you! I was joking, "Hey, Brett, maybe I should go riding while you slave away vacuuming the house!" and he took both my hands, and said with emphasis, "You-should-go-riding! Excellent idea! Look at the weather!"  So I went. And he vacuumed, as he does on Saturday mornings, with his trusty iPod. It's a chore he likes; I do fence maintenance and general farm stuff, and of course the #@%%^*!!! accounting and tax.

Sunsmart was very jolly today, and we had a good time. He's getting to the point where I can take him further abroad again, into the forest through the west gate. I'll take the iPod to take photos when that happens. Maybe early tomorrow morning, but only if the weather cooperates. I've been conditioning him for three weeks now, after not being able to ride for eight. We can get more serious again now, and do longer rides and build the intensity. He's been needing washdowns the last week or so from the pace he's interested in pursuing - about half of the time we're trotting or cantering. At proper fitness, that would be 80+% of the time.


*Hair Topiary*

One chore before I went riding was to do give Brett the rudimentary haircut he requested. Each time I swear I'll never do it again, and I spend days looking for funny bits to cut off retrospectively. (I am NOT a hairdresser, although I am quite good at hedge trimming and pruning.) Our problem is that we need a proper gay hairdresser for him. In this small town, hairdressers seem to be conditioned to cut  men's hair very short - like bloody Samson and Delilah. :-b And Brett has such wonderful hair, and gay men understand that it is not an affront to masculinity to have nice lengths through a man's hair. You don't even have to mention it, they just don't do the automatic sheep-shearing job most people seem to do on men.

I will attach, at the end of this, five photographs as follows:

1. A good haircut, done by an actual gay hairdresser from Perth
2. Ditto, another gay hairdresser, in Launceston
3. I don't know what this is - but it's funny
4. Even this is fine, although not done by a gay hairdresser
5. This desecration was done by an Albany hairdresser

So after viewing the last photo, I'm sure you will agree with me that even attemping topiary on your husband's hair is better than him going back to someone who does _that_ to him...


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## Knave

I actually like the last haircut. I like them all, but I like super short hair too. Both are nice.


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## Dragoon

Awww...he sent female hearts a-fluttering with "You should go ride!", but yes,...he has very nice hair!


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## gottatrot

So great you are riding Sunsmart and getting him fit again! It must feel wonderful.

So funny about the haircuts. DH bought some clippers a few years ago. I was to cut his hair, which made me very nervous. However, I can do beautifully artistic clipping jobs and haircuts on dogs and horses. As a teen I did such a great clip on my sister's mutt that the judge at a dog show thought he was some rare breed. 

Cutting hair is different. The second time I tried, I sneezed and cut a big chunk out of DH's hair. Then I wasn't allowed to cut his hair for awhile. But those women (and men) who cut his hair would always scalp him! So I learned to do it and am getting very good at it for the past couple of years. Now I do it how I like it, which is the most important, right? :wink:
I leave extra over the receding parts, and sort of blend it all like I do with my dog and horse clips. But I'm always looking at guys on TV and wondering how in the world they got their hair cut like that. 

The most amazing hair I've ever seen was in Japan. The men everywhere had hair that looked like artwork. Everyone was slightly different, but somehow perfect in its own way. It was so weird, I never thought of men's hair like that. 
We walked by a salon and saw someone getting a haircut, and it was a spectator sport, with four people standing and watching the artist at work. I thought DH should have his hair cut there, but we didn't have time. LOL. 

My sister is still single and I always tell her to get a man with no hair, because it is too much maintenance otherwise. DH has a ton of hair like Brett. Meanwhile, my brothers are both losing all their hair and agonizing over it.


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## egrogan

My lovely husband has lost most of the hair that was initially available to him (fortunately he's not the kind of guy that feels anxious about that). I've always thought he should go cueball shaved, but he won't do it as he doesn't want to deal with the maintenance. We have an excellent hairdresser we both use (we are now driving about 1.5 hours to see her every 5 weeks since we've moved, we couldn't bare to break up with her!)- she uses a 00 razor on him to buzz him down pretty close to the scalp. He really wants me to learn how to do "touch up" trims in between our appointments- I told him if he wants to spend the money on a really nice pair of clippers that would also allow me to do bridlepaths and a trace clip for Fizz, I'd consider it. No clippers have appeared yet! :rofl:


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## SueC

@*egrogan* , those clippers! :rofl: I've got a naughty thought - what about hair removal cream? He could DIY that way. Not that it's probably good for you to be slathering it on, but then some women do it for decades with their legs and underarms etc. Me, I just shave that stuff off in the bath/shower, and put up with being a little prickly until next time. Bigger fish to fry. I don't know why I shave my legs really, except I don't like Yeti legs on me - but I have no problem with my husband's Yeti legs - I don't feel sudden compulsions to shave him, and I'm actually glad he didn't take up track cycling as a hobby...

@*gottatrot* , it does feel great to be back on the horse.  Guess what, it's _raining_ as I sit here (of course!!!) - but I think I might as well wear appropriate clothes and go ride anyway. Sunsmart won't mind as he's going to get wet either way, since it's too warm to rug (except old Romeo) in these still, humid thundershower conditions... So funny about cutting DH hair how _we_ like it! :rofl: Brett, when he was shorn in that ridiculous way, looked glumly in the mirror, said, "Ah well, it'll grow back!" and that was the end of the matter. And yes, it did grow back! :rofl: Did you ever have one of those hairdresser playsets as a kid, where you put plasticine into hollow figurines and cranked their handles and plasticine hair would sprout from their scalps, that you could cut and style? :rofl: I remember that... 

@*Dragoon* , it's sort of mutual. I send his male heart fluttering with, "Would you like a chocolate cake today?" etc. :rofl:

@*Knave* , _of course_ you like short haircuts. :rofl: Think about your husband's _name_! :rofl:

A few more name jokes to get everyone in the mood:

What do you call a man floating in the ocean? - Bob
What do you call a girl standing in the centre of a tennis court? - Annette
What do you call a man with leaves in his pockets? - Russell
What do you call a woman with one leg shorter than the other? - Eileen
What do you call a man with a shovel? - Doug
What do you call a man without a shovel? - Douglas
What do you call a man who's been nailed to a wall? - Art
What do you call a man who is lying on the floor? - Matt

Who's got more?


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## bsms

I started cutting my own hair when I left the military. I won't post pictures because it is NEVER a work of art. It rarely is awful, though, and it keeps growing back. So at worst, I look at it, say "Yuck", and figure I'll take another stab at it in a few weeks. My wife could do a better job, but she worries about getting it right and I don't.

Shaving is worse, by far. If I don't shave, I look like feral (mustang?) Brillo pads are eating my face. If I do shave, the sun damaged skin on the right side of my face (why there?) can flare up and hurt all day. And the next night! The dermatologist told me this summer there is a treatment which he says is like chemotherapy in a bottle. Says it hurts a lot for two weeks, but then the skin is like new. He also said the summer sun makes treatment far more painful, so we may try it this winter.

Mustang Brillo pads eating my face, or scraping it daily with an extremely sharp blade. I guess it beats trying to walk in high heels...


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## SueC

Have you never thought about growing a Gandalf beard, @*bsms* ? The advantages:

1) No more shaving
2) All that gravitas - especially if you carry a staff as well
3) No more sunburn
4) Warm face in winter

I guess the disadvantage would be having to wash and condition your beard. The other day, Brett and I had a good laugh at all the beard-care products now for sale in the local supermarket, now that beards appear to be making a comeback.

Brett says he will try the Gandalf when his hair turns white, and he'll grow his hair long to match. So he should look really cool when he's 70!  I'll have to wear a pointy witch's hat.

More about names: I point this out to Brett frequently - "Brett" is German for "plank". :rofl: You have to be really careful how you word him in German. If you say, "Ich habe Brett geheiratet!" it means, "I married Plank." If you say, "Ich habe ein Brett geheiratet!" it means, "I married a plank."

And Sue, of course, is what lawyers do, but I didn't study law...

Coulstock (pron. cool-stock) is a southern English surname that means either "the people by the River Cole" or "the people who grow cabbages" - which would be ironic, because I've never grown a cabbage yet - but I have three varieties of kale...

Brett says this isn't true - he says Coulstock means "The Smiter of the Foe"! :rofl:


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## waresbear

I sometimes shave Daddy-O's head at the back if he misses a spot, lol. And he is still doing great Sue, busy restoring some old expensive car he bought and thrilled about it.


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## SueC

That's wonderful, @waresbear! And don't you make a lovely couple!


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## bsms

SueC said:


> Have you never thought about growing a Gandalf beard?...


Can't. It literally looks like random clumps of Brillo pad are attached to my face. The hair on my head is smooth. On my face? Patchy, wiry and tightly twisted. Bare skin in spots followed by twisted wire. Believe me. If I could grow a beard that didn't make little girls scream and older ones laugh, I would!


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## SueC

Hmmm. What about a fake beard, then? You can just take that off and put it in the washing machine when it needs cleaning...


----------



## SueC

*Another Trail Ride Photoessay*

Well, after a Sunday morning's amusement, I have some more photos taken off horseback! And even a video of post-ride shenanigans! With @*gottatrot* and @*waresbear* and @*bsms* etc setting these examples of letting us see and hear them with their horses, I asked Brett to film our untacking / washing session today, when we came back from riding.

The photos all come as attachments; so I'll be telling most of the ride through photo captions.

1. Julian is incredibly interested in tagging along when he sees me riding with Sunsmart, so I had him and Chasseur with me until I got to the western exit gate (Romeo was sleeping in the garden after a big breakfast ). Then our two tag-alongs continued back towards the pasture - you can just see them, but the iPod camera is really very poor.

2. Sunsmart and I went to check out if the forest gate was accessible from our western neighbour's place. It wasn't, so that put a damper on forest riding today. (People periodically lock places like this.)

3. So, we went back the way we came - this is back in our place. At the visible end of the trail, we turned right, heading towards our southern boundary.

4. Our western forest boundary track looks like this...

5. The four Friesian steers were camping in the forest today. They do it to get away from the weather.

6. I have no photos of crossing into our southern neighbour's place, and riding his boundary track up the hill to the Redmond-Hay River Road. We had a nice canter along there, and it's difficult to photograph things when doing that! :rofl: I had to get off the horse to get through the yards and gate, then we turned left, on a leafy little trail that leads along the road reserve, and back to our place.

7. Instead of going back into our place, we crossed the main road to ride down a gravel road to a nature reserve. This is Halls Rd, and at the end of this road is the Sleeman Creek Nature Reserve.

8. This is the view to the west from Halls Rd. Our property is behind the strip of bush running along the road in the middle background left. You can just see a bit of our house as a white dot between the two little trees in the foreground. The other buildings, in the pasture, more to the right, belong to our northern neighbours.

9. This is a little trail leading down to Sleeman Creek, in the Nature Reserve at the end of Halls Rd. We were trotting down this hill after I took the photo, and down on the flat Sunsmart suddenly did a sliding stop - because of a puddle! :rofl: My autopilot is used to this kind of thing; but me back didn't like it. Chicken! Him and water...

10. This was the best shot of Sleeman Creek I could get, without getting off the horse. It runs right through the photograph, about in the centre. With the creek in flood, and not wishing to swim, we decided to leave the rest of the trails on the other side to another time this summer, when the creek is easily passable!


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## SueC

11. Heading back along Halls Rd.

12. This is the Redmond-Hay River Road, with the dog near our northeastern "cocky gate" - a section of draggable fence between two fenceposts. There's a log behind it to stop vehicles entering, but I can get my horse past it.

13. The house from the far end of the farm soak.

14. Jess having a swim...

15. Brett got this shot of us as we were coming in - with a proper camera. I was already nearly off the horse...

16. Just a fun picture before I jumped off. I can now land on my left foot without pain, as long as I'm landing on the right one at the same time!  I can't understand why my helmet won't sit straight, no matter what I do, and have concluded it's due to the shape of my head...

17. Untacking. The tagasaste is on full white bloom all behind us. Behind that is the start of 50 hectares of bush (woodland), with the trails on which I started my ride. The new two-tone riding pants I bought recently are now properly dirty... I'm still wearing my hiking boots, because of my recovering foot, and as they are soooo comfortable, I just might keep riding in them on trails...

18. The dog having a good roll after swimming in the farm dam.

19. When I untack, I always undo the horse's throatlatch and chin chain when I tie him up. Saves having to do it later. Because of my threaded rope that runs through the reins, the saddle (with the rope attached to the girth) comes off first.

20. I do love this saddle... See those long, light-coloured tufts on the horse? And the long hairs feathering from the carpal joints and hocks down? I suspect my horse may be developing PPID, and the vet is coming to blood test him on Thursday.


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## waresbear

Great pictures, such a nice area.


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## SueC

21. Sunsmart currently has his late mother's ancient purple halter, while I try to find him something red without bling. The last halter I bought him was too large, but fits Romeo. The browband is from my Arabian mare, who also had a large forehead. The one that came with the bridle was too tight, and caused the neckpiece of the bridle to ride too close to the horse's ears. - People on HF often wonder if there is a quick-release knot to tie with. This is the one I use. Just pull on the dangling end and it undoes.

22. My horse's winter coat is nearly shed out now, but I don't like the pattern, or the colour his winter coat was. On top of PPID markers, I am interested in his trace element levels, possible copper or iron overload, and a few other things like that.

23. These boots always remove in a jiffy.

24. Happy rider!

25. Post-ride smiles.

26. A little electrolyte top-up in the feed is nice. Because of eight weeks off with my broken foot, Sunsmart lost a lot of shape. After three weeks of conditioning though, he's now fine to ride further afield, which is why I did a longer ride today. I'd like to take one condition score off him with extensive riding this spring - especially since the pasture is peaking.


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## SueC

And here's some post-riding shenanigans / "interviewing" - we filmed this because I thought it was so nice to hear other HF friends actually speaking in clips, and seeing them interacting with their horses. Returning the favour! Brett has a wonderful radio announcer voice, as you'll quickly notice. I am recovering from unilateral vocal fold paralysis, which made me totally unable to speak back in late 2008/early 2009. Supposedly I was never going to speak again without surgery, but the surgery would have taken half my airway, and we liked climbing mountains, so I passed, and we decided to owner-build a house. I sang a lot in the shower - well, croaked really, at first - as DIY physiotherapy, and over the years my voice gradually started to return.

It's now within range of normal, but I'm still having a little trouble separating words sometimes. That's because vocal paralysis actually makes it almost impossible to do one sentence with one breath (air excapes through the gap made by the paralysed cord), which is why singing in the shower helped. My nerve to that cord is now partially functioning again, and the gap is closing. One other thing I can't do yet is yell - but that's probably something my husband is secretly grateful for! :rofl:






We'll do some more soon, and I'll dig out some archival ones I was embarrassed about because I couldn't speak properly. In the early stages of my voice returning, I sounded like a cartoon character...


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## gottatrot

Too bad about your vocal chord problems, but I like your voice. It's interesting to hear people's voices. I think @phantomhorse13 has a very soothing voice for horses. But from what I hear, most people don't think their own voice sounds good on a recording.

Thanks for sharing the video! It was great. Now I feel bad because I don't towel my horses' heads or bodies and I can see it is very enjoyable. I might have to start doing that now. 
I like your new riding pants, and the Renegade vest. I also like how Brett calls Sunsmart "Smartie."


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## SueC

Thanks, @*gottatrot* ! Yeah, pretty much nobody likes the way they sound on a recording - not even Brett likes his own voice on playback! :shock: The general reason for it is that we hear our own voices with more reverberation than others do, because of the bathroom effect of our own sinuses that way - so it sounds flat to us to hear it played back without that! I am generally happy with my voice - well, over the moon given the prognosis I had from the specialist nearly ten years ago, because I never did have that operation - it's just that there are still aspects I want to recover. It's elongating the vowels and putting spaces between the words, instead of running-on, which I'm still needing to work on - to an extent I'd had to do that in my training for public speaking, because I'd come from a German cultural background. If you listen to Germans speaking German, you'll notice they speak relatively fast, with little space between words, and also with little modulation, and you tend to bring the "music" of your first language into subsequent ones.








Spanish and Italian speakers are also quite fast, but they modulate beautifully. And one of the reasons I think Irish and Scottish accents are so edible is that they tend to speak slowly, put spaces between words, really sound out each word properly (and with their delightful lilts), accentuate vowels, and modulate beautifully on top of it!  (@Caledonian will probably tell me the regional exceptions next time she's around! ) So often I wish we'd moved to Ireland or Scotland instead, because I totally would have acquired that way of speaking, it's so contagious. In fact, if I spend enough time socialising with people from those countries, I get halfway there! :rofl:

Anyway, it's just that I'd already gotten there before, and then this curveball was thrown ten years ago, and I had to start, not just all over again, but start from far further back than ever before. And I could-not-modulate, let alone pronounce half the consonants properly, or speak without sounding out of breath. At the beginning, I noticed that if you can't speak properly, most people automatically assume you are of low intelligence, and slow down and simplify their vocabulary, unless they already know you from before. And the phase where I went from croaking and unable to pronounce various consonants that needed a lot of air pressure, to sounding like a high-pitched Minny Mouse, was really embarrassing, as well as exasperating - strangers thought I was doing it on purpose, and were telling me to stop it. And it took so much effort to try to speak, as if trying to speak underwater. It was really exhausting.

So I'm actually really pleased to have recovered as much voice as I have, and no longer to be getting strange looks when I talk! And particularly, that I've mostly recovered the pitch I had before, and the ability to modulate my voice. :happydance: I can work on the rest. More singing, and more reading stories out loud to each other! 

There's a story behind the Renegade vest. It arrived from the US, together with a set of hoof boots, after I sent Kirt Lander a courtesy copy of the article I'd written on hoof boots for _Grass Roots _magazine. I just didn't want his ears to burn, it was just a courtesy, but he really wanted to send me something because he liked the article. So I sent him and his wife some of our honey, and a boomerang!  I like the vest, it has useful deep zipped pockets and I don't overheat in it. It's actually fine as rainwear, because I don't care if my arms get wet, but I really really hate getting too hot, and it's so easy to do that when you're in long sleeves.

And I've gotten used to the two-tone pants! :rofl: Brett thought it was very superhero. :rofl:

Sunsmart generally goes by Smartie, or Smartibartfast, around here! :rofl: Have you had the pleasure of reading _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_?

I first heard what you sounded like in your falling-off video, and I thought, "If I was a horse, I'd be running towards that voice, not away!"  And @*phantomhorse13* is like that too. As is @*waresbear* , as it turns out! We could make a study of this. None of us bark harshly at other creatures. ;-)


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## Knave

I loved it! I like your voice and your husband’s. To me it is very... don’t you hate when you can’t think of the correct word you want to use. It isn’t even there. Ugh, like a word for foreign but unique and special... oh well, maybe you know what I am thinking.

It is funny that Sunsmart hates water so. Bones is terrible! He has such a phobia of water that even when a cow pees he hangs back. I don’t think I could sponge him. Sunsmart is very expressive just like him. They seem much more similar in the small image I now have than I would have expected. I like that you are like me and just let him make his dirty looks and understand it’s only about the water. 

Bones was so bad when I first bought him that he would throw himself down if I hosed him. Today he just gives really dirty looks and moves around a ton. In the spring I have to get him into three different water holes, and you can imagine how that goes... it isn’t pretty. I don’t think if it were deep I could get it accomplished, but I don’t know what I’d do if I had to. We have had some doozies of arguments about creeks and puddles though. He’s been forced to tolerate it many times, but truly he hates it. It’s a phobia.


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## SueC

Hullo, @*Knave* ! :hug: About voices, one thing that springs to my now more rested mind is this notion that everyone I've heard in our little group here, including yourself and @*egrogan* and @*frlsgirl* and @*AnitaAnne* and others as well as the handful I mentioned yesterday, have these caramel undertones, no matter how they pitch etc - just this something stretchy and sweet in their voices, which says, "I am approachable, and I don't believe in selling my own grandmother! And maybe I've got a carrot in my pocket, and maybe later you'll find out!" :rofl:

Yeah, I don't know what it is about some horses and water, but it seems to have a hereditary component - Julian, Sunsmart and their late sire The Sunbird Hanover all share that real dislike of water, and that highly developed expressing of their feelings to the world. You pretty much always have an idea what they're thinking. And all three of them share that penchant for shark impersonations, and for raising the exact same hind leg, waving it about suggestively, and stamping it down, to make a point. Yet none of them have ever kicked or seriously bitten me, they are all bluster - and on the odd occasion they've caught skin, they've given me a bug-eyed _sorry_! :shock: But only with handlers they like. With strangers and people they don't like, they would have unhesitatingly made mincemeat of them. In part because stallions (Julian and Sunsmart weren't gelded until in their teens and retain a lot of stallion behaviour).

I think it's fair enough for stallions to be protective of themselves and their herd, it's their biological job. Once we had a very alpha-miming chestbeating sort of visitor who brought a poor attitude to our horses on greeting across the fence. Sunsmart was immediately on his hind legs and charging at him. The electric fence prevented further damage. The human was outraged, but I told him he wasn't herd boss and shouldn't ever approach horses in an aggressive manner like that. He had completely deserved the reproach. This is a free-ranging herd and their territory, not some random human's.

I'm assertive with them, but not aggressive. And they know me, versus some unknown quantity appearing and acting tough and unpleasant. I also have a sense of humour with them, which they get and reciprocate. Plus they know I would protect them and be on their side if there was a problem. And all of them come and have little chats to me on a daily basis when they see me around, even the three I'm not riding. It's really obvious they see me as lead mare, and they have transferred a lot of their behaviours towards the chestnut mare we lost last year onto me in her absence. She used to babysit them, intervene in their squabbles, do one-on-one with her herd members, and was very affectionate with them. She was their centre out in the paddock. They've lost that centre, so when they see me, they follow me around far more seriously than they did when they had a good maternal mare with them, and they are looking for affection - a female affection I think, with a sort of mothering component they are lacking now.

Julian tells me he wants to work too, so I'm resuming his preliminary "walkies" in the countryside. He loves to explore, and he always had a great work ethic as a harness horse. He still can't get over his freedom, and explores the bush tracks out the back frequently. He will love it when I take him walking on our south neighbour's place to see new scenery and the farm dams and big herd of cattle! Julian is about the same size as Bones, about 14.3hh. Sunsmart is about 15.2hh and really solid like a tank, so much muscle!

The water phobia is a tough one; I don't think Sunsmart would voluntarily swim - it's tough enough trying to get him to cross creeks! :rofl: With my Arabian mare, when she was a yearling I used to put on my gumboots and lead her through shallow water as much as possible. She'd grown up in a herd (how did Bones grow up? Herd or stable?) and drinking from dams, so not like Sunsmart, who'd only drunk from buckets and those tiny automatic drinking fountains. Anyway, water was never a problem with her.

Best of luck with Bones and water! In winter, I make sure I'm sponging Sunsmart with _warm_ water - that improved things a lot. In summer, I hose him, and he pulls faces.


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## Knave

I don’t really know how he grew up. I know that from one to two (when I bought him) he was in a small pen alone as a stud prospect. The video I saw from before that was also just a small pen. In some ways I believe it made him like an ottb, in that, although naturally sure footed, he hates being touched by brush or trees and gets extremely claustrophobic. He doesn’t travel like a horse would that knew outside.

Socially he is kind of a class clown. When he first came the horses were tortuous towards him. It was one of the harshest introductions I had ever seen and lasted weeks. I figured he was very much insulting to them, and since he is such an aggressive horse they knew they needed to bring him down and keep him there.


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## SueC

Yeah, I really believe it's not good for horses, and especially lively horses, to be cooped up like canaries. (I don't even think cooping up is good for canaries.) I think a lot of phobias and difficulties are created in horses by very unnatural and restricted sorts of upbringings. The horses I know grew up in a herd of broodmares are on average so much more sensible and less spooky than the horses that grew up stabled and not in a decent social group of horses running together. Also, re-creating a range situation for previously stabled horses has had a wonderful effect on the three ex-cooped-up ex-stallions I've got here.


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## SueC

Just adding a thought here, @Knave: I think if Sunsmart had been herd-raised, drinking from dams, crossing water etc, he would probably still have had an aversion to water, but it would have been tempered by seeing older horses not freaking out, and having to go along in these things from an early age to stay with his herd. I think he would then have made it known crossing water wasn't his favourite thing, but have done it anyway with relatively little fuss.


His aversion to water, in part it's the _sensation_ he doesn't like. He's also very ticklish. Is Bones ticklish?


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## Knave

I don’t think so either @SueC. I think that when I bought him and turned him out he mentally improved a ton. He would be a very difficult animal if still in that environment.

Some do alright with it I know. Lucy isn’t in a large area, but she does require company if she isn’t being consistently used. Poor Zeus draws the short stick. Lol. Bones of course tries to volunteer, but husband doesn’t like that idea. Hahahahaha

Oh, I just saw your other post! Yes, I think that’s part of his hatred of the brush.


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## SueC

So I think both your horse and mine have extra sensitive skins, and this affects their likes and dislikes - brushing, water etc. And in a way that's me too, because I'm like the princess on the pea - do you know that story? If there's a stray breadcrumb in the bed (from our breakfast in bed tradition), I'll find it when trying to sleep, and it will feel like a burr to me! :rofl: And those tags in the backs of shirts drive me spare, so I rip them out. And I can't wear polyester or polyester blends, it's like itching powder, and actually gives me a physical rash (as well as a psychological one :rofl. I actually like water, but not cold water...


So I can empathise with this sort of sensitivity, and be accommodating when I have an animal like that, and be very patient with desensitising, and realistic about that too. I suppose I could "make" a horse do something it really hates, but that just doesn't sit comfortably with me, not if I can work around it, be a little moderated about it etc. I'd rather take small steps frequently and then back off and praise, than throw the horse in at the deep end, so to speak. I'd hate that were it done to me. And, I _did_ hate that when it _was_ done to me, in fact! ;-)


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## Knave

Brush I mean like sagebrush. He likes grooming, but he does only like the soft brush.

Yes, I try as well to be patient about desensitizing and do allow him most of his oddities and intense emotions. Because of this I think he tries to do whatever I ask. This is the first year of work though that I can feel him actively trying to control his strong emotions. He wants to refuse to go in the water, but I let him think and he forces himself to do what needs done. Same with going through the brush. This is unless he’s upset about something, in which he cannot get a grip. 

I empathize with him. I am emotional too. He is so truly kindhearted and loving that I can’t see how anyone wouldn’t try and understand him.  

I definitely am not the princess and the pea. I am as thick skinned as an old workhorse.


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## phantomhorse13

SueC said:


> I first heard what you sounded like in your falling-off video, and I thought, "If I was a horse, I'd be running towards that voice, not away!"  And @*phantomhorse13* is like that too. As is @*waresbear* , as it turns out! We could make a study of this. None of us bark harshly at other creatures.


While I agree I try not to bark harshly - or at least not without reason - I certainly don't care for the sound of my own voice. Luckily, the animals (and my DH!) are much kinder in their opinions and respond to it as intended. ;-)


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## SueC

A little note to @*bsms* : I hope I didn't hurt any feelings when suggesting a machine-washable fake Gandalf beard. I know it sucks when something about our wrapping paper isn't representative of who is living inside it. Brett and I simply have minds that immediately veer towards the ridiculous, for humour. I'll give you an example. When I say that I don't think I'm going to live past 80 because noone in my extended family ever did, Brett says, "But then who's going to push my wheelchair?" :rofl:

And when I mentioned the fake Gandalf beard to him, he was really enthusiastic, and said he'd go for a ZZ Top on Mondays, and a little bandit moustache on Tuesdays, and a full resplendent Gandalf on Wednesdays, and a Dali on Thursdays, and a Fu Manchu for Fridays, and pick something from the Beard Olympics for the weekend...

https://www.worldbeardchampionships.com/photos/


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## gottatrot

Knave said:


> I definitely am not the princess and the pea. I am as thick skinned as an old workhorse.


Me too. People tell me bleach isn't meant to be used straight on your hands, but it doesn't seem to bother mine when I use it. 
Even as a child I would yank my teeth out early so I could get money from the tooth fairy and cut my warts off with knives. 
People at work are like, "I have this little open area on my arm that's red, what if it's infected?" 
I say, "You're a nurse, just cut it out down to good tissue, sterilize it, start over." They think that sounds whacko.
@SueC, DH and I have off-key humor too. He'll say something and I'll take it one step farther, then he'll go farther, and soon it gets way too disturbing. Whoa.

I was raised in a family where sarcasm was humor, and self-deprecating was seen as an art form. But somehow it was OK because everyone was well loved, and everyone had a healthy self-esteem. So it wasn't serious, and I never learned that it wasn't healthy to say bad things about yourself. Perhaps my parents thought we'd be narcisissts if we didn't learn how to humble ourselves or be humbled. 

Anyway, I never have wanted to feel I was above laughing at myself. It sure takes the tension down in a bad situation if you poke fun at yourself. Rodney Dangerfield had those self deprecating jokes like, "When I was a kid, I was so ugly, when I'd play in the sandbox, the cat would keep covering me up." 

People get really tense at work when a patient is in trouble, or "circling the drain" as we say when no one is around. Seconds count, and that makes people get so nervous that they lose those precious seconds because they stop thinking clearly. Sometimes I'll see someone in that state and take a second to get them lighter. 
The ICU nurse is supposed to step back and get the big picture, and if everything looks good for a moment but someone is sweating and stressing about getting in a catheter (less important), I say, "If I can't get it in I usually just tie it around the (male anatomy) and pull the sheet over - no one will notice." The shock of a bad joke will really snap someone into a better state of mind.


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## SueC

That's so interesting, @*gottatrot* , and reminds me of the lowest-stress workplace I ever worked at, where we all respected each other deeply, but were constantly mock insulting each other. :rofl: It's like we were vying to see how outrageous it could become. Strangers walking in would be shocked if we were at the straight-face stage, but sooner or later we'd all dissolve in peals of laughter. :rofl:

One time, a gentleman made a vague female joke, and all I did in response was cross over to the guillotine, and slowly bring down the blade, and all the males present were crossing their legs and wincing. :rofl: The quality of our work was excellent, everyone cooperated really well, and we were awash with endorphins all the working day.

Brett and I don't quite do that, but we do say the strangest things to each other, and it just sort of tesselates!  And we'll deliberately use outrageous or bombastic or archaic vocabulary, for kicks. Sometimes Brett will launch into a long monologue he remembers from Hamlet etc. :rofl: And I might tell him to _get thee hence_. Hee hee. The other day, my friend Alice was doing it - she's 86 and she dramatically exclaimed, _What fresh horror is this_? :rofl:

It's so easy to beat Brett at Scrabble, because he doesn't give a hoot about the points, he's just trying to make the most _elegant_ word possible! :rofl: So we modified the rules: Double score for words we both agree are elegant, and also for science jargon. You might then debate whether quark is a continental type of soft cheese, or a subatomic particle! :rofl: It's actually much more fun than playing by normal rules, and rewards elegance etc.

If you learn to laugh at yourself, you'll always have something to laugh about!

PS: _Circling the drain _nearly killed us! Never heard that before...


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## SueC

Knave said:


> Brush I mean like sagebrush. He likes grooming, but he does only like the soft brush.


:rofl: That was a funny misunderstanding!  You have _brush_ in the US to confuse everyone else in the world, and we have _bush_ in Australia to do that. I try not to say, "We went bushwalking!" on HF because God only knows what mental imagery this brings up for non-Australians. So I say, "We went hiking!" even though that's not what we say here!  And what would you think if I said, "We live in the bush!" or "We went bush!" or "We are bush-bashing!" - all of which are valid expressions in Australia and readily understood. :rofl:

_The bush_ is basically any wild Australian vegetation, whether it's desert or woodland or rainforest. It's "Australian nature" - rather than the individual large scrub it conjures up for non-Australians... 

PS Going bush means going into a wilderness area; bush-bashing is what you do if there in no clear path in the vegetation and you're getting scratched a bit and pushing branches out of the way, and living in the bush means you don't live in a city or town, but in a rural area... but apply care, as _your bush_ is your pubic hair, and a _bushfire_ is also a joking reference to someone putting a match to it...:rofl:


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## SueC

*Farm Map*

Here's an annotated aerial photograph of our farm. North is at the top, as per convention. Our farm is a squishy T-shape bounded at the northern edge by the sealed road clearly visible in the photograph, and to the west, south and east I have marked the boundaries with red lines. These red lines are where our firebreak tracks are, and these are all riding tracks for me as well. I refer to them as western forest track, southern forest track, eastern forest track. 

Most of our block (50ha) is on-farm nature conservation; with 12.5 ha of pasture adjacent to the road. In the bushland's valley floor there are two sandy service tracks. The one on the left is the one I refer to as the Sand Track, the one on the right is the Swamp Track, as it gets very wet there in winter. These two tracks delineate the valley floor with its tea-tree flats and swamplands. The darker green vegetation to either side is woodland, rising up in parallel hillsides.

The Sand Track is nearly a kilometre long and leads to a gate to the property to the south and east of us, where I have permission to ride on trails and firebreaks as well. We have 5km of internal farm tracks, and the neighbour has 12-14 km in the adjacent block. Other riding opportunities exist on Halls Rd to our north-east - the orange track running parallel to the top right of the picture. This extends to a state conservation reserve with some trails and tracks, a creek crossing and a huge hill. The reserve is rumoured to be a thoroughfare to Narrikup further north, but I've not yet found any gate or way out at the northern end. (In South-Western Australia, all land is fenced in blocks, including forests. This is unlike the fairly open rural track situation in Europe, and makes trail riding very awkward even though this country is massive.)

There is sometimes access to plantation forest further to the west (off photo) via the western gate at the "elbow" in the western boundary of our on-farm conservation reserve. This has many nice tracks and dams on it, and leads in turn to a permanently open state forest that extends over 100km to the west. Unfortunately, access is intermittent due to the plantation forest being periodically locked.

If the main road is followed further to the west, there is a really nice ride along the unsealed, sandy, 4WD Creek Road, climbing the highest hill in the local area with fabulous views. The drawback is that you have to travel escorted by a vehicle on the sealed road leading to it, because there is no set speed limit on that main road, and cars and milk trucks go hurtling around at 110km/h, on a narrow road with little shoulder to ride on and nowhere to get out of the way. You also need to arrange to be escorted back. Otherwise I'd be forever riding there!


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## SueC

*Two More Rides To Log*

I'm making up for lost time, with four trail rides in five days. The horse is still being conditioned after our eight-week enforced riding break, so I stay between 30 and 90 minutes. We're moving at quite a clip again three weeks in, so those times can get us a fair way around the countryside.

Yesterday evening, Julian and Chasseur followed us on the Sand Track and soon overtook us and raced down the track at what harness trainers call pacework speed, and most riders would call an insane trot (even though they can go significantly faster still when they sprint). It's springtime, and the horses are running a fair bit at the moment - as are the beef cattle, actually, though not quite at the same scale. Still, it's funny when neighbours' cattle jog along fencelines with you, and buck and caper around.

At the end of the track, our two tag-alongs turned around and flat gallopped back to the pasture together. Sunsmart and I went through the south gate and did what we call the fireground loop, because we patrolled that area so often during the controlled burns in May this year. We met frisky cattle nearly doing handstands, standing knee-deep in clover and trying to let off excess energy. They delighted in accompanying us on the other side of the fence, while the dog obsessively ran up and down the fenceline on our side, eyeballing them. We returned via the Swamp Track on our property. It was a nice balmy evening ride, with friends for the first leg.

Today, Sunsmart and I did what I refer to as an All Tracks ride - meaning, we went on every farm track on our own farm; about 5km but with hills. For this ride, and all forest rides, I have the horse in boots, so we can ride on the sharply rocky ridges. For the simple valley floor loop at our place, and the fireground loop in the south-eastern neighbour's, we go barefoot.

Immediately after riding, I trimmed Romeo's hooves. Two more horses to go. Then I did enormous quantities of washing and a bit of gardening (mostly watering). It was ridiculously windy and hot today, so flanellette cotton bedsheets were dry in half an hour.

I need a sleeping emoji. I can barely keep my eyes open and will be heading to bed...


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## bsms

SueC said:


> A little note to @*bsms* : I hope I didn't hurt any feelings when suggesting a machine-washable fake Gandalf beard. I know it sucks when something about our wrapping paper isn't representative of who is living inside it...


Not at all! The last few weeks have been busy due to family things, and I haven't done any riding due to early winter weather. Highs in the upper 60s don't sound like winter to most of y'all, but the normal high today would be 95 degrees. We've also had one of the wettest Octobers ever. Again, not much by Oregon standards, but 2-3 inches in a place that normally hits 14 inches a year, and averages (I think) well under an inch for October.

Just looked up the numbers for Tucson, the closest city. It is the 17th coolest October on record, and the coolest since 1982 - just before I joined the military! Add in a number of days of wind, and you get miserable horses. The corrals turn into mud pits. They spend their days and nights standing around in cold mud, wind and rain. There are only two shelters in the main corral & they won't share the shelter with Cowboy. So right now, Cowboy is in what we call the "Medicine Corral" where he can at least get shelter.

And since they pull their hay out of the buckets, it will get trampled in the mud. Thus lots of meals of hay pellets. Not a bad thing for a day or two, but we've had weeks of the weather - and our soil and shelters aren't designed to handle it for weeks on end. We've looking at getting another shelter in the main corral - the wood one is wearing out and it would be nice to replace it with a larger metal one.

The forecast finally shows a week of little or no rain. It will only take a day or two to dry everything out - particularly with the strong winds forecast for a couple of days. But riding? If it warms up enough today, MAYBE a little with Bandit in spite of the winds. Won't be fun for me, but 15 minutes of trotting in our little arena may help him to unwind. But I hate riding in the wind, even if Bandit doesn't mind it!

So....I haven't been posting much. A little recently about mustangs, but I also just have less to write about. My three horses are all pretty sane at this point. After 3.5-10 years, they all know what to expect of us and we know what to expect of them, and I think we're all pretty content with each other. Not much drama. I've also used HF to think out loud about how best to ride. But 'how best to ride', like 'proper riding', depends on one's goals. My goals are heavy into low-stress riding. Making compromises with my horses - give me a short run, then we'll stroll and you can grab some weeds to eat.

It is an interesting question: Is that approach a very low approach to riding, or a moderately difficult one? If you rarely need the reins when riding, are you 'just a passenger'? Or does your horse just understand what you want and willing to do so? And is that 'low', or 'high'? Or are those meaningless terms?

In any case, the path my horses have funneled me into seems to have left me in a foreign country from most of the horse world. Half-halts. Rein effects. Frames. Horses objecting to a rider mounting up. Crops. Diagonals. Supporting the inside shoulder. It is like Greek to me. Maybe worse, since I'd like to visit Greece, but would as soon be emasculated with a brick as need to carry a crop on every ride! I take refuge in the journal threads, where at least I find people who may use some of those, but who also seem to have horses who enjoy being ridden. People who want the horse to enjoy life too!


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## SueC

What a lovely and informative post, @*bsms* ! :happydance:

I know Brett and I are statistical outliers and don't march to the beat of any general societal drum. We've always had to think about stuff and be empirical about life, and experimental, and make up our own minds. We didn't follow fashion fads as kids, or subsequently, and were prone to viewing popular crazes with an inherent suspicion. The human herd / lemming thing and clear analytical thought don't go together. And just because a bunch of lemmings are going over a cliff doesn't mean we are going to jump.

If that's your modus operandi, you're open to accusations of arrogance and worse. But it doesn't bother me, not since I was much younger, because you can't assume that the use of your mirror neurons is going to lead to a better outcome than the use of your grey matter. And also you can't assume that someone else's ruminations are going to be superior to your own, especially if you have a lifelong habit of thinking deeply and weighing up, and starting at first principles - no matter what official expert status those people may have. I've always preferred to make my own mistakes, rather than ape someone else's. Besides, my science training taught me that my penchant for always questioning everything is a good thing, and a useful thing; and if a group of people do this together, they can really go places with getting a better understanding of the world. Observe, hypothesise, experiment, infer, brainstorm, critique ourselves, critique each other, generate alternative hypotheses, extrapolate from someone else's line, really pool those neurons.  

And oh yeah, use _both_ sides of that brain, not just the left hemisphere. Think and intuit and feel and empathise. Draw from the art and language side and not just from scientific thought and logic. Those things are _complementary_, and deeply synergistic. And that part of it is the part some people with excellent left-brain skills sometimes don't get - they want to throw out the right hemispheres. But I think the whole brain is better than just half of it.

And this is one of the reasons I love this little journalling group, because I think that's how quite a few of us operate. There's no, "But X said, and who are you?" Everyone just expects everyone to be using their brains, and it's no big deal. And all of us are interested in ideas, and in what other people have thought about something, or are thinking, and how they arrived at their conclusions. No grandstanding, no sniping, no being derogatory, and no dogma. A sense of respect and kinship. A desire for a perpetually broadening perspective.

We're also mostly not trying to solve the same equation, as we all have different selves, different horses, different circumstances, different preferences. Also of course we have similarities and overlap, as do our horses. But the best Venn diagram in any relationship is one that is partly overlapping, and partly not. The overlaps give us common ground, and the non-overlapping parts take us out of our comfort zones and make us think and grow.

And now, the weather! :rofl: We've had a very strange 18 months where we are. Severe and unusual frosts in the winter 18 months ago meant we destocked half our cattle. This was followed by one of the driest summers on record here, and then a really late season break with very little rain. We had an extremely dry autumn, so we didn't re-stock - we sold seven finished beef heifers to market in January, and bought a mere four weanling dairy poddies months later. Due to the poor grass growth and the official drought this winter, we did not buy a second lot of cattle and are still running a mere four, when we peaked at 18 at one stage, in an exceptionally good season. Depending on how the spring flush goes, we may or may not pick up another four weanlings.

Right now it looks like the rains are going to finish early, and the heat and drying winds are setting in way before their usual time. I can't imagine we're going to get in extra cattle until at least December, when we see how the pasture is going to pan out. And we might not until next May. We stock according to pasture availability, and avoid supplementary feeding - except with our tree fodder, which helps us through frosts and droughts.

I completely get why you don't want to ride in the high winds, @*bsms* . Sometimes I just walk Julian on our tracks on a lead if I don't feel like riding Sunsmart. And sometimes I have two other horses decide to tag along with us. :rofl:

By the way, I carry a crop most of the time. I use it mainly to wave in my dog's face when mounting my horse, because she barks up at his face when I do that, and nothing short of ground personnel stop her doing it. So Brett and I now refer to the crop as the _dog-whacking stick_, even though the dog doesn't actually get whacked with it. But with any retrained harness horse, a crop is useful because they are used to being cued with a driving whip. (A lot of people also beat their horses with their whips, but that is not standard practice for me - I've done that once, as a teenager when I lost my temper, and never again, because that was enough for my lifetime for sure.) It's mostly useful when a horse thinks they see a bogeyman. You just lightly touch the horse's rear end with the crop to say "forward" in a way that is autopilot for these horses, in situations where you need the help of something that was earlier and has gone deeper down than the saddle re-education.

I'd also have no hesitation in whacking a dangerous person with a crop, should I encounter one riding. :rofl: Noone will grab my horse's reins, for sure, because they shall be getting their sensory organs flagellated if they try.

Speaking of, I was intrigued by the notion of emasculation with a single brick. A pair of bricks seems more effective for that purpose, to me. ;-)


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## bsms

I typed a response and the Internet made it all disappear. Swallowed it whole. So shortened version....

I don't object to crops or whips as a last resort, nor as something the horse has been trained to understand. I do object to how often they are used as a FIRST response, as part of "Ask, Tell, DEMAND" - the demand being to smack the horse. For that sort of use...well, I've had an acronym edited out of my posts before as bad language, but as a former instructor in a Wild Weasel squadron, I'll post the Wild Weasel patch, courtesy of Wiki:









​BTW, I never flew as a Wild Weasel in combat. I did get to meet a few guys who had flown in Vietnam. For any history buffs, this is an example of what the Weasels did in Vietnam. Note most of the original Weasels paid the price:
​Wild Duel: Weasels vs SAMs Over Dong Hoi​


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## SueC

:clap: :clap: :clap: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

And isn't it ironic how the ATD (to invent an acronym ;-)) brigade doesn't think of that method as a shortcut and a poor benighted cousin to appropriate high-quality education and communication, but has often accused me of shortcuts for not riding in a jointed snaffle! :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:


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## Caledonian

@*gottatrot* – I hear similar dark humour at work. I work with the military and their jokes can be light-hearted while at other times they’re about life-changing injuries. It seems to be their form of therapy to connect stress and bad memories to jokes. We had a soldier give a talk about battlefield medicine during the 1800s and he used graphic jokes from a doctor’s diary; it was interesting to watch the different reactions in the audience depending on their experiences. 

Similar to your low-stress workplace @*SueC* , mine treats everyone equally, whether it’s sarcasm or practical jokes. If you’re easily insulted, you won’t survive very long in our offices. The best days are those when I’ve laughed non-stop, sometimes when I've been the one on the wrong end of the joke.

I like open minded threads. I didn’t realise that there are quite a few divisions in the horse world until I started reading HF and it’s changed the way I think. I’d always thought that we’re all horse riders (our common ground) so I found many of the ‘them and us’ comments difficult to understand. Due to this, I’ve avoided certain threads, or overthought about possible reactions to a post where I give my experience as an example. As far as I’m concerned everyone’s experiences are an opportunity to learn, no matter how or where they ride. 

Sometimes I carry a crop, although it depends on the horse. Toby never required one so I got out of the habit. Even during his worst moments, he reacted to legs and voice. They’re useful for when they go into a blind panic, to help with gates when they've a hook and, when riding side-saddle, as my right leg; otherwise they’re a last resort piece of equipment.


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## Knave

I like your post @Caledonian. It is odd to me the divisions as well. I guess, unlike you, I didn’t see us all as one, but I imagine a beautiful arrangement of our differences. I want to celebrate what is unique. Our bind being a love and understanding of horses, and I have an interest in how that looks in different stories and settings.

The actual distaste for each other in some of the threads or over some of the practices makes me sad. 

I love how @SueC is so interested in everyone, and how the people who frequent the journals seem to want to celebrate the successes they see. @knightrider for example is so kindhearted and supportive of everyone. @Dragoon always picks the perfect moments to show her encouragement. 

This feeling that Sue has described of sitting around the fire; that’s what I enjoy. Friendship I guess.


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## Caledonian

@Knave – That’s a good way of looking at it as well. If it were possible, I’d ‘like’ your post multiple times.:smile::iagree:


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## knightrider

Thank you @Knave, I like your post multiple times too!


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## SueC

*ANOTHER LOOK AT EXHIBIT A*


I had the 12-week X-rays today. More on that next post! It was so impressive seeing the emergency department X-ray from the day of fracture side-by-side with the 12-week X-ray today. I can't quite replicate this here, because I wasn't able to get hold of the ED X-rays today - but they did send through the 6-week X-rays to compare with the 12-week X-rays, and even that is interesting. The 6-week X-rays cleared me to walk, but you can still see where the metatarsals fractured 6 weeks before that. Why do you walk on partially healed bones? Because they heal better that way. You're trying to encourage bone remodelling. Does it hurt to do that? Not if you do it right. I was dotting down crutches on the fast-striding fitness walking I commenced immediately after the 6-week X-rays, to take some weight off the rollover phase of the stride on that foot so as not to overstress it, yet put everything through its paces. Normal everyday walking was without crutches, and a bit limpy at first. The fitness walking needed less and less weight taken off at rollover, and at 10 weeks I was doing this without any crutches at all. I can jog on soft ground again too, but am still avoiding excessive impact. Bone remodelling will further strengthen the bone healing for a few months yet.


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## SueC

For anyone not familiar with the anatomy of the human foot, the metatarsals are the five long bones in the mid-foot. Just look for the longest bones; that's them. The fractures are in the centre three, near their bases. The oblique view shows it better than the top view - the oblique view is taken from the ankle bone side of the foot, at around 45 degrees. The 2mm displaced fracture of the fourth metatarsal (next to the one connecting to the little toe) is the easiest to see; the second and third metatarsals have undisplaced fractures and you need to be eagle-eyed to see the fracture lines. If you click on an X-ray, then click again, you get a larger version which shows it more clearly.

On Monday I had a follow-up checkup with the same physiotherapist I'd seen once at seven weeks, who had told me then that there was no need for me to come in again because I was doing so brilliantly with the rehabilitation; I could see her at around the 12-week mark and she guaranteed me I'd be fine by then at the rate I was progressing. And yes, everything was back to nearly normal - just a little less flexible still in the left foot and calf, which I'm continuing to work on and will take time, but an excellent recovery.

And the orthopaedics specialist was grinning from ear to ear today when he looked at the 12-week X-ray. He brought in a student, and we all had a good look, and a discussion about how well this had gone and why. The orthopaedist said that this was the best healing he'd seen in an adult (let alone a middle-aged one) and I was way ahead of schedule. I'm completely functional again already. I started walking 5km at a time from 6 weeks in, the moment I was cleared to walk. I have been riding my horse from 8 weeks in. Back in the hills at 10 weeks, and now Brett and I can climb mountains again. :loveshower:

But to get that sort of result, I looked at nutrition, and modified my already super-healthy diet to include higher than normal amounts of Vitamins D, C and E, general antioxidants, calcium, and essential fatty acids - and I made sure I had a complete protein at every meal. I did a huge amount of voluntary physiotherapy, but never anything that would have overstressed my healing foot. While it was immobilised (first 5 weeks) I exercised the rest of my body, and "walked" on a pirate leg much of the time to keep above the left knee from degenerating. I also moved around indoors by scooting on an office chair, and had elbow crutches for things like town visits. It's so important to keep using your body as much as you can, and to do cardiovascular exercise any way you can, so you don't lose too much fitness, and so that wound healing is accelerated.

Once I started weight-bearing, I kept working to the limits (and not beyond) of my healing foot - a lot of work, but not overstressing - supportive hiking shoes to take the mechanical impact shock off the feet when walking etc, and then lots and lots and lots of walking under those conditions. Not running at first, just walking, walking, walking, and appropriate physiotherapy. My orthopaedist and physiotherapist will both tell you I'm one of the hardest-working patients they've ever had at getting back on my feet, and that I've done it just right - not too much too soon, but lots and lots of the sort of exercise that was beneficial at each stage. And everyone is smiling ear to ear at the excellent outcome. :happydance:

So while I was doing a heck of a lot of exercise, I wasn't overstressing the injury. If I'd tried to do all my fast-walking rehabilitation in bare feet, or in ordinary street shoe soles, instead of in my extra-supportive, springy-soled hiking boots, the mechanical shock of hitting the ground would have set back my recovery by months, and I might have done lasting damage. You really have to be both determined and really careful when doing rehabilitation from injury. If you speak to the medical staff dealing with fractures, the majority of patients they see are very underdone fitness-wise and in quite poor physical shape at the point of injury, and will then not be able to push their rehabilitation the way I did - let alone have the desire to move move move. And then there are people who completely overdo it, and set their injury recovery back by months, and even get follow-on injuries, such as torn muscles or tendons, by putting too much load on too soon, instead of exercising for extended periods of time at the limit of the injury rather than over its limit.

Anyway, I'm really really happy with the outcome, and apparently I was everyone's model patient.  

PS: Do you see my poor bent toes? Parents should check that their children have enough room in their shoes for their feet to grow into. I have extra-wide feet, so was particularly affected by overtight shoes as a child. If you have nice flat toes, you may wish to high-five your childhood caregivers for getting that right! 

And @knightrider: The orthopaedics specialist and his partner loved their US holiday, and he was so enthusiastic relating the Disneyland rides that the medical student was laughing! :rofl: He says his favourite rides were the Gold Rush ride, and an Aerosmith theme ride. :rofl:


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## SueC

@*bsms* , I'm sorry you lost your long response, it's happened a few times to me as well despite precautions like form savers, and generally remembering to "select all" and then "copy" before posting, so if the post gets lost in the ether, at least it's still in the buffer. But you know what's funny, virtually all the posts I've lost like that have been long ones filled with thought, rather than shorter ones or simple flip replies. Murphy. :cheers:
@*Caledonian* , hello! :wave: I hope you're having a good autumn! Have you been on many of those hikes Scotland is famous for, and that I drool over if I catch any on TV or the Internet? I am so unsurprised that the Scots defended their land so fiercely against invaders - there is so much extraordinary scenery, and it does something to a person to live in a place like that... Your workplace sounds like great fun as well. It's good when people don't take themselves so seriously, and enjoy a bit of camaraderie and the odd practical joke. (I used to have this wonderfully realistic Huntsman spider to put in people's coffee cups! :rofl: Until a colleague I pranked stole it and said that was the tax on pranking him! :rofl

What you and @*Knave* are saying about the horse world and its divisions chime with me too. I spent most of my adolescence riding alone because isolated on a remote farm, so when I got Sunsmart into agistment in Albany in 2009, when Brett and I were still living in town, I was really thrilled at first to be encountering so many other riders. But not all of them were friendly! There was a lot of cliqueyness, and "Ooooh, you're riding a _mere Standardbred_, poooo-eeey!" -P), and similar looking-down-noses-for-no-good-reason (not that there ever is a good reason).

I did find an extremely good riding buddy with an OTTB; our horses worked at very similar paces (endurance pace, with nice gallops thrown in), but she was saying the same thing about riders in general. To an extent this is replicated on HF - but not nearly as much now as it used to be a few years back; a lot of the real pains in the posterior have left - thank goodness. I think in part the generally friendly atmosphere here now is because of good moderation, and to an extent also because this kind of medium tends to attract people who enjoy writing - and HF seems particularly blessed here. Just look at the quality of the writing you can find on this forum - in the general areas, not just in the journals of people who love writing. 

@*Knave* , :hug: although I'm generally very interested in people and very gregarious, nothing turns me off faster than bad manners or closed minds or meanness, or domineering personalities who seek to impose their views, or people who quickly judge and leap to conclusions or who automatically assume they know more than someone else without knowing much about another person, or who will never admit they've been wrong (as happens to all of us), or apologise for treating another person unjustly (as also happens to all of us).

What I love when I find it is warmth, friendliness, creativity, openness, a willingness to think, a sense of humour, decency towards other creatures, enthusiasm for life and for learning new things - all that great stuff!  I'm actually quite intolerant of general intolerance. And I'm also completely intolerant of cruelty and calculated rudeness. :evil: I tend to steer clear of net-negative people, and want to hang with the net-positive ones. It's not a dichotomy, I know, so I added "net". ;-)

I completely second @*Knave* 's comments about other lovely people like @*Dragoon* and @*knightrider* . I love everyone I interact with in our little journalling community.  This may seem strange, but at the level at which we are all writing, there is so much to love about these people, and the great attitudes they show, and the kindness they have towards other people and other creatures in general. I'm lucky to know you all. Even if it's "only" as disembodied minds, photographs and clips! ;-) 

I was already justifiably thinking well of my now-husband at that point, when we'd written enough and had enough phonecalls to have a reasonable idea about each other as human beings, and before I ever met him in person! At that stage, faking things online is about as probable as faking things in real life - like Jack the Ripper and other serial killers having unsuspecting wives because they concealed it so well. That's a minority, and to me the odds are stacked in favour of a good outcome - besides, my BS radar is pretty well developed these days.

So thankyou everyone, including @waresbear too, and @frlsgirl, and @egrogan, and @gottatrot, and @AnitaAnne, and @SwissMiss, and @Spanish Rider, etc etc etc (so many here), for all the lovely interactions and encouragement and fascinating discussions and general fun, and for letting me get to know you as people! :happydance: It's great, particularly for those of us who live in pretty remote locations and don't meet as many kindred spirits as we'd like in our "real" lives! ;-)

@*knightrider* , are you an early bird? I'm sort of holding you up a lot in my mind as a good example of a person who knows how to get a lot of hours in on horseback - an inspiration, and a person to emulate! Speaking of, I'd better get off here, ride that horse, finish that tax, and plant some seedlings.

Cheerio all!


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## SwissMiss

A fake HUNTSMAN in a coffee cup????? :shock: mg: I think I would have died of a heart attack! :rofl:


When I interviewed in Australia for a position, it would have been mainly in Sydney, but due to lab renovations, I would spend a good time in Armidale as well... So we went there to get a feel of it and one day during lunch in the cafeteria, there was this huge huntsman coming down from the ceiling :shock: Everyone was carrying on with business as usual, but I was close to standing on the table :rofl:


Funding problems delayed the whole thing massively, so I accepted a job in Boston (just to get an official offer from Sydney less than 2 weeks later :shock... I sometimes wonder how my life would be if I had moved to Sydney instead :think:
It still wouldn't be _close_ to you for a visit, but closer than now :biggrin:


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## gottatrot

Such good people here. I'm afraid I'm not only thick-skinned on the outside, so it can be difficult for those who want to create divisions in the horse world to get rid of me if they don't like me in a discussion. It's not that I want to argue with people whose minds are made up, but sometimes if blatant biases are presented, I feel it is interesting to think about it and present another side. It also is a curiosity to me about what makes people go for insults and personal attacks instead of continuing to present facts, ideas, and pros and cons of arguments. Is that what happens when you run out of questions? I always have questions that lead to more questions.


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## SueC

Hello, @*SwissMiss* !  I also had a fake rubber snake that was ultra realistic. :rofl: It was a loan for a year. The replacement I bought myself only fools people at a distance. ;-)

The spider came with a magnetic backing so you could hang it onto curtains. Very handy. When putting it in a coffee cup, the best thing was to put it in so that the front legs just hung slightly over the rim of the cup. :rofl: Huntsmen are harmless, but they still provoke that primal arachnophobic response most of us have. I have no issues with them when I know they are there, and was indeed often a person called upon by others to please remove that Huntsman / Goanna / other creepy crawly to the outdoors.  But the Huntsmen can still get me if they surprise me - when I didn't know they were there. :shock: And so I scared myself more often with my own fake spider than I scared other people with it - because I kept it in my stationery drawer and would forget it was there. :rofl:

Photograph and a story about my old pet Huntsman Freddy here:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page38/#post1970515647

The problems with international visiting would be rendered nonexistent if we could locate a TARDIS...











Have you ever pranked people, @SwissMiss? Do tell... and everyone, really...what were your funniest pranks? (that other people could laugh at too!)


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## SwissMiss

SueC said:


> The problems with international visiting would be rendered nonexistent if we could locate a TARDIS...



I wish :biggrin:


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## SueC

gottatrot said:


> Such good people here. I'm afraid I'm not only thick-skinned on the outside, so it can be difficult for those who want to create divisions in the horse world to get rid of me if they don't like me in a discussion. It's not that I want to argue with people whose minds are made up, but sometimes if blatant biases are presented, I feel it is interesting to think about it and present another side. It also is a curiosity to me about what makes people go for insults and personal attacks instead of continuing to present facts, ideas, and pros and cons of arguments. Is that what happens when you run out of questions? I always have questions that lead to more questions.


Yeah, I've noticed that about you in those hairy discussions and have really admired that. I get too much of a bitter taste in my mouth when things get ugly like that, to want to hang around, or to even want to dive in these days. Because it seems so pointless to me - such a waste of time. Yet it's good to have people like yourself who do not get cleared out by bad behaviour, because it means that the main forum doesn't get dominated by rude people as it has done in the past in some of these discussions.

I'm totally with you on the questions thing.  And I think you're on the money: People resort to personal insult when they have nothing rational left to contribute. Politicians do that all the time too! ;-)

Have you heard that saying: _Don't wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it!_ :rofl:


I think you've got a nice teflon coating where it matters, @gottatrot! 

@SwissMiss: Me too... inkunicorn:


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Have you ever pranked people, @*SwissMiss* ? Do tell... and everyone, really...what were your funniest pranks? (that other people could laugh at too!)


 When I went to college, the Internet and email were still in relatively nascent days, so for us a real daily highlight was trekking to the student center to check our mailboxes, hopefully for a package from a friend at another college or a family member. My best friend and I hatched a plan to prank a third friend who was regularly part of our mailroom visits. We started signing her up for weird little trinkets/free samples of things that would be sent to her in the mail. At first it was silly little random things, like samples of dog food or toothbrushes. She found it odd, but it gave us all a good laugh when we sat down for lunch with our mail because she couldn't figure out why she was getting all these things. We got progressively more personal, finding things that we could have customized (e.g., a creepy poster from a children's singer that was autographed, "To my biggest fan Julie, may all your dreams come true!"). At that point, we had freaked her out so we decided we had to reveal ourselves and stop the game. Luckily she was still our friend afterwards.

I actually thought of that little prank recently when I heard this episode of _This American Life _(@SueC, a very good contemplative National Public Radio show [released weekly] if you are interested in expanding your podcast list) that featured a random can of black olives received in the mail; turned out to be not a prank, but a side effect of global online commerce.


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## SueC

For any of you trimming your own horses who have not yet worked out how to sharpen your rasp (both sides and both edges) in about one minute flat - here's a farrier friend demonstrating what he does, and most of his close colleagues do. He says he can re-sharpen a good rasp 100 to 120 times, a poor-quality one about 30 times.





 
Just thought I'd get that little gem on film to share. (Bet you anything @Hondo already knew how to do this! ;-))


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## Knave

I am going to have to show that video to husband @SueC!
@gottatrot that is an awesome personality trait! I am not as figuratively thick skinned as actually. I wish I were more so. I am okay when I think someone is far off the wall in a sort of comment. My friend works for the post office and was told by a colleague that she was inappropriately dressed the other day. Seriously funny! They do wear uniforms, so I reminded her to find the humor in that situation.

However, when it’s not so openly flawed I do not do particularly well with it.


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> When I went to college, the Internet and email were still in relatively nascent days, so for us a real daily highlight was trekking to the student center to check our mailboxes, hopefully for a package from a friend at another college or a family member. My best friend and I hatched a plan to prank a third friend who was regularly part of our mailroom visits. We started signing her up for weird little trinkets/free samples of things that would be sent to her in the mail. At first it was silly little random things, like samples of dog food or toothbrushes. She found it odd, but it gave us all a good laugh when we sat down for lunch with our mail because she couldn't figure out why she was getting all these things. We got progressively more personal, finding things that we could have customized (e.g., a creepy poster from a children's singer that was autographed, "To my biggest fan Julie, may all your dreams come true!"). At that point, we had freaked her out so we decided we had to reveal ourselves and stop the game. Luckily she was still our friend afterwards.


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:




> I actually thought of that little prank recently when I heard this episode of _This American Life _(@SueC, a very good contemplative National Public Radio show [released weekly] if you are interested in expanding your podcast list) that featured a random can of black olives received in the mail; turned out to be not a prank, but a side effect of global online commerce.


Yeah, I'm looking for something else at the moment and will check that out, thank you!

I trust I've already linked you to my favourite? 

https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/



PS: My husband is worried about what our falafel consumption will do to the Greenhouse gas emissions...  
:cheers:


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> PS: My husband is worried about what our falafel consumption will do to the Greenhouse gas emissions...
> :cheers:



Haha, yes, that can be an unfortunate unintended consequence. I have to be careful about eating falafel out at restaurants, because if they deep fry them in particular types of oil it really bothers my stomach later. My lovely husband like to remind me that eating falafel for dinner may very well lead to _falafeling _later in the evening!!


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## SueC

Apparently changing the soaking water several times reduces the effect. I've also noticed that the gut flora settles down a lot if you eat this sort of thing regularly, but not too much of it at once! ;-)

I've often lain awake at night thinking of a good gadget for getting rid of the fumes by taking them straight from the outlet to the outdoors, through some kind of fan-assisted tube... but let's not go there, the mental images can be distressing! ;-)

Meanwhile, because I'm such a nice person, I drag myself out of bed and relocate to another room if I have to off-gas. At least when I'm conscious... :ZZZ:


PS: Check out the marvellous new emojis... Thank you very very much @*Admin_Yungster* and co. I feel like it's Christmas already! :Angel: :angel2:


:tardis: :chicken1::chicken2::chicken:


And now it's off to :ZZZ: for me. Have a great day, all!


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## Caledonian

I had to google falafel. It sounds yummy but I think I’d need to take time off work! :shock: That's not a joke that i'd like to inflict on anyone!

I love the story about Freddie. I couldn’t keep one as a pet and the thought of waking up in bed with one above my head makes me shudder :eek_color:. My reaction to our small, safe spiders, usually involves me waving my telescopic duster, a lot of flailing when I miss and the spider drops, then a panic as I chase it across the floor. If I lose it, I sit and watch for it to reappear.

For months, I’ve been at war with a spider who lives in my office; he regularly scares me by appearing on my desk, then launching himself towards me, before dropping to the floor and disappearing under the surround. My work colleagues laugh that it’s because I’ve caught the stupid ones and now I’m left with the leader. I was happy to hear two new girls, who’re temporarily sharing my office, complaining about the creepy spider that seems to be stalking them. Apparently, I’m not the only one it likes.

The story about the bat in your house (two posts before Freddie) reminded me of a few years ago. I came home from work to find one circling the ceiling light. It was in the middle of summer on a sunny day so I’m guessing that it must’ve made its way in through a small open window at night and sat in the curtains during the day. I’d to wait for it to settle before I used a plastic box to put it outside; it didn’t seem to mind that it was a bright day as it flew off. We don’t have rabies, except in a tiny number of bats and, rightly or wrongly, I was very aware of that when I was trying to handle it. It was nice to see one up close though, as they are pretty.

We need a garage where they sell new and used Tardises so we can all have one. :tardis::smile:


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## knightrider

@SueC, you asked about my early morning rides. I get up at 5:00 a.m., do my morning workout, then feed the horses, and get whichever ones ready that I (or we) plan to ride. In the summer, we are in the saddle around 6:30 and in the winter, around 7:00. I used to have to be back no later than 8:15 to homeschool with my daughter, but this year, she insists she can manage on her own, so I often ride until 9:00 a.m. 

It's a bit hairy/scary about my daughter homeschooling on her own. She takes A LOT of breaks and plays on her phone. Then she panics because she is behind. I was always a student who started right away on term papers and big projects, and just plugged away until I got them done. I found that worrying about getting it done was much more stressful than actually just getting started and knowing I would have it done in time because I was just moving right along. So far, I haven't convinced my daughter to do that. On the other hand, she has gotten only one B since kindergarten, all the rest A's, and she has A's right now, in 11th grade. But she is stressed many many days, and it hurts me to see her so stressed. Hard to watch your kid make mistakes.

My most dramatic prank took place when I was in college. One summer I was fortunate enough to be chosen to participate in something like Peace Corps for college kids, probably because I was already fluent in Spanish from living in Ecuador. There were two teams of us placed in Puerto Rico, one in Ensenada and one in Ponce. The Ponce team had our team leader, a very dynamic, charismatic fellow, but the incredibly charismatic adult who sponsored our teams was in Ensenada with my team. This man, named Fundador Santiago, was a truly remarkable person that everyone adored as soon as they met him. He was full of energy, ideas, and zest for life. Whatever he did, it was always great.

So, the very first weekend that the two teams got together, my team decided to tell the other team that Fundi (as we called him) was not working out at all. The 5 of us on my team each cooked up some awful but plausible story about how terrible Fundi was, how we hated working with him, how we couldn't imagine getting through the summer. Fundi knew we were going to prank the Ponce team and went along with it. The team leader was devastated, as he had worked with Fundi the summer before and was crazy about him (as we all were). As we went on describing all of Fundi's "so called" many faults, the team leader hung his head lower and lower. Then he got Fundi alone, and Fundi went on and on about each of our horrible faults and how could he possibly work with us all summer.

When we got to the beach for the fun part of the reunion, we yelled "Surprise!" and all ran to hug and climb on Fundi.


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## Knave

@knightrider, sometimes I think it’s super hard to sit behind and watch our kids do anything we think will harm them. I have to control myself to not micromanage and let them make bad decisions sometimes. It is when I step back and let them dig a hole that they actually learn what I cautioned was true.

I don’t think I struggle with it for any reason more than I want to see them always happy. My oldest is a perfectionist, everything must always be improved... her school counselor said to both of us at her mandatory meeting, “She has to learn to fail. Celebrate when she gets it wrong.” It is awful hard for me to do, she doesn’t want me to let her fail. Even when she succeeded perfectly she feels it wasn’t good enough. So I definitely have to stay back, and I try to remind her that perfection is impossible. It is a hard line to tote with her; she is utterly hard on herself. So, she rarely ever stumbles, but the stress of it is very hard for her to manage.

I don’t know what I’m trying to say, just that I understand. Enjoy your ride, maybe let her flounder a little, she’ll figure it out.


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## SueC

Hello all! :wave:

Hope everyone has had a good weekend. Regrettably, I've had no riding, because of high winds that were at times gale force, combined with hayfever (yay, ryegrass season...and no more really effective antihistamines for me). Tomorrow morning first thing looks good. Brett and I have been catching up with spring planting in the garden - putting compost and mulch on fruit trees, planting companion plants, starting beans in the greenhouse, and also Brett dug a seed bed for Painted Mountain Corn going in this week, and I've been busy transplanting Japanese cucumber and tomatoes, and mulching these, and other vegetable beds. I will post photos of that soonish - still going though.

Bill was over as usual on Sunday. In the morning I felt miserable with a sore throat, headache and constant sneezing, but later on it improved. We had Seafood Fettucine for lunch, with a generous side of Salade Nicoise with nice green beans from the garden (Aquadulce broad bean pods, very tender and delicious and the first beans in the garden in spring; later on in the season I will let the pods mature on the plant and harvest the seeds for a knockout _lime green_ hummous - @*egrogan* , that's great fun to make!). After some gardening in the afternoon, I made rye waffles and we had them with our home-made concentrated plums and thickened cream. Delicious.

@*Caledonian* , your Cullen Skink is still firmly in line, as soon as I chance on some stray potatoes in the garden, which I will with all the digging up I am doing!  I thoroughly recommend falafels, and they'll be no worse than your poetically named Rumbledethumps in the offgassing department. I'm glad you enjoyed Freddie, and loved your stalking spider story! :rofl: And aren't bats cute? When I get a book with bats and flying foxes, I like to turn the book on its head so I can see these critters the "right way up" and this is very funny! Been riding lately? Totally agree about the TARDIS.
:tardis: :cowboy::cowboy::cowboy:

@*knightrider* , you are so _dedicated_!  I think you deserve some kind of award, but you're probably going to tell me that your rides are reward enough in themselves and you don't need any gold stars etc for doing what you enjoy. The prank made me :rofl: - what an effort for everyone to keep poker faces for that long! :clap: And your daughter will work out sooner or later that quarantining herself from her distractions when she has serious work to do will reduce her stress levels. She could turn off her phone and put it in the attic, or lock it in the car, or put it in the oats bin in the feed room, for example. When I have serious work to do, I sometimes get my husband to take the Internet dongle to work - or I take it out myself and leave it upstairs, which cuts down on "just going to check this" and then falling down a hole. :rofl: Sometimes the best thing is to remove temptation physically, especially on an unfocused sort of day or if you're a bit under the weather and secretly looking for escape routes from your to-do list! 

@*Knave* , that's sage advice.  Your big girl sounds similar with her perfectionism to the way I was at her age, and for a while after. You can scale great heights, but feel a bit disjointed. These days my remnant perfectionism is my servant, rather than me being its slave!  - And I am really interested in that big new colt of yours with the regal nose and bearing. If I had a TARDIS I'd love to come check him out, kiss Bones' stifle better, and meet everyone! That'd be wonderful. Who knows, maybe one day we will all be able to teleport! ;-) Would be extremely handy.


*Ends That Need Tying!*

I realised that I've never really explained what my issue with postmodernism was, that I was going on about when I started some music posts quite a while back now. I never actually got to that, but got through a lot of music! This will be remedied soonish.

And I need to finish those blooper photos, which is easily done, starting next post!


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## egrogan

@SueC, the broad bean hummus sounds lovely. I do enjoy Mediterranean style mashed bean spreads, particularly with homemade bread and pita and really fruity olive oil to drizzle over it. Just don't try to call it guacamole! A couple of years ago, the hipster foodie scene here exploded in rage when pea guacamole became "a thing." This article is a tongue-in-cheek response to the controversy: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/i-made-the-pea-guac/397565/


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## SueC

Oooh, that all sounds delicious, @egrogan! Do you know, when I went to London in my mid-20s I put on 5kg because I basically lived off toasted wholemeal pita bread with hummous, and Sainsbury's Strawberry Trifles. This was because my housemates had basement hygiene standards and the kitchen was mostly not safe to cook in, if you could even find any room amongst all the accumulated crusty dishes.  :hide: I decided the toaster was safe, as was shop hummous and shop strawberry trifle. Oh yeah, and there were the McVities' chocolate digestive biscuits, rather addictive... and the proper doughnuts filled with real strawberry jam, in the streets in the CBD... had to run it all off when I got home! :rofl:

Had a look at the article; :rofl:! I quite agree. I'm reading the rest later, to Brett, because it's that kind of article and we're both sort of purists like that!  How's that kitchen, and the mouse situation? Best wishes to your DH and assorted four-legs and :chicken2:things! ;-)


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## egrogan

I did a study abroad in London one summer in college, and I think I might have had the same kitchen in the basement of our dorm @*SueC* ! :rofl: The tube station near us oddly had a stand selling NY-style bagels, so I think I ate two of those with peanut butter every day as my main meals!

I hear the mice scurrying in the walls as I'm typing, so that's not looking too promising. It's getting cold now so they'll be inviting all their cousins in too. My cat is sleeping next to me on the couch so no help there! The kitchen planning is going really well though- we decided to wait until the spring to start so we can save some more $$ and splurge a little on a few things we'd like to have included. It will be a pretty big project- converting another room in the house to be a kitchen, and ripping out the existing kitchen to turn it into a nice office space- but I think it will be worth the disruption to have a bigger space that we can lay out the way we like. We cook A LOT and it's hard in the tiny space we have now.


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## SueC

It will be worth the wait and the extra planning, @egrogan! And one day it _will_ be done and you'll be using it. 

Good luck with the mice. Can you funnel bait into the walls? Of course the problem is, if they die in the walls you'll have to put up with the terrible stink. Maybe better to trap them, and look for where they might be coming in (which can take forever to figure out, so many options...). Mice are pretty cute, but not in your house...

Australians do like to joke thusly about the English:

How do you get an Englishman out of the shower? - Throw in the soap!

(My UK housemates were flabbergasted that I showered daily! When I asked them how often they did, they said maybe once a week. And they were wearing nylons in synthetic shoes... :shock


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## egrogan

Yeah, you've hit it, we need to figure out where they are coming in and stop that. We are still doing trapping and have 1-2 caught every morning, but they just keep coming. In an old house with a large basement, there are just so many points of entry. Our last house was built on a stone foundation, so _that _was quite a task to mouse-proof, but we eventually got it taken care of there. So I'm sure we'll eventually get the entry points blocked.


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## Caledonian

Hi @SueC :wave:

No riding since last week. I'm working the weekend (again) as I'm trying to handle an influx of requests due to the Centenary of the Armistice. We're trying to accommodate as many as possible but some are going to be disappointed. I'm going through the mountain of emails that have appeared since Friday: you'd think people had better things to do!:smile: 

I'm struggling to focus on work at the minute as well but i need the internet and flicking between HF tab and my work email tab is far too easy. HF is more interesting! I've fallen down the HF hole!:rofl:

Blaze, the little Highland i ride since i lost Toby (my heart horse) :frown_color:, is being ridden by a another to help keep the weight off him. He's been out today as the weathers beautiful. Ugh!

Digestive Chocolate biscuits Yum yum!

Dirty kitchens reminds of the one at my first yard. I'd rather have eaten out of the horses' feed bowls. The students used to sit around the table picking goat hair out of the pies. They'd done it for years and never noticed the disgust on the newcomers' faces.

Anyway back to work:sad:


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## SueC

*Quirky Archival Photos Wrap-Up
*
This originally started here:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...s-other-people-479466/page100/#post1970610387

...and it's time to wrap it up!

1, 2, 3: Brett has very cute feet, and in Melbourne some years ago, I could not resist photographing them as they hung out of the bed in such a provocatively endearing manner, while he was still asleep.  I am sure I have mentioned before that our feet got engaged before we did!  But, at least our feet and the rest of us managed to get married on the same day!

4. Brett on Seven Mile Beach near Hobart Airport, Tasmania.

5. This was a photo Brett took when I finished the teaching term in Tasmania in 2009 and just came home and went to sleep because I was so zonked.

6. And this is how he was looking at me when I woke up.  I asked him for the camera then. He is so lovely... 

7. This was our favourite place to have hot chocolate in Launceston: The Cocoa Bean...dedicated to all manner of chocolate...

8. This was Brett with very sore feet in one of the huts between Cradle Mountain Summit and the Twisted Lakes via the Face Track. This was also just before I came down with food poisoning, with around four hours of walking left to do before returning to camp after 12 hours of walking and climbing up and down Cradle Summit. It was part of the story where we froze our backsides off in a tent at Christmas Eve, in this post: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...s-other-people-479466/page102/#post1970612617

9. This one was taken in Sydney near The Gap (they also have one, but the Albany one is way better). The hat was from Circular Quay so I wouldn't burn my nose. We got there by ferry and I'm pretty sure we had Sharon with us and had fish and chips at Doyles in Watsons Bay that day...

10. Oh, that snowman on Mt Wellington in Tasmania! :rofl: Brett likes to think the ghost of it is still up there, floating above Hobart. I'm letting Brett say a few words about this, and I quote: "_You mean the snowman that we created, and then cruelly abandoned in the harsh unforgiving wilderness to die by snowmelt?_" I don't know what he was expecting, that we take it home and put it in the freezer? :rofl: The nose of this snowman was made with a stone, and the rest of the features with wallaby droppings...


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## Knave

@SueC I love how much you love your husband. It makes me happy.


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## SueC

11, 12: Brett pushing a rock uphill in the Porongurup Ranges - we were doing the Nancy Peak circuit, named after Nancy the cow that got lost in a storm about a hundred years ago, and was found sheltering under a peak now known as Nancy Peak. The impressive rock wall in the background is the Devil's Slide - a nice little dessert climb after the main circuit through the Porongurups. I found out how it got its name when I climbed it in the rain about 20 years ago. :rofl: The Porongurup Range is one of the most ancient mountain ranges in the world, and has eroded down into basically hills and monadnocks. When this range was formed, it was sticking out of an ocean, and the most sophisticated life forms on earth were slimy microbial things and algae. - We were going to do this exact walk as our next one following that Stirlings climb of Mt Talyuberlup for Brett's birthday (https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page62/#post1970571069) - but then I broke my foot... Still, three months later, we can put it back on the agenda!  As a reward for finishing spring planting I think. My reward for finishing the tax this week will be the Kalgan River Walk...

13. Brett on a pre-walk picnic in the Stirling Ranges, just before starting the Mt Magog - Talyuberlup Circuit we were doing for his birthday - a full day walk, around 12 hours from start to finish, with lots of bush-bashing.

14. Same place; please note the black ginger tea which is no longer obtainable (Brett just lamented it with piteous sounds), and the Elmo ziplock bags we had originally bought on holiday in Tasmania, from Mole Creek IGA, the same place where I got that fateful contaminated salami that made the Cradle Mountain - Twisted Lakes Walk so interesting in the concluding few hours... :rofl:

15. One of my favourite photos of Brett - on his birthday, having climbed Mt Magog and descended back to the ridge, we're now going to make our way across that ridge to the peak in the distance, scale that spire, eat when we get there, make our way back down on the Talyuberlup track, and then walk another 5km between respective car parks to get back to the car...

16. A civilised moment at the famous Denmark Bakery, fuelling up on their award-winning pies before scaling Mt Lindesay.

17. With some snacks from the bakery in the Mt Lindesay car park. We love food and walking equally, which is lucky.

18. Brett in Balingup making friends with an alpaca.

19. Brett trying to feed the cow...

20. Still in Balingup - a tiny town in the Southwest of Western Australia, near orchard country and forests.


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## Caledonian

Thanks for that @SueC:loveshower:


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## SueC

Thank you likewise! :dance-smiley05:

@*Caledonian* , I'm sorry you lost your Toby. :hug: I was looking to see if you had a thread on him somewhere, but no luck. Anything you can link me to? If not, will you tell us his story? No rush or anything, with work and all that, and besides, I need to do this now: :ZZZ: 

PS: You like archery too!  We still need to build Brett a target, in the absence of round bales around our place... I've had a construction plan around here for ages but there's always so much to do with the garden, animals etc it gets short shrift. Really must make that a priority... Brett used to do a lot of archery before we built our house, and taught me some too...

Goodnight everyone! :ZZZ::ZZZ::ZZZ:


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## SueC

:dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05:

Stop press!

I've just had a phonecall from a friend of a friend, who is offering us his two donkeys if we can give them a good home. 

















It's a mother-and-son pair, and that's all I know about them, other than that their human says they are the smartest animals on his farm! :Angel: Regrettably, the farm has to be sold, so.

I rang up Brett, and he went: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl::dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05:

We're going to look at them tomorrow afternoon. Basically we want to eliminate that they might be foundered donkeys, in which case we would put the owner in touch with someone from the Donkey Society to look at adopting and managing them (because I have a lot on my plate). But it isn't likely, just something I wouldn't be able to take on at the moment.

Donkeys are so funny. Brett was saying, "Imagine how Don Quixote would feel." :rofl: I think he'd be in the paddock with the camera for most of his spare time if this goes ahead.

I'll keep everyone posted. And I'll take the camera tomorrow afternoon.


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## SueC

???



































???


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## Knave

I hope they are sound and that Mr. Don Quixote is full of fun when they arrive.


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## SueC

*Another Little Musical Expedition*
*Two Songs About Love*

Well, when I read or listen to something great, it really occupies me, and affects me lastingly. I don't spend more time than absolutely necessary on things that leave me cold. But when something touches me, or teaches me, and makes me think and feel and grow, then I give that thing space and time in my life.

It's been over 30 years since I first read Charles Dickens' _Great Expectations_, and I'm still digesting and enjoying and occasionally re-reading that one. It's become part of who I am, this book and many other books like old friends, and music too, and good films and paintings etc. I still remember how I could do nothing but breathe when I first saw JMW Turner's paintings for real in the Tate Gallery in London, and how I stood dumbstruck in front of _The Angel Standing In The Sun_, amazed that a painting could have such power and such light.

I still remember how listening to my favourite bands as a teenager, sitting crosslegged on the floor on a cushion in the dark, helped me cope with a shocking and cold home life, and helped me see that there were other ways of thinking, other ways of being - that love and hope and life were not empty words or ideas - that I should look in this world for people like this, when I had the chance. And random people popped up and radiated kindness, on the bus, in the street, in the neighbourhood - and also there were teachers and friends who made my life better and helped me along this journey, in more ways than I can enumerate. It all mattered, every little word or smile or gesture. I was held aloft by many hands, seen and unseen, living and past, without really realising it at the time.

As an adult I found real purpose, and I discovered wonderful natural cathedrals on foot walking the wilderness of my favourite places, and met some really amazing people - not least of all young people, whom I had the care of for many years; and I started to feel like I was a part of a huge superfamily out there all over the world, some of whom I knew, and many of whom I did not.

And I found a home of my own, finally, and life has become so much less of a struggle now there is a secure we and a nest we built with our own hands, in addition to people and places to belong to. I'd always loved to see very old people walk hand in hand together, and now I walk hand in hand and share a life, and we may very well become like this for other people - in fact, probably already are, since we are over 40! :rofl: After ten years you begin to believe it is real. 

In my early 40s I first listened to an album which is still affecting me too, five years later. It was actually a fortunate thing that I didn't encounter it before; it's such a luxury discovering a great band when you're past so much of your early baggage, and you're at an age where you have so much more ownership of yourself. It's sort of like having had a good wash before entering an amazing space, instead of coming in all dirty with your street shoes on. (And you need music for both states of being, but it really is so nice to feel all freshly scrubbed, and to hear things without having accumulations of metaphorical earwax in the way.)

Yes, I'm coming back to _Bloodflowers_ again. There's about a dozen albums by The Cure I don't even have yet, but I can't ride a dozen horses properly all at once either. I have to really get to know each entity, so to speak - not make passing superficial acquaintance. It's just how these things work for me.

So, two songs from this album today, which are back-to-back right in the thick of this collection. The album _Bloodflowers_ deals extensively with mortality, with the human experience, with being a little transient ant in a big and ancient universe - and yet the little ant has sweeping ideas and feelings, much bigger than its little body and far beyond its little life.

Robert Smith wrote the words to this album on the verge of turning 40; a watershed for many people; a time to stand back and assess, when you understand that your life is not forever, but around fourscore and a bit if you're lucky, and you're already at half-time in the game. (But I think the second half is the better half...even though we may be a little worse for wear on the exterior... ;-))

Robert Smith is kind of popularly portrayed as a gloom and doom merchant, but I think that says more about those people, than it says about him. From another interview: _"I'm not a morose person; it's just that my best songs reflect on the sadder aspects of life. It's very rare that I'll write an upbeat song that captures the essence of me feeling joyous. It's not that I don't have a fantastic life; I do. I couldn't dream of a better life, really. It's just that I don't feel the need to document my every happy thought, and that I don't think I write happy songs convincingly." _

Apparently it's morbid to think seriously about life. And now I really need to quote from one of my favourite books:

_“To Summarize briefly: A white rabbit is pulled out of a top hat. Because it is an extremely large rabbit, the trick takes many billions of years. All mortals are born at the very tip of the rabbit's fine hairs. where they are in a position to wonder at the impossibility of the trick. But as they grow older they work themselves even deeper into the fur. And there they stay. They become so comfortable they never risk crawling back up the fragile hairs again. Only philosophers embark on this perilous expedition to the outermost reaches of language and existence. Some of the fall off, but other cling on desperately and yell at the people nestling deep in the snug softness, stuffing themselves with delicious food and drink._

_'Ladies and gentlemen,' they yell, 'we are floating in space!' but none of the people down there care._

_'What a bunch of troublemakers!' they say. And they keep on chatting: Would you pass the butter, please? How much have our stocks risen today? What is the price of tomatoes? Have you heard that Princess Di is expecting again?”_

― Jostein Gaarder, *Sophie's World* 


I think this is as true about a sense of wonder as it is about a sense of mortality. I personally have to have both, and one feeds the other actually. It's like two sides to the same coin, like day and night define one another. Both deserve serious contemplation. I think to ignore mortality is about a lack of maturity - it's the ostrich with the head in the sand. And what can you see with your head in the sand?

The two tracks I'm focusing on today deal specifically with love relationships in the context of that realisation of mortality. The first one is called _There Is No If_. I think it's such a beautiful song, yet the singer himself really had reservations about it, at least at the time, commenting at the time, _"I think the only really depressing song on the album is 'There Is No If,' because in that one there really is no way out - everything goes wrong and then you die. I originally didn't want that song on the album, and I was loath to even sing it, but the others in the band really wanted it on there. I normally disregard the four-to-one votes, which are as meaningless in this band as they are in any dictatorship, but everyone who heard the song really liked it."_

I do wonder if he's revised his opinion since. Because I just don't see it as depressing, probably because of the way I personally look at love and mortality - and that has evolved; I think earlier in life I would have found that depressing... anyway, see what you think.

And the only other thing I would preface this track with, is that it was written by a person who this year celebrated his 30th wedding anniversary, to a person he originally met attending middle school. So to me, it's key that it's a person entering midlife looking back at how their ideas of love and life have changed - how the teenagers saw it, how the people now on the verge of 40 might see it.






I think it's kind of sweet to hear that naive view that probably all of us have experienced as teenagers. And then the pointed pause, and the more mature understanding of life and love. It's quite possible that one of the reasons I don't mourn the loss of that first point of view is that it never worked out for me! I got married in my 30s, by which time those ideas had been long displaced, and to a person I first met in my 30s - and I don't think it's sad that those ideas are not reality, actually. In our relationship, it was pretty clear from the start that love isn't these rose-tinted ideas.

Maybe another difference in perspective I have with Robert Smith when he wrote _Bloodflowers_ is that if this is about stages of grief, then I have now reached acceptance about that particular thing, I think - and was reaching acceptance at the time I started listening to this album. How does it go again? Denial; pain/guilt; anger/bargaining; depression; processing and reconstruction; acceptance and hope. So he might very well have been at the depression stage of that progression at the time of writing; and people do tend to evolve if they are open to things. It's also more understandable to spend longer at that stage when you've known your life partner since you were barely out of childhood. Brett and I were already advancing a little towards decrepitude when we first met! No such hard landing then, perhaps.

And as for _there is no always forever, only this_ - I would say, but there _is_ this, and _look_ at it! 

The Romans famously had _memento mori_ - and I think it helps you to realise that this is it, that this is your time on stage, and this is your one time; and therefore to really live, with intent and purpose. Imagine how much more procrastination would be going on if we were immortal! _No, I'm tired, I'll get up next century. Hmmm, I like piano, I'll pencil some lessons in for 3000 years from now. Oh, it can wait._

A sing like _There Is No If_ just makes me appreciate so much that I am actually alive, and it reminds me to make it count.

Mortality and love - such an enduring poetic theme. Here's two wonderful poems by WB Yeats on the topic.


_*Love and Death* (WB Yeats)
_
_Behold the flashing waters 
A cloven dancing jet,
That from the milk-white marble
For ever foam and fret;
Far off in drowsy valleys
Where the meadow saffrons blow,
The feet of summer dabble
In their coiling calm and slow.
The banks are worn forever
By a people sadly gay:
A Titan with loud laughter,
Made them of fire clay.
Go ask the springing flowers,
And the flowing air above,
What are the twin-born waters,
And they'll answer Death and Love.
_ 
_With wreaths of withered flowers
Two lonely spirits wait
With wreaths of withered flowers
'Fore paradise's gate.
They may not pass the portal
Poor earth-enkindled pair,
Though sad is many a spirit
To pass and leave them there
Still staring at their flowers,
That dull and faded are.
If one should rise beside thee,
The other is not far.
Go ask the youngest angel,
She will say with bated breath,
By the door of Mary's garden
Are the spirits Love and Death._


Mike Scott set this, and a fair few other Yeats poems, very beautifully to music, by the way - easy to find on YouTube.


*When You Are Old And Grey* (WB Yeats)

_When you are old and grey and full of sleep,_
_And nodding by the fire, take down this book,_
_And slowly read, and dream of the soft look_
_Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;_

_How many loved your moments of glad grace,_
_And loved your beauty with love false or true,_
_But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,_
_And loved the sorrows of your changing face;_

_And bending down beside the glowing bars,_
_Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled_
_And paced upon the mountains overhead_
_And hid his face amid a crowd of stars._


This next song, _The Loudest Sound_, to me is a far sadder song, and to me is about a dead relationship that just goes through the motions - yet it's quite amazing how many people online have gushed, "Oh, this is what a comfortable relationship looks like!" :shock: Heaven help us if we think this is something to aspire to... I think if anything, this is supposed to serve as a warning. And I'll just say I really love the bell-like quality of the guitar playing on this track...






To me, _nothing left to say_ is something completely different to that lovely feeling with an established healthy relationship that sometimes you can just sit in silence and understand and know each other without the use of words, and you can connect with the other person without words. Brett and I can do that, and do it often, but we also never run out of things to talk about, to explore with each other. That would be like having nothing left to learn, and neither of us would get to that point even if we had 10,000 years to live instead of fourscore or thereabouts. This is such an amazing universe, and there is just such an infinity of fascinating stuff. All the languages you can learn, books you can read, musical instruments you could learn to play, people you could get to know, walks you could take, mountains you could explore - even a given mountain is never the same twice... The work you could do, the things you could create... I can't conceive of boredom, ever. Only of burnout and not quite enough energy to do everything! :rofl: That's it really, but if you had 10,000 years, you could pace yourself a bit better I think! :rofl: And sleep more. - Ha, I don't know, I already sleep a lot anyway with my 8+ hours in every 24. 

And now I've got horses to feed, and am temporarily out of words...


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## SueC

OK, a chocolate Freddo frog for anyone who also spots the typo that eluded me before the editing window closed.


Am miffed also about the transferred typos from that version of the _Sophie's World_ quote from the Internet (because I really didn't want to type it out - and assumed it wouldn't need spellchecking...).


Ah well, the people who make Mosques etc apparently always leave at least one inbuilt imperfection, as an exercise in humility. Maybe I should adopt that motto about journalling.


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## Knave

Lol @SueC. I hate looking back and seeing my typos too. I do it on my phone, so often I miss something or my phone autocorrects a word. Ugh. Then I figure since I never look at other people’s typos in a judgy manner, they probably offer me the same courtesy.


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## SwissMiss

Typo? It is called "language interpretation" or something like that (need some coffee first - my brain is still quite asleep )


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## gottatrot

That was a beautiful post, @SueC. 

My problem is that I can't help correcting spelling when I quote someone's post on the forum. 

Some things I've noticed in life are that many people keep the idea of love as a simple emotion. And they feel that grieving and sorrow are things to be avoided at all costs. I don't see how you can love if you keep it shallow enough that it won't hurt you like cutting off part of your own soul if you lose it. To me, love is being "all in." It's not about making sure you don't get too attached because it's going to hurt too much if something goes wrong. 

People seem threatened by the idea of love sometimes, and the idea that love can involve sacrifice. I've noticed that if I say that I wanted something, but my husband wanted something else, and I decided to go with what he wanted instead, it bothers people. Sometimes giving is rewarding, and sacrificing what you want in order to see someone else happy is fulfilling. But for some reason people believe that you can sacrifice for a child, maybe for a parent, but not for a spouse or sibling, and certainly not for an animal. It is as if they fear losing a sense of self if you are too loving or giving toward another.

With animals, people don't want to keep loving when the animal can't give back or be useful to them anymore. Especially with horses that aren't able to be ridden.

It's not like we get a ration of love, and if you give out too much, you'll run out. The Bible says, "Freely you have received, freely give." 

Of course, we can run out of hay, if we have too many donkeys. :lol::lol:


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## SueC

:rofl: @gottatrot! On that topic, and before I do anything else, here's some photos from earlier this evening, when Brett and I went to see Nelly and Benjamin (AKA Benny). They were bigger than we expected and have gorgeous wild-type colour patterns, complete with dorsal stripes and even leg barring on the male. They are in good shape, not overweight, and the hooves are OK although they need more heel and less toe, which is going to be straightforward to fix for them, and will take around half a year. The farrier who trimmed them erroneously trimmed them like a horse, and donkey angles are much steeper. But at least they were trimmed regularly! They let me pick up their feet with no fuss and no need for a halter or someone holding them - great.

These are very laid-back, quiet, friendly donkeys. Apparently Nelly (the lighter-coloured one) is a complete expert at burglary, getting into sheds and chicken feed bins when noone is looking. :rofl: Benjamin has just the same placid temperament as his mother. Both have been used to give pony rides to children, and the current owners love them to bits, but are selling their farm and glad to find a good long-term home for these lovely animals. We're not quite sure when we're bringing them home; maybe Sunday.


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## Knave

Yay!! I’m happy about them for you. How nice that they are broke too! You never know when you’re going to need a good donkey.


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## SueC

Knave said:


> Yay!! I’m happy about them for you. How nice that they are broke too!


Thank you! :hug: I'm very happy you have that nice gentle giant colt too, that's going to be such an interesting horse to have around! It's so funny, I mean, you had warning that you were getting a new animal, because you went looking. Me, I just got a phone call yesterday, "Want two more donkeys at your place?" :rofl:



> You never know when you’re going to need a good donkey.


That's very true. :Angel: I think I might print that out as a motto and frame it to put up on the wall! 



gottatrot said:


> That was a beautiful post, @*SueC* .


Thank you!  It's nice being able to write about wide-ranging topics. Music always seems to have interesting consequences. Someone once told me opera was the ultimate art form, but honestly, mostly I don't like the screeching (there are some lovely pieces, but as a genre it's not generally my thing). I think music in general, across a lot of genres, has the potential to be an amazing art form. By the way, I always admire how you team just the right music with your clips on your journal. It's great! 



> My problem is that I can't help correcting spelling when I quote someone's post on the forum.


Hahaha! I've done that too - or sat firmly on my hands determined not to. :Angel: But I tell you what, I want to carry paint in the car just to obliterate all the erroneous apostrophes so common on public signs in Australia... apostrophes do not get put into plurals, children...

(excessive emoji use means I have to break the post :rofl


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## SueC

> Some things I've noticed in life are that many people keep the idea of love as a simple emotion. And they feel that grieving and sorrow are things to be avoided at all costs. I don't see how you can love if you keep it shallow enough that it won't hurt you like cutting off part of your own soul if you lose it. To me, love is being "all in." It's not about making sure you don't get too attached because it's going to hurt too much if something goes wrong.


Yeah, and that brings me to one of my favourite quotes:

_I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot; I would that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew you out of my mouth. Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.
_
That and Hamlet, and a bit of Yeats... whew!











> People seem threatened by the idea of love sometimes, and the idea that love can involve sacrifice. I've noticed that if I say that I wanted something, but my husband wanted something else, and I decided to go with what he wanted instead, it bothers people. Sometimes giving is rewarding, and sacrificing what you want in order to see someone else happy is fulfilling. But for some reason people believe that you can sacrifice for a child, maybe for a parent, but not for a spouse or sibling, and certainly not for an animal. It is as if they fear losing a sense of self if you are too loving or giving toward another.


I think there is a big difference between giving willingly from a whole self, and being a doormat - maybe some people need to understand that difference - perhaps you could educate them!









When I think of love, I don't think of it as an emotion, although for me, emotions do come _with_ it. But love, I think, is an attitude, and a doing word. It's wanting the genuine best for another, without thinking that you know what is best for them... And it's about being kind, and willing to serve (freely, but not to people who take it for granted or think it is their right), and trying to understand what it is like to be that person, how it feels to walk in their shoes. It's about genuine relating to other people, and being encouraging, and supportive, and appreciative of others. It's about trying to really see others, and being interested to learn things they can teach you too.



> With animals, people don't want to keep loving when the animal can't give back or be useful to them anymore. Especially with horses that aren't able to be ridden.
> 
> It's not like we get a ration of love, and if you give out too much, you'll run out. The Bible says, "Freely you have received, freely give."


Yeah, you sort of wonder what sort of love that was in the first place. I think it was probably love on the level of "I love ice cream." Because then, when it melts, you don't "love" it anymore...



> Of course, we can run out of hay, if we have too many donkeys.


 Love it - both at face value, and the metaphor!











SwissMiss said:


> Typo? It is called "language interpretation" or something like that (need some coffee first - my brain is still quite asleep
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> )












And as for the coffee - maybe you need one of those St Bernards to follow you around with the new mini coffee machines! You know, in case of emergency!









Story here if anyone hasn't heard it yet:

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/black-drink-saves-from-white-death/7309338



Knave said:


> Lol @*SueC* . I hate looking back and seeing my typos too. I do it on my phone, so often I miss something or my phone autocorrects a word. Ugh. Then I figure since I never look at other people’s typos in a judgy manner, they probably offer me the same courtesy.


Oh, I know you're all super courteous.







It's just a pet hate. Like, you know, socks on the floor - thank goodness I have a civilised husband!

We don't have iPhones, because we like to look at the Internet on full-sized screens. I'm actually flabbergasted anyone can read HF on a small device. Must be handy for you though, from the point of view of being able to fill in wait times when travelling!

@*Caledonian* , I made Cullen Skink tonight - that was very nice!







Had never tried that before. Then we had stuffed mushrooms. I'm feeling very international. Got a Haggis recipe?









*Riding*:







Jogged Sunsmart two laps around the Sand Track / Swamp Track loop before we went on that donkey visit this evening (you can still see my hat hair hee hee). Yesterday he was in boots and we rode all the tracks on our farm, around 45 minutes.

:ZZZ::ZZZ: for me... hope everyone has a great day!


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## gottatrot

The donkeys are so cute! I can see they are sitting back too far on their hooves. I remember seeing donkey hooves and frogs for the first time and it surprised me. The frogs sit back sort of behind the heel buttress and the hooves are so conical and upright. Very different from horses. They'll feel better once you straighten them out.
For those who haven't seen them:


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## SueC

Great photo! That's what Don Quixote's look like. Sparkle has tiny foal feet, Mary Lou has box hooves. Nelly and Benjamin have had most of their frogs removed by overcutting, then squashed by the overlength toes. Their hooves are relatively short, but very lacking in the big frog acting as a heel cushion. You can see that the donkey hoof is adapted to rocky terrain - those frogs, when they are how they should be (like in the photo), are excellent shock absorbers - it's very difficult for a donkey with healthy feet to get stone bruised!


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## egrogan

What exciting additions! My lovely husband will be jealous- he really wants a pair of donks (they would be named after jazz greats, he's decided :wink. I think we both understand we're at our current max animal load, but some day...It will be fun to follow yours. What sort of introductory process will you follow?


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## knightrider

Yay about the donkeys! I'm so excited for you!


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## SueC

Well, the horses will be excluded from the area I'm putting them at first - and they will get to meet the other donkeys, with lots of room. Donkeys are quite placid and sociable. Brett will be filming, because I'm sure ours are going to make a big hee-hawing racket with excitement at meeting more donkeys. There will be all sorts of shenanigans, I'm sure. :rofl:

We used to tease our donkeys, before the house was finished and when we were living in the caravan and Brett had set up the farm shed as an office, by playing clips of donkeys braying on YouTube, up loud, and the donkeys would come running and braying and trying to see who was in the shed! :rofl:

Especially with this clip:






:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:


Once the newcomers are comfortable in their new environment (I'm putting them in the Common - the big area with unfettered access to the 50ha of bushland behind) then the horses will be allowed to leave the 4ha internally fenced area to join them.  Maybe a day or two later. Our horses understand the concept of donkeys, and that it is not good to chase them, or you will wear hind hooves waving about at horse nose level! :rofl: (This always surprises a horse the first time! Donkeys are extremely clever...) Besides, they rather like the donkeys.

@*egrogan* , jazz greats are a wonderful idea for naming! Donkeys are so much less work than horses. Our three current donkeys are less work than one horse. Doing their feet is so easy, they are such small feet, and the donkeys don't lean 500kg on you because they don't weigh 500kg!  They also eat very little compared to horses - very efficient. You need to make sure they have lots of fibre, and appropriate minerals/trace elements/vitamins. Not too much high-quality feed - desert type food. Straw, weeds, tree fodder, poor pasture. Or they get fat...

And donkeys are just so sociable and lovely. I think your DH needs a pair of donkeys! onkey:onkey:


Hello, @knightrider! :wave: Have a nice evening!


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## SwissMiss

Congrats at the new additions! I simply loooove donkeys! 





> And as for the coffee - maybe you need one of those St Bernards to follow you around with the new mini coffee machines! You know, in case of emergency!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Story here if anyone hasn't heard it yet:
> 
> https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/black-d...-death/7309338


Ok, it took me a moment to realize the story was published April 1st :rofl:
I wasn't that baffled about the coffee instead of Brandy (makes much more sense), but more so about the fact that St. Bernhards were claimed to be the rescue dogs. :shock: :rofl: They were fine in their old form, but by now they are waaay too big and heavy to navigate an avalanche. Labradors and Belgian Shepherds are the breeds of choice...


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## SueC

:rofl: Many years ago - well, you know, in ancient times, when I was a child, there was a TV report on Spaghetti Trees on the German news. It was all about how spaghetti grew on trees and how they were harvested etc, complete with footage of happy farmers pulling bunches of spaghetti out of trees, and it included phone numbers of nurseries to call to get stock. April 1st. :rofl:


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## SueC

Sunsmart's blood results are back - I suspected he was starting PPID because of strange things happening with his coat this winter. The vet is happy with the blood results - liver, kidney functions, trace elements all fine, blood sugar etc great and no signs of Equine Metabolic Syndrome. And yes, very mild signs of PPID - drug treatment optional at the moment, can just make sure he gains no weight this spring, stays well exercised etc. This was all on a phone message (our reception is so poor, that's what happens) and we'll talk soon about pros and cons of early treatment of mild PPID starting. @*gottatrot* , you will have looked at this backwards and forwards, your opinion on early treatment is most welcome!


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## gottatrot

SueC said:


> @*gottatrot* , you will have looked at this backwards and forwards, your opinion on early treatment is most welcome!


Since I've had two horses with it, PPID seems to develop or progress quite differently with different horses. Amore did very well waiting several years until her symptoms got worse, and then starting low dose treatment. I'm not sure if the pills are as expensive in WA as they are here. Amore has never had hoof issues, goes on grass, and small changes in her diet don't seem to be critical. At 27, her disease seems to be progressing very slowly, and my guess is she'll be one of those that dies of something else other than PPID complications. The pills do seem to help her energy level, coat, ability to sweat and such, but it was not urgent to put her on them.

Halla was tested the first year with her laminitis and was negative, then this spring when she was already foundered too badly to recover, she tested positive for both metabolic syndrome/IR and PPID. My theory is that if you have a horse with IR and the abnormal fat deposits, that's the scary kind (Halla developed weird fat deposits even when she tested negative for IR, and the vet said it's an imperfect science and some horses seem to suffer severely with borderline test results while others have higher levels and do fine). Another vet told me that the hard keeper types with metabolic syndrome that look thin but put fat in weird places are the ones that tend to do the worst. 

So my opinion is that if you only see mild symptoms, you can probably wait and watch. I think if it comes on hard and fast like Halla there might be nothing you can do anyway.


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## SueC

Thanks for that, @gottatrot, and sorry again about Halla...

Yeah, Sunsmart's mother's PPID just hit like a ton of bricks out of nowhere - weird coat her last winter, like a yak, and trouble shedding it out - no other symptoms, other than she became even more extra-enthusiastic about eating, but her weight and voluntary daily activity were all spot on - running several times daily on "excursions" through the forest and tracks with the others, and inciting a lot of it! More interest in the salt lick, and then suddenly collapsed hooves, before she was even lame on them - our thinking is that the cortisol levels in her spiked so much it raised her pain threshold. And then unhappy after a routine trim, and full-blown laminitis within a week after that, as well as drinking ridiculous amounts of water (80L bucket overnight) and peeing all the time, and feeling miserable whenever the temperatures hit over 25 degrees Celsius. And all that added up to things going downhill too fast to be able to help the nearly 28-year-old mare. We suspect her PPID was from a fast-growing adenoma in the wrong spot...

So of course I was really uneasy when Sunsmart came down with a shaggy winter coat a year later... and I hope he's going to be the type that progresses very slowly.

I really wonder if there are environmental factors in developing these pituitary adenomas... a lot of horses get them, and it seems strange...


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## SueC

This is something I wanted to post a while back, when we were doing hazard reduction burning in May, but what with the broken foot etc it just got forgotten. I originally wrote this the week we did the burn, and it very much captures what it is like for us to live here.


Sue and Jess on Fireground Patrol 2018 – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


*BURNING DAYS*​ ​It's five in the morning, and I am limping around the kitchen cooking Spaghetti Carbonara, the old Italian woodcutter standby. You can see why they invented it, it's excellent fuel for hard work. A packet of spaghetti is bubbling away in a pot of water and I am busy with ham, chicken stock, white wine and cracked pepper. I toss in the drained spaghetti, add five eggs, cream and parmesan, and stir gently until the sauce is just right. ​ Some goes in my bowl, a little in the dog's, who also had a rough 24 hours. Her head springs up from her sleeping shape like a jack-in-the-box, ears up, as I put her bowl on the unlit wood stove to cool down a bit. She has an excellent nose and knows what's coming. I proceed to the bedroom and settle down in the warm covers, cradling my bowl. My husband's comatose form stirs. “There's a mug of green tea on your bedside table,” I tell him. “I thought you could use it. I've been cooking Spaghetti Carbonara.”​ ​ Brett laughs. “You're a crazy one!” he says affectionately as I tuck into my food. “At this time of the morning...” He sits up painfully. Both of us have aching muscles all over, accompanied by assorted twinges and blisters. “Is this old age?”​ ​ “No,” I reply, “It's your mid-40s. You could be 25 and you'd feel like this after yesterday's effort.”​ ​ He sips his tea, and then he who never, ever has a cooked breakfast but sticks steadfastly to toast, porridge or home-made muesli says, “I could use a small bowl of that myself!” and now it's my turn to laugh. After the pasta we eat home-grown apples, closing our eyes in delight over the unbelievable flavour and crunch.​ ​ Earlier that morning, a blister on the pad of my foot had woken me up, and then my stomach started growling as well. I tried a little tuning out of the negative bodily sensations, focusing instead on the nice, soft, warm bed and being snuggled up to a lovely, warm human being, and for a while it actually worked. Then with a sigh I reluctantly left my cosy haven to slap some honey on the perforated blister and cut a good size padded band-aid to dress the area before tending to matters involving gastronomy and nutrition.​ ​ Right now, it's time to get ourselves ready for work. I get on the mountain bike and do a patrol loop of the tracks around the four-hectare fireground with a wildly yelping, excited kelpie leading the way, while Brett dresses for a day at the office. I return with an all-clear report and send him off with kangaroo stir-fry, some more pasta, a tub of poached pears, a packet of dark chocolate and almonds, and another home-grown apple. We fondly kiss goodbye at the farm gate, the dog chases the car along the other side of the fence-line, and I set off to do morning chores.​ ​ The ancient horse needs his senior breakfast, all four horses need their rugs off, the poddies want to graze in the driveway, and the sprinklers need attending in mid-May because we have had no rain to speak of so far this year. There are dishes left over from yesterday when neither of us had anything left in the tank, and I wash four loads of laundry sequentially in our trusty energy, water and detergent saving twin tub. I make sure the broad beans and garlic I put in last week get a good soaking before rotating the sprinkler to the potato patch, and pick ripe tomatoes on the way back to hang another load of clothes into the sunshine.​ ​ There are beans soaking for Green Minestrone later, so I collect kale and silverbeet. The olives are ripening and need netting, and there are still zucchini on the vines to be grated and frozen for winter. There are new facecuts from the local mill and I've set up the table saw to cut one of them to go over a sharp metal edge the horses and donkeys have dug up in the shelter. Last week a horse nicked his foot on it kicking at a bot fly and we don't want injuries. The backpack we took when doing our controlled burn has leftover chocolate, apples and drinking water in it that need tidying away. I steam multicoloured mountain corn cobs to have as a snack slathered with butter and salt, because after a still morning the north wind has kicked in, so I need to go monitor the fireground to make sure nothing flares up again. I smile at my fingertips stained purple by the corn and hop back on the mountain bike.​ 

​ All is well. There are no flare-ups, just some smoke from smouldering logs, and none of those are generating embers in the wind. In this single four-hectare fireground, pieces of burnt ground alternate with pieces the flames didn't visit, which together with the 46 hectares of bush we didn't burn this year, and the bushland on adjoining properties, will act as refuges from which the fauna can recolonise when the new lush re-growth appears later this winter and spring.​ 



​ 



Our fireground is surrounded on three sides by firebreaks and tracks, and on its north boundary we made a containment line to stop the fire spreading to the rest of the block. We actively put the fire out using hand rakes and shovels when it approached this line yesterday.​ ​ We had started the fire on Sunday morning. Saturday had been too windy for safe burning, and the forecast for Sunday and Monday suited the piece we needed to burn exactly. This piece was the southwestern corner of our block, which adjoins bushland on both sides. This entire area hadn't been burnt in over a decade and was an accident waiting to happen. The understorey was dry and scrubby, with large amounts of dry built-up leaf litter and dead plant material. We'd had nightmares about this corner for a couple of years, but had been unable to burn it because of a couple of early breaks of season, so by the time the fire bans were over, everything was too sodden to burn.​ 
2018 has been the opposite so far – we've had less than half the normal rainfall and the season still hasn't properly broken. The dry summer followed by the dry start to autumn made much of this area of bush into a tinderbox – and it would only be worse next summer. We have a responsibility to ourselves, the wider community and the flora and fauna not to allow large areas to build up tremendous dry fuel loads that invite another Black Saturday. Small-scale autumn mosaic burning done right, and similar to Aboriginal fire management before Europeans arrived, is helpful both for the prevention of extreme fires and for biodiversity conservation.​ ​ We had to have the right weather for this controlled burn, so when we got it, we jumped on it. We lit up one single dry bush at the edge of the central sand track using a little bit of scrap paper and cardboard, and away it went. It is viscerally frightening how flammable much of our sclerophyll is, how loaded with volatile oils. And it's fire adapted, but not so much to devastating red-hot large-scale wildfires that cook the very earth, as to sensible, traditional small-patch mosaic burning that allows animals to get away and plants to regenerate quickly.​ 

​ The fire trickled slowly through our target area; it was a nice still day. We were astonished when dozens of frogs started hopping out of the bushland opposite to the burn and gravitating _towards_ the fireground periphery, until we realised they were lining up to catch insects leaving the area. Away from the fringes, the flames hit some very long unburnt patches of particularly flammable vegetation – casuarinas and tall tea-trees – though these are nothing compared to paperbark trees for burning like exploding torches. Still, this drove the fire into the canopy in places, which is what we prefer to avoid when doing hazard reduction burning. This area needed to be burnt two years ago really, but the right time both times was before the legal burning time due to the early season breaks, and we don't like to spring burn – too many birds in nests and marsupials in the pouch and burrows.​ ​ The southern boundary, which was the area of greatest concern to us – summer lightning on any of the adjoining properties could create a rapid and catastrophic multiple-property fire – burnt neatly. We had to pick a wind that didn't blow embers into neighbouring unburnt properties. As the dark set in, we watched some red embers blow skywards like a slow-motion fireworks display, and then go out. This was good, as was the fact that a cold night was starting and a little drizzle set in as forecast. Later on, when a couple of trees turned into Roman candles and showered embers down, some arrived red at ground level but extinguished in the moisture covering the unburnt ground. You can't have any live embers hitting dry ground outside of your target fireground, and preferably not in it either, as dealing with multiple fires becomes complicated even inside the area you want to burn.​ ​ Brett has been a volunteer firefighter for over 30 years and has been to catastrophic fires. I'm a more recent recruit and I have not. When our hazard reduction burn hit those high fuel load areas, you think to yourself, “My God, if this is how it goes in controlled conditions on a cool still autumn night, this would be hell's own inferno on a 40oC summer's day with high winds!”​ ​ We patrolled all night, worked with rakes and shovels, slowed the fire down, put it out in places, removed fuel from the direction in which hot flares were heading, and didn't go home to eat until all boundaries had gone out at 2am. At that point, the remaining fire front was narrow, gentle and trickling along in an area surrounded by burnt bush. Brett showered and fell into bed after our late-night meal, and I went back to check before retiring. At first light, when we could see clearly and before the winds arrived, we put this last line out. While the wind blows, you have to patrol constantly to check on embers from still-smouldering logs well inside the fireground, which you don't want leaving the area. You can turn them over, pull them apart, throw water on them, but you can't leave them unmonitored.​ 



​ On one of my fireground checks today I stood in the ashes as birds sang from adjacent trees. After Black Saturday, huge tracts of land were lifeless. When I walked home with the dog, I diverted through an area we burnt three years ago because the Brown Boronias needed it to survive. Two years after the burn, the sweet scent of the boronias filled the air on our place in spring. Another year on, the understorey is higher than me in many places, but rejuvenated, lush and green. Native grasses have thrived as well and get enthusiastic attention from kangaroos.​ ​ At nightfall, I rode my horse around the patrol loop. It's one of his regular rides, but the first one since burning off. He went along as usual until we got to the first burnt section, where he immediately did a double take and stopped to survey the scene. Horses are like that; they are very interested in changes to the landscape. I could almost hear him commenting as we completed the loop.​ ​ All is well out there, although we humans are a little worse for wear, and my metal garden rake needs orthodontic attention from a hammer after doing fireground duty. I take my hat off to the Aboriginal Australians who did all their mosaic burning barefoot, without the aid of fire trucks and PPE. They knew what to do, and when to do it, and there are voices in their communities that we can learn so much from. We too feel deeply the honour of stewarding a piece of Gondwana; to nurture this earth and be nurtured by it.​ ​ 
Bushfire Haze At Dawn I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Bushfire Haze At Dawn II – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Hot Burn of Teatree-Paperbark Flats 2018 – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Bush Four Years Post Burning I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Bush Four Years Post Burning II – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr​


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## Knave

I really liked that. I especially like the part about the frogs! That must have been such a neat thing to see. My friend has two frogs that hang out under her bug zapper. I guess they like the barbecued bugs the best. She laughs about the lazy chubby animals.


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## Willrider

I fell in love with Standardbreds after reading Marguerite Henry’s born to trot when I was nine. I have a rare buckskin paint standardbred mare named Paris, and I show her in 2’6” jumper classes. I would post a picture of her... but I don’t really know how!


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## Caledonian

@*SueC* – I meant to answer you last Monday but this has been a looong week!

Toby was a 15.3hh chestnut with a tiny white star and golden legs. He was one of the sweetest horses I’ve ever met. He’d choose to stay with me rather than the herd and would play, snooze or following behind me like a dog. When I first met him, he was heading to one of our local auctions as he’d a reputation for being extremely spooky. Despite offers, his owner wasn’t willing to pull him from the list. About a month later, I met him again at the same yard (obviously he hadn’t been sold) and after a few rides and warnings, he came home. 

He was always very reactive but I found that having one rider and handler built up enough trust that he became a great ride. He was a creature of habit and anything out of place or a new location had to be introduced quietly and with plenty of patience. His last owner was a professional showjumper and Toby certainly had talent that, due to his nervousness and my dislike of jumping (great heights), meant that we never found out how far he could've gone. In all of the years I had him, he never once tried to bite, kick, run-off or rear; I don’t think there was a bad bone in his body. 

I had him for the majority of his life so it was very sad when I made the decision that he wasn’t enjoying himself. His arthritis had got too much for him and I decided that it was time to let him go. I’ll always be grateful for meeting him.

I took up archery when I was a teenager. I’ve always shot a Recurve bow with all of the gadgets from a sight to stabilisers, only occasionally giving Barebow a try and once or twice, Longbow and Compound. My one and only attempt at horse archery was great fun but, honestly, the target was the safest place on the field! There seems to be a lot of horsey people in the sport. I’m not sure if it’s because we have the space or we’re all used to standing in a field. 

I love your donkeys. I wish I’d the room for a couple. The burning looks scary given its potential to escalate although the alternative is far worse. 

The spaghetti tree hoax was the one of the best April fool jokes in Britain as well.


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## SueC

How amazing that you tracked that archival spaghetti story, @*Caledonian* ! Now I can show it to DH when he wakes up. Having a middle-of-night cup of tea here, since I had a post-lunch nap yesterday that ridiculously ended up being _four hours_ long... In summer, I often do a post-lunch nap to avoid heat and UV, after starting very early. Usually it's 60 to 90 minutes and I'm good to go again. But I slept so long yesterday afternoon that I was totally disorientated when I woke up and actually thought it was morning, and couldn't work out why I couldn't find my husband. I thought he must be making tea because I'd slept in! :rofl:

Part of it is that it's the middle of hayfever season here, and when I sleep, my head gets all clogged despite antihistamines, and I wake up feeling like it's all glued together from the inside. :shock: That's also why middle-of-the-night tea is on the list right now.

That's a lovely story about Toby, and it's really sad to have to make these decisions at the end... but more honourable than not making that decision when quality of life nose-dives. I've had to make that decision twice so far, and I also have a 34-year-old gelding whom I'm constantly re-assessing, but so far he's such a happy chappy and hasn't lost his intelligence or smile, so we just keep feeding him his twice-daily "porridge" to make up for his comparative toothlessness...

One of the reasons I said yes to the new donkeys is because I will not be replacing Romeo when he passes; three horses will be enough work. It's a sort of sweetener. It's like when my Arabian mare was getting old, and we adopted Jess the Kelpie in mid-2013 partly in anticipation that she wouldn't be around much longer - she was the first horse I owned, childhood companion etc. Dogs and people get very close, so in part it was to give me another very strong animal relationship knowing I was going to lose one soon - and my mare went about 9 months after we adopted the dog.

If you find a photo of Toby, I'd love to see!  I'm going to repeat something here that I said elsewhere this week about love and loss (and it is a kind of PS to the theme of the last music post a couple of pages back):

When I've lost someone I've loved, one thing that's really helped me is the thought of being a living memorial of that lost being - your life became better, you became a better person, and you can really _wear_ that in memory of someone. I find this is also true of deceased (or living) authors, poets, inventors, etc; people you've never met who've made a big difference to you somehow, and who have affected your humanity. Well, I can live a little bit more for each one of these people, and beings, who contributed to the positive about me. And when you think about it, this includes the animals we _eat_ too - to respect them is to live in memorial to them too, somehow - to understand we are all connected and we all go the same way, but still our lives have meaning.

The things you've loved about someone are usually things you aspire to as well, and so they've helped you become. My mare taught me so much about life and love and freedom and _being_. Special people have too. I want to honour all these people, living or dead. Where would we be without these?

The one thing that does survive is love. 

PS: Funny thing about love. The First Law of Thermodynamics is that energy can't be created or destroyed, but can be transferred, and can be changed from one form to another. Maybe it's the same with love. It may change form, but it is always passed on somehow. I look at all the kindness from various sources that fed me along the way, cumulatively, and how that made it possible for me to give out kindness. It's like other beings' kindness charges some kind of internal kindness battery, and then we can pass on that kindness.

@*Willrider* , there are help posts around on HF to show you how to post photos - probably the easiest is to attach them, in "Advanced" posting (button below post box) - if you already have photos online, you just insert the URL into the picture option in either basic or advanced reply mode. When you work it out, be sure to post some photos of your horse here and tell us more! 

@*Knave* , the barbecued bugs made me :rofl:! Want fries with that? ;-)


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## Caledonian

@SueC

Toby. He was quite young in this, about eight i think.


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## SueC

Don't you find it interesting how much of a horse's or person's personality shows in their facial expressions? He looks exactly like the horse you were describing!


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## Caledonian

yes, a very gentle soul. I remember that i was going to lunge him and I'd turned my back to move his tack, when i turned around that was how he was standing. I had to take a photo.


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## SueC

*Nelly & Benjamin Arrive*

The two new donkeys are here, and currently walking the perimeter of the 50ha bushland conservation area, as donkeys will do when they come to a new place. I will probably bump into them later when riding Sunsmart.

We were supposed to be back by 10am and instead missed out on morning tea and came home late for lunch! We went to the donkeys' home to help load them, as we don't have a towing vehicle or a float. The ute that was supposed to be used by the owner to trailer the donkeys to our place had gone out with another family member. So we went to ask a neighbour if we could borrow his towing vehicle, helping him with a construction project along the way - Noel built his own aeroplane, now he's building a camper to put on the back of his farm ute for a trip to outback Australia next year. He had a sore arm so we did some aircraft hull riveting under his instruction! It's a really clever construction, like a Tiny House.

Anyway, an hour later we were off with the borrowed ute, eating peanuts from our emergency packet because we were starving and had missed morning tea, and I said to Brett, "I bet the tyres on the trailer will be flat!" :rofl: Stood to reason, as it had been parked in a paddock for a while. Well, one of them was indeed flat, but thankfully there was a compressor on the place, so that was quickly remedied. It did mean I had to back the trailer out of the machinery shed and around a corner afterwards, not my favourite thing, but I got the hang of it after a couple of little steering experiments and actually managed fine.

Then it took us half an hour to load the donkeys - food bucket in front and nose rope cueing, like I do with horses, with plenty of time and calm to let them investigate when they first load onto a new transport, and praise and a temporary pause when they make progress in the right direction. These guys hadn't travelled for about a decade and presumably not on this trailer, so we took it gently. The halters we had brought were a little big for the donkeys, and the ramp was very steep, so we added a lunge line around the haunches for gentle resistance and cueing (I had come with my full kit of tricks). This quickly had Nelly on, and then we loaded up her son Benjamin.

We then had a fun slow ride with the trailer, which was the sort that fishtails if you get above suburban speed, and you can't fishtail a load of animals... Brett was keeping an eye on them directly, and I checked them regularly in the rear vision mirror. They travelled OK, leaning back against the sides of the trailer to keep their balance. The trailer was making an awful racket, which stressed Nelly a bit, but thankfully it was a short ride to our place. Benjamin kept craning his head this way and that to look at the scenery. Both were on running ropes tied low so they couldn't try to climb out of the trailer, but could still move along the sides for balance.

At home we let them offload themselves into the little driveway paddock, and they perked up really quickly, checking out their new environment. Don Quixote, our resident boy donkey, came running up in his rocking-horse canter, hooting from across the fence with great interest. Nelly was protective of Benjamin and a bit aloof. We let them settle in their little safe area and dropped the trailering equipment back to its respective owners.

After a late lunch, I backlined the donkeys with ivermectin before letting them out into the Common, where the other donkeys were. There was a lot of communal running around as our donkeys followed the new, faster (because taller) donkeys around and around. Then the lot of them disappeared back into the smaller driveway paddock, where we took some photographs. Nelly looks like the new alpha jenny, protecting her adult son from all comers; but they are all getting cautiously acquainted. They went back out into the Common after that. I'm going riding, and will post films soon, when we've done some editing / uploading.


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## gottatrot

Oooo, love the picture of all five of them together. So cute!


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## SueC

Here's a clip we took just after we let Nelly and Benjamin into the Common with our other donkeys and Romeo. The three younger horses were confined to the internal paddocks today, so that things would be kept relatively simple for the new arrivals. Romeo is 34, loves donkeys and has seen it all before. You'll see that he barely bats an eyelid as the lot of them come barrelling past him. You can also see that Mary Lou and Don Quixote still have a fair bit of weight to lose. Normally they are in grazing muzzles, but immediately before their first meeting with the two new donkeys, we took them off. Looks like they will get a lot of exercise for a while!






Jess is barking disgustedly in the background because we tied her up so she wouldn't interfere with the donkeys doing their thing. :rofl:


More clips to follow.


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## Knave

I love the video! Wow everything is beautiful!!


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## Caledonian

The video :rofl::rofl::rofl:


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## egrogan

Gosh they are cute! Love all the running around- and already jealous of the green, as I look out at a white-covered paddock!


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## SueC

Here's two more clips from yesterday, taken after the donkeys had gone back into the small utility paddocks - as shown at the end of the last clip.

Our resident group is so interested in the newcomers, who are a bit aloof still. In part this will be because they are in a new environment - which is where donkeys react a little differently to most horses, by staying with their own existing buddies, rather than immediately joining the resident herd together. Also in this case, our resident donkeys have met other donkeys on a number of occasions, and had intensive exposure to other donkeys when the Donkey Society was re-training them before re-homing them to us. The new donkeys are a mother-son pair who have not seen any other donkeys for a long, long time... but at least Nelly clearly knows what they are! 

It's so interesting to watch donkey social behaviour in these situations, which is so different to introducing horses to a herd of their kind. And yet still, it's clearly _equine_ behaviour...






Nelly looks like she is going to assert herself as the new alpha female, taking over from Mary Lou (the walking shagpile). For those who don't know, the little piebald, Sparkle, is "legally blind" and can't see a lot of the body language others are showing. She has adapted well though, and additionally, other donkeys and horses quickly start cutting her a lot of slack when they get to know her. They seem to get something is a bit out of sorts there.

With this next clip, it's so hilarious how Don Quixote goes cantering off after the retreating newcomers at the end. :rofl: He's not aggressive, just playful and so interested. Especially in that dishy new donkey jenny... (I remember the eyes he used to make at my Arabian mare; such an optimist! :rofl






You can also see the work I need to go and do this morning - I'm doing fence repairs this week, and since there is no voltage on the right-hand-side fenceline, it has been rather mistreated by opportunistic herbivores...especially the steers... and the repair list has been longer than usual due to being out of a lot of action with a broken foot for most of August and September...

So I shall go fence, and leave everyone with a contrasting clip of our last _horse_ introduction - Julian meeting Sunsmart and Chasseur (all three of them late-cut stallions with much retained stallion behaviour); about 5 minutes after joining them in the paddock. Opera singers, the lot of them! :rofl:






The full story on that was covered here:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page39/#post1970517327

Wishing all a productive day and restful leisure time! :wave:


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## SueC

*A Historical Thankyou*

I listen to my iPod when doing outdoors work. It's fencing repairs this week, and I've come back for a drink because it's hot, and some spare polybraid because the steers decided that a down section of polybraid tasted delicious while I had a broken foot and couldn't tend to the break in electrical conductivity somewhere (polybraid wires can rust out in sections as make subsequent sections go dead). I don't know what's so attractive to them; its little wires poke into my fingers if I work without gloves, and I certainly wouldn't volunteer to chew any... :shock:

Anyway, I had some playlist additions recently courtesy of Brett playing musical Santa ("What would you like this week? I'm going to pay a little visit iTunes..." ... oh and, last time we went to town he passed onto me three CDs he'd picked up at a closing down sale, "That should keep you busy!" )

So today, I'm posting a song that came out in my final year of high school, and made big waves in Australia, as well as Scandinavia. I've been giving it a bit of a spin again three decades later, as it was one of the songs that were like personal anthems to me at the time. It got a lot of radio airplay, and still does in Australia, so I never actually bought the album, and don't really want to now either because it's just a bit too mainstream for my taste musically. But despite that, this was a really really important song to me growing up - because of its message, and because of the passion and lack of apology with which it was delivered.

I grew up with a lot of family violence and discord, and was despairing of the adults in my home life. I had some great teachers which provided admirable alternative role models for me, and was also discovering alternative perspectives that helped me survive and thrive through music, literature and art - as I often point out on my journal. Kindness, compassion, justice, intelligence and healthy love demonstrated by other human beings recharge some sort of internal battery in me, and help me to live these qualities, and in turn send them out to others. These things are never wasted, just like the First Law of Thermodynamics explains about energy - it gets transmitted, changes forms, but never gets destroyed (although dead ends are sometimes hit).

This song is _You're The Voice_. It overtly addressed international conflict and was a peace song for that, but it is really about violence and discord in all its forms. In the clip it includes domestic violence, and the singer symbolically removes a little girl from a violent scene and puts her in a line of people who are discovering their voices. But I think it's about wider implications: The positive aspects of being authentic and speaking up






I know some people thought this was really twee, and kind of want barf bags when they come across ideas like these, but I really can't overstate how incredibly important it was for me when I was a young person to see adults voicing ideas and convictions that were diametrically opposed to what I was seeing from my primary caregivers. It was really _redeeming_ to know that there were adults in this world thought it was important to care about others, and to have ideals - and when I grew up, it was really important to me to _be_ that kind of adult, in turn. I don't care even now how lofty the ideals are and how "unrealistic" (often debatable) - I will refer to the saying, _Aim for the moon, and if you miss, you'll still be amongst stars_.

So here's a historical thank you for this song, which I find still applies to my life, even so long after high school, and in such different circumstances. There are many songs like that in my life, but I've picked out one today that would be likely to get the biggest eye-roll from people "serious" about music! ;-)

Sometimes, you can look past the music that's not entirely your cup of tea because the message of the song is so excellent. And likewise, _sometimes_ I've forgiven idiotic lyrics because a song is musically interesting. :rofl: I just wish, then, that I could buy a Swahili version so it would be easier for me to ignore the words...


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Gosh they are cute! Love all the running around- and already jealous of the green, as I look out at a white-covered paddock!



At least you're going to have a White Christmas, instead of frying in the UV here in Australia!  And... don't you want some donkeys for DH? :Angel:


PS: You can have my hayfever if you want it! Which interferes with exercising a horse that needs it!


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## Willrider

This is a photo of my Paris!


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## SueC

Is he invisible, @Willrider, or do I _really_ need glasses? ;-)

*
Middle of the Night Clogged-Head Ruminations*

It's that time of the year again: Springtime...when the flowers bloom, the birds sing incessantly, the bulls hoot amorous opera late at night, and the grass pollen floats about the countryside. Quite rude really, all this airborne plant sperm. And a bell of doom for me, because of hayfever and running out of effective antihistamines. So it feels like a flu: Head glued together from the inside, muscle pain, exhaustion, sore itchy eyes and nose, coughing and spluttering, the occasional asthma attack... for over eight weeks, just when I really need to be in the garden planting summer crops and tending fruit trees, and getting through that long to-do list of farm jobs like fence repairs and firebreak maintenance, and my horse needs lots of exercise... and I'm at half-speed with this. :evil:

So it's good to have a journal to whinge to in the middle of the night, when I'm up once again with a clogged head, having to drink tea and swallow lots to clear some of the gunk from my sconce. This kind of routine really reduces my daytime energy, so a whinge is in order tonight.

And now, here's an impromptu preliminary album review. Brett and I were making pizza this evening, and listening to _Japanese Whispers_, the 1983 Cure album picked up at half-price last week, for the first time. We're both huge fans of _Disintegration_ and _Bloodflowers_ - later, more mature albums - and we're aware that digging back into someone's early 20s work can be a bit of a let-down when you are already spoilt by their mature work. We already knew a couple of tracks off it anyway owing to radio play, best-of compilations and live albums, and they were OK tracks, but not mesmerising. _Love Cats_ is very cartoony and naughty and clever but was, for me, an acquired taste... I did eventually grow to like it (when I realised Robert Smith is not shallow, despite some of his songs that get on the radio a lot - anything but).

The opener, _Let's Go To Bed_, offended me no end as a teenager because I took it at face value and thought it was extremely cynical, and swore that I was going to aim a kick to the gonads if ever a man approached me with that attitude. Brett and I had a good laugh about that recollection. :rofl: Actually it's difficult to tell if it is face value, or if it's parody, but be that as it may, we both commented on how we dislike that handclapping synthesiser sound effect so popular in the 80s, and also marring _You're The Voice_ posted above. Besides that, it's a catchy track, and if you ever catch the video, it's hilarious.

The second track neither of us had heard before, but I was going, mg: Brett, it's Playschool!!! Robert Smith is auditioning for The Wiggles! And this happened with a fair few of the tracks on it. My word, did this person develop as a singer as well, after this album. He was positively adenoidal and monotone on a lot of this one. There was one track in the middle where both of us said, "Well, this sounds better, it's quirky and jazzy!" and I can't tell you offhand which one it was. There was another track we could not finish listening to because the keyboard line was so annoying - and I remembered suddenly when I was nine years old and with a friend of mine was composing funeral marches for dying butterflies on an electric organ an older niece had bestowed on me. If you're from a snowy part of the world, you know the deal - dying butterflies after frosty autumn nights, and little girls bringing matchboxes lined with scraps of nice fabrics to put them in. We did that, and then in solemn procession headed for the indoors where the organ was, and played some likely impromptu dirges for the occasion, which really annoyed my older brother, but was small change compared to having to listen to his idiotic Kiss records at seismograph-triggering decibel levels.

Anyway, said funeral marches composed by us little girls back then actually had more dignity than the keyboard playing on a lot of this album. It made me pull out a 1983 album by some of their age contemporaries - _New Gold Dream_, by Simple Minds, a band which our Mr Smith bagged a bit in his younger days, and which I feel he had no business doing after listening to _Japanese Whispers_, because _New Gold Dream_ is actually the more emotionally mature, more musically sophisticated album in comparison. But there you go, all of us do and say stuff we shouldn't, and one of the blessings of a normal sort of life is that nobody bothered to record or write down our incriminating statements when we were in our 20s.  Whereas public figures have that on the record for the rest of their lives, and we should remember what that would look like for us.

1983 is also when U2 put out their _War_ album, and of course U2 were super-focused and mature beyond their years when they were in their 20s - only to rather regress in their 30s... anyway, as a teenager I was really drawn to deeply serious, idealistic people, so U2 was a natural fit, and The Cure at the time was not. In fact, I had a flashback that made Brett laugh: Getting chucked out of a Year 11 English class until I could find my manners, when we were all doing our music projects and a girl called Pauline with spiked-up black hair and Goth makeup was playing us The Cure. When she got to playing us _Why Can't I Be You_ I collapsed in a hysterical laughing fit I could not pull myself out of... because I thought that was a ridiculous philosophical proposition, like _Why Can't I Turn My Broccoli Into Chocolate Icecream? _I was 15 and did seriously wonder why a grown-up person of 27 would ask a question like that. :rofl:

And I think that's why I never became a Cure fan as a teenager - I thought they were imbeciles, and was looking for more grown-up role models. And actually, much as I love The Cure's more mature work, in retrospect I really think they wouldn't have been great role models for me as a teenager. Although of course, it would have annoyed my father no end to be confronted with their appearance! :rofl: Now that is a hilarious thought...

Back to :ZZZ::ZZZ: for me now, and if anyone has a magic hayfever cure, please don't be shy sharing!


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## Willrider

You should be able to click on the box as a link to take you to the photo, if it doesn’t work I can try something else.


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## SueC

No box on my screen. Try posting an actual URL as it will work in all applications, including UNIX based OSs. Or use the standard forum methods for inserting photographs, as found on the help pages - these consistently work. Double check you are not posting from http: sites, the photos won't show; https: is needed for inserts. Attachments may be easier.


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## Willrider

Here is Paris


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## SueC

That's lovely, @Willrider!  I'm sure we'd all love to hear more about you and your horse, if you want to tell us! inkunicorn: I've never come across that colour STB before, so you're right, it's rare! Is she (and apologies for prior gender slip) registered as a STB? How did you come by her? How long have you had her? You both look like you're enjoying yourselves with your jumping. STBs are often very good at that! 

How are the trails near your place?


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## SueC

Double post - now I have to tell a joke...

Hmmmmm. OK:

What do you get if you drop a piano on an army camp? (A flat major.)
What do you get if you drop a piano down a mineshaft? (A flat miner.. works better spoken...)


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## SueC

*HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ROMEO*

He was officially 34 on September 1- in Australia, horses' birthday for when you don't know the exact date, and also for the purpose of racing age groups. But we know he was born on October 30, 1984.



He's a little lean, but still gallops regularly, and is in excellent spirits, particularly when he gets his senior porridge twice daily. Food has always been one of his big hobbies!



We are amazed he has made it to this age. He's been losing molars for five years... but you can't keep a good horse down, apparently! 




:charge: :happy-birthday8: :charge:​


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## Knave

Happy birthday Romeo!!! He looks good for his age and especially for just coming through winter! I hope you gave him a special rub down and treat. He is very near to my age, which is quite shocking when you look at his birthday.

Here a horse is one on Jan. 1 no matter what. Born Dec. 1st? A yearling in January. Is it the same there in that they become an official yearling in October, or is it the following year? If it is the following I like Australia’s rules better. (This said I don’t know racing rules at all, so maybe it is different than the organizations I’ve shown at.)


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## SueC

Hello, @*Knave* ! :hug: In Australia, with STBs and TBs anyway, a yearling is an official yearling when it is 12 months old at the official horses' birthday. If the horse is born in October, say, it will be an official yearling the following September 1. If the foal is born early, say July 30, it is deemed a yearling when it is barely a month old, which is stupid and results in some people hiding premature racehorse foals in the back paddock for a couple of weeks until September 1. Of course you have to draw the line somewhere, or there will be unfair advantage.

In reality, of course, a yearling isn't a yearling until it is _actually_ 12 months old.

My first horse, the French Trotter mare, was born in 1969 and was therefore older than me! Would have been the same with you and Darcell, and actually by a bigger margin too! Isn't it funny to be born last century? :rofl: I'm sure your girls can make some jokes about that.

In Western Australia, our winters are comparatively mild and are our actual growing season, and the horses are in rugs when there is rain with wind and/or cold - Romeo more often because he's old and likes his warm "bedclothes"!  It's the summer droughts I worry about with him, but he gets to come into the garden for green pick from the irrigated lawn - he can't process dry grass or hay anymore. Thankfully we have enough lawn / semi-pasture in the irrigated house surrounds for him. Pickings in the paddocks can be pretty dry in February and March especially. 

Romeo spent this morning in the garden with me, eating his "porridge" and listening to Cape Breton fiddle music coming through the open living room window, while I put pea straw on more vegie beds, and prepared a few more spots for planting. I got my first zucchini transplanted, and it looks so innocent just with its seedling leaves and two first true leaves, but we all know they become monsters! :rofl: This one is a _Blanco Lungo Cylindrico_, a very light green fruit with cream markings. I've got _Black Beauty_ in the mini-greenhouse, but it's not ready to plant out yet. I also planted out a few Lebanese cucumbers. Tomatoes after tea break - I'm on my second mug, and we drink our tea out of huge soup mugs, you get more hydrated that way and it's less work! 

It's funny how animals are drawn to music. The horses generally like Celtic and Cape Breton fiddle music, as do the donkeys - it's often cheerful and crazy and upbeat and makes you want to tap your toes - and the balance is usually eerie laments. When I put the music on this morning, the new donkeys came running and queued up at the garden gate - this is the native garden near the house, not the food garden, where only Romeo is allowed! So I let them in - I've got the lower tier pegged off for animals to graze under supervision - Nelly and Benjamin, with a highly interested Don Quixote in tow. I think he's got a crush on pretty Nelly!  Mary Lou and Sparkle were lying down snoozing in the sun in the paddock.

This is one of the tracks that was playing this morning:






Our cows seem to come listen when there is piano music to be heard.

Romeo got a nice thorough grooming this morning after his breakfast, which he really enjoyed. A lot of his remaining coat shed out. He most probably has mild PPID as well, but probably has for years, and no symptoms except uneven shedding (he doesn't get very woolly), and really too old for us to consider treating him with the medicine I'm trialling Sunsmart on. He's OK, and his teeth are the biggest challenge. At that advanced age, I think horses are "DNR" - support them physically, but no major medical / pharmaceutical interventions. (And if I live to his equivalent age, which is late 90s, I wouldn't want major interventions either. Happy or dead, I think.)

My hands were too dirty to take photos of my garden work, but I will post some photos soon. Back out there in a minute, when the washing is on the line. 

Have you had any frosts yet? Is there anything you can grow in a greenhouse over winter?

Hope you have a restful night!


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## Knave

I usually play music on my phone while I ride at home. I call it my radio.  

Yes, it’s been freezing for around a month I’d say. This morning, when I go to catch Cash for his first work day it should still be probably 20*F. It is 20 now though, so it might be a couple degrees colder. It is supposed to start turning into winter now.

I don’t have a greenhouse. My aunt has a spectacular one though, and it is temperature regulated. She grows things year round, but she is the only person I know capable of such a feat.


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## Willrider

I am not sure if she is registered since she doesn’t have papers but she’s definitely an STB, as sometimes she’ll pace around in the pasture and had to be trained to canter. My riding instructor owned her previously and thought she would be a good match for me. The trails around here are pretty nice, there are a lot of them so endurance and eventing are pretty popular. I don’t normally take her out on trail because she is a bit nervous around things that blow in the wind. Here is an older picture of us when I first got her.







This photo was taken in one of my lessons when she belonged to my instructor .


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## Caledonian

:happy-birthday8:Romeo. He does look good for his age. 

It was minus 3 here yesterday morning and everything was white with a thick mist hanging over the land and between the trees. It took forever to clear the windscreen of the car and heat it to a point where I stopped shivering. 

My garden’s looking pretty miserable as everything is dying back. My greenhouse blew flat in a spring storm so I’ve been searching for a new one in my local DIY shops and garden centres but they look just as flimsy. I decided to approach a local Joiner who made my last two sheds to see if he would create a wooden framed one with plenty of windows. I’m hoping to have it for the Spring. 

Hay fever is horrible:evil:. My cure was age and a different location. In the past few years I seemed to have grown out of it, with one minor blip, which was last year. I’m not sure what was in the fields around the house to cause a flare-up. Anytime I head away from farmland, trees and gardens towards the north and the moors and mountains it disappears. I remember people commenting on the difference it was so noticeable. I just wish I could recreate the affect in a pill! :smile:


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## SueC

@*Willrider* , that's a lovely mare you have there, and you look well matched to each other! How long have you had your mare? What's the tallest jump you two have jumped, and did it feel like a skyscraper? ;-) Have you ever jumped bareback? ...you're in the presence of seriously crazy horsepeople on this journal - at least one of us ( @*Knave* ) can even do spectacular circus tricks on horseback! :rofl: :hug: - another ( @*knightrider* ) rode her horse when she had bone fractures and was supposed to be resting, naughty naughty, and is ace at making spectacular costumes and teaching her horses tricks :loveshower: - another ( @*bsms* ) started riding at midlife and immediately chose a super-hot Arabian mare as their starting horse :rofl: :clap: - another ( @*gottatrot* ) is working with a challenging but fun OTTB and riding on the beach all the time (but not exclusively) and has written two e-books on her two Arabian horses :racing: - another ( @*egrogan* ) has gone from a lively Morgan to a chess-playing Morgan relatively recently and is reporting shenanigans on a regular basis







:Angel: - another ( @*frlsgirl* ) is doing dressage on a Morgan :riding: - one of us ( @*Caledonian* ) is from Scotland and we're getting to know her better :blueunicorn: - another ( @*waresbear* ) is from Canada and very multi-discipline :charge: - another ( @*Hondo* ) is a venerable human elder who is always doing spectacular DIY and is perfecting perambulation on horseback :cowboy:- several others ( @Dragoon , @*SwissMiss* , @*AnitaAnne* ) have interesting horses with opinions of their own :apple: (and don't we all :rofl ... and there is even a mystery person who takes advanced dressage lessons on Spanish horses, I wonder who that could be... and several others besides... Me, I've been known on several occasions to overshoot when mounting bareback and hit the ground on the other side... It's a crazy and loveable bunch of very nice people here!


About the STB: My birth family bred STBs and none ever had to be taught to canter - although this is a common misconception about the breed. Some individual horses may have problems cantering due to physical issues, but it's not characteristic of the STB breed. All the ones I've seen grow up cantered in the paddock from foalhood. Often if a STB apparently doesn't want to canter after a harness career, it's because their particular trainer didn't let them during training, so the horse thinks that when it is working with humans it's not _supposed_ to canter.

Not all STBs can pace (there are trotting lines and trotting races, pacing lines and pacing races, and many STBs are "ambidextrous" - can do both very very well), and there are other breeds of horses throughout the world that pace - including the Icelandic, and various gaited horse breeds in America.

To positively identify a horse as STB, look for a freeze brand or lip tattoo. All registered STBs in Australia and NZ are freeze branded as foals, and many US STBs are as well (right side of neck). American Standardbreds initially had tattoos on the inside of their upper lip for identification purposes - as do some other breeds, but if your horse has a freeze brand or lip tattoo, you can work out if it's the STB brand, and if yes, trace her heritage here:

https://pathway.ustrotting.com/search/index.cfm?

(Starting with 2019 foals, STBs in the US will now be microchipped instead of freeze branded or tattooed.)


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## SueC

@*Caledonian* , that sounds a bit chilly, but very very picturesque - thank goodness for thermal underwear! ;-) It can get cold in Australia too - one time when I was working in Victoria, there was a morning where the refrigerator temperature was warmer than the room! My mini-greenhouse blew over several times in storms, so now I've tied it to the rafters at the top, and to a post by its feet, and I take all the trays and pots indoors when there is another storm forecast. It sounds like an excellent idea to have a very sturdy one made up for you. - Romeo says thank you and sends his venerable regards (and that we're all looking good for our age :rofl.

When I lived in seaside Albany, hayfever was but a horrid memory. But then in 2010 we had the bright idea to move onto a farm! :rofl: I'm feeling a bit better today because my DH came home with antihistamines that do work better, but make you very drowsy, so you take them at night, which also means you are less likely to wake with a clogged head in the wee hours. So I nearly slept through for once, and would have slept till mid-morning I think, to make up for recent nights, if it hadn't been for the alarm clock... tomorrow (Brett's day off) no alarm clock, and we're sleeping in. This evening, we are watching Dr Who... I think the female Dr Who is working out great! You Scottish have had so many notable people in this series...

Do you have White Christmases where you are? @*egrogan* is heading for one for sure.

@*Knave* , is the snowfall reliable enough to have White Christmases as a standard thing where you live? And have your horses shown any preferences for particular styles of music? Do they like you to sing when riding? ...best wishes to all at your house!


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## Knave

@SueC you always shock me with your kindness and ability to bring everyone up.  

Yes, most of the time Christmas is white. Occasionally Halloween also is, so it’s exciting for children dressing up when it has yet to snow. 

My horses seem to like most music. They are used to a large variety. Sometimes I sing to them. I’ll really get into it too, but I am not the best at singing and I think even they are aware of that. Lol. Do yours like you to sing to them?


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## SueC

It's a good thing horses are so forgiving, @*Knave* ! :rofl: I find it quite hard to sing on a horse because it's hard to sing in a sitting position (and even harder when posting! :rofl. It's not a gala performance for sure! But on a nice long trail, sometimes I do when we're just walking along, and the horses' ears start to scan around, which is funny. I think they like it, especially low notes. Sometimes I've sung "99 Bottles of Beer" when in a dodgy situation with an inexperienced or new-to-me horse, to stop either of us getting nervous! ( @egrogan , something else you can try with Fizz if you haven't already!) It gives the horse another variable to think about, and because singing is sort of meditative, it counters nervousness in the human, which means the horse doesn't catch the human's etc.

I was glad to read of Cashman's first day at work - that went so well!


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## Knave

I have tried to use it to counter nerves myself! Sometimes it works, but sometimes it almost gets me more worked up. I usually try in any case.

One day, when he first came, I was singing to Zeus. I was just happy, and really giving a major performance leading him to his corral. Imagine terrible singing accompanied by just awful dancing. Major performance going on... so much I even dropped to my knees in front of the mildly amused little round colt. Suddenly there was a look on his little yellow face, and I followed his gaze to see my husband and father! Shocked embarrassment and another memory to remind me to not get so involved with my headphones on. Lol


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## waresbear

I am horrible singer but dog is mesmerized when I do. Horses kinda mildly interested, but I don't sing & ride, too focused. I groom & sing though, so maybe it's the grooming they like, who knows? 
View attachment 973613


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## SueC

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:, @*Knave* !

Singing in the shower is far the best aesthetically, because the sound is coming back at you from the tiles and then you can pitch to it and easily hold notes! And all that reverberation is so flattering to the vocally challenged! :rofl: It's the opposite of hearing yourself on a recording. With a recording, you hear less reverberation than you hear from inside your head - we sound flat to ourselves and icky, because we only ever hear it from within the personal bathroom of our sinuses.  And that's not how others hear it, unfortunately.  And in the bathroom, there's even more reverberation! :happydance:

Maybe they like both, @waresbear!  I hope you've had a good week so far! Love the dog; always amazed to see a Blue Heeler all the way where you are, but I suppose we have aeroplanes these days! :Angel:


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## SueC

*Donkey / Horse Interactions*

Nelly and Benjamin have been very curious about everything at our place, and eager to explore far and wide - they've already walked most of the farm tracks under their own steam, as well as closely scrutinised all the pasture, and tried out various different trees for shade and for scratching itchy spots. They're not in the least bit shy about looking for us to request things - they simply like company, and to look at what we're doing. Sometimes they tell us they'd like their ears scratched or a gate opened so they can have a look around on the other side of it. They're very lovely characters, both of them - so friendly and curious and companionable.

They are a pretty independent pair and will go about on their own, but are also interested in the other donkeys, as well as the horses, and spend time with both groups. Nelly seems particularly interested in Julian, who also seems to be well-disposed towards her. I caught a few snaps of Nelly and Benjamin with Julian and Chasseur earlier - and also one where they are in the garden with me...


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## SueC

Just in postscript to the photo above, poor Nelly was walking on collapsed heels in front. The walking surface contacting the ground went from the hairline of the heel over the actual heel and right to the toe as one flat oblong surface. After the photo was taken, I did as much corrective trimming of her front hooves as was safe and comfortable to do in a first session. Nelly's feet are tender to work on because pulled out of shape and because she also has seedy toe - I don't want to cause her discomfort or give her a bad experience trimming, so I will work incrementally every fortnight or so until the angles are restored to normal. In the first session I gave her a walking surface that was distinct from her heel, to get her off her squashed heels; just by trimming at an angle backwards from where the heel should be, and shortening the toe. I also trimmed off some of the distorted front hoof wall and mustang rolled the hooves to bring the breakover point back towards where it should be.

Today she was walking far more comfortably than before, and I was pleased to see the trim hadn't made her tender. She has some way to go before she gets normal front feet again. Her back hooves will be on the agenda tomorrow. She's a real darling at having her feet handled.


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## SueC

*Spring Planting*

I've been very busy in the food garden lately; after today's effort I literally had nothing left in the tank, and was walking crooked as if needing a Zimmer frame from being crouched on the ground much of the day. Lots has been achieved though! I took some photos and will explain through them:

*Photo 1* is one of the six mandala circles planted out. The tall trellis in the middle divides the circle bed through the middle, and is meant for climbing beans, which I planted today, as direct seeds, in the little channel running along the base of the trellis. There is a black trickle pipe next to that channel to irrigate the beans. Top left you can see broad beans, which take up most of that semicircle, with some of them out of view. Front left is a bucket of seed potatoes with which I will augment the volunteer potatoes coming up between the trellis and the broad beans. The potatoes have been top-dressed with horse manure, which we will continue to do so that they can form potatoes in the layer they are being topped with as well.  Lettuce, parsley, a zucchini plant and volunteer potatoes front left, ready to really grow. To the right, poppies, and behind that, Japanese climbing cucumbers planted out in little protective tubes (next to the trellis), and to their right, tomato seedlings in little protectors, with lots of pea straw around and space to grow.

*Photo 2* is of the neighbouring circle, which also has broad beans in one half (mostly off-screen). The middle section is newly planted with Amish Paste tomatoes (in white protectors, surrounded by pea straw mulch). There is a little channel under the trellis, with a trickle pipe, where runner beans were direct seeded. To the left are poppies, silverbeet and fennel - mostly off-screen. A young Granny Smith apple tree newly mulched in preparation for summer in the background.

*Photo 3 *shows the same circle from the opposite direction, with a wider view. One side is Aquadulce broad beans, with King Richard leeks planted in the protectors in the foreground. The transplanted tomatoes are in the middle, and the silverbeet and fennel are more visible in this photo.

*Photo 4* shows a half-circle newly planted out with Potimarron and Turks Turban pumpkin seedlings. Brett dug the whole semi-circle today after coming home from work, and added compost before I planted the seedlings and mulched with pea straw. The other half is parsley and mint at the moment. Romeo is having his dinner in the background (cleaning up what he dropped around his food bucket), near a young mulberry tree that needs TLC, compost and mulching.

*Photo 5* shows a young Potimarron pumpkin seedling, newly transplanted.

It's starting to look good, but I have lots more to do! But, now I need some :ZZZ:...


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## Caledonian

@*SueC* - Glad to hear that you’re feeling better.

I’d never sing where anyone could hear me, I’m awful. I can’t remember who said ‘all the right notes but in the wrong order’ but that applies to me. :smile:

I can’t listen to music when I ride as I like to have my ears uncovered/free to hear what’s coming and I don’t think that bouncing’s going to help my voice!
The horses like to have the radio on in the barn, especially when it’s windy, as it covers some of the rattles. I say 'the horses' but I've wondered if it's actually the humans that think sound is better than silence and the horses aren't bothered.

I haven’t seen this series with the lady doctor. I gradually stopped watching when Matt Smith took over and I think I saw a few hours with Peter Capaldi and gave up as he didn’t look very comfortable in the part. I’ll need to give it another go. I don’t think I’ve seen Jodie Whittaker in another part but I do like Bradley Walsh; he’s got a good sense of humour. I used to watch Doctor Who with Tom Baker and Peter Davidson when I was young, mostly from behind the couch or fingers. Mind you, the angels from David Tennant’s time were just as disturbing!

White Christmases are rare as our snow doesn’t last very long. Usually a day or two and the next weather system comes over, washing it away. Every 20 years or so we get a run of bad winters and the last one was extremely bad. We’re hoping that this one will be warmer.

@*Knave* - :rofl::rofl::rofl:the major performance for Zeus 

@*waresbear* – Love the dog’s face, it’s completely hypnotized!


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## SueC

@*Caledonian* , I loooove the weeping angels!  :hide: Jodie Whittaker was excellent in _Broadchurch_, which I really recommend - and is excellent as Dr Who. Her take on that is a completely different personality to the character she played in _Broadchurch_ - so different you forget she's the same actress. David Tennant was brilliant in _Broadchurch_ as well, but really wasn't my favourite Dr Who. Brett and I are watching the classic series end-to-end at the moment and are just up to the last episode for Peter Davison (_The Caves of Androzani_, which I've seen before and think is a great story). I'm actually really enjoying the pared-down basics of the classic series, before all the technological whizz-bang - they had to try harder at making you suspend your disbelief, and the fact that they could do it at all, despite the bubblewrap monsters etc, tells you something about them and the stories they were in. Often you had the feeling you were watching a play on stage - which was a great experience too!

I bet you saw Peter Davison in _All Creatures_ first too. I could never get over him being in _Dr Who_! :rofl: He did a great job though, although they unfortunately gave him such a naff outfit - and that stupid celery... and the ?? on the lapels... :icon_rolleyes:

The Scots seem to be great at dark humour (as well as spine-tingling music). I actually like reading Val McDermid's crime novels - and we're just catching the screen adaptation of _Wire in the Blood_. Camilla Lackberg from Sweden also writes interesting crime fiction - it's not my favourite genre, but these two ladies have ways of making it very interesting by having it be about way more than just the puzzle.

Isn't it lovely that there are so many interesting books, paintings, songs, poems, movies/drama series, podcasts etc in this world.


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## Caledonian

Bubble-wrap monsters and darleks you could escape by going up the stairs. They were still terrifying! 



I loved Peter Davidson in All Creatures Great and Small. Every Sunday night we sat in front of the TV to watch. Of course at that time we had three stations. I bought James Herriot's books 'If Only They Could Talk' and 'It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet' and they're one of the few books i've kept from my childhood.

I'm off to :ZZZ::ZZZ:. Have a good day.


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## SueC

I love those books, @Caledonian, and still do. Brett also had them when I met him! 

Have a good rest!


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## SueC

*The Blessing (And Art) Of Gratitude*

Before I get to the main topic of this post - I can't get the word _hobbledehoy_ out of my head. It describes a clumsy or awkward person (especially young person), but this morning it popped into focus and rolled around a lot in my head as I was hobbling from the bed to the kettle. DH and I seem to be losing the capacity for walking like normal people early in the mornings. For me, it's a pinched nerve currently niggling in the lumbar region (and insufficient Pilates, I know), combined with a foot recuperating from fractures that needs to be warmed up before becoming fully functional...

My main topic comes today from listening to a song that goes like this:


*WANT* 

_I'm always wanting more_
_Anything I haven't got_
_Everything I want it all_
_I just can't stop_

_Planning all my days away_
_Never find new ways to stay_
_Never feel enough today_
_Tomorrow must be more_

_More drink, more dreams_
_More bed, more drugs_
_More lust, more lies_
_More hate, more love_

_More fear, more fun_
_More pain, more flesh_
_More stars, more smiles_
_More fame, more sex_

_However hard I want_
_I know deep down inside_
_I'll never really get_
_More hope or any more time_

_Any more time_
_Any more time_
_Any more time_

_I want the sky to fall in_
_I want lightning and thunder_
_I want fire instead of rain_
_I want the world to make me wonder_
_Want to walk on water_
_Take a trip to the moon_
_Oh, give me all this_
_And give me it soon_

_More drink, more dreams, more drugs_
_More lust, more lies, more love_
_However hard I want_
_I know deep down inside_
_I'll never really get_
_More hope or any more time_

_Any more time_
_Any more time_
_Any more time_

When I hear a song, my mind starts to go: Can relate / can't relate. I can't tell you how much I really can't relate to the sentiments portrayed above, although I've seen them a lot in various people. And with poetry, of course, it's worth remembering that we can't always tell if a person is being autobiographical or if they are simply commenting on an attitude etc, using a persona. I think this is a great song, musically, and also because of what the lyrics bring up on reflection. (It's the opener off _Wild Mood Swings_, the album before _Bloodflowers_ we're just starting to listen to.)

In some ways it's like when I read Sartre's _Nausea_ in my 30s, and was sorely disappointed after all the hype. I wanted to pull the guy's nose, slap his face, say, "Stop sitting around moaning about the lack of inherent meaning - go out and make your own meaning! Stop sitting in your little Paris pad gazing at your navel fluff and wasting your time!" My God was he wasting his time. Frittering it away, literally, in senselessness. As a lot of people do. As is portrayed in _Want_. As consumer society would like everyone to do - don't be a _person_, be a consumer, define yourself by your consumption, consume exponentially, never think you have enough. Hell no. I've seen too much of it, and what it does to people. Nobody in my birth family had any idea who they really were, or who anyone else was, they just knew about the things they had, the little and big status symbols, where that put them in relation to everyone else playing that game. That stupid, senseless, ridiculous, harmful, depersonalising, earth-destroying game.

When I turned 31, I was travelling on the cross-Bass Strait ferry when I got a phone call from my brother: Happy birthday, and it's time you stopped wasting your life and seriously looked at acquiring investment property, or you will be a pauper when you are old. Sheesh, thanks, bro! (Not.) He's devoted to investment properties, Amway, all sorts of pyramid schemes, and milking what he can out of a tax system designed to help capitalists accrue more capital, at the expense of those who do not have enough, while spitting on people who are on unemployment assistance when they have gaps in paid work (people who actually on balance pay more tax than he does with his creative accounting and milking the system - and _he_ calls _them_ parasites - he whose mummy and daddy helped him capitalise his own business when he graduated university - and now he looks down his nose at everyone, and mistakes financial worth for moral worth - he who's never known what it is like not to have the latest camera, enough food, or a roof over his head, sitting in judgement on a world he has no idea about).

Wasting my life! :rofl: I was educating young people, doing pastoral care on a daily basis, really meeting human beings at an eye-to-eye, soul-to-soul level, caring about who they were and who they were becoming, watching them unfold, looking at the wonders of the universe with them, and the wonders of language and imagination. And in my spare time, I was walking in natural cathedrals - the ancient Tasmanian rainforests, on windswept mountains, along roaring coastlines. My parents often accused me of wasting my education because I was _only a teacher_. (After doing science research and teaching at university. Oh, what a nose-dive in social status! :rofl: How can my relations bear it?) And yet I never used my education more, in paid employment, than when teaching young people - and it never mattered more, everything I was, and all that I could give. Some people are completely clueless...

People like my birth family, and people portrayed in _Want_, are unhappy, empty, never have enough, always have to have more. Because they are trying to address their nutritional needs by drinking more sugary drinks, to use an analogy, and then wonder why that doesn't fill them.

I realise I am very blessed in just seeming to feel a lot of gratitude pretty much all the time. Maybe it's the unhappy childhood - and the release from it. The very first time I had a place completely to myself - a bedsit I rented - I was 22 and newly graduated from university, working in sustainable land management research and advising on the same. And I just could not get over the feeling of coming home and closing the door and having all this peace and silence in a place I called home. I could close the door and nobody would yell at me, guaranteed, and I'd not have to hear people yelling at each other either, guaranteed. Nobody criticised how I decorated the walls or how I spent my leisure time or what music I was quietly enjoying, or made disparaging remarks about my appearance or character. Nobody threatened me or raised their fist to me or made up lies about me to other people or got off on humiliating me. The kitchen was permanently clean and hygienic, as well as enthusiastically used, and I could always find things in logical places. And, I had a _right_ to be there, which I so enjoyed. I'd come home, and this peace and joy would just settle into my bones, and happiness would bubble up quietly like little champagne bubbles.

They do say it feels wonderful when you stop beating your head against a wall. That's true, of course. And there's often conflict when people live together, and the easiest way to not have that conflict is to live on your own. The real trick, however, is to live with someone else, and still feel that you belong - which, happily, is the case for me these days, although I wouldn't wish to mislead anyone into thinking that Brett and I naturally fell into a good pattern when we got married - to an extent we did, but there were some things we had to really work on, both of us, and it wasn't always easy, but it was really really worth it.

I think both of us have a real talent for gratitude. We don't take what we have for granted - not each other, not our shelter, not the food we eat, not the many beautiful things in nature around us, not the people who mean something to us, not the wonderful books and music and art in this world. The shape of a raindrop is imbued with miraculousness, as are the colours of a sunrise or a sunset, or the unfolding of a flower, or the bursting forth of a seed, and the weathering of rocks, and the scallopping of sand on a beach... so, so many things like that. Having scientific explanations for phenomena never took the sense of miraculousness away for me - it only added to that quality. Surface tension, Rayleigh scatter, DNA transcription, osmosis, acid-carbonate reactions, energy transformations, quantum probabilities, all of that - the deeper I looked, the more I saw, the more amazed I have always been, and the more breathless with wonder and appreciation to be alive and to experience these wonderful things.

Here's an interesting idea: I do not what what I haven't got. But if everyone felt like that, our economy would collapse! :rofl:

:happydance:

PS: Sartre's cookbook here; it's so funny! :rofl:

http://pvspade.com/Sartre/cookbook.html​


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## SueC

*Donkey Pedicures*

Just reiterating about Nelly's hooves, from a post on the last page:

_When I looked at Nelly's feet, I found she was walking on collapsed heels in front. The walking surface contacting the ground went from the hairline of the heel over the actual heel and right to the toe as one flat oblong surface. After the photo was taken, I did as much corrective trimming of her front hooves as was safe and comfortable to do in a first session. Nelly's feet are tender to work on because pulled out of shape and because she also has seedy toe - I don't want to cause her discomfort or give her a bad experience trimming, so I will work incrementally every fortnight or so until the angles are restored to normal. In the first session I gave her a walking surface that was distinct from her heel, to get her off her squashed heels; just by trimming at an angle backwards from where the heel should be, and shortening the toe. I also trimmed off some of the distorted front hoof wall and mustang rolled the hooves to bring the breakover point back towards where it should be.

Next day she was walking far more comfortably than before, and I was pleased to see the trim hadn't made her tender. She has some way to go before she gets normal front feet again.
_
You can see to some extent the problem with her hoof angles on this photo from when they were on the trailer (click to enlarge). Her stance would have been bad in a horse, but for a donkey this is really really bad, as donkey hooves are meant to be considerably steeper than horse hooves, with a massive shock-absorbing heel. Look at the pastern angles compared to the hoof angles...










Well, today I did her rears, which had similar problems, although not quite as extremely squashed in the heels - but still pretty bad. She also has spots of seedy toe there, although that should be back under control by the end of summer. Stockholm tar is very helpful, plus these guys are now getting a small hand-feed with a good vitamin-mineral supplement daily.

Then it was Benjamin's turn. His angles were better than Nelly's when standing, and I'd not picked up his feet before. I got quite a shock - the undersides were dreadful, and worst of all, he has seedy toe _in the quarters_, so badly that the hoof wall has crumbled away more than halfway up the hoof, in both quarters of both front hooves, exposing the laminae. I lopped a lot of toe, and rasped away over the heel end of the hooves to bring the sole he is walking on down. It looked much better when finished, but I still find it shocking that the hoof wall is so far down. I'll try to get photos soon, but today I was just interested in getting the job done, so no in-depth "before" photos. The rear toes were unbelievably long... Thankfully, the horn I exposed seems very healthy, and I think he'll come right by the end of summer with care and attention. I'll have to rasp them fortnightly until they have normal hooves. It's a good thing they are such sweeties about having their feet handled! 


*Sunsmart and the Excavator*

:cowboy: On our last ride, we did all the interior tracks of the farm - which included going past the neighbour's gravel pit on the east boundary, which had a huge noisy excavator working away in it! Off-track harness racers have close acquaintance with mobile barriers, tractors and watering trucks, as all of these are encountered on the track and in motion when harness horses attend trials and races. This makes them pretty good with large machinery - but not necessarily with speed, or with weird or loud noises. The excavator was massive and making plenty of weird and loud noises that we heard clearly from 800m away. Sunsmart was quite relieved to find the source of the strange noise! The excavator was working right on the fenceline, a metre away from the firebreak on which my horse had to pass, with tall forest blocking us to the west: Through the eye of the needle! The excavator's bucket was going up and down, reaching impressive heights - the machine looked a bit like a giant yellow Praying Mantis.

Sunsmart was a little hesitant, and I got off him and stayed between him and the noisy machine, saying, "Looook! Isn't that a big machine!" in amazed tones, looking at him and looking at the machine in turn. And so, we walked past, within 2m of the huge noisy excavator moving its bucket around. With me between it and him, my horse was completely calm and looked with curiosity at the machine as we walked past. Horses understand that if you're on the ground and confident and you're clearly aware of the issue, then that means it's OK as far as you are concerned. If they have come to trust your judgement, it becomes so simple like this.

There are so many horses that would have done a song and dance about this situation. I'm proud of my horse for how he handled that. ...and it's really water that he hates the most! :rofl:


Excavator at Work - Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr
_
This is the actual excavator we went past, when it was working on our building site!_


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## SueC

*Romeo Retrospective Films*

In honour of Romeo's 34th birthday, I've been going through our home movies and finding interesting snippets. Here's a clip from five years ago, when Romeo was 29, and we were living in a caravan in the utility paddock building our house. It's so funny watching this, for me - I was so scrawny at this point because we were working physically hard for many hours a day, at least six days a week. We would often plaster walls until well after sunset - really hard work. This is one of the couple of times in my life where I look at photos etc and say, "Someone feed that person!" :rofl: 

Also, I previously explained about how I got unilateral vocal fold paralysis back in 2008, and it took years to get back to a normal voice. Here, it's getting better, but still far higher-pitched than normal, and very breathless and having to rush my words because of the abnormal gap between the vocal cords, and how that means you run out of air after a couple of words, so you tend to speed up to try to compensate, because otherwise you'd be breathing after every couple of words... it's actually nice to know I'm getting the low-range back these days. Must be all that singing in the shower. inkunicorn:

Romeo is very particular about which parts of his body he would like the most attention on. This is very typical of an extended grooming session with this horse. I make sessions like that, when they are at liberty, "horse's choice". When a horse is tied and getting prepared for work, it gets systematically groomed, instead of extended free-choice. This fellow, however, is retired, so it's all free-choice now! 







:happy-birthday8:​


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## SueC

Here's one we dug up of Romeo first arriving at Red Moon Sanctuary back in October 2010, at age 26. The horse with him is Frog, who didn't work out at our place (too agoraphobic, kept going through fences and destroying things, random attacks on my old Arabian mare) - he went back to Lake Clifton and a stabled environment, and can actually be seen on Page 1 of this journal, well after his return there.

What strikes us about this, eight years on, is the emptiness of the place compared to now. We literally bought 50ha of bushland with 12.5ha of mostly treeless pasture attached at the northern end; all it had was a boundary fence around the whole farm - the vehicle crossover, gate and small farm dam were negotiated as part of the purchase offer, and were thankfully agreed to, or we wouldn't have bought the place, as we were operating on a shoestring budget.

The funny thing here is that though it looks so bare to us looking back, in the four months since purchasing it in July 2010, we'd been out there every weekend and some weeknights, setting up internal electric fences, and planting tree seedlings to make the shelter belts that are now enjoyed by humans, livestock and wildlife alike - birdsong everywhere you go now, compared to the silence there used to be in these fields. Brett and I planted hundreds of trees and bushes, using just manual tools, in the months before the place was ready to receive my two horses - my late Arabian mare, and Sunsmart.

Romeo was an adoption we volunteered, because of the state of his teeth and his difficulty with hay in a dry lot situation. We thought that being on green pasture 10 months a year would extend his life by two years or so, and I'd ridden this horse as a younger person - and he had such a history, which you can find back in the early parts of this journal, that I just wanted to give him a supercalifragilistic retirement. We expected him to reach his late 20s - and now he's 34. :clap: 

The oldest STBs in Lake Clifton got to 29, but most died before then. Romeo's full sister, Classic Juliet, died at 28 years old.

Anyway, here he is, discovering clover - and showing off his amazing trot - albeit a tad stiff in the hindquarters at first because coming off a 5-hour float journey - but he soon unkinks that kink! Romeo raced as a pacer - is an ambidextrous horse, so to speak - he paces and trots with equally long, powerful strides. In his youth, he regularly paced 800m in 56 seconds, which was equal to the 800m track records in WA at the time, done by the grand champions of the sport. The problem with him was that he was a short-sprint specialist, and because of PTSD from training experiences before he was put on the dog truck at age 3 and acquired by my birth family, he would run his heart out at the very start of the race, often leading by 50m margins, and at the end of the mile / 1.5 mile races, the other horses would catch up with him again, and some of those would have some sprint left in them for the finish. He was, however, an excellent trail horse and jumper. But just look at his big frame and how he's all legs... Frog is a more "normal" trotter build, and also has the STBs flowing trot. Romeo, however, is really extraordinary.






For a landscape comparison, I've pulled up a few recent farm photos.

Those baby shade clumps and shelter belts all grown up now:










The house and the garden around it:















None of this was there eight years ago... In our everyday lives, we often lament not being able to get through our to-do lists the way we want to. But then look how much we've actually _done_... Brett just said, "Yes, just a little at a time, one foot in front of the other, some days where you achieve amazing amounts, some days you crash, most days you just progress a little. But this is what it builds." 

Sometimes, the big picture reminds you that you're doing something right after all!  It kind of puts a spring in your step and gives you momentum to get out there and keep beavering away...while the birds are singing from the trees you've planted.


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## SueC

Here's one of Romeo and Frog being offered supplementary feed on their first evening, to give them a sense of "home":






While there was certainly enough food out there for them, we always offer dry hay when transferring horses to pasture, so they can make the change at their pace. At first, horses new to pasture will eat quite a bit of hay. The bucket feed is a nightly thing - just a small hard feed, primarily to give them vitamin/mineral/trace element mix, as Australian soils are so poor.

I just remembered, looking at the bathtub, how we actually got water into the horse paddock! I did say we were doing everything on a shoestring budget, and with the house build coming up, we had no money to splash around. We got a second-hand bathtub, and a roll of polypipe, and because we couldn't afford a proper motorised pump, we bought an inexpensive 12V caravan pump and hooked it up to a car battery to fill the bathtub from the farm dam a couple of hundred metres away in the Common! It took about an hour to fill the tub, but fill it we did.  We just did it while we were doing other things as well. The hardest part was moving the car battery from near the electric fence energiser (its normal home) to the farm dam. We used to put the battery on a wheelbarrow and take the little pump with us and go to the dam. When the tub was full, we'd reverse the process, and end up with a live electric fence again. It's fun to think how we solved many problems on an extreme budget, and didn't stint on the big things - like planting trees etc, or building well with limited money.

A couple of days after Romeo and Frog arrived at Red Moon Sanctuary, we went back to Lake Clifton to get Sunsmart and Snowstorm. These two, as my chief riding horses present and past, were such seasoned travellers they didn't even break into a trot once offloaded - they just walked around the perimeter in a calm and leisurely way, and then settled down to graze.






I miss this girl - but I'm very thankful that she had three and a half good years with us here, leaving the best till last: Lots of freedom, friendship and TLC.  inkunicorn::blueunicorn:


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## gottatrot

Your property is so beautiful.
It is wonderful what you have done for Romeo, giving him such a great life in his older years. He's feeling so good he wants to just keep living. 
Those trots!! Interesting about the difference between the styles. Makes me want a Standardbred.


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## SueC

Thank you, @*gottatrot* . :hug: You're only 40, which means you have another 40 years to acquire a STB. 

Speaking of trots, here's a recycled one of Sunsmart and Snowstorm doing lovely floaty trots in 2012 when the first group of donkeys arrived:






Brett did such a lovely job putting music to this one - and choreographing it on the horses pulling up at the fence - that I just keep posting this clip.


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## SueC

A month after we got the horses down to Red Moon Sanctuary in 2010, Romeo was looking so good I hopped on his back and took him up the sand track and back. He'd not been ridden in over two years, owing to relatively poor condition (when not on pasture; here he picked up quickly). This was pure impromptu - I didn't even have riding clothes with me - just the helmet and tack I use for Sunsmart. This was the old Bates Caprilli AP, which was a bit too small for me, and had been adjusted to fit my tank, rather than Romeo. The sheepskin built in some leeway for a little ride, but this was definitely not a comfortable thing to do for longer, for the horse, so we left it at 10 minutes. This is a 16hh horse, by the way, with a huge frame - I'm just tall (5'11") with really, really long legs.  I never let that stop me from riding my horses, though - and no, I don't like playing basketball! :rofl:






Despite not having done any work for two years, you can see how this horse develops impulsion under the saddle - he always reminded me of an Andalusian parade horse. @AnitaAnne , @knightrider , @SwissMiss , @walkinthewalk , and anyone else with gaited saddle breeds, may like to compare the gait he does in the second clip coming back with what your horses do - I'd find that interesting, since I've never met a gaited riding horse breed, but of course the American STB is very much related to the TWH etc.







:happy-birthday8:​


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## SueC

Here's two clips of Romeo pelting around the Common in early 2011 - four months after arriving at Red Moon Sanctuary and living in a social group free-ranging over a 62ha block. You'd not believe this horse is 26; and he muscled up so beautifully with the life he was now living.  Young Frog was also interested in running - Sunsmart was getting plenty of trails, and my Arabian mare was 30 and happy to generally take things easier at that stage of her life - so these two were more interested in the grass at that time - although they still did their own share of running at liberty as well.


Romeo is the large-framed horse with the white socks - if you're having trouble distinguishing him from his running mate. 













:happy-birthday8:​


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> I think both of us have a real talent for gratitude. We don't take what we have for granted - not each other, not our shelter, not the food we eat, not the many beautiful things in nature around us, not the people who mean something to us, not the wonderful books and music and art in this world.
> PS: Sartre's cookbook here; it's so funny! :rofl:
> 
> The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook​



I can relate so much to the sentiment you've expressed up there. ^^ My lovely husband and I are both statistical outliers from families that don't understand us (nor we them- we often wonder how old we'll be when we realize each of us was miraculously switched at birth and ended up in thoroughly unsuitable families!). I think when you find someone else who gets that, it makes you really grateful and helps you realize how silly the constant push of consumerism is- as well as all the other things you are just "supposed to" accept, like "family is family" no matter what...


Loved "Sartre's" cookbook. :rofl: In college I took a fabulous course called 20th century women political philosophers, which was centered on a lot of Simone de Beauvoir- so I came to Sartre tangential to de Beauvior. I have re-read a lot of her writing over the years but can't say I've gone back to him much :wink:


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## egrogan

PS- Happy birthday Romeo!


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## knightrider

Fun watching Romeo pace. Paso Finos are not supposed to pace. Their gait is supposed to be a 4 beat gait with all 4 beats exactly the same. At Paso horseshows, the horses ride along a wooden bridge so the judges can listen to see if their gait is perfectly even. My Chorro does pace, however (that's bad for a Paso), but he is so smooth and comfortable that I don't correct him.

Is Romeo's pace smooth?


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## SueC

Hello, @*knightrider* ! :hug: Romeo's pace is smooth, but what is captured in that clip isn't a pace, it's a rapid four-beat! You have to look closely to see it, slow it down, but it rides very different to the pace. Romeo is a body pacer, which means when he paces, he swings his whole body from side to side - as opposed to leg pacers, who swing their legs only. So riding Romeo or any other body pacer at a pace is a bit like riding a camel. :rofl: And because the horse also doesn't get ultra comfortable with having a rider going side to side like an unbalancing pendulum, Romeo actually would mostly trot and canter when ridden, or gait like that at slower speeds, even if given free choice on gaits. He'd generally pace only when he wanted to compete with another horse, or if on a really firm surface that reminded him of a racetrack - on firm surfaces it's also more comfortable for a horse to pace than trot.

Does your Chorro leg pace, or body pace? I'd guess the latter - that he keeps his body very still?

It's that four-beat Romeo is doing in the entire second clip (except when I'm bringing him back to a walk with the circles) I'm interested in. (NB in the first clip he's just doing a standard fast walk.) Right rear -right front, left rear-left front. What do gaited horse riders call that gait? A running walk? A rack? In Germany they call that a Tölt, but they call pretty much any unusual four-beat that. It's very smooth to ride, you could carry a glass of water - the horse is almost gliding. The clip where I'm riding that doesn't really do it justice, because after a horse hasn't been ridden for two years and you get on its back on a saddle that doesn't fit it properly, things are a little raw for both parties. With Romeo in particular, there's a lot of head and neck movement, while Sunsmart and my late Arabian mare have/had this really stable head in relation to the rest of their body - and at the same time he's wanting to step up into the bit and have contact, so I'm trying to find my "elastic arms" on him to go with his head and neck movement there, and am needing a bit more practice!

Also I noticed with that clip that I'm super floppy compared to on my regular horses - because to ride a tense horse that would love to race away in a non-routine situation, like a one-off or starting work again, I've always gone super-relaxed and floppy to counter that tendency - and I'm circling him the moment he sees that open landscape in front of him and starts to get ideas about a rapid take-off! :rofl: This horse, I wish I could show you a clip of him racing, when he was a young horse. He got banned from racing several times because he was speed crazy and only marginally controllable. After a race start, nobody could stop him going flat out. The horse would have his nose on the mobile barrier accelerating away, and actually jam up his neck so his body could go a little faster for a moment than the mobile barrier would allow - he'd stick to the barrier like that and race away from the field with a rocket start, apparently attached to the mobile barrier. Those people learnt to drive really fast when he was in a race! :rofl: Just so they could pull away from him.

Running like that, of course, was a fear response - that horse had track PTSD - the early trainer was ambitious for this talented horse from a famous dam, and greedy, and trained him with an electric whip instead of tact and brains, with the result that the horse started jumping the inside barriers of racetracks to fight back, with the cart attached, smashing everything up, cart and driver included, so he ended up on the dog truck at three and a half years old.

And he's such a sweet-natured horse, and was so relieved to be treated with decency. But, he never lost his track PTSD, and the fear running response there. Under saddle, he wanted to run for fun, like my Arabian mare, and felt, like she did, like a turbo-charged rocket that wanted to go off all the time, but he didn't go into that glazed panic. Still, I can tell you without any doubt that this is the fastest horse I have ever ridden in my life, at the trot and at the gallop - this horse had phenomenal speed, and once he was off, it was like a jet at lift-off. I chose my "you may run as fast as you like now" tracks very carefully with him - sandy tracks, straight or with gentle curves only, preferably uphill! :rofl:

...I wonder what this horse would have done as a racehorse, had he been trained properly from the outset... and no track-related, racing-related PTSD... With a horse like that who naturally wants to run all the time, your prime focus in his education is to work on slowing down and stopping and chilling out - not on making him go faster and faster - he'll give you that himself...


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## knightrider

I don't know what Chorro does. Someone told me it is a pace. It is very smooth and comfortable, so I am thinking it is probably not a true pace. Chorro is extremely well bred. His grandsire was a world champion show horse and one of the top ten breeding stallions for 9 years. His other grandsire was almost as famous. I am sure if I knew how to train Chorro, he'd be up there ticka tacking rat a tat tat along with the best of them. But I started him as a yearling and don't know how to do the fancy training. He's a grand and lovely trail horse with a glass smooth gait, so I'm happy with him.

Here is a you tube clip about the different paces. I really don't know much about this sort of thing. I just ride. The one thing I pay attention to when I am training the Pasos is to listen to the sound of the gait. It has to be that ticka tacka sound. But my Pasos don't do that piston firing leg thing that the show Pasos do.


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> I can relate so much to the sentiment you've expressed up there. ^^ My lovely husband and I are both statistical outliers from families that don't understand us (nor we them- we often wonder how old we'll be when we realize each of us was miraculously switched at birth and ended up in thoroughly unsuitable families!). I think when you find someone else who gets that, it makes you really grateful and helps you realize how silly the constant push of consumerism is- as well as all the other things you are just "supposed to" accept, like "family is family" no matter what...


Yeah... I wonder who makes those rules, but they are so ubiquitous it's not always easy to challenge them... For a long time I also had this fantasy that I'd been switched at birth and my real family was out there somewhere - but pretty soon on my journey I realised that I looked too much like them for that to be a blessed possibility... it was sort of like being a cat growing up surrounded by hyenas, I don't know... (and apologies to the animal kingdom for this analogy) ...and the hyenas are saying, "This is how you should be!" and it's not in my nature to be a hyena... And for all the pain of that sort of situation, especially early on when you're in it and having to understand you're in it and trying to get away from it, and that you're not a bad person because you're not a hyena, and that you don't deserve all that bad press the hyenas are spreading about you... And the process until you can freely enjoy catness, and be who you are...

It's a limited metaphor, in many ways, but you get the drift...

Brett and I wish you two all the very best in the world...  and I'm always doing cartwheels inside when I hear that two people right for each other have found each other! :happydance: It's so nice to be yourself, and to be loved for yourself, and to love someone for who they are - instead of living with all these projections, and faked personalities...




> Loved "Sartre's" cookbook. :rofl: In college I took a fabulous course called 20th century women political philosophers, which was centered on a lot of Simone de Beauvoir- so I came to Sartre tangential to de Beauvior. I have re-read a lot of her writing over the years but can't say I've gone back to him much :wink:


Haha, I wonder why! :rofl: The cookbook so nails it... isn't it funny how some people can live like that and be deemed serious philosophers to boot... :rofl: ...and have to be read by so many university students all over the world, and have essays written on them etc etc...

That course of yours sounds very very interesting indeed! The most similar thing I took was a course called _Environmental Ethics_, run by the same expat Californian (Dr Patsy Hallen) who also did the _Ecofeminism_ course - I came from a really misogynistic family and a lot of that stuff clung to me early on, about what women could and could not do, even though I was studying Science and of course I'd been told that this was unfeminine! :rofl: I don't know what it was like for you, but the easiest thing was always the intellectual challenge...the emotional imprinting was so much harder to deal with. For a long time I could think one way and feel another. These days, thinking and feeling are reconciled, but it was quite a process to get there.

Anyway, that was an excellent course that really challenged me. The course text too was wonderful, _Deep Ecology - Living As If Nature Really Mattered_. The ideas of that one resonated with my own experience, thinking and feeling instantly - the ecofeminism stuff took longer, because of my background, but it was really important for me developmentally to be exposed to that, and to think about it. I'd been brought up with the views that any challenge to the idea of male superiority and male authority was reactionary and man-hating - which of course it isn't, that's just the usual catchcry of people trying to protect their positions of entitlement.

The world is filled with false, unhappy selves wreaking misery on themselves and other people. Yay for authenticity and gratitude. inkunicorn::blueunicorn:

I'll have to check out Ms de Beauvoir more closely one of these days - another friend also recommends her thoughts! 

Have a wonderful Sunday now, Ms @*egrogan* , DH, and assorted four-legs, in your own little Eden! 

PS: Brett thinks you two would enjoy this:

http://existentialcomics.com/comic/102


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## SueC

knightrider said:


> I really don't know much about this sort of thing. I just ride.


And me, sister! :clap: :Angel:



> The one thing I pay attention to when I am training the Pasos is to listen to the sound of the gait. It has to be that ticka tacka sound.


Ah, that's the sound you get from that gait Romeo does in that clip. Thanks for the clip, I shall peruse and learn! 

A body pace can be very comfortable too - the horse's back doesn't move. Pacing is always a two-beat, like trotting - it just uses same-side leg pairs, instead of diagonal leg pairs. The pace doesn't have the upward jolt of the trot.

Wishing you a lovely Sunday and excellent riding, dear @knightrider! :hug:


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## SueC

...so, it appears from the clip that riders of gaited horses, and the harness racing fraternity, have different definitions of what it means to pace. For the harness racers, it's not a pace unless it's a two-beat. The presenter of the clip calls the four-beat gait Romeo does a "stepping pace". On all the STBs I've ridden with that particular gait, it's been a very smooth gait, and neither it nor the leg pace or body pace bump your back at all, unlike a trot - of course, the body pace makes you swing from side to side! :rofl:

The difference may be in the horses attempting it. The STBs I've ridden have all been fit horses with very efficient racing gaits - while the idea of a gaited riding horse is, from what I can gather, more about comfort compared to the ordinary riding horse, as opposed to going particularly fast. The horse demonstrating the pace in that explanatory clip does not have what harness racing people would consider to be a smooth pace - it's pacing rather clumsily, and with a short stride.

Even the world record mile under saddle from a while back looked quite smooth for the speed:






With the flying trot these horses do at speed, I'm always posting - not very much, but it's always easier on horse and rider - just like with my Arabian mare, who used to win saddle trotting competitions at gymkhanas when I could find them - and I still find those trots smoother than WB trots or TB trots - as I should, because these horses are bred to trot efficiently, and don't "bounce" very much.

The roughest trot I've ever ridden was on a mare called Ceijka - a grey, middle-sized WB mare at the riding school I started at - a real sweetheart whom we kids loved, but dreaded trotting on. She had a very steep shoulder, therefore little shock absorption. It's pretty much impossible to find a racing STB with a steep shoulder - it also limits stride length, and therefore speed.


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## egrogan

@SueC, loved the comic. I hope you and Brett will enjoy a few reflections of Henri, the existential cat:


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## SueC

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

These are excellent, @*egrogan* - Henri is so much like Marvin the Paranoid Android, except less useful! :rofl: Do you know Marvin?







:smileynotebook:​ 
*Mt Talyuberlup Clips*


I'm still going though home movies to find nice horse stuff, but found something nice to share that has nothing to do with horses! Other than it helps us keep in shape to deal with horses etc.

Western Australia has such gorgeous wilderness areas - I've found two clips from one of our favourite spots in the world - Mt Talyuberlup, which you'd have seen before recently on this journal, here, because we climbed it for Brett's birthday this year, just before I broke my foot...

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page62/#post1970571069

Well, these clips were from a previous birthday of Brett's, in 2011, and show the interior of the cave on top of Talyuberlup, and then how one can celebrate on a mountaintop! 












These are the sorts of things that make us really happy...


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## Knave

I love those @SueC! I think that sort of thing should make anyone happy. We like to take little hiking trips as well.

I was thinking about your trotting discussions. Cash is extremely smooth and quick, which shocks me because of his size. I have an app that tracks mileage and gate and it cannot pick up any gate change on him. He is truly that smooth.

Trotting out a long ways is common on ranch horses, so a smooth and fast trot is sought after. Bones is very smooth in my opinion, and one of the smoothest I had ridden only to be put to shame by Cash. Lol. The worst is Pete. He is fast for sure, and Grandpa once called him a road horse, but he is terribly rough. Not many (I’m sure yours could of course) could beat that horse at a trotting race, but a whole body would complain afterwards for days.


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## Caledonian

It’s interesting to watch the different paces and read about your experiences. Paso Finos are new to me, as is their gait and I’d have said that it was a two beat rather than a four, if it wasn’t for the slow motion. 

Do the four and two paces come from the need to travel comfortably over a distance? The trotter progressing into racing and the Paso Fino into the shorter show stride? 

I’ve never ridden or been around a pacer so I can’t compare. Toby had a very bouncy stride that was comfortable over distances if you were rising but not sitting. My other two were average enough that nothing stands out in my memory. 

The worst was a Clydesdale. I found it difficult to adapt, as I was used to the movement and rhythm of horses at around 15-16hh. Trying to sit to his trot almost bounced me out of the saddle and I’d to slow down my rise to go with his huge stride. My legs always ached at the end of a ride.


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## SueC

Here's another snippet: Romeo and friends incoming after being called. Brett is being unobtrusive behind the camera and I'm attracting their attention in the background, which is how we got this neat little clip. This is a fairly leisurely "incoming" - generally they race up flat out - but this was a mellow afternoon. In this clip, Romeo really is magnificent at 27, Sunsmart is 15, and the Arabian mare 30.






I think they should have given him a season - he's very good! :rofl:


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## Knave

@SueC I am sure he has some draft in there. Grandpa used to say they ran their work horses on certain ranges and the saddle horses on others.

Bones is doing all right I guess. He still is covered in hives despite another change of feed. I believe his hives are a response instead to the pain of the stifle although he refuses to acknowledge it. It swells off and on still, and I saw it drop out from under him yesterday for a couple of steps.


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## SueC

@Knave, I hope Bones gets better quickly. It must be so frustrating for him and for you. On the up side, you got this amazing new working horse because of that timing... We got burgled by a sociopath in 2012 and he tried to poison our horses by putting industrial chemicals in their oats bin (which I saw immediately). The same person did this to other people we know and always left his calling card so you'd know who he was, but the police were slack and didn't do their job. Someone contacted me a couple of years later to ask me about our experience - she'd had a fishing knife held to her throat by the same person, and her housemate got beaten up - again, nobody in police was interested. That whole thing was a really low point for me - I lost so much faith in our society, and our police and law. But it made us look for a dog, and we adopted Jess because of that. So the bad timing of these bad things ended up with the little gem of an upshot that we got a dog, and this _particular_ one. And I've been glad ever since to have her. I think Cashman will be such a long-term consolation for Bones getting injured this year. One day they will ride out together! :cowboy: :cowboy:


*House Building Clips Unearthed*

Here's something from the home movie archives about building our house. This was our second plastering session after completing the strawbale walls of our house. I'd had an accident where someone rear-ended my car doing 140km/h speeding on the highway and not paying attention as I was turning off into our little country road. It was like being hit by a bomb and my car flew through the air and landed on the other side of the road facing in the opposite direction. It was miraculous that there was a gap in the traffic and that I walked away from that crash. But I was sore, and my old back injury had been aggravated, and so I couldn't do any heavy lifting for a couple of months. We had gotten some help in from a so-called spray plasterer because we were panicking at not being able to progress with our house with the winter coming. He did a really shoddy job on what he did, and we had to take a lot of it off the walls later and replace it with sturdy plaster that didn't crumble when you touched it.

This is why I sound sarcastic in this clip - and because many people had been telling us we couldn't possibly plaster our house by hand, we weren't burly enough, it was too hard, what did we know, etc etc. Well, we looked up how to plaster on Andrew Morrison's strawbale.com site, and got his instructional videos, and did just fine. It did take years all up to do the three coats inside and out (along with everything else), but we got it done, just the two of us. And despite an architect saying to us that you couldn't plaster more than half an hour without a break, we typically plastered three hours before a proper break - and just drank lots of fluids and had little snacks to power us through. And then we'd do another three hours. We did sleep very well at night. :rofl: It's actually not the plastering itself so much, as mixing the plaster and wheelbarrowing it and bucketing it up to heights that's the really hard work in the mix. And I did get much faster than in this clip!






I'll post a few more little building clips today - it's kind of nice looking back, now that we live in the place!


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## Knave

@SueC I agree completely and haven’t been as worried because of it. I feel that everything came together in exactly the way that it did so that I would own Cash. It’s like I can actually see God’s hand in it. For this I am grateful and I also assume it is possibly good for Bones to learn to take time off and to be a horse.


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## knightrider

Yes, thank you for asking @SueC. I rode Chorro this morning and he was fabulous, as always. Chorro is the horse that the young people prefer, and he gets ridden less by me because he so often goes out with the kids. I have to sneak a ride on him about once or twice a week so we don't wear him out too much. He has the most lovely smooth gait no matter what speed he goes.

Isabeau is the horse I put timid beginners on. Although she was horrible when I first got her, she's great now. And I've discovered that she has quite an affinity for scared helpless things. She likes taking care of creatures . . . which isn't too far from taking charge, which was ALWAYS Isabeau's intention.

I'll be riding her solo tomorrow. She's not my best solo horse, but she's getting better all the time. She won't get better at riding solo unless I ride her solo.


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## SueC

knightrider said:


> She won't get better at riding solo unless I ride her solo.



Exactly! :clap: This is true for so many things - it could be a motto to hang on one's wall!  And we don't get better at our warty sides unless we practice lots either! ;-)


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## Knave

This is funny for an old conversation we had. Little girl is out playing the flute for the animals and you can see she has a crowd. Look at the cows too.


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## SueC

Haha, that's so great playing the flute to the fascinated four-legs, @*Knave* !  I'll have to reciprocate sometime and take my fiddle out into the field and film the reaction. :rofl: You do realise we're both living in circuses? Yours is more acrobatic, we specialise in clowning, but we all have funny animals and musical instruments! ;-)

:dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05:

​ *Some More House-Building Clips*

Preparing the toe-ups for the strawbale walls:






This next one is a comedy blooper - I was supposed to interview Brett explaining how to build a strawbale wall, and he played silly-******s! :rofl:






Here he was more loquacious:






And I used to be bad with heights, and sort of still am, but much more practice now:






Now, good plaster versus dodgy plaster. Dodgy plaster falls off on adjacent surfaces when you just do _this_ - and on our "novice" plaster, we can do this...






And this is dodgy plaster, courtesy of a "professional" we briefly employed to help us...






This is interior plastering, last coat, mammoth 4-day session across the walls to make it seamless (sleeping at night though), that completed the living area interior in early 2014:






Things are so much more civilised when you can work to music - which we could, for much of our plastering post mid-2013 (when we got electricity to the house!).








Will be returning to normal Romeo-related birthday celebration broadcast next post!


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## SueC

*Ride Report* 

After spending the whole Sunday horizontal with a low-level migraine and missing out on my planned ride, I managed to snatch a ride this afternoon. It nearly didn't happen because the winds were gale-force by late afternoon, when I'd finished various outdoor jobs, but then I thought, "****** it, I'm riding anyway!"

Sunsmart was very pleased to be caught after evening feedtime, and enjoyed being groomed, as usual - showing me all his itchy zones he likes me to focus on - mostly his neck, especially the front of it (although he is ticklish on the chest), and over the withers, and the top of his back (but his ribs are really ticklish, and his belly is worse), and the entirity of the hindquarters and inside legs from the top to the hocks, and of course the tail.

All this time, Nelly and Benjamin were congenially hanging out with us, watching what we were doing, and getting the odd scratch themselves, which they liked - also they just like getting talked to, and know when you're talking to them versus talking to your horse.

When the tack was on, I asked them, "Nelly, Benjamin, would you like to come walking?" and they followed us out - they do exactly this too when we're just walking around the farm and ask them that question. Eye contact, invitation - "Great, we're coming!"

And off we went, around the house, like this:

:cowboy: onkey: onkey:

The three other donkeys were grazing by the farm dam in a group, and when they saw the procession, they joined in, until it looked like this:

:cowboy: onkey: onkey: onkey: onkey: onkey:

The really funny thing is that they were all in single file behind us, in size order - biggest to smallest - so Benjamin, Nelly, Don Quixote, Mary Lou, and Sparkle as tail-end Charlie. Brett laughed so much when I told him this later - you really couldn't make this up, it's so hilarious! He wants to see if he can sneak the performance onto film sometime.

Pretty soon after we got to the sand track, though, the donkeys all decided to veer right into the forest track, while Sunsmart and I kept going straight to the back of the property. We did just walking and jogging as it was late, Sunsmart was barefoot, and his hooves were soft from all the rain in the last couple of days, and therefore sensitive to the gumnuts and knobbly roots on sections of the track. At the south boundary, we headed around towards the swamp track, through the Middle Meadow, and then a small leap over Scary Creek, and back towards the house.

When I explained we were doing a second lap, my horse let me know he thought I was nuts - which was an unusually strong reaction. I know he doesn't like doing two laps of the same thing; he prefers doing all the tracks or going out (but I didn't put on his boots). I was also calling to Julian to see if he wanted to tag along, and he readily came, as he enjoys it. So with all that focusing on the ground and the horses, I didn't see the big rainclouds coming up, but obviously my horse knew about it. Heading out on the second loop, we looked like this:

:runninghorse2::runninghorse2::charge:

However, the two escorts soon veered off into the forest as well and up the hill, and Sunsmart and I continued straight on. I thought there was a fair chance I would meet the two new donkeys again, as they are an adventurous sort, and indeed, as we turned at the boundary, there they were, a little way up the hill:

onkey:onkey:

I called to them, and they came towards us, and joined us on the way home along the swamp track. When we started trotting, they fell behind a bit, but by the time we reached the Middle Meadow, we could see them again. And then the rain started - only an icy drizzle at first, but with the wind whipping around us like mad, we made for home quickly. As I untacked, the rain got heavier, and because of the wind chill, I towelled Sunsmart off and rugged him in his lightweight rain sheet.

Then I had a good look at those clouds and decided I was rugging Chasseur and Julian as well. Romeo was already in his warm quilt. By the time I threw a rug on Julian, sleet was pelting down, and I got to Chasseur quickly before he was saturated. The horses are all in their summer coats, and I can't tell you how freezing it got with gale-force sleet coming down. I attended to all the animals as quickly as I could, but by the time I got under the shelter of the carport on the way into the house, I was saturated and shaking. I stripped off my soaked thermal top and riding pants, hung them off the line, and jumped into a hot shower. My arms and legs had gone lobster red where they had been wet and the wind had blown through, and the hot water made a pins-and-needles sensation on them, like you get when you wash your hands after making snowballs.

Those late-season cold fronts can be pretty brutal. I hadn't rugged anyone except Romeo at night for weeks; we'd had warm spring weather...

I'm glad to be in warm clothes, eating the pizza we whipped up this evening - a potato pizza with ham, garlic, chilli sauce and cheddar, and some pocket pizzas filled with ham, mushrooms, tomato, mozzarella, capsicum, salami and parmesan - all wholemeal, of course, and super tasty. We've got a date to watch _Wire In The Blood_ after that, should be fun.

Just before I go, something else dug up for Romeo's 34th birthday celebrations. This was from July 2012, the day the first group of donkeys had just arrived. Sunsmart was trying to alert my Arabian mare to perceived danger, she was telling him to nick off and let her graze, and Romeo decided it was a good time for an excited run. Sunsmart saw that and pelted off behind him at a racing trot, actually bolting - tail up, head up - and then, suddenly, he didn't know what to do with his feet, and tried all sorts of things vaguely like a canter, bwahaha.






:happy-birthday8:​


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## knightrider

Isabeau did great on her solo ride. I probably shouldn't say anymore that she isn't wonderful solo because she was and is. We rode for 2 hours and met the road grader twice. There are some places on the dirt road where you cannot get off the road to let the grader pass. It's a huge noisy machine that takes up half the road. I was most fortunate that I was in accessible places to get off the road when the grader passed both times.

Isabeau was terrified of traffic, especially big trucks, when I first started training her. I rode her one whole summer, every ride, alongside our road on the other side of a fence, with a buffer of trees. It took her 3 months to get over leaping around when traffic went past. I'm so very proud of her. She gave me a fabulous ride this morning. No donkeys, though. I think your ride @SueC was hilarious!


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## SueC

knightrider said:


> Isabeau did great on her solo ride. I probably shouldn't say anymore that she isn't wonderful solo because she was and is. We rode for 2 hours and met the road grader twice. There are some places on the dirt road where you cannot get off the road to let the grader pass. It's a huge noisy machine that takes up half the road. I was most fortunate that I was in accessible places to get off the road when the grader passed both times.
> 
> Isabeau was terrified of traffic, especially big trucks, when I first started training her. I rode her one whole summer, every ride, alongside our road on the other side of a fence, with a buffer of trees. It took her 3 months to get over leaping around when traffic went past. I'm so very proud of her. She gave me a fabulous ride this morning. No donkeys, though. I think your ride @*SueC* was hilarious!


Yes well, they just keep on popping up! onkey: I wonder how I am going to explain it to them when they follow me and Sunsmart and I actually need to leave them on the home side of an exit gate?

That's very dedicated of you, three months of riding next to traffic - I'm sort of imagining the little sudden jumps I'd be getting from my horse if he wasn't used to traffic, that he does when he detects bogeymen. You know, "Whee!" and dipping his back and sort of leaving you sitting in thin air and trying to find your horse again with your backside... Superglue might be helpful here, although it would mean no more posting, and actually, come to think of it, you'd be walking around with a saddle stuck to your backside afterwards, which could be awkward... Maybe just velcro on both sides; or perhaps a smart seatbelt with a quick-release and parachute for emergencies?

As a kid in Germany, I rode a young horse for a while (before the French mare) who was completely terrified of anything with a motor in it. If he saw a tractor in the distance, his eyes would bug out on stalks and he'd just want to take off for home, and because I was inexperienced, that's often what ended up happening. It wasn't great fun for a beginner, but made me really appreciate the French mare - completely unspooky, but eager to do long floaty trots, and racing trots, and canters that felt like she was in 7-mile boots.

Hasn't Isabeau come a long way? Man, I wish I had a TARDIS. I'd love to ride with you!

:tardis: :charge::charge:


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## knightrider

@SueC, I was wishing I could ride with you too!


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## Knave

Ooh, I want to come too! I will have to bring Cashman since Bones is out for now.


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## SueC

That'd be great: Isabeau, Cashman, Sunsmart! :clap: We'll just invite Hero and Fizz and everyone else for a big ride too! inkunicorn:

This is why we needed this emoji: :tardis:

...because of all the fantasies of just dropping in on each others' rides, that goes on, on HF!

Was just thinking that the last time I did a group ride on my horse was in 2009, when we had him agisted in Albany - where I also had a regular riding buddy for around half my rides. The neighbour here has a TB in the paddock and I was hopeful when I got here, but nobody actually rides the thing...

Good thing my horse is a great solo horse. And I suppose the donkeys are trying to be riding buddies. But I'd so love to ride with my HF friends on a regular basis! Typical human, wanting what you can't have, but tell you what, it's wonderful to know you all and read what you have to say, and see your photographs! 

Happy riding to my fellow journallers! :racing:

Have a great evening, @*Knave* and @*knightrider* ! :hug:


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## Knave

Well, my ride was rather boring today. Cash and I loped around the pivot and then trotted little circles around sagebrush and grease wood. The only funny part was when I caught him and realized he’d been playing a bit much in the water trough. I laughed at him, but it is cold now and I can only imagine the dead fish, broken water trough, and angry husband come summertime. Lol

ETA: I was going to take out Zeus because he’s been begging to go, but I ended up without as much time today as planned. Tomorrow I will probably do better with him.


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## SueC

It's so funny, @Knave. Chip was like that with water, wouldn't leave hoses alone - always had to drink from the end and blow bubbles into the water and swish it dramatically around his mouth, and flick the running water this way and that with his tongue for fun. :rofl:

Bones must think Cash is mental! I know Sunsmart thinks my dog is mental when he sees her jumping into the dam when we go past it!


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## SueC

The other day I was writing on a thread and suddenly developed hypergraphia (how unusual ;-)) as I was thinking out loud about something vaguely related to the topic. It developed from a post about whether to buy a horse someone was really clicking with, that had a conformation flaw that would probably limit its range of endeavours:

https://www.horseforum.com/horse-co...es-horse-itself-outweigh-conformation-797485/

A few of us were talking about many instances where conformationally flawed horses (and people!) have excellent working lives, because of an ability to compensate with good conditioning and muscle strength, and with a great attitude. Of course, for every wonderful story like that there are many stories of heartbreak and broken dreams. The other person I was talking to here erred on the more conservative side than me when it comes to general horse riding, I think, but I was explaining that I'm a real naysayer when it comes to breeding. 

Which made me think of the whole circus in which I grew up... and this will be a preliminary side trip for this journal... I still wonder to this day how my birth family went from having two recreational horses that were flown out to Australia, to a (_grrrr_) horse stud / racing establishment. That was not the intention on arriving in this country - the ideas that had been spun were to have more family time, more riding time, have the horses on the same property as us, do some of that self-sufficiency stuff from the John Seymour classic that my grandfather had given us - grow some vegetables, keep chickens. A rosy sort of picture that never eventuated. Instead, my French Trotter mare was unceremoniously taken off me as they bred her to a famous stallion, even though they knew that the previous owners had sold her to us as a riding horse because she'd had six foals and the last one had been such a difficult birth that their veterinarian strongly advised against ever breeding her again, because of the risk it would kill her.










And kill her it did - she bled out straight after the birth, and noone could save her. I still fume about this thirty-four years later, and I am still so sad that this mare had to die for my parents' vanity, and angry about their Indian giving of her to me in the first place - my mare allegedly, until they wanted her for something else and told me I hadn't paid for her so she wasn't really mine. (Is that the same for every present anyone ever gives you? Nobody else ever did this to me.) I loved that horse with all my little-girl love - and we were so wonderfully suited to each other, and I say that with the hindsight of an adult, as well as the heart of that little girl - I was nine when I started riding her, and not quite twelve when she was wrenched off me.










My father had an alcoholic brother who served as a sort of family pariah - I can't even remember meeting him, although I must have, at my paternal aunt's daughter's wedding, which is the one rare contact I remember with that side of the family (besides my grandfather, whom we saw several times a year). And the irony is that my father was a workaholic, which is the more socially acceptable form of compulsion and running away from things - after all, it's the sort of compulsion that can lead to a high salary while everyone praises you for your excellent work ethic, and can lead to a racing yacht and trips to the opera with your wife in a Persian black-wool lambskin coat and a house in Italy and keeping horses in Germany where it's super expensive, etc - and then all the people who buy into this status game think you're so wonderful. But, work was always more important than family to them (although they would never admit that, possibly even to themselves), and I had a lonely childhood, often lost in books where families were warm things and people genuinely connected, or out with the dog or a horse in nature, which also got me away from the scapegoating and the chronic physical and emotional violence.

But I've often wondered if maybe that was it - my father had enough money and investments to retire in his 40s, but it seems like he couldn't handle the idea of spare time somehow, and perhaps also the idea of not being measured against someone else - and training and racing horses, of course, will eat your spare time and set you up in constant competition with other people. Anyway, after they did that, it was like an obsession to them - nothing else seemed to exist - the whole farm became a feedlot for more and more horses. While I saw more of them physically than when my father had had his office job and my mother her charities etc, their eyes were always glazed over, and there was even less human contact - not that they would have noticed it, because to them, to be in the same room and to talk about the weather or horse tack is to have human contact - and to me it's really not, that's just sound and fury about a passing parade of things. I loved school, where people actually asked interesting questions on a regular basis, and people asked you about your feelings and opinions and what was important to you, and often even _respected_ your answers, instead of telling you that you were stupid. I loved literature and music and art, which are exactly about the stuff that was so sorely missing from my life. And of course, animals will connect with you as well, and actually look you in the eye. They're not just madly dashing around on the surface of things, pretending there is no underneath and no above. They have depth and they are who they are, and don't pretend.

That's where I will leave my preliminary side trip today. Here's the main excerpt from what I wrote yesterday on the thread linked to at the start of this post:

I was always preaching "don't breed this horse" to my birth family, who were breeding from any old mare and blind to the flaws in the conformation, which in their case was too much of a gamble, considering they wanted horses that could race ultra fast on hard tracks, and win at it.

The real irony is that they started with a foundation mare whose breed (French Trotter) actually placed restrictions on which horses could be bred from - French Trotter mares back then had to run race qualifying times at least, before they could have foals registered in the Stud Book and eligible to run - which I think is a very good idea, because there is too much breeding going on, and many harness horses never even make it to track, and then what is their fate?

And then people were bringing my family mares that hadn't made the grade, "Would you like her as a broodmare?" and they just _could_ not say no. The two gift mares had six foals between them - one of them grew up to win two country races, and then broke down with the exact same tendon weakness that had finished his dam's racing prospects as a young mare. The rest didn't make it to races, despite years of effort, corrective shoeing, etc - the other gift mare had a reasonable country career after being adopted and raced, but had a twisted front leg, and passed that on to two of her three offspring, so badly it could not be compensated for in them - the third foal didn't make it because he was trained too late and inconsistently by people who now had too many horses to do a great job on educating any of them from thereon in.

_Warning: Breeding / racing rant ahead! _

All the arguments we'd had: (me) "She's got a twisted leg!" - (them) "Well, that could have happened _in utero_, and she isn't necessarily going to pass it on!" - (me) "Yeah, but statistically she has a far higher chance of passing on a twisted leg than a mare whose legs are straight!" etc etc, and with the first mare, (me) "She's blown out her tendons, and look at her conformation, she's prone to it!" - (them) "Yeah, but the people who started her didn't condition her properly, and asked too much too early, and we're not going to do that!" - (me) "Yes, but even if you do everything correctly, foals from this mare will still have a greater chance of breaking down with weak tendons than if you breed from a mare who didn't have this trouble!" - and so it went, and despite all the best care in the world, the only foal of hers that made it to the races first broke down as a five-year-old, after winning those two country races, and never won another, even though he was brought back twice after one-year recoveries from breakdown, and raced on and off until he was eleven, for just one more second place and a few minor placings (4th or 5th) in all those years.

This from people who were officially running a business... you just can't do that. $7,300 in stakes over eleven years of training, that's not a business proposition, that's a hobby. And that was the second most financially successful horse of the eleven horses in total that they bred themselves. Classic Julian made about $12,000 in his career, but his parents were both flawless in conformation and I had no arguments about him being brought into  existence. There was one more mare who made it to the track, also from two excellent parents, who made around $2,000 all up. So financially, was that whole breeding programme a good idea? Definitely not. Should these horses have been bred? For the purposes of racing, most of them, no - I'd have bred just three of those eleven.

Why am I harping on about commercially viable? Because the context was a business. I've personally never been interested in having horses as a business proposition; to me it's been a much-loved hobby - and my chosen pursuit was horse riding - mostly trail riding, endurance training and riding, dressage training, some show riding, a fair few gymkhanas, and with my main horse of the last decade, nothing at all competitive - just pure hobby riding (at endurance pace and with dressage training) - we have other priorities in our lives than for me to compete with horses, which would eliminate so much else of what we value as a couple. But, I love my horses (and donkeys).









And one of the reasons I harped on also, is because when I was growing up and wanted to go to a competition with my mare after training hard for it, I was not encouraged - "That's just a hobby, it's not worth trailering you all over the place." So I _rode_ to a few endurance rides myself, and because of my mare's success in our junior division (won first-up _and_ best conditioned), pressure was put on my parents to give her some more outings with me, further abroad. So I had a handful more, plus some gymkhanas and shows; and later, when I was at university, and could drive the float myself, some more opportunities to compete. And the point I'm making here is that the entire racehorse breeding programme my parents undertook was not commercially viable - it cost them time and money, instead of even paying for itself - so of course I was seeing the irony of their "what we do is business" claim...

For anyone interested in how these things go:

The overall statistics from 30+ years of harness breeding and racing from my birth family...



11 home bred horses = 2 country race winners, 1 placegetter
 ...of which, 3 home bred horses that were bred from parents with flawless conformation and performance = 1 country race winner, 1 placegetter



 4 yearlings bought early on after close examination (and I liked all of these in conformation and temperament, no quibbles) = 4 race winners, 3 of them commercially worthwhile


1 yearling bought simply because she was the full sister of the most successful of the above group = not made to track (I wouldn't have bought her as she was too small; she barely made 14hh at maturity)


4 adult racehorses with issues bought = 3 country race winners, 1 placegetter after purchase / adoption

So, that was a little long... :ZZZ: :ZZZ: :ZZZ: :ZZZ: :ZZZ: 

The horses I have here now are four retirees from harness racing. Romeo I rode when I was younger; Sunsmart is my current horse, Julian will be saddle trained to take over for a bit eventually, and Chasseur is the horse who is just paddock sound after his tendon trouble (but thankfully totally so). He's a real sweetie, and the most like his French grandmother in appearance and disposition.





 

Left to right (at start): Sunsmart, Julian, Chasseur - when we adopted Julian last year. All of them are beautiful horses who would all have been very fine riding horses (and one of them truly is, one of them will be, but the chestnut is injured and 24). None of them made commercially viable racehorses - even though two of them are country race winners. It's a tough sport.






























​

So to wind up my rather looooooooong musings this morning: It's so much easier to have a sound and totally enjoyable riding horse, than a successful horse racing at track -_ and there's so much less collateral damage_ (think: dog food). I love my riding, and encourage other enthusiasts to do the same - to work with a horse they really like, to do it sensibly and well, and enjoy it, and give the horse a long and decent life in return for their services to you - services which have to be tailored to the individual's capabilities and inclinations, on both sides - horse and human.


_Everyone's thoughts on any of the matters raised here are welcome - but only if you want to! _


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## SueC

A topical song:


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## horseluvr2524

I love your videos of your herd in motion. So beautiful! I get that familiar heartache to be around a horse again, and to be riding ... you know, that longing. Gosh I miss it! A new home near my horse in the spring just can't come fast enough.


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## Knave

I never paid any attention to minor conformation. I really still lack the knowledge I should have about it, but have learned more and more. I say this because I stopped reading that thread after the first couple posts, but I didn’t stop thinking about it.

Runt was taken out early because of a vet error in her youth. Following her I had two other horses taken out early, but they were because of conformation flaws. Sassy was a lovely mare, I couldn’t have asked for better, and she got navicular at 11. General was next with also career ending ringbone at 11. I bought him thinking I better understood conformation, and yet I did not know a 1250# animal should not be the bearer of size 0 feet.

A vet misdiagnosed Bones due to a conformation error and thought he should be put down and had his career ended at 3. (This error I am able to manage and has not dramatically effected his long term career at this point, nor do I think it will with good management.) This is why I thought about the post. I loved Sassy and General was many people’s dream horse (a bit condescending though). Bones is my great friend and quite the athlete, although we can argue many points against his having been bred obviously.

Would I knowingly buy a horse with a conformation flaw again? I don’t really think so. Not because I don’t think that they can work or understand that many live to be amazing athletes with long lives, but I have gambled and lost even when I didn’t know I was betting. I take nothing away from the deficits the horses I own carry, and plan on them living long and productive lives, but to knowingly make that decision... I just don’t think I could.


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## gottatrot

Knave said:


> Would I knowingly buy a horse with a conformation flaw again? I don’t really think so. Not because I don’t think that they can work or understand that many live to be amazing athletes with long lives, but I have gambled and lost even when I didn’t know I was betting. I take nothing away from the deficits the horses I own carry, and plan on them living long and productive lives, but to knowingly make that decision... I just don’t think I could.


Good post, I agree. The trick comes when someone gives you a free horse, and you're already attached...


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## SueC

Another little song from an excellent expat Australian artist...


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## SueC

Before I do anything else, something's been on my mind and I will add it in post-script to the long post I wrote on the previous page.

It's about how everyone seems to make the assumption that if you grew up with a loaded family, you're spoilt little rich girl. And people never thought it until they met my parents, which, as I became wiser, not so many people did. My own life has been so different from theirs, from the go-get.

I was actually unaware of my family's financial position for much of my childhood. In Germany we lived in a row house like everyone else, and looked like everyone else. I never saw our family as being in any way elevated above anyone else - and in some ways that was very good, because I always felt like just one of the sea of humanity, which is what everybody is, although ostentatiously rich people sometimes think they are somehow above all that.

My father never wrote his income on any school forms, just "none of your business", which as a young child made me suspect we were poor and he was ashamed. The other reason I thought that is because invariably, my primary school classmates from average financial backgrounds had more toys than me and did more extracurricular stuff you had to pay for, like ballet school and piano lessons and riding lessons. (I did go to a summer sailing school once to learn knot-making and dinghy sailing, but so did all sorts of other people.) And I actually really dug my heels in to get riding lessons with one of my best buddies from primary school, whose family my mother referred to as "Reds", who were definitely average income and just saved up to give their children these experiences - I know this because she and I discussed all of this as adults a few years back, and compared notes, and she feels that she had the far better deal with her family (especially in terms of warmth and feeling safe). Although she did say that in her childhood she thought I was terribly spoilt _when my parents bought a horse_, because her family couldn't afford that, and that she was awfully jealous; and she actually apologised for behaving like an *** to me about it at the time (she stopped talking to me for a while back then). But I can see why she would have felt bad, because as a little girl she loved horses as much as I did, and I would gladly have shared with her at the time too.

I suppose the acquisition of a horse when I was nine (and a racing yacht at about the same time) was evidence against my childhood working hypothesis that my father was ashamed of his low income, but children don't do formal operational thinking at that age, they are just impressionistic creatures. We didn't live in a mansion, and our shoes weren't made of gold like in the cartoons, and my life on the surface was much like that of people all around me. I actually knew a girl who lived in a mansion though, through Year 5 at school, and stayed over with her once, simply because I liked her and she was a bit ostracised for being "foreign" - her father was a doctor from Eastern Europe somewhere, but my mother hissed that he was really a spy. She was a lovely girl, Angela was her name, and I was surprised that her family employed a cook, who spoke to Angela in, I think it was Czech. My budding friendship with her was not encouraged, and I lost touch with her when we moved to Australia soon after. I wonder how she fared, and how much "little rich girl" she was tarred with, on top of being branded a foreigner. It's so sad how people judge and condemn others for things like that - being too rich, too poor, too this, too that, from another country etc. These are such idiotic things to characterise people on - it's the contents of a person's mind and heart that matters, not all that surface stuff.

I carried on with the impression that my parents were financially pressed when we got to Australia. Yes, they'd just flown out two horses and shipped over their racing yacht and a container full of household goods and bought a farm, but I lived under the impression for a long time that they'd spent their financial reserves doing that, and that it was important for me to be extremely modest so that nobody would starve, now that my father wasn't at a job fulltime. The stuff the family bought for everyday life was all bargain basement stuff. I lived in a handful of K-Mart clothes and assorted hand-me-downs I plucked from the wardrobe. You can actually see it here:










I remember that outfit very well. I was 13 and I had very little clothing that suited the hot Australian summer, so I found an old sleeveless top of my mother's from the 1970s from her "doesn't fit anymore" stash, and wore that with my old gym shorts from Germany, and a horrid pair of gumboots that made my feet itch. I didn't own a bra at this point, and it was killing me to ride. The hair was testament to the fact that I never got to visit a hairdresser in Australia until I could pay for it myself from my university student living allowance. Things would have been really different had my grandmother been around - but she was half a globe away.

The Arabian filly, by the way, was two here, and I'd gotten her half-price as a result of the 1983 drought, because she looked like this when I got her:










In reaction to having the French mare taken off me, I decided I never wanted to be put into that kind of position again, and used some savings from personal possessions I had sold when we left Germany for half the purchase price of this filly, begging the loan of the rest as a chores mortgage, which I paid off for years - but it was my name on the horse's papers, this time.

This is us when I was 15 and she was 4, at around the time of our first endurance competition. I had grown out of my childhood riding pants and got sore riding in jeans because of the seams, so I found an old pair of my mother's riding pants in the discard section of her wardrobe, and modified it on the sewing machine into a semblance of a fit, and rode in that on the longer training rides.










I also remember those singlets well. I had three of them, all from a K-Mart sale - one white, one pastel yellow, one pastel pink. The white one was my favourite, and I wore it for "formal" with my best jeans. The singlets were polyester-cotton, and I wore them until the seams came undone and the cotton was washed out of the fabric and you could read a newspaper through it. I actually had two bras now, but they were low-end K-Mart stuff, very low support, certainly not suited to sports, and horse-riding especially. That would have been far out of the allowed price range. Thank goodness my horse was a smooth ride, but it was still uncomfortable and had me tending to hunch when riding.

It's just little details like that, and as an adult you look back and you know that your own children would have been provided for in these matters, even though Brett and I are quite average earners compared to my birth family at that age, and have less money to splash around than they did when I was growing up, even after our move to Australia. They "couldn't afford" a new lead rope or a decent bra for their daughter (let alone a dress for the formal, a decent warm jacket, some actual non-casual clothes, shoes other than K-Mart sneakers or old gumboots), but they were buying one racehorse yearling after the other.

My adult mind simply boggles. In winter I was often in school with wet feet, because fabric sneakers aren't appropriate winter footwear. I had my Year 1 schoolbag from Germany right up until Year 12 in Australia (they do make quality items in Germany, but a primary school backpack bag isn't really that great for high school, not that anyone cared). In my final school year, I got embarrassed about my bright primary colours plastic rectangle bag and appropriated my father's old hiking backpack out of the discard wardrobe, which was at least a neutral colour.

I had skipped several grades at school and went to university at the tender age of 16 on a Science scholarship. Family life had never been pleasant, but really came to a head then. I had to do university stuff like spend evenings in the library doing closed-reserve research for my botany assignment - and my parents decided this was a transparent excuse and that I was really partying, and curfewed me. I was living with my brother in the city, and he put about these sorts of stories also. Apparently I was having wild sex with boys - me, the studious, dead serious, dead focused person. These accusations really stung. I got fed up, and I got very upset, and talked to the university counsellor, and the university people rallied around me, and explained to me that the situation was untenable and I couldn't be expected to live with it. I was so relieved - I was "spoilt", remember? They did the paperwork to get me an independent student allowance that I could subsist on, and I split from my family around the time of my 17th birthday.

Other people helped me move quietly out of my parents' city investment property, where I'd lived in a bare room with a bed, small desk, built-in wardrobe, bare walls (decorating not allowed), and a bar heater I was lectured not to use so often so that I had spent most of my winters doing homework sitting at a desk wrapped in a bed quilt. It was easy to just pick a time when my brother was at his friend's place for the night, and pack up the bed, student desk and clothes I had. I shared a dingy flat with another person and rode to university on my bicycle, as I had done before, because I'd not had sufficient money for the bus fare, and my brother, who had a car courtesy of my family, and studied at the same university, did not like to give me lifts when he went to campus - he couldn't be bothered coordinating the starting and leaving times each day, etc.

So I left quietly, and went into hiding, and the proverbial hit the fan, as you can imagine. My parents were initially under the impression they could legally force me back into their "care" because I was under 18 - but this notion was soon put to rest. University staff remained supportive of me, but around this time I had what I in retrospect think was a reactive depression to the whole situation, and from that time until I graduated university, with an added Grad.Dip.Ed on top of my double major B.Sc., I really really struggled with self-esteem and confidence, and felt like a leper somehow. I yearned for my grandmother - someone where I could just put my head in their lap and feel cared for as a human being. There was no such person in my life.

I can write all that now, thirty years on, from the basis of a stable, loving home life - the thing I didn't have as a child. I couldn't have written like this without that present reality. Many people have stories like this one - it is far from unusual. Friends of mine have had traumatic upbringings without emotional security too, and it's interesting to de-brief and to compare notes. An adopted sister of mine had this sort of thing, and more, happen to her - alcoholic father, grinding poverty, sexually abused by a family member for years, etc. When we compared notes, she was interested in how the patterns were so similar, even though my parents had had ample financial means, and hers had not. The added injury, of you come from a wealthy family, is that outsiders often think you were a "spoilt little rich girl" when nothing could have been further from the truth.

Not that I would have preferred that either - people like that have their own demons to deal with. The advantage of having lots of misery in your early life is that you don't tend to grow up looking down on other people, and that you understand that the overt impression is often so different from the reality. Something worth knowing.

And should this post move anyone, please use that emotional energy to be understanding of someone else, and to look deeper than the surface when you meet new people.


:tardis: _...I got away._


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## Knave

I am sorry all of that happened. Of course you were depressed over it; anyone would be in the same situation. 

I do not think having money always leads to spoiled kids, just as I don’t think not having money always leads to grateful children. I think one way or another, childhood depends little on wealth unless necessities are limited (like the ability to have a full belly). It is the necessary things that do not cost money that are more valuable than those that do.


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## horseluvr2524

It always seems so inadequate to say I'm sorry, but I'm sorry that your parents didn't provide you a better home life. I can relate to some of the things you say. My parents were middle class. They ensured that myself and my siblings had decent clothes to wear, and other such necessities. We got to have some fun vacations and do different things. My mother let me have all kinds of animals, although she never wanted to put out the money to care for them properly.

It took me growing up to realize just how much emotional abuse I endured, and my siblings as well. My mother and I were always great friends growing up, and it took me getting married and seeing from my husband's family's example what a normal, stable, functional relationship should look like, for me to recognize those very subtle manipulations and put downs that my mother would do to me. There were times that she was encouraging to me, and in the very next instance would turn around and put me down, her life was harder, my problems didn't matter, type of stuff. I dealt with recurrent, what I would call "suicidal depression" for many years. Often times when my parents were angry with me for one reason or another, I sat in my room and cried and thought about how everyone would be better off if I wasn't around. It was all my animals that kept me from going through with suicide, because I knew they wouldn't get good care if I wasn't around. If not for them ... I don't know.

Having my first child now, it's been very difficult dealing with my decision to not include my mother in my life anymore. There are so many recent reasons why that I just can't relive at the moment. In many ways, she is worse now in her behavior than when I was a child. She makes me feel horrible as a person, like the most lowly being on the planet, which is the farthest thing from the truth because I have always been a "goody two shoes" type of person, and always been caring and respectful of others. I definitely don't want her associated with my daughter. I want to provide my daughter with a good home life and stable, healthy family relationships, and my mom would not be one of those.

I am so glad that through my husband, my husband's family, my animals, and now my daughter as well, I have been able to discover what healthy relationships look like, and to discover what real love is supposed to look and feel like. It makes me happy to see how far I, and others like you, have risen above our past to find a brighter future for ourselves, rather than repeating the same patterns of abuse.


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## SueC

Yeah, I completely agree with your thinking there, @Knave. You only need enough money for decent nutritious food and shelter and some decent basics; beyond that, it's the things you can't buy with money that make your life worth living. Isn't it funny how sunrises and sunsets are free - as is snow, and as are frosty windowpanes, and snowballs, and snowmen, and wildflowers, and misty mornings, and crackling fires, and electrical storms, and butterflies. And how real love is something that money can't buy either! Even books can be borrowed from a library. A smile costs nothing, but as they say, gives so much. And so on!


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## SueC

@*horseluvr2524* , I am so very glad that you too got away, and got to see what real love looks like, and have ended up in a secure and happy place. Sometimes we have to make tough decisions about low contact or no contact with family of origin, or in-laws etc, because (revelation of revelations...) our own emotional health is important, as is the emotional health of the people close to us.

Thank you for telling some of your own unfavourite experiences, and how your got through. I wish your family of choice much happiness, good health, laughter and wings to fly. Congratulations again on your little girl. Her life will be different. 

If anyone needs a good resource for dealing with difficult family issues, this one is my favourite, and I wish I'd had this as a teenager - it would have spared me so much ignorance, guesswork and running around in a fog.

https://littleredsurvivor.com/

 to all.


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## SueC

Now if I'd had a pet cat instead of a horse, I could have tucked it under my arm and taken it with me when I left home because of family problems. I could have fed it on leftover tuna casserole and gotten it through - but of course, this is not possible with a horse. I've often wondered how my life from that point would have been different if I hadn't had a horse. It is doubtful I would ever have had more than a very distant relationship with my parents from that time on, if it hadn't been for my horse, on their farm. And I was missing my horse, who was my best friend.

There was no way I could afford to board her in Perth, and have her with me. I was also worried that they would sell her to recoup costs of board, which was legally a possibility. They didn't make any overt threat about that, but they didn't have to. I'd seen what happened with the French mare, and learnt the lesson that the person with the money is the person with the legal power. I was also well programmed in debt, because in my birth family, nothing was given to me without strings attached - you always owed, financially, emotionally. I saw a snippet as a young person about the costs of raising a child to age 18; on average around $100,000, and my heart sank at the thought of how I would ever repay that - because I thought I wouldn't be free until I did. Now I know, of course, that this is ridiculous - I did not ask to be born, and when adults decide to have children, it is their legal and moral obligation to provide for them until age 18.

When I was a child and young teenager, there were frequent examples of my father holding forth to the family that everything was financed by his money and the rest of us were basically nobodies living on his largesse. This was usually accompanied by lots of shouting and cursing and people calling each other names and, on particularly emotional occasions, with things being thrown or fists flying. There were memorable times later on too, where my father sat at the table with his one best mate from horse training, rehashing an old favourite that once you married, you only got 50 cents in the dollar, and once you had children, even less than that. One time they even discussed how many hours of "service" by prostitutes you could afford on the money you would save if you didn't get married.

I think if anyone is reading this who also read my early journal, they will now start to understand why I took a break from journalling after telling an initially sanitised and heavily edited version of the story that was presentable to the public, when people started to tell me what a dream childhood I had had. This wasn't right, and made me think of all the things I hadn't said, that were burning inside of me at the notion of my allegedly wonderful childhood. Things that I've been beginning to relate after returning to my journal after that break. We're often conditioned not to talk about this stuff, but we should feel free to tell our stories as they really were. It helped me feel like less of a freak that other people did (like Cherilyn in the link above) - and it helped me to make sense of my childhood, and to recover emotionally from what I had been through. I'm now being straight-out with these things, both to set the record straight, and because telling our genuine stories is so helpful to others who have experienced similar hidden things.

So, to pick up the story, at 17, after half a year of comparative financial independence on a student allowance, so that my family could no longer threaten my very existence with the fact that they had money and I did not, I tentatively re-contacted them. Letters from them had been forwarded to me courtesy of the university - angry letters accusing me of rebellion and immorality and lies and lack of gratitude and selfishness, and about how they'd only ever wanted the best for me. I was too exhausted at this point to be angry about this (and I had every right to be), so I was just sad, and worried for my mare. And so to see my mare, and to try to ensure her welfare, I tried to patch things up with my family.

Were I advising this person now, I'd tell her it was not a good idea - but at the same time, how to solve the problem about the horse? She was very well-bred, and had had two years of light but very successful competition in junior endurance, and at a handful of gymkhanas and shows. I got on my bicycle at one point, on the weekend, and cycled 60km to an Arabian stud out at Serpentine, whose owner I knew from the endurance circle, to ask him whether he wanted to lease my mare for the duration of my studies to breed foals from. This stud, though, was breeding fashionable Egyptian lines, and they weren't interested in a Crabbet/Polish mare as a temporary addition to their breeding stock. I didn't know anyone else breeding as my circle was limited, and definitely wasn't going to lease her out as a riding horse, from what I'd seen of that, so I had run out of potential options.

I did have the advantage this time around that I was financially independent of my family for food and rent, and that it had been made clear that I had adult responsibilities as a university student, and therefore had the right to make my life decisions for myself, and to live according to my own conscience. It gave me a bit more power in what had hitherto been a powerless equation for me. - Reading the start of this paragraph back, I kind of have to laugh at the potential notion this might raise that I might have been partying, trying recreational drugs, drinking myself under the table, and having promiscuous flings - things that were indeed going on all around me, and that I was accused of, but never did. From the time I was in senior high school, I studied three hours a night, voluntarily, because I loved learning and because I wanted to get the heck out of my family situation, and the only way that was going to happen, in the long term, was with a good job after graduation. I've never in my life been in a nightclub, and I've never participated in recreational drinking or drug-taking. I was way too focused on survival to do things like that - and I know that if I hadn't been, I could have gone into a spiralling descent into the abyss. People from backgrounds like mine do not generally have easy relationships with alcohol and drugs, and it can be best just to have no relationship at all with these things.

So because of my mare, I went back and patched things up with my family, but of course on the understanding that I was the villain here. I went and saw my mare on some weekends, and I spent all my university vacations on the farm, riding my horse, mucking out stables, helping with general training and with the education of young horses, strapping at races - so that I didn't have to worry about my mare. As far as my parents were concerned, I was having pleasant "horse holidays" with them and making personal savings on my food expenditure, since I was obviously fed while I was present. I wasn't asked how I saw it. As an adult looking back, I can see that it solved my horse problem, and gave me a lot of horse handling and training experience. I'd already educated my Arabian mare to saddle solo; now I was educating young harness horses, and in time, re-training some of them to saddle. I could see what worked, and what did not. And though I really detest horse racing, for a number of reasons other than that it was foisted on me by my family of origin and that my beloved French mare had died in the furthering of this parental fantasy, I did really enjoy, for example, riding Romeo to help settle him, and endurance training with the wonderful Chip to help give him more race stamina (I also got one entry-level ride with him out of it!).

But the flip side, of course, is that you're living these false relationships, where all the dreadful stuff is just ignored, and nobody ever says sorry to you about what happened. You are sort of burying your real self, and the child that you were, in the attainment of a faux peace that is really no peace at all, not for you. You're having to compartmentalise what happened to you as a child, and what is continuing to happen to you in your relationships with these people. And that is a heavy price to pay, and a price I stopped paying in my 40s, and that I would advise anyone not to pay if they can at all find an alternative way.

The other disadvantage of how I spent my university vacations is that I couldn't go on study-related work experience, I couldn't network, I couldn't get paid vacation work to perhaps get my transport problem solved and be able to afford more fruit and vegetables and protein than my student allowance afforded. My parents always saw themselves as doing me this massive favour by "taking me in" during university vacations, but my peers were becoming socially sharper, weren't cycling in wind and rain and getting bronchitis every winter, were getting real-life work experience, were socialising with each other like normal human beings. When I was on the farm, the only human beings were my family - i.e. no genuine human contact - and the best relationships I had were with the horses.

:charge: :charge: :charge:


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## SueC

*Some Notes On Physical And Emotional Violence*

Physical violence is really obvious: Cheeks are slapped, your ears are banged, fists fly, noses bleed, skin is bruised, wooden cutting boards are broken over your head, your shins are kicked viciously, you are chased with implements which will be applied to you violently if you don't get away, skin is bunched and twisted till it burns, hair is yanked painfully, you are thrown against walls and on the floor, your stomach is punched. All these things happened to me at the hands of my family, and all three of them participated: Father, mother, eight years older brother. I was the youngest, and no physical match for them. At age 14, I was taller than my mother and once, after she broke that cutting board over my head and pursued my running self with more threats and flying fists, and I got trapped in a corner, I caught and held on to her wrists to stop her hitting me, and she hissed, "How dare you!" and started kicking my shins to pulp.

I don't remember a time when there wasn't physical violence in my family. It was already a dark presence when I was in the cradle, and I could feel it even then. People say there are no memories before age three, but this is wrong. There are no _verbal_ memories, but there are impressions, mental photographs, states of feeling that can be remembered, just as other nonverbal creatures can remember, especially if you felt in danger from the beginning. _If_ there is neural pruning that deletes early memories from most people - well, that didn't happen to me. I could reliably describe the first nursery I was in back to my parents as an adult, even though I was in it for less than a year and had no recollection of the rest of the house we lived in then, and moved from when I was still a toddler. I knew where the door was - right in front of me and slightly to the right, and have memories of it opening in the dark and making an upright rectangle of light, like a film someone has shown you. I knew the window was to my left, a square of light in the daytime, although I didn't know it was a window. I saw the bars of my cot and I experimented with moving my legs, which were _over there_ visually, but somehow seemed connected to me. I asked my mother once, as an adult, about a doll I was sure I'd had once and was missing from my childhood collection - a red doll, simple fabric, flattish, round head - and she said that was my first doll that was taken away when I was eight months old, because I'd sucked its arms to pieces and it could no longer be washed and made presentable and hygienic. She wondered I could remember it.

I was a restless and anxious baby, and sucked my own thumbs raw. I was still sucking them at age three and had mustard applied to them, bandages around my hands at night, and admonitions to be sensible. My parents apparently had no clue about the reason I was doing this; it always seemed to be treated as some sort of stable vice. I was terrified and I remember the terror. It was the first sensation of my dawning consciousness. There was a darkness and I was alone. The darkness was more than the physical darkness that came on and off in the day-night cycles of this planet. It was an ominous thing; it inhabited the air.

I don't remember anything specific apart from this - other than that I hated the sensation of lying in wet nappies from very early on, and cried, and learnt to cry when I knew it was coming. My mother's side of this story is that she took me to the doctor at three months because she'd find me in a purple fit and open my nappy to find it dry - and then I would immediately empty my bladder. The doctor was very practical and told her to hold me above a potty instead of letting me go on my nappy. My head had to be supported, but it worked. If there's any sceptics out there about early bladder control, they should read up about the African tribes that toilet train their babies from birth, to a sound cue, and hold them over the bushes - or research the Scandinavian concept of "elimination communication". It's a nice alternative to learned helplessness.

The first act of violence I distinctly remember in detail is when I was around three or four? I don't know, except that it happened in Italy and that the dining table still towered over the top of my head, because I remember that. There was yelling from the kitchen and then my father put my mother into the rubbish bin. I was mortified - and strangely I laughed, hysterically, in big sobs of brittle laughter that felt as if it was coming from someone else, and I was ashamed and horrified that I was laughing, and thinking I must be a bad person to do it. And then I sucked my thumbs even harder at night.

The episode disappeared under the surface of things. Nobody referred to it. People swanned around in their holiday clothes and went sailing. Whipped cream was served with the cake. What violence? It was always like that. It officially didn't happen. You were just crazy and had a vivid fantasy life. You'd been born neurotic, what else could be expected? You were a bad person to make such things up. You had a perfectly nice, happy family. So you stopped asking about it. And you sucked your thumb, and hid behind people, and were afraid of new people, and were "the problem child".

There is this saying in psychology that if parents bring their child to psychotherapy, it's they who really need the treatment. My mother went psychologist shopping until she found someone who agreed I was the problem and she was the victim. By this time, she'd made me into "the other woman" competing for her husband's affection. When I was six or seven, I overheard my primary school principal irately telling my father once, after listening to my mother going on about me and my ills, that my mother needed psychiatric treatment, not me. It was a little fairy light in a dark universe, a fairy light that said, "Maybe it's not true that you are a freak, that you are bad, that it's all your fault."

Other people were both hell and redemption. My family was unsafe, skating on this perfect disneyfied surface but turning into hell beneath on a regular basis, a hell that was afterwards denied and glossed over, until it ate everybody. Redemption was in people like my first primary school teacher, whom I had for two years: In her thirties, warm, colourful, encouraging, player of multiple musical instruments, facilitator of art and craft and stories, patient and highly competent instructor in grammar and spelling and mathematics. I secretly wanted to sit on her lap, to hug her, to tell her my troubles. I didn't, but she picked up a fair amount, I think, and was so helpful to me on my road.

Within six months of being in her class, I was no longer undersized and skinny, I had hope in my little heart, and lovely things to look forward to every weekday. I learnt to smile - I'm smiling on my Year 2 class photo, beaming ear to ear, delighted to be there - and I learnt that there were warm, safe people in this world. And I excelled academically, blossoming with the encouragement, and the acceptance of me as a person, which she gave me. Art classes were heaven. I loved to paint. I loved the new ideas she showed us, and the materials she brought in - the paints, the glitters, the matchsticks for making cute wooden hedgehogs with pointy noses. I loved her clowning, her involvement with us.

At home there was none of this. My mother cooked and cleaned the house and made sure I made my bed and did my homework, but it was like living with a caretaker, not a mother. We didn't do art and craft, or colouring - I was given colouring books to take to my room and do on my own. We didn't do storytimes, and if I came out of my bedroom wanting to read a book passage I'd just come across and loved out to my parents, their expressions froze, and they tried to find me other things to do that would get me out from under their feet. As a family, we played cards and board games - and my mother was always upset if she got beaten at the silly competitive games, and I learnt early on to make deliberate mistakes and let her win, to avoid that emotional fallout.

It was much more fun playing with my friends, who had non-competitive games like fishing for magnetic fish with a magnetic fishing rod, or loading up a mechanical donkey's basket with goods until its spring was activated and the donkey kicked up int hindquarters, scattering everything while we laughed and laughed. Or we played with plasticine - the hairdressing salon with the plasticine hair sprouting from dolls was particular fun - or we braided bracelets, or made flower crowns, or pretended to be fairies, or Indians, or veterinarians tending to our plush animal collections. We flew kites and rolled in the mud and rode our bicycles, and went to the dairy farm to brush the cows and help with milking. We went to the circus when it was in town, and begged to brush the ponies. My father was angry about that, saying that these people were exploiting child labour. I felt bad, but went back anyway, with my friends, breathing in the scents of the big animals I learnt to love.

And so I was a bit buffered, from what went on in my family. In those days, the violence was successfully concealed - it was done quietly, without the neighbours hearing, with promises of more painful punishments if you screamed. And of course, you always deserved what you got, which is the pattern in such families. The usual conflict point for me was when I didn't agree with something my parents said, or when I wanted something different to what they wanted, or when was tired of being insulted, and flung a name back at them for a change, or when I called my mother a bad mother because she would instruct my brother to beat me to spare her the dirty work. There was a lot of conflict with my mother when I was in primary school, over things like my not wanting to wear pink clothes and pointy shoes, or not liking sugar in my cream, and not eating it, or generally expressing personal preferences. My favourite colours were, variously, yellow, red, blue or green, early on; violet and other complex colours later. I didn't like pointy shoes, they hurt my feet - and I ended up with deformed toes from footwear like that, and from my feet getting too big for my shoes as I was growing.

Once my family bought a horse when I was nine, this also became a good tactic for them. If I expressed unhappiness with my family, they could say, "We bought the little miss a horse, and she's still not happy, see how ungrateful she is, and what a piece of work?" And half the world believed it.

Once we moved to Australia, the gloves were off. We were on a remote farm, and nobody could hear what was going on. Loud yelling and physical violence were now a daily reality. When not at school I hid in books, over my homework, under headphones, went walking on long walks with my Arabian filly to where I could not hear the yelling. I remember being 14 and waking up, once again, to raised and angry voices, and praying that one day, when I was an adult, I would have a family where people loved each other, and treated each other with decency, and enjoyed one another's company. It took a while, and the quest took wrong turns, but it did happen. :happydance:

Emotional violence is a harder thing to detect than physical violence, especially if you grow up with it, and it's your daily "normal". There are no visible bruises, and you do not bleed, or swell up. The overt stuff is put-downs, gaslighting ("You're imagining things again!"), undermining your confidence - but there are also lots of very subtle versions of this, which I too ( @*horseluvr2524* :hug did not fully understand until more recent years.

Here's an excellent website about this common problem - thank you, Veronica:

https://theinvisiblescar.wordpress.com/

And an example of some very powerful thinking that really helped me as a teenager: _Because you say, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and know not that you are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked._ (from Revelation)


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## Knave

I am so sorry about these things. I am glad you have such a lovely life now.


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## SueC

Probably the best song I know about the subject of abusive relationships and their fallout is this one, written by someone looking back from middle age.






It is good when people share their experiences like this. This is such an awfully common thing, but you wouldn't know it from all the silence about it. Everyone reading who has been affected by such things, please know you are not alone, and you don't have to do these things alone. There are others to reach out to, and you don't have to feel like you're a failure as a human being. For many years, the best people I found to talk to were professionals in the field of psychology and trauma recovery. Then the future arrived, along with really helpful websites. Now that I've learnt to talk about these things, I talk about them with my friends, and wonder why any of us were ever silent. I only became comfortable talking about this stuff in public in recent years, and now I simply want to tell my own story, and to bear witness, and to break the conspiracy of silence.

This is not about blame. This is about truth, and stopping the pain, and stopping the cycle of abuse.

And yeah, having a horse is no magic totem to shield you from such experiences! ;-)


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## SueC

Knave said:


> I am so sorry about these things. I am glad you have such a lovely life now.


Thank you... :hug: That's over now, @*Knave* ; although we always carry it with us, and it's part of what shapes us as human beings. It's amazing how many flowers will grow in all that shi't though. inkunicorn: It's like a law of nature. Some of the loveliest people I know have had shocking experiences growing up - all under a veil of silence. Opening up about it lets the daylight in, and shows others who might be on hard roads that there is hope, and that they aren't crazy. It's the only way to break these cycles.

Also, I take so little for granted because of it all.  Which means that the joy I have had since, has well and truly eclipsed all the sorrow. Here's a lovely and famous poem about that.
*

On Joy and Sorrow*
_ Kahlil Gibran_

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. 

Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed. 

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.​


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## SueC

*About Scales Of Abuse*

If you go to a hospital, you'll find people in the cancer ward, people recovering from heart attacks, people with broken bones, diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver, organ failure, life-threatening infections, wounds that need stitching up, foreign bodies in ears and up the nostrils of infants - many many different things. Who's hurting the most, and does it matter? All these people need care and attention.

I've also said before: Say you had two children, and one of them nearly died of cancer, and only just pulled through, after terrible and painful treatment. And then your other child breaks a leg. Do you say, "Hush, Child B, be grateful you didn't have what Child A had?" - Only if you're seriously unhinged. Even if your child just bumps their elbow, you kiss it better. Pain is pain, injury is injury, love is love.

It's pretty common, when I'm open about what happened in my childhood, for people to say, "Well, now I'm ashamed, because I thought I had it bad!" The irony of it is that this is exactly how it was for me, for so many years. I read with horror about children having battery acid dumped on them by their parents, having their hands immersed in boiling water, having their bones broken, being locked into cupboards and starved, and I thought, "Well, I really have nothing to complain about."

And while these people undoubtedly had far worse experiences than I did, this is erroneous thinking. There are scales of abuse, and I think I sit somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of abuse survivors, with my particular experiences. Other people didn't have the physical side of the abuse, or the being socially isolated by physical and manipulative means, that I did, and maybe would place themselves on a lower scale of abuse - I'm not even sure this is valid, although I instinctively always place people who experienced bodily sexual abuse and more serious physical injuries than me, along with that emotional abuse and the battering of their selfhood, on a higher abuse scale than what I experienced. But I don't think that is the point. This isn't a competition, like a hospital isn't a competition. This is about stopping the pain and about healing, for _everyone_ who has been through things like this, or is going through them as we speak - and it's about saying to those who aren't going through such stuff, and who genuinely care about other people, "Please keep your eye out, please be kind, you will meet several people today whose story, if you knew it, would shock you."

A caveat: Habitually abusive people often play the victim, and portray themselves as the abused party. How can you tell the difference? Well, watch how they are with people - are they genuinely kind? Or is it a calculated, practiced act, designed to get credibility? Are they genuinely interested in other people? Do they have insight? Do they have empathy? Do they say sorry when they stuff up, or is it never their fault?

I'm not nearly as good at explaining this as some people are, and I really recommend this little guide to what I am talking about, on a very helpful website I linked to previously:

https://littleredsurvivor.com/2017/04/01/narcissism-101/

And by the way, I've also met very entitled people who seriously believe they were abused because they didn't always get what they wanted, when they wanted - and/or because they didn't have a Disney kind of life - and who think it is abuse when someone else says no to them. That kind of person is probably a narcissist.

If you've ever wondered if you are crazy, you probably aren't. Like many abuse survivors, I've wondered, especially as a young person, "Am I one of those mentally deranged people who makes up fantasy worlds, and I've truly imagined all this? And now I believe it myself?" This is the typical response to gaslighting. I had to dig up a significant amount of evidence and corroborating witness statements that verified some of the experiences I had as real, before I could consistently dismiss that idea. Also, there were incidents that I had actual civic witnesses to, like being dragged behind the car on a public road once as a high schooler, by my brother when he lost his temper, that my family still denied ever happened, and in retrospect I do wish I had reported it to the police, but unfortunately people in these situations often don't, and I didn't either (but I did make one official report about something like that, once, and I'll get to that sometime).

The really crazy people apparently never doubt their own sanity. Of course, to an extent many of us are crazy - hopefully in a good-crazy way. ;-) And then, there is that definition of sanity as the extent to which we can fit in with the insanities of those around us. ;-)

Enough writing for now; I'll see if I can't fandangle myself on that horse out there for a ride.

:cowboy:


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## gottatrot

SueC said:


> ...Who's hurting the most, and does it matter? All these people need care and attention...
> 
> ...Pain is pain, injury is injury, love is love...
> 
> ...This isn't a competition, like a hospital isn't a competition. This is about stopping the pain and about healing, for _everyone_ who has been through things like this, or is going through them as we speak...


This perspective is very interesting, true and wise. Thank you for all you've shared, it is enlightening and helpful.

Something I think may also be true when talking about scales of abuse or pain - not everyone can tolerate or cope with things at the same level. So what might seem lesser or more from a distant perspective may be experienced differently by the person involved. 

I'm not talking about someone being overly sensitive or weak.
Our minds are as physical as our bodies are. You might fall down and break bones where I may not, or vice versa. What one person might come through without terrible damage might break another completely. So I think this is another reason why we can't compare things in severity just by the facts of what happened to a person. 

An example is that I believe factually that my mother treated me a bit harsher than my sister. However, my sister suffered more effects psychologically than I ever did. Although I don't think anorexia is a healthy way to deal with emotional problems, it actually gave me an outlet for my stress, and sort of gave me a way to let it flow away. My sister did not have an outlet for the stress and internalized it, and it stayed with her much longer. My sister is not weaker than I am, and I am not a superior person because she was more affected in the long term. We just were wounded differently.


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## SueC

Those are excellent points, @gottatrot, thank you for adding them! 

It's interesting the limitations I run into trying to discuss this stuff when using analogies, which are often really useful, but always have necessarily incomplete overlap. And with that hospital analogy, I was thinking afterwards, "Of course, the ER has triage!" but I think that actually works in parallel as well, thinking about it. Because it's the same with people who've survived abuse - there are times, when dealing with that pain, that almost everyone feels like they do not want to live, whether just in theory (as I did at some low points in my 20s - if you'd asked me if I'd wanted to be born, I would have said no, but given that I was alive, I didn't want to end it - and it's amazing how the answer to that question changed for me the moment I had purpose again, and could see I was doing useful things in the world...), or in actuality, seriously wanting to end your life.

And with those horrible episodes where people really feel the pain and loss of hope, obviously we have to do triage as well, and initially prioritise those who are in the worst shape if resources are limited - but make sure we get around to everyone. You might be able to rewrite this analogy better, as this is your professional stage! ;-)

It's interesting what you say about anorexia - I've heard the same from a very close friend. It was like a coping strategy that allowed her to go on, dangerous though it was. It's something to do, in a strange way. My closest psychological parallel to that, I think, would be the way I knuckled down to study, as a path that might take me through and out the other end, into a chance at freedom and independence from oppression. At high school, I loved the whole process and wasn't overly stressed by it. But at university, no longer pastorally supported by teachers, and with no sense of community (because I didn't go to the bar, and I wasn't an art student ;-)), and with the extra demands all around, it became a real drudgery, even though I was still interested in it - because I was taken beyond my available energy reserves so often. There was just so little else in my life but that - the days and nights passing felt like a strobe light to me. But I held on like a drowning person and kept on kicking my legs and got through. It felt so shocking as a form of life that I was amazed to win the top graduate prize for the programme. The learning I loved, but running on empty I didn't. That part wasn't a healthy process, and I knew it, but it was something I had to do to survive.

Mmmmh, the human condition! ;-) I think it's time to put in Sartre's cookbook again, just so we can all have a good laugh!

The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook

:rofl: Guaranteed to provide cosmic comic relief from the human drama!


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## knightrider

@SueC, your journal is just wonderful. It is so moving for you to share your history and your insights.

My mom was emotionally abusive, but she was also mentally ill, so the rest of the family would hang in there, telling ourselves that she couldn't help it. Oddly enough, when she was in her 70's, she was in a terrible car accident and almost died twice. After that, she changed completely. I took care of her the last 3 years of her life, and I finally had a real mother, someone I could relate to and talk to. I am so glad I had those good memories at the end.

I thank you so much for sharing! I love reading your journal and thinking about your ideas.


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## horseluvr2524

What you posted previously about your impression memories as a baby, I totally believe it. My husband can remember impressions as well, not bad ones, just the smell of his caretaker and things that she did to soothe him.

A couple weeks ago, I was having a rough time. My daughter was upset and crying as I was changing her diaper, and I had these horrible, practically demonic emotions come over me. It was truly scary. While I didn't hurt her, I had thoughts running through my head like "she's not that cute, I don't like her" while simultaneously thinking "what the **** is wrong with me?! I love her! She's adorable!" Even thinking about it now makes me sick. It was such darkness. I put her on to nurse and she just would not calm down. It seemed different than a colic fit, she was really upset. I called my husband over and gave him the baby and said "I just need to go away, I can't deal with her, I can't deal with you, I can't deal with anyone right now." And then I went upstairs, and was internally freaking out over this emotional darkness I was feeling. I prayed and cried out to God and spent time with him, and within moments, they were gone and I gradually returned to myself. I have never experienced anything like that before, and never want to ever again. It was truly horrifying. 

But I definitely think that my daughter sensed my emotional state and was extremely upset by it. I still feel so guilty over that, so tremendously guilty, and I truly hope that is not something she will ever remember or ever affect her in any way. But imagine what it's like for a baby who has truly abusive parents, even if their parents do no acts of abuse to them. That darkness ... they can sense it, just like an adult can, or animals do.

I'm still healing emotionally (I've only recently gone completely no contact with my mom). I'll go weeks and be fine and then suddenly fall into a hole again. This is one of those bad weeks. Reading your posts gave me courage to go into the email folder where all of my mother's emails automatically get filtered to, though I did it with the usual sickness in my stomach. I didn't read any of them, but I was able to go in and select everything from her, and clicked "mark as spam", and suddenly, I felt so free. If it works right, I'll never have to see an email from her again. If she has to contact me, my phone number hasn't changed. Though she never uses it because husband and I share a phone. That should tell me something. Probably that she wants to manipulate and mess with my head without my husband knowing or seeing (though I always showed him any email I read from her so I didn't have to bear it alone.)

Sometimes I put a lot of guilt on myself for "being the barrier between my daughter and her grandma." And it's hard, because I doubt myself that the relationship with my mom was toxic, because things weren't always bad with her. I was best friends with her and have quite a lot of good memories with her actually. But I wonder how much childhood emotional trauma I am suppressing, because every communication with her leaves me feeling like a beaten dog, and I know that's not healthy.

I think the thing I fear the most is ever causing any kind of trauma to my daughter. It terrifies me. But love casts out all fear, right? So long as I'm aware and vigilant, and strive to be the best mother I can be, I won't fail ... right?

I'm sorry. I don't mean to turn your journal into my own therapy session.


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## egrogan

@*HorseLuvr2524* , I am not a mother* like so many of the people here, so I can't speak from first hand experience, but I wonder if you might consider talking to someone you trust about the possibility of post-partum depression? Having supported friends and colleagues going through it, it is not a flaw or weakness in the mother, but a physical side effect of giving birth for many people. 

_*Ironically, my own mother spent most of her career as an OB/GYN nurse and delivered thousands of babies, but she really never knew what to do with her own kids. She has now tried to make up for that by becoming deeply obsessed with her two grand daughters, moving hundreds of miles away from her own family and the place she lived her entire life and very aggressively taking on parenting responsibilities from my brother and his wife, to the point that she has given up things she enjoys to be so involved with them. Like many of you, I also have little to no contact with family. For me, not becoming a mother was a very conscious decision after receiving very distant/detached mothering myself and finally recognizing a strong but mostly untreated history of mental health challenges on both sides of our families. _


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## horseluvr2524

@egrogan

Thanks. For the most part, I'm okay. The depression that I do get at times has been something that has gone on even before I got pregnant. It has more to do with just reliving difficult memories and healing from those difficult situations. The experience I related could have been an instance of PPD, but it was a one off. Never happened before, hasn't happened since. And like I said, the occasional bouts of depression have happened since before the baby was even conceived. They don't happen until I read an email from my mom, or I read something that triggers bad memories.
ETA: But I am truly getting better as time goes on. It was only a year ago that all the really bad SHTF with my mom, and I went extremely limited contact. Now, after a year of the same from her, I've gone completely no contact. And I'm 2,000 miles away, so that helps a lot.


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## knightrider

@horseluvr2524, I did not get ppd, but my daughter in law was suicidal from it. And I had a close friend who shot her husband (in the shoulder--he healed and the marriage is intact) due to ppd. It can be pretty bad and sudden too. What you described is pretty much what my close friend told me happened to her . . . but she acted on it. I could never ever in a million years, imagine her shooting her husband, so it must have been really severe for her.


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## horseluvr2524

@knightrider
That's terrifying. My midwife is super proactive about PPD. She visits you at home two days after the birth, and then you go to her a week later, then again two weeks later, and then one more time two to three weeks after the last. She also instructs mother and partner to call if you ever feel something's off. She does all of this so that in her words, she can make sure that you don't want to kill your baby.

My one experience was just of not liking ANY human being, and just some overwhelming dark emotions. But not aggression. I can't imagine feeling an urge to harm someone. Terrifying, truly.


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## Knave

I am trying to remember back to the time of new babies. I was hormonal for sure, but the only person I really remember disliking was my poor husband. It is a time that you are so tired, and I do remember once thinking that I was done babysitting, when would the baby’s mother come and pick her up? It was a momentary thought, but I do remember the tired that stuck around. 

I don’t doubt that you love your baby, but I also don’t doubt how tired you are. I am sorry that happened to you. If you ever worry about ppd you should definitely talk to your health care person, but I believe what happened was probably normal, like the day I thought that about being a babysitter. Don’t forget to take care of yourself, and make your husband step up so you can take a nap! 

ETA: I also remembered I disliked everyone who wanted to touch my babies. Like seriously, everyone. It was sad. I was like an angry cow in the pasture trying to go after any one who dared to come near... yet, it was in my head because I was too polite to scream all the mean things I was thinking. Mostly, “Don’t touch my baby!” Sometimes it was even, “Why are you looking at my baby!”


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## Knave

Also, I have to give serious props to husband who forgave his wife for shooting him! Wow! I know this was out of her control, but I’m sure it was hard to just get over.


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## gottatrot

Even without PPD, the hormonal shifts are significant. I've met a few that I could tell felt like @Knave. On occasion I've had to help with post partum patients and they scare me. Give me a raving psychotic or drug addled person any day over a new mother. I've been around mother animals enough to tell that the mother human feels the same way. One false move and they'll attack. Since I'm not good with babies, that feels unsafe to me. I'm just wrapping a blanket (clumsily) and they're looking at me all feral like they'll kill me if I do it wrong. Some of the dads get this way too, and then it's like a dual attack.


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## Knave

I agree completely @gottatrot. It is funny because I will mention it before I hold someone’s baby, because I don’t want to be attacked either. Lol. Oddly I’ve never met anyone who admits to feeling how I did, and often I have had people say it bothers them when others don’t want to hold their babies or come and see them. I guess it just depends...


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> Since I'm not good with babies, that feels unsafe to me. I'm just wrapping a blanket (clumsily) and they're looking at me all feral like they'll kill me if I do it wrong. Some of the dads get this way too, and then it's like a dual attack.



This has me cracking up out loud @gottatrot, as I am so the same way. I'm almost through the life stage where my close friends still have newborns, and while I love and support all of them, nothing strikes terror in me more than that moment where a new mom looks at you and says "oh, I know you want to hold her" as a writhing helpless creature is thrust into your lap and you know that one wrong move will end you right there!!


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## horseluvr2524

Before the birth, I was super anxious about people touching my baby. After she was here, not so much (I had really bad pregnancy anxiety). I pretty much stayed home for the first two months, aside from doctors appointments, so I didn't have to worry about other people touching my baby. Now, I'm okay with it so long as they are respectful, not sick, and I am somewhat familiar with them. Understanding that even though my baby doesn't have an immune system, she is provided one through breast milk, really helped to alleviate my anxiety over people touching her.

I would never have been comfortable with handling other people's babies like @gottatrot does, before I had my own. It has taken a while for me to feel comfortable with how to handle a baby. Newborns under a month old are the most nerve wracking to hold, with their necks being so fragile. I remember asking my midwife if I could touch my baby or hold her or something, and she was like "of course!" Funny to think I was asking permission to hold my own baby, but I was so afraid of doing it wrong with her being so fragile.

Thanks @Knave for the encouragement! DH is a huge help and support and everything I could ever ask for in a partner, and he's so good with our little girl. He's got some kind of knack for babies and kids that I don't have. Thankfully, baby and I seemed to have worked things out and it's a nice feeling to have her really want me and my presence more than anything else. Going back to the emotional abuse thing, it's very healing to not only feel loved but needed and wanted and valued by someone else.

I'm sorry for the thread derail Sue!


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## SueC

Hello, everyone...






























First of all, I just want to thank you all for your posts, and for how everyone is supporting one another with this stuff. I think you're all rock stars, and you are such an excellent example of how people can be kind and empathetic to one another, and how humans can be positive rather than negative for one another.









I'll get around to everyone eventually; I just wanted to begin with the post that really got my mind cranking this morning!




horseluvr2524 said:


> A couple weeks ago, I was having a rough time. My daughter was upset and crying as I was changing her diaper, and I had these horrible, practically demonic emotions come over me. It was truly scary. While I didn't hurt her, I had thoughts running through my head like "she's not that cute, I don't like her" while simultaneously thinking "what the **** is wrong with me?! I love her! She's adorable!" Even thinking about it now makes me sick. It was such darkness. I put her on to nurse and she just would not calm down. It seemed different than a colic fit, she was really upset. I called my husband over and gave him the baby and said "I just need to go away, I can't deal with her, I can't deal with you, I can't deal with anyone right now." And then I went upstairs, and was internally freaking out over this emotional darkness I was feeling. I prayed and cried out to God and spent time with him, and within moments, they were gone and I gradually returned to myself. I have never experienced anything like that before, and never want to ever again. It was truly horrifying.


It's super that you have a supportive husband to help handle situations like that, @*horseluvr2524* - that way, you can deal with these things when you need to, without having to worry about your baby in the middle of the thick of it.

I've had those sorts of moments of darkness - I remember one incident in particular - I don't know why I was getting triggered, or what did it - anyway, we were on our Tasmanian sojourn in 2009 and on this particular weekend, suddenly I couldn't deal with a visitor or my husband, thought I was going to scream and rant if I stayed with them, and I fled into the bedroom as this darkness was just coming over me, similar to how you can go black before your eyes if you get up too fast or if you're about to faint - except this wasn't on a physical level, but an emotional one. And I couldn't breathe, and was dizzy, and sat down on the floor, and just panicked inside - very unusual for me - and so, so dark. I called a mental health line actually, explained what I was experiencing, asked, "Am I going crazy? Is this some sort of psychotic break?"

It wasn't - it was just one of those things, call it an emotional flashback, call it a panic attack - probably the former leading to the latter.

Some years later, it was coming up to Christmas - this is the last time we visited my birth family - and I was having more and more of those strange night terrors in the lead-up - episodes I'd had all my life at intervals, where I'd wake in the middle of the night in this horrible adrenaline rush, heart nearly leaping out of my chest, nauseated, dizzy, soaked in sweat, for no apparent reason - no nightmare to go with it, just a blank. Well, near that Christmas, finally, the memories returned - really early-life memories of danger and violence, that had stayed with me for decades, buried during the day, compartmentalised away because they were like TNT...

In part, people like me compartmentalise this kind of childhood trauma because it's the only way we can survive childhood emotionally - wall it off, so you can survive and get out - you just can't deal with this stuff on your own, especially as a child, and in a chronically dangerous situation.

I talked to my GP, who's just excellent on things like this - of course, it was PTSD - the complex PTSD form you get from growing up like that. And I said to her, "Why now? Why after all this time? I've had this weird night thing all my life, but not the memories, so now it's obvious it's PTSD and not some weird adrenal tumour. But why did it take so long for the memory to be restored to what turns out to be a recurring emotional flashback?"

And she was saying, "But Sue, this is exactly when it happens, it makes sense. You were never in a safe environment until now, so it was all walled off. And now you've been in a happy home with a person you can really trust for years, and your subconscious is easing up. It's now safe for you to deal with this awful stuff, but it wasn't before - not when you were on your own with all this, and you had to turn up to work each day so you could eat and pay your rent."

And I remembered then a number of times when I was in my late 20s and my early 30s, when I had been aware that my family situation and past was such a black hole that I could not get near the event horizon of that black hole, or it would suck me down, and God only knows when if ever I could emerge from that again. It was simply something I could not deal with while I was having daily responsibility for work and for the emotional and academic welfare of 100+ adolescents. See, I always knew intellectually that I'd been through abuse, but I could never connect to it emotionally, until I was in a safe supportive place where it didn't matter anymore if I fell apart - where that was a _survivable_ prospect.

My brain has cPTSD wiring, which is a wiring that allows a person to continue to function in the midst of growing up in what is a war zone (instead of a nurturing, safe home). Everything that's too much is on hold until you're out of danger. The main priority of that wiring is to make sure you survive. And I still handle life disasters incredibly well, better than the average person, because of that wiring - for the duration of a crisis I can put the emotions to one side, and focus on what needs to be done to get the best possible outcome. It's kind of like being a fireman. You just assess very clearly and do what you need to do. But the flip side of my ability to handle such situations at the time is how I pay for it later, when the repressed emotions can return. Then I feel terrible, like I've got the flu - sore muscles, general pain, nausea, completely flat.

I've had some success in the last few years in rewiring that delayed stress response, so thank goodness those sorts of horrible states haven't happened for a number of years now, just "normal" responses (but I still have that focus in a disaster, which is an asset).


inkunicorn:​

So I've just tried to give you some near examples from my own experience, to show you what goes on "backstage" for me. We all have these backstages; some of us more dramatically than others. The brain just has these kind of hard drive errors sometimes, you know - more so if you've had developmental trauma. It's like the computer seizes up, and you have to re-boot it. What really helped me was to actually depersonalise that process. It's common, when first experiencing stuff like this, to push it away and try to forget about it because it's scary and not who you want to be. It's common to think that you've got an evil side that's wanting to come out, or that you _are_ these things you are experiencing - and the fear of that can actually exacerbate such episodes. But the Buddhists say is so well: You are _not_ your thoughts - you _have_ thoughts. They are phenomena. They are not generally _intent_, they are often random data that just goes around your head. You can observe them; they will pass.

The way I see it, the brain is trying to process all sorts of stuff past and present, and sometimes it just seizes up like a computer. So you just find a way to reboot; don't be afraid, don't think your computer is ultra-defective. It's just a computer dealing with a load, in one sense. It's not you being a defective person or whatever. These glitches we have are not our _fault_ - but they are our _responsibility_ - that was an important distinction for me to learn. You're not to blame for this, but you do have to deal with it.

Another analogy that helped me deal with these things: Think of your brain as a traumatised horse you're re-educating. There you go - immediately you look at it with love and compassion.  You have it for your animals, now have it for yourself. ;-) What would you do for the horse? How would you show it that it's safe? How do you communicate these things? Be just as thoughtful and gentle about your own situation. It really is so much like re-training a horse which has had bad experiences. That horse doesn't deserve punishment or anger or disdain or being thought of badly - and neither do you. 




> But I definitely think that my daughter sensed my emotional state and was extremely upset by it. I still feel so guilty over that, so tremendously guilty, and I truly hope that is not something she will ever remember or ever affect her in any way. But imagine what it's like for a baby who has truly abusive parents, even if their parents do no acts of abuse to them. That darkness ... they can sense it, just like an adult can, or animals do.


Yes, they can sense it, definitely - but it's important to remember that a few instances like that, that you are dealing with already, is not the same as the _pattern_ that constitutes abuse. I know it's ultra scary to think we might repeat the pattern, but if you're dealing with these things, that's very unlikely. You're human, and you'll not be perfect - what matters is not that you're occasionally going to slip up, but what you do consistently. The good memories you are creating, etc. What you _normally_ do.

And you know, it's good to let children know that even though you're an adult, you're not perfect, you make mistakes, you have to work on things too, and to say sorry and talk about this stuff, with verbal children. That's not an excuse to be blasé - you know, "Oh, I'm human, who cares about my mistakes!" But that we all have things to work on, that we are all works in progress - and to model taking responsibility for our actions, and processing stuff like that - instead of pretending it simply didn't happen, or it was the child's fault, which is what my parents did.

I didn't get to be a parent, but I did work with lots of children, and teenagers, and was open about this stuff with them. If I stuffed up, I admitted it, apologised to them, and talked about the processing of things like that by humans. A lot of them were so impressed that I apologised, or admitted factual errors when they came to my attention, etc. They said, "Most adults never apologise, never admit it when they are wrong, but they're always telling us when _we're_ wrong!"

One of the nicest compliments I ever had was from a girl in a Year 5 class - not high school, but I was working in a K-12 setting, and as a favour looked after that class for an hour and did some science with them, from the high school curriculum. This mother reported to me that her daughter had come home all excited: "She addressed us as _ladies and gentlemen_, not _boys and girls_! She was so polite, and treated us like we were _intelligent_, not like dumb kids. She treated us like we _mattered_."

That was always the _aim_; often it worked, sometimes it didn't. But the things you really work on, because they really matter to you, will become good patterns. Also for you, @*horseluvr2524* !







_Be of good cheer_, etc. ;-)




> I'm still healing emotionally (I've only recently gone completely no contact with my mom). I'll go weeks and be fine and then suddenly fall into a hole again. This is one of those bad weeks. Reading your posts gave me courage to go into the email folder where all of my mother's emails automatically get filtered to, though I did it with the usual sickness in my stomach. I didn't read any of them, but I was able to go in and select everything from her, and clicked "mark as spam", and suddenly, I felt so free...


 I'm sorry you're having a bad week. Hang in there - you'll get through. :hug: It is completely right that you should be blocking things from your life that cause you fruitless mental and emotional struggles - your health and happiness are important, both for you personally (you deserve these things), and for your ability to love and be emotionally present with your husband and daughter and friends, and have good patterns with them. It is totally right that you are shielding your child (and your own inner child!) from traumatic influences. You will do so much more good in the world if you put safe boundaries around you like this - all that energy that gets wasted in bad patterns from the past, and dealing with people who drain you, is put to so much better use if you direct it towards truly positive things instead. Your mother is responsible for her own patterns and addressing them - that is not your job. You're not her therapist...

And you know what? Don't apologise for this journal being turned into a therapy session. It already was one for a long time before you told us what was happening for you! :rofl: Could you tell? ;-)

All of us need community and connection - and it's only in that, that we can become fully ourselves.

You're always welcome here. Everyone is! :hug:


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## SueC

Knave said:


> I am trying to remember back to the time of new babies. I was hormonal for sure, but the only person I really remember disliking was my poor husband. It is a time that you are so tired, and I do remember once thinking that _I was done babysitting, when would the baby’s mother come and pick her up?_ It was a momentary thought, but I do remember the tired that stuck around.


:rofl: That's funny, @*Knave* !  And not so unusual.

One of my really good friends who used to live here in Albany had the politest, friendliest, most together teenagers I'd ever met socially. (There were also amazing kids like that I taught.) They would come to the door, smile genuinely, "Hello, Mum is having a bath, come on in, I'll make you some tea!" - when I was just getting to know this family!  Either of the girls would do this. They were so super impressive, just their demeanour, the way they handled themselves, the super-professional way they answered the door and made you tea like you were in a coffee shop... And then they'd sit with you and chat, completely at ease, polite, funny, just lovely girls. They too treated others like they mattered - and carried themselves knowing they too mattered!

I said to my friend, "So how did you manage to get these amazing girls?" And she laughed so much, and said, "Do you know, when they were both little, there was only a year between them and I was going crazy. One day I packed my suitcase, and when my husband came home, I said, 'You look after them! I am going, otherwise I am going to _kill_ them!'"

She told me this led to a bit of a change in situation, more baby-sitting from the husband etc - she was just at her emotional limits. They worked it out, but she clearly remembers the feeling, and could laugh about it afterwards...

Her girls said to me, "Our mother never hit us, but she had this _look_!" and they were laughing so much at their recollections. They told me that if they were naughty in public when little, she would just come down to their level, give them that look, and whisper, "You will behave now!" :rofl: And apparently they just did. It might help to explain that my friend is like a lioness... and like a snake charmer, too!  It's just something she has...

I love to watch them together, my friend with her girls. The girls are in their 20s now - but always, they were so close and warm with each other as humans, and so at ease, and they still are. They all respect each other so much.


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## knightrider

Since we've been sharing some songs to deal with this kind of pain, I will share this one. My husband and I were supposed to adopt an older girl. We had her 9 months. I got her ski lessons and ice skating lessons and often took her. I taught her to ride and was looking at buying her a horse. She kept saying she didn't want us to adopt her, and as it became time to finalize the adoption, she began to act out. She had been sexually abused before we got her, and she began to intimate that if we went through with the adoption, she would accuse my husband of abusing her and stop the adoption. The next day, Good Friday, I took her back to her foster home and relinquished the idea of adopting her. It was devastating to us. I wrote the lyrics to this song on the whiteboard in my office and looked at them every day to remind myself that I would love again. It wasn't going to be the end of the world.





We learned later in our adoption class that this child's attitude was normal and to be expected when a child has been through the hell that she had been through. She felt that she was "on her own" and did not want to be surrounded by a loving family. She had never had it and felt stifled by it. It helped me a lot to learn about the difficulties of adopting older children.

The happy ending is that I have been able to keep in touch with her (I was determined that she should face the truth that we NEVER rejected her--it was her that did not want us). I knew that 14 year olds can create a lot of drama for themselves and see themselves as victims. She is quite happily married now, has three darling boys, and a good life. I am so happy for her. I loved her very much and wanted her to be my daughter, but it was not to be.


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## Knave

@SueC I like to believe my girls are much like that, but it is possibly because we rarely have company and they are thrilled for almost all interaction.  Sometimes though they have made judgements about people they find offensive later, but they always seem polite. Well, I say this knowing full well my oldest girl lost her temper with a teacher very recently and went to the principal to complain... I do think they need to be able to advocate for themselves, but she received a scolding for doing so in the manner she did.

I 100 percent believe we all mess up! Sadly I have often had to apologize to my girls for one thing or another. I have noticed they are both very empathetic with others and their mistakes, and they grant me the same favor. 

I love how you remind us to have empathy for ourselves as well. Oddly, Bones has taught me a lot about that.


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## SueC

:rofl: @*Knave* , you can tell your oldest girl that her Australian aunt was _very_ prone to such things when she was a teenager too! ;-) I know I shouldn't, but I'm going like this: :clap: :clap: :clap: - just at the notion! :rofl: It's good though that she has someone who can maybe teach her more diplomatic approaches... 

@*knightrider* , I'm sorry about that situation - and glad that things turned out well for her after all.

So much more I'm thinking and would like to say - but I really have to do some work now! I'll come back to it in our evening. Have a pleasant night, everyone... :ZZZ:

...I must go toil upon the land now... but will leave you with this...








It just says so much, about life and being human...


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## horseluvr2524

Thanks so much for the encouragement @SueC and allowing me to vent here!

It is awesome getting to know you better. I remember one of my early posts on HF about something horse related of course, and you offering advice and support (I think it was about TOO dry hooves, if I recall correctly). I thought you were lovely and nice. Then you disappeared and I wondered what happened to you.

I am similar to you in how I deal with traumatic, crisis situations. Emotions get shut out, I stop and evaluate the best course of action. I often think of myself as reacting in a similar way to danger as a donkey. Donkeys also stop and think before reacting, rather than immediately running like horses do. And donkeys are also close to your heart :wink: I would love to see video of your donkey parade.

I would not be surprised if I am experiencing those dark memories resurfacing. I don't remember my dreams often. But when I do, they are always dark ones, nightmares. Well, actually, that's not entirely true. I do remember some neutral/good/non-terrifying dreams, but they are always the most ridiculous things that don't make any sense and make me wonder if I'm crazy, lol. On a lighter note, one memorable dream was from when I was a child. I had dreamed that there was a giant venus flytrap in my classroom, and it swallowed my teacher in one gulp (which is just what happened in a kids show I watched, lol).

On a darker side note, that's why I'm so careful what I watch and read and put in my head. "monkey see, monkey do." Most of the new shows out there have a lot of horrible abuse of human beings (and even children these days, disgusting) in them, and it disturbs me how desensitized people are getting to them. My SIL is a sweet, wonderful person. I love her. But somehow, watching things like The Walking Dead doesn't disturb her (zombies are one thing, but some of the abuse that one human does to another in that show is seriously disturbing). One year for Christmas she gave me a book which is called The Girl on the Train. I read a couple of chapters in, but I found it to be one of the most mentally disturbing books I've ever touched and could not read it anymore. I skipped through it and found that the main character not only kidnapped a baby at one point but at the end she murdered her former lover. Yet my SIL was raving about the book and loved it. I find it mind boggling, I just can't understand it.

I hope you don't mind if I attach a picture. I feel a bit obligated after talking about the baby so much, lol. This picture is my husband with the baby tucked in his arm, our cat Shadow, and our bird Baby, all hanging out together. The second is our baby girl. It's a bit blurred because it is very hard to get her to hold still when she's awake!

ETA: I don't quite understand this obsession with putting decor on the seat of baby pants, lol. But I will admit the bow on her butt in this is very cute, I think.


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## SueC

Hello all! :wave:

Was too tired this evening to write anything - and I'm only up briefly at this ungodly hour to eat a nice bowl of fruit salad, because chewing it helps unclog my hayfever head. It's one of my husband's mixes he makes in large batches - apple, pear, strawberry, melon, kiwi, mandarin, with a little cranberry juice - minimalist but yummy, and good at helping out compromised Eustachian tubes. For the last two years, hayfever has led to glued-up sinuses etc and it helps to chew things to unglue things a bit in the middle of the night. I'm already breathing better.

*Ride Report - Now With Racing Donkeys
*









Nelly and Benjamin continue to be extremely interested in absolutely everything. I can't tack my horse up without them showing up to watch, and to try to cadge some brushing while the grooming kit is out. Today, tacking up, I had those two join me, as well as Romeo, who set himself up suggestively near the grooming kit and gave me looks too. 

So after putting his boots on, grooming went like this: Near side on Sunsmart, then offside on Romeo, who had sidled closer and was nudging me suggestively. Nearside Romeo, before nearly tripping over a Nelly who had silently appeared (donkeys are very good at that); both sides of her, then Benjamin, the offside Sunsmart, who was going, "Hey, I'm the one tied to the rail here, surely I should be getting all the attention!"

Oh yeah, and I forgot to say, when I was putting the boots on Sunsmart's hind feet, I was nose-to-nose with Nelly. Just like what Sparkle did when I was trimming Romeo in this photo:


Up Close and Personal - Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

I asked the donkeys, "Are you coming for a walk?" and they started heading out of the gate as I was getting on the horse - they know the drill, and donkeys learn so amazingly fast, and then look all pleased with themselves when you tell them how clever they are, just like my dog does.

They ambled along with me as I was warming up my horse on our western forest track, but about halfway along started getting left behind a bit - they weren't in a hurry, but Sunsmart was walking with seven-mile boots on today. I knew we'd probably bump into them again out on the tracks, so the horse and I had a nice canter along the southern boundary, racing the dog up the hill, and then trotting along the eastern forest boundary until we got adjacent to the neighbour's gravel pit. Nobody was working there today, but we admired all the machinery: Excavator, semi-trailer, and I can't remember at this time of the night what the third thing was!

Here's our farm map again that shows the internal trails we use for shorter rides; you may even be able to trace our journey - north is at the top! The gravel pit is easy to spot bottom right.











We headed back through the pasture on the northern boundary and veered into the Middle Meadow to get to the swamp track, on which Sunsmart decided he was going to canter today. Near the end of that, as we came around a bend, and because of our speed, we startled Nelly and Benjamin coming in our direction! So, they turned and ran too, although they soon learnt it was only us when I called to them. Anyway, they seem to have a taste for running, because they were cantering ahead of us along the entire southern boundary until we turned right into the sand track - and there they continued at the same pace, with us behind them, and a tail-wagging dog between us - she'd never seen anything like this before - donkeys that actually ran on an outing! I have to admit, neither had I. Our first donkey group are lucky to break into a trot on occasions like that! These two, we might as well call them The Amazing Racing Donkeys from now on...

It took us quite a while to actually overtake them on the twisty-turny track, and then they were in hot pursuit as well! When Sunsmart and I got back to the tie rail, the donkeys turned up again with this, "We know you're going to feed him, we think you should feed us too!" expectant expression, and they weren't disappointed, as it was evening feedtime anyway, and all our equines need mineral/vitamin supplementation, so even the weight loss donkeys Mary Lou and Don Quixote get a little chaff and a half-handful of cubes to mix their supplements into.

I may not have a human riding companion these days, but the universe keeps sending me donkeys...


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## SueC

I'm not really supposed to be here yet, considering it's not even 6am here and I was awake for two hours until 4am because of hayfever. Pffft. But we've just had another earthquake, which woke me up at about 5.05am. The Geoscience Australia website logged it as a magnitude 5.4, with the epicentre at Lake Muir about 80km from us. We're not on a tectonic plate boundary here, it's just internal stresses in our plate, and the Lake Muir region has been getting a lot of quakes in the last few months - there were about half a dozen in the last 24h logged there, but mostly really low magnitude, so not felt where we are.

The last one we really felt was a magnitude 5.7 back in September, which we didn't realise was an earthquake until it was reported - we thought the horses were just gallopping around the house again, as they do several times daily.







This one this morning, though, was very distinct, and actually felt stronger where we are than that last one, even rattling windows for a while.

So, Plan B for today: Do a morning work session starting ultra early, sleep 2-3h after lunch to compensate, ride my horse, then evening work session...




















There you go - that's modern technology for you (click to enlarge). We are a little to the right of where the little inset square is on the right of the picture. See where it says "Redm"... ? 15km to the left of that (see scale LHS). See that very _square_ square of vegetation? That's Sleeman Creek Nature Reserve to our immediate northeast. We are in the squiggle shape of vegetation below it and a little to the left! The squiggle looks a little like a flying bird coming at you. Just under the bottom left corner of the square.









There's just been a funny little post from the Seismology Group, saying this quake was a week early, because the meeting of Australian seismologists is in Western Australia _next_ Friday...


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## SueC

knightrider said:


> @*SueC* , your journal is just wonderful. It is so moving for you to share your history and your insights.
> 
> My mom was emotionally abusive, but she was also mentally ill, so the rest of the family would hang in there, telling ourselves that she couldn't help it. Oddly enough, when she was in her 70's, she was in a terrible car accident and almost died twice. After that, she changed completely. I took care of her the last 3 years of her life, and I finally had a real mother, someone I could relate to and talk to. I am so glad I had those good memories at the end.
> 
> I thank you so much for sharing! I love reading your journal and thinking about your ideas.


Dear @*knightrider* , I am glad you are enjoying this journal. It's a bit gory at the moment, but sometimes we need to discuss gory things, and then we find that so many people are dealing with gory stuff and that it's actually good to be able to talk about it with others - rather than just reporting on the bright side of life, as I think the social pressure would mostly have you be - you know, make Disney movies out of everything...

In the early 2000s in Albany, I joined a community music group, where a lovely lady called Melissa, ex US, was undertaking to teach us all fringe music stuff like Native American tribal chanting and drumming, and the use of all sorts of unusual instruments, like the rain stick. It was wonderful fun, and she was a lovely lady, in her mid-30s. She'd busk at the markets with her acoustic guitar, sing for you on a visit, etc. She had an EP out which I got hold of, and though the music was beautiful, one thing that I did notice about it was that lyrically, it seemed artificially bright to me, very sanitised... the dark side of life was not even remotely referred to in any of her material. And the music that moves me the most is music that refers to both joy and sorrow - artists that deal with both.

In the mid-2000s, when I returned from working interstate for three years, I dropped around to her house to see what she was up to, and the door was answered by a stranger. He said, "Melissa? I'm her brother. Please come in and sit down." And he told me he had come from the US because his sister had died, and he was wrapping up all the end-of-life practical things that someone has to. He said to me, "Nobody knew it apart from her family, but Melissa was bipolar and suffered terrible black depressions, and she never let anybody near her when she felt like that. She jumped off the tall cliffs at The Gap last week. Would you like to come to her memorial service?"









_Shelley Beach, West Cape Howe National Park_

Her memorial was held at Shelley Beach. Nearly 200 people attended, and mourned her passing. Many people had known and loved Melissa. We were all of us shocked, would never have expected this to happen. And each of us would have ached to be there for her when she was in the darkness and pain that made her lock her doors to the world, to truly be her friend; not just when it was fun to be her friend, but also when things were hard for her. And yet many of us also knew the embarrassment and shame that often comes with this kind of thing, but should not come with it.









_At Shelley Beach by Jenelle Smith_

I learnt from that that people have to talk about it, be able to talk about it. And in my early 20s, I couldn't do it either - I had a few rainy day friends who tried to blame me if I ever broached anything like this, told me I should go to church (and the _correct_ church - _their_ church :rofl, or told me to lighten up, I was seeing things wrong - so I felt like a leper emotionally - and of course, because I couldn't talk about it, it went round and round in circles in my head and never got any smaller. What saved what there was of my sanity, was that I journalled about things, and that the music I listened to dealt with these difficult things, so I knew I wasn't completely alone in the world, at least in theory. Also an emphasis on constructive work towards my university qualifications, physical exercise, and riding my horse etc. But I really do remember the awful human isolation of such a thing, and once I got past that, I was determined that I would look out for others who were in these kinds of black holes, as I went through my life. I kept my eyes open.

And now I'm writing in public, I write about this kind of thing, rather than ignoring it. Because I know that other people's stories were really helpful to me.










That was a tough situation you grew up with, @*knightrider* . :hug: Even when you know your mother has a mental illness, it doesn't make things a picnic - because in many ways, you simply do not have a mother. I am very glad that you and she had a good final three years together. Do you know if it was the confrontation of mortality that catalysed the change, or if it was brain trauma? It's extraordinary how physical brain trauma can lead to personality changes, or have effects similar to ECT, when it actually works, which it does for some people with some kinds of long-term mental/emotional illnesses.

Speaking of: Just on terminology - I kind of disagree with things like depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD being classified as _mental_ illnesses - because that implies that the people who have it are _thinking incorrectly_, which is often not the case, and when it is, isn't what causes the primary problem. These things aren't really in the cerebrum, they're more in the reptile brain, the limbic system, and they are really _emotional_ things, not mental things - _feelings_ that are out of whack, rather than thinking that's incorrect.

I think a _mental_ illness is when people are delusional, think they are Napoleon, etc etc. I do think we should make that distinction.

Going out to garden now; note to anyone here in my absence: The coffee is over there in the cupboard; make yourselves comfortable, and I don't mind if you bake me some cookies while I'm out! ;-)


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## knightrider

Awww, that's so sad about your friend--you would have gladly seen her through the dark times if you had only known . . . and such a loss to the world.

I have one of those tales also. When I was teaching school, we had a wonderful second grade teacher in my school, just down the hall from me. All the kids adored her. She was just so bright and positive and always had a smile for everyone. She was a survivor from Dachau, and met her husband in New York at a survivor's meeting, as he was one also. She was like your friend in that she brightened a room when she entered it.

Her husband fell in love with a girl younger than their daughter and left my friend, his wife, for this young girl. My dear friend said she couldn't go through that kind of suffering another time and took her life. What a loss to the world. I miss her to this day.


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## SueC

*A Morning's Work*

It's a really lovely spring day here in Redmond, and it's a joy to be outdoors on a day like today. I've been working in the food garden, where I am going to transplant more cucumber, tomato, and pumpkin seedlings later this afternoon, when things cool down. Also, I have some bean seedlings ready to go out - Blue Lake, a nice "normal" climbing bean, as well as some mixed runner beans, also high climbers, but these come back every spring for two to three years once they establish, from an underground tuber.

This morning I had to go on the roof to put shade cloth over half the evacuated tubes of our solar water heater - at about this time of the year, the water starts to boil in the tank unless we provide this summer shade. Evacuated tubes are very effective, and boiling water in the tank isn't great - it wastes water, wears the tank, and the vibrations loosen the connections with the roof, potentially causing roof leaks as well as improperly attached equipment.

While I was up there, I shot a little 360 degree film because everything is looking so lovely here just now. In the film, you can see our attic wing, the now half-shaded solar water heater, the edge of the 50ha on-farm bushland conservation reserve behind the house, and the green firebreak between it and our house - look for the bright green acacias, some of which have yellow blossom, and the bright green tagasaste hedges (which double as high-quality stock fodder, like the acacias) all around the food garden and small utility paddocks. Those are located just behind the water tank and shed - the little yard with the shelter in it is referred to for historical reasons as "The Donkey Paddock", but is really used by horses and donkeys alike. The area between it and the shed is a tacking up / feeding area.

On the other side of the tagasaste hedge, to the top and right of the shed, is one of the 2ha internally fenced paddocks, referred to as the Flat Paddock, and behind the line of young trees in the distance is another paddock of that size, referred to as the Hill Paddock (you can also see these on the farm map in an earlier post higher up on this page). Both paddocks are surrounded by shelterbelts, and have shade clumps in them - all planted by us, with hand tools only, in the eight years since we bought this place. It all used to be bare pasture.






As the camera swings north, you can see the Redmond-Hay River Road if you look carefully, just beyond the front gate at the end of the driveway. The driveway shelter belt is about half eucalytpus / bottlebrush / melaleuca, and about half _Acacia saligna_, the green firebreak / stock fodder species we have also planted immediately around the house, and on stretches of roadside, like to the right of the front gate.

The green hill opposite is part of a neighbouring farming property; the woodland to the right of it is the Sleeman Creek Nature Reserve. The pasture to the right of the driveway is an open 8.5ha section we refer to as the Common, whose sedges bear witness to its winter waterlogging - it is a peaty flat. You can see that it extends beyond the little farm dam as the camera swings east, and in the distance, there are a few scattered Paperbark trees (naturally there) which provide summer shade. There is a natural shelterbelt composed of Tea Trees and Paperbarks to the north of the Common, growing in the roadverge.

I've zoomed in on the dam, so you can see the little family of ducks that managed to get one or two of their ducklings through this year. The earth bank is used by the livestock for entertainment - especially the cattle and donkeys love to run up and down the embankments, or to stand on top, graze, and look at the view. The film ends with a scan to find the two new donkeys, and gets a bit wobbly because I had to walk to get a clear view of them!  The other donkeys, horses and cattle are so far up the eastern end of the Common this morning that I can't see them from here.

I will end with a photograph of a beast I wrestled with as part of morning chores: One of the tap risers from the irrigation line that comes from the solar bore we put in two summers ago (which is located in the Middle Meadow, the little pocket of pasture that runs south from the Common - you can see that in the farm map in the earlier post). These little beasts have a clamp with a hole which you have to put exactly over a hole you make in the pipe, and when that works, you get a water tap. Unfortunately, Romeo snagged it walking past last autumn, and the holes were offset by the force the horse applied to the riser. This meant we had a leak, and we turned the bore off over winter so we could fix the dry line in spring before using the bore water again.

Fingers crossed, I've fixed the leak, and siliconed the surrounding section under the clamp for extra security, and tied the riser to a star picket for support. Later on, I'm going to turn on the bore pump - which I hope will start without a hiccup - to see if the fit is tight; if it is, I can bury the line again, and we can start using bore water in the garden. This would be great, because the regular rains are now diminishing, and we want to keep our tank as full as possible before summer. Wish me luck!


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## knightrider

I'm impressed! I hope your repair works! Good luck!


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## horseluvr2524

A note about hay fever and sinuses: I have a tendency to get "clogged" or "full" in my ears. Every season change, without fail, I would come down with a horrible sore, swollen throat. A few years ago, I poured some hydrogen peroxide into my ears, because I had just moved from a very dry environment to a humid one, and I felt as though I had water trapped in my ears. I realized not too long after that cleaning my ears with the hydrogen peroxide stopped me from getting sick. So now, whenever my ears feel clogged or full, or I have an itch in the back of my throat, or my head feels stuffed up, I use the hydrogen peroxide. And now I title myself as someone who never gets sick because I never really do. Well except for the past couple days. I have been pushing myself too hard for a couple of months now, not allowing myself to have enough rest to make up for the fact that my sleep is interrupted every few hours by my daughter, and thus suppressed immune system from lack of sleep, so got sick. Bleh. I have since lightened my work load now, and giving myself more credit for doing the full time job of taking care of a baby. I was just feeling like a lazy lump because of spending half or three quarters of the day in bed, so pushed myself harder to be awake and do more, not realizing how much interrupted sleep can affect a person.

Anyway, just wanted to mention the hydrogen peroxide because that has saved me a lot of misery!


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> _*Ironically, my own mother spent most of her career as an OB/GYN nurse and delivered thousands of babies, but she really never knew what to do with her own kids. She has now tried to make up for that by becoming deeply obsessed with her two grand daughters, moving hundreds of miles away from her own family and the place she lived her entire life and very aggressively taking on parenting responsibilities from my brother and his wife, to the point that she has given up things she enjoys to be so involved with them. _


That could turn out to be a rather claustrophobic scenario for your brother and wife... these sorts of situations are often also rife with the grandparent completely ignoring their adult children's boundaries and wishes, but trying to pass themselves off to everyone as the caring, involved grandparent. There are so many opportunities for playing, "I do childrearing better than you!" and playing all sorts of games like that. Or, sometimes people really are just caring, involved grandparents, perhaps overly obsessed, but still respectful of their adult children's boundaries.

Sometimes, having children can open up several new cans of worms for people who already have dysfunctional families of origin and/or in-laws. No wonder so many people in situations like that end up even leaving the country to get some space. Or decide they're not having children and more of those complications._





Like many of you, I also have little to no contact with family. For me, not becoming a mother was a very conscious decision after receiving very distant/detached mothering myself and finally recognizing a strong but mostly untreated history of mental health challenges on both sides of our families.

Click to expand...

_I have a number of friends who took that position, and in my first relationship, I also took that position, and it was the right decision both at the time and also looking back with hindsight. It was because Brett was essentially a safe person that I reviewed that position when we met each other (but of course there's more to it than just that, it's so complicated...). There would have been problems from families of origin for sure, but we could have moved to Tasmania if necessary (island state of Australia separated by 2000+km of Nullarbor, and then the whole of Bass Strait, from Western Australia ;-)).

But I had no illusions that any children we might have had would have had healthy relationships with their grandparents. We would have had to adopt family for them, to have an extended family type experience. (Did any of know that this is happening more and more? You hear these nice stories - older adults who never had children of their own, becoming honorary grandparents to children who had no grandparents of their own, or no uncomplicated warm relationships with their biological grandparents.)

It turned out that babies didn't happen for us anyway, and though we've regretted that, we also understand that this has really simplified things for us, and these days we appreciate that comparative simplicity... because you might as well enjoy the advantages even of a situation not of your choosing, rather than fret about the way things turned out... and because the amount of energy for dealing with complications isn't unlimited...

I can understand why people want to have children, and I can also understand why people don't want to have children. Also, that there are far more children in the world than people who truly care for them. I've at times had whole classrooms full of adolescents who self-identified as unwanted...

On my final teaching practicum for my Grad.Dip.Ed., a near-retirement teacher from a Greek cultural background said to me, "Have you got time to sit in on one of my classes after lunch? There's something I would really like to show you." I loved this guy (and the whole department there, _great_ bunch) - he was warm, and funny, and zany, and totally into the subjects he taught. Anyway, at the start of the class, he introduced me, then said, "Could you please put your hand up if you had breakfast?" And perhaps three hands went up, in a class of thirty. He was asking why not? For quite a few of them, because no food in the house. Wow... For most of them, because their families didn't have a communal breakfast, so they just grew up with optional breakfast, and many teenagers seem to prefer a sleep-in to breakfast too. There's girls on diets, etc etc. And their teacher said to me later, "So 27 out of 30 in that room don't even have fuel in the tank. And how can you _learn_ like that? This is what they never tell you at university."

Then he asked, "OK, what are you having for lunch?" - and there were some that also had brought neither food nor money. Quite a few kids had a packet of potato chips, or some sugary snack bars. Hardly anyone had a decent nutritious meal. Some kids said that they basically just ate at dinnertime, in the evenings.

This was in Mandurah, a low socioeconomic area. At the time of my practicum, overall students were getting decent results there. But classes like that one... it's interesting how often the poor-performance, low-outcome streams were also the non-eating streams...

And that's just looking at physical issues - were these kids physically well cared for? ...so how well cared for _emotionally_ were they...???


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## horseluvr2524

I lived off of poptarts and soda for lunch for nearly around two years of high school. It's amazing that I was able to function off of such poor nutrition. 

I started a journal tonight. I also had an epiphany tonight, and I really do have to attribute my coming to this epiphany to you, Sue, because you've been making me apply logical, rational thinking to myself and my childhood, which I previously did not. Everything else, yes. Myself, no. Somehow I've been programmed to believe I'm not deserving of that which I give to others.

_"I've put off writing for a long time. I always felt like I didn't have a valid story, like I wasn't an abuse survivor, because my parents weren't always bad. But I've only just come to realize that such a notion isn't true in the slightest...

To go back to my point, “my parents weren't always bad,” I need to ask myself a question. Would it be okay if I were to hurt my daughter, whether emotionally or physically, because I have also fed her, and changed her diaper, and smiled at her, and bought her toys? Do these things make it okay for me to make her feel worthless as a person and call her names? Of course not! It is in realizing this that I have been able to acknowledge that I did undergo abuse as a child, even though my situation was a far cry better than what one normally thinks of when they think of child abuse. I have finally stopped making excuses for my parents, and I can finally face my past and see the truth of what it was."_


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## SueC

horseluvr2524 said:


> My one experience was just of not liking ANY human being, and just some overwhelming dark emotions. But not aggression. I can't imagine feeling an urge to harm someone. Terrifying, truly.


I've felt that way on some rare occasions. First of all, in its positive and protective form - I felt that for the first time when I was in my 20s and had volunteered to walk two Year 8 girls (12 turning 13) from my class who had forgotten their lunches, from a communal Year 8 beach excursion to a lunch bar, and we had to walk through a deserted area to get there, when a man approaching from the other direction set off some sort of intrinsic alarm in me. (This alarm generally, from other experiences, is spot on; though there may be a few false positives as well.)

I crossed the road with these girls and suddenly was filled with this overwhelming certainty that should this man cross the road to our side, and approach us, I would tear him limb to limb with my bare arms. I took a mental note of that one - wow, so this is the maternal instinct - the mother cat with her kittens, who would fight the wolf to the death, and win, just from that extraordinary force inside. - I was never involved in physical fights with peers as a child, and had, back then, no practice at martial arts or physical fighting, but it was just this calm heavy conviction that should this person look at these girls the wrong way, I would defend them by ripping into this guy entirely from instinct and whatever hormonal cascade had been triggered.

I think that's a very useful thing to have, for some situations. It's very like @*Knave* 's mother cow and the whole _I'm going to charge now_ thing.


I've also, on very rare occasions, had the instinct to harm people seen as threats to me in the middle of emotionally wrought situations - and for a very brief and regrettable time, had a taste of what it is like to actually act on it. Again: I never in my life had picked physical fights with others, not as a kid at school, not later - so this was completely new to me. It came out of an emotionally overwrought situation, and within a very short time, I reflected on the situation and decided that I had to remove myself from it. If I was flying out of control when triggered, then it was my responsiblity to remove myself from whatever triggered it. This worked - and has remained in my toolbox - should I ever get overwhelmed like that again, I will simply take steps to remove myself physically from the situation.

But the other thing it taught me is that all of us are capable of violence, under the right (wrong) circumstances. Even those of us who abhor violence, and want no part of it. I think this is a good thing to know - it's better not to have any illusions about "it could never happen to me"...

I shall end on a rather comedic little saying: _We are all of us just one haircut and three meals away from savagery. _


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## SueC

@*horseluvr2524* , traditional paper book journalling is excellent for working through things like this (and a whole lot of fun for other applications - like hosting your own rock music awards ), and critical and analytical thinking skills are your friend in matters like these.

I had this thought - you know how children draw people?










The funny thing is, if you get the average adults into a room and ask them to draw human beings, they actually generally don't get far past this sort of depiction style. People usually have to have some kind of art training to progress into the drawing of realistic, rather than cartoonified, faces and bodies.

And it's probably similar with our thinking. We have to _learn_ how to think critically and analytically - and many of us do that in our formal education. But then, we have to learn to _apply it_ to contexts in which we've hitherto stuck mostly with our unconscious social and familial programming. It's really good to look at things differently - to change perspective - and to keep looking from all sorts of different angles, to get a good multi-dimensional picture of _anything_. And a multi-dimensional view is so much more helpful that a flat view.


PS: I love this story about the power of journalling:

https://littleredsurvivor.com/2018/08/18/journey-from-the-cave/



For my last couple of years of paper journalling, I used a structured journal, rather than a blank-pages journal, and found that really interesting. This is the one I used:










You can find links to that type by typing "Daily Journal For Your Soul" into a search option. The person who made this format is a bit new-agey, but I just removed all the pages that I found hair-raising, about sitting in a limestone cave meditating on your chakras etc, and used the wonderful _structure_ of this particular type to advantage. I might scan a few examples of how that one is laid out later to give you a better idea, because I'm finding it difficult to get "look inside" views online for this...

Here's a link to last year's edition:

https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Journey-Journal-2017-Daily/dp/0985598239


There are a number of structured annual journals these days which look really useful, and it's easy now to find one that suits you.


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## SueC

knightrider said:


> I'm impressed! I hope your repair works! Good luck!


Thanks for your well wishes, @knightrider! I hope your riding was great today! :charge:

It worked all worked first go, by the way - much to my surprise!  I thought I'd have to go back at least once to make it less leaky, but leakage is minimal, and only through a thread - just a couple of drops every now and then. More plumbing tape on the thread could have fixed that, but it's a pain to unscrew risers and put them back in, and wasn't worth it.

Also to my great surprise, the solar pump worked without a hitch first go, after over six months of being shut off. Amazing. ...this might sound overly pessimistic, but my optimism in such matters in times past was often disappointed, and I've learnt that by expecting things to go wrong mechanically, you can only get pleasant surprises if they don't! 

So we had water all day today to give all our fruit trees a good soaking - overdue for some of them. We've lost a young Santa Rosa plum - the third one of its variety - you're supposed to have these to pollinate your blood plums, but those have done fine without the Santa Rosas, which we've never managed to grow. I think I'm throwing in the towel on Santa Rosas, and will replace the tree with another almond next week.

Compost application and pea straw mulching were the order of the day - we also dug new beds, transplanted our Pennsylvania Crookneck pumpkins and beans. Slowly slowly but getting there. We were gardening most of the day.

Wishing all a really pleasant day. :ZZZ::ZZZ: here!


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## SueC

*STRUCTURED JOURNALLING*

Since it has come up, I'm going to have a little fun and post some examples of structured journalling.

Up until and including 2009, I used to do unstructured journalling. You simply get a blank book and write in it. The whole thing started when our Year 9 English teacher introduced us to free journalling as one of our major assessment projects, back in 1984. _Write about anything you want to - just write. _ Well, that was exciting! Anything and everything! And I was off.

I was very isolated on my family's rural farm - apart from the odd weekend I was invited somewhere specifically, I did not get to spend spare time with other teenagers. At home, circumstances weren't conducive to having good conversations - nobody was interested - the common refrain was, "I don't have time." The most usual forms of communication, other than functional things like "Pass the butter" and "We're going shopping on Thursday" and things like that, were lectures and all-out arguments.

I soon learnt to conceal a lot of things that were of emotional significance to me - but that didn't mean I didn't want to think about them, or talk about them. The journal became a place I could discuss things that were meaningful to me. I wrote diary entries about everyday life, did book reviews, staged my own annual music awards, charted my progress with my Arabian mare, thought out loud about world issues, religion, our family problems, etc.

This tradition simply continued - every year, I'd get myself the biggest exercise books I could find, sandwich two of them together, and cover them in a nice arty wrapping paper and clear contact film. In about 2005, I moved to A4 spiral-bound journalling books with lovely hard covers that were then becoming available. And in late 2009, when we were in Tasmania, I discovered structured journalling when I found this in the Oxfam Shop in a mall in Launceston:








I'm reasonably sure Brett actually bought it for me for Christmas! He's sitting here laughing, saying, "I can't remember. Why don't you look it up in your journal?" 

The structure of this journal really appealed to me, and I'll show why in the excerpts I am going to post. I spent some time earlier doing a little magicking after Brett showed me how to use the GNU Image Manipulation Programme - it's very handy having a graphics / IT buff for a husband!

So here's a few pages from 2010. Any of them click to enlarge, so they can actually be read.










This is a personalised title page we printed on special handmade paper for just inside the cover, and we had these then-current photos on the opposite page:










Part of the fun of a journal is really making it into a personal book and treasured keepsake which documents a chunk of your life, so I used photos and stickers and did bits of artwork, as well as write entries.

Next was a preamble, and some more photo pages:




















After a few pages you could personalise, this particular structured journal contained an instructions / suggestions section, written by the author/designer of the Sacred Journey journals, Cheryl Thiele. Here are some excerpts of suggestions for the annual preamble section, before the day-to-day journalling begins:



















This is just an example of dozens of pages that discuss the sorts of things you could be writing about for the under the set headings of the annual preamble section, which is supposed to get you to really think about how you are going to approach the year - and to work out what is important to you, and why.

Here's the personalised frontispiece of that section of my 2010 journal:










And here are a just some selected excepts of what I put into this long preamble section:














































There were a lot of set writing exercises in that section - I thought it was a really good focusing and exploration tool. I'm only including selected excepts of this 280-page journal, both because it's a personal journal, and because it's 280 pages of writing! 

The next, and biggest, section of this journal was for day-to-day journalling. Next post!


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## SueC

Here are some more of the journal designer's instructions / suggestions for the day-to-day writing section that's the heart of this structured journal. Click on any of these to enlarge and read.














































And here's some excepts of how I used this section - the excerpts happen to be from January 2010, when we were on holidays camping in Tasmania, before heading back across the Nullarbor. It's something of a travel journal at that point, and I'm comfortable for people to come along with us on this Australian road and walk journey!

Each month started with a blank page for writing opposite a monthly planning calendar:










The monthly planning calendar, I actually used not just for planning, but a daily summary - because I didn't want to waste the daily entry slots for that, and because I am capable of very small handwriting, which together with colour coding, makes everything neat and readable.










I generally use red for appointments, green for physical / outdoors / exercise type activities, and blue for general writing.

Next every month was a symbolism to reflect upon, and I actually made an effort to do this. Here's January's:










And then, you'd come to the daily entry slots:










Each left page was a general writing page, some of which I turned into creative writing slots; each right page was daily entry slots.



















The nice thing about using these daily entry slots the way I ended up doing it, is that it made you condense each day down into six lines. Anything longer than that had to go on the facing pages.


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## SueC

The rest of our January holiday - I hope you enjoy the vicarious experience!  It really was a wonderful time, and I recommend these landscapes and places to everyone who ever comes Down Under.





























Here's a few more nice things from later on in the year. This first one is from a major bushfire that came close to where we were renting our place in Robinson.










I also did a fair few short book reviews throughout the year - it gave me a record of what I was reading that year, with some scaffolding so I could remember the books as time went on:


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## SueC

The last batch of samples from structured journalling I am posting are from when we had just bought our little farm in Redmond. We were super excited, and out planting trees the day after official purchase!

This is the monthly calendar and its facing page:


















The next pages immediately following show some of the formal structure for each month - pages I didn't include for January's samples:



















Next, something hilarious from some ultra-funny readers' letters in Grass Roots magazine:










:rofl:

It was now becoming a work /practical journal, because we had so much to do to set up our bare farm:










But, there was also time for the odd funny ode, and a political rant... Toby was a Border Collie we walked for our neighbours, before we had our own place and could finally get a dog of our own...










More farm-focused stuff:










Our second last really cold winter, in Robinson - and general life...



















And finishing with two humorous pages - one of silly odes for fun, and another where I was imagining what a library book on chainsaws might contain - and created the imagined index page...



















I hope these pages have shown how journalling can be a really rewarding thing to do - and what structured journalling can look like!


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## frlsgirl

Wow. You take your journaling very seriously. I have a simple spiral bound note book where I log my rides and important happenings with Ana; like vet visits, farrier appointments etc. I also have a calendar/planner that I carry in my purse that I use for keeping track of upcoming appointments.


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## gottatrot

I've been enjoying your recent posts.

Not to derail the discussion, but there is something I've been wanting to ask you, so I apologize for an abrupt subject change.

I believe you use the same bit on Sunsmart that I do on Hero - I can't remember the name you have for it in WA, but we call it a Kimberwicke. You mentioned awhile back that you had some opinions about how it works, and why horses might like it.

Anyway, my question is about how you use your curb chain with it. For years we used to attach the curb fairly loosely. When I did this, it seemed like if I stood by the horse's head and pulled back, there would only be pressure inside the mouth until a certain point and then eventually the curb would engage under the chin. In my mind, this meant I could ride with light pressure and not have the chain apply pressure to the horse.

Lately, I've heard that putting the chain more snug makes the bit stabilize better, and that using it loosely is less kind to the horse.
I haven't been able to tell which a horse prefers, either way. It seems like if I was keeping light pressure on the bit, it would be better if I wasn't pulling on the chain. 

I'm not sure with a solid ported mouthpiece how much stabilizing is needed? The bit itself is quite stable. 
What is your opinion? How do you attach your curb?


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## SueC

Hello, @*gottatrot* ! :wave: The curb is attached, in our case, the way these things are officially meant to be attached for correct fit - as, for example, explained by Tom Roberts in _Horse Control and the Bit_ - who debunks all this silly stuff about curb bits using an actual understanding of physics, which I can verify (I taught university-entry physics, after studying university courses on physics as part of my B.Sc.), rather than weird and wonderful ideas / common dogma... There's a little bit of slack in the chain so you can just get a finger in-between it and the horse's chin (I can be more precise after next time I tack up) - too much slack and the lip can be painfully trapped, not enough slack and the chain engages too early and can be pulled too tight, hurting the horse. The best thing is to fit the chain, stick your finger under it, and rotate the mouthpiece, so you can feel the pressure from the chain yourself at various stages of the rotation, and get a better idea.

Also it's important when fitting the curb to make sure the chain lies flat throughout the rotation, and the corners of the lips don't get trapped in the chain at any stage of the rotation - this can be an issue with incorrectly fitted chains/bits. Just observe everything on your horse when you take the bit through to the furthest rotation that can be achieved with the reins (which in the case of this particular bit, when correctly fitted, will not "clamp" - just gently increase pressure to a pretty low-key maximum).

The bit which here is called a port-mouthed Spanish snaffle / Kimblewicke bit has a very mild curb action compared to Pelhams etc, when you put it in the lower slot of the D-ring. In the top slot it has negligible curb action, and the chain mainly just stabilises the bit in the mouth (see links below - limits _backwards_ movement in the mouth). In the D-ring itself the rein can move and curb action decreases as the horse lifts its head, which is the opposite of how you'd want it to be really, and kind of pointless.

I've never seen injuries to the mouth from these bits in horses I have worked with - but have seen injuries from snaffles, including in harness horses, when things get wild and the horse rapidly "bangs" into the bit, or when a rider jolts the reins - which many riders do, even riders who are totally convinced they don't, and which is why a lot of horses in snaffle bits run around with heads higher than normal, in order to prevent jolts to the jawbone inside the mouth - just a bit of epithelium on bone - so they try to take the shock in the corners of the lips etc, where pressure is less painful. You can compare it yourself - apply pressure to the corners of your own lips, versus press down on the gums behind your molars (since you don't have a diastema ;-)). Another equivalent sensation area in a human is the bridge of the nose: A thin bit of soft tissue on top of a bone...

Also, Romeo raced in the same type of bit you and I are currently using with our riding horses - and it was the one bit which did not injure his mouth (or anything else) - this was the PTSD, barely controllable in races horse who'd been previously banned from racing, and who'd been put on the dog truck by the previous trainer. This was a bit he liked, and would willingly open his mouth to, as opposed to snaffles, with which he'd had lots of painful experiences.

Here's some past posts I did on snaffles versus curbs:

https://www.horseforum.com/horse-riding/bit-use-587762/#post7543034

https://www.horseforum.com/horse-tack-equipment/best-bit-fussy-mouth-617097/page2/#post7934737

https://www.horseforum.com/horse-tack-equipment/best-bit-fussy-mouth-617097/page3/#post7954425

https://www.horseforum.com/horse-training/hard-mouthed-horse-help-581850/page2/#post7483466

Hope that's helpful!  I'll happily brainstorm with you anytime on this topic / other topics. I'm not infallible, but I do apply my brain! ;-) As I know you do too!


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## horseluvr2524

Good discussion on bits. Here's another derail, lol.

I saw this post and my heart just broke for the poor girl. And then to see adult posters come in with what I feel is a complete lack of sympathy and empathy ...

Maybe I'm too soft, I don't know. I just don't feel like harshly pointing out how this kid is "wrong" is going to help anything. She's clearly depressed and going through difficulty with her family, and looking for encouragement. While it's true that teens in general need discipline, I feel like most adults go about it the wrong way. There seems to be a lack of empathy.

I find it interesting that some of the posters there that are being a bit on the harsher side, are also ones I have seen say that they will sell on a horse that is very difficult, has vices, etc., instead of trying to work with them.

Why is it that those old methods of beating horses and dogs black and blue are now considered very abusive and wrong, yet such methods applied to children are somehow okay? Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not against a well deserved swat when needed. I just don't feel that the belt on bare skin method is the right way to go about it.


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## egrogan

I stayed out of that thread as I'm sure I would be told to butt out since I'm not a parent. But I definitely do not understand nor relate to the "I LOUDLY REQUIRE RESPECT FROM ALL CREATURES IN MY ORBIT" orientation to the world. I guess I'm kind of a contrarian person who (maybe to a fault) values independent thinking. Children of all ages are capable of independent thinking and choice making, and just because an adult owns the title of "parent" doesn't make them right or reasonable all the time. In teacher training, there's a concept known as "the warm demander" - a type of teacher who certainly provides structure and discipline, but has high expectations for every student's worth and value and helps each child meet them with firm support. That's the mold I tried to adopt as a teacher. I don't know how you could be a great teacher- or parent- without trust- and I don't know how you build trust when you make the child feel stupid.



This seems relevant to leave here: The American Academy Of Pediatrics On Spanking Children: Don't Do It, Ever. | New Hampshire Public Radio


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## knightrider

I also read that post and stayed out of it. It is in the "Teen Section" and specifically says that adults are to be sensitive and not preach. And then people did preach (in my opinion). I also felt sorry for the girl, and then thought, "I guess I am too soft . . . or something." All those negative comments didn't sit well with me.

Before you know it, kids start cutting or drugging or starving themselves. There is a need to be sensitive, I feel, and that young girl needed some sensitivity. One reason why I don't post rants or requests for advice except in journals. It's the main reason why I had Isabeau write her own journal--I didn't want people to jump in and say, "You should do this" or "You should do that." Unless you have ridden and worked with Isabeau, you have no idea . . . she's a horse like no other.

And @SueC, I love love love Maeve Binchy. She is the best!


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## SueC

horseluvr2524 said:


> Good discussion on bits. Here's another derail, lol.
> 
> I saw this post and my heart just broke for the poor girl. And then to see adult posters come in with what I feel is a complete lack of sympathy and empathy ...
> 
> Maybe I'm too soft, I don't know. I just don't feel like harshly pointing out how this kid is "wrong" is going to help anything. She's clearly depressed and going through difficulty with her family, and looking for encouragement. While it's true that teens in general need discipline, I feel like most adults go about it the wrong way. There seems to be a lack of empathy.
> 
> I find it interesting that some of the posters there that are being a bit on the harsher side, are also ones I have seen say that they will sell on a horse that is very difficult, has vices, etc., instead of trying to work with them.


Here's the thread that originally made me think twice about being involved with HF, and eventually I did take a long break. I gave advice about educating a horse, and pulled up a few people who were disrespectful to the OP / assuming they weren't capable of learning. One of the people who is being quite nasty and making a hell of a lot of dangerous assumptions in the thread you've linked to from the teen forum also told me I sounded "ridiculous" etc, and has many times been rude and made personal attacks on me instead of actually discussing the subject matter in a rational manner (she also seems to have comprehension issues - since she has a tendency to argue things that the person she's addressing hasn't said or even implied!). In this thread, which I complained about several times to the powers that be, I was actually told to "seek professional help" - amongst other things - it's still there! I had some big disagreements with some of the mods at the time as to what constituted disrespectful behaviour and just stating an opinion. I am really glad to see that the worst offenders for personal insult have disappeared from HF since then - or there would be no way I'd be back here.

And, every single one of them was an "I loudly demand respect" type person - who didn't seem to think they owed any respect to horses, children, other HF members etc - and could never be wrong - and loved to ridicule others - all of which are hallmarks of abusive behaviour and narcissism. I'd seen too much of it in my own family of origin, and was sure as heck not going to come to a forum in my recreation time where it was OK for people to treat others like this under the guise of "free speech" etc. This old thread still disgusts me (even after moderating) - and it disgusts me how many people click the "like" button when someone is being rude to another person.

https://www.horseforum.com/horse-training/breaking-7-year-old-gelding-432746/#post5624786

Since re-opening my journal, I've not had anyone be rude to me on the main forum - but I'm still seeing harshness and lack of empathy towards others, and especially towards younger people seeking personal advice. Interesting: @*egrogan* , @*knightrider* and I have all taught teenagers, and all cared for their emotional welfares - rather than be bully type teachers, or don't-care-just-collecting-my-salary teachers, etc, which also exist in droves. And all of us knew what it was like to have unhappiness as a result of the actions or lack thereof of our own primary caregivers. Unlike a lot of these harsh-comments people, we're actually qualified professionals in these areas. And yet, you're telling me you're staying away because of how this goes - which I completely understand, and often do myself, but is also a sad indictment of how those least qualified to offer advice end up offering more than their fair share.

And I'm not saying either that professional qualifications are the be-all and end-all here - even more important is having warmth, empathy and human decency, which don't come with university qualifications - but which all of you who talk to me on this journal have. So I think you're all eminently qualified to offer advice to youngsters who ask - and I don't think this is the case with the general crowd.




> Why is it that those old methods of beating horses and dogs black and blue are now considered very abusive and wrong, yet such methods applied to children are somehow okay? Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not against a well deserved swat when needed. I just don't feel that the belt on bare skin method is the right way to go about it.


Yeah, and for the thread you posted, I think it's shocking that the parent is calling their child "stupid" - if reported correctly, but probably is. That is disrespectful, abusive and attacking the person - rather than dealing with the issues. No wonder the child doesn't want to listen. Honestly - people can shame us, and we're supposed to attend respectfully? If you want respect, then offer respect as well... What sort of role modelling is that? And it's the role modelling that is the most important thing of all, from adults to children - the being a good example.

Thanks for bringing it up, and hope you're feeling better!  Cute photos the other day, by the way. Was just too tired to post! :ZZZ:




egrogan said:


> I stayed out of that thread as I'm sure I would be told to butt out since I'm not a parent. But I definitely do not understand nor relate to the "I LOUDLY REQUIRE RESPECT FROM ALL CREATURES IN MY ORBIT" orientation to the world. I guess I'm kind of a contrarian person who (maybe to a fault) values independent thinking. Children of all ages are capable of independent thinking and choice making, and just because an adult owns the title of "parent" doesn't make them right or reasonable all the time. In teacher training, there's a concept known as "the warm demander" - a type of teacher who certainly provides structure and discipline, but has high expectations for every student's worth and value and helps each child meet them with firm support. That's the mold I tried to adopt as a teacher. I don't know how you could be a great teacher- or parent- without trust- and I don't know how you build trust when you make the child feel stupid.
> 
> This seems relevant to leave here: The American Academy Of Pediatrics On Spanking Children: Don't Do It, Ever. | New Hampshire Public Radio


Completely agree with you - and thanks again for the link! 




knightrider said:


> I also read that post and stayed out of it. It is in the "Teen Section" and specifically says that adults are to be sensitive and not preach. And then people did preach (in my opinion). I also felt sorry for the girl, and then thought, "I guess I am too soft . . . or something." All those negative comments didn't sit well with me.
> 
> Before you know it, kids start cutting or drugging or starving themselves. There is a need to be sensitive, I feel, and that young girl needed some sensitivity. One reason why I don't post rants or requests for advice except in journals. It's the main reason why I had Isabeau write her own journal--I didn't want people to jump in and say, "You should do this" or "You should do that." Unless you have ridden and worked with Isabeau, you have no idea . . . she's a horse like no other.
> 
> And @*SueC* , I love love love Maeve Binchy. She is the best!


 Yeah, she writes so well about everyday life and situations, rather than just concocted high drama.

I don't think you, or @*horseluvr2524* , are being too soft - I think you're just used to finding fault with yourselves. ;-) Childhood patterns rah rah rah - been there, got the T-shirt. It seems some people end up with expertise, and others with confidence! :rofl:

And I completely agree with everything you've said above. It's rather dystopian out there in the "real world"! ;-) Which is why making safe and healthy microcosms is really really important - in our homes, in classrooms, in stables/paddocks, and in public spaces like this.

Big :hug: to you all and have a great day!


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## horseluvr2524

I had to post there, just to be some kind of light for someone who was living in darkness, because I remember that well. I'm young. It's not so long ago I was in a similar situation as the OP. I doubt the OP will ever come back to that thread, which is sad. I don't understand the attitude that many people have of 'lording over' kids, especially teens, like they get some kind of emotional high from it. It's almost like they are back to acting like mean teenagers again, "I lived through it and now it's my turn to haze the next generation."

On the other hand, you can't just be their friend. Some discipline and structure is required. Just like horses, who do better when they have a set of rules to follow, so as to make life safe and predictable. I see the way some adults act, without any respect for anyone or anything, and demanding that everything be about them, and throwing a fit when things don't go their way ... and I have to wonder what their childhood was like.

A little while ago, I was feeding my daughter. Her little newborn arms went flailing everywhere and she punched me in the breast with some force. I said, "Hey, don't hit me, brat!" Then I chastised myself. I'm still working my way out of those verbal abuse patterns from childhood, and to cut myself a bit of slack, being exhausted most of the time doesn't help. I then laughed as her arms continued to flail and punch and said, "Don't hit the boob that feeds you!" In a joking manner of course.

OK, I don't know where I was going with that (see, chronic exhaustion). That was leading up to something, but it's lost now. OH! I've got it. Um ... to continue.

Again, I can't say I'm entirely against a swat, as in like one little gentle hand pat on the butt. I consider it more something for small children, if to be used at all. However, I must say that of the physical punishments I can remember, I don't remember why they were given. I remember that they hurt. But I don't remember the reason I got them. So I would say that at least the way my parents used them, they were ineffective. But my household was very dysfunctional, there was a serious communication problem, and there was a lot of anger. I'm not even sure how I was taught my manners, and morale, ethics, etc. You'd think I would remember something like that.


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## horseluvr2524

Just saw your post @SueC

_" And it's the role modelling that is the most important thing of all, from adults to children - the being a good example.

Thanks for bringing it up, and hope you're feeling better! Cute photos the other day, by the way. Was just too tired to post! "_

To carry on from my last post, I think that is how I learned those character developing aspects, from role modeling by adults in my life. I think that lead by example is the best way to go, and always thought that saying "Do as I say, not as I do," (which my parents used to tell me) was very stupid and prideful.

I am feeling better, thanks, at least as far as the depression goes. I'm still exhausted, but not putting so much work on myself, and taking more time for naps.  and thanks! I think she's pretty darn cute, but I am biased.


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## SueC

@*horseluvr2524* , and anyone else, if you feel people have put off OPs, you can always PM the OPs and give them a little antidote to any poison they may have experienced - and say that you didn't think that sort of behaviour was OK. I did that a fair few times in the old forum days, when people got treated as stupid, preached to, lectured from on high, and had rudeness directed at them etc. And usually they'll get your PM, because it's usually notified via their email as well. A friendly title is essential if you do this!  And it's usually appreciated, and makes people feel a little better about the world. As human beings, I think we should stand by those who are being unkindly or rudely treated, and tell them we're sorry they experienced that.

Be kind to yourself too right now - those kinds of programmed responses are autopilot repeats from caregiver modelled responses in childhood, and tend to come out in stressful situations, when you're tired, etc etc - you have to overwrite that programme, and it takes time. But, the best thing is, you're aware of it, and don't like it, and you're determined to replace the faulty programming with a healthy pattern. Acknowledging it to others and making amends is so important, when we make mistakes like that - my own parents, who surely had their own bad programming from their own childhoods, didn't acknowledge, they were in denial about it as long as I've known them, and simply pretended everything was hunky dory even when it clearly wasn't - to the point of editing out events from their acknowledgement, like extremely abusive deeds from them and my older brother - they simply "never happened" or "it wasn't like that" and "it was your fault, really" etc - even when there were civic witnesses, like the time I got dragged behind the car by my brother when I was in high school, when he lost his temper. Oh, and of course, my father never put my mother in the rubbish bin when I was little, either - that was just my vivid imagination! ;-)

Good luck and hang in there. And by the way, Supernanny got so much criticism from the way she dealt with young "problem kids", but I think her method was one that worked, and ended up with happy children. There's a few variations on methods that work, but they all involve respect (going both ways), firm boundaries (going both ways), _immediate_ and consistent consequences for boundary infringements, lots of warmth, encouragement, and focusing primarily on the positive. And no, you can't reason with very young children. (And sometimes not even with what physically looks like adults! :rofl


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## gottatrot

Thanks for the info about the bits! I agree, and that's just the information I was looking for. I've seen many horses having issues with snaffles and sometimes it's just about finding the exact mouthpiece they like, but sometimes a snaffle just is not the right bit. I've always thought that people who think every horse should go in a snaffle either are not listening to horses, or are dealing with horses that don't feel free to make their opinion known.

That's too bad about the adults taking the adult dad's side in the teen thread. I've heard people say things that sound like if you just are harsh enough with a kid a time or two, they'll turn into an angel. Same as if you just give it to a horse hard enough they'll never do something again. It depends on the kid and depends on the horse. I know that as a kid there would have never been a "hard enough" that would convince me to straighten up. 

Amore tried to bite me one time and I scared her, and she never did it again. But she had never been taught not to bite, and she just needed to know it wasn't acceptable. Other horses like Halla and Hero know they're not supposed to bite, but they will still do it once in awhile. It doesn't matter if you tell them harshly not to, they are horses that would get into a physical fight with another horse if necessary. Even if they got injured by the other horse, they would still fight again if the circumstances were right. So even injury would not be enough to deter them permanently. 
@SueC pointed out that with stallions (and some other horses, and some kids), if you are aggressive with them they will rise to the challenge and fight. It is better to create an understanding and even let some things slide, in order to get a working relationship.

I've seen this with patients also, who sometimes revert back to a more childlike or else a "fight or flight" state. I've seen how people who only use a head on approach sometimes have it worse. Say someone in a bad state throws a punch. One nurse I work with will always yell and get in the person's face, which often results in agitating the person more. I'll try to duck the punch, and often get very soothing instead of loud, and say we're not going to hurt you, don't be scared, things like that. It is rare that a person is actually aggressive and in their right mind. Most often they are being defensive, like horses are. A defensive person or horse needs to know they can stop defending themselves and are safe.

I've never been one to make a kid behave, so I'm just speaking from my experience being a kid. Pretty much when kids do crazy things, I watch because it is interesting, or try it too. Then people point out to me that I am an adult.


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## knightrider

> I watch because it is interesting, or try it too. Then people point out to me that I am an adult.



Hah ha ha ha ha. I can just see you doing that, after thoroughly enjoying your two horse books!!!:smile:


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## gottatrot

SueC said:


> This old thread still disgusts me (even after moderating) - and it disgusts me how many people click the "like" button when someone is being rude to another person.
> 
> https://www.horseforum.com/horse-training/breaking-7-year-old-gelding-432746/#post5624786


You made some good points in that thread. I wonder how many hundreds and thousands of teens have started horses on their own just by reading books or even just using trial and error. I've met young women who are not necessarily great riders or trainers, but they certainly knew what worked for their own horse and could ride that horse beautifully and do tricks. 

I wonder how many pro trainers actually had another trainer tutor them through the training process. I've met a few that started out by training a horse or two on their own, spending some time winning at shows, and then offering their services to others. I never went through a horse starting program with a trainer, but I can certainly start a horse under saddle, as can you and many others on the forum. Including @knightrider, and perhaps @Knave, right?


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## SueC

gottatrot said:


> Pretty much when kids do crazy things, I watch because it is interesting, or try it too. Then people point out to me that I am an adult.


:rofl:, @*gottatrot* ! However: While childishness isn't good in an adult, _childlikeness_ (as you're showing there) is a good characteristic to have - trying out new things, being slightly deranged and good-crazy, being amazed by things jaded people find boring, being open and loving, saying what you mean, etc. I think of humans as being like cross-sections of trees; all your ages are still inside you, and I think the people who are reconciled to that, and celebrate and honour that, are actually the most mature people in many ways.

Some past posts on...

Annual rings:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page80/#post1970589861

Looking deeper than the surface, journalling, and "weird" people:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page80/#post1970589823

Brett told me last night I should make a thematic index for my journal, now that it's so long! :rofl:


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## horseluvr2524

@gottatrot

I love you gottatrot! :hug: You are awesome. I hope that others here will be as lucky as I was to meet gottatrot face to face and ride with her. I'm sorry, I can't help but brag. It was such fun! :wink: :gallop:

One of the things I am most excited about as a new parent, is that now that I have a child, I am going to have plenty of excuses and chances to be silly and childlike (in a good way), and relive the joy of childhood. :smile:

ETA: Thanks Sue, childlike, not childish :razz:


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## SueC

Who needs an excuse? ;-) :rofl:

Although I've got to say, there has been a lot more of that in my life, since I married my co-conspirator! 
























More silly photos here for anyone who missed them:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...s-other-people-479466/page100/#post1970610387


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## lostastirrup

Ive never commented on your thread before, but I do read it regularly, i think we have the same taste in Sci-Fi and I wonder if you've ever seen the show Firefly by chance? but I thought I'd jump in on the point of criticism, mental health and the idea of addressing teenagers. Because often us Young folks need more tact and care than we would like to admit, and those teen years are difficult. I don't care who you are. I'm 22. Still young with fiery blood and not so removed from an angsty phase. I have a wonderful relationship with both my parents... Now. There was a period of time when my relationship with my father was somewhat violent, and not good. He never whacked me, but there was a lot of yelling and lording over that came from his own insecurities and the fact that every teenager ever is frustrating. I have forgiven him, I feel safe around him, there is a lot I respect about him, and love him very very much. 

I grew up Christian, and over the years attending various churches that preached a "shove it down their throats" evangelism after we came stateside, my family grew up missionaries in Haiti and were solidly not in that camp, namely because it doesn't work, and it NEVER is respectful to a thinking human being who is made in the image of God. It's one of the few things I think is clear cut. 

That method also doesn't work with horses. If you think it does I have a long list of mounts that put significant time and misery teaching me that's not the case. And they'd be happy to oblige the uninitiated. 

The method that works with people or animals to develop a good working relationship is the same: be willing to see and address their weaknesses and refuse to abandon them. That looks totally different depending on what you're riding/ who you are talking to. With my horse it means not shoving with the spur when he's not under himself in canter (I ride dressage) and instead taking the time to either start again or get off his back so he can rebalance. My horse is not afraid to make a mistake with me. He trusts me to be consistent, to give the same aids and do what I can to help him in the job I've put him to. When I signed his bill of sale I made the promise to be responsible for his well being, that means looking to his physical needs and because I want a partner, being willing to change myself so that the work comes easy. I have not put him in a method or a program that I expect him to cookie cutter fit. He doesn't know. He doesn't understand. He only exists in the reality I've created for him, he can't research what I'm doing, he can only respond. That means I have a heck of a lot of moral responsibility to him to make that reality a good one. No bad rides. I must have empathy. 

When it comes to people, we don't get to make the call that "since you've had this stimulus or since you are presently in this situation you should feel this way". That's individual. How we experience life is individual. My good friend grew up in an incredible home with incredible supportive parents, and she struggles with suicidal thoughts and depression. To be a good friend, I must meet her where she is in her pain and be there to support her. I can't diagnose why. That's not my call. I can't tell her how she should feel. That's not my call. I can't tell her that because she's had a phenomenal upbringing and phenomenal support that she shouldn't struggle this way. That's not my call. 

My boyfriend grew up in a house where they hid the knives so his mother couldn't kill herself, where violence was the rule and not the exception. He also struggles with mental health, but of a different flavor. I can't tell him he shouldn't feel anxious. I can't tell him that he's the way he is because of how he grew up. I cant tell him that it's genetic and he will always be this way. None of those are my call. My best service is to support him where he is weak, and to help him when he is low.

If I assume his bad past has defined him or if I assume the good past should define how my friend feels, I havent been considering the right things. If you're going to cope with mental health or loneliness or abuse you need someone to come along beside you, not to peer at your "resume" and contest the results. It's a breach of trust. 

It's weird to me that people are unwilling to contend with the quirky horses, every one I've seen has settled out with good training. But I think these same people would back away from helping the quirky people. But the bad horses you can sell on and the hurting people you can ignore or blame on someone else when it finally boils to an ugly head. Maybe it wasn't the hard spoken person's fault they struggled or responsibility to see to their care. But by golly WHO ARE YOU if you do not? What higher form of cruelty is there than to neglect pain and suffering as if it isn't there. 




Sorry. You can have your thread back.i really don't like the flippancy with which the behaviour of children/young adults is dealt with. It really grinds my gears. 


I showed my Fellow pictures of your strawbale house and now we want one. But our climate may be too cold. 

Cheers
gm


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## Knave

I also have been reminded I am a grown up on several occasions. Lol

Yes @gottatrot, I have started horses under saddle. Like my little one though, I had a lot of experience surrounding me. I never remember not riding, and I have raised my kids the same. Most kids who grow up in my culture start a horse or two, maybe even just so that they have the confidence that they can. We still hold some old feelings like that.

Now, my brother never started a horse, but he never had any interest in horses. My oldest also is not interested in starting horses, although she rides for work and enjoys her horse. She does plan on being the person who does most of Bones’s riding this spring so that her sister may use her horse for work and she can get some experience with a younger horse. 

I don’t think it is a mandatory thing in this day and age. I told the girls that the only mandatory I had for them was the ability to work with the family. This means that they need to be horseman enough to get their jobs done, but they don’t need to have a hobby that is horses as well.


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## SueC

@lostastirrup, I've no idea why you're apologising, you're totally welcome to be here and to chime in! :hug:

I wish there was a love button - that was such a wonderful, heartfelt, insightful, wise, super-articulate post from you - thank you so much for writing it.  :bowwdown:

It makes my day to know that there are people like you in this world - beacons of light in an often dark place. This will make such a difference to so many people - and other creatures! I'm particularly over the moon when it's younger people who are articulating such things. I'm GenX, a really rotten generation in many ways, my leaving yearbook was full of cited ambitions like "I want to be a millionaire by the time I'm 25!" and "I want to get rich and to get laid as much as possible!" and "I want to have a villa in France and a jet-boat and marry a photographic model!" blah blah blah (we should request a vomit emoji; here's an imported one:







)

Oops, that a bit big! :rofl:

The first generation I taught were GenY, and such an improvement on what my generation had been. I'm often reminded of the saying, "Change happens one funeral at a time!" :Angel:

It feels good to know that there are people being born who are going to be an improvement on the world average attitude. That you're still going to be here and shining your light when I'm dust. Great stuff - thank you! 

My DH loves _Firefly_ and tried to sell it to me several times. I'm not instantly hooked - probably the environment putting me off - I'm not as much of a SciFi buff as he is. But I did really adore _Wonderfalls_, and if I'm not mistaken, I think there's a common production element to that somewhere... And I love _Dead Like Me_...

I'll tear myself away now, everyone, and actually do some work! :rofl: Have a great evening, and remember, the coffee is in the pantry over there! ;-)


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## lostastirrup

I'm actually not really sure how all the generations line up. But I don't think mine is particularly improved from the last one. Different issues maybe, but plenty of our own sins. 


You really should give Firefly a second try. Have a glass of wine with it if you must to get through the setting, it will grow on you quickly I promise. And you'll be as sad as the rest of us that it ended. 

Best of luck doing actual work. I've been trying all afternoon to no avail.


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## horseluvr2524

@lostastirrup

Hello fellow 22 year old! :wave:
Yes, I'm 22. With a two month old now. I don't like to admit it, because somehow things I say become of less worth once people find out my age. But this is not a thread where that would happen.
@SueC

Your husband has the same light in his eyes. Such happy people. You two are a great couple


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## lostastirrup

horseluvr2524 said:


> @lostastirrup
> 
> Hello fellow 22 year old! :wave:
> Yes, I'm 22. With a two month old now. I don't like to admit it, because somehow things I say become of less worth once people find out my age. But this is not a thread where that would happen.


 What is it they say "age is just a number and mine is unlisted". 

I've always looked younger than I am so I'm used to being treated as though I have less experience. Which it's true, so I try and be careful and only speak to the things I know I know. 

A two month old! Just a year or two away from a first pair of boots and a pony!


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## SueC

Ah, ageism, @*horseluvr2524* - that happens at both ends - and even in the mid-range! :rofl: But not in this journalling group, where we're all human beings, and happy that we were all born with enough time overlap to get to know each other better.

Songs again: Here's a person in midlife looking back at their early 20s. The singer is about a decade up from me, and very influential on me as a teenager, as a good role model, which in many ways he and his bandmates actually were, back in the day. U2 showed me, with their music, that you could be angry for reasons other than not getting your own way - not in a destructive way, but in a constructive way. Also they showed me that male adults could care about other people, and people less fortunate than them, and that they could define love very differently to the way people in my family of origin did. (As did the Gospels, which I was reading for the first time at the time, after a visit to the school by the people who hand out the little pocket NTs in red covers - some of the boys immediately went and used them for toilet paper, after making loud declarations to that effect, but I've always felt I should read something and form my own opinion on it before opening my mouth about it, and doing public theatre.)

From around the 1990s, my audience relationship with U2 has been very on again-off again, as they cycled through some musical styles I didn't like, and wrote a few songs that had a sort of emetic effect on me along the way, which was also true for their 1990s multimedia stadium shows, of which I was never a fan - which is not to say it was "bad" - just that it didn't appeal to me - there is a difference! 

But U2's _Songs Of Innocence_ and The Cure's _Bloodflowers_ are without question my favourite two albums to come out this millennium - both of them spoke to me, from start to finish, like no album had since I was in my early 20s. I've yet to catch up with a few Cure albums from this millennium, but U2's _Songs Of Innocence_ is my favourite U2 album since _The Joshua Tree_ and _The Unforgettable Fire_ were released back in the 1980s.

This song I'm going to link to is so eloquent about the youth-end ageism that you're referring to, @*horseluvr2524* , and that I experienced myself as a teenager and a young twenty-something - like what would we _possibly_ know? (...in the song the lines, _Old man knows that I never listen/So how could I have something to say, and Old man says that we never listen/__We shout about what we don’t know_ especially hit that for me!) Which is such an arrogant attitude... and teaching people of that age range, later on, just reinforced that for me - many people give far too little credit to young people, intellectually and emotionally. I've known 12-year-olds that were more emotionally mature, and also more intellectual, than some of the principals I've worked with (but also, luckily, had some great principals along the way). You really can't judge people so superficially, and arrive at anything accurate.






And this is an example of what U2 were up to in their early 20s:






Yay for 22, you two - enjoy!  When I was 22, I was just starting my first professional job out of university. My research project (sustainable land management) involved, at one point, working with a senior soil scientist who was also in the area. He was a bit cranky at first, but we soon got on. My research supervisor said, "Well, I'm glad that's going so well! When we hired you, he said to me, 'Oh, I see you gave an important project to a little girl just out of school!'" :rofl: We all fell about laughing - the soil scientist included...

Oh and thanks for your compliments re Brett and me. I think he's super-amazing too, but I really can't underline enough, especially talking to younger people, that we too still have things we really need to work on, and that this is a lifelong process - I don't think anyone has it fully sorted...


@*lostastirrup* , I'll give _Firefly_ another go - since the person suggesting it is one of the small subgroup of the population who understand why it's funny that one of my Sunsmart's nicknames is Smartibartfast! ;-) This will also make my husband happy - which he wasn't when I was sort of falling asleep in Episode 1... :Angel:

Hope you have a more productive time soon. Me, I've managed to plant a Tahitian lime and do some general maintenance, and am back in on a break, eating chickenless chicken soup... had a migraine yesterday and the ghost of it is still around, and this soup wards off ghosts and is easy to make - you just boil some soup pasta in chicken stock (which these days rarely has actual chicken in it), and when the pasta is done, add some slices of cheddar cheese and a handful of parsley. Let the cheese melt into the soup and... hmmmm. Also excellent when you've gotten really cold, or been mountain-climbing, or just had a hard day.

While I was out, I was listening to my i-Pod, and thought I'd come and pop this 80s anthem on my journal on my break. Because the 80s were materialistic rather than idealistic, the alternative music scene was a rich mine of inspiration for me. Tears for Fears weren't my usual cup of tea, but I did love this song, _Shout_, as a teenage, and looking back on it, I have to applaud it as an adult as well. I was never a fan of keyboard-heavy music, or of drum machines or anything but complex polyrhythms, but it doesn't matter with this song - just as it didn't matter in John Farnham's _You're The Voice_, which I posted a few pages back.

I also love this, from Wikipedia:"A lot of people think that 'Shout' is just another song about primal scream theory, continuing the themes of the first album. It is actually more concerned with political protest. It came out in 1984 when a lot of people were still worried about the aftermath of The Cold War and it was basically an encouragement to protest."
— Roland Orzabal​"It concerns protest inasmuch as it encourages people not to do things without actually questioning them. People act without thinking because that's just the way things go in society. So it's a general song, about the way the public accepts any old grief which is thrown at them."
— Curt Smith[5]​


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## SueC

lostastirrup said:


> What is it they say "age is just a number and mine is unlisted".


:rofl: Very good!

I've also heard it said that age doesn't matter, unless you are a cheese! :rofl:

And that older people shouldn't eat health food, because they need all the preservatives they can get! :Angel:


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## gottatrot

Very nice post, @lostastirrup!

I am against ageism, along with most other "isms." I remember all too well feeling biased against as a younger person. @horseluvr2524 is very mature anyway, and many older folks have no wisdom, while some younger ones are very sage.

My DH said recently he saw a girl around 5 years old walking with someone and saying, "When I was a little girl..." Very cute. Age is all relative.

I liked Firefly. My favorite character was Zoe, who was a strong woman who didn't need to point out that fact to anyone, and married to a man who was not as courageous or stereotypically macho, which also did not seem to make him less important.


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## SueC

@gottatrot , what you just said about -isms made me remember this song, and I've not heard it for so many years... :rofl:


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## SueC

I've just realised just how long it's actually been since I heard that song. I heard it only once, on _Especially For Headphones_, a mid to late 80s Perth radio programme, with my headphones on, and I laughed so much - I was in senior high school. So that's a really interesting thing - that someone can tap a little compartment in your head and it can fall open, and this stuff can tumble out! 

I hear Robert Fripp was tone deaf and lacked a sense of rhythm when he started guitar as a child, but he did well, and this is a very deliciously naughty sort of song - even the music is naughty - just listen to the bass! :rofl: David Byrne, of course, from the Talking Heads, is perfect for this vocal.

This leads to another little known, surreal Talking Heads song I find really interesting, off an album of theirs in my collection; here's the lyrics:

_SEEN AND NOT SEEN_

_He would see faces in movies, on T.V., in magazines, and in books...
He thought that some of these faces might be right for him...
And through the years, by keeping an ideal facial structure fixed in his mind...
Or somewhere in the back of his mind...
That he might, by force of will, cause his face to approach those of his ideal...
The change would be very subtle...It might take ten years or so...
Gradually his face would change its' shape...
A more hooked nose...wider, thinner lips...beady eyes...a larger forehead.
He imagined that this was an ability he shared with most other people...
They had also molded their faced according to some ideal...
Maybe they imagined that their new face would better
Suit their personality...Or maybe they imagined that their
Personality would be forced to change to fit the new appearance...
This is why first impressions are often correct...
Although some people might have made mistakes...
They may have arrived at an appearance that bears no relationship to them...
They may have picked an ideal appearance based on some childish
Whim, or momentary impulse...
Some may have gotten half-way
There, and then changed their minds.
He wonders if he too might have made a similar mistake._






_Under Heavy Manners_ and its -_isms_ was probably the inspiration for the following (later) song:






As an Australian, I feel this urge to apologise for INXS. I did like _Shabooh Shoobah_ and _The Swing_ - great albums - but they really lost me in the late 80s, with all their silly rock star antics. Michael Hutchence in particular became a sort of embarrassment to a lot of ordinary Australians, running around in his torn dirty clothes and with a really big mouth, doing drugs as a sort of fashion statement, and running off with someone else's wife. The guy in the leather pants can't even walk in a straight line. Their spelling is unsatisfactory, and the band just made me cringe, with and after _Kick_. Maybe I'm too harsh - Brett says he didn't mind them and there were lots worse (but that he wouldn't invite any of them for lunch :rofl. I'm probably un-enamoured of in-your-face dysfunctional antics, because it cuts too close to my own background. I've had enough crap without wanting to see someone else sort of making a cavalier display of it...


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## SueC

Man, this music thing is like a tapeworm! :rofl:

Now that I've put in a sort of teeth-on-edge example of Australian music, I really must put in some thoroughly wonderful Australian music and artists as well. And I'll start with the way our musicians have saved us from our dreadful national anthem...

Those of you in the US: Be grateful that you have an anthem with actual poetic words and a lovely melody. No such luck here; Australians had a shocking thing foisted upon them by those who ruled the roost, a lame thing lyrically and musically. It is generally agreed by many Australians that some fogey wrote it who knew nothing about the actual country. The original text was so sexist and racist they had to modify it several times already, and it still stinks. I've never sung it - being 11 when I came, and thinking, "What the heck is _this_???" after singing actually nice European anthems - the Bavarian one was lovely, the German one a bit stodgy... Bavaria was its own kingdom once and so still has the old anthem as a regional thing, although now part of Germany... 

Once, a drunken English person wanted to beat me up because I failed to get up and sing the Australian anthem at_ Opera In The Park_, in Sydney, in 2003. My friend Stephanie and I had just been to the peace march and came to this free public performance to see if our musical tastes could be modified to include this genre (the experiment failed :rofl. 

The Australian government were not representing the overwhelming will of the Australian people not to get involved in George W. Bush's war - the Sydney ferries were packed to the point of tilting as the populace went to protest in the CBD. It was a sad time, and not a time to sing national anthems, I thought - because they were becoming like soccer team songs, with this sort of us versus them mentality, when all of us are human beings. Because of my international upbringing, I've never felt I was any particular nationality as much as I was simply human, like everyone else. I can see why you'd want to sing a nice anthem if you had one (and I did, as a child), under peaceful and harmonious world circumstances, but not an ugly anthem, at an ugly time, when people needed to be _human_, instead of soccer hooligans.

My friend and I were talking in German - as she was German and doing a practicum in Sydney - and suddenly this belligerent, unhygienic troll of a person who reeked of alcohol a mile into a headwind loomed over us aggressively, fists clenched, and drawled drunkenly, in a _British_ accent - irony of ironies - "In _my_ country, when you come here, you sing _our_ anthem, so get up and sing!" The crowd, at this point, was silently coming to our defence - a lot of Australians have an egalitarian streak and won't stand for this sort of base intimidation. I sat and looked him in the eye, because I'm well versed in bullying and physical violence from my childhood, and from about age 14, when I grew a sense of an authentic self and a sense of my own soul, never let anyone cow me, even if they actually hit me - I'd always look them in the eye, and tell them that being bigger than someone else didn't make you right, and didn't mean other people had to agree with you. And after a tense pause, in which I didn't move or flinch or do anything but look him in the eye, I said, in my own best ABC accent, "In _our_ country, we don't have a dictatorship, and we're free to express how we feel about things at times like this, without anyone taking us away and shooting us. _ Our_ country is made up of lots of ethnic backgrounds, it's a multicultural country, and its original inhabitants were here before us." Murmurs of assent came from the crowd, and the bully backed off and went back to his bottle. That week I'd started off feeling ashamed to be Australian, because of our government, but with the peace march and all the lovely people and because of what the crowd did that night for us in the Sydney Botanical Gardens, I felt really proud to be Australian, and to have a tangible sense of fellowship with fair and decent people.

Back to our _real_ Australian anthems, written by _real_ people: _Waltzing Matilda_ is the unofficial Australian anthem... here is our Jenny Thomas doing a nice version. It's really about the low-ranked people versus the land aristocracy in colonial Australia. Translations for Australian jargon in this song are easy to find online! 





 
Jenny Thomas also did the violin for the _Lord Of The Rings_ movies (soundtrack). This is far more Australian than that rubbish anthem that some toffee-nosed politician imposed on the Australian population.

This next song is also often used in lieu of our awful anthem. It really really conjures up Australia for me, and what I love about it. This version comes with gorgeous scenery I know you will all enjoy.





 
And then there's this little number, originally written by the Warumpi band, a neat Aboriginal outfit who have some excellent songs. Nice clip too.





 
This was Christine Anu's version, which she performed at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. This song is really important for giving voice to the original inhabitants' connection with this country. They were totally left out of that silly official anthem we have, and can't identify one bit with it. And the funny thing is, I'm a European immigrant, but I can so, so identify with these songs written by the Aboriginal Australians - because I so share their sense of place - because the Australian landscape, flora, fauna, light, heat, wind and rain have sunk into my very bones like nothing else has, and have made me Australian - although in terms of allegiance, I'm simply human. 





 
And finally, another important Aboriginal anthem, about reconciliation, held in high esteem by many of us:





 
So now you all know what our REAL anthems are over here!  

PS: @*Knave* , I know you've seen some of this before! ;-)


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## knightrider

Well, that's interesting! I always thought "Waltzing Matilda" was the Australian National anthem. You live and learn, huh? I googled it and because I don't know the history, I thought "Advance Australia Fair" was charming.






But, wow, since this is your journal, I guess no one will jump on me when I make the statement that sports players who refuse to stand for our national anthem and are denigrated and treated terribly just drives me wild. Colin Kaepernick, who is incredibly talented, has sacrificed his whole career for what he believed in. No football team will hire him. It upsets me terribly that people say things like, "He doesn't respect the flag", like the national anthem and American flag are holy things that we all must revere. I think police not shooting unarmed black people is something we must revere.

I love what you did, @SueC. I don't see why we should make these things holy relics when they are just pieces of cloth and music. Let actions be more important that cloth and music.

And I enjoyed your eclectic musical selections. Lots of fun. Thank you!


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## Alder

I'm late to comment but I found myself really thinking about your posts about your childhood SueC. Hope I'm not a downer by bringing it up again!

I also had an abusive upbringing, but at 62 years I have yet to escape the effects. My critical mother made me terrified of people. Even being looked at by others sends me into a panic state; when she looked at me I saw the eyes of a hunter going for the kill. I only coped by becoming hidden and frozen, and later, by becoming a loner. To this day I dread going out and encountering people. I don't seem to be able to stop my mind from going into a panic state.

I've always had an affinity with animals though and I loved horses from before I can remember. 

I joined this forum a while ago but rarely comment, for the same reason, fear of being attacked. But thanks to you SueC, and your warm and open nature, I find myself wondering if it's finally time for me to start talking. I also want to thank other forum members; gottatrot, Hondo, bsms, knightrider and others for their thoughtful posts that have started a change in my thinking. Maybe I'll start a journal!



A big thank you to you all!


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## SueC

Hello again, @*Alder* , and welcome!

:welcome:



Alder said:


> I'm late to comment but I found myself really thinking about your posts about your childhood SueC. Hope I'm not a downer by bringing it up again!


No, it's fine, @*Alder* , I'm reconciled to it and through the stage where it was really hurting me - and that took a long time to get through, so I completely understand why some people hurt their entire lifetimes over things like this, and are still raw the day they die. I've just been very fortunate to have had a lot of education, and kindness from great people along the road, and above all to have gotten into a stable, loving family situation, and to have been able to talk about it; otherwise the pain of what happened would still be eating me, I think.

And now I can talk about it, and am happy to field questions or to hold hands and talk with those who have known the same sadness and horror. People are both hell and redemption when it comes to abuse in any form. It's people who put you through hell, both in the original abuse and the ignoramuses who like to blame and stigmatise you over it and look down their noses at you (especially in the early phases of recovery, where you're stuck and lack social skills and struggle and aren't fun because you're so down), and of course society on a wider scale is filled with emotional and physical violence - but also kind people who reach out for you when you're in a lonely hole in the ground and in need of warmth and kindness - and do you know, I've found that the kindness of just one person can cancel out the cruelty and ignorance of a whole mob.

You're amongst kind people here, and you're very welcome, and you can say what you want, and tell your own story if it would help, and ask what you want - _no_ _worries_, as we say in Australia. :hug:



> I also had an abusive upbringing, but at 62 years I have yet to escape the effects. My critical mother made me terrified of people. Even being looked at by others sends me into a panic state; when she looked at me I saw the eyes of a hunter going for the kill. I only coped by becoming hidden and frozen, and later, by becoming a loner. To this day I dread going out and encountering people. I don't seem to be able to stop my mind from going into a panic state.


I'm so sorry for the little girl you were, @*Alder* , and also for the pain that has stayed with you. :hug:

That panic is typical of complex PTSD from being horrified and unsafe from the cradle - and I had that panic and that lack of ease with people very badly both as a pre-schooler, before being taught for my first two years at school by a warm, kind, vibrant person, and then again from around 17 to around 22 - when I lost the friendship community of my high school and the pastoral support of my teachers - when I was essentially too unbuffered by enough warmth from other people. If anyone laughed, I'd think it was at me; I walked around with my head down and hunched and could not look people in the eye, and really lost the ability to connect with people I'd learnt at school and been able to maintain at school. I couldn't speak in public, things were just so dark, and I actually did a Grad.Dip.Ed. primarily to overcome the fear of public speaking and inability to relax with a group (which was sort of like throwing myself in the deep end voluntarily, but it did work).

It's hard to believe I was like that, looking back, but I can still really feel it if I go there - it was just a bottomless pit emotionally. I've a lovely friend in her 60s who is just so excellent one on one, as a friend, and also doing structured presentations in public, but she struggled with OCD and agoraphobia all her life due to a childhood that made mine look tame (mine was only mid-range in terms of abuse). I could never understand why she declined invitations to come walking, go out for coffee, go to the museum etc, until she told me about all this. She has a physical safe space, and prefers to stay there unless there are significant reasons not to. It was especially bad for her because her family was in a church, where love and kindness was preached, and she was beaten black and blue at home, as the family scapegoat, and ridiculed over her weight, and yet nobody in the congregation ever seemed to notice - they all seemed to think her parents were just the ant's pants. And they were doing this stuff _in the name of God_. (Don't talk to me about terrorism - because so many people think that's just what someone who doesn't look or speak like them does to white people - and don't realise it runs through everything, every place where people abuse their power. What my friend's parents did to her was terrorism, no question about it.)

One of the bloggers I just love, Cherilyn Clough, had to deal with religious narcia - and has the best website I've ever seen to help people from backgrounds of domestic abuse.

https://littleredsurvivor.com/



> I've always had an affinity with animals though and I loved horses from before I can remember.


They are kind, warm and very intuitive creatures - it's no accident they are chosen for a lot of PTSD work with war veterans. In one sense they are therapy on four legs - just like music can be therapy through your ears. They are bigger than you, but aren't using that fact to bully you all the time. Our octogenarian friend Bill says that the human species is the very worst animal there is, because of the incomparable cruelty that is found in our species. A carnivore eats another animal because it's hungry and will die if it doesn't eat. A lot of humans actually _enjoy_ hurting others, and just do it for _fun_. Which is not to say that all abusers are sadistic - some are, some aren't - there's the sadistic kind, and there's also the kind that never sorted out their own issues and are just running on autopilots, like corrupt computer programmes - because they won't challenge their own behaviour - often they don't even want to see it. And often, churches or work organisations become complicit in the abuse - turning a blind eye, enabling, and sometimes even encouraging abuse.

@*Alder* , I am very glad you had horses. Also @*knightrider* , and anyone else reading who had a terrible deficit of human warmth in their birth families. I'm glad I had contact with them too. And other animals, as well.



> I joined this forum a while ago but rarely comment, for the same reason, fear of being attacked. But thanks to you SueC, and your warm and open nature, I find myself wondering if it's finally time for me to start talking. I also want to thank other forum members; gottatrot, Hondo, bsms, knightrider and others for their thoughtful posts that have started a change in my thinking. Maybe I'll start a journal!
> 
> A big thank you to you all!


A big _you're so welcome_,_ and I'm glad we could do something_ from me. :hug: It's such a lovely bunch of people. 

Talking in an unsafe space is a minefield - as I'm sure you know. In a safe supportive space, however... 

You are very very welcome to be here and to talk with us about anything and everything amongst friends. I'm sure the others will tell you the same thing, and mean it too! 

I hope you're having a better day.

Are you riding? :cowboy:

@*knightrider* , thanks!  You know, I think it's so great to be talking to a person who was there in the 60s and so involved with civil rights etc. :bowwdown: Thank you thank you thank you, for doing that, and for being that person! 

I will get back to you about the anthem, and do a naughty little post on it - as you'd expect by now. ;-)


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## SueC

@*gottatrot* , now I've got a horse question for you! You've got a horse on pergolide at the moment, right? Amore? ...did you ride her at any point of her treatment, or was she retired when that began? The reason I am asking is because Sunsmart has been on pergolide for early PPID for coming up to 20 days, and in the past week he just seems a bit sluggish when ridden, which is unlike him. This morning, he actually preferred to mostly walk - even though I took him out of his familiar haunts to someplace he found very interesting.

I hear pergolide can occasionally have that effect. It could be other things too, of course; and it's not quite a pattern yet. I'm going to take him for another spin this afternoon to see if he's just not a "morning person" - I usually ride him afternoons.

Pergolide is a dopamine agonist, so we're messing with his brain - obviously to prevent an outcome that's far worse than the side-effects of dopamine agonists. I did wonder if his uncharacteristic leisureliness is drug-related... as you can get with SSRIs etc...


*A Little Related Pharmaceutical Detour*

I remember when I went on low-dose SSRIs for a bit after being diagnosed with complex PTSD, to stop the night terrors I was getting at the time that the whole thing came to a head. It was the first time I was on a pharmaceutical specifically designed to target my brain! I'd been really wary, but my GP said, "Well, it's kind of like HRT for a trauma-affected brain. Just see what it's like to live with the kind of serotonin levels non-traumatised people have. Go off it anytime you want to." I'd lifestyle managed all of this all my life, and with considerable success - lots of exercise and sleep, focus on good nutrition, do worthwhile things, be constructive, spend time in nature, spend time with friendly people, learn a musical instrument, read, write etc.

It's a holistic way to have a healthy life; it wasn't intended as therapy, it just was, as well!  However, at times of burnout or when there was dirty office politics or in-law troubles or the time we were burgled, I was doing it really tough... biochemically, because the hypervigilance that's characteristic of cPTSD type brain wiring then just never turns off, and then you can't sleep and you feel really rotten, no matter what you do in the daytime... and that's because the hypervigilance is created by churning through all your serotonin - the body won't let you have it if it's in alert mode (standard biological survival response; great for physical stuff like confronting lions or crossing a chasm on a tightrope; not so great as a response to the intangible ghosts of childhood abuse).

So on SSRIs, the route to getting my regular sleep patterns back after some kind of big stressor, instead of getting naturally (but tediously) back to normal over a couple of weeks, went like this: Half an hour after first dose, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. :ZZZ:

I'm highly chemically sensitive anyway; solvents and synthetic fragrances make me ill, unnatural stuff in laundry powders gives me rashes, even two paracetamol for headache will put me to sleep. So, I had a week or so where I was actually sleeping at least 12 hours a day, as my body sort of went, "Well, thank goodness for that!" and recharged its batteries. :rofl:

The interesting thing about the SSRIs, after that phase, in the medium term, was the amount of inertia I suddenly developed. With all that nervous energy that had driven me all of my life turned off, not only was I sleeping really well at night, instead of waking up whenever a tap started dripping or a leaf rustled on the breeze, but I found that my armchair seemed to have developed a gravitational field of its own.

All of my life, I'd not been able to sit still, except if engrossed in a book or journalling or writing essays or marking student work. Whenever I wasn't doing that, I'd catapult out of my chair and go for a bicycle ride or make five different things to eat in the kitchen (for sticking in the fridge and then having whenever), or decide to spring clean, or to do a few cartwheels etc. And now suddenly, I found myself sitting down in a chair, and then noticing how wonderfully _comfortable_ it was in that chair, and developing a real disinclination to get up. I could just sit and do nothing - unbelievable! And no, it's not just middle age, since it's reversible off SSRIs! :rofl:

What psychoactive substances shall I try next? :Angel: Isn't this interesting? To find out which parts of your personality are related to which biochemical pathways? You can also find that out on HRT. ;-) (Of course, it's always a two-way street too... biochemistry affects us, but we also affect our biochemistry with our choices, activities etc...)

Comedy break: 






:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

By the way, I had to go on a half-dose pretty soon so I'd not just hang around most of the day procrastinating and wanting to relax. But I'm like that with anaesthesia etc as well - always minimum dose or below. So _half_-minimum-effective-therapeutic-dose levels of SSRIs were enough for me. After half a year I went off completely, and the night terrors returned (but it was still a fragile time). I then stayed on a half-dose for a year, went off for many months no worries, back on half a dose when another significant life stressor happened and the insomnia started and I decided I didn't want insomnia. Then off again when that went by, and I do think the brain, over that length of time, learnt to have weaker stress responses, and to get to a sort of new normal.

At which point I must tell a funny anecdote: I know someone who only ever takes SSRIs when she has to go overseas to spend time with her in-laws - her mother-in-law never thought she was good enough for her precious boy and even thirty years into marriage is still a dragon to her. She does this with the complete blessing of her psychiatrist - in fact, he was saying, "This would be a good strategy. You could actually _enjoy_ your holiday." :rofl: And she said to me, "You know, it works! I don't give a **** what she says or does when I'm on these; she recedes to the psychological disturbance level of annoying insect, and I'm just focused on enjoying the finger food and the scenery." :rofl:

Which reminds me of another funny thing another friend said to me once: "It's so strange how sociopaths do this horrible stuff, and then _we're_ the ones going to the psychiatrist afterwards!" :Angel: It's not all like that, of course - we all have our own stuff as well.

Another anecdote that made me laugh, from yet another person with deeply religious, violent, abusive parents, where every Christmas going back as an adult was just another opportunity for the mother to criticise her adult children all afternoon long, and their cooking efforts for the occasion, and to shame one of them publicly over her weight ("for her own good" of course), by actually getting scales out and hectoring her to stand on them, next to the Christmas table! Her hippie sister was fed up with this and one Christmas baked THC into a batch of Christmas cookies, and fed it to the parents immediately upon arrival. It was reported as the most peaceful Christmas they ever had as a family - the parents were lolling back in their chairs and going, "Oh, the decorations are so twinkly!" :rofl: 

(And then there's the no contact option, which is totally understandable with these kinds of unpleasant families.)


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## gottatrot

That youtube guy is so funny.

Yes, I did ride Amore for a couple of years after she was on the Pergolide. She did not have the sluggishness, or loss of appetite. I was almost wishing she would have some loss of appetite! After about a month, I noticed that she had more energy than before going on the medications, obviously they made her feel better. Some horses apparently get a little hyper or aggressive instead.

I think they say some horses get low energy while they adjust and they call it the "Pergolide veil." If it seems significant, I've read that it's best to take them down to a half dose of what you were giving, and give that for about a week, then increase it gradually again, giving a full dose every other day. Apparently some horses need to adapt to the drug more slowly.

Interesting about how you react to SSRIs. My mother-in-law has OCD and Schizo-affective disorder, and we convinced her at one point to go on an SSRI. It helped her function normally for the first time in years. She was getting up, taking care of bills, shopping, and her apartment. However, because she was used to racing thoughts, she self-reported herself as a numb zombie and was angry at us for awhile because we had tried to turn her into a zombie. She stopped taking them, and has deteriorated since, going from assisted care to now being in a full care nursing home. 

I'm very sensitive to drugs also. We are supposed to get a flu shot each year for work, but after several years it started giving me a reaction where I develop a low blood pressure several hours after the shot and have to stay flat or pass out. I've taken many other shots, but for some reason had the same reaction to the Hep B series. 

When I broke my nose, I took a half of a Percocet and had a blissful fifteen minutes where I felt like my arms were floating away. Then I had to go lie on the bathroom floor for six hours while I threw up every few minutes. It is not fun to throw up with a broken nose, so I regretted taking that pill very much. I have decided that pain is easier to take than drugs. 

Back to the Pergolide, the unexpected result for Amore was that she has Sweet Itch and it had been getting less severe. I realize now that was because her immune system was depressed with the high cortisol levels from the Cushing's. When I started her on the med, her immune system improved and so her allergies were much worse again. Of course I would rather that she deal with allergies than have no immune system and be vulnerable to pneumonia, abscesses, etc. 

As you say, diet and a good lifestyle are helpful with all diseases. When I first got Amore in her early teens, she must have had early Cushing's, because at the first barn we were at she was the only horse to get both Pneumonia and also an abscess in her neck. After we moved to the coast I began giving her a healthier diet with vitamins, minerals, no grain, and better turnout with other horses. She did not have any sicknesses that were serious after that, even before I had her on Pergolide. However, she did get scratches fairly often which she has not had since starting on the treatment.


----------



## SueC

Thanks for that, @*gottatrot* ! I'll see how he goes, and keep you posted.

Vomiting with a broken nose - you poor thing...

Interesting about your MIL's response to SSRIs. Most people who get them for depression apparently become _more_ active on them - because abnormally _inactive_ before. If you've got cPTSD without depression, you tend to be hyperactive (not in an unproductive way - actually, for me, mostly in a super-productive and highly focused way - but that's probably not all due to cPTSD either, some of it probably is underlying personality, whatever that is, and inclinations) and perhaps the reason I end up with _less_ activity (and _more_ rest) is that it's swinging you back towards the norm.

One reason I was very averse to the idea of these kinds of drugs is that I did see them turn a university friend who'd been through the war in El Salvador and was traumatised by bombs and body parts into a zombie - she was completely mentally flat when on medication, and stayed like that for years. Obviously there's different drugs and doses and individual responses, but that was my biggest misgiving about trying it, and it's why my GP said, "Unlikely at that dose and if it does happen, just stop taking it."

And it never, ever affected my mental clarity, ability to converse, think, write, etc etc. It just made me want to sit in an armchair while doing so. I never had the feeling that I wasn't me. It affected my stress responses in a positive way - and made me far more relaxed, to the point that I had to learn to kick my own backside to get moving again! 

I'm now going to tell *all* about the worst side effect I had when I first went on SSRIs three years ago. I initially told nobody but my husband this, and I didn't need to tell him, as you will see!







Here I was fearing that it was going to be like a chemical sort of lobotomy, something that would adversely affect my me-ness, my thinking etc. And you know what I got? ...the worst-smelling farts in the known universe. I swear they were corrosive. I could feel them eating into my skin as I was holding my breath and running out of the room. They clung to fabrics; I was forever washing my underwear and pyjama bottoms and even outer pants because this was so vile. It could have been bottled and sold as a chemical weapon.

I looked this up online since none of this was mentioned in the pharmaceutical leaflet, and yes, some people have this reaction! And because it didn't settle, it's the chief reason I went off it the first time. Instantly back to _normal_ stink. But next time I was on them, it was much better, and on the third rotation, that side of things stayed normal. ...The gut is very sensitive to serotonin, and it was slowing down my gut a bit too much to start with, which is why the brew got really disgusting (extra matured)...


----------



## SueC

knightrider said:


> Well, that's interesting! I always thought "Waltzing Matilda" was the Australian National anthem.


You see? :rofl:

We wish!  




> You live and learn, huh? I googled it and because I don't know the history, I thought "Advance Australia Fair" was charming.


It's nice that it appeals to some people! And I mean that genuinely. Tastes are very personal. And you know, I didn't know when I first posted about anthems that you have bombs in yours - hadn't studied it closely, just had gone by impression - the melody though is excellent. But maybe that's why you find ours charming? No bombs there. Isn't it funny how many words we can miss. Speaking of, most Australians actually struggle to recite more than the first verse of ours - in repeated surveys... I'm not even going to try, I'd rather have the space for extra memorised lines from _Hamlet_... now there's some writing...

Rant warning: In-detail personal anthem rant ahead! :Angel:

It used to start, "Australian sons let us rejoice..." and women were supposed to sing it too of course. They changed the wording when sexual discrimination legislation became a thing. But Aboriginal Australians are still expected to sing it, despite it making no reference to their existence - indeed, it's such irony about the "we are young and free" - put yourself in their position, for starters. Australia has actually been inhabited by modern humans longer than Europe has - the earliest modern human fossils found in Europe date back around 45,000 years, compared to around 60,000 years for Australia. So this is an ancient land, both in terms of human culture, and in terms of geology. And our anthem just wipes that away like it never existed. A lot of Aboriginal people won't sing it - and I understand why, and would not sing it just to show solidarity with them, even if that were the only problem with this anthem.

And "free"? Do the Aboriginal people feel that way? "Wealth for toil" - tell that to the increasing number of people who struggle to stay afloat with several part-time jobs, none of them permanent, since the Howard era (see also the concept of the precariat) - while the gap between rich and poor is widening, and the fat cats skim the cream that doesn't belong to them off the top, just because the rules made by their ilk say they can.

"Our land abounds in nature's gifts" - well, it used to - we have one of the highest rates of species extinction and habitat destruction in the world, ditto soil erosion and desertification, because of this "It's a smorgasboard, let's all take take take" attitude. And while we're at it, what the heck does "Advance Australia Fair" even mean???

"Boundless plains to share" - well, most of our country is red dirt in a big central desert - want some? The ecosystems on the edges of the continent are quite precarious. And sharing? Many genuine refugees are turned away, while anyone with money can just buy their way into the place. My father did. He didn't need to relocate - he was financially secure and set up in a stable European country - but of course he got a fast-track immigration process when they saw his bank balance. Other people, truly homeless people with no future, needed this place more than our family did... share, indeed... what lip service.

On language and expression alone, this piece would never have made an A in high school poetry class - a B if you're feeling generous. In terms of facts, it's a D. And in terms of representing Australia, it's an F. So it's bilge, really. Unlike the songs listed as examples of our real anthems in that post last page - all of which would make at least an A-/B+ grade as pieces of high school poetry, and represent at least an aspect of Australia well and genuinely - and all of which are delivered with passion - unlike the semi-comatose droning that goes on when our anthem is sung anywhere. One of our senators actually said a while back that we need to change the anthem before it puts our whole country to sleep...

Musically, it seems to me our anthem was composed by someone using one index finger alone to play a keyboard - something that almost always has regrettable consequences... It's very _Twinkle Twinkle Little Star_; very _Baa Baa Black Sheep_ - do you know that one on your shores?






In musical complexity it's also like this:






Kind of sort of playschool... where are the arpeggios? Where is the counterpoint, the call-and-response? It's bare out there...

/end rant! (for now, anyway ;-))

And just to show another example of a decent Australian composition:






Also this little-known West Australian guitarist, whom we caught live, has oodles of talent at composition - this is a fabulous piece:









> But, wow, since this is your journal, I guess no one will jump on me when I make the statement that sports players who refuse to stand for our national anthem and are denigrated and treated terribly just drives me wild. Colin Kaepernick, who is incredibly talented, has sacrificed his whole career for what he believed in. No football team will hire him. It upsets me terribly that people say things like, "He doesn't respect the flag", like the national anthem and American flag are holy things that we all must revere. I think police not shooting unarmed black people is something we must revere.


Yeah, I can really see that in your shoes, living in your country, I'd feel that way too. While we don't have quite the obsession with the flag and particularly the anthem that the US is internationally renowned for, we have pretty much all the other problems (but less gun violence).

It's interesting how the microcosm of a dysfunctional family is so similar to the macrocosm of a dysfunctional country. There's holy relics, dogma, sticking to the official sanitised and twisted version of the story, bullying, scapegoating, coercion, violence, propaganda, character assassination, intolerance to views other than the "official, authorised version", black-and-whiteness, oversimplification, one-size-fits-all prescriptions, the powerful versus the dispossessed, etc etc. I guess what's learnt and not learnt in the family (and at school) comes home to roost in general human organisations as well.




> I love what you did, @SueC. I don't see why we should make these things holy relics when they are just pieces of cloth and music. Let actions be more important that cloth and music.


:clap: :clap: :clap:

...and I love that you were active in the civil rights movement etc! 




> And I enjoyed your eclectic musical selections. Lots of fun. Thank you!


I'm glad you did. Should I become a DJ? :rofl: Thankyou also for posting your own selections - I always listen, and I always learn a bit more. You know, if I had a TARDIS I'd surely visit you in the 60s!

:tardis:


*And Now: What Do Y'All Loathe?*

The other day, Brett and I were briefly exposed to Whitney Houston's _I Will Always Love You_ - and we both shuddered, and looked at each other like this:







Musically, opera sopranos doing sustained high notes with vibrato have a similar effect on us. Maybe we're metaphorical panes of glass... I also have an intense dislike of most rap music, and most heavy metal, and a lot of Top 40. I'll spare everyone why. We've talked a lot about what we like musically - and I'm also really interested in what everyone here can't abide - and _why_!

I have a lot of rants on here - now it's over to you guys. Don't be shy! ;-)


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## Dragoon

This is your journal, and you've mentioned before that you loathe heavy metal, and I have no interest in changing anyones' mind. We all have multilayered reasons for why some music speaks to us and not others. But I'd like to point out that for some people, the way their body hears sound is very influential!

I dislike most popular music, and most women singers. Always have. I am attracted to deep voices that are clear and have resonanance. Type O Negative is my favorite band. Every note they play makes me perk up and feel happy! I could list a bunch of others, but the commonality is a deep male voice. 
I always knew I was hearing impaired but it wasn't until I was tested for a hearing aid in my late 20s that I found out my hearing is *gone* in the high ranges, but tests within normal in the low ranges. So I hear a different (incomplete) sound that others do. 
**I really dislike wearing the aid and rarely use it as it makes things sound different. It doesn't make human speech more clear (mumbles still are mumbles), just alters how it sounds. So if people are not more clear, I have no real reason to wear the silly thing...urghh, don't wan't to start a rant on people's BAD speaking habits, like turning away whilst speaking or trying to speak across a room without also raising their volume!

I also have a very low singing voice for a female, and cannot hit the right notes for most popular music...I LOVE singing along to the radio and to myself in general. I get the most enjoyment from songs I can sing along to! I work nights and generally by myself, so happily sing and hum for hours. For me it doesn't matter so much what they are singing about ( I cannot hear discrete words mostly...)

Anyways, just pointing out that there may be a biological reason humans are attracted to the music they choose...and that heavy metal can be a welcome relief from all those squeaky sopranos! 
If I knew how to insert videos, I'd put one of Type O covering 'Cinnamon Girl'. Hahahaha Lucky for you I am not vey tech savvy!

Disturbed' s cover of 'Sounds of Silence' is amazing, too. 

You speak German so can understand Rammstein, I can't. Another great voice but am glad I don't understand the language, their stage shows are very lewd. Ignorance is bliss...


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## JoBlueQuarter

I think I'm pretty much the odd one out here. :hide: I like most modern music; listen to pop, lots of rap, some rock, etc. I used to only listen to country, but I can't stand it anymore... Don't kill me! :lol: I just began to realize how lame and honestly rather dirty/disrespectful-type most of the lyrics are; I dunno, I can't listen to most country without cringing, now (note that I said most; there's still some good country out there.) But yeah, I know and like most of the Top 40 songs, and others of that type...


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## knightrider

@SueC, thank you for your explanation about your national anthem. I understand so much better now, and can see where you are coming from. I wish that I could talk to people like you just did about politics, with them explaining why they like and dislike someone or something and then listening to my point of view. Instead it is, "If you don't agree with me, there is something wrong with you. Anyone can see that ______ is wonderful . . . or lying . . . or great . . .or wrong." I get so tense and flustered, I can't think of anything to reply.

I love popular music--I get a kick out of discussing lyrics and why we like and don't like certain songs with my daughter. We can really connect through popular music. I like country quite a lot--it is so heartfelt, in my opinion. I like the moldy oldies a lot--they are so lively and fun. I don't enjoy the heavy screaming stuff that my son loves. I can't get into opera. All my life I've wanted to like and appreciate classical music as my best friend does, but I don't. I love Caribbean rhythms, steel drums, calypso. I also love Hispanic music . . . and we have lots of Spanish stations in Florida. I also love folk music, show tunes, and Celtic music. And probably lots more that are not coming into my brain at the moment.


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## SueC

Hello, @*Dragoon* ! :wave:



Dragoon said:


> This is your journal, and you've mentioned before that you loathe heavy metal, and I have no interest in changing anyones' mind. We all have multilayered reasons for why some music speaks to us and not others. But I'd like to point out that for some people, the way their body hears sound is very influential!


Yeah, thank you for pointing that out! I think that applies to me as well. To me, unless you can actually hear the bass notes, and preferably hear them with your body, not just your ears, it's just a pale approximation of a song - and when I listen to people's music they post here, I always do it on our office computer, which is hooked up to decent speakers (and you can actually feel the vibrations in the desk and below it, where the bass speakers sit).



> I don't wish to change anyone's mind about their aesthetic preferences either - as you point out, our reasons for those likes and dislikes are complex. It's sometimes as simple as just not liking pineapple - and our taste preferences with food are heavily linked to what's going on for us biochemically - and the particular taste range we have.


One of the things that was always really fascinating about teaching Science was when we contemplated as a group the fact that everyone perceives the world slightly differently through their senses. (And of course, our senses only receive a subset of the data that is out there - bees see the landing strips on flowers, we don't etc.) We'd think about how we might see the world another way if we could do temporary body exchanges. And this made talking to each other really interesting - we were seeing each other as complementary sources of information - where what one person misses, another picks up etc.

And that's also one of the reasons I am fascinated to hear about people's likes and dislikes about music, and it makes me look anew at things I haven't liked, or look at things I've not come across before - with music, it's not just the way we sense, it's also our personal contexts, past experiences, brain wiring, thinking styles etc etc.

And I don't actually loathe all heavy metal - just much of it! ;-) I think for me, that's because that kind of music has an emotional link to violence in my own experiential filter. Of course, there are exceptions - tracks I like - and those were usually brought to me by people I've liked and respected and I sat down and listened while turning off as many preconceptions as possible! 

And I thought it was pure genius how that European ice skater does her routine to AC/DC's _Back In Black_...








> I dislike most popular music, and most women singers. Always have. I am attracted to deep voices that are clear and have resonanance. Type O Negative is my favorite band. Every note they play makes me perk up and feel happy! I could list a bunch of others, but the commonality is a deep male voice.


Deep voices... Nick Cave... Andrew Prieboy... etc etc... basement singing can be really amazing... Not to mention certain radio announcers / presenters...



> I always knew I was hearing impaired but it wasn't until I was tested for a hearing aid in my late 20s that I found out my hearing is *gone* in the high ranges, but tests within normal in the low ranges. So I hear a different (incomplete) sound that others do.
> **I really dislike wearing the aid and rarely use it as it makes things sound different. It doesn't make human speech more clear (mumbles still are mumbles), just alters how it sounds. So if people are not more clear, I have no real reason to wear the silly thing...urghh, don't wan't to start a rant on people's BAD speaking habits, like turning away whilst speaking or trying to speak across a room without also raising their volume!


Yeah, a lot of people with hearing impairments feel that way. We have one person at our supermarket like that and she's forever teaching us to slow down and enunciate! I like to have subtitles when watching dramas, because I hate having to strain for unclear / fast stuff, or to rewind things...



> I also have a very low singing voice for a female, and cannot hit the right notes for most popular music...I LOVE singing along to the radio and to myself in general. I get the most enjoyment from songs I can sing along to! I work nights and generally by myself, so happily sing and hum for hours. For me it doesn't matter so much what they are singing about ( I cannot hear discrete words mostly...)
> 
> Anyways, just pointing out that there may be a biological reason humans are attracted to the music they choose...and that heavy metal can be a welcome relief from all those squeaky sopranos!


Tell me about it! Having to listen to Whitney Houston makes me want to dance naked to AC/DC, or to play Black Sabbath up loud! Bwahaha!



> If I knew how to insert videos, I'd put one of Type O covering 'Cinnamon Girl'. Hahahaha Lucky for you I am not vey tech savvy!


Here it is! And all you have to do is copy the URL from YouTube and paste it into here...






Wow, he does have an interesting voice! And you know what? I like that they have _space_ in their music - which a lot of heavy metal lacks - and I dislike a lack of space in any piece of music, whatever the genre. I don't like things coming at me too fast. Thank you for bringing to my attention a heavy metal track I can actually like!



> Disturbed' s cover of 'Sounds of Silence' is amazing, too.
> 
> You speak German so can understand Rammstein, I can't. Another great voice but am glad I don't understand the language, their stage shows are very lewd. Ignorance is bliss...


Yes, you may treasure your ignorance on this point! :rofl: Totally agree re that cover - and it was @*waresbear* who first played that to me! Thank you very much, both of you!


Hello, @*JoBlueQuarter* !  



JoBlueQuarter said:


> I think I'm pretty much the odd one out here.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I like most modern music; listen to pop, lots of rap, some rock, etc. I used to only listen to country, but I can't stand it anymore... Don't kill me!


:rofl: :rofl: Aren't we people funny! But it's so true! People get very emotional about music, and for lots of reasons. When I was a teenager, I was really intolerant of other people's musical tastes if they crossed into my "personal loathing" territory. I was shocking with this!!! I got chucked out of a Year 11 English class to find my manners when I was 15 for laughing hysterically at a Cure song a classmate called Pauline, with spiked-up black hair and Goth makeup, was playing us during our music projects. It was _Why Can't I Be You_, and I just thought the question was silly. Still, that didn't mean I had to be disrespectful, and it embarrasses me in hindsight. The real irony is that The Cure later became one of my favourite bands (once I stopped thinking they were a bunch of imbeciles), and remains so today.

I found that the best way to address my own personal intolerance was to ask people I liked to educate me about their particular aesthetic tastes. I also learnt that "I personally dislike this song" is not the same thing as "This is a really bad song" (well, just a few times it actually still is - does anyone here not think _Achy Breaky Heart_ is a really bad song? :rofl.

Sitting and listening and removing your preconceived notions is a really excellent exercise in becoming a broader (and less odious) person!  And the really interesting side effect I've found is that it's actually also great fun to broaden out, and to look seriously at other people's perspectives, and let them teach you a thing or two! 



> I just began to realize how lame and honestly rather dirty/disrespectful-type most of the lyrics are; I dunno, I can't listen to most country without cringing, now (note that I said most; there's still some good country out there.) But yeah, I know and like most of the Top 40 songs, and others of that type...


Disrespectful lyrics are broadly distributed across multiple musical genres... and usually are a brick wall for me too. I do really like the general sound of the Dandy Warhols' _Every Day Should Be A Holiday_, for instance, and the chorus is OK, but I really have to plug my ears and go "la-la-la" at some of their verse content...






I just realised I probably can't comment on Top 40 in any useful sense, because I've not actually listened to any Top 40 in at least a decade, and it would be incorrect to simply assume it's still the same... :rofl:

Do you know when I first double took and thought, "Oh no - I'm getting old!" ??? I was 27, teaching at high school for the first time, and getting on a bus for the Year 11 combined Geography excursion. The students put music on and I heard myself exclaiming, "What _is_ this? Is this supposed to be _music_?" And then I thought, "Ooops, I've now become the older generation, how did _that_ happen? :shock: And do I really want to sound like my parents?" :rofl:

Footnote: I have a tiny excuse in my favour. This was the Grunge era...

PS: @*knightrider* , I've just read your post and yeah, exactly!!!


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## SueC

A postscript for @*Dragoon* : Brett wants to know if you like The Sisters of Mercy...






Very basement... (biggest flaw here I think is rather boring drumming...)

Also he sends you this:






...expat Aussie living in London, voice right down in an ocean trench... my favorite song of his is this one:






And I send you this: ;-)






This is one of these songs where I can't help singing the harmony when I hear it up loud!  The voices go really well together, like Iggy Pop and Kate Pierson from the B-52s:






...and as I'm in the editing time frame, here's another one both of us just want to chuck into this mix...


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## Knave

Hmm, this is a hard question for someone like me @SueC. Like @Dragoon I like deep men’s voices, but I also like women singers, maybe I even favor them. Like @knightrider I like popular music and connect with my girls over it, and I’m not much a fan of most heavy metal. Other than that I like a lot of different types of things. When I worked in town my boss said she liked how my music had such a variety.

I am about lyrics more than the instrumental. I love good lyrics.


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## gottatrot

knightrider said:


> [MENTION=105474]I wish that I could talk to people like you just did about politics, with them explaining why they like and dislike someone or something and then listening to my point of view. Instead it is, "If you don't agree with me, there is something wrong with you. Anyone can see that ______ is wonderful . . . or lying . . . or great . . .or wrong."


I agree, I think we need to have reasons, and even if I disagree with you, if you have reasoned through why you have a point of view, to me that is legitimate. It does not seem like sound reasoning to believe something because other people in your group do, or because "anyone can see..." 

I've always found it interesting that many people seem to have "rules" for themselves about what music they will like or listen to. "Oh I don't like...(genre)." Especially I've noticed this in people who use reasoning like what @knightrider mentioned above, in regards to politics and such. They often have narrow rules for what type of music fits in with their belief system. I'm not talking about something with vulgar lyrics you don't appreciate, but rather about the sound and rhythm of the music.

I personally don't have any rules for music, I listen to songs from any genre and see if they appeal to me. But what appeals might be different in each song - something might be funny, or the tones are beautiful, or the beat is catching. Sometimes songs that have "iffy" lyrics have a great rhythm and are very catching, so then you just have to make up your own words or meaning for the words. Sure, you don't necessarily want to support someone who is spreading a bad message, but if you're listening to a free song, it's OK in my book. 

It seems that music is like the weather or moods. It can affect us, sure, but you can also end up with an unsatisfying mood or some bad weather and have it be harmless. Listening to it doesn't have to mean we've embraced an entire culture or belief system. Maybe I like the sound of a rap, country, big band, jazz, folk or heavy metal song. It doesn't really have to say anything about me...anymore than liking spaghetti or an odd flavor of ice cream. I think the Meghan Trainor song "All about the Bass" is kind of funny, and my DH would think it was too stupid for words. But hey, I'm a low tenor. Plus he likes WAY more Grimes songs than I do. 

Anyway, THIS is a good song for all of us, I think (if you haven't seen it).





@SueC, I'm glad it's not offensive that we think of the Icehouse song "Great Southern Land" as an anthem - that and "Waltzing Matilda" were what I was singing in the car as we drove around WA. 
I thought it was funny when we went to Japan and they played the "theme song" of the famous and huge electronics store called Yodobashi in the Akihabara district. The tune they sang to was the U.S. "Battle Hymn of the Republic." So I was looking at all the electronics and singing "Glory, glory, hallelujah," and you know what? It was a bit glorious.


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## SueC

Thank you, @Knave and @gottatrot, for your thoughts!  I will get back to them shortly. Today, we had a bit of a milestone to celebrate, and I've brought some of the beautiful scenery back with me to share - well, digital representations of that scenery...


*KALGAN RIVER WALK*

This was the walk we were aiming at when I was rehabilitating my foot fractures that happened three and a half months ago - the one that let me know I could do absolutely anything again, including mountains. Because we got so busy catching up on garden and farm work once I was cleared to start walking again two months ago, it's taken a while to actually get around to it! We have recently done things like Mt Melville and Peak Head, which were quite substantial walks:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...s-other-people-479466/page100/#post1970610041

(...and I thought I'd written up Peak Head, but that was the week we got that call about the donkeys, so I actually forgot to do it! Beautiful wildflower photos from there - so I will have to do that one retrospectively...)

The Kalgan River Walk is a lovely 14.5 km riverside trail with uphills, downhills, twists, turns and all sorts of different footings and obstacles to contend with - bridges, rocks, logs, tree roots, deep leaf litter, boardwalks, steps, firm tracks. The views are magnificent, the dog can take swimming breaks at any point along the track, we get a really got workout, and the trees and general flora in the valley are just amazing... there's pelicans, other water birds, Aboriginal fish traps made from rocks, lots of lizards and other reptiles, and the odd boat to meet.

The photos tell the tale:

1. As you come down the steps from the South Coast Highway end car park, this is the view of the Kalgan River through the trees.

2. The steps... (and there are lots of these through the whole trail)

3. Still descending...

4. This shows you just how massive an old Marri tree is (also known as Redgum).

5. Woodland trail on the stream bank - farmland to the left.

6. The dog is always popping up if we stop to take photographs, just to see if we need chivvying along...

7-10. Jess just loves swimming, especially if there is something to retrieve...


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## SueC

11-13. More dog bathing...

14. The Kalgan Queen was doing a little tour. They had a very naughty advertising campaign in the early 2000s - showing their boat with famous people photoshopped into it - most notably the Queen, the Pope, and Osama bin Laden - with the heading, "Everyone's been on the Kalgan Queen!" Bin Laden got replaced when he shuffled off this mortal coil; this is their photoshop job now (very fuzzy...):










15. The shapes of the gnarly old trees never fail to amaze us.

We did the walk in 2 h 20 minutes (including two drink/snack breaks), at a cracking pace - I was really enjoying walking, and the testing terrain. Since recovering from a broken foot, I take even more delight in doing long-striding walking. Many people you see in the street walk flat-footed... but if you want to walk to cover ground and to have real exercise, you actually roll on your foot and then push off with your toes - this action effectively increases your stride length, as well as your speed. I was never particularly aware of that when walking, but fracturing those metatarsals really educated me about the process of walking...

It's just amazing how much pleasure there is in things like being able to walk, and walk fast and easily, in lovely scenery... enjoying the physical capabilities of the human body we just happen to have; and enjoying the rest of nature too. 

I was really super pleased as well with our walk time, which was excellent going, faster than the last time we did it, more than five months ago - and also with the fact that everything worked so easily and I was burning along mile after mile... I didn't actually hit my aerobic limit until 2 hours 10 minutes into the walk - but ten minutes away from getting back to the car park, I suddenly hit that limit, and had to really push myself to continue at (almost) the same speed until we completed the walk.

That was great though, to have such a _long_ time of easy fast walking - and you push through muscle burn and lack of coordination at the end, just to put the icing on your exercise outing. We are wanting to get back into regular serious walking like this, as well as cycling up hills etc - both of us could use more cardiovascular fitness and muscle tone - the fracture did throw a spanner in the works there, but the aerobic fitness was still up there, probably thanks to all the pushing I did with the pirate leg, and later on with the crutch-assisted, cross-country-skiing type walking I was doing for fitness...

Very very pleased to have recovered like this.  We're aiming at the Porongurups next Thursday. That's Brett's day off work, and usually our complete day off together...since we do a lot of work on weekends...


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## Dragoon

Congrats on the fantastic walk! I am green with envy, but so very glad that someone who has access to such wonderful vistas is taking full advantage! I share your views about sedentary lifestyles being the fast track to disease and early demise...

Wow, I'm floored you took the time to give me such a great sample of music to try! I am honoured but slightly embarrassed to admit that I live under a musical rock, of sorts. I'm not sure why, but I've always been resistant to listening to new things. I (was) always close minded about music and only wanted to listen to the albums I already loved. Its very rare for me to like a song right away...usually I have to hear something a few times. I have gotten better, but don't listen to music much anymore. It was always something I put on to go jogging or to the gym to. Hence all the music I preferred has a driving beat. I run better, and will actually recover from tiredness if a really peppy song comes on!

I watched all the videos!
The first one, never heard of them. The singer might have a good voice but its hidden by all the girls singing and the 'dance music'. Very 80's. the 80's had a lot of pop bands that were 'metal'...I wasn't into any of them except W.a.s.p. (I liked Lawless' voice) They all had the same costumes! It was so funny. Spandex and pointy stuff. 
I was a Danzig fan. I hesitate to write this. I preface by saying I am NOT religious. I do NOT take lyrics seriously. I grew up on ShaNaNa, and loving songs where just the syllables that rhymed were sung and who cared if it was a word or not. 
I loved Danzig from first listen. I had all his albums, went to every concert, waited for hours in freezing cold for his autograph, and have a Danzig tattoo. Loved his voice, loved jogging to his bluesy sound. Danzig introduced me to Type O, as they opened for him one concert. Years went by and when I got the internet (finally, I was a computer hating holdout) I found he wrote comics. I bought some off eBay since they are banned in Canada. One title was slightly disturbing, but good so I got others. *crash* 
I was horrified. I don't think this guy is kidding anymore. He really is a whack job, and it has changed how I feel about listening...

The first Nick Cave one was creepy. His voice was good, and I love a capella stuff or minimal instrumental support. With my hearing, not sure what it was about, vid was creepy.
I really liked the second one!! Very nice song! Thanks!

The Prieboy one was okay. Nice voice, no idea who he is...

Hmmm....Burn. I didn't know who Cure was until you posted Burn on another thread and I went OMG! I LOVE this song!! The whole Crow soundtrack is one of my top three albums! I have worn out two cassettes (dating myself) and the CD is fine, now lives on my iPod. So I guess I am really warming up to them because of the songs you keep posting. The one about No Birds Sing, I caught myself singing parts of that for a while after. So I guess that is the next album I need to get. 
(I very rarely buy new music. Very rarely.)
So I thank you so much for opening my world a little!

I loved the Iggy and girl song! I didn't know he had done that, or could sing so well. I know him from the Crow soundtrack, too. I like the girls' voice as well. She was perfect with him. I love when two voices blend.Not sure what the musical term for that is. I am not a musician. 

The Adele parody!! AWESOME!
I confess, the first time I heard that song, was that parody. I had never heard of Adele before watching that video from here on HF. (I live under a rock, remember). Since then, I heard the real Adele sing the original song. But I still had the equine version firmly in my head, since I had heard that version first. I still think its better!

So thanks so much for the education of sorts! 
One thing I truly love are covers. Hearing a fresh take on an old, tired, but good song is one way to discover it all over again!
I will get running now and leave you with another of my favorite bands. 
Have a great day!!


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## Dragoon

*sigh*
My fav Danzig tune. The guitar is just so good in it. Try to ignore the guy is a nut. 







And a pretty song by Type O. I LOATHED this album when it came out. I considered it a waste of money and didn't buy anything from them for a long time after. The whole album is soft and breathy with different pictures of trees in shades of dark green. NOT what I was expecting. 
Now I wonder what was I thinking. Pretty can be cool, too. The piano reminds me of water dripping from trees...


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## SueC

Knave said:


> Hmm, this is a hard question for someone like me @*SueC* . Like @*Dragoon* I like deep men’s voices, but I also like women singers, maybe I even favor them. Like @*knightrider* I like popular music and connect with my girls over it, and I’m not much a fan of most heavy metal. Other than that I like a lot of different types of things. When I worked in town my boss said she liked how my music had such a variety.
> 
> I am about lyrics more than the instrumental. I love good lyrics.


I love good lyrics too! I like music that I can think about, that I can laugh about, cry about, that will teach me something, inspire me to do things - not necessarily all at once! :rofl: And generally, this means the lyrics have to be up to scratch.

I am definitely repelled by poorly written lyrics, or by gutter language (one thing too commonly found in rap - not that I want to paint it all with the same brush), or by obvious dysfunction in love songs (a good example of that is the otherwise beautiful Cranberries song _Linger_ - but the lyrics make me wince), or by destructive and negative attitudes. And I think all these things repel me in real life as well, not just in music.

A caveat though. Let's take the famous f-word. If people use it like punctuation, or as a sort of universal adjective, I find that repulsive - not to mention unimaginative. I want to give them a Thesaurus and say, "Why don't you expand your vocabulary a little!" But if it's only occasionally used, to really make a point, then that affects me differently - such as Ben Folds Five using it for a single instance in _Song For The Dumped_ ("Well, **** you too!") but it actually conveys meaning there, and heat, and a bit of comedy.

And while we're at it, isn't it interesting that our vilest swear words that are most intended to offend are all related to body functions? ...digestion or reproduction...

I had a rule in my classroom - find a creative word to use when you need an outlet. The one I used was _barnacle_. "Oh, _barnacle_!" And the students made up their own (although they were also welcome to use _barnacle_, since I don't have the copyright for that particular use ;-)). So there were things floating around like, "Holy banana!" or "Pernickety pineapple!" One that everybody liked, and I can't remember where it came from, was "Grrreat Hopping Haggis!" (in a Scottish accent) - as an exclamation of surprise.

This provides an outlet, and improves the vocabulary, and makes people laugh. I also gave them all a copy of the Shakespeare Insult Kit, so nobody would call anybody else an i'diot:

Shakespeare Insult Kit



gottatrot said:


> I've always found it interesting that many people seem to have "rules" for themselves about what music they will like or listen to. "Oh I don't like...(genre)." Especially I've noticed this in people who use reasoning like what @*knightrider* mentioned above, in regards to politics and such. They often have narrow rules for what type of music fits in with their belief system. I'm not talking about something with vulgar lyrics you don't appreciate, but rather about the sound and rhythm of the music.


Yeah, if people have rigid and narrow identities, they tend to have rigid and narrow tastes. It's the same with food - I once dated a man who refused to eat the sushi I had made because he hated Japanese people. _All_ Japanese people! mg: And then there's, "I'm not eating this _foreign_ food!" :shock:

With music and with food, I think it's good to keep sampling widely and to stay open-minded, but I think it's also fine to develop personal preferences from that, and to mostly choose what appeals to you the most. What's less ideal is when people are narrow from the beginning, and refuse to even try music and food from other cultures etc, especially if it's on some sort of principle, for them.

Brett is always saying to me, "Life is too short, and there are too many excellent books, to be reading mediocre books, or books you don't like." I agree with that - and it holds for any sort of art for me. I think it's like food though - a diverse diet is healthier than a narrow one - so I think we do choose what we like best, but from a diversity of genres etc. I do exclude some genres - I think life is too short to read Mills&Boon (formula romance), and I'd still think that if my life span was a thousand years. ;-)

I think there are personal reasons, both physiological and psychological, that certain sounds can repel us, and others attract us. If you've got PTSD, then you might find the general heavy metal sound triggering - or you might find it therapeutic - or none of the above. Responses are so individual. I think it's fine to say, "I like.." and "I don't like..." and anything in between, but not to say "I don't like it, _therefore_ it's rubbish."

Are some things objectively rubbish, others objectively brilliant? Well, yes, according to lists of criteria used to evaluate things for assessment - but on the other hand, a lot of it can also be quite subjective.

That was a funny story about Japan! :rofl: And that Adele mock-up! :rofl: Thank you for the laughs! Brings back a lot of the little songs that Weird Al Yankovic did. Remember this one?






You might have to be _of a certain age _to really find this one funny... :rofl:

@*knightrider* , I noticed you like Celtic music - want to pick us a play list of five things from that genre you really enjoy? Pretty please with cherries on top! :cheers:

@*Dragoon* , I'll get back to you, and I know I've also got something floating in my head about something @*horseluvr2524* said about some literature, which will fit nicely into this general discussion...

But meanwhile, I need to get back to outdoors work! :wave: Hope you're all having a nice night.


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## SueC

Some more songs about Australia.

This guy is sort of our Bob Dylan - this was what he wrote about the 1988 "Bicentennial" - and I'm one of the people who are glad he wrote it.






He's also a great storyteller. This is based on a true story:






It always gives me goosebumps to hear this one. It's so clever how it's written from the point of view of one of the wives.


Lastly, a song I heard very soon after arriving in Australia - which hit me then, and still hits me now. Shane Howard was way ahead writing this one - it took real guts for him to do it, back in the early 1980s.


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## SueC

@Dragoon , it's Dr Who night tonight, and I want to write you a proper reply for your posts, so I'll do that tomorrow. :tardis: But you know, my brain has been scouring its database for songs with good low range representation, and has come up with three more tracks you might actually enjoy.

This first one is from a UK punk band who are playing a _harpsichord_ on this track! The song also has a really unusual rhythm, and a great voice, and the music just mesmerises me. Play this one two or three times and you'll be hooked! I've just had it on endless repeat while making dinner, and you just sort of get hypnotised!






It's also a bit of a subversive song - possibly about a girl, or a culture, but actually on the drug culture of the punk era, when it was "romantic" to take heroin, since the British Romantic poets like Coleridge and Shelley had done a lot of their writing under the influence. The singer, recently interviewed, laughed about that and said that the best writing is actually done, in his experience, when stone cold sober! :rofl: 

...oh, and when The Stranglers toured Australia and were asked what the song was about, one of them said, "Vegemite!" :rofl: And no joke, I had my iPod on random play the other day when changing the compost toilet cartridge, and just as I was layering its contents into the large, hot compost pile, which song do you think started playing? Yep - _Golden Brown_! :rofl:

Next is a UK singer with a basement voice, with a cruisy track you might like.






And finally, something from Australia which also is well represented in the low range, in its instrumentation. The singer's voice isn't that low, but has a beautiful resonance.


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## Dragoon

Hey! You're pretty awesome!

I watched them in order, and I found myself wishing the second guy had sung the third song too! That would make it great!! 
I'll be adding Looking for Summer to my iPod, I just loved it! Thanks!

Now I have some searching to do when I get some time, which music to add from Chris Rea, Nick Cave and Cure. 

Gotta go, there are cold hungry horses waiting for me...we got our first snow yesterday. boo. :6


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## JoBlueQuarter

@SueC - Noooo, I was scared "Eat it" was going to be an MJ "remix"... and it was :rofl: It's hilarious but I like the original more ;-)


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## Caledonian

Wow! Agadoo and Golden Brown. They take me back to when I was at school. I remember Agadoo was banned by the BBC, yet it still managed to worm it’s way into my brain. I didn’t understand what they were singing about in Golden Brown until many years later.

I enjoy a good singer rather than favour a male or female voice. I like well written songs but a catchy melody can have me humming it all day and night even though the lyrics are nonsense. I draw the line at bad language though as I think it’s laziness. 

I like most genres although I struggle with rap and jazz. Celtic will always be my favourite when I want to listen and learn. There’s such a wide variety from mouth-music and waulking songs to rock and pipes and they all teach you something about the language, history, culture, music, folklore….

Birds of Passage - Breabach 

I heard it on the radio a few weeks ago and I stopped working and turned-up the volume. 





 


A Ghaoil, Leig Dhachaigh Gum Mhathair Mi – Julie Fowlis


An ancient song about a young girl begging a shapeshifting water spirit called a ‘each-uisge, Water-Horse or Kelpie, to let her return safely to her mother. She calls the creature ‘love’ and ‘darling’ as she’s seeing the handsome male human form rather than the horse. An early method of keeping children safe from water and strangers.

My Gaelic isn’t always strong enough to understand, so often it’s a melody or a sound that will attract me before the story. 








Live Forever - Skerryvore


For no other reason than someone was playing it this morning and I can’t get it out of my head, so I need to send it out to the universe if I’m going to get any sleep tonight :smile:. Oh, and I love Argyll as well. Goodnight everyone :ZZZ::ZZZ:


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## knightrider

@Caledonian covered Celtic music for me. Lots of good stuff there.

Here is one I believe you might have turned me on to. Hayley Westenra. I really like this singer. Could you have played something by her? Somebody did this summer, and I have been listening to her doing other things as well.


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## knightrider

I will add a couple more. I love this one


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## JoBlueQuarter

@knightrider - my BFF is totally crazy about Lindsey Stirling. She is pretty much her _whole life_! If you ever start her talking about Lindsey, you can expect to be stuck there for a whole long while, lol


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## Knave

@JoBlueQuarter my oldest was supposed to sing shatter me for a violin player one year. He moved before they performed, but I will forever love that song.  

So, on that note I will add one she sang that I didn’t love until I heard her do it. I am biased you know. 




Had to add this one too. She was in 6th grade, but I love this song. Her little sister picked it out for her.


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## SueC

Dragoon said:


> Congrats on the fantastic walk! I am green with envy, but so very glad that someone who has access to such wonderful vistas is taking full advantage! I share your views about sedentary lifestyles being the fast track to disease and early demise...


I really had a hard time living in Perth for my senior schooling and university education, because the endless artificial environment is just so depressing. There's a good reason we live in Albany, and why Tasmania was Plan B.

Sydney was a nice exception actually, I was comfortable there despite it being a huge city - due to an accident of geography, they couldn't clear a lot of the bush and rainforest immediately around Sydney Harbour and its tributaries. Sydney is in a sandstone basin, so all the streams have eroded down into canyons, and the steep sides of those simply remained as they had always been, while the houses were built on the plateaux between the streams. So you could walk to the end of a suburban street and just drop down into a canyon with rainforest in it.

_All these photos are Internet photos._









More examples here:

https://www.bestsydneywalks.com/sydney-harbour-national-park-walks/

I used to do the Balmoral Beach to Taronga Zoo one regularly after work. I did so many different Harbour walks. Also I loved Barrenjoey Head, at Broken Bay:










And I also did so many walks in the nearby Blue Mountains:










The Grand Canyon walk was my favourite:






You can see why it wasn't a hardship to live there for 2.5 years...

I'm under the impression you're in Canada - do you have any beautiful places near where you live?



> Wow, I'm floored you took the time to give me such a great sample of music to try! I am honoured but slightly embarrassed to admit that I live under a musical rock, of sorts. I'm not sure why, but I've always been resistant to listening to new things. I (was) always close minded about music and only wanted to listen to the albums I already loved. Its very rare for me to like a song right away...usually I have to hear something a few times. I have gotten better, but don't listen to music much anymore. It was always something I put on to go jogging or to the gym to. Hence all the music I preferred has a driving beat. I run better, and will actually recover from tiredness if a really peppy song comes on!


Yeah, it's like that for me too. If I really have to wake up to do something, a song can be so helpful. Here's one I listen to a lot when preparing the horse feed at night:






The singer/lead guitarist is ex The Clash. I first heard this in senior high school, and it became an anthem for me to keep studying to get out of my crappy situation. The motto_ When you reach the bottom line / the only thing to do is climb_ is so applicable to all sorts of situations though, so I still listen to it a lot - especially to get some energy happening, these days!

Another one that really raises my energy levels is this little-known U2 B-side:






It's hard to believe this is from the same band who did _Pride_, which I posted a few pages back. I think it was Lou Reed who said once that U2 was good music to fall over to, as you couldn't dance to it. So, they showed that they could write something that you _could_ dance to! :rofl: Unlike a lot of the dance genre, this has a lovely complex drum track - courtesy of Larry Mullen, their excellent drummer. I really dislike monotonous drumming. Try predicting some of the side tracks to this example of drum playing!

And of course, Irish and Scottish jigs, reels etc also get your blood up when you need it to be:






I'm sure @*Caledonian* could post a few more examples for us!

Since nobody in these tracks has basement voices, I think they are unlikely to make it onto your playlist. They're just examples of what really energises me.

By the way, we live under a rock as well. Almost never turn on the TV, avoid current affairs like the plague, concentrate on more positive aspects of humanity, and the little microcosm we can actually have a positive effect on, and without losing precious energy from the weight of all that broadcast negativity. And I don't know much music outside our record collection / historical experience either, because I've pretty much stopped listening to music radio; I'm mostly on iPod music / podcasts these days. It's actually YouTube, with its suggestions, that exposes me to new-to-me music these days.



> I watched all the videos!
> The first one, never heard of them. The singer might have a good voice but its hidden by all the girls singing and the 'dance music'. Very 80's. the 80's had a lot of pop bands that were 'metal'


I'd never heard of them either! :rofl: And I agree with your assessment. Brett says it's the one song he heard by this band that he thought was OK, and wanted to try you on the voice.



> ...I wasn't into any of them except W.a.s.p. (I liked Lawless' voice) They all had the same costumes! It was so funny. Spandex and pointy stuff.
> I was a Danzig fan. I hesitate to write this. I preface by saying I am NOT religious. I do NOT take lyrics seriously. I grew up on ShaNaNa, and loving songs where just the syllables that rhymed were sung and who cared if it was a word or not.


I just looked up a whole bunch of stuff as I was unfamiliar with these. When I played W.a.s.p.'s _Wild Child_, Brett pricked up his ears, and he said, "Oh, sounds like hair metal!" :rofl: I had no idea such a genre existed, and he read me some definitions of it. You're so right about their costumes! Hilarious. That would have put a few parental noses out of joint! 

I looked up Danzig's _How The Gods Kill_ - he really does have a nice voice. I've been really surprised how many nice voices have come up here with people's heavy metal suggestions for me over the past few months. Not all of these people are screamers! (You know AC/DC? Not really heavy metal, but a voice like fingers down the blackboard - and like he's constipated, too... he's not really _singing_, or even trying to I think...)

There seems to be some Goth iconography happening with Danzig - all those skulls and the black...



> I loved Danzig from first listen. I had all his albums, went to every concert, waited for hours in freezing cold for his autograph, and have a Danzig tattoo. Loved his voice, loved jogging to his bluesy sound. Danzig introduced me to Type O, as they opened for him one concert. Years went by and when I got the internet (finally, I was a computer hating holdout) I found he wrote comics. I bought some off eBay since they are banned in Canada. One title was slightly disturbing, but good so I got others. *crash*
> I was horrified. I don't think this guy is kidding anymore. He really is a whack job, and it has changed how I feel about listening...


Yeah, I prefer the musicians whose work I spend money on to be fundamentally nice and preferably largely sane people as well, although you can't always know, of course. Have you ever read Neil Gaiman's graphic novel _Death: The High Cost Of Living_? That's excellent, and definitely not a whack job.

With that favourite Danzig track you posted, I was thinking about their intro guitars. On The Cure's more serious (as opposed to more comedic) music, their guitars are like the polar opposite of the guitars on the intro to that Danzig track. If we compared it to knitting, then The Cure likes to knit intricately patterned things, which at the same time have an elegant minimalism to them; and the colours are really desaturated, with some spot colours, like a sepia-toned photograph with a splash of red in it. The Danzig intro guitars, and a lot of heavy metal guitar work, seems to me like people frantically knitting a multicoloured long scarf with lots of knobbles and deliberate holes and bits of wool hanging off randomly, all showered in glitter. Isn't it funny how music can give us imagery like that?



> The first Nick Cave one was creepy. His voice was good, and I love a capella stuff or minimal instrumental support. With my hearing, not sure what it was about, vid was creepy.
> I really liked the second one!! Very nice song! Thanks!
> 
> The Prieboy one was okay. Nice voice, no idea who he is...


Do you know, I have no idea either! :rofl: I actually heard that one on the radio, when I accidentally had the radio on!



> Hmmm....Burn. I didn't know who Cure was until you posted Burn on another thread and I went OMG! I LOVE this song!! The whole Crow soundtrack is one of my top three albums! I have worn out two cassettes (dating myself) and the CD is fine, now lives on my iPod. So I guess I am really warming up to them because of the songs you keep posting. The one about No Birds Sing, I caught myself singing parts of that for a while after. So I guess that is the next album I need to get.
> (I very rarely buy new music. Very rarely.)
> So I thank you so much for opening my world a little!


And thank you likewise, I'm getting educated here as well! If people I like play me things that mean something to them, I actually want to listen, even to stuff I normally wouldn't. I can't just go blowing it off then; I have to remove my preconceived ideas, and that's a good exercise, and leads to really good discoveries as well.

The _Crow_ soundtrack, and the song _Burn_, was what made Brett sit up and take notice of The Cure, and to start listening to them more widely; and then, of course, I got to listen to his collection when I met him! The lead guitar on that is just so spine-tingling. The drums/percussion/bass are fabulous - as is the voice and the words to the song. It's one of those songs I can set on endless repeat and not tire of.

If you love _Burn_, you'll probably love the albums _Bloodflowers_ and _Disintegration_, and some of the tracks on _Wild Mood Swings_ (a very mixed bag, from songs sort of like _Burn_ to jazzy-Caribbean type things), and some of the tracks off _The Cure_ (the album after _Bloodflowers_) as well. I'm still exploring their back catalogue as well.








> I loved the Iggy and girl song! I didn't know he had done that, or could sing so well. I know him from the Crow soundtrack, too. I like the girls' voice as well. She was perfect with him. I love when two voices blend.Not sure what the musical term for that is. I am not a musician.


Yeah, they just blend perfectly.... I'm not much of a musician either, but I have fun singing in the shower and doing imitations of the _Psycho_ shower scene on my violin! :rofl:








> The Adele parody!! AWESOME!
> I confess, the first time I heard that song, was that parody. I had never heard of Adele before watching that video from here on HF. (I live under a rock, remember). Since then, I heard the real Adele sing the original song. But I still had the equine version firmly in my head, since I had heard that version first. I still think its better!


So do I, and I'm very happy that @*gottatrot* put this up for us! Brett and I were watching it last night - it is so professionally done - great voice actually, and really made us laugh with the parodies of stereotypical music video moves!



> So thanks so much for the education of sorts!
> One thing I truly love are covers. Hearing a fresh take on an old, tired, but good song is one way to discover it all over again!
> I will get running now and leave you with another of my favorite bands.
> Have a great day!!
> 
> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8oYodfK4DkE


Yeah, I remember the original - Chris Isaak - and this is a nice new take on it, because it's giving an alternative interpretation, rather than just trying to ape it. Brett really likes the Garbage cover of Paul Weller's _Butterfly Collector_, and Frente's cover of the New Order song _Bizarre Love Triangle_, and Johnny Cash's version of _Hurt_ over the Nine Inch Nails original. I really love U2's cover of Patti Smith's _Dancing Barefoot_ while Brett thinks that's sacrilege and prefers the original!

Glad we could find you another voice. We'll keep our ears open for nice basement voices and music! Have a lovely evening!


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## SueC

@*JoBlueQuarter* , I secretly actually like _Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough_. ;-) Despite the schoolboy voice intro. It really works, and he's so luminous in that clip.

@*Dragoon* , a postscript for you about cassette players. I still had one in my first car! So now we can both be carbon-dated! :rofl:

@*Caledonian* , hello there :wave: - and thank you for offering me road-tested Celtic music for my weekend listening! I'm on the laptop, so I'll run these through the desktop with its decent speakers later. Spring clean today as it's too hot and humid to be outdoors - DH manning the vacuum, me the mop (a splash of real lavender oil in hot water makes the house smell wonderful...)

@*knightrider* , thanks muchly for weekend music to listen to as well!  And I'd still love _five_ Celtic tracks from you, just to know what _you_ like! That LOTR theme, that's our Jenny Thomas playing the fiddle on that soundtrack, who also did that version of _Waltzing Matilda_ I posted recently. Isn't that a great theme! 

@*Knave* , you've got the all-singing, all-dancing, all-riding, tricks-on-horseback family. Do you charge entry fees for visitors? ;-) It must be an amazing feeling to have these little humans grow into these people who sing and dance and ride and have opinions and ideas of their own!


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## gottatrot

Great music! I liked Live Forever, that video was amazing. Also the cover of Wicked Game and the Master of Tides, a lot. That violin was beautiful.

This is a genre I've never listened to, but the tune is so catchy!





If you want to hear something different, my DH found this odd music by Grimes and I have no idea what you call it. One song she does is apparently about Al Pacino as the Godfather from the perspective of him being a vampire??? All I know is some of the tunes really get stuck in your head.




 





I'm not sure why I like this song lately. Something about the dissonance.


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## knightrider

I sure am getting a kick out of all these songs I did not know. One of the genres of music that I just love is a capella music. I love scared harp music and this is what we sing at my church. It comes from Appalachia, but I used to sing in a scared harp group in Washington DC. You can just imagine how fun it is to sing these kinds of songs with a group. You can just feel your voice melding in and locking in those complicated harmonies. This song is not my favorite but most typical of sacred harp.





And this one might be my all time favorite. We sing this at my church too.






Another a capella type of singing is barbershop, which I sang with my husband's family for years. It is SO much fun to sing. Just impossible to pick a favorite since there are so many fun numbers to sing.

This is the song that we did most frequently together, sometimes impromptu performances, first with my husband and in-laws, and then later with my husband, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law. We were much livelier than this group, and we each had a motion that we did. My part was the one the short guy sings--"Musical demon, set your honey a dreamin', won't you play me some rag". I get chills just remembering how thrilling it was to lock in our harmonies at the end of the song, going into that crescendo. It was SO much fun. They are all dead now, all but me. But really happy memories.






And this is one of the many much loved typical barbershop songs.


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## Knave

@SueC it is a good feeling! I love knowing them and being a part of their stories. Last night little girl had her first date. It was a father/daughter dance.  Big girl and I got her all dolled up, and when she came home she said she had so much fun. I am completely grateful.

Big girl and her father can sing and dance; the little one and I struggle in that department. The girls worked the system to do both basketball and ballet, so we will see if she can pull it off.


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## Knave

I know you like pictures @SueC, so I have to show you! She said she felt like a movie star with her big sister and I getting her ready.


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## knightrider

Awwww, she's adorable! So sweet!


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## Caledonian

@*SueC* - Hi :wave: When you mentioned lavender, i remembered that i've flower buds from my plants in a jar, so i used some to help me sleep last night so  . 

I've always liked music that gets my feet tapping and the Jigs never fail. I also enjoyed the rhythm in @*knightrider* s sacred harp music. It's not a genre that I've heard before, although a quick search shows that we have it here. It's similar to our Waulking Songs and Lining Out of hymns. 

I saw Hayley Westenra sing Pokarekare Ana many years ago and she was amazing. It was huge outdoor arena and you could've heard a pin drop. She has a beautiful voice. I also liked @*gottatrot* 'The Dead South' very catchy and unusual.

@*Knave* - what a wonderful idea and she looks very pretty.


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## SueC

Hello all! :wave:

Isn't it lovely to be hearing everyone's music! I'm working my way through it and really enjoying. Here's some feedback.

@*Caledonian* , Celtic is one of my favourite genres as well - I started out just enjoying a lot of the contemporary music that came from Scotland and Ireland when I was at school - U2, The Waterboys, Big Country, Simple Minds initially, and then from there to Hothouse Flowers (who do so much nice Celtic stuff as well as what was played on the radio), Enya, Clannad and Capercaillie - the latter are one of my favourite bands ever. 

That Breabach track was really beautiful. Julie Fowlis' piece gave me goosebumps in the loveliest possible way. And I'm not surprised that the Skerrymore clip celebrates your countryside, which is just glorious, and the things you can do to commune with it - walking, camping, cycling etc etc. I had a small chat with Karen Matheson once after their outdoors gig at the Vancouver Arts Centre here, I think it was in 2005 - it was an accident, would you believe I bumped into her in the backstage toilet (of all places!) that was there for public use, during the interval. I wondered had she been out on the Torndirrup Peninsula while visiting and she said they were planning to, and that Albany really reminded her of Scotland.

It seems that I am drawn to these kinds of dramatic landscapes, and to music that reminds me of these. I think all these people making that sort of music really understand the idea of having a sense of place. In our country, it is the Aboriginal Australians who really get this, which is why I am also very much drawn to their music, and why two (three, if you include the variations) of the real Australian anthems I posted a couple of pages back were by Aboriginal Australian performers. Here's the link to the post, if you'd like to hear some sense of place music from Australia, to compare with your local offerings:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...s-other-people-479466/page128/#post1970630827

Something that culturally seems to run strongly through Irish, Scottish and Aboriginal music is the fact that so many local people had to fight against invaders, and mostly at the losing end - at the same time as feeling this physical and spiritual connection to the wonderful landscapes and the history of these places. I remember Hothouse Flowers did an acoustic gig in Perth back in the early 1990s, where they actually commented on this. They were wearing the black, red and gold bracelets that had been given to them by native Australians they had spent time with, and their lead singer had learnt to play the didgeridoo, which was so fantastic. They had also recorded this song with Shane Howard, who'd written _Solid Rock_ back in the early 80s (posted here https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...other-people-479466/page130/#post1970632653):






I remember they featured the didgeridoo in all three gigs they did in WA that visit, and together with _a capella_ singing in Irish Gaelic, this totally silenced the crowd - you could hear a pin drop. I've never been in a crowd of 6000 people so silent in my life before or since, and when each of these types of songs finished, people just clapped thunderous applause - no yelling, just this really dignified response to very dignified music. (The cheering returned for their radio songs, but everyone I talked to afterwards said they'd never forget this _other_ material!)

He's still playing didgeridoo:






And singing beautifully:






This is one of my favourite tracks from the contemporary music Hothouse Flowers was mostly known for - this one didn't get radio airplay, but so wonderfully captures that sense of place and the sense of giving your life to what is meaningful:






:dance-smiley05:​ 

@*knightrider* , thanks for bringing Hayley Westernra to my attention, what a magnificent voice - and from just across the waters from us, in NZ! I thought it was fabulous to discover how many languages she has sung in, and that she's a UNICEF ambassador. Don't people like that just lift your heart! Lindsey Stirling reminds me a little of Vanessa Mae, with the showpersonship etc.

That a capella stuff is so great, and singing like that is such wonderful fun - I was in a choir for years and it was just as you say.  The first song makes me wonder if there was a Scottish influence in the Appalachians - since there is a strong reminiscence to the Scottish Waulking songs there for me - and I see, reading the next page, that @*Caledonian* thinks so too! I know that the Scots had a huge influence in Cape Breton, which gave us gems like this:






_Love_ the second one! And barbershop - yes, a friend of mine from Sydney with whom I spent a lot of time has been doing that recreationally most of her life, and has gone to the US for competitions several times with the group she's in. I stayed with her for nearly half a year when initially coming to and working in Sydney, and loved to hear them practice! That second song, not musically but in terms of setting and feel, reminds me, strangely, of a performance of _Orpheus In The Underworld_ another friend did with a Bunbury group, that came to our town hall in Albany - it was a Light Opera version, but it was great!

Here's some a more capella with harmonies that might appeal to you and @*Dragoon* :







:gallop:

​ @*gottatrot* , I just love The Dead South, I'd seen them before sometime on YouTube! :loveshower: This is such a fun song. I love how the cello is used like a portable double bass, and the two non-instrumentalists double as dancers.

Our craziest Australian band is Monsieur Camembert, from Sydney. Here's a taste; of a Leonard Cohen cover.






And this is some more eclectic stuff - these guys sing in English, Russian, Yiddish etc:






Thanks for posting Grimes; I like experimental things, always conceptually, if not always aesthetically! Brett was saying the Audioslave singer used to be in Soundgarden, and he has one track by the latter, _Black Hole Sun_, and a cover of it done in Swing style!

:racing:​
@*Knave* , what amazing photos!  Great to hear and see the things your family do! Hope you have a great Thanksgiving - I thought of you yesterday when we were scrubbing our house! 

Also everyone else here from the US, I hope you enjoy your holiday.

We're having a look into our beehives this morning, whcih is exciting! :smile: _Sssssssssssbbbb!_

Thank you again for the music, everybody - I will repeat-play your tracks as I get into my boring office cleanup job next week - it will be perfect to have this diverse soundtrack to jazz things up a bit!


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## SueC

*RIDE REPORT - VALLEY FLOOR EXTENSION*

:cowboy:

The grass pollen finally seems to be starting to die down just a little, and I hope to get back to riding 5-6 times a week after that - currently my sad average is 2-3 times a week, because either sneezing or tired from the antihistamines. However, we've got some grass starting to dry off, and seed heads forming, so hopefully the pollen will be a thing of the past soon. The neighbours all have their hay in, except the ones immediately to our north, who don't listen to weather reports and always cut their hay on the Albany Show weekend, because that's what daddy did; and for the whole six years we've lived here, it's rained on their cut harvest because of this - because these days, there are lots of downpours in November, and you have to really watch for a safe week to cut. It's pretty incomprehensible to me that some people stick their head in the sand and ignore the actual good sides of modern technology - like satellite photographs, precipitation radars, and some of the best bits of the Internet - and do it to their own disadvantage. Brett and I are probably part-time troglodytes, but not outright Luddites! :rofl:

Anyway - yesterday, after a horrible sweaty house cleaning session from both of us, which resulted in a lovely clean lavender-scented house, I showered the grime off me and found that the weather outside had cooled and I could go riding. I started down the old "Fireground Loop", crossing into the south neighbour's place, but decided to extend the ride heading south along the valley floor, through this kind of lovely vegetation - this is taken at the start of that stretch:










A full set of riding photos from the Fireground Loop are here:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page55/#post1970559673

Anyway, it was really pleasant to meander through this nice vegetation along the animal trails, trying to find a way out back into the pasture at the south end - we've tried before and hit dead ends, but this time we managed to find a route that exited at the southern end of this bushland, near Verne Road, into the cow pasture. We then turned right along the fence boundary and followed it all the way back to our own block. Sunsmart was animated once we hit the open field, and raced up a hill; around the corner we hit some rocks and slowed down, as he wasn't booted. 

The whole herd of cattle to the west of the fenceline came running up to us, and capered alongside us until a fence stopped them. We also saw the Stoney's herd in the paddock we were riding in, down at a waterhole behind the trees, and Sunsmart couldn't quite see who was crackling in the bushes, and registered a preference to run. He needs the exercise, so I let him. He was a super boy going back through the gate into our place - he knows I have to get off him, remove a live 10kV line that protects the gate from cattle, trust me to keep it away from him and hook it back up, and then does the little dance involved in closing the hinged gate with me. He does try to catch my sleeves when I do that - once I'm not holding that electric line! :rofl:

We meandered back through our own property, and I trimmed his front feet when we got home so I can get him back in his boots today - this afternoon is nice and cool, and I will snaggle a ride after doing some more work in our vegetable garden - and netting a few fruit trees. I've got a ride map attached - since Brett showed me how to use the GIMP software for scanning and digitising those paper journal entries back here: 

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...s-other-people-479466/page125/#post1970629613

...well, now I can also do snazzy things like make a ride map when I've been somewhere and want to show people the place from a satellite perspective. Isn't some of this technology great?  You can see the loop we rode below. Click to enlarge!


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## lostastirrup

On the topic of allergies- have you tried having local honey? When I came down to MT I did local honey instead of Zyrtec and it worked well. I'm not sure how, my biologist buddy could speak to it better, but when the bees "make the honey" they process the pollen/our allergens in such a way that our bodies can register them not as threats.. I'm not actually sure how it works, but it does... 

Looks like a beautiful place to ride. You mention valley, are there hillsides or mountains to ride up in too?


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## SueC

Hello, @*lostastirrup* ! :wave: We keep bees - and have had our own honey for eight years, and lots of it! (Yum yum.) But they collect flower pollen, which around here I'm not allergic to, not the grass pollen, as grasses are wind pollinated (airborne plant sperm - phew - happy springtime to all). Contrary to popular belief too, honey isn't made from pollen, just gets some falling in it - the honey is made from flower nectar which is carried in the bee stomach and regurgitated in the hive, where they reduce it down. So technically, honey is evaporated condensed bee vomit!  The pollen is collected in special combs on the bee legs, and its high protein content makes it wonderful growing food for the larvae. Of course, it gets all over the bee bodies too, which is how the plants they visit are pollinated - when their pollen-covered bodies bump into the stigmas of the next compatible flower...

As a kid I was allergic to both grass pollen, and some European flower pollen. I was put on pollen therapy to try to reduce my allergies, but all it seemed to do was give me a really sore throat, so that was discontinued. It probably works for some people though. We moved to Australia when I was 11, and if I'm in the Australian bush, not near farmland, I don't get allergies - one of the reasons we love going bushwalking (Brett has hayfever too), and I used to live on the Torndirrup Peninsula, surrounded by national park and the sea, before we moved to our farm...

Australia is very ancient and eroded, so our mountain ranges (apart from the Great Dividing Range that runs along the Eastern Seaboard) are generally considered laughable by Americans, Europeans, Himalayans etc ;-). We have two locally - the granitic Porongurup Ranges:










...and the metamorphic Stirling Ranges:










This is the top of Toolbrunup, where Brett proposed to me 11 years ago this month.  We can walk in these mountains, but no horses allowed, or even dogs, as national parks... I salivate at some of the horse trails I see in the US...

Our particular valley floor where we were riding is flanked either side by two eroded ridges maybe 30m higher than the valley floor!


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## SueC

Some recent footage of life in the equine herd.

Firstly: The new donkeys Nelly and Benjamin follow my horse and me all the time, but the one time we get a cameraman to film it, they decide he is more interesting than going riding! :rofl: We'll have to try again. Maybe build some sort of camouflaged "donkey hide" for Brett...






The following day, Sunsmart and I were following Julian and Chasseur out..






Little riding snippets. @gottatrot , I've decided Sunsmart is definitely getting unusually sleepy now, after we started the pergolide three weeks ago - and yesterday his droppings went soft. So he's getting a reduced dose from today. It's possible he's reacting like this because we caught him so early with his PPID. The only symptom he really had so far was being hairy this winter and shedding in a funny pattern. He was still all go; but now he's definitely looking drugged...

Meeting the donkeys in the morning:






After a while, you just start braying to them. You just can't help it!

Next, 34-year-old Romeo wanting his breakfast. This is what happens when you go out the front door in the morning:






Romeo at breakfast:






Good service includes removing the rug and supplying a fly veil once breakfast is served...


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## knightrider

Wow, Romeo chews so fast! Chompchompchompchomp. He looked like one of those rescue horses that are starving. That was so cute, especially @SueC, your whinnying at him. I laughed out loud.

Thank you for sharing that beautiful music. After reviewed piles and tons of barbershop songs, I found one that is, perhaps, my favorite, for rather a weird reason. It's not especially popular and it's not catchy. I thought long and hard about sharing it. Everyone else's music is so profound, and I tend to fall in love with the sentimental claptrap. But this barbershop song is my special love because it speaks to me. It doesn't matter how rich or poor you are, these three things can make your life satisfying and happy, and everyone can have them, no matter who you are. When I would go to barbershop concerts, afterwards, I would wait until they were packing up, and then request them if they could sing me this song. I could never get a recording of it because it isn't very well known, so I so valued when they would sing it for me. (All barbershoppers will sing for you if you just ask, they are so SWEET!)
I Wanna Have Fun in Just One Lifetime






@knave and I talked about liking the popular songs on the radio which we enjoy sharing with our daughters. My daughter and I both love this one, so I'll just throw it in. I love the xylophone--reminds me of skeletons dancing around.
Somebody That I Used to Know


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## SueC

Hello, @*knightrider* ! :hug: I think songs can be profound and meaningful while still being upbeat musically - that second song makes people think about romance and breakups in a constructive way - the first reflects about what to put into your life, and that you only live once. So I think both are meaningful, and I also like both of them musically. Isn't it great how everyone in that choir is putting in all they have - singing in a choir really takes you beyond yourself. The group energy is so amazing. That song and the way it's presented to me sits somewhere between classical choirs and musicals. They do such a great job there. 

Got to run just now; here's an interesting blog post that came up this morning on the mental / emotional health benefits of keeping a personal paper journal, especially for people from unhappy birth families:

https://theinvisiblescar.wordpress....l-helps-your-mental-health-emotional-healing/

Hope everyone has a lovely evening! :wave:


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## SueC

...here's a clip I've been meaning to post... you'll love the stone xylophone, @*knightrider* ...






...and oh yeah, I forgot to say - and the serious teenager I was would hang me for this - that not all music has to be deep and meaningful! :rofl:

And it doesn't even have to be really aesthetically exceptional all the time either...

Sometimes you can just have _fun_.






Likewise here...






And here's a really amazing Australian...






And I'm sure you all know songs like this! :Angel:


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## SueC

*NEW WEANLING STEERS COMING FRIDAY*

Now that the spring flush has finally replenished the fields after a tough year, we can move our stocking rate back up again - we'd scaled right back to just 4 Friesian steers, bought as weanlings earlier this year (now yearlings), after carrying on average 12 growing cattle, and 17 at peak - all starting with a hard frost that killed most of out kikuyu the winter before last. To avoid overgrazing the land, we had to drastically de-stock immediately then and sell 5 unfinished rising two-year-old Murray Grey steers to a feedlot to finish, and we got the remaining 7 Murray Grey yearling heifers through with lots of tree fodder supplementation - and sold them late summer, earlier this year.

After enquiring at a neighbouring dairy, we found they actually had 4 beef weanlings for sale, Simmental / Murray Grey crosses. We agreed to buy them, and they are expected to arrive on Friday. It's been a long time since I've seen Simmentals, and it will be fun to have a group of those around for 18 months to 2 years. This is them... rather cute...

This will also make it easier to stop the horses overeating pasture without having to lock them out of large areas all spring and summer...


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## SueC

*ARTICLE ON OFF-GRID LIVING*

Hooray for technology - building on the recent paper journalling entry here https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...s-other-people-479466/page125/#post1970629613 I've now learnt how to post converted pages of the pdfs of the magazine articles I've written for _The Owner Builder_ - so no more cutting and pasting manuscripts of those into here, and telling everyone how great Lynda is at doing her visual presentation of the whole thing but having to get people to imagine it!

Click to enlarge - maximum size is a bit bigger than A4. It should be comfortably readable. This article explains how never to pay another electricity bill - and the many reasons this is a good thing.


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## SueC

We're playing with resolutions here. Turns out HF software resized the pages from the above post, and the resized pages are a bit blurry. We're now employing a little trick to hopefully make posts like this more readable.

I'm going to post the page layouts of all TOB articles I've done this year, because they really are so much nicer than posting manuscripts plus photos. However: There are more photos included in my previous entry on this, here: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page53/#post1970558119


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## SueC

OK, I originally posted the manuscript and photos (more than in the magazine) on our house interior here: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page53/#post1970558119

The cover didn't come with this pdf, so here's the thumbnail of it:










This is the page layout - click several times to enlarge to maximum size.


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## SueC

From this issue:












...the layout of the recycled kitchen article:


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## SueC

...and a little snippet on our mosaic burning here, which Lynda actually put together from captions I had on Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/albums/72157687658557055 - I didn't submit a manuscript for this one because I didn't realise how serious she was about running it. So, some of the photos are actually from a previous burn, rather than this year's, but this doesn't really matter, it was spreading awareness that was the point.

Something extensive and personal I wrote about this year's hazard reduction/biodiversity conservation burn, with lots of photos: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...s-other-people-479466/page112/#post1970620989

A version of this appeared in _Grass Roots _recently.

Page layout from TOB piece:


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## Caledonian

@SueC - You braying at the donkeys :rofl:and the little hee haws in return is so cute!


I love the video of the weird instruments. It takes talent to get the right notes from everyday objects. The stones, pipes and twisted metal (forks?) created wonderful sounds. I admit that I’ve made bagpipes out of rubber gloves, straws and cardboard tubes for children:hide:, although, they don’t make as good a sound as the set on the video!


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## SueC

@*Caledonian* , is there a law against making bagpipe impersonating instruments out of household objects? :rofl: Will they take away your sporran if you do such a thing? :Angel:

I really love bagpipes, especially the Uilleann type. But both are spine-tingling.

The donkeys are a bit shy about their braying when I have the camera. That Mary Lou can really trumpet away if she wants something! I'll see if I can capture that sometime. Benjamin has a fine and classical bray with snorts at the end, much like Don Quixote. Sparkle actually ululates... at high volume, enough to bring the cattle running...

Took the fiddle out to the donkeys the other day to see if that would make them join in. Nope. Not even ambulance siren sounds did it. So I just did a bit of _What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor_ for them, and all five donkeys stood around listening with their big ears turned towards the sound. Then Julian came from the other end of the paddock to investigate. 

His late mother used to come really close and put her head on my non-violin-bearing shoulder and breathe in my ear when I was playing. She seemed to be hypnotised by the sound. Poor thing spent most of her life in a sand yard alone after retirement, and as she was a bright, adventurous horse, this was so hard on her she actually got depressed. I'm sure she'd be happy that her only foal has been plucked from what would otherwise have been the same fate...

Are you getting any snow in Scotland yet? Will there be a White Christmas, do you think?

The other day, on the TV I caught a segment on the Forth railway bridge. What a beautiful old bridge!!! Amazing engineering. The presenter went up into an arch. (That can be done with the Sydney Harbour Bridge too!) The views were just amazing. Have you been on that actual bridge?


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## Caledonian

@*SueC* :rofl::rofl:


They'll take my sporran and tartan! There should be a law against making our cardboard tube version:smile:. I almost want to apologise to the parents, as I know their night is going to be ruined, at least until the straw or glove splits. 

I like the sound of the Uilleann pipes as well as the small ones from the UK. They’re very atmospheric and easier to listen to as an individual instrument. The large pipes are more suited to bands and outdoors. I was listening to two boys playing last week in a large vaulted room and the acoustics were wonderful but they were so loud that it spoiled the music. My ears were still ringing twenty minutes later. 

I’ve always wondered what music sounds like to animals. I’m not sure that mine even acknowledge the radio but I often wondered if a live instrument, producing a range of vibrations, would be completely different. That’s sad that Julian’s mother spent that time alone but what a wonderful connection to have with her. 

No snow here. It’s been pretty mild up until the start of the week. The air’s been coming from Africa which has kept us at around 10-15C, while some areas in the north hit 16 -17C. Well above average. Today was around 6C. We’ve had sunshine and showers for weeks. It's pouring down at moment. After last winter's snow I’m hoping that we don’t have a white Christmas. Everyone's been looking at the Rowen berries on the trees and the amount of geese that arrived and saying that it’s going to be a hard winter. :-(

The Forth Bridge is very imposing, my dad used to take me to stand underneath and watch the tankers go up and down the estuary with the little pilot boats buzzing around their sides. It makes its own music as it creaks, clinks and rumbles when trains go over. My parents have been over it and I’ve been underneath on a boat but my memory of the day is of rough water, a bouncing and tipping boat and swirling helicopters overhead, rather than the wonderful bridge. We came out of the Roysth Naval dockyard and headed to the bridge but the water was so rough that I spent most of the time pinned to the outside of the cabin with my eyes closed.

Apparently, it’s over engineered due to the Tay Bridge disaster as they didn’t want a repeat. It’s still amazing to look at just like the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Golden Gate. I think they’re planning a tourist experience so that people can climb to the top; I’d love to go when it opens.

night Sue:ZZZ:


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## SueC

Busy with a vastly amazing thread here:


https://www.horseforum.com/horse-talk/do-horses-love-us-798237/


Please chime in if you've not visited there yet. Warning: High and rapidly growing word count!  But great fun, fruitful discussion. Love, and horses.


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## frlsgirl

SueC said:


> The donkeys are a bit shy about their braying when I have the camera. That Mary Lou can really trumpet away if she wants something! I'll see if I can capture that sometime. Benjamin has a fine and classical bray with snorts at the end, much like Don Quixote. Sparkle actually ululates... at high volume, enough to bring the cattle running...
> 
> Took the fiddle out to the donkeys the other day to see if that would make them join in. Nope. Not even ambulance siren sounds did it. So I just did a bit of _What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor_ for them, and all five donkeys stood around listening with their big ears turned towards the sound. Then Julian came from the other end of the paddock to investigate.



Awww I love donkeys. We are not allowed to have them on our property per the neighborhood association covenants. Probably because the mini horse farm at the entrance of our neighborhood has a mini donkey that makes enough noise to cover a 1 mile radius. 

Since you live in such a remote location you probably never have to worry about bothering the neighbors or adhering to covenants. Or does such a rule exist in the Australian wilderness?


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## SueC

@*frlsgirl* , hello! :wave: Hope you're well, and keeping warm! What a shame you can't keep donkeys where you are, they're such nice people, and make a lot less noise that some humans and their stereos!

We're not exactly in the wilderness, but we are in a rural zoned area, so no such limitations on animal keeping. We also have lots of original forest around here, so it actually feels a bit like wilderness, even though we're only 25 minutes' drive away from the regional centre, and the coastline. Sort of the best of both worlds. We even have bitumen up to the front gate!

Do you ever just want to move to remote Africa?


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## SueC

*SPECIAL SUNDAY VISITORS AT RED MOON SANCTUARY*

At it was Sunday, Bill came over as usual at morning teatime. I'd had difficulty rising from bed this morning as it was soooo comfortable and we were having such a riveting discussion on the thread referred to above. We both usually have an extended breakfast in bed on Sundays, but Brett shamelessly enabled me to continue to stay ensconced by going off to give Romeo his breakfast, flashing me an impish smile and going, "Enjoy your reading and writing!"  Lovely, naughty man. It's much easier for me to get up when I know I have to feed Romeo, and noone else is going to do it! 

When Bill turned up, I finally extricated myself from the discussion and the nice comfortable bed. It's such a lovely bed and such a great room...





It's my favourite bedroom ever... this is what I see from my typing in bed perspective:



That's the morning sunlight right there, coming in through these windows:



In this example, there were even horses grazing in the lower garden tier. Not infrequently, Romeo comes to remind me that it is breakfast time for him - and he knows exactly where we are:



Anyway, you can see why this is such a hard room to leave, and why it sometimes doubles as my office when I decide to work on the laptop instead of the desktop.

Finally this morning, though, I did make myself presentable and join the land of the living, and had a good chat to Bill while preparing the pears for this lovely little number:



You have to peel them, core them, slice them into eighths, then simmer them in red wine with added cardamom pods and star anise, to give them that lovely red colour. This makes the house smell all amazing while it is cooking. And no sooner had the amazing smell started to spread out from its epicentre than there was a knock on the door. Of course! Hannah and her niece Scarlett! They'd come for a long-talked about visit. Hannah has been buying our honey for years and has met Brett on many occasions, but never me - I just did the emails on honey orders, life, the universe and everything! It was lovely to meet at last!

We started chatting as I was making a tuna pasta salad with capsicum, spring onions, cubes of cheddar, freshly ground pepper, and a yoghurt/mayonnaise dressing. This we had for lunch, and then I made the pastry shell for the tart, followed by the chocolate custard, as the shell was pre-baking. 

Meanwhile, Scarlett was entertaining Jess with the dog's favourite balloon game:



We have a balloon tied to the ceiling fan, which the dog loves to bop around with her nose, but she wants other people to bop the balloon as well, backwards and forwards to her. Today, Jess met her match: Scarlett played the game for so long that the dog's tongue was hanging a long way down and she actually got tired - a bit of a miracle for a kelpie!

Once the chocolate tart was out of the oven, I banished it to the freezer for a rapid chill, and then we had a fortunate rain break, so we could take young Scarlett for a horseback ride before afternoon tea.

(It is a little hard to concentrate on this entry as Brett is reading out to me from _The Other Bible_, which is all the ancient peripheral/ignored texts that weren't included in the Bible. He's just treating me to the geography and architecture of hell, which apparently has seven divisions, one beneath the other, each of which has seven subdivisions etc; with rivers of fire and hail; and there are crevices in the walls with 7000 poisonous scorpions in each crevice, etc etc etc. And apparently God isn't having a good time, because he keeps telling things to do things and they say _No_! Things like water, for example; which then makes God have a fit of violent outrage and throw the whole world into chaos all over again. "The water was recalcitrant, it resisted the order to occupy the lowly spots, and threatened to overflow the earth, until God forced it back into the sea and encircled the sea with sand." You try writing when having your attention split by fascinating stuff like this!) 

I retrieved Sunsmart, who walked towards me the moment he saw me, looking eager for diversion, and brushed all the wet sand off his surface-wet coat. Then we saddled him, and I showed Scarlett, who is ten, how to estimate your length of stirrup (about armpit to fingertip for dressage length). This showed us that my stirrup straps were way too long for her, and so I dug out the ones I used when I first started riding as a nine-year-old. Now even that was too long, so I punched some extra holes, and finally we had a workable length for our young equestrienne.

We gave her a bit of a boost to get on Sunsmart's back. I didn't have a bridle on him, just the halter, with a nice soft lead rope looped back like reins from the noseband for our young rider, and another lead rope for me to lead him by. As I explained, this way, she could hold on to the rein/rope if necessary, if she got nervous, without worrying about hurting the horse's mouth by not being soft enough. I explained you could also steer a horse like that, but she wouldn't have to worry about it today because I was leading him for her.

Scarlett has ridden a handful of times, without being led, but the last time, her ride ended with her horse trying to bolt back to the stable. She didn't fall off, but the experience frightened her. So, this was about getting her confidence back, and making it fun again, in a super-safe way, with an experienced horse and a person leading from the ground, and auntie walking on the offside of the horse, as we took a leisurely tour of the farm tracks.


:cowboy:

At first, our young rider was tense and had the typical body memory reaction of a child who'd had a scary experience the last time she was on the back of a horse - the reaction which says to the owner of the body, "This was dangerous last time, is this a good idea?" Also, Sunsmart was taller than the other horses she'd ridden, and very powerfully built. I remember what it felt like when I was a kid, to sit on a to me mountainous animal! So we diverted Scarlett's attention by telling her about funny things the horse had done. The moment we got around the back of the house to the sand track, Sunsmart made entertainment for everyone as well - as every time I lead him, whether between two gates when riding, or when leading a novice horseperson around the tracks, he wants to play "the stick game"!

He starts by looking at me and trying to catch my sleeves in his lips. The next part of the ritual is that I find him a stick he can carry, and present it to him. He then gravely accepts the stick and carries it in his teeth, horizontally. Then he looks at me, and I'm supposed to pull on the side of the stick. When I do, we have a little tug-of-war. Scarlett was laughing by now from her perch on the horse, watching all this going on and hearing the explanation of why we were doing it. This really helped blow away that nervousness for her. "Just like a giant puppy! So funny!"

So she rode the giant puppy stick-game off-track racehorse down the sand track with us, really beginning to beam and enjoy the experience. We walked the sand track - swamp track loop, with occasional halts to enjoy scenic views. "I'm not scared anymore, this is fun!" said our young rider, and we two ostlers / footmen beamed at her and each other.

When we got back to the tie rail, I asked, "Do you know how to get off?" and she did a lovely dismount all by herself. She got to feed the horse his bucket feed after the ride, and then all of us dashed in for chocolate tart. Scarlett helped me arrange the pear slices on top of the tart, and the five of us had a merry chocolatey afternoon teatime, chatting about Dr Who and all sorts of things. Bill was talking about horses and the district and asking Scarlett if she would ride again. I said that since she and her aunt had excellent manners and were great company, they were welcome to come visit anytime, and we would repeat the riding.

On their way out today, we took carrots, and visited the rest of the equine herd. Scarlett found herself surrounded by five donkeys, feeding them a carrot each and exclaiming at their long ears and faces etc. She said, "Oh, I've just discovered I love donkeys!" and leapt about. She was a great hit with them too - they love people, and especially young people oozing enthusiasm. She found out where they like to be scratched, and learnt all their names. Chasseur, who's a super-cuddly horse, came up too, and I showed Scarlett what he does when you scratch the underside of his neck - cranes his head high up into the sky, closes his eyes blissfully, wiggles his lips - that made her laugh, and soon she was scratching him just the way he liked it! It was very hard for her to tear herself away from the super-friendly chestnut horse and the five long-ears, and I said, "Before today, you didn't know any of this existed. Now you do - and you can come back anytime!" She gave me a big hug before she got in the car, as did her aunt, and then they drove off playing the _Wonky Donkey_ song on the car stereo. 

A wonderful Sunday for all. 

onkey: onkey: onkey: onkey: onkey:


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## egrogan

The puppy-horse story just made me smile from ear-to-ear @SueC! I love working with riders Scarlett's age, particularly those who have had some frights in the saddle. When I was teaching my sample lesson for my therapeutic riding certification, I was instructing a rider who I had never met before (the day before you teach the lesson, you are given a couple of paragraphs of general information- first name, an overview of the rider's disability, maybe a high level blurb about their favorite mounted activities- but that's about it. Nothing about previous good or bad experiences with horses, things that scare them, etc.). So in the middle of my lesson, the horse my student was riding had a buddy sour moment and let loose with a deep, rumbling whinny to a friend back in the stable, and followed that up with a huge, full-body shake like a horse will do if he's wet. She let out a little yelp and tensed up instantly. The horse was being led from the ground, and was not out of control in any way- just making sudden weird movements that really scared her. She was riding with a neck strap, and I was able to talk her through how to use that neck strap to stabilize herself, which actually got her sitting deep in the saddle again and more relaxed, and we immediately went right into a game of weaving through cones of different colors and she was fine again. Those moments of off-script improv are always my favorite time in teaching a lesson or giving a presentation- I'm not so great with staying on script :wink: Anyway, when I was going through the review/feedback with the certifying committee, they mentioned how that moment could have sunk the lesson, but instead, staying calm, helping the rider take control and feel confident, and having a little fun right after a scary moment made the difference.

Seeing those pretty poached pears and reading your recipe reminded me of a new dish we just made for Thanksgiving. Not sure how widely cranberries are available near you, but this year we made this wonderful cranberry chutney, and even though there is only a little cardamom in it, it's flavor was so noticable in the finished dish- not overpowering, but very fragrant. And also that delicious red color (photo from the recipe on the NYTimes Cooking website, and yes, it looked as pretty in real life, just didn't think to take a picture).


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## SueC

That rider story sounds great, @*egrogan* ! And the best thing to do with a script is to throw it away. ;-) The cranberry chutney looks delicious - what do you eat it with? A cheese board? Turkey? In turkey sandwiches? We get frozen cranberries here, I have a pack in the freezer! Might get creative! 

Yeah, there's just something about working with young people, and making sure they have a good experience, that's so wonderful. Also, you know, I fell off in my very first riding lesson when I was nine, from a 17hh Warmblood mare. I got back on because I was told to, but that fall hurt my shoulder, it was a shocking thump! I was nervous for quite a number of sessions after that. And I had nobody to tell me that this feeling wasn't me being a wimp, but simple body memory, and a sort of automatic alarm system. We explained that to Scarlett today, and that this is completely normal, and that good experiences cure it - the initial nervousness will lessen each time you have another good experience.

You've probably seen this before, but that's why I translated this story about a German horsewoman who did loads both for horses - by promoting ways they could have more natural and social lives - and new riders - since she designed a course to teach beginners in ways that promoted confidence and avoided tension. I stuck all that here, with photos, and I work very much in that style if I get a visitor who'd like to try out a horse. Make it safe and supported, remember to laugh a lot, etc. 

https://www.horseforum.com/horse-riding/alternative-german-rider-1922-2016-3-a-793527/

Have a cosy Sunday - hope you get some riding time in! :hug:


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> The cranberry chutney looks delicious - what do you eat it with? A cheese board? Turkey? In turkey sandwiches? We get frozen cranberries here, I have a pack in the freezer! Might get creative!
> ...
> Have a cosy Sunday - hope you get some riding time in! :hug:



We had the chutney initially as a side dish with our big holiday dinner. I bet it would go great with a cheese board, though I don't eat much cheese myself. We've subsequently had at with buttermilk biscuits for breakfast, and yes, as a sandwich topper. It's delicious just on its own stolen by the spoonful out of the refrigerator too 

Unfortunately no riding for us today. Temps warmed up but a thick mist drifted in as the warm air collided with all the snow on the ground, and I get a little anxious riding on our country roads when visibility is bad.


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## SueC

You've got such a nice spot for your horses - and for yourselves! It's wonderful that you are able to run your girls in a happy little herd with so much access to the outdoors and each other! 


If you can't ride, maybe you can make a few snowmen.  Or perhaps an igloo. We used to make little igloos as kids, and it was surprisingly warm in them!


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## egrogan

We used to make igloos too, and snow forts under big thick evergreen bushes where the branches were strong enough to support the snow, but keep things perfectly dry and protected underneath. There's a cute snowman outside a house down the street from us. It's all very pretty, but I am still floored that it's not even December yet! We're looking at up to another foot of snow by Tuesday to replace all that melted away today...


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## SueC

*HIP HIP HOORAY: COMPOST TOILETS!**:cheers:*

The current issue of _The Owner Builder_ just came off the press, and what more appetising topic could there possibly be? This is how _we_ do things. Visit if you dare. Have some pumpkin soup! ;-)

Click several times to enlarge to reading size!

I've included the index and editorial this time as well. It's a great magazine - so nice to see people doing different stuff to mass-manufactured life and living.


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## Knave

I don’t think I ever told you, but I think it is so cool that you are a writer. I am always thrilled to see your articles.


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## Knave

My morning sky for you @SueC. The world was pink. It is terribly cold, so I didn’t wander to get a better picture.


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## SueC

Knave said:


> I don’t think I ever told you, but I think it is so cool that you are a writer. I am always thrilled to see your articles.


We're all writers here!  Your journal would make a beautiful glossy book (the bits _you_ write, and the arty photos!)  But thank you. It still feels a bit weird to see your own stuff in the newsagents, even after seven years of doing this. It looks weirdly official when it's on glossy paper in something with a price tag on it.

I've actually got to pull my socks up and expand who I write for / resell articles to international magazines. Good thing Brett is such an effective motivator / information source when it comes to that. By the way, I'm over the moon because he's finally written an article for one of the magazines I do regularly, and had it accepted first up, and it's going to be in the next issue! :loveshower: The editor told me! He underestimates himself; this will hopefully change that. The best thing is that it's a three-parter - so he's got another two parts to write for the two subsequent issues... (and then he'll be hooked bwahahahahaha!)

It's on environmentally friendly, corporation-and-ripoff-avoiding computing - recycling, using freeware, etc etc. I'll post scans of it to this journal when it comes out. Very exciting...


PS: Nice sky! Hope you've got your thermal wear ready... What's the structure in the background with the thing that looks like a floating roof?


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## Knave

They are our hay barns. The roof keeps the hay nice and dry from rain and snow, and there is plastic underneath the hay. Sell hay goes in barns. I will see if I can find some pictures for you.


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## Knave

Bones says they are good for hiding from bad weather, and the girls and I like to use them as backdrops. They are also a nice place to shoe horses.


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## egrogan

:shock:


Woah. THAT is some hay (pristinely) put up! And I was feeling good about my 550 bales earlier this fall :rofl:


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## SueC

Bill is enjoying those photos of your hay and setup, @*Knave* ! 

Now I get it! That sunset photo has a roof over a haystack - no walls at all. You've stacked it so it resists rain at the sides - and perhaps don't get much wind-driven rain in the time you store this hay?

Looks like you do some smallish square bales to sell too as well as the jumbos, and the jumbo tractor-fork pickup bales for feeding out to your own stock!

Ever thought about making a strawbale hut, and lime rendering it? ;-) Grow your own walls...

Those shepherd camps you were talking about elsewhere, they have those in Europe too, called shepherd carts. These varied from small ones pushed like a barrow, to big ones pulled by horses. Apparently I had a distant relative who, when the Nazi madness descended, went to live out in the woods in a shepherd cart, far away from town, with shelves of books inside and a few animals for company. ...I think I have a lot of DNA in common with that unknown distant relative!

@*egrogan* , good thing you got that hay squirrelled away, your horses won't starve if you get snowed in!


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## Knave

You are absolutely right @SueC. Wind driven rain is not a common issue for us any time of year. Whether we make big or small bales depends on the crop. Anything sold for cows is done big and horses small. 

That sounds like the perfect plan your distant relative had! I have been working on the camp fairly consistently.


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## SueC

*SUNSMART IS RUNNING FOR FUN AGAIN!*

I'd been worried about my horse recently, because he took to lying down sleeping a lot more than usual, and he'd stopped running around with Julian and Chasseur when they went racing around in the field and on the forest tracks. As some of you know, around five weeks ago we started Sunsmart on pergolide because a blood test caught early PPID. Three weeks into treatment he started getting unusually sleepy and disinterested in his usual shenanigans, a reported potential side-effect of pergolide, so I talked to the veterinarian and we halved the dose. I also gave the horse a week off, because he was so low-energy.

Well, guess who's racing around again today? It was so good to see Sunsmart thundering through the forest trail behind the house with his friends earlier, when I was gardening. I think this means we can start trail riding again! 


:charge:


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## gottatrot

Yay Sunsmart!


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## knightrider

> At first, our young rider was tense and had the typical body memory reaction of a child who'd had a scary experience the last time she was on the back of a horse - the reaction which says to the owner of the body, "This was dangerous last time, is this a good idea?" Also, Sunsmart was taller than the other horses she'd ridden, and very powerfully built. I remember what it felt like when I was a kid, to sit on a to me mountainous animal! So we diverted Scarlett's attention by telling her about funny things the horse had done. The moment we got around the back of the house to the sand track, Sunsmart made entertainment for everyone as well - as every time I lead him, whether between two gates when riding, or when leading a novice horseperson around the tracks, he wants to play "the stick game"!
> 
> He starts by looking at me and trying to catch my sleeves in his lips. The next part of the ritual is that I find him a stick he can carry, and present it to him. He then gravely accepts the stick and carries it in his teeth, horizontally. Then he looks at me, and I'm supposed to pull on the side of the stick. When I do, we have a little tug-of-war. Scarlett was laughing by now from her perch on the horse, watching all this going on and hearing the explanation of why we were doing it. This really helped blow away that nervousness for her. "Just like a giant puppy! So funny!"
> 
> So she rode the giant puppy stick-game off-track racehorse down the sand track with us, really beginning to beam and enjoy the experience. We walked the sand track - swamp track loop, with occasional halts to enjoy scenic views. "I'm not scared anymore, this is fun!" said our young rider, and we two ostlers / footmen beamed at her and each other.
> 
> When we got back to the tie rail, I asked, "Do you know how to get off?" and she did a lovely dismount all by herself. She got to feed the horse his bucket feed after the ride, and then all of us dashed in for chocolate tart. Scarlett helped me arrange the pear slices on top of the tart, and the five of us had a merry chocolatey afternoon teatime, chatting about Dr Who and all sorts of things. Bill was talking about horses and the district and asking Scarlett if she would ride again. I said that since she and her aunt had excellent manners and were great company, they were welcome to come visit anytime, and we would repeat the riding.
> 
> On their way out today, we took carrots, and visited the rest of the equine herd. Scarlett found herself surrounded by five donkeys, feeding them a carrot each and exclaiming at their long ears and faces etc. She said, "Oh, I've just discovered I love donkeys!" and leapt about. She was a great hit with them too - they love people, and especially young people oozing enthusiasm. She found out where they like to be scratched, and learnt all their names. Chasseur, who's a super-cuddly horse, came up too, and I showed Scarlett what he does when you scratch the underside of his neck - cranes his head high up into the sky, closes his eyes blissfully, wiggles his lips - that made her laugh, and soon she was scratching him just the way he liked it! It was very hard for her to tear herself away from the super-friendly chestnut horse and the five long-ears, and I said, "Before today, you didn't know any of this existed. Now you do - and you can come back anytime!" She gave me a big hug before she got in the car, as did her aunt, and then they drove off playing the Wonky Donkey song on the car stereo.


I really loved this story. It is the sort of thing that just makes my day/week/month when it happens to me. I am so happy for you.


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## SueC

@*knightrider* , it was a great Sunday, and Scarlett can come back anytime to ride again! Logistically, of course, she will need a lift from family and we're half an hour out of town, but I think we'll see them again before too long. It's great fun to be able to create situations like that where people have safe fun with horses (and donkeys onkey, and grow in confidence. I really enjoy introducing people to horseriding basics; intermittently, the universe sends me people! ;-)

How's the weather going in Florida? I don't imagine you'd ever get snow? Does it drop down to freezing at all? ...we need more photos from you!  You've sort of stopped your journal (or should I say, Isabeau stopped typing), and we don't know what you're up to! Except vaguely, like that you ride every morning... Do you know what I need? I need some Chorro stories. Isabeau just called him an old buffalo. Maybe Chorro needs to do a typing course? Alternatively, his rider could write... inkunicorn:


*EVENING RIDE WITH STEAM TRAIN GALLOP* :racing:

Following my earlier post on Sunsmart racing around with the others again today, I took him for a spin on our farm tracks this afternoon - the full double loops, in boots, as the outer loop is mostly rocky ridges (the inner loop is in the valley floor). Startup shenanigans for riding as usual - the dog was doing cartwheels indoors when she saw me in my riding pants - I've never before had a dog who knows which clothes mean riding, which mean gardening, which mean cycling, and which mean a town visit. When we left through the front door, she immediately went to look for Sunsmart. Kelpies are unbelievably bright...

There was much tail-wagging as I tended to the horse at the tie rail, but the moment I picked up the bridle to put on the horse, Jess started barking frantically. It's always, always when she sees me pick up the bridle. She then dashes backwards and forwards the whole time I'm putting the saddle on. When Nellie and Benjamin heard the dog barking, they came running to watch the spectacle. Nellie was sniffing Sunsmart's tail at length while I was adjusting gear.

Donkeys are such amusing critters. They stand right up against you to see what you are doing. Also they get very close to the horse, and horses who've known donkeys a while seem to tolerate them invading their space far better than if another horse did it. They're always interested in the horse's tail, and in bits of gear you're putting on them, and in the underside of their hooves if you're trimming - they'll put their noses right on the hooves if you are between tools, and give a good sniff-around. It's so funny!

And as usual, when I got on Sunsmart, the dog was barking frantically, Nellie and Benjamin followed us, and Julian had turned up to do the same. We had three hangers-on right up to the forest corner, up the first hill; then Julian decided he was doubling back on another trail, and Benjamin ran after him throwing his hindquarters up in the air and buck-kicking just for the fun of it.

Sunsmart was saying, "Let's trot!" - a good sign indeed. On the southern boundary, he walked down the steep hill, then ignited into a lively canter, and after we'd crossed the valley floor, he raced the dog up the next hill. On the eastern boundary, he showed much interest in the various bits of inactive machinery in the neighbour's gravel pit. We came out at the meadow, bush-bashed until we came out at the swamp track - and when he saw that open sandy trail before him, and the dog racing off, he said, "Let's go!" and thundered after the dog with a steam-train gallop - all the way to the end of the track. Back at the southern boundary, he deigned to slow to a canter, and then he cannonballed again as we turned into the sand track heading home. Halfway down the track, we went back to trotting and cantering; then a relaxed walk home. He looked very pleased with himself when I got off him, and was happy as a lark when I fussed around him taking gear off, brushing and towelling him, etc.

Well! He's not been this lively since he started his PPID treatment. It's good to see him back to normal energy levels.  His birthday is on Saturday. He'll be 22. This means he has now spent half his life as a riding horse. I don't know where the time goes, but we've had a lot of fun together the last 11 years. I did his preliminary saddle training with him when he'd just turned 11; when he was 12 I brought him down to Albany for intensive fitness and exposure-to-the-world training on trails, as well as arena work; and he moved to our farm when he was nearly 14. We've had this place for over eight years now... When you're a child, a year goes on forever. When you're an adult, it whizzes by, and then it's Christmas again!


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## lostastirrup

That sounds like a lovely ride. Funny how the dog knows. My dog back home can tell if my mother is on the phone with a particular woman who also has a dog. She gets very excited. Do the donkey's eat the horses' tails? I rode for a lady with two mini donkey's and two horses with no tails


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## knightrider

Isabeau doesn't write anymore because nothing much is happening. She still hates Chorro, of course, although he is delighted when she comes back from rides. I rode Chorro this morning for an hour and a half, but I don't write anything because there is nothing to write about. I've never written much about Chorro because he is just a doll--does everything he is supposed to do and a joy to ride. All my rides are super fun and lovely. All 4 of the horses now ride out solo beautifully, and also ride in groups just fine. All of Isabeau's drama is over. I am so happy about that. Isabeau is my "go to" horse when I take beginners, and she is especially good with fearful folks. She likes taking care of things and does NOT like taking orders from humans, but she has learned to tolerate my requests with good grace.

So sweet of you to ask. Thank you!


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## SueC

Dear @*knightrider* , nothing to write about because Chorro is a gentleman?  Hmmm, what's the scenery like, what are his mannerisms, how does he talk to you, is he a snorty horse when he's talking to you, does he look at the scenery a lot, how do you two negotiate your ride, what does it feel like to ride him - is he like Cloud Nine?  Does he have favourite tracks, does he show preferences at intersections, does he like to curve his neck and play with his bit (or is he bitless), what colour is he in the sun? Do you sing songs when you're riding? Does he curl up his nose and wiggle his lips when you scratch him? Those are all very interesting topics, you know! And that's just the beginning! ;-)


In other news, I harvested the broad beans yesterday; the stalks were spent, so I cut them back; some of the plants are making new stalks, so until the weather gets hot, we should still get a trickle of baby bean pods to steam and eat with butter. We grow the Aquadulce variety, which is dual-purpose: Great baby pods to eat whole which are as good for that as conventional beans, and of course, the big broad bean kernels from the mature pods. After shelling a bucket of beans, I froze a packet of kernels, and made a lime green hummous from the rest; fresh, lightly steamed - just lemon juice, salt, fresh garlic, the broad bean kernels, and a dash of Greek yoghurt to balance the flavour. Some went in a zip-lock bag in the fridge, some went straight onto rye crispbread; and I used a spatula to clean out the blender and ate those bits as well! 

You can see a batch of broad beans behind one of the trellises here - I had two like that this year:


Frog Pond, Poppies, Broad Beans – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

I could use more broad bean kernels to freeze; of course, we were eating baby pods all spring, so that reduces the kernel harvest. I'm just going to have to grow more next season - and find a good position for them. They get wind-burnt easily, and of course, we might as well live in the Roaring Forties with the wind we get here... even with all the windbreaks we've put up, it's a struggle to keep broad beans, citrus and avocados happy here.

Today I am planting potatoes between the cut-off, partly re-sprouting broad beans. By the time the secondary bean shoots finish producing, the potato plants will be a good size and about to really take off. And, I'm netting the rest of the trees, sowing some more seedling trays, and starting an article on building biology, toxic building materials, low-toxicity alternatives, etc. Deadline in ten days. Yesterday I sent off a Huntsman Spider piece for _Grass Roots_. It was partially developed on this journal when @*Zexious* asked me about our wildlife.  I've also got to do a piece on the new donkeys, as GR are very interested in donkey articles. And I think Sunsmart and I will venture out to Halls Road today to see how that creek is going. If it's crossable, we could go up the Really Big Hill and get a wonderful view - plus explore out the back of the nature reserve...

:charge:


PS: Who's growing stuff to eat? I know @*Knave* is, and I think @*egrogan* does, but she's just moved house - if any readers grow edibles, I'd love to know what sorts!


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## JoBlueQuarter

My mom does two good sized gardens each year; every year we have a hard time with it because it's so much, and every fall after harvest she's like "OK, I'm going to cut back next year! That was _waaay _too much!". And then, early each spring, "the bug" hits her, and she's ordering all kinds of new seeds and planning her garden even bigger than the year before... It's like a disease, I'm tellin' ya! :lol:


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## knightrider

> Dear @knightrider , nothing to write about because Chorro is a gentleman? Hmmm, what's the scenery like, what are his mannerisms, how does he talk to you, is he a snorty horse when he's talking to you, does he look at the scenery a lot, how do you two negotiate your ride, what does it feel like to ride him - is he like Cloud Nine? Does he have favourite tracks, does he show preferences at intersections, does he like to curve his neck and play with his bit (or is he bitless), what colour is he in the sun? Do you sing songs when you're riding? Does he curl up his nose and wiggle his lips when you scratch him? Those are all very interesting topics, you know! And that's just the beginning!


I am in North Florida, so we get plenty of frost. We've had frost the last 2 nights, but not tonight. Every once in a while, it gets down to 15 F, -9.44 C. We can't grow oranges very well this far north because oranges love cold weather but no frost. I think Live Oak got snow in 1956, but we've never gotten any snow. There was frost this morning, but it soon warmed up to 65 F, 18.33C.

When I bought Chorro as a yearling, he was super well bred and super beautiful. He was the first and only quality horse with papers that I have ever owned. His sires and dams were world champion Paso Finos. He was listed as temperament 7. I thought I wanted a spunky fizzy horse, and I thought I could train him . . . which I did . . . but it was more challenging than I expected. All my life I have gotten other people's cast-offs and rejects so I have dealt with a lot of problem horses over the years, and I thought I could do it. Turns out I could, but it was interesting. Chorro is so affectionate and friendly and happy and ready to please that we call him a Labrador in a horse suit. He loves to cuddle and interfere with whatever is going on. If you leave a lead rope, halter, hose, or tool in his paddock or pasture, he will play with it and tear it up. He just loves everything and everybody and he thinks personal space is for others, not him. Which is why Isabeau doesn't like him. He either doesn't have a sense of home or doesn't care, but if you get lost on him, he will not take you home. I believe he thinks it is far more fun to see what is around the next bend in the trail. His gaits are lovely and smooth and he lets anybody ride him. He can spook big . . . or he used to . . . not so much any more, but he is full of pep and spunk and loves to go, just like I wanted. In fact, he is everything I ever wanted and I love him SO MUCH!!!!

Isabeau calls him a big buffalo because he is huge for a Paso Fino. His sire and dam were both 14.2, which is slightly big for Pasos, but not unusual, so I expected him to be that size. But he kept growing and growing and GROWING! I say he is like Clifford the Big Red Dog. Do you know why Clifford grew so huge? Because Emily Elizabeth loved him SO MUCH!


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## SueC

@*Hondo* on his journal was showing us a wonderful blues man.







I'm "reprinting" this post I put on his journal, because it's a nice topic - and because I chanced across a wonderful player when looking for interpretations of a particular composition... 

I think it's so clever when people can play a melody and their own backing on the one instrument, all at the same time. In violin playing people do a thing called double stopping (and even triple stopping), where two (or three) strings are bowed simultaneously. On open strings it given you a lovely resonant blend of complementary notes - violins are tuned GDAE (much to the delight of Australian violin teachers, who tell their young students, "Just say G'Dae!" for a handy mnemonic...







). Of course, you can also be playing notes on the simultaneously bowed strings - you have enough fingers, even if some of them might end up in unorthodox positions compared to playing on the one string.

Here's a piece that left me completely gobsmacked when I first heard it in my 20s and understood it was _solo_ violin. You can see a bit of how the player does it, but it's pretty subtle as well and bits of it are very fast. In the intro, he starts playing a simple melody, with an open-string backing from simultaneously played strings. After that, things get a bit more complicated... A one-instrument band...





 
(This guy is great! A lot of the players who specialise in Paganini are amazing technical wizards; on top of that this guy has amazing expressiveness, real _soul_... wow!)

Paganini's Caprices are famous for this level of complexity. They don't always sound pretty (the 20th is one of the nicer ones), but they're always super-challenging. Paganini, born 1782, was the sort of Jimi Hendrix of the violin. There are Paganini competitions all over the world every year, where people try to play the Caprices, because they are technically some of the hardest violin music that can be played. I had a teacher once who was able to do the intro to the 20th. It was fun to watch!

My own most sophisticated double stopping involves some open-string stuff on bits of _Fiddles on Fire_, and more open-string stuff to punctuate _What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor_ (with an occasional double stop with the third finger on two strings














) and other jigs and reels. Now that our house is finished, I'd like to get back into practicing regularly, because it's fun and it's good for the brain connections. Also, Brett really likes it when I practice - even though I'm just a basic player, didn't start till my late 20s - but the instrument really does sound so lovely, helped by the good acoustic qualities of our high-ceilinged, resonant open living area...









Do any of you noodle on anything? @*Knave* is part of a very musical family!


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## Knave

The little girl used to play the violin. She was pretty decent, but that is a difficult instrument! She loves it though. She is pretty talented at whatever instrument she plays. 

I’ve been enjoying my oldest teaching herself piano lately. She has a concert on Sunday where she will sing and also play the trumpet.


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## JoBlueQuarter

Three of my siblings are very musical. Oldest brother plays the piano very impressively, and guitar (though not as much these days), and he used to play violin; also very well. My oldest sis played piano and cello for a while. Now my youngest sis (6 years old) has started taking piano lessons, and she's got some real talent too!! Takes very much after her older brother in her style, and other things. The rest of us all had piano lessons at one time or another and I still play the guitar some, but we're not as much musically inclined.


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## SueC

@*JoBlueQuarter* , you sound like a family with very healthy nutrition!  The main thing I think is to cut back on zucchini... :rofl: We no longer eat them (or anything) to the point of nausea. The freezer is our friend; I just wasn't sure how to do that with zucchini - freeze them whole and they turn to mush. A friend showed me her trick of freezing them grated, in ziplock bags - then they come out all winter for adding to soups or stews, or for making zucchini/potato fritters with sour cream and sweet chilli sauce yum yum! And I love having an excess of blood plums - they make a wonderful concentrated plum sauce with less than 10% added sugar (unlike jam - 50/50 sugar :shock: - and I just freeze steamed peach and nectarine slices instead...). You may know this as Pflaumenmus - utterly delicious on toast and waffles, in pancakes, with muesli or hot on rice pudding... Are you baking anything for Christmas, Jo?








@*knightrider* , thank you for spoiling me with a Chorro story and all those lovely photos, just as I'm finishing my morning cup of tea (horse fed, of course!). Your climate in some ways sounds similar to ours, with the temperatures and the borderline-ness of citrus growing. We had severe frosts the winter before last, down to -8 degC, and it killed off three young avocado trees I'd just planted - there was no frost forecast that night, and behind the house we don't normally get frost, but this was a really hard frost - normally, temperatures don't drop more than a degree or two below freezing here. At $80 per tree, that was expensive, and I've given up trying to grow them, except the old battler of a Hass that's trying to hang on out the back - planted five years ago, didn't grow a new leaf all last growing season, and this spring had come out with a vengeance... Our lemon, about the same age, and the fourth one - all three of its predecessors died from either frosts or high winds - really started to shoot up in all directions a year ago and now seems to be a keeper. We had our first lemon harvest this spring, and the tree is already making a new batch.



Our very young tangelo, orange and mandarin, after looking woeful for a year, have just started actually growing new leaves, if not looking the exact picture of health at this point... Two sad little citrus trees in the first two beds - the second has a poppy as an indicator plant to make sure it's not drying out or drowning or getting deficiencies - and also in the fifth in the distance. In-between, two vigorous jostaberries that replaced two dead young avocados... and hidden in the plastic, the avocado before it started growing actual new leaves...





I don't think we'd have as much humidity as you get in Florida in summer - although it does get shocking when there's a trough that brings down the tropical air to us. And I'm not sure you'd get our frequent high winds...



Chorro is just gorgeous, and about the same calibre as Sunsmart - a strong, solid, muscular, athletic horse, with a big Spanish parade horse neck! He looks like he has the same high opinion of food as my horse! :rofl: All that exercise and still not race weight! (A bigger issue for actual racehorses...) Never mind, both our boys at least look healthy and fit. I've never been able to get Sunsmart thinner than Chorro is in his photos - and as a young horse, when he was prepared to race, he was worked around a sand track for many miles a day like a chariot horse, and locked into a dry lot, and still didn't ever get to the point where you could see his ribs! He's just very efficient with his food, and very fond of it. He eats very slowly, savouring each bite, licking his feed bucket perfectly clean every night - not a bit of chaff or a grain of oats left in it. Of course, the big solid muscles on our horses make them look extra solid compared to less muscular, more finely built "good doers"...

Chorro sounds like a horse called Chip whom I used to ride, in personality - it's such amazing fun to have a horse like that. Chip would never stop playing with garden hoses - he wanted them held up so he could drink from them, and he'd do various different things other than drink, like gargle his mouth, and blow bubbles, and swirl his tongue noisily in the water, all the time seeing what sort of reaction he was getting from us, and if we laughed he'd immediately up the ante. He also liked to hold the hose and direct the flow elsewhere. He was into everything and anything. Sunsmart was quite a grump when I first started working with him, but most of that I think was that he was bored and socially isolated, because he's not like that now, and he quite enjoys games and ear scratches and even cuddles :shock: these days - when I first got him, he was all "Work with me please because I like exercise and diversion, but no pleasantries thank you - I'm ticklish, don't touch me - plus I'm my own person, so don't touch me, it's taking liberties, I'll eat you if you do! Yeah, I'm happy to have a carrot, and some food after work - and you can go now!" :rofl:

The change to free ranging and living in a herd and making his own decisions has really made him happy. One of the reasons I think that he's warmed to me and exchanges pleasantries with me all the time now is that he can say no to me about personal stuff like grooming - I ask him what he likes; am careful not to use hard brushes over his flanks and to concentrate on the places where he enjoys the attention, like the neck and shoulders and hindquarters, while doing the bare minimum on his ticklish zones.

I actually think it's rude and disrespectful not to take a horse's preferences about their own bodies seriously. Some people act like a horse should put up with whatever a human wants to do with it, its personal space, its body, its mind - well, I disagree. And I think that's why such people have trouble with spirited horses who are serious about their own personal boundaries. Bullying doesn't work with horses like that - negotiation does. And less assertive horses appreciate negotiation too - they just don't put up much of a fight when people walk all over them. I think people are actually breeding extra-compliant horses that are psychological doormats, sort of like the ISA Brown chicken was developed to put up with spending its life in a small cage never feeling soil under its feet or feeling the sun or being able to roam, without getting a nervous breakdown over it. But I don't think that's ethical - I think humans are monsters, when it comes to what many of them think animals should put up with. And I'm not a vegetarian, I eat animals as well - but it's important to me that food animals too get to have fairly natural lives with social groups and room to roam and a bit of dignity - just like companion animals. Quality of life is such an important thing for all critters - and death is non-negotiable for all of us - some sooner than others.

Exactly how tall is Chorro? He looks over 15hh, but hard to tell without a scale! Does "Chorro" mean anything in particular? I think it's so funny that Chorro won't take you home! :rofl: Loved the story. And yeah, I've also only ever had one horse that wasn't someone else's retiree from another sport. That was my Arabian mare. I think it's nice to have one of those, mostly on principle and because you can do all the training and work with them from the very beginning when you get them as yearlings, as we both did - but I don't enjoy Sunsmart any less than I enjoyed my mare!  Thanks again for the Chorro post. He looks great and if I had a TARDIS I'd love to guest ride on him! I've never ridden a Paso Fino before - but his personality is what attracts me the most!


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## knightrider

> Exactly how tall is Chorro? He looks over 15hh, but hard to tell without a scale! Does "Chorro" mean anything in particular?


Chorro is 15.1 and Paso Fino people say, "No, he's not a Paso. He's too big." I have no idea why he is so big. I wanted a small horse, but when you buy babies, you get what you get. I got my daughter's filly at 4 months, and her dam was 16 hands. We so hoped that the filly would not grow too much, as my daughter is only 4' 11". We got lucky with that one. She stopped growing at 14.2.

Chorro's name: It took me weeks and weeks to choose a name for him. He was the most beautiful, elegant, stunning horse I had ever owned and he deserved a name worthy of him. It had to be a Spanish name because Pasos almost always have Spanish names, and I speak Spanish and love all things Hispanic (including my beautiful daughter, who is El Salvadoran). But Americans had to be able to pronounce it, so something cool like Tornado (pronounced Tor- naa-tho in Espanol) would not work. And it had to be super noble, something really really special. I combed the Spanish dictionary looking for just the right word and finally came up with Chorro, which means "burst" or "jet". I was thinking "jet black" in English, which translates, loosely, in Spanish Chorro Oscuro, which is what I named him.

So, I was getting some riding boots repaired, and the Mexican fellow who was fixing them asked me if I rode, and I said yes, and he asked me about my horse, and when I told him my horse's name was Chorro, he started sniggering and pursing his mouth. I said, "What? What!" And he told me that in Mexico, Chorro means "fart." Oh My Gosh. Happily it does not mean "fart" in Colombia or Puerto Rico where Pasos come from. But I hate that his name means something crude and ugly. But it is easy and fun to say, and Chorro Oscuro does sound elegant if you are not from Mexico. Oh well.

And hurry up and invent your tardis and come over here. We Floridians will treat you to some awesome trail riding!


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## JoBlueQuarter

SueC said:


> @*JoBlueQuarter* , you sound like a family with very healthy nutrition!  The main thing I think is to cut back on zucchini... :rofl: We no longer eat them (or anything) to the point of nausea. The freezer is our friend; I just wasn't sure how to do that with zucchini - freeze them whole and they turn to mush. A friend showed me her trick of freezing them grated, in ziplock bags - then they come out all winter for adding to soups or stews, or for making zucchini/potato fritters with sour cream and sweet chilli sauce yum yum! And I love having an excess of blood plums - they make a wonderful concentrated plum sauce with less than 10% added sugar (unlike jam - 50/50 sugar :shock: - and I just freeze steamed peach and nectarine slices instead...). You may know this as Pflaumenmus - utterly delicious on toast and waffles, in pancakes, with muesli or hot on rice pudding... Are you baking anything for Christmas, Jo?


Heh, most of the produce actually gets sold, lol. Ooooo, yeah, definitely cut back on the zucchini... or, like, quit growing it all together! :lol: Mmm, that plum sauce sounds good! Honestly, we don't do Christmas (odd one out again ;-) :lol. We do celebrate Chanukah though which means "latkes" (potato pancakes) and lots of doughnuts, and other good stuff. That actually starts this coming Sunday; my oldest sis is going to be back here for a couple days next week as well (she lives in MB).


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## SueC

@*JoBlueQuarter* , I don't really do Christmas either, not in terms of getting together with people out of duty rather than affection, nor in the commercial terms. My husband and I have quiet time with each other, just relax and kick back, and have a sort of private retreat!  Brett is more into Christmas as a thing than I am, since his family of origin was less obviously dysfunctional than mine, and they were able to have a semblance of peace and harmony and festivity over Christmas. 

We're planning to plaster our unfinished attic over Christmas this year, and we'll put up our Aussie Christmas tree again - a pot-grown Albany Woollybush that we decorate.




























And this is a West Australian "Christmas Tree" - it flowers spectacularly around Christmas, therefore its name - growing at our place:










As far as religious significance, Christmas was put on to replace Saturnalia in the Roman social calendar, and is sort of like a Queen's Birthday for Jesus. We're both agnostic - but both very literate in theological stuff, and both appreciative of people like Jesus, and Buddha, and Rumi, and other great thinkers / ethicists, and we have tons of fun over Ecclesiastes, and also Ben Sirach - do you know that book? It's included in the Catholic Bible, along with other interesting books the Protestants deleted - I'm not sure how well known it is amongst Jewish people, but it's basically someone (author or narrator, not clear) writing down the things their grandfather used to say. Apparently the Ethiopian Bible has the most books of them all! We also have the "Other Bible" - the Gnostics, Nag Hammadi library, etc - which were things that didn't make the official cut, but are still really interesting to read - I love _The Thunder, Perfect Mind_, for example.

I've never been to a Jewish celebration - do you have lovely candelabras like they do in the movies? I love doughnuts, and potato cakes, and candlelit get-togethers, and would be angling for an invitation if I had a TARDIS!  There's a super-cool rabbi I listen to sometimes on my iPod, called Rabbi Ted Falcon - he's part of the Three Interfaith Amigos, who are a fabulous bunch: One Jewish, one Christian, one Muslim, and all friends and promoting peace and goodwill.

Home

He has an amazing sense of humour, and a lot of depth! You have a very interesting spiritual tradition, I think! Of course, I didn't have to grow up in it! ;-)




@*knightrider* , that's a pity about it meaning something rude in one part of the world, but nobody where you live has to know! ;-) Really funny though is that there is a popular 4WD in Australia called a Nissan _Pajero_, and pajero means _wanker_ in colloquial Spanish. I try to think of that if one of those pulls out in front of me and I have to slam my brakes on! :rofl: If I had a TARDIS, I'd totally be there - and offer you afternoon tea and a nice ride here as well, right now!  Sometimes we have to remember that the thought does count for something too! :loveshower:


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## JoBlueQuarter

SueC said:


> @*JoBlueQuarter* , I don't really do Christmas either, not in terms of getting together with people out of duty rather than affection, nor in the commercial terms. My husband and I have quiet time with each other, just relax and kick back, and have a sort of private retreat!  Brett is more into Christmas as a thing than I am, since his family of origin was less obviously dysfunctional than mine, and they were able to have a semblance of peace and harmony and festivity over Christmas.


That's nice. I think Christmas is absolutely awesome in that it can bring people together the way it often does, even though I _might _not be agreeing with the background/origin ;-)



> We're planning to plaster our unfinished attic over Christmas this year, and we'll put up our Aussie Christmas tree again - a pot-grown Albany Woollybush that we decorate.
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Wow, your's is the most beautiful Christmas tree I've seen 



> As far as religious significance, Christmas was put on to replace Saturnalia in the Roman social calendar, and is sort of like a Queen's Birthday for Jesus. We're both agnostic - but both very literate in theological stuff, and both appreciative of people like Jesus, and Buddha, and Rumi, and other great thinkers / ethicists, and we have tons of fun over Ecclesiastes, and also Ben Sirach - do you know that book? It's included in the Catholic Bible, along with other interesting books the Protestants deleted - I'm not sure how well known it is amongst Jewish people, but it's basically someone (author or narrator, not clear) writing down the things their grandfather used to say. Apparently the Ethiopian Bible has the most books of them all! We also have the "Other Bible" - the Gnostics, Nag Hammadi library, etc - which were things that didn't make the official cut, but are still really interesting to read - I love _The Thunder, Perfect Mind_, for example.
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> I've never been to a Jewish celebration - do you have lovely candelabras like they do in the movies?


Yep, we have a couple more like this one:








And a couple homemade/wooden ones. Those you always have to watch; make sure the whole menorah doesn't light on fire! lol



> I love doughnuts, and potato cakes, and candlelit get-togethers, and would be angling for an invitation if I had a TARDIS!  There's a super-cool rabbi I listen to sometimes on my iPod, called Rabbi Ted Falcon - he's part of the Three Interfaith Amigos, who are a fabulous bunch: One Jewish, one Christian, one Muslim, and all friends and promoting peace and goodwill.
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> Home
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> He has an amazing sense of humour, and a lot of depth! You have a very interesting spiritual tradition, I think! Of course, I didn't have to grow up in it! ;-)


I checked them out; I really love the whole idea of their group. Sounds a little cliché, but we need more people like that these days!
When you said "One Jewish, one Christian, one Muslim", it reminded me of a story my brother once told us. He was going to the bar with two of his friends from Uni to hang out, and then one of them laughed and said he had the beginning of a new joke: "A Christian, a Jew, and a Mormon go to the bar together"; they hadn't figured out the rest, yet, lol

And like @knightrider said, hurry up and get that TARDIS built!  You're _always _invited, Sue! :tardis:


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## SueC

JoBlueQuarter said:


> That's nice. I think Christmas is absolutely awesome in that it can bring people together the way it often does, even though I _might _not be agreeing with the background/origin


I'm interested in a whole bunch of different cultural celebrations and traditions. In Japan they have one day a year where they think about things they want to let go of, personally, and write it on paper and float that down the river on a little paper boat. I think that's a wonderful idea.

In Italy, where I spent a lot of time as a young child, there was a pre-Lenten feast called Carnevale where the whole town would get together in the town square, dressed in outrageous costumes, and people were busy baking Chiacchiere in the streets - little twist pastries that helped use up all the eggs before the Lenten fasting, that were handed out for free, with extra helpings for children, who are showered with public affection in Italy - volunteers did the cooking, and I think the council paid for the ingredients.



















The smell was amazing, and the crunch and taste of these was divine - especially as I'm remembering these from childhood, when these things taste extra amazing!  There would be people busking, groups of people doing traditional dances in traditional dress that would teach other people and let them join in, people doing street theatre, circus tricks, just general bonhomie and mayhem. Italy has a great public culture, far more extroverted and warm and demonstrative than central European and Anglo cultures, and far more community-orientated and social, and I feel my small fraction of Italian DNA very enormously! 

There's various places in the world, including Alpine areas in Europe and hilly districts in the UK, where they have downhill cheese rolling contests:






That one is pretty spectacular, but I prefer the ones where there are multiple, enormous cheese wheels like a Parmegiano-Reggiano, with one attendant / steering person each, having a race. :rofl:

I believe there's haggis-hurling in Scotland - @*Caledonian* , have you witnessed this?

I've just branched out into fun things on that list, but a lot of the serious things are also really thought-provoking. I hear that Jewish people have a special day / season (?) all about repentance, which is about making actual reparation with people we may have harmed - now that to me is a far more useful kind of repentance than saying three Hail Marys and being "forgiven" - as if your own soul is worthy of greater concern than the person you have wronged. As if you can harm someone and come away scot-free and snow-white, and the person you have harmed has to live with what you've done to them, while you can feel good about yourself. I'm not knocking Catholicism, just raising my eyebrows at this part of it, which has enabled much harm across people's personal lives to go unaddressed, for both perpetrator and survivor. There's also a lot of beautiful stuff in Catholicism - it's like any tradition, and any person really - nothing and noone is perfect; but if we encourage and cultivate the good in people and traditions, that's a great start I think...

I think we'd all be so much richer if we could appreciate each other's traditions - the good aspects of them!











> Yep, we have a couple more like this one:
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Does that mean you have to have a fire extinguisher on standby as part of the celebrations?

When Brett turned 44 last year, I made him a cake with 44 birthday candles on it - but that was OK, we're both trained volunteer firefighters, and there were a couple more similarly qualified in attendance!


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## SueC

_(had to chop this in two - excessive emoji use again...sigh...)_




That was a chocolate cherry tart. I like any excuse to cook, which is why I'm asking everyone about their Christmas baking!











> ...it reminded me of a story my brother once told us. He was going to the bar with two of his friends from Uni to hang out, and then one of them laughed and said he had the beginning of a new joke: "A Christian, a Jew, and a Mormon go to the bar together"; they hadn't figured out the rest, yet, lol


The ones I like the best were Dave Allen's religious jokes.

One went like this: Someone arrives at the Pearly Gates and gets a tour. Heaven is lovely, with many amazing places and landscapes. And suddenly they come upon this wall, and the sound of laughter is coming from behind that wall. The new arrival says, "What's this?" and St Peter goes, "Shhhh! That's the (Catholics / Jehovah's Witnesses / Baptists / general Christians / Muslims / insert any suitably "we have it right, you don't" overtones religion) - they like to think they are alone up here!"

Also another one along the same lines - pick two religions of your choice - Dave Allen traditionally chose Catholics and Protestants, because he was Irish - so two representatives of those different religions get talking at the bar, and after many hours of discourse and getting progressively sloshed, one - and it doesn't matter which one - says to the other, "Very good, brother! (hic!) I'm glad we've sorted this out, and now we can go, and you can teach religion your way, and I'll teach it _His_ way!"











> And like @*knightrider* said, hurry up and get that TARDIS built!
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 Awwwww. Thank you...

















:tardis:

















And so are you, dear @*JoBlueQuarter* , and everyone in our lovely little journalling community! The TARDIS is a bit of a sticking point at the moment technically - if not metaphorically!







But if any of us ever get to travel abroad, there will be fabulous willing hosts all around!











With horses even!







With whose characteristics we will already have some familiarity!


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## Zexious

I love, love, love that photo of the chocolate cherry tart! Not only does that sound absolutely divine, but I can practically feel the warmth radiating from the image. 
Honestly, I'm not much in the way of a baker or a chef, but I'm incredibly envious of those who are! Boyfriend is quite skilled. Me? I just make a mess.

I haven't had the opportunity to experience some of my favorite holiday traditions in person (so I can't necessarily speak to their validity), but I think they're fun to share none the less.
In Japan, people celebrate Christmas with KFC! Millions of people place their orders weeks in advance, and December is one of the busiest times of the year for the company in that particular country. 
My other favorite Christmas tradition is the Mari Lwyd, which is basically a horse skull mounted on a pole, and carried by someone beneath a cloth. They're typically decorated with ribbons, bows, lights, etc and have Christmas baubles for eyes. A group of men accompany the Mari Lwyd to doorsteps, where the group sing songs to request entry. Traditionally they are denied (also in the form of song). The Mari Lwyd and the home owners then sing back and forth, until ultimately the home owners relent and the group is welcomed in for food and drink.
Pretty cool, right??










The only 'tradition' that I have is one with Boyfriend. In addition to normal gifts (I can appreciate those who choose to bow out of the capitalistic nature of the holiday, but I'm a sucker for gift giving), we curate a little box for one another to be given on Christmas Eve. Each box contains a film to watch that evening, treats to eat, and a new set of pajamas to cuddle up in for the night. It's something I look forward to every year.
We've tried to include others in our little tradition, but somehow it's always more fun when it's just the two of us.


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## Caledonian

@*SueC* - I love seeing your garden. It reminds me that someone's got the heat and sun and their garden isn't as dead looking as mine.:smile:

As for haggis flinging? Ha! No, I’ve never seen it. I don’t think it’s that wide spread and it’s pretty new as a sport; I think it may be aimed at tourists and Scots abroad.

I haven’t done Christmas since I was very young. I think my parents did it for my benefit and let it fade away as I grew-up. My relatives weren’t that into it either and, although we’d meet-up for a few hours, it wasn’t a massive celebration. 

In Scotland the Kirk banned Christmas for 400 years, from the 1500s until it was officially restored in 1958. Well, in theory they banned it but many people still celebrated in different ways and it affected how we do it today. 

Originally, we acknowledged the winter solstice in Neolithic buildings using the light of the Sun and it evolved into Yule, which was a twelve-day festival to celebrate the return of the Sun. Then Christianity arrived and it took over the celebration, even though much of the Pagan religion survived under the new name. It was worshiping superstitions such as the Sun and a change in religious thinking that regarded ‘extravagant festivals’ as being part of a different Church, that brought about the ban. Until then, people seemed to have been doing a mix of both under the banner of Christianity. 

Everything had to be hidden, done quietly and privately or on a different date, such as Hogmanay. Even bakers were made to report the names of anyone who requested a traditional Yule bread. It was the Victorians who made it fashionable to celebrate openly, as the royal family seemed to be very keen on the festival. 

We’ve had 61 Christmas Holidays in the last 368 years! Due to this, most of our celebrations including present giving was around Hogmanay. The old religion still survives though. Our Fire Festivals are at the end of the year; we make small mince pies with fruits and spices; large spiced puddings called Clootie Dumplings; most people have Yule logs, either to eat or burn; my neighbours keep their lights and trees up for twelve days; and, one of them bakes Yule bread and hangs out her wreaths.


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## SueC

lostastirrup said:


> That sounds like a lovely ride. Funny how the dog knows. My dog back home can tell if my mother is on the phone with a particular woman who also has a dog. She gets very excited. Do the donkey's eat the horses' tails? I rode for a lady with two mini donkey's and two horses with no tails



No, none of our donkeys have ever shown any interest in eating the horses' tails, they just want to sniff and have a good look. Maybe it's tail envy! ;-)


Ha! That's so funny about your dog! :rofl: Will you post a photo? Does the dog ever ride with you?


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## SueC

@*Zexious* , how's it going? :wave: Your innocent question about Australian spiders a while back is going to result in poor unsuspecting Australian magazine readers hearing all the hairy stories I told you, and then some! Bwahahahaha! One of the team said to me, "OMG! I printed the manuscript out and put it on Megg's (main editor's) desk! I hate spiders!" 

You might be interested in a few more things I dug up for the article... 


Miturgidae Prowling by Jean and Fred, on Flickr

"The speed of various Australian Huntsman spiders was recently measured, and found to range from an impressive 40+ body lengths per second for a species from Queensland, to a respectable 15 body lengths per second for the slowest species tested. Many of them can also jump very well. No wonder people feel their hearts in their throats when one of these big spiders suddenly appears at top speed."​ 

"Spiders, like sharks, are far more frequently harmed, and even eaten, by humans, than the other way around. There have been no confirmed deaths from spider bites in Australia since 1979. Also, few of us personally know anyone who has been attacked by a shark, but virtually all of us have eaten shark in the form of fish and chips. Spiders were firmly on the edibles list of nomadic hunter-gatherers throughout the world, and in South America and Cambodia, deep-fried tarantulas are still eaten as a delicacy. And why not, considering that spiders are closely related to lobsters, and few Westerners would think twice about tucking into those. Deep-fried tarantula fans describe these beasties as wonderfully crunchy on the outside and delightfully chewy on the inside; a texture contrast us ordinary folk enjoy in potato croquettes or falafels.​ ​ While researching this topic, I came upon a delightful story from the 18th Century. French astronomer de Lalande used to visit the naturalist d'Isjonville each Saturday, and there, to eat such spiders and caterpillars as he could find in the garden. Eager to be a good host, Madame d'Isjonville began to collect them beforehand so she could serve them to him on his arrival. Monsieur de Lalande, like many other spider-eating enthusiasts, reported that spiders taste of hazelnuts."​ 
If you hadn't asked... ​ 
That 18th Century story came from an old zoology encyclopaedia. Doesn't that little snippet just make you want to write a novel based on de Lalande and the d'Isjonvilles? Madame d'Isjonville especially seems like a really fun character! :Angel:

It's good to hear your BF is still keeping up that cooking standard. Now surely you can make some culinary things? Making a mess is part of the process!

I recently heard the one about KFC and Japanese Christmas - isn't that funny! The Japanese are such a quirky lot. 

Is the Mari Lwyd a Welsh tradition? And are cow substitute skulls allowed? Because someone has been cheating, otherwise! Perhaps cow skulls are allowed if they were riding cows? Like these?





































Aaaah! Traditions! Good old Bavarian ox-racing! 

That Mari Lwyd thing sounds very sociable. I'm going to look up more about that, thank you for bringing it to my attention! 

Your Christmas tradition sounds grand! Love the idea of that curated box. Especially the new pyjamas - very hygge! Although if you include others in that tradition, you'll have to tell them to cuddle up elsewhere!  Unless you're having a pyjama party...

Nice to hear from you, and a Hygge Christmas to you! inkunicorn::blueunicorn:

@*Caledonian* , I always learn interesting things from you! :loveshower: 

I had no idea the Kirk banned Christmas, let alone for nearly half a millennium! Isn't it sad how people in power are always trying to impose their value systems on the grassroots people? One of the things I think that made people value their Celtic culture even more, either side of the Irish sea. I like the ancient Celtic traditions; they honour nature and the landscape, which is not characteristic of most major world religions...

It's interesting to see the parallels between Irish and Scottish history. Have you heard this particular song? Do the Scots have code songs too? If so, please post one!


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## Zexious

Spidersssss :')
Really lovey excerpt! I enjoyed reading it. 
I do wish that people were a little more understanding of our less than fluffy (though, in some cases reasonably fuzzy...) friends. I have become way more tolerant of creepy-crawlies over the years--not in the sense that I don't still scream when I see one (lawl), but in the sense that I don't just smush them immediately. Now I try to wrangle them outside. 
In fact, we recently had a little lizard find its way into our condo! They're extremely poorly insulated (which is kind of a joke, because they're touted as "luxury" condos for the area, but I digress), so I really wasn't that surprised. I was able to guide him outside, but my later Googlings told me he would have been happy to hang out. I was pretty bummed, as I would have loved to have kept him.

It is, indeed, a Welsh tradition! I've never seen a bovine skull, but I don't see why one couldn't be included.
I think riding cows is pretty much the coolest thing ever. Just look at the conviction on the faces of their riders! I love it! (In the second to last photo it appears one cow has lost its rider? Or has maybe decided to participate as a solo entry? Haha!)
I want to say that cows are some of my favorite animals, but pretty much all animals are "some of my favorite animals". Haaa ugh.

Sending Hygge Christmas wishes to you as well! 
How's the herd? c:


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## JoBlueQuarter

SueC said:


> I'm interested in a whole bunch of different cultural celebrations and traditions. In Japan they have one day a year where they think about things they want to let go of, personally, and write it on paper and float that down the river on a little paper boat. I think that's a wonderful idea.


That's a really cool idea!



> In Italy, where I spent a lot of time as a young child, there was a pre-Lenten feast called Carnevale where the whole town would get together in the town square, dressed in outrageous costumes, and people were busy baking Chiacchiere in the streets - little twist pastries that helped use up all the eggs before the Lenten fasting, that were handed out for free, with extra helpings for children, who are showered with public affection in Italy - volunteers did the cooking, and I think the council paid for the ingredients.
> 
> 
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> 
> The smell was amazing, and the crunch and taste of these was divine - especially as I'm remembering these from childhood, when these things taste extra amazing!  There would be people busking, groups of people doing traditional dances in traditional dress that would teach other people and let them join in, people doing street theatre, circus tricks, just general bonhomie and mayhem. Italy has a great public culture, far more extroverted and warm and demonstrative than central European and Anglo cultures, and far more community-orientated and social, and I feel my small fraction of Italian DNA very enormously!


Those look SOOOO good!



> There's various places in the world, including Alpine areas in Europe and hilly districts in the UK, where they have downhill cheese rolling contests:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEh3wz-92i4
> 
> That one is pretty spectacular, but I prefer the ones where there are multiple, enormous cheese wheels like a Parmegiano-Reggiano, with one attendant / steering person each, having a race. :rofl:


Loved the video! Would be fun to participate in one of those contests 



> I believe there's haggis-hurling in Scotland - @*Caledonian* , have you witnessed this?
> 
> I've just branched out into fun things on that list, but a lot of the serious things are also really thought-provoking. I hear that Jewish people have a special day / season (?) all about repentance, which is about making actual reparation with people we may have harmed - now that to me is a far more useful kind of repentance than saying three Hail Marys and being "forgiven" - as if your own soul is worthy of greater concern than the person you have wronged. As if you can harm someone and come away scot-free and snow-white, and the person you have harmed has to live with what you've done to them, while you can feel good about yourself. I'm not knocking Catholicism, just raising my eyebrows at this part of it, which has enabled much harm across people's personal lives to go unaddressed, for both perpetrator and survivor. There's also a lot of beautiful stuff in Catholicism - it's like any tradition, and any person really - nothing and noone is perfect; but if we encourage and cultivate the good in people and traditions, that's a great start I think...
> 
> I think we'd all be so much richer if we could appreciate each other's traditions - the good aspects of them!


Yes, it's called Yom Kippur - Day of Repentance. It's a full day (beginning at sundown the day before and ending at nightfall) of fasting, prayers, and asking forgiveness of people you've wronged. The fast is mandatory for all healthy guys over 13 and girls over 12 (if someone's sick, they're not required to keep the full fast).
You can read more about it here, if you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur



> Does that mean you have to have a fire extinguisher on standby as part of the celebrations?
> 
> When Brett turned 44 last year, I made him a cake with 44 birthday candles on it - but that was OK, we're both trained volunteer firefighters, and there were a couple more similarly qualified in attendance!


:rofl: Love the pictures! Like @Zexious said, you can feel the warmth radiating from the image


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## SueC

Zexious said:


> Spidersssss :')
> Really lovey excerpt! I enjoyed reading it.


Good Saturday evening to you from our Sunday morning here, Ms Zexious! You know, I had to laugh several times when reading your post - the way you use language is very naughty and very skilled. :rofl:



> I do wish that people were a little more understanding of our less than fluffy (though, in some cases reasonably fuzzy...) friends. I have become way more tolerant of creepy-crawlies over the years--not in the sense that I don't still scream when I see one (lawl), but in the sense that I don't just smush them immediately. Now I try to wrangle them outside.


Yes, it's one of the curses of conservation biology that everyone wants to stop cute bug-eyed furry mammal species from going extinct, but bats? Reptiles? Spiders? Bushes, in fact? And indeed, mammals with long noses too - anything not perceived as "cute" (which translates to resembling the human infant and triggering our nurturing responses - big eyes, round face, huge forehead, compact body, cuddly-looking) - is hard to get the public enthusiastic about. I don't know why myself, I love bats etc - I think they're gorgeous, but my gorgeous must be set differently from the general public's.

How do you like our Australia tube-nosed bat type?










Of course, I don't have to go "Aaaaw, cute!" or even "Isn't that intricate/fascinating/etc" to want to conserve a species. We should use our brains for that question, not just our nurturing instincts!  Totally with you there!



> In fact, we recently had a little lizard find its way into our condo! They're extremely poorly insulated (which is kind of a joke, because they're touted as "luxury" condos for the area, but I digress), so I really wasn't that surprised. I was able to guide him outside, but my later Googlings told me he would have been happy to hang out. I was pretty bummed, as I would have loved to have kept him.


:dance-smiley05: Your narration! Such fun reading! ...you'll know for next time. These critters are actually great at hunting various insects that hang out around a house, and pill-bugs too! We have huge amounts of earwigs on our farm. They love hanging out in the timber window frames, under logs, anywhere. My husband cut up a fallen acacia yesterday that we'd let dry for a few months for firewood, and he said to me, "Earwigs tumbling out as I was cutting. Hiding under the bark, in little cavities etc." We have an earwig farm... Maybe I need to recruit a few dozen geckos to patrol our window frames...

Yes, building standards, and then also actuality on top of strange standards... The more I see of Western society, the more appalled I am at how money seems to be the major factor of decisions that ought to be made with ethics and community and environment and social justice in mind... Buildings as cash cows... So sad.



> It is, indeed, a Welsh tradition! I've never seen a bovine skull, but I don't see why one couldn't be included.


You posted one. Too many zoology examinations!  No top incisors, very curved lower jawbone, etc.










Compare horse:










Superficially hard to tell apart for most people, when it's a polled (hornless) cow, but now you know what to look for! 



> I think riding cows is pretty much the coolest thing ever. Just look at the conviction on the faces of their riders! I love it! (In the second to last photo it appears one cow has lost its rider? Or has maybe decided to participate as a solo entry? Haha!)


Maybe it's a very _small_ rider... :rofl:

Yeah, those riders look very into it! This would be a fun event to enter!



> I want to say that cows are some of my favorite animals, but pretty much all animals are "some of my favorite animals". Haaa ugh.


I have the same affliction / blessing! 



> Sending Hygge Christmas wishes to you as well!
> How's the herd? c:


They're good! The universe sent us another two donkeys recently. You'll like this film of all the donkeys running the day the new ones arrived - it's sort of like teddy bears cantering....






 
Jess is barking disgustedly in the background because we tied her up so she wouldn't interfere with the donkeys doing their thing.









The new-donkeys story started here, with an unexpected phone call:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...s-other-people-479466/page110/#post1970618753

You can follow the story along through the next few pages following that and get more photos and film - just take a good baseball bat with you so you can bat away all the intervening posts on music, bushfires, ruminations on society, blooper photos etc etc etc. If you're firm, you can stick to the donkeys! ;-)


@*JoBlueQuarter* , those Italian pastries are quite easy and there are lots of recipes online - maybe you can have them as an extra for Chanukah - make them when you make those doughnuts... Thank you for the Yom Kippur link, I will peruse and reflect! 

I think the best thing about those cheese-rolling contests would be eating the cheese, after all that exercise...


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## JoBlueQuarter

Awww, those three teddy bears actually look a lot like fluffy sheep! :lol:


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## SueC

*JESS THE BALLOONATIC*

Our kelpie Jess is completely mad about playing all sorts of games. Her favourite this past year has been a party balloon hung by a cotton string off a ceiling fan in our living area. She bumps it around with her nose to make it fly up and then wants other people to bump it around too so she can jump in and bump it again mid-air. Like a team game. 

Here's a clip I took today. In it, she's getting frustrated because I'm not playing, since I'm filming her!


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## frlsgirl

Oh my gosh how cute @SueC  You can tell she's really proud of herself like "did you see how far I bumped it?!?"

The donkeys are too cute "eek stranger danger, stay away"


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## Zexious

Oh my, how embarrassing! I had no idea! xD
Admittedly, skeletal anatomy (or any anatomy, ha) isn't my forte. I didn't even consider that it may not be a horse skull, but now that you point out the differences I definitely see them! Living in Texas (ugh), steer skulls are somewhat common place as decorative pieces but the horns are intended to be the focal point and are a defining feature for me. Now I know better! I wonder if bovine skulls are used for the Mari Lwyd out of accessibility? I wish I could ask a Welsh person!









This one is a horse, right?

I just recently saw a really gorgeous, gold plated skull with a several foot long horn affixed to the forehead. It was a gorgeous piece that I'd love to have in my home (my aesthetic is a little out there for some people haaa), but now I'm starting to wonder if that too was a cow! I'll have to see if I can find it. 

Nooooo, I love bats! They're like flying puppies c: I mean, just look at these burritos:









I don't think I've ever seen that species before. I think he could use a nose job, but I'm willing to overlook it 
Honestly, my last real hang up is insects/arachnids. I've long since been a happy member of the Reptilian Hype Train! Growing up I had an assortment of lizards and snakes with my stepbrothers. They were very neat animals--the lizards, I mean! My favorite species was undoubtedly the Crested Gecko. They are wonderful little creatures. People who aren't willing to open their hearts beyond puppies and kitties are really missing out!

That said, I am something of a connoisseur of mammals with long noses 









I love, love, love the donkeys! I'm going to go back through and catch up!


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## egrogan

Has anyone read the Michael Chabon novel _Moonglow_? These horse skulls are making me think about that book, in which they feature prominently. It almost makes me wonder if he came across this festival researching the book...

And since someone mentioned the Japanese aesthetic a few posts back, I can't help but sharing this book, translated from Japanese, that I nearly purchased for my lovely husband.









He is a bit of a cat whisperer, and admires the apparent warmth Japanese culture has for kitties, but he's not much of a crafter :rofl:


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## Caledonian

_@SueC - your donkeys and Jess make me smile. They’ve brightened a dark, wet night:smile:
_
_Jess the Balloonatic’s look to the camera just says ‘your turn mum’. 
_
_I think bats are gorgeous too, as are bees, reptiles and beetles, some of their colours are amazing but more importantly they’re all part of the chain that we rely on for survival. I’m not that keen on spiders, although I do understand that they have their place… outside of my house. :smile::chicken2:
_
_The song is really beautiful and he’s got a wonderful voice. I’m not aware of code songs but there must’ve been something to say whether or not it’s safe. I’ll have a look and a chat with people in the know and get back to you. You’ve got me wondering!_

_I haven’t read the book @*egrogan* although I like sound of it from the summery. How do the horse skulls fit into the story?_


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## egrogan

Caledonian said:


> _I haven’t read the book @*egrogan* although I like sound of it from the summery. How do the horse skulls fit into the story?_


 @Caledonian- Let me see if I can explain without giving away the plot twist! 

The story is narrated by the adult grandson of a Jewish American WWII veteran-turned-engineer. The grandfather married a French woman after the war; she had survived the war being sheltered by a group of nuns who took her in with her baby daughter. This woman, the narrator's grandmother, struggles with mental health throughout the story (we get some glimpses she may have bipolar disorder or schizophrenia), and when she is having moments of mental health crisis, she is haunted by grotesque images of a "skinless horse" that is tied to past events in her childhood when she believes she saw horses dying at a rendering factory...and other things. The narrator's mother loves horses as a child, but her mother's torment by "the skinless horse" results in an intense scene with a horse skull and difficult times ahead for their family.

I don't think that gives away too much! It's not a novel _about _horses, but they are present throughout the story because of the grandmother, even if their role in the story is pretty dark.


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## SueC

Hello all! :wave: I've got no riding reports because I put my back out three days ago (just a wrong move will do it) and though it's getting better, horse-riding is not advisable when that happens - which is about twice a year - less if I do enough Pilates...

So I've been doing a lot of non-recreational writing - wrote two pieces 1300-1500 words back-to-back; the first on Monday evening, the next yesterday morning, all-complete, edited and sent in under 3 hours each, which is great. Of course, I'm sort of procrastinating the one whose deadline is next week, which is about toxic building materials to avoid, and safer ones to use - it actually happens that the person who taught us Environmental Toxicology when I was an undergraduate was really into this, and later did a popular series on Australia's SBS on the matter of air quality in modern houses etc, and which materials were creating health problems for people. This is one of the reasons we really looked at material toxicity, offgassing etc when building our own house. It actually is an interesting topic and there's no real reason to be putting it off, other than that I become perversely productive at doing other articles when there's one I'm meant to be working on.

Also we started watching _Labyrinth_ last night. Brett knows it well; I've caught snippets when supervising someone's music class as a favour. Really interesting to me is that the two movies I remember where you could have heard a pin drop in the classroom was this one, played to middle school music students in Albany, and _Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon_ in a classroom of mostly Chinese immigrants at Sydney Girls High School - an academically selective school filled with delightful teenage boffins, where I had fun for a couple of terms when visiting Sydney. I still remember the looks on their faces when they were watching this film; the cultural connection for them... and how they talked about it afterwards.

_Labyrinth_ is a Jim Henson film, and of course I grew up with Kermit, _Pigs In Space_ etc. It also has a very young Jennifer Connelly, whom I first saw in _The House Of Sand And Fog_, playing the teenage protagonist; and David Bowie as the antagonist, the Goblin King. David Bowie doing a quasi-musical? That's got to be interesting, right?

Hmmmmm. I really appreciate David Bowie's contribution to the arts, he was an incredible trailblazer, made things so much easier for people who are "different", and made some of the brainiest music in the known universe. I have a chronological compilation which I often put on at full volume and enjoy while doing things around the house that don't require mental focus. Brett has an actual early-period album, but David Bowie is not the sort of artist where I can sit through an entire album on headphones - I can maybe do 20 minutes, then I need air. And the same, actually, is true for Pink Floyd, in my case - which perplexes Brett. "But they're a concept album band!" Yes, I know that, and I really admire their music, but if I try to sit through more than 20 minutes of one of their albums in a row, I get ants in my pants.

"Well, if you can't sit through an entire album, you're not a _real_ fan, you know!" Brett told me in a teasing tone this morning. I replied, "Is that so? Well, to be a real fan, do I also have to have a poster of them up on my wall, and to have had sexual fantasies about them?" (I was thinking of Amanda Palmer's infamous open letter to Robert Smith.) "Because if that's the case, I've been nobody's real fan, not even as a teenager." Brett looked thoughtful. "Hmmm, me neither!"

:rofl:

OK, where I was going with that: I think the puppets in _Labyrinth_ are wonderful. Those goblins! That worm who says, "_'Allo_, come in and have a cup of tea!" Priceless. And I laughed myself to death over the critter under the paving stones who said, "Your mother is a fragging _aardvark_!" :rofl: But every time David Bowie starts singing in that movie, I want to run away, it's so bloody terrible! mg:

It's not his voice, he's got a very fine voice; or the acting, he's very convincing. It's the compositions. Totally rash-inducing for me. And just when you think it can't get any worse, it does. That song where he was dancing with the baby and the goblins, I just shuddered. How can a man capable of writing such wonderful songs write something like _that_? You know, like something unpleasant you might step in on a pavement? It's as if I set out one day to deliberately cook a disgusting dinner. Why would I do that?

Brett says, "You're not the first one to feel that way, I've read a lot of reviews. But remember, this is primarily a children's movie, and when I first saw it (he was 13), I didn't mind the music. Just later, when I got older I started thinking it was a bit naff. Maybe Bowie just wanted to do something different. He was clearly having fun, and getting paid, and getting to work with interesting people."

All this is true. I'm just not used to David Bowie giving me hives. And then something else leapt out at me - other than the Rod Stewart hairstyle. The Goblin King wears tights, as a lot of male ballet dancers do; and male ballet dancers have, ahem, bulges, but they're quite benign bulges - I think they actually have special undergarments or inserts or something, so that things are blurry and people are spared unnecessary details. But, nobody in the costume department appears to have given David Bowie any of these blurring accessories. So I had the shock of my life - "OMG, I just saw something I really didn't wish to see!" Brett laughed. "Oh, you've finally noticed? Yes, that's had a fair bit of discussion in the reviews as well."

It's a children's movie, and I'm flabbergasted. Do we really need to see Bowie's wedding tackle, basically just spraypainted and in fine detail? I don't usually make a habit of looking at people's crotches, but this one just sort of leapt out and assaulted me. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. That's a pretty big glitch for a children's movie with a generous budget, if you ask me.

Or maybe it's not a glitch. Maybe it's like when Dr Who had Leela in her skimpy jungle costume as the sidekick in the late 70s - it was something they did deliberately to keep the daddies entertained. So the really screaming female teenage hormonal-type fans of Bowie would have been in their 30s by the time this film was released, and watching it with their littlies. The story for the kiddies, the crotch detail as an Easter egg for those mummies, perhaps?

That's one theory. We'll finish watching it sometime this week.


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## Knave

Hahahaha. I’d forgotten the movie completely and was reading along having no idea what you were talking about until you mentioned his willy. Then I remembered having watched it! Hahahahahaha!

I forgot to say I am sorry about your back! I hate when that happens.


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## SueC

You see, @*Knave* ? The trauma of that just burns itself into your brain unforgettably! :rofl:

Och aye, backs. You had your accident on your 30th, I was 21 - not nearly as traumatic as your incident; was riding someone's mad horse for them for an evaluation. He threw his hindquarters straight up in a sudden big buck as I was coming down in a posting trot, and this bashed the underside of my pelvis and gave me an injury typically seen in BMX or MotoX riders, landing back on their seats after a long drop. A ligament between the pelvis and spine got stretched, and as a result, things are more mobile than they should be and a nerve can get temporarily pinched if I move in just the wrong way. When that happens, I walk funny for a couple of days and then go back to normal function.

Did you ever find out exactly where the injury is for you?


:think:...did anyone notice this strange thing that happened on the last page with the clips? Originally they went song, donkeys, balloon game - and people commented on them as such - and that's how they still are in my saved offline version. Yet for some reason, it now goes song, same song, donkeys - we got gremlins in the system? Very strange...

@*Zexious* , no need for embarrassment, it's an easy mix-up to make, especially if someone mislabels it for you. Yep, the second one is definitely a horse. I really wonder who came up with the idea in the first place, and how! :rofl: And I think bovine skulls are far easier to get hold of than equine, on account of all the steak etc people eat. If you find that golden unicorn skull, please share a photo! And don't worry, I've got a horse skull lying in the garden under an olive tree. I've not brought it indoors because it still needs to air and have any little bits eaten off it by little critters. It's from the mare we had to put down last year; she had an open burial in our conservation reserve and six months later we went to look at the skeleton and retrieve a few anatomical specimens. Skulls and skeletons actually have a beauty of their own - I'm sure you're a person who understands that, instead of freaking out.

Having the skull in the garden is a strange thing - very Hamlet - you know, "I knew him, Horiatio!" and all that. The Romans used to keep _memento mori_ around to remind them to make the best use of their lives. Brett would very much like for his skull to end up as a book-end in a library once he no longer has a use for it.

Those bats are burritos indeed!







And I love the pointy-nosed dog. Is it yours? Looks like a classical short-haired Collie.  Fun reptile stories. A housemate in Sydney had a huge Diamond Python and encouraged us to spend time with it. It was pretty cool, except for its tendency to want to make coils around your neck - you kind of had to keep unwinding it! :rofl:

@*egrogan* , yesterday I found that episode of _This American Life_ you linked me to magicked onto my iPod and heard this funny story about the jar of olives sent anonymously that was actually not a random act of kindness, and an astronaut who thought space was rather ordinary, and some other interesting stories! _Moonglow_ sounds interesting; our library has it and I might get that one out. I'm currently reading this:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...who-climbed-out-of-the-window-and-disappeared
...great fun.

That cat craft! Those cat cafes! See, I didn't know about those - Brett did... I love those sorts of eccentricities... 

@*Caledonian* , glad the clips sent some warmth your way! I will be interested to hear if the Scots had any subversive songs to deal with being bullied by the invading people. Hope you keep warm and cosy!


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> @*egrogan* , yesterday I found that episode of _This American Life_ you linked me to magicked onto my iPod and heard this funny story about the jar of olives sent anonymously that was actually not a random act of kindness, and an astronaut who thought space was rather ordinary, and some other interesting stories! _Moonglow_ sounds interesting; our library has it and I might get that one out. I'm currently reading this:
> 
> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...who-climbed-out-of-the-window-and-disappeared
> ...great fun.
> 
> That cat craft! Those cat cafes! See, I didn't know about those - Brett did... I love those sorts of eccentricities...


 Glad you found the podcast interesting. Here in the states, that radio host (Ira Glass) created a public radio genre of shows hosted by serious, curious, ironic hosts who can make the ordinary of life seem gripping. Lots of imitators- some good, some not- have cropped up in the past few years. We have a weird relationship with public radio in this country- not sure if this humor will translate, but this is a fabulous sketch comedy show making fun of This American Life and how it dramatizes the mundane.





(And here's another episode of _This American Life_ hosted by Fred Armisen, who plays the main character in that sketch.)

I will add your book recommendation to my library list. We're still new in town (our realtor told us you are "new" until you've lived here for at least 7 years, which is more or less the amount of time it takes to prove that you're going to stay and not pack up and leave for civilization...) so the librarian has been pleasant but aloof when we go in. With the short winter days, my lovely husband and I read for at least a couple of hours every night, and our library has a decent selection and great access to loans from the statewide library system. So, we've been in there quite a bit. Last week, we had a breakthrough with the librarian- he said "you two are interesting readers- you both read books that _I'd _actually like to read myself." Now, I don't know a lot of librarians, but that seems like a pretty good compliment coming from one! :grin:

And with that, I think I've thoroughly evidenced just how nerdy I am for the day and I'll end there


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## SueC

*CD REVIEW - "CHILL WITH VIVALDI" NAXOS 8556779 (1989 - 2001)*

Here's an impromptu review, occasioned by Thursday being Brett's day off and therefore starting with a traditional, extended breakfast in bed, with many cups of tea and sometimes a bit of music. I'm the morning magician and Brett is the evening elf - because of when we're respectively at our best and worst. So when I do breakfast, I might select some music that's compatible with starting the day slowly and gently, and that doesn't require your complete focus - as we're generally reading and having bursts of reading-related conversation. I usually pick something classical. Mozart's _Eine Kleine Nachtmusik_, ironically, makes excellent morning music - it's calm, vaguely impish and puts a spring in your step; so it's had repeat spins on our Thursday mornings. 

An aside: Some wag has called that Mozart piece _Eine Kleine Nichtmusik_ - bwa, ha, ha. _Nacht_ means night, and _nicht_ means don't / not / nothing. So you get _A Little Nothing-Music_ or _A Little Not-Music_ instead of _A Little Night-Music_. And when English-as-a-first-language people try to pronounce _Nacht_, unfortunately the vast majority make a total hash of it - and turn it into _nackt_, which means naked. I don't know why it's so difficult for Anglos to do a soft ch sound, it's just a soft breath directed at the back of the throat and palate. ( @frlsgirl, @*SwissMiss* , why don't you try to get some of your colleagues and friends to pronounce _Nacht_ properly, just for entertainment! :rofl_ Eine Kleine Nacktmusik_ sounds like just the thing for an evening at a nudist colony. Brett, of course, thinks it's a reference to what the orchestra is wearing...

Generally, the Baroque is the richest mine for finding classical music compatible with our extended breakfasts in bed. So, this morning, I turned to Vivaldi. Instead of putting on an actual entire piece, like _The Four Seasons_ or _La Tempesta Di Mare_ (which is too uproarious for breakfast anyway), I chose a bits-and-pieces compilation called _Chill With Vivaldi_. What could possibly go wrong?

The starting track, the _Larghetto e spirituoso_ from the _Concerto for Two Violins in A Minor_, made a ponderous gloom descend on our house. I'm familiar with larghettos, but _larghetto e spirituoso_? Slow movement with ghosts? Slow movement with vodka? Slow movement with new-age spirituality? Be that as it may, the effect was rather wrist-slitting. We were getting _funereal_ vibes. I sensed that somebody's dear uncle had died tragically. A sad darkness was welling up and threatening to drown all who remained.

As other tracks came and went, I said to Brett, "Who selected this compilation? How is this _Chill With Vivaldi_? This is _Grieve With Vivaldi_. It's _Cry With Vivaldi_. Just because something is slow-tempo doesn't mean it's "chill" type music. Did the person doing the selecting not get that? Or did they go, "Hee hee, a chance to inflict misery on those who wish to chill!" ?

After a cut from _The Four Seasons_, there was a piece which really made you feel that somewhere in the world, right now, a little child is freezing to death. I felt cold and sad. Macrabre quotations were appearing in my head unbidden, such as, "Life is but a flash of light between two eternities of darkness." This stuff was starting to make The Cure's _Pornography_ album appear upbeat in comparison...

By the time we got to _Cello Concerto in C Minor: Adagio_, someone's uncle had still died, but this was someone's uncle they didn't know in person, so the reaction was more subdued. (Brett says this was the uncle who spelt your name wrong on the Christmas card.)

And so we got to _The Four Seasons, Winter: Largo_ - my favourite ever bit of all the Vivaldi compositions. This was an OK version, but I personally prefer the pizzicato backing to be more prominent in the piece. Also, the lead violinist here is _tickling_ their instrument and playing very gently - I can hear the violin _giggling_! In my favourite versions, the lead violin is played with panache, and the bow is applied with some force.

The _Gloria in D: Et In Terra Pax_ is spine-tingling: Edgy, jagged violin combining with gorgeous, ethereal, haunting choral harmonies. I found a lovely online version of this piece as it's well worth hearing:






With the _Concerto in G for Two Mandolines: Andante_, and the closing track, the _Largo_ from _Concerto in D for Guitar_, the sort of music implied by the title actually gets a spin, although even this piece is slightly melancholy.

Is this a CD full of beautiful music? Yes, it is, very much so. It's just not _Chill_ type music. And this is the first little complaint I have with any of my acquisitions from the NAXOS catalogue, which aims to bring fabulous classical recordings to the public at an affordable price. Not the music, but the inept naming of a compilation! But if you see a NAXOS CD, it's a pretty safe bet it's good quality music!


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## egrogan

^^Too funny. I will check it out. I love Four Seasons- have written many a paper with that as the soundtrack.


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## Caledonian

@*SueC* :wave:I hope your back’s improving. Even if it lasts a couple of days, it still sounds like a nuisance and painful. 

Labyrinth – :rofl::rofl::rofl: I think I need to watch that film again; I don’t remember it being that entertaining! 

I used to listen to Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and Four Seasons when I worked in the yard. I can get tired of the thump, thump, thump of modern music and change to classical for long periods. I’ve even been known to listen to Gregorian chants and other early music.

I agree that Anglos struggle with the soft ‘ch’ sound while Germans, Swiss, Welsh, Irish, Spanish and Scots find it easy to pronounce. I often hear the word ‘loch’ pronounced ‘lock’. There seems to be a common thread running through the old languages of those countries which isn’t present in other languages.


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## SueC

Hello, @*Caledonian* ! :wave: Thanks for the well-wishes; my back is fine again today, and I worked out a trick to get it to snap back into alignment - a chiropractor can do it, but we've worked out how to do it at home now. Speaking of Gregorian chants, I've got some Pigorian chants done by professional singers, doing _Old McDonald Had A Farm_ in Latin with choruses in pig Latin, which I used to play unobtrusively at professional development days etc and people would just go, "Ah, Gregorian chants" and not notice the lyrics bwahahaha. It's this one:

https://www.amazon.com/Grunt-Pigorian-Chant-Snouto-Domoinko/dp/0761105948

I don't blame you for switching genres etc; when Grunge happened in the 1990s I stopped listening to commercial radio stations most of the time, and went sideways into giving myself a systemic education in classical music. I was still listening to world music too, including the Celtic stuff, of course... and the general stuff in my CD collection. I mostly got back into contemporary music as part of the mix because of Brett and his CD collection and iPod etc. "Thump, thump, thump" though is enough to send me to the off-switch most of the time...

We did finish _Labyrinth_ - you know why some of the puppet dialogue was so funny? They had one of the Pythons writing the lines... :rofl: My favourite character was Sir Didymus... (of course, I couldn't help thinking if his first name was "Epi"... do you remember how Monty Python named one of their posh English characters _Nigel Incubator-Jones_? :rofl: ...I do believe the convention is to have the female surname first, so...

Is it snowing in Scotland yet?

Stinking hot morning where we are; searing Australian sun at nearly the longest day of the year here (22st Dec), and the bush flies are terrible because nights aren't warm enough for the dung beetles to be completely effective yet. All the horses and donkeys are in fly veils, and the UV is so intense that I can't go out between 10am and 2pm or I will burn any skin still exposed (and it's too hot not to expose any). So we're indoors waiting for the pizzas to come out of the oven. I hope to get a ride in when it cools down a bit later.

@*egrogan* , the web gremlins won't let me look at that video in my region, I'll try to chase it up. I hope you're keeping nice and warm and that you're not completely snowed in. Yeah, isn't the _Four Seasons_ great? I can't type to stuff with English lyrics, or lyrics in any language I can easily understand. It's one of the reasons I got into Celtic and world music, and classical, and have lots of instrumentals.


@*Knave* , hope you're getting some you-time there with all your pre-Christmas events!


@*knightrider* , @*gottatrot* , do you put antlers on your horses at Christmas?

In other news, here's some recipes and Brett's "Hippie IT" article, from the last two GRs. I completely agree with what he says about the topic, but then you'd expect that - we're both not typical consumers. Click and click again to get to readable size.


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## Rawhide

Ms SueC if you like bagpipes etc you might like this if you never heard it . Luving ,enjoying you all's thread !!!!!

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5afp0


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## knightrider

@SueC, my daughter and I had antlers on her horse last night for our town's Christmas parade. If I can get my daughter to send me the pictures, I'll write about it. Although I have ridden in countless parades, this one was "different." I was much too preoccupied to get photos, and she was too, but she's 16 and phones come first, no matter how much she has going on. So she got some pictures. How you can take photos when your horse is bouncing all over the place is beyond me. I kept telling her, "Put your phone away and concentrate on your horse." I could just imagine her dropping that phone that she paid all her hard-earned money for.


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## egrogan

knightrider said:


> I kept telling her, "Put your phone away and concentrate on your horse." I could just imagine her dropping that phone that she paid all her hard-earned money for.





Sometimes I have to reprimand myself like this as well :hide:


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## knightrider

Now, the parade story. I've ridden in piles and piles of parades since I was young. My big Paso Chorro has ridden in piles of parades since he was young, including a bunch of night Christmas parades. My daughter's young mare Windy has ridden in one other night Christmas parade where she was great.

But this parade was wild. I wonder if it was because the night was so mild, or perhaps it was better advertised, but I've never had so many spectators in our small town at a parade. There were 3 times as many floats as we normally have, and everyone one of them had flashing lights. Five fire engines all running their sirens. We were waiting for form-up next to our high school's marching band and flag twirlers. They put us behind the electric company's float--brand new--which had blaring music, wild flashing lights, and churning out fake snow (which didn't bother the horses at bit--the snow was fun!). Behind us, they put another brightly lit fire engine who drove much too close to the horses, so they were sandwiched between a crazy loud float and a threatening fire engine. (Floats in this case referring to tractors pulling huge trailers with scenes staged on them, not horse trailers.)

In spite of all the commotion and our horses' unexpected anxiety, we still had a grand time because the mix of people, all colors and races, were so enthusiastic. Everyone getting along and everyone so happy. It was lovely to wave to the big crowds, all yelling "Merry Christmas" dressed in their Christmas finery and Cindy Lou Who hair-do's. Nobody fell off and the crowd got to see prancing dancing horses. You can barely see Windy's antlers, but they are on there. Excuse the anxious look on my face. We were waiting next to the high school band and flag twirlers doing their thing and it was crazy. Oh yes, and please excuse the low hackamore. I wanted to ride Chorro with the silver hearts, which isn't his normal bridle and did not adjust it properly. I know better; it was just a hyper night.


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## frlsgirl

Congratulations on finishing the Labyrinth! I have a hard time sitting through movies as well. I usually watch the beginning and the either fall asleep or wander off so I know mostly the beginning of movies just not the middle or ending. 

I did sit through “The Nun” though over the weekend with my trusty dachshunds by my side. It really upset Lou though as he’s too sensitive to process horror movies. First he was hiding under the blanket and then at bed time he kept crying outside of our bedroom door.


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## SueC

@*Rawhide* , hello! :wave: Thanks for that link, that was a lovely track. I'd never heard of the singer, but then I do sort of live under a rock. It's always nice to have things recommended to you - far less hit and miss than turning on a radio. ;-) Glad you're having fun, and welcome - chime in anytime! 
@*knightrider* , you always have the best parade stories! mg: - The idea of having to ride while there are vehicles with sirens going, marching bands, blaring music... :hide: Your horses must be extremely Zen :Angel: not to be racing out of there at a million miles an hour. :racing: 
Isn't Windy a beautiful mare too? And I've got to say, that green tack looks great. You two and your horses are brave, and look like you managed to enjoy yourselves - perhaps between bouts of butterflies when especially crazy things were happening?

I've only been in a Christmas parade once, and that was on foot, with my Pilates teacher and class, to promote healthy exercise. We were all in tracksuits and yoga type clothes, marching up and down York Street in Albany between the various Santas, floats etc, waving at the crowd. A peculiar feeling! :rofl: 

@*egrogan* , I've been out on a horse with an iPod a few times just to take a few trail photos every now and then. It's not like normal riding though, and I really hate splitting my attention to attend to electronic gadgets. If I were an octopus, the extra appendages would come in useful for taking photos, but I'm not. I carry the iPod in a pocket, when I go on a rare photography ride, and the first problem is not dropping the slippery-as-an-eel, expensive thing on the ground from a great height. That always makes me apprehensive. The next thing is that I have to slow down the horse, or things blur. Then the screen brightness goes onto power-save just when I'm setting up a shot, and I can't see a thing until I go back to twiddling the controls. It's not at all like operating a proper camera, but I can't go riding with my proper camera around my neck... :music:

@*frlsgirl* , very cute dog. I know exactly what you mean about falling asleep when trying to watch a movie. Things go better for me now that we have to take summer midday siestas because we don't want to bake outside, and watch movies then, with the curtains draws, in the nice cool lounge room. But at night, what better place is there than curled up in bed with a book? ...have you watched any Japanese horror? They can do ultra-creepy...


*DEALING WITH BEDDING - INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE (now with hippies)*

Well, the days are heating up, so it's time to wash all the pillows, blankets etc. Rather silly in retrospect to put the latex backing pillows into the bathtub with an old acrylic snuggle blanket to soak (it kills any dustmite present; we also put pillows etc in the freezer overnight now and then for the same reason). The latex pillows are a bit old and hand wash only, I've ended up with a myriad little latex crumbs stuck between the fibres of the snuggle blanket, so I'm machine washing it, spinning it (I have a twin tub washer), then flapping it around outside like a madwoman to eject more particles, before chucking it back into rinse water - and I will have to repeat this until there's no more crumbs coming out in the wash... lesson learnt...

Even the electric blanket will get a two-hour soak in the bathtub today to drown any microscopic critters, before being hung into our brutal summer UV at midday...

Speaking of bedding, we're actually getting a new quilt and cover, which for us is really extraordinary - we usually get ourselves really good quality basics, and treat them carefully, so they last a long, long time. For example, this is our current bedding:



I bought the coverlet and the curtains back in 2005, when I was painting the bedroom of my bachelorette rental earth colours after putting up with the original florals for years. The coverlet is all-cotton; I can't sleep in synthetic bedding, and polyester / polyester-cotton blend clothing gives me skin rashes. It just so happened that this coverlet I was interested in back in 2005 was also half-price, which was great considering the original price was nearly $400... 

It's lovely and breathable, but the down side is that this coverlet is not machine washable, so in the warm times of the year, I've been soaking it in the bathtub and doing the whole ye olde hand-wash routine with it, except I wasn't doing this in a creek. You can't spin it either, it needs to drip-dry on the line, and that takes around two days even at the height of summer. So all this means I can't wash it as often as I normally wash bedding. Therefore, a top sheet is used between the sleepers and the coverlet, and turned over the coverlet edge at night.

This whole sleeping with top sheets was not how it was done when I was a primary school kid in Europe. You, and all your classmates too, had a bottom sheet and a down quilt in a quilt cover, and once a week, the bottom sheet, quilt cover and pillow covers were washed, and the quilt itself was aired on the line, preferably in the sun. So when I came to Australia, I didn't know what to do with the top sheets once I left home and started buying bedding. I usually just used them as alternative mattress sheets. Occasionally I stayed in a motel for work and got acquainted with Australian bedding arrangements. To be honest, the top sheet makes me claustrophobic, because is settles on your skin, and I sort of feel like I'm sleeping in a Venus flytrap then.

Also, it can tangle. I know you can reduce that problem by tucking it under the mattress, but then the whole thing becomes like a straitjacket. Ugh. Give me just a sheet on the mattress and a quilt with a washable cover, and I'm happy. The quilt doesn't cling to your skin and wind itself around your limbs, it just sits softly on top - the fabric cover sticks to the quilt, not to you. That's how I like it.

But, due to the expensive hand-wash only coverlet, I've been sleeping with a top sheet for over a decade now (either flat cotton, or cotton flannelette). The coverlet is much heavier than a quilt too, and has a tendency to go walking at night unless you tuck it in. It can simply end up sliding off the bed on one side or the other. This is almost certainly in part produced by sleeping in company and unconsciously chasing each other across the bed at night.

Anyway, we were sleeping badly due to hayfever and suspected dustmite lurking somewhere, and the coverlet was walking every night, and we decided we were fed up and would go back to sleeping with a quilt instead (no top sheet), at least in summer, when you least want to tuck your bedding in. So for the first time in over 13 years, I looked for new bedding for us to use (other than sheet / pillowslip sets, which wear out occasionally and get replaced).

The local Spotlight, like most large bedding stores, stocks primarily synthetic bedding, although I did get a QB light, all cotton lofted summer quilt from them, at 30% off this week too - which was a handy coincidence and will help pay for the two new fly veils Brett is getting for the new donkeys today - the old ones are falling apart. onkey: However, at these sorts of stores, you'll almost never find any all cotton or all linen or all hemp or other all-natural fabric quilt cover sets. And if you do, it will probably look like someone set off a hand grenade in a fruit bowl - that seems to be the fashion at the moment.

So I love the Internet. I went to the place where I tracked down a quilt cover set to match our existing curtains for the front guest room a couple of years ago:



And would you believe, I found something all-linen and in sedate colours that match the rest of our bedroom, which also just happened to be half-price on sale. Again, it didn't affect my choice, it was just a handy coincidence:










Now tell me something, anyone who actually understands this - what is it with all these pillows on the display beds? Where are the _people_ supposed to sleep? Do they wedge themselves into the gaps between the pillows? Do they pile the pillows up by the headboard and then sleep with their feet hanging off the bottom of the bed? Do they remove excessive pillows to a special cupboard at night? Four pillows in a QB is already pushing it if you're tall, but having one extra each as a backing against the headboard if you like to sit up and read is handy. These days though, when I look at display beds, they have eight, ten, even twelve or more pillows on them! :shock:

Are they for pillow fights? The mind boggles. Anyway, we're looking forward to sleeping with a simple covered quilt again and no tangles, and no walking bedding at night. The ETA is within a week. Meanwhile, I'm drowning any microscopic critters in an abundance of water.

The cotton coverlet is hanging on the line in the sun as we speak. We'll use it again in winter, when we don't mind tucking it into the foot of the bed at night.


So how do you sleep in the States, and other countries - top sheets, or not? What's your most comfortable bedding?


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## gottatrot

We always have had a top sheet, which is traditional in most of the U.S. Growing up we had "bedspreads" which were more like a heavy, thin blanket similar to your coverlet - then when I was in my teens the "comforter" became popular, which was a thicker version and more like what you call a quilt. Comforters here usually have the thick batting inside, but no cover so you wash the whole thing in a large washing machine. Very infrequently, so you pretty much need a sheet.

What we call a quilt is something made of pieces sewn together with a backing, and the batting is all inside so there is no cover. They are usually very heavy and often homemade.









In our travels we have had difficulty with no top sheet. This is common in Japan as well as Europe. The problem is when they give you a thick top blanket/quilt and no sheet, so if it is hot you are stuck with either a thick cover or nothing at all. Sometimes I have taken the washable cover off that is thin like a sheet, and used that as a top sheet.

We're not into aesthetics much and are very practical. We finally figured out about a year ago that the best thing is to have two top blankets, one on each side of the bed. That way DH cannot wrap himself into a burrito and leave me freezing, or I can have a thick one on and he can have a thin one. For some reason we can share the top sheet, but the blankets never worked out well until we found this solution.

The dog is fine with whatever. He sleeps on top unless it is very cold, since he has long hair. My last dog liked to be under the covers. When we first met, DH said he'd never allow a dog in the bed but that was a long time ago, LOL. Training of horses and husbands is a long, slow process, but over time...


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## SueC

:rofl:, @*gottatrot* ! Husband training and burritos... :dance-smiley05:

That's such a lovely decorative quilt in your photo! In Australia, we use the word _quilt_ for decorative quilts like that, and also for plainly constructed quilts designed to go in washable covers. My husband has too much English DNA to adopt the Australian usage of quilt, and calls it a duvet, like they do in the UK (where they also use the word continental quilt to distinguish it from a decorative quilt not meant to go in a cover). Some Australians use the word _doona_ for quilt; the term is probably linked back to the down feathers which traditionally were used to fill quilts/doonas/duvets.

In Europe, the problem of being overheated when sleeping in a quilt without a top sheet is generally dealt with by selecting a quilt appropriate to the season. Also Europeans are great pyjama wearers - Aussies not so much... so I guess they're more likely to benefit from a top sheet - that way the choice isn't between bare skin and the quilt.

I've been known to put washable open-weave cotton cell blankets in the place of a top sheet - they're not quite as "Venus fly trap" as top sheets are... and they're wonderfully breathable. In summer you can kick off the quilt and just sleep under the cotton cell blanket, which allows your skin to breathe. Top sheets tend to make me sweat because they don't breathe that well and you end up in a humidicrib basically. 










I hope Hero's well!  Am working to deadline ATM and will have to catch up on people's journals after.


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## frlsgirl

Wow I admire your commitment to properly care for bedding. I don’t have that kind of patience; I was supposed to wash our machine washable bedding over the weekend, but yeah couldn’t motivate myself to get it done. 

I do miss German bedding and how lovely it was to sleep in feather bedding that’s been baking in the sun all afternoon....ahhh the good old days. 

About the pillows, Americans appear to use them mostly for decor. We have two tiny decorative pillows and they always end up on the floor or up against the wall.


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## knightrider

We also have top and bottom sheets and put whatever blankets we need, depending on the weather.

I like to make quilts. My daughter has been in Girl Scouts since she was 5, and I was the assistant leader, but when our Girl Scout leader died, I was given all her tee shirts (as well as having to become the Girl Scout leader). I gave away as many of the tee shirts as I could, but my Girl Scouts kept telling me I should make a quilt with the extra ones that nobody wanted. Making quilts is a TON of work, and I just couldn't face all that work, so I sewed the tee shirts to a light blanket and have a lovely keepsake of our Girl Scout adventures. I also threw in tee shirts that my daughter outgrew and ones that our troop wasn't wearing any more. 

I painted the horses on the headboard--at the time I painted them, the ones in the front were living, and the ones running behind were dead. I didn't paint all the dead ones--it would have been quite a herd and I wasn't up to that--just the most recent ones. Now, two of the ones running in front have died, and we have three new ones not shown.


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## Caledonian

I love the top sheets in the photos.

I sometimes use a top sheet in the winter but it's not a tradition. 

Just now i've a cotton under sheet, electric blanket, then a fitted fleece under blanket; they're very warm and great to snuggle into during the winter. On top, is a winter-weight duvet (with cover) and, at the moment, a thermal top sheet. In the summer, the winter duvets are swapped for lighter, thinner versions and i stop using the fleece under blanket and top sheet.

The Great Duvet Fight still has me puffing when i try to change the cover though; i've never managed to work out an easy way to change the covers without getting in a tangle. :smile:


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## SueC

An old Chemistry ditty I posted before, but now it's Christmas, so it's getting another spin. Wrote it as a warning for my Year 12s in 1999!







It was also a way of testing their Chemistry comprehension. 


*CHRISTMAS CHEMISTRY*

_by Sue Coulstock née Kelly, Christmas 1999_

It’s Christmas, it’s Christmas, the Pudding is flat
Flatter than the mat on which the cat sat
With a consistency of blu-tack to the power of three
Methinks that someone forgot to add the NaHCO3
Never mind, it’s time again for the carols to sing
The reindeer bells are ringing, let them ring
Rudolf’s nose is red, and resplendently so
Too much UV, he forgot to put on his ZnO

You’ve stuffed yourself silly with Christmas fare
Roast turkey, potatoes, cranberries, pickled hare
A selection of cheeses, Christmas cookies galore
Quadruple chocolate mousse; and you kept having more
Now a complicated gut impaction has you at death’s door
You need a funnel, an assistant, and hydrated MgSO4
If your case is so desperate that even this will not do
Try liquid hydrocarbon of general formula CNH2N+2
Said liquid also applied with a funnel, of course -
That should work for you; it works in a horse

This ancient remedy having been effective for you
You feel obliged to go and party until half past two
Now post-party muscle cramps are giving you hell
You’re electrolyte depleted, so administer KCl
And try drinking some H20 for a change
Your friends, of course, may be finding this strange

Next morning, or perhaps should that be noon
You’ll invariably feel you’ve awoken too soon
So black coffee, number of teaspoons of this seven
And you might also need a little C12H22O11
Some people like to have this intravenously
But the conventional method will do for me

There are also Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs
Of course, should you be feeling as if jewel bugs
Are crawling nonstop beneath your fingernails
And your very last neurons are going off the rails
All perfectly legal, as doubtless you knew before
Found on your supermarket shelf as C9H8O4

There’s a saying about learning from the past
Else history will be the one laughing last
Alas, it is time to bring this tale to an end
And so I will be wishing you, my friend:

Merry Christmas​ 

PS: Formula C2H5OH was absent from this poem, I admit
Because the author could find nothing to rhyme with it.
However, it represents significant progress (and more)
As this author’s poems have rarely rhymed before.


*GLOSSARY FOR RUSTY CHEMISTS*

NaHCO3 = sodium bicarbonate (raising agent)

ZnO = zinc oxide, physical sun barrier found in zinc cream

MgSO4 = magnesium sulfate (Epsom salts)

CNH2N+2 = general liquid hydrocarbon formula, standing in for liquid paraffin whose exact formula doesn’t rhyme

KCl = potassium chloride, one of a number of major mammalian electrolytes

H20 = please! If you don’t know this one, where have you been?

C12H22O11 = sucrose (table sugar)

C9H8O4 = aspirin

 C2H5OH = ethanol (drinking alcohol)



@*Caledonian* , the way I avoid the Great Duvet Fight is to turn the cover inside out and then put my head and shoulders through the opening as if I'm going to be a Halloween Ghost. It's particularly effective with white sheets! ;-) I make pointy hands above my head, left hand in left corner, right hand in right corner of the cover, and then grab those corners firmly. I can now extract my head back out of it to see what I am doing. The quilt is lying on the bed and I grab the corners of the quilt with my quilt-covered hands, bring them together slightly, and then shake the cover over the quilt, turning it the right way out again. A second person can be helpful but isn't essential. Then I just line up the free quilt edges in the bottom edges of the cover and shake the other way, and close the cover when everything is flat. :thumbsup:

I'm glad you've got an electric blanket. In a climate like yours, that's an essential. We have one too. I've actually just washed it (in t'bathtub!), and it still works! It's amazing that they make washable types these days. 

@*knightrider* , aren't you super crafty! Love the recycling.  Has Chorro got a nice patchwork rug like that? ;-) And those headboards!

@*frlsgirl* , I think Germans make the best bedding - that down bedding, even in summer weight, is just so light and lovely. As a kid my head used to just float on those large square down pillows at night. I think the effect diminished a bit as I got older and my head got heavier. :shock: Suddenly it began sinking, sometimes hitting bottom. Oh well. The price for my future intellect I suppose! ;-) 

Speaking of, yesterday my husband brought home a brain model someone didn't want, with the words, "Hey, I've got half a brain!" :rofl: Endless mileage. We've put it on top of the bookshelf, next to the Earth globe, and adjacent to the owls.

I sort of have to care for our bedding properly, or we sneeze ourselves to death. Dust! Dustmite! Little flakes of human skin feeding the dustmite! We humans are continuously shedding miniature cornflakes from our skin surfaces. Between that and fabric fibre dust, and the dog shedding its hair and bringing in assorted outdoors particles, no wonder the place never stays clean for long...

The new cover finally got here and is soaking in water with a few drops of (real) lavender oil. I'll hang it out later, and tonight, we'll use our new bedding for the first time, a sort of early Christmas present. The new cotton quilt is already soaked, washed and line-dried.

:Angel: :blueunicorn:​ 
I've got nothing exciting to report because I spent all of last week writing an article about low-toxicity housing. It was only supposed to take two days and be 2000 words, but ended up taking four days and coming in at over 4000 words. It's just one of those topics - and then the fifth day was spent chasing illustrations and editing a couple of dozen words out of the article to make sure there was no wasted space, no redundancies, etc.

It's a useful topic to do, but also a depressing one. As a 19-year-old taking Environmental Toxicology I was in shock for months; up until then I had thought that dangerous synthetic chemicals were properly regulated. They're not... people really suck, they're supposed to have brains and consciences but often show limited evidence of either. I ended up re-reading _Silent Spring_ and _Slow Death By Rubber Duck_, and found some really interesting stories online, e.g. about a granite benchtop that was as radioactive as uranium ore! Granite usually is slightly radioactive, like a fair few rocks that make up our background radiation, but occasionally there are hotspots in it, and people making granite sculptures, benchtops etc don't usually run around with a Geiger counter. :rofl:

So I ended up with square eyes and computer fatigue, and completely "written out". I'm doing house cleaning, Christmas decorating and all the other chores that were on the back burner last week. Yesterday, after a monster day on Monday, I collapsed into a jelly and slept most of the day. Brett says, "Take it easy, don't work too hard."  I'm going to de-spider and de-dust the carport and pergola today, with a pressure jet, and scrub all the outdoors furniture,, and wash down the window exteriors. Typical early summer routine. The two timber entry doors will need re-sanding and re-finishing after cleanup, but this is actually a pleasure, because the doors are so nice:



And here's the potted Albany Woollybush we bring in at Christmas, in last year's finery:


Aussie Christmas Tree – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

The tree is in, but dressing it up is on today's to-do list.
Hope everyone is having a good Christmas lead-up! :charge:


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## Knave

I love the poem! Merry Christmas to you!!

Mine is a busy lead up. Yesterday we went out of town to do a bit of shopping. Today I had to play hairdresser, catch up and then take my oldest to the dentist. 

Tomorrow we are pushing cows around 16 miles, then I have an errand to run. Then we are celebrating a birthday and then a Christmas concert for the littlest one. Also, unimportantly, our favorite show is at season finale when we return. We all watch it together on Wednesdays, and we get excited about the finales. Lol

The next day we have another busy day, then there is another group of cows to move around and preg and another Christmas party. 

I am excited but also a bit overwhelmed. I guess I will have to remember to live in the moment and not worry.


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## SueC

Here's a clip of Romeo I took in October. Brett laughed when I showed this to him, so I thought I might post it.


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## lostastirrup

Going to have to get caught up on your thread this week! So good to be back!


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## Caledonian

Romeo's such a sweetheart. Especially when he said hello.

Presenting his tail for a scratch is hilarious.


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## frlsgirl

Very interesting twist on the traditional Christmas tree. 

Do you celebrate Christmas on the 24th or the 25th? In the US it’s the 25th but in Germany, it’s on the 24th. 

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas!


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## SueC

@*Knave* , I hope you are all letting your hair down a little now, so close to Christmas! :hug: Me, I'm trying to find a fence fault on Christmas Eve before the cattle start turning into infrastructure bulldozers, and hoping our house water pump won't pack up at this time, as I mentioned to @*egrogan* on her journal, because she too has been having a typical smallholders' pre-Christmas experience, helped along by Murphy. More here... https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...re-stars-trail-431322/page206/#post1970652527


@*lostastirrup* , I'm keeping my fingers crossed for your examination results. If all goes well, will you be Ms Engineer after Christmas, or do you still have some time to go in your degree? I hope you have a great Christmas. :hug:

@*Caledonian* , like a lot of people who've moved onto properties with horses, I'm doing less riding because I'm doing more maintenance - but one of the consolation prizes is routines like those, and frequent daily social contact with all the animals. I'm keeping the cattle out of the top paddocks at the moment due to fence repairs, so the horses and donkeys line up in the morning to go out into The Common, which they see as their playground - 8ha pasture, 50ha bush with tracks they like to use for running and exploration. I put on their fly veils, as the Aussie bush flies are shocking around Christmas, and open the gate for them, and instead of leaving, they all queue up in an orderly manner to have pleasantries and scratches with me, beginning with herd leader Julian, who is developing a very soft side to his personality, having free ranged with us for over a year now, and having therefore turned into a happy horse who gets to have choose-your-own-adventures on a daily basis. Sometimes I'm out there for 20 minutes getting around to all the nine equines, all of whom want a slice of the attention - and I don't feed treats in the mornings, so it really is just the hobnobbing they queue up for... 

I hope you have a nice Christmas up in Scotland, and that you stay warm and cosy! :hug:

inkunicorn::blueunicorn:​ 

I'm still digging up home movies, and have a few to share that some of you might enjoy. We'll start with Australian wildlife. This is a black-shouldered kite Brett captured on camera from our place:






And this is a bandicoot foraging:






And this is mid-2013, when we took a 400km round trip from Redmond to Donnybrook to pick up this dog from Donnybrook Farm Dog Rescue. We drove via Boyup Brook, a small country town. This was a welcome break from house building, which we were in the middle of at the time. So here's a little clip of Boyup Brook en route to collecting our dog:






And this is just after collecting the dog. We returned home via Bridgetown and Manjimup, which also has fabulous scenery.






Jess was just under a year old when we adopted her - she had been driven to some bushland and dumped there by someone, and thankfully been picked up by the ranger. She's a fabulous dog, a working-line kelpie, and we think someone bought her as a cute puppy for their children and then got rid of her when she grew up and became too much trouble... she loves and trusts visiting children. Kelpies aren't cut out for a suburban existence, unless living with a dedicated jogger or cyclist or other person who ensures they get enough stimulation and exercise. If they don't, they will bark and dig up your garden etc etc. Out on the rangelands, they will do 60km on a working day, rounding up sheep or cattle - they are a tough, hyperactive dog who loves to work.

We take Jess everywhere, and discovered within a week of her arrival that she loves "rounding up" the waves on the beach. This is her within a fortnight of adoption, visiting Frenchman Bay with us and Toby, the late Border Collie we used to walk for our neighbours when we lived in town:






And this is Jess at Lake Towerinning with us, an inland lake north-west of Kojonup, that same winter:






...fabulous dog...

Hope everyone has a great Christmas Eve. Or Christmas Eve Eve, as may be if you're in a timezone lagging behind us! ;-)


PS: @*frlsgirl* , we do both at our house. Isn't it nice being adults and being able to choose to do things that way? The other thing we're choosing to do is to have ice-cream for lunch on really hot days!  I've been making berry icecream with our own berries - masses of youngberries at the moment, which are like blackberries... 600g of those blended into a mush, mixed with cream whipped up from a 600mL carton and sweetened with 6 tsp of sugar, then frozen - heavenly, super-fruity, and not sickly sweet. Delicious... Sometimes we choose to have dessert first, too. Being an adult is pretty good. Hope you, DH, Ana and dog have a lovely Christmas! :hug:


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## SueC

*BABY BANDICOOTS*

Going through our photo album I came across these adorable photos of baby bandicoots I found a few years ago under their deceased mother (run over by 4WD) when walking the dog on a local bushwalk. It was just the dog and me and a leash and not even any suitable pockets, so I wondered how I could get them to the vet - it was half an hour's hike back to the car and I didn't want to stress the poor things. Sudden inspiration! I took off one of my long woolly walking socks and slipped the baby bandicoots inside. They were snug, secure and could breathe, and I very carefully carried them in this dummy pouch, while barefoot in one of my walking shoes! The vet examined the babies and alerted a wildlife carer. We visited the carer and bandicoots a few days later and made a donation for their care and eventual release. Here's the photos:




















Brett handling the perky brother-sister pair at a Volunteer Wildlife Carer's Residence in Albany, Western Australia. I was very relieved that the dehydrated, distressed babies found on a hike had survived and were looking very cheery and well cared for less than 48 hours later.













The female baby Southern Brown Bandicoot was keen to explore the world outside the artificial pouch, while her brother apparently mostly preferred to sleep. The male put on 20% in weight in under 48 hours after coming into care. A bellyful of milk makes all the difference in the world.

Here's some home movies I found from our visit. In the first, the carer explains the ins and outs of what she does with the orphans.






And here's some more:


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## knightrider

Merry Christmas to you, @SueC! I so appreciate how encouraging you are to Forum members, always something kind to say to make us all feel positive. Your journal is so fun and interesting, bringing spice to our lives. We are lucky to have you on the Forum!


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## Knave

Yes to everything @knightrider said!

We finished up most of the cow work on Saturday. Of course they are fed everyday and there is other work to be done, but these are not usually my jobs.  

I hope you have a lovely Christmas.


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## Caledonian

I hope you have a lovely Christmas too @SueC. It wouldn't be the same on here without you!

I wholeheartedly agree with Knightrider as well.


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## SueC

Awwww, @*knightrider* , @*Knave* , @*Caledonian* ! :dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05:

As we say here, takes one to know one! ;-) You're all kind and encouraging folks as well.  And I love reading what you all have to say about things too. This really is such a nice little online community...

I hope everyone is having a good Christmas Day! It's Boxing Day here and I'm having an early cup of tea, about to make Romeo's breakfast. I'm up really early - it's not even 5am - but then I actually spent most of Christmas Day lounging around being a jelly! :Angel:

I had such a low-energy day yesterday I haven't even opened all my presents yet! When I returned with our big morning mugs of tea yesterday morning, I found a big parcel had suddenly appeared on my bedside table, and Brett was sitting there with an expectant and happy expression. I picked it up and felt the contours and said, "Oh, it's a book!" He said, "Of course it's a book!" :rofl: It was a big coffee table book on The Cure, just out this year. He said that was a natural thing to get, seeing they had been my thing for several years now and that I was incessantly playing _Disintegration_ and _Bloodflowers_, which is actually an exaggeration. :rofl: If he wants to know what incessant playing of favourite albums looks like, he should get in one of these:

:tardis:

...and come visit my teenage self. :Angel: I had my head encased in earphones (the encasing kind, that all my fellow fossils will remember) on a nightly basis, sitting crosslegged in the floor in the dark, completely deconstructing instrument-by-instrument and then putting it all back together again. I only had a handful of albums, so I got to know them very well, and learnt a lot about how music is put together. And now, in my 40s, I've got access to a music library so huge I couldn't get around to a quarter of it if I gave it that kind of intensive treatment. And where was _Bloodflowers_? That's right, on Brett's iPod which he lent me about four years ago for routine outdoors work, so he really started all of that, _ner ner_. I remember going, "Oh, you listen to The Cure?" and he recommended that album to me as a starting point. He says it was a fair swap for my introducing him to the music of Mike Scott. Example here:






That's been one of my favourite artists since about age 15, though I am sadly lacking in CDs released after this particular one, a situation I plan to remedy in 2019... Mike Scott and I are both huge fans of WB Yeats, and he's actually done a whole album of Yeats poetry to music I don't have yet, for example. This has actually been the most durable artist for me - never stopped liking what he did, in more than 30 years now - with U2 I stopped liking what they did along the way (though _Songs of Innocence_ is as good as any of their early material). And The Cure is something I've warmed to in midlife, and I still don't warm to their early material, so they're a sort of reverse U2 situation for me. And then there's dozens of other artists I really really like, but I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole today.

So, I spent most of Christmas Day in bed reading, until my head was full to exploding. Here's a little reflection on all that: I got really deflated by the apparent need of many artists to have substance-abuse orgies to fuel their so-called creativity. Admittedly, this was mostly at a period when I didn't like this band, I thought they were imbeciles as a teenager, and that was probably an astute assessment in some ways. They certainly weren't good role models at that point, which, to be fair, they never aspired to be - but as a teenager, having good role models was important to me, since I didn't have them in my birth family, and I was very choosy about my music because of that.

Now, of course, I no longer need role models to show me ways in which a useful, fulfilling, positive life can be lived, and how to be decent and fair - plus I've been one myself / am one. :Angel: Yet it still puzzles me how pickling one's brain in alcohol, cocaine, LSD, etc with boring regularity and in huge quantities is such a widespread hobby, and not just amongst artists. I'm not saying this looking down my nose, I'm saying this with alarm and puzzlement. But then, I'm a total museum piece because I stayed away from all that so thoroughly. I know now that PTSD and alcohol/drugs aren't an advisable mix, but I didn't even know I actually had PTSD all my life, until four years ago! (Forest/trees thing) ...looking back, I had a very good survival instinct as a young person, and knew that I didn't need any more trouble than I was already dealing with.

Perhaps PTSD is my creativity drug, bwahaha. I mean, it seems to me that perhaps some people who've not really known major adversity in their childhoods seem to want to have chemically-induced near-death experiences and descend into the dark underworld at all costs, so they can write "profound" things. Well, I don't think that works very well, for the record, not from the observer's end; to me that always comes across as pretentious and hollow and imbecilic, and I always yawn about the material that comes from such processes. Perhaps later on, in the case of the lyricists of this particular band (or should that be, chief lyricist and Fuehrer :rofl, they'd experienced enough _actual_ adversity, or witnessed enough adversity outside their own bubble and cared about it, to start writing really profound things, which they actually did. But Robert Smith really was something of a self-important prat in his adolescence, and had I taught him, would probably have spent a lot of time removing chewing gum from under the student desks at lunchtime. :rofl:

The substance-mediated dark underworlds seem to conjure up little kiddie wading pools of darkness for artists to splash around in; if you've grown up with physical and emotional abuse, public scapegoating, and a complete absence of genuine warmth and nurturing in your birth family, or other forms of early adversity like that, you automatically have a whole ocean of darkness at your constant disposal, should you require it for artistic inspiration, bwahahaha. By the way, none of that hurts anymore, not at this stage of my life, but perhaps it's still useful to have known that, because I'm certainly not stressing that my creativity might dry up anytime soon.

So, can you tell I've had my head in a book a whole day, puzzling about the human condition? Surrounded by Christmas lights, with Brett reading too and eating great food at regular intervals. We started with nut/chocolate horns for breakfast (new recipe I tried the other day), and during the day ate various delicious salads, berry icecream, berry flan made yesterday etc. At lunchtime, Brett had made a wonderful stir-fry. Outside was brutally hot, so I just got up to shift the watering hoses around from time to time. Jess got a soccer ball and a whole tube of proper tennis balls for Christmas, and was totally delighted (she'd ruined all her previous ones and was down to balloons and a few squeaky toys which she seems to consider beneath her dignity these days).

Miraculously, at the end of Christmas day I managed to get upright for a couple of hours and even had plans to watch something nice on the sofa with Brett, instead of returning to bed; but after chores, it got too late. I have days like this at intervals where I am a complete pudding, and Brett says it's because I overdo it at other times. Maybe he's right. Or maybe I'm turning into a fossil! 

By the way, the pump problem is fixed (we need new filters, at Christmas of all times when that shop is shut for two weeks, typical Murphy - but I rinsed them out yesterday night so they'll do us another week or two I think, water pressure is good again) but still haven't found that fence fault, though admittedly I couldn't be bothered looking for it on Christmas Day. Better luck today, I hope - the weather is cooler, for starters. inkunicorn::blueunicorn:


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## egrogan

Hurray for the pump (mostly) working! 

Isn’t laying in bed for a lazy day of reading wonderful? Lovely husband and I both happened to give the other cookbooks for Christmas, so our big plans for tomorrow are sitting by the fire with them and planning some tasty new things to eat between own and New Year’s. That’s pretty much the story of our vacation time...

Give all your noses a pat for me. Here are a couple of ours hoping to find more candy canes earlier today


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## gottatrot

Merry Christmas!
I loved those little bandicoots. So cute. They remind me of rats, which of course I am fond of since having my little orphans I raised.
The other night at the barn, a rat about five months old popped over the top of Amore's feeder and sat there looking at me. Then later when I was over in Hero's pen, he ran across the sand and hid under the water trough. After having rats for several months, they no longer startle me and all I see is a little personality rather than a pest.


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## SueC

@*gottatrot* , yes, rats (and mice) are actually equally cute critters as bandicoots, but because of what they do when they get into a house or farm shed, we bait and trap in those locations. I've often reflected on the irony, but I don't like having my belongings shredded, rodent droppings all over the place, or the idea of getting leptospirosis... A good friend in Sydney had a pet rat. Someone else I knew there had a 2m diamond python, whom they fed mice to from the pet shop...

@*egrogan* , noses patted!  That's such a cute shot. Besides the usual smallholder dramas, your Christmas is sounding perfect. Did you create anything new from the gastronomic tomes yet? I've got another, different nut horn recipe to try out, and we've just eaten the last of the first delicious batch. I spent hours in recent days going over and over the central fence trying unsuccessfully to find the fault - everything _looks_ normal, and I've checked every connection and insulator more than once. All vegetation near the fence pruned etc. Maybe someone draped a super-thin wire between a live and earth wire somewhere as a practical joke? In a hidden spot, because I see nothing.

Yesterday, two calves went through the fence somewhere and the big Friesian steers started getting toey and showing a strong desire to follow them, so I rigged up our backup unit on the peripheral sections of fencing currently disconnected from the central fence, where the big fault is. Although our main earthing sytem is in the central fence, the peripheral fence is keeping up a good charge with the backup unit anyway, so at least I don't have to have any nightmares about bovine bulldozers now, and can get on with other tasks than obsessing over the unfound fence fault. Breathing room...


Here's some more home movies from the archive. The first is sooo cute. It's Jess, who's always trying to show us how clever she is in many new ways, eating a bone upside down. Now Jess has a special bone-eating spot in our house - on her sofa, on a towel - but she was trying to show us a new trick and we have a concrete floor, so we let her. She's very good at holding things in her paws...






Here's a lovely moth we found on our front door:






Emus grazing with horses. They really do remind me of giant chickens...






Another emu:


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## frlsgirl

Jess is adorable with her bone. Lou used to love chewing on bones when he was younger and still had all his teeth. He could never quite figure out how to hold the bone with his paws, so he would use random objects around the house to help him out; his favorite was my 5 pound set of weights; it took me a while to figure out where the white sticky residue came from


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## SueC

:rofl:, @frlsgirl !


*A SLOTHY NOTE FROM THE SOFA*

We're settling into the typical midsummer pattern of having siestas between 10am and 2pm - no outdoors except sprinkler-shifting (solar bore only works while there is sunlight) because of the heat and horrid burning UV. The Australian summer of tennis is here to help with that pattern. Every midsummer, I turn into a daytime couch potato to watch the live Australian tennis tournaments. The Hopman Cup has just started, and right now it's Garbine Muguruza versus Angelique Kerber, while I'm typing this and Brett is making a delicious smoked ham / mushroom / celery salad - as he did for Christmas Eve. The breadmaker is squeaking with its load of pizza dough - in about 20 minutes I'm going to roll out four little flat pizzas and do an Alsace style topping of yoghurty soft cheese, thinly sliced onions and bacon.

I'm not completely idle. This morning at 6am I let in the three younger horses who'd decided to spend the night in the Common. Those three are too precious to drink from the _scary_ farm dam (all three stable raised initially), so they need to come in to the internal paddocks to drink from our big drums and bathtubs. The cattle are banished from the internal paddocks just now because of fence issues, otherwise I'd just leave the gate open. I noticed that we had some dew last night and that the horses' hooves were moist, and thought to myself in passing that this would be a great time to trim Sunsmart's front feet. Then I went indoors and back to bed.

After the requisite cups of tea, and toast from the sunflower ryebread I made yesterday - with sliced apple and walnuts on the side and, for me, two boiled eggs and a little ham (Brett doesn't believe in boiled eggs as a breakfast food), and some reading in bed, we did get up at 8-ish and start doing useful things. Brett fed Romeo for me, to save me from mixing up a huge bucket of feed, because I had some cryosurgery on a finger a couple of days back to zap a neoplasm that was close to the finger joint. The doctor and I puzzled over the thing, and our best hypothesis is that it was transmitted by a virus being shed from a horse with warts whom I handled / groomed / washed a couple of years back (not my horse) - I have cracks on the index finger where the reins run, and that's exactly where this thing formed.

Let me backtrack a little about Romeo's breakfast. When we decided to get up, we opened the French doors to air the bedroom as usual, and Jess was lying in the grass against the house wall. I asked her if she wanted her tummy tickled, and she turned her belly up and made pleased noises at receiving this attention. And then Romeo's head appeared from behind the corner, and he went, _"Wohohohoho!"_ and rubbed his head against me. Brett and I both laughed out loud; the dog wasn't pleased at this intrusion from basking in the sunshine of undivided human attention, but alas, Romeo had heard us talking and had come to remind us he was ready for breakfast...

After seeing to the horse's nutrition, Brett did a manure run with the wheelbarrow, and I dealt with the cartridge of our compost toilet. This time of year, there are little midges that like to breed and hatch in the cartridge, and it's not fun when the toilet is erupting with newly hatched midges flying out when you open the lid. The eggs are probably present in the chaff that is used to line the cartridge, and the midge hatching cycle takes three weeks, so you can prevent midge eruptions from your toilet by emptying the cartridge just short of three weeks in summer. The added bonus of this is that the cartridge is light then, so less chance of back injury, and there isn't too much _product_ so it can all be mixed nicely and easily into the hot compost heap, and then covered with a wheelbarrow of horse manure and another layer of lawn clippings.

Did I already mention that last time I did this, I was listening to my iPod on random play, and The Stranglers' classic _Golden Brown_ came on just as I was mixing the cartridge contents into the compost? Naturally, I did this: :rofl: ...the old subversive post-punk song with the harpsichord and the complex rhythm, ostensibly about a girl but really about "recreational" substances that came from distant lands... and when in Australia, they once claimed it was about Vegemite... :rofl: ...anyway, here was another interpretation kindly suggested by the universe...






I just had to hose out the cartridge after this, feed the liquid to a grateful fruit tree, and re-line the cartridge with two scoops of chaff before closing the whole wall compartment back up. And then... (drum roll)... I girded my loins, and trimmed Romeo's hooves. My rasp is blunt, but at least his hooves were soft-ish. Still haven't managed to get hold of a rag wheel attachment for the bench grinder to sharpen up the rasp, as per the clip we did with Greg Coffey doing this magic trick a while back...

Half an hour later, I had sweat dripping off the tip of my nose and was ready for a shower and a siesta. We've made berry icecream again; there's still tonnes of berries ripening daily, and we're even freezing packets of youngberries and boysenberries for later use. The Morello cherries look about a fortnight away; some of our apple trees shouldn't be too far behind. Our favourite plum tree - the Satsuma - suffered root disturbance this year because I put the compost on it too late - the harvest off that is usually phenomenal, but will be meagre this year. Waaah! What about our concentrated plum sauce? Ah well, the broken foot did put me behind in the garden this year... and at least I didn't kill the tree...

The pizzas and salad were delicious; Angelique Kerber won; now it's Alex Zverev versus David Ferrer, the green-eyed Spaniard. It's broadcast on commercial TV, which we normally avoid like the plague, and the idiocy of the advertisements is _astonishing_ to a non-regular viewer. There's just been some woman trying to sell me a tin of whey protein for weight management at the "special price" of $25 for not even a kilogram. Do you know how much ricotta cheese you can buy for $25? That's largely whey protein as well, and doesn't come with a plastic container if you play it right. (You can buy big chunks of it from the deli, wrapped in paper.)

Sometime after peak UV, I shall be trimming Benjamin's hooves. His mum Nelly had her pedicure last night; I'm still shocked at her feet - chronically collapsed heels, hugely stretched white line at the toe - but the angle is so much better than it was when we first got these two donkeys in spring. Here's skewbald Nelly and dun Benjamin, with Julian:



Speaking of Julian, he was so funny early this morning when I opened the gate to let the three younger horse back into the internal paddocks. He moved right into the middle of the gateway, and then just stood there, resting a hind leg. Just like Sunsmart used to do when he was paddock boss. And just like with Sunsmart, I grabbed Julian's halter and moved him out of the gateway so the others could come in - while he was going, "Not fair, monkey!" :rofl: I think they both have that gene from their father. Same little tricks, those two. And guess who's turned up to the garden gate to see if I will hobnob, when I last went out to rotate the sprinkers? :Angel:

Hard to know whom to support in this tennis match. They're both wonderful players, but I think Ferrer is the underdog here, so I'll cheer for him. He's two points away from squaring up by taking the second set. Good luck! He's mid-30s, and sport being what it is, will be retiring in the next couple of years, and I'll miss his wonderful, dogged, never-say-die playing. Yes! He's got the second set! They'll have to play a decider now. Well done!


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## SueC

*A SCENIC OMISSION - SPRING WILDFLOWERS AT PEAK HEAD*

On the 25th of October this year, three months after my triple foot fractures, Brett and I did the Peak Head walk with the wildflowers there in spectacular bloom, and because this is the same week we were offered the two donkeys Nelly and Benjamin, I completely forgot to post the beautiful photos we took on that walk, so here goes!


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## lostastirrup

This one is stunning. It looks so vast!


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## SueC

It also feels vast when climbing up it! :rofl:


The South Coast has quite a few places that make you feel like you're a little ant, which is quite accurate in the scheme of things. I find that oddly comforting and inspirational!


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## SueC

*HO HUM, HAPPY NEW YEAR AND ALL THAT*

I got up this morning and opened the refrigerator, only to be confronted with last year's fruit salad and last year's Seafood Marinara. Last year's dishes were still in the sink, and Romeo turned up to tell us he'd not been fed since last year. As this was an emergency, I dared myself and went to the shed in my birthday suit to mix up his feed. Numerous Australians don't wear much when they sleep in the summertime, and it was too hot to bother with the trappings of civilisation just for a little outdoors jaunt. Besides, all we need is two figleaves and then we can really play Eden at our place.










It's a little ironic that my first journal entry for 2019 is in my online journal. I actually have a paper journal again for 2019, one of those structured ones discussed here:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...s-other-people-479466/page125/#post1970629613

That's after four years without one, and what do you think happened? I sat down yesterday to handwrite seriously for the first time in four years, and found my eyes were unable to focus on my own handwriting. The near point has now moved too far out for that - loss of lens elasticity blah blah. Because it's a thick journal and therefore closer to my eyes, I really noticed this - I was still getting away with it signing the odd card, and writing the shopping list standing up.

We're in our mid-40s, and for the past couple of years, Brett and I have both been reading books held out a considerable distance on our arms, rather than near our faces as really young people do, and increasing the brightness of our bedside lamp globes; it was inevitable we'd need glasses, and this is the year, finally, for both of us. When reading or writing on computer screens we don't notice it much yet, as the screens are further out than when you work with paper, and because screens are so well illuminated. 

So, Brett asked me formally to go on a date together to the optometrist, to choose some cute glasses. :loveshower: inkunicorn::blueunicorn: Then we can both pretend far more convincingly to be librarians. Brett said he wants a monocle, for its gravitas and because it should really be half the price. Me, I'm just looking forward to not being cross-eyed anymore when doing close-up work, not getting tension headaches that start in the eyeballs, not causing unintended bleeding when cutting my own nails, and actually being able to see handwriting and print in focus again, in reasonable proximity to my face.

I'd like to get some this shape, like my sunglasses - this photo is from our first trip to Tassie in 2007...










This is on our South Coast, out at Frenchmans Bay:










...that kind of works. I might go for red or purple frames, I think.


The Hopman Cup is having their traditional 24-hour break to allow the athletes to 1) get inebriated for New Year, and 2) get over their hangovers somewhat before going back into battle. This evening, in Perth, Western Australia, when play resumes, Serena Williams will meet Roger Federer in the Mixed Doubles when the US plays Switzerland - a historic first on-court meeting. It would be so funny if she aced him. Yesterday, she aced Stefanos Tsitsipas, which was hilarious. :rofl: Roger Federer said in a press conference that he's already been aced by her sister Venus, in an exhibition match a while back, and that he aced her right back. :rofl:

Other fun: Brett and I just started Season Two of _The Good Place_, after getting Season One for Christmas. We just had to, after the big twist at the end, bwahahaha! :rofl:






It's as funny as _Dead Like Me_, _Wonderfalls_, _Sea Change_, _Doc Martin_ and all that sort of thing.  Good comedy is priceless...

*Happy New Year everyone!* :winetime:

...oh, I forgot, those people in the US who like to think they're so advanced are actually still back in 2018 at present. You're all living in the past!  Happy New Year to you, when the world turns enough! ;-)


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## Knave

Lol, we are stuck in the past aren’t we? I think a date to the optometrist is a great idea. I also think I should copy you and start a paper journal...

The girls and I have been playing artist yesterday and today. We are ending the year happily. Husband and I went on a very cold and short ride, and we ate pizza and plan on watching a movie and dancing.


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## SueC

This sounds _perfect_! I hope you have a whale of a time! :hug: 


Big hugs to all!  You're such a creative bunch I wonder if you're all going to turn into fireworks at midnight...


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## frlsgirl

Time zones are so confusing. It’s 2019 in Australia and Germany but still 2018 in Oklahoma, for a couple of hours anyway. 

Happy New Year!


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## SueC

Great idea sent our way this morning:










:rofl: :rofl: 

Thank you, Elizabeth! 

Yep, we'd be in it! ;-)


*READING GLASSES!*

Further to what I said in my New Year's post: We bought reading glasses yesterday and then oohed and aahed over the clarity of the print in the books we were holding nearly at arm's length before that. Everything just leapt out and reading was so easy!!! And the book is back near the face, as it once was! So we had a reading party and stayed up irresponsibly late reading till 11.30pm. So we're a little wan after only 7 hours of sleep instead of the 8-9 we actually need. Brett put his back on first thing in the morning - he looks like a librarian!  :rofl: I have two; one crazy pair for reading which is a fruit bowl colour, and one nice, plain pair that's good for screen distance.

We should have done this at least two years ago, possibly five, but humans are seriously strange, us included. Every now and then we'd say, "We really need to get glasses!" and then not. I changed the lightbulbs in the bedside lamps two years ago to make them brighter, and I still got eye strain. Yesterday night... wow - no eye strain, read really fast, and now I have a chance of actually getting through those books stacked on my bedside table!

The most incredible thing was actually standing in front of the test print instruction sign at the iCare reading glasses stand at our pharmacy at the allotted 33cm distance (mmmm... everything blurry) and then putting on the +1.5 glasses, and suddenly everything was crisp and clear, just like when I was a kid and when I could examine ladybirds almost field-microscope-like with my eyes, at about tip of nose range, which is a preschooler's optical near point... I was exclaiming, "_OMG, this is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!_"

And when we got home, it was the same. We sat down with our books and oohed and aahed. Brett actually went around the house and did things like look at the knobs on the cooker, calling, "Come look at this! Wow!"

:rofl: :loveshower:

Brett said, "I can see clearly now..."

...and here's my favourite version of that song!






Thank goodness for modern optics. And for kidney transplants, too - now a reality in our circle. There are advantages to living here and now.

Hope everyone's year is starting swimmingly.


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## SueC

It's been a while since I made an entry. Not much to report as I'm still a pudding!

It's Australian tennis month, which I traditionally use as an excuse to vegetate and watch tennis matches half the day and only do the bare minimum in a sort of homesteader's holiday.  Trying to catch up with a pile of cards I should have answered way back when I broke my foot, but didn't; and a whole bunch of other stuff from the to-do list that fell by the wayside last year - in-between tennis. Haven't ridden this year yet, but thankfully the horses are self-exercising - which is more than I am, bwahaha. We thought about it and I'm going to get myself a skipping rope for some much-needed cardio I might actually do - play one song, skip to it, maybe do this two or three times a day would be a good start, and something I can face. Can't face our bicycles just now for some reason - the heat and flies and current aversion to getting up ultra early to avoid that is one major factor - and I'm not a runner.

Till I get the skipping rope next week, I can also do pretend dressage tests on the front lawn - that's also the kind of fun thing I might actually be able to get myself to do! You know, walk, trot, skip for canter, change legs every three, two, one strides etc - as a pretend horse. I'm sure I'm not the only person here on HF who's done that before - it's a good way to learn an entire dressage test without your horse learning it as well and therefore anticipating the moves on the actual day, which is a no-no...

About the tennis: I'm never a dedicated sports watcher at any other time, but tennis has only two people for one ball, and I can cope with that. Hordes of people and one ball always confuse the hell out of me and give me headaches!

On an equine-related note:




*"NEW DONKEY" HOOF CORRECTION PROGRESS REPORT*

When Nelly and Benjamin came to live with us a couple of months ago, they had some serious hoof problems. Nelly had completely collapsed heels in front, and significantly collapsed heels at the rear, which gave her really bad hoof angles and put a lot of strain on her front legs. In front, she was basically skating on a surface that started at the hairline and ended at the overlength toe, with the heel squashed so badly it was part of the running surface. Donkeys usually have well-developed and high heels, and far higher heels than horses - together with the frog, and probably more so than the frog, in the donkey, they act as rubbery shock absorbers / rocky terrain negotiators.

Healthy donkey hoof:










You can see in this photo taken soon after the new donkeys arrived that Nelly's angles are really off:



She's coming along well - on the first trim I gave her a walking surface separate from her heel, and on the last trim, consolidated that work to gradually restore healthy heels to her. She's no longer walking collapsed - the pressure is off the heel, and should allow it to grow back over time. Nelly looks so much more comfortable now.

Benjamin, on the left, had pretty good angles, although he'd also been incorrectly trimmed at flatter angles than donkey hooves should have. That was easily fixed with him, in one trim - he has great, tough, springy heels. But he did have a rather hair-raising problem of his own: Large sections of hoof wall were missing in this donkey, having broken away from the white line, going halfway up his hooves in places. There was no active rot in the white lines. In the first trim, I just got the angles and length correct and buffed ragged edges off the broken-away walls with the fine side of the rasp. The good thing is that he had healthy soles, and these could carry the weight - in donkeys, the sole is much thicker. I just had to level his soles to give him a better walking surface.

Both donkeys have been on mineral / vitamin supplementation, and it's making a difference to the quality of the horn already. Ben had rather crumbly sole horn; when I trimmed him yesterday, I noticed this was no longer the case - the fresh material was firm and elastic. Last night's trim was very satisfying: The hoof walls were stabilising - he hasn't lost any more - and two trims from now, should be right back to ground level all around. On the worst hooves, he's got broken wall on both sides, so it's really important that the walking surface I make for him is as close to the ground as comfortable for him, and dead level, at the correct angles, so he doesn't roll over, and so his wall can grow back straight.

I'm so pleased with the progress of Nelly and Ben's feet, and that they came to us: They are the most wonderful characters - super dispositions, incredibly social - they see you and they come to hang out. If I sit in the bottom tier of the garden, which is currently open to equines, they come and stand either side of me and just hang out. Just as they did when I took that photo above. These two are unbelievably cool cucumbers. They also follow the horses everywhere. I think Nelly has a thing for Sunsmart. Mary Lou, our Irish Long-Hair, has a thing for Benjamin. Don Quixote has a thing for Nelly. It's interesting how the introduction of two new characters affects herd dynamics!


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## SueC

While we're on the subject of donkeys, I just loooooooove this photograph I saw online:










Also, there was a lovely article from NZ on "donkey therapy" for mental health:

https://www.horsetalk.co.nz/2018/10/12/equine-donkey-therapy-zen-mental-health/

Horses are great. Donkeys have something extra special, though - they are so, so calm... and those ears...


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## gottatrot

SueC said:


> Both donkeys have been on mineral / vitamin supplementation, and it's making a difference to the quality of the horn already. Ben had rather crumbly sole horn; when I trimmed him yesterday, I noticed this was no longer the case - the fresh material was firm and elastic.


Nice to hear the donkey hooves are doing so well! I've noticed a big difference in hoof wall quality from when I've given minerals/vitamins and when I haven't.


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## frlsgirl

I’ve never actually seen a donkey hoof from the bottom. Thanks for sharing.


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## SueC

*HOT DAY, COOL HORSE*

At age 34, Romeo has an all-access pass to our garden to eat on the lawns - that and his twice-daily big bucket of "porridge" is a must for him to get enough calories these days, because he's been losing teeth for years. He knows exactly where the best places are in a heatwave. 



We had a scorcher in the high 30s (Celsius) yesterday, and this was him behind the house, as seen from our office window, where he talks to us through the window:



It's a great place for noontime shade, and of course, he has a nice bucket of cool water there.

Here's what it looks like from the outside:



We're amazed he's gotten this old and is still really interested in being around!

This was him with Chasseur in the lower garden tier the other day (where other equines are also allowed sometimes):




*CHRISTMAS AT OUR PLACE*



If you'd like to spy on the bookshelves, you can click several times to _really_ enlarge this one: ;-)



Albany Woollybush and decorations:




Food... this is tacos at our place, served on a mountain of salad, with a side of guacamole:



Brett's fabulous fruit salad, now with our own boysenberries growing in the food garden:



Making chocolate nut horns (brioche pastry)... roll out the pastry:



Cut one third of the rectangle into a fringe and put on some filling:



Roll up and shape into crescents:



Put on trays and bake:



Cooling on a rack and ready to munch:



These shapes were so cool to make!

I also made another type of nut horn, but neglected to take photos, so will have to repeat that recipe soon. What a pity! Hee hee...


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## egrogan

Mmmmm you’re making me hungry and I’ve just had my breakfast (homemade English muffins with strawberry vanilla preserves)


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## SueC

Sounds lovely, @egrogan! And here's one foodie wishing another foodie a wonderful Sunday, while signing off to climb into an Antipodean bed! :ZZZ:


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## SueC

In case anyone wants to know, the Australian Open is really hotting up! We have five Aussies through to the third round - young Ashleigh Barty and Kimberley Birrell, and on the men's side, the three Alexes - totally amazed by the two "other" Alexes I didn't even really know existed, _both_ knocking out higher-ranked competitors last night in Round Two. A real feast! The crowd was just amazing. It's such a nice crowd at the tennis, compared to the hooligans at the football. I love their antics and enthusiasm!


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## SueC

*HEATWAVE!*

Summer heatwaves are starting seriously now - today is our first 40 degree C day this year (104 degrees F), and it's a scorcher out there. On heatwave days, I make sure the stock have enough fresh cool water and that the bees aren't descending on their drinking sources (it helps to have a bee drinker near a stock trough). I get extra vigilant irrigating the house surrounds and small utility paddocks for days ahead of the heatwave forecast, and make sure the more vulnerable plants are well watered again in the early morning (seedlings, tender salad vegetables etc). During the day, I switch the Wobble Tee stations and sections of trickle pipe about hourly. What is a Wobble Tee? It's an Australian sprinkler designed to minimise misting and maximise ground saturation while using very little water, and (like trickle pipes) it's ideal if you have to do daytime watering, as is the case for us with our solar bore which works only during daylight hours.






I showed on the last page how I keep old Romeo cool at these times, but will just re-post the photos, as things look identical again today - when looking out of the window:



View from inside the office - the horse likes to hear us chat and will come to the window he can hear us behind:



Outside view:



If I don't keep him in the garden in the daytime after his breakfast during heatwaves, he tends to go into the shelter shed, which is way too hot on hot days - and I retrieved him from there with the beginnings of heat stress on the first hot day we had this year - his respiratory rate was higher than normal - and stood him in the cool spot and breeze behind the house with a bucket of cool water. If I don't look out for him on days like that, he's likely to get dazed, and could very well get heat stroke or worse.

The other horses and all the donkeys know the drill, and move under the shade of the big Paperbark trees in the Common by mid-morning in summer. Here's an example with two horses under one tree, but I must get out there sometime and take more photos of this...



Typical summer paddocks:



There's still green perennial forage amongst the abundant dry annual grasses - we have various clovers, lotus and kikuyu hanging on. The three younger horses are still a bit on the show condition side from spring flush, and I'm happy to have them on lower-quality forage at present - plus vitamin/mineral mix in a small bucket feed, currently every second night.

If we don't get any rain to keep perennials green this coming week, I will start feeding out tagasaste (tree lucerne) tops, especially to the cattle, who are all growing. The horses already self-serve by taking the side branches, which have an electric line running about 1.5 m from the stem so the horses don't bark-strip. Here's some horses with tagasaste branches I fed out to them, with a shady green tagasaste shelter belt behind them. This stuff is deep-rooted, and green all summer long.



Julian in the foreground, Chasseur behind:



I had to throw a shade cover on my bean trellis today because of the extreme conditions - beans really suffer on days like today. We'd had a whole bunch of beans mixed into a guacamole for lunch, and another batch was ready by lunchtime - I've got Scarlet Runner Beans, Blue Lake and the multicoloured Dragon's Tongue at the moment - a photo of the latter:










We're meant to get a cool change tomorrow, 28 degrees C, possible thunderstorm. Here's hoping! I'm not exhausted anymore - exercising again every day at the moment - and actually feel like riding again, so will do that when the cool change gets here. The rest over Christmas / New Year has worked its magic. Might have to give my horse a wash, he's very dusty.

:cowboy:

*MEANWHILE, INDOORS*

At 2pm local time, while the outdoors is absurdly hot, indoors is just under 25 degrees C (75 degrees F). We don't have, or need, an air conditioner, because this house is designed to stay cool in summer and warm in winter. A ceiling fan is nice, or a pedestal fan facing at me when I return from my short stints outdoors.

Tomas Berdych is playing a red-hot Rafael Nadal as we speak - got bagelled in the first set, 6:1 in the second, tie-break in the third. Nadal just won it. I like both these players and was completely impartial, but now I'd like to see Nadal go further this year, seeing as he only won the Australian Open once before, and he comes across as such a nice bloke when talking to people.

Earlier in the day, our last surviving Aussie, Ashleigh Barty, took out Maria Sharapova in three sets, and advanced to the quarter finals. Brett and I were both watching. We're generally impartial or going for the underdog, but in this case, we had more reasons to want our young Aussie to win than usual. We also both really dislike Maria Sharapova, because she is unfair to other players out there. They actually brought in a shot clock to stop people like her from taking forever to serve, and from making their opponents wait. It was so tedious to watch a match with this player when the umpires weren't enforcing time rules.

And the very worst thing about Sharapova is how she screams like a banshee all match long. If it gives me a headache, and I can turn the volume down, how do the people playing her feel? You'd want to be wearing hearing protection. It's rude, it's completely unnecessary, and it's hard to see it as anything but an unfair attempt to improve her odds of winning by distracting and annoying her opponents - and to us, that shouldn't be part of sport. Typical for Sharapova, after losing the second set 6:1, she went for a toilet break and took longer than the allowed time to return - and wasn't penalised for doing so. At this stage, Brett and I were hoping our Ash Barty would bagel her in the last set, and it looked good at 4:0, but in the end the Aussie won it 6:4. Well done Ashleigh Barty - and best of all, she's such a lovely girl.










The Americans were having an amazing day today too, with the last remaining men's contestant from the US, young Frances Tiafoe, recording a super victory over Grigor Dimitrov. In the women's, things were even more astonishing: A Ms Danielle Collins cooked champion player Angelique Kerber 6:0, 6:2 today. Good luck to her too, for the rest of the Open!


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## SueC

*COOL DRINKS AND CONVERSATIONS*

During the Ash Barty - Maria Sharapova match-up today, Brett exclaimed, "Look, Sue, it's Michael Klim, the swimmer, sitting in the audience. - I can't believe it, he's sitting there in the sun with his bald head and no hat on! What is he _doing_???"

"Boiling his egg," I replied, and Brett fell about laughing. I thought it was just a fact, and not _that_ funny... "Right now, it's soft-boiled, but later on, it will be hard-boiled. And tomorrow, he will have a blistered pate!"

The UV is so intense I actually wear a sombrero to change the irrigation stations during the day, and still get a bit red sometimes. I can't imagine why anyone would be sitting outdoors in the sun for hours during peak UV...

I try to keep my peak UV outdoors sojourns brief, and anyway, the quality of the cool drinks is very good at our place at the moment. Two weeks ago, Brett decided he was going to try to make his own ginger ale this year. Soon after that, I found him in the kitchen grating large quantities of ginger root, and zesting lemons, before boiling them up with dark brown sugar until the house was filled with the aroma of Christmas. When his concentrate was ready, we mixed it with ice-cold soda water and lemon - and it was _marvellous_. I've never tasted better ginger ale: Rich, earthy, tingly... and completely natural, no artificial flavourings: Just real ginger, real lemon, a bit of brown sugar.

'Tis also the season of iced tea, and I make a carafe daily. Jasmine green tea with orange, or lemon green tea, or lemon/orange green tea, or lemon/lime green tea... I use a vegetable peeler to slice the skins off the citrus and toss that into a glass measuring jug with the teabags and boiling water, and let it steep for 15 minutes before adding a small amount of sugar, straining the lot, and adding it and the juiced citrus (2-3 per batch) to the carafe of ice water. It has a real flavour kick that isn't imitable by any laboratory, and isn't going to poison us any.

We thoroughly recommend making your own drinks... so delicious.

Congratulations to 20-year-old Stefanos Tsitsipas, on soundly beating Roger Federer this evening. Well done! It's nice to see the young people doing well in tennis this year. It's extremely boring to watch the same people win the competitions over and over again, and the stranglehold of the past decade and a bit is finally loosening up. Tennis is getting far more interesting again.


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## lostastirrup

The Jasmine ice tea sounds to die for!


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## gottatrot

We always watch the Australian Open as the play gets farther along, so we saw some of those matches too. We got in the habit of watching a few years ago because it's on over here in the middle of the night, when we're awake.


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## SueC

Well, @lostastirrup, anytime you're in Australia I'll make you some iced jasmine/orange tea!  A little dumbwaiter portal would be great, because then, even in the absence of one of these :tardis:, we could all share food as well as conversation. I had a wonderful boysenberry flan I could have shared out this week. 

@gottatrot, got anyone you think might win it this year? Nadal is looking incredible at the moment and I think has as good a chance as ever, but there's some excellent other contenders too... On the women's, I think Serena WIlliams also has a pretty good shot at a post-baby Grand Slam... but doesn't that young American girl, Danielle Collins, have some serious shotmaking? That's a real dark horse, that one. Very well-kept secret!


*SOMETIMES I THINK WE ARE LIVING IN A ZOO*

Look what I saw when I opened the door yesterday afternoon just before feed time!






Chasseur and Sparkle were hiding around the corner. Everyone seems to be in summer holiday mode, and laid back. Not bad especially for the two boys I'm talking to, since both of them used to charge at horses or humans getting near their yards / stables with teeth bared and deadly intent, in their previous life.

Now we just need a giraffe, I think.

Something serious I wanted to consult this little group on: Romeo is 34, and down one in condition score from where he was a year ago, and down two from where I'd like him to be. Dentistry has been impossible with him since age 29 because his remaining molars are worn down, loose and gradually falling out - making it inhumane to rasp him, as my vet explained. Last time his teeth were done, he got very stressed because it was so uncomfortable for him with the loose teeth, and also it wasn't achieving much. Not many edges left either. We've had him on soft feeds twice daily since then - the small bucket you see is the soaked cubes component that ends up in his large bucket feed. He gets, twice daily, 7L short-cut chaff, 0.75L canola, 1L copra, 2L bran and 2L solid pony cubes soaked until mushy - and the whole thing mixed until the moist consistency of the interior of a Bounty bar. He loves the stuff and is doing well on it, and is pretty much at the maximum concentrates you can give him without putting him in danger of laminitis. Also pretty much at the limit of what we can afford to give him - he's 80% of our cost of keeping our four horses and five donkeys, because of the amount of stuff we have to buy in for him. A Melbourne Cup horse would do well on that feed...

He supplements what we can give him with short tender grass from our irrigated lawns, which he has a technique for grazing - his incisors are good, if incredibly pointed forward - to which he has access anytime he wants it, and in summer, he's in the garden over half the time - and in the growing seasons, he finds short feed all over the pasture. Even now, he still goes down to the mostly summer-green perennial areas in pockets of our pasture, and eats strawberry clover, etc. He's happy, he gets about all over the place. He definitely doesn't run as much as he used to, but still trots and gallops occasionally, especially when he's on the other side of the farm and realised I'm feeding. 

He's assertive, and affectionate, and enjoying himself. But clearly, he's getting to the limits of what his body can do, and his main vulnerability is that eventually he won't get enough calories to survive. I don't want him to starve to death from physiological malfunctioning, which can happen even in the presence of ample feed. In nature, he'd have been taken out by a cold winter, or a summer drought, years ago. We rug him throughout the cool seasons, and even at night in summer unless it's balmy all night - because he has no cushion left and is really old and he loves his rug, and is so comfortable in it. (He actually comes up looking for his rug if it starts raining, or is getting cool in the afternoon - he knows where I keep his rug...)

I wonder, in a case like this one, where to draw the line. I don't think I could watch him drop another condition score without thinking I needed to put him down. The veterinarian says, "You'll know, the horse will tell you. Just like the other two times you made that call."

The other two times were tumours (pituitary in the last one - really bad PPID), and obvious distress we couldn't get on top of. We gave the first horse - my Arabian mare, at 32 - one week before we realised the intermittent pain was going to get worse and less intermittent and I made that call. Sunsmart's mother, at 28, three weeks with supportive treatment, before we decided quality of life wasn't going to become what we considered acceptable again - she was suffering every time the weather turned hot, and getting laminitic, and it didn't look very treatable. She was lying down a fair bit between feeds (still eating well, but that's one of the things that can happen with PPID too), and she had her head in my lap a lot when I sat with her, and I remember the moment when I decided that this wasn't fair on her anymore.

In Romeo's case, it isn't cancer, although at his age, he's probably got bits of that too somewhere, not necessarily contributing. And he's happy so far, so we've kept feeding him instead of arranging euthanasia. Is anyone shocked by his appearance? I know he's thin, but I see him every day, and it's sort of like bringing a lobster to boil starting with cold water... He's got good muscling still, good coordination, very shiny coat (all that oil in the canola, and the vitamin/mineral mix...), but he's thin. How thin is too thin? Would anyone be making the end-life decision now?

I think I probably will know, like with the others, and I don't feel that yet. But it helps to check in with people outside the situation, in cases like this one.


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## Caledonian

The teas sound nice. I like Jasmine green tea and lemon tea but i haven't tried the combinations. I looked-up harvesting, storage, safety and brewing of teas at the end of the year as I've a number of herbs that i could use. I thought it might be better than going through packets from the supermarket. A lot of the processed ones have too many 'flavours' added to be natural and herbal. 

My attention tends to wander with tennis, unless there's something different about the match, such as a lower ranked player beating a seed. My Mum used to play and she enjoyed watching Wimbledon until the stranglehold of certain players destroyed the game for her as well.


I've always felt that they tell you when life is a struggle. You know him the best and will see when it's too much and no longer interesting.


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## SueC

Hello, @Caledonian! :wave: Nice to see you pop up, how's Scotland? Re the tea, yes, most of that stuff on the shelves is just tea with cordial added, really. All artificial flavours, or "nature-identical" laboratory-made. The problem with the latter is what you're _not_ getting: You're not getting the vitamins, antioxidants etc for which the flavour is just the marker, in nature. If you can get good unsprayed citrus, it's dead easy to make gorgeous concoctions yourself that are healthy, and often cost less money as well. Brett puts mint from our garden in his green tea, like the Moroccans. Sometimes he just infuses the mint and has it with a spoon of honey. So much exciting stuff you can do yourself!  If you land on any nice DIY concoctions, please share! 

Totally with you re the tennis. This Australian Open is the first one in ages which actually has me really excited, because it's lots of underdog versus name, or newcomer versus established identity, and those new people making inroads. It seems to me that the stranglehold is loosening significantly.

Thanks for your opinion re the old horse. It's good to get outside views from other horsepeople. In all the time I've been around horses, there was only ever one that went by itself and without drama, in old age. She just went to sleep in her box - she was 28 and still lying down - and one morning she was in a normal restful sleep position, but dead. No struggle. She seemed to have known something was up, though, because she spent the week before she died asking to be let out of her paddock, and walking all over the jogging track and fastwork track and general landscape where she'd worked as a young horse, spending hours sightseeing, and her adult daughter and paddock buddy, who normally didn't like to be separated from her, didn't bat an eyelid the whole time her mother was on excursions, or after she died. Interesting scenario...

Hope you have an excellent week! :charge:


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## Knave

He looks very old to me, but not shockingly bad. We have difficult winters here, so at a certain point in fall we decide not to put them through another winter if we think they are in hard shape. The girls had one though that started to die on his own, and it wasn’t easy, and we had to put him down then. 

I think that the vet is probably right. I keep thinking the same thing with my old cat, because she is so old and looks it, but she still seems happy enough most days.


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## egrogan

@SueC, I know you value honesty, so I will be. When I saw your recent picture of Romeo hanging out in the yard, I did do a bit of a double take at how thin he looked. But like you're saying, the looks are just part of the picture- you see him multiple time a day, know his attitude and his energy level. I haven't yet had a very old horse myself so I'm not sure how to balance all the factors. But if his attitude is happy and he moves around easily, like you said, I think that tells you he's game to continue. And also that it will be clear when he's not.


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## knightrider

From @SueC [quoteThe veterinarian says, "You'll know, the horse will tell you.][/quote]

I guess I am the only one who "doesn't know". I worry and wonder and second guess myself and think about it way too much, whether it is time to let the animal go. I haven't had a vet yet who was supportive about it either. They seem to think I should continue to throw money their way and keep the animal going. With my dog, I called it "The Frisk Factor", whether she seemed to still be able to frisk around a bit, or did she just hobble around miserably. But unfortunately, she did both--for a very long time. Some days she seemed happy and a bit frisky and other days, she seemed miserable. And when I finally decided she was mostly miserable, the vet chided me roundly, saying I should try more medications. But I refused and felt horribly guilty, and still do even now. Same with my epm horse, same with my cat. I did NOT know for any of them, and it has been hard.


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## gottatrot

I think Nadal is playing very well, it will be interesting to see if he wins. Something that I always wonder is how he can replace the electrolytes he loses during the games. He seems to sweat so much. He must have it down to a science. 
Collins did great, and we liked Barty too. Williams is not my favorite, she's just so emotional. I don't mind when athletes celebrate and all, but I prefer it when they act professional about calls during the game.

About Romeo, you know he's getting close to the end. I think if he were my horse I'd consider his energy level, positive mood and lack of infections as signs that he still has working organ systems and a working immune system. What I wouldn't do is wait until his body was using his muscles and organs for fuel (I still see a decent amount of muscle on his body), or recurrent infections such as hoof abscesses or skin infections. If his energy level drops to where he lays down a lot, I'd think that wouldn't be comfortable with his bones pressing on the ground, so if I saw he was starting to get rubs or sores I'd think it would be getting to the point of putting him down too. 
You've done so well with giving him a comfortable old age. He is lucky to have ended up with you.


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## Knave

@knightrider don’t feel guilty! Don’t do that to yourself only because a vet wanted to make a buck. Oftentimes we keep animals around a lot longer that nature would allow, as @SueC mentioned.

I think, in some aspect, people who live my lifestyle are a lot more comfortable with death. We raise animals for consumption, and if we thought so terribly of death we would not be able to do our jobs. I think life is what we need to worry about, not death. Don’t feel guilty!


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## SueC

I'm just going _wow_ at the lot of you here!

At the honesty, at the wisdom, and at the little idiosyncrasies we all have, e.g. trust @gottatrot to wonder about Nadal's electrolyte replacement.  On which I'd say, as far as I remember from doing Physiology at uni / reading about it since, the concentration of electrolytes in people's sweat varies amongst individuals, and probably also varies for an individual at different times - it's not just a reflection of the electrolyte concentration of the plasma - so some people may be better adapted to sweating lots. More to the point though, the stuff the tennis people are constantly drinking every chance they get during a match is electrolyte replacement solution, probably isotonic. Leg cramps are indicative of electrolyte deficiency, and you do see these a bit in later sets of tennis, or with extended play, especially in the heat.

@knightrider, I'm sorry that these decisions have been so extra tough for you. :hug: That was such a difficult scenario with your dog, and the veterinarian was out of line making you feel guilty about your decision. Don't feel bad about any of your calls - I like the adage "better a week too early than a day too late". 

@Knave, Her Royal Highness The Cat has made a number of appearances in your posts, and it's always made me smile.  And I think that's so sage to say that life is more important than death - that quality of life is more important than quantity, as well.

@egrogan, I've been going "eek" as well for the past year looking at photos of Romeo! When I see him in person, his excessive leanness doesn't stand out as much as on a photo, because of the energy coming off him and his interactiveness. He's anything but dull. He's significantly quieter than he was as a younger horse, but still pretty active, and still has enough strength to almost pick me up with his head when he rubs it against me with my permission!  He went down one condition score after Sunsmart's mother died just over a year ago - went apathetic and off his food for a fortnight, and we thought he might be departing too, at that point. Then he started eating again, but he's never made up the lost weight, even though we increased his feed. I think at that age, it's difficult for them to get lost body tissue back, as geldings in particular and without anabolic steroids, which I won't be giving him even though it was once suggested to me. For starters, it would make him hungry, and his appetite is fine anyway, he eats with gusto and cheerfully about 16 hours a day, but obviously it takes him a lot of time to process his food.

@gottatrot, I think your guidelines for those sorts of decisions are very similar to my own. If I lived in @Knave's climate, I wouldn't put the horse through another winter, but out winters are comparatively mild, and he's very warm and comfortable in his rug (I always check under it) and has shelter spots to stand in, including a walk-in shed.

My check for geriatric equine quality of life basically looks like this - all these criteria should be met:

* Capable of trotting and cantering, and still do that of their own accord at least sometimes.

* Able to walk comfortably.

* Able to get on and off the ground comfortably.

* Has good coordination.

* Shows mental alertness, interest in environment and social interactions with equines and handlers.

* Doesn't have significant chronic or intermittent pain. (Can be hard to gauge, but usually horses get depressed with chronic pain.)

* No recurring infections and other ailments.

* Still has significant muscle mass.

* Bright, happy outlook.

Romeo at this stage still ticks all of these boxes. He rolls at least once a day, both sides, and he still lies down to sleep as he always has - he's made himself a soft sand hole under a tree, in the shade - sometimes he camps out on the lawn to sun himself (cooler seasons). He still runs, especially if he's been a distance away and it's feed time. He's had no infections, even though I thought sooner or later he'd get a tooth abscess (and I wouldn't be treating any infections in a horse this old, that would euthanasia). He comes around the house looking in the windows to see where we are if he wants something, and is very good at letting us know exactly what it is he wants (food, company, rug, bot fly bothering him he wants me to catch, wanting to be let into a another area etc).

I've been thinking this horse is near the end for four years - but he just sticks around. Bill tells us he's got it far too good to be in a hurry to leave.

I'll tell you some scenarios I've seen with people and pets, where I would have drawn the line much earlier:

*Very old dog unable to support hind legs any longer being wheeled about by owner in a wheelbarrow. The dog didn't strike me as particularly happy, and it certainly wasn't functional. Partial paralysis plus age - I wouldn't carry on.

*Very old horse getting cast every time it lay down, and needing assistance to get up. Also so thin you could see its entire pelvis outlined, and he could no longer trot, or walk with any energy. Were it my decision, that horse would have been put down one to two years before its eventual death (put down because it could no longer get off the ground even with assistance).

*24yo gelding showing coordination problems, and difficulty balancing when pushed firmly sideways. This horse was put down half a year after I would have called it, because his hind legs were paralysed one morning and he was sitting like a dog and panicking. I think it would have been nicer to put him down before that happened - I don't like it when a horse's last experience is awful like that.

*16yo really arthritic, obese kelpie (overfeeding owner) with difficulty walking without pain - would have put him down on that account half a year before he died of a painful cardiac arrest that had him literally screaming. I'll never forget that one - that was so unnecessary.

*Yearling filly with broken leg had broken segment removed and stump bandaged by owner, and lived three-legged (as a breeding prospect) until she was cornered and gored by a bull (non-poll) with whom she was idiotically in the same cattleyard for some reason, a year later. In that year, the horse grew crooked around the pelvis because unable to support one side of it. Cats and small dogs can live OK on three legs - but not large animals.


Generally, I think I call it earlier than a lot of people. I don't want things to get really bad first, if it's already predictable that bad things are down that road.

Thank you so much for your input and opinions on the matter! It's good to know how you're all thinking - and that noone who posted thinks I have a massive blind spot about this particular case - I know it's possible for us to get blind spots.


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## bsms

Knave said:


> ...I think, in some aspect, people who live my lifestyle are a lot more comfortable with death. We raise animals for consumption, and if we thought so terribly of death we would not be able to do our jobs. I think life is what we need to worry about, not death. Don’t feel guilty!


The last time we went to help push the sheep, one of the lambs lost its mother. The rancher was going to kill it but agreed to try keeping it for my wife's sake. But it died a week later. As my friend pointed out, "_With over 3,000 sheep, I see a lot of death!_"


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## SueC

Yeah, the maternal instinct can be very strong in us females at least when we see a cute, big-eyed little thing in need of assistance. I got sucked in a lot when younger and people brought me things and said, "Can you help this critter?" With the benefit of hindsight, many of them needed knocking on the head immediately.

I saw a really interesting motto on someone's wall:

_Feelings are like waves. You can decide which ones to surf._


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## gottatrot

I like how @Knave thinks about it, that the life is the important part. I don't understand why people try to avoid an animal's death at all costs, when they are suffering. I'm someone who has paid a lot of money for vet care, even surgery on a twelve year old dog, but for things that are definitely fixable, and with the animal coming out with a good quality of life on the other end. It's better to err on the side of ending suffering.
@Hondo has mentioned that I talk about my mare Halla in an almost justifying way about her condition, and I know it may seem like I'm questioning about what was done. I've never had a thought that putting her down was the wrong thing, and I don't think my criticism of those who promote continuing on with horses with severe founder is about trying to make myself feel I did the right thing. The only thing that bothers me is that I wish I understood more about what was going on in her body that created the issue, because I believe there are probably more cases that vets don't understand.

There are several that bother me, one was when I went to my aunt's house and she had a cat laying on her porch mostly dead and breathing raggedly and she said it had been there for a couple days, but she felt too sad to bring it to the vet. Thankfully the cat died right then.

Another was the horse in her mid-20s at my barn, whose owner couldn't see how much pain she was in with her chronic laminitis. Her hooves were just destroyed and she'd even had Pete Ramey try to help her at a clinic. I just remember when I told her the mare was laying down for hours each day and she told me all horses need to lay down a lot when they hit their 20s. She kept her going at least a year longer than she should have, with the horse limping every day and she not wanting to give a daily pain med because of the cost.

The worst was the extremely skeletal 33 year old that was barely able to move around, struggled to get up each time and his owner thought she could still see a spark in his eye if she peered in deeply. When I came to the barn I called his owner because I found the horse laying in the rain in a puddle with his head going down a hill, moaning. She still asked me if I was sure he was suffering, as he kept craning his head back toward his tail to see if he could lift his body, but he didn't have the strength. I said he was absolutely suffering and that she needed to get the vet out now. He was kept going probably two years longer than he should have, getting abscess after abscess.


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## Knave

I like that motto @SueC! 

I haven’t seen too many foundered horses in my life. One for sure, but she was fine all of the time I knew her.

I asked for a horse to be put down that no one would once. It was Runt, my beloved mare. She had pigeon fever, and it ruptured internally. Her fever was so high that her hooves just broke off to blood. I asked that she be put down before that, but she was such a wretched witch of a mare (I say that in complete love), that her nasty chase around the horses and give terrible looks to everyone made them feel she was okay. She was a fighter.

Even when her hooves broke off the vet wouldn’t put her down. My husband, who hated her, also refused. The thing was that she was already crippled. A muscle split down her back, leaving a hole on the inside between her ribs. The best horse vet I have ever know said he couldn’t fix it. He knew the horse and her athleticism, and he said she would split it straight away. (She tore it saving me from a wreck in a true display of what an athlete she could be.)

She was young though, twelve I think, and she was so stinking tough. They said maybe she could pack a colt. After she survived the pigeon fever and was back to herself, I gave her away as a broodmare to a cutting breeder. I could afford to breed a horse at the time. I didn’t know him; I only knew his brother.

A few years ago I looked him up. I wanted to buy a colt off of him, but he said he had to put her down. She never would breed. I assume the fever sterilized her. I regret not putting her down myself when she was suffering, so she could have been with me and happy all of her life. Hindsight is 20/20 of course.


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## SueC

Yeah, @Knave, that sounds like a really awful situation, and hindsight teaches us a lot of things. I have one real regret - a mare who died of a ruptured bowel a day later, when she started to colic, I spent the night with her in her stall and she was really bad, and my instincts and observations were suggesting she wouldn't make it, which was like a black hole to me because I loved that mare (she was a real sweetie and I strapped her at races a lot). When dawn broke she seemed better, got to her feet and wanted to go out, so I clipped on her lead and walked with her, and she wanted to go in a particular paddock with a giant eucalytpus tree like an umbrella at the other end. She literally dragged me to that tree, then lay down flat on her side under it and got glazed eyes. She was giving up. I'd seen the French mare with exactly that attitude before she died (post-partum haemorrhage), when I was 13, so this brought back awful things and panicked me. I was saying urgently to this mare, "No! No, don't go away! Come on, we've got to try to make it, get up, don't give up, let's walk, moving might make you better!" And gradually, she came back, and focused on me, and got to her feet, and we walked all over the place, and she lived another day. She rested all day in a walk-in shelter, and seemed easier. Now we know that was only because her gut had ruptured, which had relieved the pressure which had caused a lot of pain - but horses like that die of peritonitis quickly. By evening, pain was setting in again, this time from infection, and the mare was put down. And I've often thought with great regret in my heart about the time I called her back to me under that tree, when I should have let her go. She knew.

And she taught me to respect the horse's decision in that sort of situation.

Another time, before that time, it was more obvious. A mare had an acute twisted bowel immediately after rolling (horses kept in sand yards eat sand, which predisposes them to colic and twisted bowel). When I had seen her half an hour before, she had been fine and eating her hay. She rolled, then got up and went straight through the electric polybraid like it didn't exist, and went back into an open sand run, where she threw herself on the ground, got up again, threw herself on the ground again, and made terrible noises I've never heard a horse make before or since. When I got to her (having seen this from the window) she was foaming already. And I knew she wouldn't get better - I've never seen a horse in that sort of state get better.

The vet was called, and everyone dilly-dallied, while the mare was writhing on the ground rapidly, covered in sweat, kicking out - I'd not seen this level of pain before, or since. They decided to sedate her and confirm by physical examination that she indeed had a twisted bowel. At this stage I was saying, "No, just give me the gun, I'll shoot her myself if nobody else will!" The sedation made no appreciable difference. It took quite a while to have a window of opportunity in which a quick (rectal) examination was even possible, and of course it confirmed it. Then they shot the mare - an hour too late. They could have spared her that hour, and the rectal as well, which with a twisted bowel at the end is no picnic. But they wanted to "give her a chance" - when blind Freddy could see there was no chance, just terrible pain.

I've never forgotten those images from that night, they're like a film in my head - also what happened when the mare was shot, which I've not seen any other time either. When the mare was shot, instead of subsiding immediately as usual in euthanasia, with a few mild reflex reactions, that mare's body went on autopilot immediately after she was shot, and she started kicking the air with her legs going at racing speed, in spasms - legs up, race race race, legs down briefly, legs up, race race race, repeat. After a long while, as I was looking on with horror, the movements began to be slower, like in a toy running out of battery. Eventually she lay still, but it took a long time.

The mare wasn't incorrectly shot, and was definitely unconscious and dying. But the head shot removed the horse's ability to consciously suppress movement and tough it out, and revealed how tortured that body had been. It was dreadful. I couldn't believe how much energy had been stored up in that poor body, how much adrenaline there was driving this on.

A little too soon doesn't hurt an animal. A lot too soon doesn't either, it just ends the animal's life, lights out. But too late can be so horrific, and can never be undone.

@gottatrot, about your question, I think a lot of it is either about deferring what's unpleasant for the person rather than thinking about what's unpleasant for the animal, and/or about loss of control over a situation, and/or about projected fears of death from people who themselves have not made peace with the fact that everyone will die one day. In my own experience, the people who are most afraid of death, and / or are really controlling sorts of people who like to micromanage everything, are the most likely to dither about euthanasia while an animal is suffering.

I'm not saying we should always shoot an animal when it's in pain, either. We do have to know the difference between a situation that could realistically get better, or one where the odds are really bad. If it's the former, control the pain and assess, and do a treatment trial - but if the pain can't be adequately controlled, think again, and weigh up the chances against the pain.

A useful link:

https://dailystoic.com/how-to-not-fear-death/


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## SueC

Just cross-linking a few things here. I don't often get into the STB saddle training nitty-gritties anymore, but wrote another post on it today, and am saving it for reference, and possible future use, here.

https://www.horseforum.com/horse-training/trotter-800329/page2/#post1970667765

And I was remembering some super people in my life here: 

https://www.horseforum.com/member-journals/why-i-gotta-trot-645777/page270/#post1970667813

Going to do some actual work now!  Wishing everyone a pleasant evening, and an excellent Thursday.


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## gottatrot

SueC said:


> @gottatrot, about your question, I think a lot of it is either about deferring what's unpleasant for the person rather than thinking about what's unpleasant for the animal, and/or about loss of control over a situation, and/or about projected fears of death from people who themselves have not made peace with the fact that everyone will die one day.


Good thoughts. I've seen many people die, and a few animals. I've heard that people now are more separated from death than we used to be in the past, which can make it more mysterious and frightening too. When someone is dying, I am a very strong advocate for letting people go out comfortably rather than torturing them on the way out. Most people want this for their family members, if they understand what the choices are. It's one thing to have a sudden and reversible arrhythmia, and go through some pain to be revived. It's quite another to be a 95 year old with cancer, heart failure, and chronic pain. I believe in that case if your heart stops, it is quite wrong to shock you, break all your ribs and wake you up in more pain than you were before, just because your family doesn't want to go through the emotional pain of your death. 
With people and animals, my thought for those making the decisions is always "It's not about you!" 

I loved your post about training the trotters by the way.


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## knightrider

Reading this brought back a memory I hadn't thought about in years.

I had bought a yearling filly to raise because my heart was broken when I lost my forever horse and didn't want to ride. In fact, I wasn't sure I wanted to "do" horses any more. I thought this filly would help me heal and I named her Magic because I hoped she would work some magic in my life. But I was certain that I would never ever love another horse again, so she was strictly a project horse. Raised to train and sell.

She colicked as a 4 year old, and I got the vet right away. Whatever we were doing, it wasn't working. This was years and years ago, when we thought you needed to walk a colicky horse. Night came, and she was no better. She was down and thrashing, and the vet told me to try to keep her still. My husband and I were laying all over her trying to hold her still. At 11:00 p.m., the vet gave me one more shot to try (I was driving back and forth in contact with the vet). As he gave me the shot, he said, "You know, she's not going to make it." I was crying, and I said, "I know."

I gave her the shot, which did no good at all. As my husband and I continued the long vigil trying to hold her down through the night, I kept telling him, "I'm not upset. It's OK. She's just a project horse. It's not like Cyclone" (my horse that was hit by a car and killed) and as I was telling him that, I knew I was lying, that I loved her dearly and did not want to lose her at all.

Around 5:00 a.m., she stood up, shook herself, and acted normal and fine. I considered it a miracle. She lived to be 26 years old, won me numerous championships horse showing, fox hunting, camping trips, jousting, teaching beginners to ride. At the end, she committed suicide, another very odd story.

Why didn't I let her go back then? I was very young and really didn't know what to do. Where there's life, there's hope. That's all I knew.


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## SueC

@knightrider, would you like to start a "bought yearling filly because much-loved riding horse got taken off me" club together? ;-) I've thought this before when you first told me about Cyclone and I'm really sorry you went through that. :hug: So much crap, but look at the flowers you grew in it. I'm glad Magic made it - and that nearly losing her made you realise how much she actually meant to you underneath the bulwark you'd built to avoid further pain - and that you had such a long, wonderful time with her. If it doesn't distress you to recount it, I'm curious about what you said about her ending her own life. I hope you have a wonderful day with your horses and daughter. 

@gottatrot, that's an amazing post about death and dying, and I completely agree with your sentiments. I think medical technology is being used too much to keep people "alive" when they would, a hundred years ago, have had a more dignified exit. I keep thinking of the parents we met before we bought this little farm in Redmond, whose house we made an offer on. They were selling because they had a daughter in a vegetative state from birth that medical professionals had kept alive by tube-feeding, and sent them home with. She was just a body with staring eyes, unable even to sit up or roll over, not truly conscious or able to communicate. She had to be wheeled around on a mobile cot and tube-fed and changed and turned over all the time to avoid pressure sores, and could never be left alone. She was now school-aged, and getting too big for her mobile cot, and they needed a house with extra-wide corridors. After meeting them, we went away and cursed the doctors who kept this baby who could never have an actual life alive and inflicted this life sentence on her parents. And even more ridiculously, equal opportunity legislation required that she "go to school", so a fulltime aide was employed to wheel her around the local school to attend lessons. Don't get me started!

Not at all the same situation as a nonverbal young woman with cerebral palsy I looked after two days a week for two years while we were finishing our house. She was obsessed with horses, and I was her horse buddy, plus the person who found her places where she could safely do very naughty things with her electric wheelchair - she totally delighted in hooning and doing donuts. :rofl: She had a _huge_ personality, and ways of communicating almost telepathically, as well as with body language. While she needed a fulltime team taking turns to look after her, she definitely was living a life, and being someone. And the horses here loved her, and were very solicitous with her - really amazing to see their behaviour around her, and how they kept her company etc. She first came to our place as a visitor with her family:

https://www.horseforum.com/therapeutic-riding/horses-aware-disabilities-505658/#post6543714

And later, she came regularly to hobnob with donkeys and horses:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...nkeys-other-people-479466/page19/#post7623721

While I was looking for these posts, I came across some photos from three years ago that are so funny I am going to re-post them! :rofl: Small side-track:

_On Sunday I discovered that even camels have itchy spots!







_










_I had the first opportunity of my life to test out this idea on a camel at Pentland Alpaca Stud, who happened to have a nice new camel. After the usual large-herbivore introduction rituals, the camel quickly showed me where it liked to be scratched. It made faces and wiggled its upper lip when I got it right in a very similar manner to the way a horse or donkey will. It became quite a long "conversation" and the camel would have preferred it if I hadn't left. (My husband wants to hire the camel for a day to put on our farm, just because he'd really like to see how the horses would react







)_



















:rofl: Brett was falling about laughing at the memory as well, and said, "We could visit three years later, and the camel would be remembering you and would be all over you like a rash!" :rofl:

It's so funny how they all seem to get like that...

End side track...


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## knightrider

Since you asked, I will tell you how Magic committed suicide. Magic had hocks that were too straight. I probably rode her too much for her conformation. She developed hock spavin later in life. My parents owned a 60 acre beef cattle farm in Florida and gave me permission to retire her at their farm. They had two other retired horses grazing with the cattle, and the person looking after them was super conscientious and a very close friend.

So, Magic went to Florida and was happy there. Although Magic was super well trained and experienced, she scared folks who didn't know horses very well. She was fake aggressive on the ground. Many people chided me, saying I should "train her to have better ground manners," but she didn't act aggressive with me, ever (I was her mom), and once under saddle, she was a pussycat. And besides, I had trained a bunch of horses, and they all had excellent ground manners, so I knew it was just Magic being who she was. But, nobody in Florida rode her because they were afraid of her. It would have been better for her hock spavin to be lightly ridden. Oh well. A few years down the road, she developed heaves, which became quite bad. She was struggling to breathe. When I was visiting my parents, I got the vet out, who gave her some expensive medicine to try. It worked so well that she was heave free for 6 months, but then the heaves came back, worse than ever.

I was putting my husband through a PhD program on a teacher's salary. Nobody rode Magic, or even liked her much. I really couldn't afford regular doses of the expensive medicine. Magic had had a wonderful life and given and received nothing but love her entire life. So I told my parents to please have her humanely put down by the vet. My parents refused, saying it was too traumatic for them, and if I wanted that done, I would have to fly to Florida and have it done myself.

I was in the process of making airplane arrangements (it was more complicated in the olden days), when my mom called me and said "Never mind. Magic is dead."

It turned out that after that phone conversation, Magic went to a field cultivator that had lain abandoned in the pasture for 40 years, hooked her hoof on one of the tines and ripped her hoof off. She had bled to death before anyone found her. She said (so typical of that mare, too), "If you're not gonna take care of this, I'll do it myself." She had never bothered that cultivator in all the years she grazed in the pasture.

One of the first things I did when we took over the farm, was get that cultivator out of the pasture.


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## lostastirrup

I've been thinking about your post on romeo. And since, been reminicing about past dead horses and the nber of times I've seen it pushed too far past the limit. And I 100% agree that it's best to take them sooner while they haven't become totally miserable. I have always thought that animals think little of the future, I could be wildly wrong, but I haven't seen any evidence of it. I think it's better to make the time they have with as small as fraction as possible of miserableness. 

At my old barn, back in AK, my trainer (whom I love dearly, in spite of) is nursing along a pony whose "lights have long since gone out". And a QH I'm fairly certain has intermittent chronic pain. And while I can see some reason to keep both going (they both still enjoy eating), Alaska is frigid, they are in pens, neither is healthy enough to get out and about, and their quality of life is very diminished. I hope this is the last winter either horse goes through, and that if she chooses to take them through a lovely Alaska summer she let's them both go before the first freeze. They have both been too steady and good to let them decline to the point of desperation. 

As for Romeo, as old as he is, he just looks skinny to me. And I will admit that at one point I was grossly underweight, and while it wasn't pretty, it wasn't painful either. That is my one thought. Make of it what you will.


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## SueC

@knightrider, those are wonderful photos.  And look at Magic's _expression_ on the second photo!  It's very compatible with your own! 

Thank you for the story. Why why why can't they all just go to sleep under an apple tree in the sun and then depart peacefully in their sleep unaided? Cats are much better with neat exits than horses are... With a horse, you're pretty much guaranteed that it's either going to be really traumatic (twisted bowel, broken leg, horrific injury) or you're going to have to call time at Point X, either with a chronic illness or with other causes for unacceptable decline in quality of life.

@lostastirrup, I agree with your sentiments. Our horses do think of the future every day - the immediate future of bucket o'clock!  But I'm pretty sure they don't engage in existentialist philosophy, or ruminate on their mortality very much. I think they are instinctively aware of their mortality - but more in a "must stay away from scary predator or steep cliff edge" way, than in an "OMG we're all going to die!" way. I think horses are very Zen and very grounded in the present, in a way we humans have to go to meditation lessons to achieve! :rofl:

That's sad about those retired horses in Alaska. If all I had to look forward to each day was food, shoot me - and that's even though I am a passionate foodie. Man shall not live by bread alone, and neither should the horse. There's so much more to being a sentient creature than just eating...


*THE AUSTRALIAN OPEN... DRAWING TO A CLOSE...*

Well, I won't be going on about it much longer, because the _final_ final will be on Sunday. Nadal completely demolished the young gun who convincingly beat Federer. What a match that was - the ball was flying all over the place, and at crazy angles and speeds! And now Djokovic is through his semi - ho hum, in a way: The final will be One Of Those versus One Of Those.

Having said that, this has been one of the most exciting Grand Slams in recent history, because not so dominated by The Big Four on the men's side anymore - there are a whole bunch of really exciting under-25s out there who are really taking it to these guys these days, and still have a lot of growing to do physically. The quality of the matches was really high overall, men's, women's, doubles. And the wheelchair tennis - gosh, how do they manage to hold a tennis racquet and propel their wheelchair about like that? Extraordinary.

With the men's final, given who got to the final, I must admit I hope Nadal wins it this year. Last time those two played in an Australian Open final was in 2012, and it was a five-hour match, seesawing on tiny points - and Djokovich just won it. Well, I hope Nadal wins it this time. Plus, he's the more exciting player to watch - he's not clinical by any stretch of the imagination. He's been red-hot and making unbelievable shots all tournament, and hasn't dropped a set. He's also bagelled really excellent players. And he always comes across as a _genuinely_ nice person. So I'll be cheering for him Sunday evening.

The women's final this evening is Naomi Osaka vs Petra Kvitova, i.e. noone from the Top Three seeds. They're both lovely girls, and Kvitova has returned after a horrible thing where she copped a knife in her hand from an intruder in her apartment and had to have surgery - on the tennis racquet hand, of course. So everyone is glad to see her back and doing well.

@gottatrot mentioned before about Serena Williams not being her favourite player. For a long time I felt the same - the tantrums and the endless grunting and screeching during points was really offputting, and I will admit that, like with Sharapova, I would watch her matches only if I felt there was a chance the other person was going to beat them, and cheer like mad for the opponent! :Angel:

Having said that, I think health complications and motherhood have genuinely mellowed Ms Williams - she's played the AO with a totally different attitude this year - and she's dropped that horrible screeching, playing most of her points silently now. She's been genuinely lovely in her post-match interviews, about other people and in general. She also related that apparently her daughter has insisted on watching _Frozen_ about 3000 times instead of picking something different. :rofl: I think it's great to see women returning to top-level sport after having babies, and was so happy when Kim Clijsters won the 2009 US Open after she'd had her daughter. And who can forget _this_?










One of the really nice moments this Australian Open was when Serena Williams went and hugged and comforted an up-and-coming player who was crying post-match because of the scoreline, and was telling her how when she was a young player, she was going through exactly the same thing against the greats of the day - and telling her, "Don't cry, you're amazing! And you're still young!"

The Aussies had a great Australian Open this year: Five into Round Three in the singles, most of them very young players just starting out. And Dylan Alcott looks like winning the Wheelchair section yet again. Here he is teaching a game Novak Djokovic wheelchair tennis:






The Aussies also have at least one person in each of the doubles finals this year. Samantha Stosur and Zhang Shuai took out the women's doubles final yesterday; Astra Sharma and John-Patrick Smith are an all-Aussie team in the mixed doubles final today, and John Peers and his Finnish partner Henri Kontinen are playing in the men's doubles final tomorrow. 

What will I _do_ with myself after Sunday? ...well, there is a little more tennis because of Davis Cup in Adelaide in early February. And then it's back to this: :charge:


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## gottatrot

We're watching Osaka and Kvitova play right now. :smile:
To me the most impressive feat for a new mother was when Maria Alvarez Ponton won the 100 mile endurance ride at the Equestrian games in 2010 on Nobby. That was less than two months after she had a baby.


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## SueC

Us too! Excellent match! 

And I'm making cherry trifle, because I accidentally baked brioche pastry in the breadmaker, that should have been formed into hazelnut scrolls...

That's an amazing achievement for Maria Alvarez Ponton - and I'm sure she can recommend an excellent bra for the rest of us ladies!  Thank you for posting that, it's very inspirational to hear about those sorts of things!


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## SueC

*SUMMER HOLIDAY SCENES*

Eeeeeeveryone is really laid back here at the moment - horses, donkeys, cattle, dog, monkeys. Yesterday I took some films of what the animals were up to as the monkeys were lounging in the house.

This is looking south behind the house, walking towards the garden fence to the edge of our 50ha bushland conservation remnant. The edges near the house were once pasture and we're letting that go back to bush, albeit strictly managed bush that isn't allowed to build up much fuel between the house and the firebreak track 50m south of it. (The bushland to the south of that is mosaic burnt for biodiversity conservation and hazard reduction.)






The three younger horses are hanging out under a huge Marri tree, and the "new" donkey Nelly is enjoying the sun, standing in the sandy surface of an old cattle camp - before we bought this place, this is where cattle congregated _en masse_ to rest, in the soft sandy patch in the shelter of the trees at the edge of the bushland. Benjamin is under one of the tree branches scratching his back on the 'backscratcher branch" all the livestock love. You can see the effective camouflage afforded by his true dun coat - it's quite hard to spot him. He's between Nelly and Sunsmart (leftmost horse).

This gives you an aerial view of the place, if you want to orient yourself in the landscape (click several times for full magnification):










This is another quick view of the five critters:






And this is Romeo, across the fence in our garden, munching on irrigated kikuyu lawn:






Because of his age and lack of teeth, he has a special access pass to all our lawns. It's a soft, green grass he can actually eat - very scarce stuff in the pasture in summer - and it's short enough so he can bite it off with his incisors and then not have to do much work with his old, worn-down, gappy molars. He's been doing this for five years since he was last able to have any dentistry done - he's at the end of the road with that because the remaining molars are too loose to file, but the teeth aren't hurting him, just really inefficient, and you can see he's very chirpy and interactive. 

He's not been able to eat carrots since he was 28, but there are compensations - one of them is his twice-daily super porridge stuffed with good things. He can eat soft pears though, and sultanas, and currently we're harvesting nectarines - if we've got any soft, ripe ones, he just looooooves those - and he's welcome to them, since we like our nectarines nice and crunchy and a little under-ripe. I will make it my next assignment to film him eating a juicy soft nectarine, as he has a special technique for getting the stone out, and thoroughly enjoys the process...

:apple:


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## egrogan

Love the videos and all the green everywhere! I think my girls would LOVE a roll in that sand spot right about now. Everyone is so itchy even though I try to get them time out of their blankets as much as I can.

Could Romeo eat carrots if they were grated up, just as an occasional treat? The nectarines reminded me of a lovely old therapeutic riding horse called Star that I worked with for awhile. His teeth were in a similar state so he couldn’t get a lot of treats-but every year when the persimmon tree dropped its fruit, his owners would keep all the other horses out of the paddock with that tree for a couple of weeks, and he’d have the run of it so he could slurp up all the fallen persimmons as they softened up. He was a wonderful teacher and it was really tough when we lost him. But whenever I see persimmons, I’ll always think of him :smile:


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## SueC

Yes, we occasionally grate carrots - but only occasionally, since he loves sultanas, ripe pears, ripe nectarines, etc, and even Weet-Bix as much as carrots. 

Many horses love figs too, but we don't grow any here. That's a cool story about the persimmons! Can you believe the French mare actually liked lemons? :shock:

I hope you're not up to your necks in snow, and that you don't have to bail heaps of water this week. You'll find solutions for these things, but all this annoying stuff right now will give you plenty to write about, should you ever wish to write your horsey smallholder bio! ;-)


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## egrogan

I tried to get Izzy to like pears but she said "nope!" How funny about the lemons. I wonder what it is that gives them these quirky preferences?

We're actually having a nice, gentle snow shower right now- if it was always like this, winter would be lovely!









Just enough for a frozen nose to poke you in the face and say hello (_and do you have any peppermints today, please and thank you?_)









Fortunately we are out of the flooding danger zone for awhile. _Un_fortunately, that's because it's going to be frigidly cold most of the week- ranging between -7*F/-23*C to 0*F/-18*C in the middle of the week. Other parts of the country have it even worse, I saw some folks posting on FB they were expecting _actual _temps of -25*F/-32*C with windchills on top of that. I'm thankful it won't be quite that bad here!


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## SueC

...and here we have Photo Of The Month! :rofl: :clap: :loveshower::dance-smiley05:










This really is a masterpiece. It looks like a sort of alien muppet with a huge head. I love the frosting, and the cascade of whiskers against the backdrop of snow!


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## egrogan

Love your description, I will be sure to let Izzy know her nose was admired.

Our older dog's nickname is actually "Muppet" because she is so scruffy and fluffy and hairy, and she is one of those dogs just begging to be a human with all her talkative vocalization. Her actual name is Delia (inspired by Johnny Cash...which people find confusing because Delia isn't exactly a hero in this song! Lovely husband likes the song and liked the name, so it stuck.) 






But she goes by Muppet, Muppy, Scruffy Mup, Delia Dog (DD), or DD Mup :grin: Here is a DD Muppet in her natural environment, enjoying her favorite food:









A slightly more flattering shot :wink:


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## SueC

The Australian Open is over, and I'm back to normal work routines. One of those is preparing another long article, this time on balancing encouragement of biodiversity with reduction of bushfire hazard when landscaping around buildings in Australia's sclerophyll. It's a big topic, and very relevant with a lot of dry areas getting drier in our country, and with a horrendous bushfire season already.

Last time, for _The Owner Builder_, I looked at low-toxicity homes. Lynda made beautiful collages out of the photos we provided for the article. She has a _wonderful_ eye for visuals and layout: Her magazine is the food porn of architecture.  I've included both sides of the front and back cover to show how lush the photography in this publication is. Isn't it incredible what beautiful stuff people can come up with when they build their own dwellings! ...in stark contrast to most of the public buildings designed by people who actually studied architecture... It's all about what's in the heart.

Click and click again to enlarge as usual, to get to reading size.


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## SueC

...two more...


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## SueC

Here's an extracts link to see more online:

https://issuu.com/theownerbuilder/stacks/a820eadbcd4045b0b12fe72c46a079c4

The article I wrote for the last issue wasn't typical for the magazine in that the printed information in it was the main focus. Usually, there are wonderful photos of house exteriors and interiors to go with the articles, which are mostly about houses people have constructed themselves. But, I've got my environmental science hat on for the last few articles. That's why I included the above link - so that a selection of beautiful building articles can be seen, that weren't written by me!

@egrogan, love the Muppet photos, and the other nicknames - she might be a small dog, but appears to have a full-sized personality!  Brett actually has two Johnny Cash tracks - he's covering the Nine Inch Nails in _Hurt_. Can you believe it? Also, Brett has _Time Of The Preacher_ which is a cover of a Willie Nelson song that was used in _Edge of Darkness_, a mini-series from 1986. I have a U2/Johnny Cash collaboration, _The Wanderer_, which is a great song:






I hope everyone is keeping well!


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## SueC

@lostastirrup set us all a good example by including poetry in her journal recently. I've been meaning to post this quirky number, which I first laughed about as a university student:


*Ode To The Amoeba*
_Arthur Guiterman
1871-1943
_
Recall from Time's abysmal chasm
That piece of primal protoplasm
The First Amoeba, strangely splendid,
From whom we're all of us descended.
That First Amoeba, weirdly clever,
Exists today and shall forever,
Because he reproduced by fission;
He split himself, and each division
And subdivision deemed it fitting
To keep on splitting, splitting, splitting;
So, whatsoe'er their billions be,
All, all amoebas still are he.
Zoologists discern his features
In every sort of breathing creatures,
Since all of every living species,
No matter how their breed increases
Or how their ranks have been recruited,
From him alone were evoluted.
King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba
And Hoover sprang from that amoeba;
Columbus, Shakespeare, Darwin, Shelley
Derived from that same bit of jelly.
So famed is he and well-connected,
His statue ought to be erected,
For you and I and William Beebe
Are undeniably amoebae!


Another favourite number is this one:


*I Saw A Jolly Hunter*
_Charles Causley
1917-2003
_
I saw a jolly hunter
With a jolly gun
Walking in the country
In the jolly sun.

In the jolly meadow
Sat a jolly hare.
Saw the jolly hunter.
Took jolly care.

Hunter jolly eager-
Sight of jolly prey.
Forgot gun pointing
Wrong jolly way.

Jolly hunter jolly head
Over heels gone.
Jolly old safety catch
Not jolly on.

Bang went the jolly gun.
Hunter jolly dead.
Jolly hare got clean away.
Jolly good, I said.


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## SueC

*MORE AUSTRALIAN SUMMER HAPPENINGS*

We harvested the majority of the nectarines off our two trees a couple of weeks back, and immediately sorted into cooking grade and eating grade. Made stewed nectarines and potted them up for the freezer; in winter, you just defrost a pot of them, put them in a baking dish, heat in the microwave, top with crumble topping (I like a mix of porridge oats and coconut with a dab of honey and butter), and bake for 15 minutes for a great hot breakfast that reminds you of summer.



Then it was plums, and I made a plum cake plus a big vat of plum sauce, from the cooking grade plums. The plum sauce is low in sugar, sky-high on flavour, and excellent hot on waffles with ice cream or cream, or in pancakes.





We've been inundated in cherries - the dwarf Morello cherry tree gave us 20L of cherries already, and there's still late stragglers on the tree. Cherry trifle, baked cherry custard, cherry clafoutis... several times over, yum yum, and stacks of frozen cherries for winter delights.



Also, the berries were wild this year - buckets and buckets of boysenberries and youngberries. Some food-related photos below... 

Boysenberry flan, waffles with nectarine/berry/citrus sauce, garden produce, the garden from the rooftop.





































Here's a rooftop film I took at the same time - the horse neighing for admission to the utility area is Julian:






This was about three months earlier:


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## SueC

*THIS POST CONTAINS DONKEY COIFFURES*

All right, it's Sunday and I'm having a breather from my rather monster article due mid next week, so I thought I'd check in and see what everyone's up to while having a cup of tea or two or three. Brett is at the races as usual as he does the photo finish gig, being Mr IT Geek, so I've got the afternoon to myself, and the UV outside is enough to cook one's DNA, so I do my outdoorsy things before 10am or after 3pm this time of year. Even the horses and donkeys are all in summer mode, snoozing under shade trees during the day and grazing mostly at night. I should buy them all sombreros!

Brett's latest experiment will be ready on Tuesday: A yeast-brewed, and therefore somewhat alcoholic, ginger beer. It smells great, and given the fact that Brett's experiment before that was for a dry ginger ale (non-alcoholic, made with grated ginger, lemon zest, lemon juice and brown sugar; add syrup to soda water) that is the best I've ever had in my life, this newest experiment might also be very positive.

OK, now to some weekend happenings that might entertain. Yesterday being Saturday here, we got out in the garden and dealt with all the brambles running wild near our espaliered youngberry and boysenberry plants. Those things are like Triffids, albeit very spiky ones. They love to make runners, which can form new clones of the parent plant if they get to the soil and make new roots on a stem, which is nice in one way, as we'll never have to buy another youngberry or boysenberry plant - and could probably set up a shop, especially if I used all the material I hacked off (this being post-harvest, and we had BUCKETS of berries this year, the freezer is filled with what we couldn't eat) to strike cuttings. But I didn't. The donkeys requested the excess runners, and I obliged them. I knew they'd eat the leaves, but was surprised when they munched even on the green parts of the prickly stems without batting any eyelids. I was wearing doubled-up gloves because these things are so prickly, and they were EATING them...









After lunch, we got down to the business of attending to Mary Lou's coiffure. Remember this donkey - the Irish Long-Hair that looks like a yak?



She gets terribly hot in summer under that shagpile, and last time she needed clipping, our neighbour came over with his expensive alpaca clippers:



This was the result:



Much cooler, albeit unfashionable - but a donkey like that grows coat so quickly, three weeks later you can't see the unevenness of the clip anymore. You can't really do their underparts or knobbly bits with these clippers because this could result in accidental cutting of skin, which our Mary Lou wouldn't like at all!

So when the poor donkey started looking like a Flokati floor rug on four legs again and rubbing herself on trees until she felted sections of her back, I knew she needed clipping again. Not wishing to bother the neighbour, who's busy with his own endless to-do list, I simply asked if he had an old-fashioned set of manual sheep shears I could borrow. Alas, he did. They look like this:





 

There's a very cute segment of actual shearing at the end of this film.

Anyway, it was time for Mary Lou's hair salon experience. I have before photos below, as well as photos of how much "wool" she was relieved of, and of bathing (with shampooing) afterwards. Mary Lou was ultra patient for the clipping, but didn't like the bathing. However, she had a lot of dirt and dandruff built up under her felt carapace, so I gave her a good shampoo and skin massage. Brown water ran for ages when I was hosing her off, but she's not itchy anymore.

I have no "during" photos as Brett was holding the donkey and entertaining her; but she forgave us and returned to the house this morning for a cuddle, and was very shiny and cool. I'll get another photo of her later this week! And she's getting a new halter, because the one she came with is too big and falling apart. She doesn't normally wear a halter, but she really does need a nice one that fits her properly.


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## Caledonian

What a wonderful harvest. Yum Yum! There is something about colourful food that makes my mouth water. 

I never thought the donkeys would have eaten prickly runners from the plants. I had a lot of brambles around the edge of the field and Toby would pick at the fruit and leaves (when he did not have a well-trained human to do it for him) but the runners were left untouched. He would eat the heads off thistles with great care and an open mouth, perhaps bramble thorns were too painful. 

Poor Mary Lou. That is a really thick coat to carry around in the heat. It must have been a relief to get rid of it, even if a bath was going a little too far LOL.

It is a mild and sunny Sunday morning here. Our snowdrops have been flowering for a few weeks and some of the miniature daffodils are ready to pop. The larger and less protected ones look like they might take another month to flower. The spring flowering Clematises have leaf buds and should be flowering by April. I will need to cut back my Buddleia trees and lift a lavender plant, which has died. Overall, the garden needs a tidy to collect bits of stems and leaves.


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## SueC

Fàilte, @Caledonian! :wave: Thank you for your Scotland report, it's really cool to have little windows into other places on the planet like this!  ...I couldn't believe it either about the brambles, but they've eaten two wheelbarrowloads of the things left in the paddock to no ill effect, and only left the woody branches - ate all the green ones. Plenty of feed choice around, including tree lucerne and acacia, but they just love the berry brambles, green branches and all. Maybe they're like sherbet to them, or sour bombs or something. Extra, non-standard sensations with the eating... Donkey society website I've checked says blackberry brambles are beloved of donkeys and that they'll take off what they want... which in our case, :shock:!

On another thread, I've just mentioned that if we had unlimited money and a TARDIS, we'd go walking in the Scottish Highlands and around the UK coast and beauty spots, and in Scandinavian Fjords, etc etc. @ACinATX, please feel free to post walking photos and recollections here!  @Caledonian has most probably done lots of the Highlands too! ;-)


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## egrogan

Donkeys are bramble eaters?? One more reason we probably need some eventually. :smile:onkey: Our trails are so thick with raspberry runners it's like something out of a scary children's fairy tale! 

The fresh fruits look so amazing. I used some frozen blueberries last week to make muffins and they were great, but this is the time of year here when you start getting tired of root vegetables and wishing for luscious fresh produce!


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## SueC

See, @egrogan? Told you you need donkeys! :Angel: Your DH, like my DH, will adore them too. And, they also have a civilising influence on horses. They're the calm cousins, and they've calmed our horse herd right down!  The new donkeys in particular are always hanging with the horses; and they'll preferentially hang with a solitary horse, keeping it company. They don't spook like horses do, they tend to think instead and move slowly and plan things. It's a good influence on their short-eared relatives!  

onkey: onkey: onkey: onkey: onkey:


Raspberries, yum. Was supposed to plant some last winter, but broken foot meant that was put forward a year. You can freeze those too! Lucky you!


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## egrogan

Wish I could ship you some raspberry starts (we have both red and black everywhere). And blackberries. They grow like mad here. The upshot is that all summer and fall you can gorge yourself on the bounty for free!


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## Knave

I think Zeus is like that too! He is a calming influence unless he is feeling feisty. Then he just torments everyone. I wonder if that is simply his youth showing though, and eventually he will be constantly mellow. I do worry though.

My friend told me they owned one for one of their kids to learn to ride on. He was once an important cultural member as he drove a wagon in an opening ceremony for a big rodeo. He was then retired to therapy, where he began falling apart. The therapy center offered them to simply take the horse. They joked picking him up thar he wouldn’t make it home.

Little did they know he simply disliked the therapy program, and he picked right up. She told me once the kid wanted a turn sorting cattle. He rode in on the horse who wouldn’t do much of anything. His dad rode up behind and wacked him with the romal. Ever expressive creatures, he turned to the father with a “How dare you hit me!” shocked expression. Then he pinned his ears, turned to the cattle, and went right to sorting. Lol

She said she hooked him up and drove him once. The pride he displayed was something to be seen.

My digression aside, she said he was so rough on other horses they had to keep him separated. Even then, through the fence, he managed to break the leg of a neighboring horse.


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## SueC

That's probably the fence partly to blame, @Knave. Like vets can break their arms pregnancy testing cattle if the cow falls down and the arm gets caught in a rail. And anyway, it seems to me if you keep your Fjord plenty exercised once he's old enough, this should reduce the shenanigans. Nothing like a bit of work to produce a more even temperament. Horse or human! ;-)

Also, Fjords are smart. You could always pop a grazing muzzle on him if you see him tormenting other horses with his teeth. As long as it's not mealtime - or even then, if he gets over in condition at any point. :rofl: He might learn that Mummy puts a muzzle on him everytime he's acting up too much... :Angel:


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## Knave

Well, it seems to me his biggest target now is Cash who is willing to play along most of the time. If he hurts that big moose I will be surprised.


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## Knave

Although not nearly as quick, it seems to me that those drafty horses play a lot rougher than my others. It is good for him to be taught lessons by the older horses, but even they don’t make him easily move. Sometimes they have to get pretty mean... I remember Keno drug him down and held him on the ground a few times, and I was mad and worried, but I actually get it now watching him enough. Lol

He tries his best to take Cash down now. I don’t think he’s accomplished it, and maybe Cash has gotten him down a few times. They just are a rough bunch. Bones hates it because he is lower on the totem pole and can’t handle the abuse. Luckily he mostly just stays away.


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## SueC

I'm reminded of several things, @Knave.  When you called Cash a moose, I remembered that I had a school friend who used to draw a cartoon character she had named "Moose Caboose" as a sort of signature. Maybe this could be an occasional nickname for Cash! :rofl:

Also, about the shocked expression of the Fjord who got whacked on the rump, the "How dare you!" My family had an ultra-clever and funny stallion called Chip, who was their most successful racehorse. But you couldn't hit him, or he'd immediately stop everything and make a major fuss, for hours if necessary. :rofl: And he was such a kind horse. He would not be forced to do anything though, he wanted to work with you, not for you. And he'd do pretty much anything for you if he liked you, even though some things, he needed a little convincing first, perhaps a little song in his ear and a tap-dance. :rofl:

Anyway, the regular race driver was unable to drive, and a substitute, professional harness racing driver was given charge of the horse, and he was warned: Don't whip this one at the sprint to the finish. Don't even slap the whip on that little plastic triangle on his rump (part of the hopple suspenders), he doesn't like that at all. Just let him compete.

But people are sort of on autopilot. And the horse, in this race, led at the home turn, and ran for the finish line, and was a length ahead just near the post, when another horse came down the outside with a fast sprint, and automatically, the driver tapped Chip with the whip. And Chip put his ears flat back and threw a sliding stop immediately, in the middle of his sprint. We have the winner's photo - he won by a nose, literally sliding through the finish line, rear end low, ears flat back, teeth bared, eyes popping, outraged expression. It's so funny! :rofl: And the driver said, "I just gave him a little tap. It was just a little tap. It wouldn't have hurt him!" ...but he never used the whip on him again. They went on to win quite a few more races together. :rofl: We said, "It's a good thing you didn't hit him earlier, or he would have lost!" :rofl:

A horse with a good brain and personality is a treasure. You'll love your Fjordie. You already do, but you'll love him more, the more you know him and the more antics he gives you! :loveshower:


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## Knave

That is a great story!! I love it. 

Yes, I do love him and only more and more with time. Once little girl is able to start riding him after school I’m sure I will love him even more. He is such a character.

Cash I haven’t wacked either ever. Someone got him scared of ropes, and so I have to convince him that they are our tool not a discipline. Even moving saddle strings would panic him in the beginning.

One thing I am beginning to notice about him is that he is similar to General. He doesn’t handle discipline well. Rarely do I ever do much anyways, but when I do it sets him on edge to start a fight. Getting in a battle with such a big horse is not on my list of good ideas. Lol. He had taken to taking a few jumps, which I could shut him down from, but I hadn’t figured out my mistake until recently.

When he would buck I would pull his head around as to not get bucked off of course (he has a ton of power you can imagine), and then I would boot his hind end around in a circle. Kind of standard for me in that situation, because I don’t want a horse to learn bucking is an out.

Anyways, he was just working himself up each time this happened. I thought, maybe I need to redirect him in another way rather than try and continue what is not working. Right away I noticed the difference. He was worried and getting ready to fight over the discipline.


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## SueC

So what is it you're doing instead now, in that situation, @Knave?

Horses are so interesting. Their individual idiosyncrasies teach us so much!


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## Knave

They do teach us so much don’t they?! I was just talking to husband about that yesterday. He has such a different temperament than my usual style of horses. It is more like Zeus, but without all the desensitizing at this point.

I have started to take it back down actually. I get him completely stopped and then go back to what I was doing. If I was only walking I will start working on something he knows easily enough, like pivoting his forequarters. If he starts doing it as a lazy excuse I will make him work at something faster, but right now I want him to be able to come back down from it. It goes against my own thought process, but I did need to change something. Definition of insanity you know.

I have also tried to up his training when the ground is good anyways. Rare are the days I can, but he is getting more broke, which makes me hope that he doesn’t pull the attitude at work when he is busy minded.


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## Caledonian

Halò :wave: Tapadh leat Sue! 


I’ve a sudden craving for raspberries! They rarely manage to survive long enough to be made into anything when I’m around; they’re like sweeties. 

That’s a great story about Chip. I’d loved to have seen the driver’s face! 

I’ve never thought of using donkeys as a calming influence on a herd. We’ve always used ponies as companion animals and they caused more problems than horses. The last Shetland was bad for biting at their stomachs and back of their knees, often bringing the largest of the herd to the ground. I would prefer a quiet and sensible donkey. My first school had a grey donkey who roamed the yard throughout the day. You could say that she was their watchdog. Thankfully, she never left the yard to explore, as it was open to the road and, a short distance away, the motorway/freeway. 


Tìoraidh an-dràsta.


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## SueC

Hello all! :wave:

I'm re-emerging from a deep dive writing for a deadline, and now decompressing! So I've finally got time to pop back on here!
@Knave, it seems to me you operate both from gut instinct and from thought and reflection when figuring out various training issues with your various horses. I think we horsepeople need both equally, and then perhaps some divine intervention every now and then as well! :rofl:

I've got a little relaxation meditation for you: Imagine Bones, Cash, Zeus in 5 years from now... how wonderfully advanced they will be compared to now, and how much riding them will be like getting on a magic carpet! 

I had a lot of "fun" when I was re-educating Sunsmart from harness to saddle a decade ago - most of it to do with "monsterology" as he'd been so sheltered from the "real world" by his racetrack life - cows, goats, bicycles, sprinklers, puddles, people wearing purple etc etc - that we seemed to spend as much time in orbit as on the planet. OTSTBs are great with cars, trucks and slow traffic owing to being around mobile barriers, track-watering trucks etc while working on a racetrack - but the natural world is quite another thing! :rofl: Sunsmart has the ability to turn in mid-air, and exercised it frequently in his first year - it's a wonder I never came off in the process. I learnt too that he was less likely to do it at speed, so I spent a fair bit of ride time at racing trots, fast canters, gallopping etc, past various monsters before he could really register them. :rofl:
@Caledonian - A bheil Beurla agat? :rofl: It is fun to live in the Internet age, and also for me to compare the basic Scots Gaelic phrases with the smidgeon of Irish Gaelic I retain from taking classes many moons ago! Brett and I are raspberry addicted too, but it's a healthy addiction, very good for you. 

I have another story for you about that driver - now sadly deceased. I'm not a fan of the racing industry, but I loved Phil and his wife Delma, they were wonderful people and seemed to glow from the inside. They were kind, and thoughtful, and animals just loved them. Phil wasn't just a harness driver, he was an amazing all-round horseman, and unlike many others in that industry, he did horses on a small scale, not as an impersonal sausage factory. He had a handful of very well looked-after and very well loved horses of his own, and also harness trained for others, and drove other people's in races, including some of the racing legends of the 1960s and 70s. Here's his obituary:

News Article - Australian Harness Racing

One of my favourite stories about him is what happened before his wedding. He and Delma had both been unhappily married before, and met later in life. These two were clearly best friends as well as spouses. They didn't take each other for granted - and had that extra appreciation and happiness with each other that comes from having seen the opposite in life. Anyway, apparently when Phil proposed and Delma accepted, he was so over the moon that he counted the laps incorrectly in a race that Friday night, and sprinted for the finish a lap early, pulling up as everyone was racing past him. :rofl: He got fined for unprofessional driving, but it didn't dampen his happiness. 

Beannachd leat!


*Kodak Moments*

I'm going to finish with a recent Kodak moment. The other day, I finished working in the garden and brought in a test Granny Smith apple as the apples are getting close to ripe. It was hot and I sweat a lot because not very heat-tolerant, so I left all the sweaty clothes in the washing machine en route the shower, because that's the practical thing to do. So here I was carrying an apple down the corridor while in my birthday suit, when I bumped into my husband, who was on his way out again. His eyes got very wide, and what else could I do but bow down ceremoniously, then hold out the apple to him, wink, and say, "Look what I found in the garden, would you like to try it?" :Angel:

Sometimes, life hands you priceless moments on a platter. Anyone here had any of those?


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## Knave

I have one for you that happened to my husband yesterday. I didn’t see it, but I laughed so hard when he told me. Obviously not as sweet of a moment as yours, but Kodak worthy for sure.

I told you it was a ice rink around here... well, a new calf had been born. He wandered onto a patch of ice and could not get up. Husband slowly went out and was trying to push him off the ice with one leg, and maintain his balance. He said every push would make his other leg slip.

Mama cow was not happy with this scenario. After she couldn’t handle it anymore she decided to get rid of the man tormenting her baby. When she came at him she slipped and fell on the ice. He said he was trying to run away from her, but he was stuck in place as his legs kept slipping. 

I wish I had seen! Lol

Now, for a loving one I will have to think.


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## SueC

:rofl:, I wish that had been caught on camera, @Knave! I remember a few camera-worthy scenes when Brett and I lived in town (at the fringe with cow paddocks), and we used to go walking on the local tracks, one of which we shortcut through the neighbour's property to get back home - his cow paddock where he kept the newly calved cows... We walked along the drainage channel, which was about 3m deep and with water in it all year. I'm used to large animals from little, but not Brett, and this was in our early days. I'd say to him, "Go straight along the drain, be confident, don't even look at the cattle!" - but he'd steal nervous glances at them, and not keep his walking speed brisk and consistent - which encouraged them to come forward and follow him, and get feisty. Even worse was if he ran!  Quite a few times he'd nearly end up in the ditch trying to escape. He'd say, "Why are they doing this to me, and not to you?" - and I'd say, "Because you've got a red flashing light on top of your head that says, _Nervous person here who is fun to chase!_"

Brett was always referring to the cows in that paddock as The Attack Cows. :rofl: And one day, he did get attacked, because he nearly stumbled upon a newborn calf that was hidden in the long grass right by the path where we walked next to the drain! He mightn't have the best cow skills, but my husband is very quick and athletic - can move like greased lightning, which he did, going down the steep drainage channel, where the cow could not follow him. Unfortunately he got wet feet that time! 

Now that we have our own cows, Brett is getting the hang of it better. It helps that we don't have any calving cows on the place; we only have 12ha of pasture, so just buy in weanlings and sell finished cattle.

Brett is also so much better with horses! When I first got Sunsmart down to Albany in 2009, when I was agisting the horse and re-training him to saddle, Brett used to say, "Your mare is one thing, but I can guarantee you I'm never going to be on the same side of the fence as _that monster_." :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: And now of course, Brett scratches Smartie's itchy spots and feeds him and leads him around, and has even, one memorable Halloween, sat on him!  Let me just get the evidence of that out again...

  

...before and after he photoshopped Middle Earth into the shot!


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## lostastirrup

SueC said:


> :rofl:, I wish that had been caught on camera, @Knave! I remember a few camera-worthy scenes when Brett and I lived in town (at the fringe with cow paddocks), and we used to go walking on the local tracks, one of which we shortcut through the neighbour's property to get back home - his cow paddock where he kept the newly calved cows... We walked along the drainage channel, which was about 3m deep and with water in it all year. I'm used to large animals from little, but not Brett, and this was in our early days. I'd say to him, "Go straight along the drain, be confident, don't even look at the cattle!" - but he'd steal nervous glances at them, and not keep his walking speed brisk and consistent - which encouraged them to come forward and follow him, and get feisty. Even worse was if he ran!  Quite a few times he'd nearly end up in the ditch trying to escape. He'd say, "Why are they doing this to me, and not to you?" - and I'd say, "Because you've got a red flashing light on top of your head that says, _Nervous person here who is fun to chase!_"
> 
> Brett was always referring to the cows in that paddock as The Attack Cows. :rofl: And one day, he did get attacked, because he nearly stumbled upon a newborn calf that was hidden in the long grass right by the path where we walked next to the drain! He mightn't have the best cow skills, but my husband is very quick and athletic - can move like greased lightning, which he did, going down the steep drainage channel, where the cow could not follow him. Unfortunately he got wet feet that time!
> 
> Now that we have our own cows, Brett is getting the hang of it better. It helps that we don't have any calving cows on the place; we only have 12ha of pasture, so just buy in weanlings and sell finished cattle.
> 
> Brett is also so much better with horses! When I first got Sunsmart down to Albany in 2009, when I was agisting the horse and re-training him to saddle, Brett used to say, "Your mare is one thing, but I can guarantee you I'm never going to be on the same side of the fence as _that monster_." :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: And now of course, Brett scratches Smartie's itchy spots and feeds him and leads him around, and has even, one memorable Halloween, sat on him!  Let me just get the evidence of that out again...
> 
> 
> 
> ...before and after he photoshopped Middle Earth into the shot!



It's funny. You can't see his face... But I feel like he looks very proud of himself.


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## SueC

lostastirrup said:


> It's funny. You can't see his face... But I feel like he looks very proud of himself.


Yes, I'm sure you're right! :rofl: And just look at his posture! 

Apparently Nazguls sort of don't have faces... so he wore a dark balaclava and pulled the hood down low on his face... :rofl:


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## SueC

*IT'S A HARD LIFE*

A while back, I promised to take a film of Romeo eating stone fruit. At the time, we were harvesting nectarines. At 34, Romeo has very few molars left, and has been unable to eat carrots for over six years. But he can eat nice soft nectarines, plums, figs, sultanas, soft pears and other such treats. Here's a clip of his plum-eating technique I took earlier today. Towards the end of the chewing phase, he thinks about spitting the stone on the ground and then comes towards me because the horses know I am happy to assist at that point - they also do it if there's too much carrot for all at once. It's much cleaner if they get to put the stone (or bit of carrot they can't manage yet) on my hand instead of the ground, because there is still some licking off to do at that point!


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## Caledonian

‘A bheil Beurla agat?’ Ha! Barely! As for Gaelic, I reached intermediate level due to a couple of jobs but, through lack of use, I’d consider myself a baffled beginner. I didn’t realise how different Irish is until I looked up ‘thank you’ and got pulled down an internet hole!

That’s a wonderful story about Phil and Delma. It’s never too late to find your partner. In his obituary, it says that he changed the style of racing: does ‘prepared to race outside the leader’ describe the side he passed another horse? 

My Kodak Moment happened many years ago when I was a in my mid-teens. I was with a friend who suggested that I should ride one of her ponies. I hadn’t been expecting to ride so I’d left my hat in their house with my bag. I ran back up the hill (not something that would happen nowadays) and burst into their kitchen. I was confronted by her gorgeous older brother standing eating his breakfast in nothing more than very, very tiny underpants. He was just back from a night out and wasn’t expecting a flustered and blushing teenager and I wasn’t expecting… him. I can still remember the minutes or years where we stood looking at each other; him with a spoon half way to his mouth and me with a scarlet face. Eventually, I managed to squeak out something about my hat before grabbing my bag and running out the door! 

Love the photos of Brett on Smartie and the video of Romeo eating the plum. There’s a lot of thought going into getting the flesh off the stone.


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## SueC

Wheeee, @Caledonian, did you tell your friend? :rofl: ...hilarious. And so like that scene in the Dr Who episode "Blink" - did you catch that one? 

And also hilarious that we care so much less about that stuff when we're 40+. _Now_ if that happened to me, I'd probably just say, "Put it away, thank you very much." (Unless it's DH. :Angel Which, come to think of it, reminds me of a rather traumatic teenage memory where my father and older brother were both sitting at the dinner table in pyjamas, the type that seem to have no buttons at the fly, and they were manspreading, and some of my brother's tackle dropped out. I was like, :shock: "Excuse me, close your legs, I'm eating!" They should at least have some velcro at the fly in men's pyjamas to stop wardrobe malfunctions like that, what with their propensities for sitting in such a spreadeagled manner. Have you ever read Desmond Morris' _The Human Zoo_? Morris used to work with baboons, and he explains so well why men behave in such strange ways. 100% recommend that book, it's an eye-opener and you won't stop laughing...

About racing outside the leader: This position is known in harness driving parlance as "The Death Seat" - because the horse is both in the running line (which means it's covering more distance than a horse at the rails), and because it's pushing wind. Statistically, it's one of the worst positions for a horse to be in when racing - most horses will droop at the end and have nothing left for a sprint - while the horse sitting behind this position, in the "One Out, One Back" - has one of the best positions statistically, as it has cover (it slipstreams) for the whole race but can usually pull out in the home straight and pass the horses in front of it. The horses on the rail tend to get trapped, especially if the race is slow, say if the leading horse slows right down, which they try to do so they have sprint left in the end, as racing without cover. But if the Death Seat horse challenges for lead position, the race gets fast, and people are more likely to get away from the rails at the end, through a gap in runners. It's a big thing in harness racing, because horse and cart are so long, compared to in TBs. Anyway, Phil's horses were fit, as he interval trained them before anyone else over here had heard of this technique, so they could sit quietly in the Death Seat, stress out the leader by putting pressure on them instead of letting them slow down, and then have enough left to sprint home at the finish...

:runpony:

Yeah, Romeo is very brainy and has always been a problem-solver. As a young horse, he was forever opening doors and sneaking in to the feed room to find the oats bin. He could take the lid off any bin, no matter how tight. And he'd greet your with an innocent expression when sprung.  We used to call him Houdini, because if you locked something away from him, or him away from something, he'd always find a way to get around it anyway! He once walked down the driveway at my parents' farm and around the swamp, and back around through the back tracks, about 800m in a large semi-circle, so he could get into the back shed door when we blocked the front door off to him because he was looking for the oats bin. An hour later we found him with his face in the oats bin and an innocent facial expression...

He really thinks about things, and it's quite amazing how well he's coping with having very few functional molars left. He has a grazing technique where he's using his intact (but very acutely angled) incisors to cut off very short grass, which he doesn't have to chew very much. The sort of grass that's left behind when I mow the lawn!


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## Caledonian

No, I didn’t tell her, he did though. She told me that he thought it was hilarious as he’d been just as shocked to have a relative stranger come in when he thought he was alone. You’re right, when you’re older things don’t bother you as much and, if it happened tomorrow, I’d probably say ‘hello’ grab my hat and walk out without a second look. 
Ugh! I’ve often thought Velcro should be standard for their pajama pants. I’ll have hunt for ‘The Human Zoo’. It might explain a few things!:smile:

Yes, I saw the Blink episode. It’s very creepy! I’ve a neighbour who has a four-foot stone angel with her hands covering her face and every time I pass the house I think of that episode.


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## SueC

Love that episode, it's my favourite, the creepy is so extremely well done!  If we had ridiculous amounts of money, we'd have stone angels like that in our garden. But alas, we do not!


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## SueC

The other day, an HF buddy had a very unpleasant day at a show. I wanted to cheer her up, so I imagined a "horse show from hell" episode, using a collage of events personally experienced, extrapolations from events personally experienced, and events I saw or heard about other people experiencing. I wanted to have a copy here, to invite anyone who's feeling inspired to write a similar piece (any horse type event) / add to the existing piece. What else can go wrong? It's always funny as an armchair sport, especially if you've experienced some of that yourself for real. It's never funny at the time, of course...











*MURPHY'S LAW AND HORSE SHOWS*

Why does Murphy's law always apply to horse shows? It starts with the weather - it'll be one from the following menu: Sleet coming down at a 45 degree angle, or a sauna day with humidity and you're supposed to be in a jacket and no antiperspirant works and you think you're going to faint as your brain is boiling away under that black velvet helmet, or it's 48 degrees Celsius with a dry gale from the Sahara, or a tornado, or endless drizzle, or a combination of those. Then lots of things go wrong. The ramp falls off the horse float, the towbar falls off the car, the lead rope gives up its ghost, the bridle is inexplicably dirty, the saddle is back home in the tack room, your horse is grey and rolled in poo while you left it in its box to collect your gear, the zipper of your riding pants breaks and you're wearing polka dot underwear and there's no safety pins in the car's first aid kit, or if there are, they malfunction and stab you while you're saluting the judge.









A midge enters your eye as you pass the judges and you are unable to see where you are going or to remember the next part of the test. You hope the horse is looking suitably well-trained as you squint to see where the arena markers are. Halfway through a volte, one of the girth straps breaks - you can feel it go _zooooinggg_ under the saddle flap, and you breathe a prayer that the remaining strap will hold for another ten minutes. A purple umbrella breaks away from a spectator in a gust of wind and gets blown into the arena, where it flaps like a dying bird. Simultaneously, one of your horse's shoes comes off. Meanwhile, at home, you left your iron on, and you remember this exactly as your horse is leaping over the purple umbrella. You gather the horse back into a working trot and realise one of the judges is a person who used to be your friend. In a paddock adjoining the showgrounds, someone starts doing target practice with a .22 rifle. And you're only halfway through your test...

Ah, horse shows...


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## Knave

Lol. I’ll tell you a real one, which should make your friend feel much better. I have many if I need to go in a different direction. I’ve told this before I know, so forgive me if you’ve heard it.

My friend, and family friend, needed a team roping partner for his first high school rodeo. I said no, because I didn’t feel ready. Team sports tend to get under my skin as I can’t stand to let anyone down. My parents were mad at me as they thought I was just being snobby.

So, there I was, entered in the team roping. I was also entered in the barrels at the same time, so my mother was holding the paint horse over the fence. She knew better of course, but she took the tie down strap and hooked it back to itself. I look over the track and see he has put his foot through the tie down and is panicking. I don’t know what I did with the mare, but I was jumping the track fence to go save the paint.

As I jumped the fence I ripped the seat out of my jeans. The whole seat. In my little thong I fixed his problem, jumped the fence again, and ran my barrel pattern. High school rodeos are not small events mind you. Then I gave my mom the mare and got on the paint. I was petrified.

I was so scared, that I literally peed my saddle. I never had before since very small of course, and I’ve yet to do so again. In high school this is of course the end of the world. 

You stand up to come out of the box and while you are roping. Not me that day. I sat my butt far down in that saddle and looked like a moron. Luckily he missed. 

So, when I came out, in front of this huge crowd, my mother said get off and give Vickie the tie down back (she had borrowed it from her, the mother of the boy I roped with). I said “No, could I just ride back to the trailer and I’ll give it back to her after I tie him up.” She was livid I told her no. “Get you *** off that horse and give back the tie down.” “Um, I ripped the butt out of my jeans, could I just wait until I go tie up?” “I said now (and something about my rude behavior).”

So, I stepped off of the horse, not ashamed of the bare butt, but humiliated about the peed saddle. I tried to keep my butt to the horse as I undid his bridle and said thank you for letting me use the tie down. Of course the saddle was wet, and it wasn’t a hidden thing.

It was such a terrible thing. I laugh about it now of course, but in the moment I just could have cried. If I could go back I would have just ridden away and faced the consequences. It shocked me that she figured that would be the time I would decide to misbehave. I don’t think I ever in my life said no. I try and remember that with my kids. Sometimes the benefit of the doubt is necessary.

I’m sure your friend probably didn’t pee her saddle without any pants on top of it! Lol


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## SueC

Oh, that's really embarrassing, @Knave! I'm sorry that happened to you! :hug:

That thing about the polka dotted underwear in the story above is based on reality. The one time I tore the seat of my jeans in public, when I was a high school student on a Biology excursion and climbing a tree to get a sample, with a group of fellow students looking on.. _rrrrrrrip_! - and that day, I wore bright pink underwear with black polka dots the size of Australian 5c pieces... Not my choice, those things were bought for me, and my mother was forever trying to get me into pink on any level at all... I hated pink...

Anyway, I came down off the tree rapidly and wore my jumper across my backside for the rest of the day, sleeves tied at the waist. There's no way that remotely compares to your experience....


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## SueC

*HOW TO FIT EVERYTHING IN*

_...you probably need Mary Poppins' handbag! _:tardis:

It's the first day of ordinary life again, after our summer break - Brett is back at work four days a week, I'm back to working full-time on farm stuff and articles for publication - after my summer homesteader's half-holiday, which has gone from Christmas to now. That's when I work half-days on essential stuff, and have half a day every day to myself. This year it ran for a blessed six weeks, for me, because Brett just finished having 2.5 weeks off work, so I continued my holiday mode too.

It's the hottest time of year, and I'm not very heat-tolerant, so for decades I've spent summers vegging out on the sofa, watching the Australian summer tennis season - the Hopman Cup, the Sydney and Brisbane Internationals, the Kooyong Classic, the Fast4, and the Australian Open. Normally, watching sport is anathema to me, especially if it involves machines, or hordes of people with only one ball. But tennis happens to be on at the hottest time of year, at the hottest times of day, and as there are only two people with one ball, I can cope. Plus, you get to know the athletes a little, it's not so faceless. In the commercial breaks, you can do some bookkeeping tasks while hardly noticing them, and you can dash out to rearrange the sprinklers and soaker hoses at intervals.

And then there's stone fruit harvest, and making plum sauce, and bottled nectarines and peaches, and freezing lots of cherries and berries when you've had too many cherry clafoutis and cherry trifles, and you can no longer face any more homemade berry icecream, after subsisting off this elixir for weeks.

And then there's thinking about the direction of your life, and what you hope to achieve with the next revolution around the sun, and what you're going to prioritise, and what you're going to change, and how.

One of the ironies of my life is that I love to do so, so many things - reading, writing, horse-riding, hiking, bicycle riding, rollerblading, Pilates, listening to music, doing music practice, keeping a paper journal as well as an online one, growing our own food, looking after the garden, farm animals and the land, cooking everything from scratch, etc etc etc - and yet my energy to do these things is finite! And so, apart from the farm/food-related stuff, I don't get to do these things half as much as I want to, which gets frustrating. Since we built our own house (2012-1017) and started living on a farm, music practice, Pilates and bicycle riding have fallen pretty much by the wayside - the place keeps us so busy.

Also, ironically, I ride less than I did when I agisted my horse and had an office job. Then, I felt cooped up all day and just wanted to get out and ride or walk after work. Now, I work outdoors a lot on our own farm, determine my own hours, and when I've finished working, I long for the sofa instead of bursting to get on a horse or on a hiking trail! On the other hand, I've got horses around me all day long, including some old buddies I knew all my life and have been able to retire here, and I wouldn't swap that for extra riding time.

But I'm re-thinking how to get more of my activities into an actual week, and decided to start timetabling them into my week as regular slots again, for this upcoming year. Returning to my "normal life" - whatever I'm going to make that this year! And that means returning to riding five times a week, and trying to fit all the other stuff in, if not for as long as I like, then at least _some_ of each, regularly!

So I'll start riding again this week, and then the following week will introduce another activity I've dropped, and so on; even if I just do each one once or twice a week - and as "timetable dates".

I think for me, one of the problems historically is that I have about ten areas of interest, but would like to do each of them as if it was my only one, which doesn't work unless you have a time machine.







And then I can get frustrated when my inner whatever-it-is decides that I'm "behind", compared to if I did whatever it is full-time. And it's this silly thing that can then drain energy and motivation, and which I will try to evict this year.

My husband has great advice on all this, for me, and it's been helpful before when I've implemented it:

1. Ride your horse before you start your farm chores, first thing. That way you won't be too tired at the end of the day to do it.

2. On two days every week, have "free time" - no timetabling, no  "should do this" - and just do what you like, for recharging those batteries.

To which I've added this one:

3. Make regular "dates" with various activities the other five days - by the book, like an appointment. Slot in music practice, Pilates, bicycle training, other things you're trying to get back to, twice a week each, rather than five times a week, or it becomes a chore, and unrealistic. Start with one additional activity first week, and then slot another in the following week. Only slot another in when it's comfortable.

So I'll see how that goes for me. The structured journal is also very helpful!


* FIRST RIDE FOR 2019*

As I spent three hours last night slaving away in the kitchen to do what I had planned to do lunchtime today, I have time to write this reflection, and to write up my first ride for the year!

So, true to the principles I wish to adopt this year, I collected Sunsmart for riding as my first task, after our and Romeo's breakfast. Nobody is wearing halters anymore, as Julian is now manoeuverable without one, and because Sunsmart had a summer holiday. So the halter went back on, and I gave the horse a good grooming, which he enjoyed. I'd taken off some of his fuzz yesterday already, with the rubber curry - he didn't grow a proper summer coat this year; he went from yak to having a sort of dead, coppery coat in spring, despite commencing treatment for recently diagnosed early PPID.

But something seems to be working in the treatment, which he's been on over three months. He's having a sort of intermediate shedding now, just past mid-summer, and there's shorty, shiny, dark chocolate hair underneath that fuzzy stuff that's shedding out. This is very promising.

From the promising to the completely predictable. Yes, I've been trimming feet over summer, but do you think it's possible to get on a horse after a riding break without having to do a touch-up? ...no, it isn't. I had one look at his front feet, trimmed three weeks ago, and started rasping. His nearside front hoof is developing a smidgeon of a tendency to long toe. Greg Coffey, the professional farrier who occasionally comes out to trim (usually in summer, when the hooves are rock hard) and talk shop, thinks, first of all, that what I call bad feet is not what he sees when he goes out and trims bad feet. He also thinks that some horses, as they get older, can get a tendency for that on one of their front feet, because they are "footed" the same way we are "handed" - they favour one of their front feet when grazing.

So I shave off heel to stop it from collapsing, and take the toe back, and mustang roll (still without hoof stand, really must see to that) so that the breakover point moves back. Things looked far better after that, and I tacked up. The dog, at this point, was barking excitedly, and I had to brandish my dog-whacking stick (which is what Brett christened my riding crop) theatrically to stop Jess from baying and leapfrogging into Sunsmart's face.

Once upon a time, in 2013, I thought the dog was simply on L-plates and would calm down with continued riding. Not this one. What you see in this clip we took three months ago is mild for her...






Anyway, I have to growl at her when I get on my horse, so she settles down a bit. After that, she is usually found ahead of us on the trail, looking back at us with the eyes of a speed fanatic, trying to entice us to go faster.

Today we did the southern trails past the fireground. I didn't have the iPod on me, but solemnly promise to take it on any "new" trails this year which I've not already photographically documented on this journal. Meanwhile, I will recycle existing riding photos from this exact trail. 

Heading south on the track behind the house:




























The south gate into a neighbour's place:










Heading west once through the gate:










Right turn past the dam in the valley floor:










Past the dog's second swimming opportunity for the ride:










And then we rode through a lot of this:










This is really gorgeous countryside, and a total pleasure to ride through. You leave the service tracks at this point, and just end up following one of a number of possible cow trails through this valley floor. Up until here, we'd done some trotting and cantering, but now we meandered along, picking out "roads" and enjoying the scenery. Sunsmart likes bush-bashing! He's always trying to veer off the service tracks onto animal tracks, just to see where they go.

This is a photo from the middle of last winter. The light is brighter now, and the Christmas trees are in spectacular bloom. They look like this:










Next ride will start on the same route, through this valley floor, and then diverge; so I will take my camera, and can then also show people reading these wonderful trees, and how the light is different now. Also, you should see how the vegetation has grown back in the areas we burnt last autumn! Everything is green and lush now, lots of animals grazing on the new growth.

Speaking of, there were quite a few kangaroos in this valley floor today, sproinging along. Here's an aerial view of this trail, so you can work out where we are in the landscape. The valley floor is the bottom loop, right hand side, heading south!










Once you come out at the fence line, the horse always wants to zoom up the big hill, and then there's a lot of this:










We went home via the swamp track in the valley floor of on our own property, which you can see on this map, parallel to the single red line and to its right. Back out in the pasture, we came upon the rest of the horses, out in the Common for the day, and I left Smartie with them to graze. As I took the saddle and bridle off, the two new donkeys came running with curiosity, and Julian came to join Sunsmart. Everybody got "scratchies" - they all always like a little individual time with me, so they got it - and then I shouldered my gear and walked the few hundred metres back to the house, with the dog jumping into yet another dam, this time our own.

I really enjoyed this ride, and Sunsmart was very jolly today, and inquisitive, and doing a lot of sightseeing. It's lovely to be back on the horse. It's funny how sometimes we need breaks in life to recharge, but once that's happened, it's really nice to be out in the world again.

:cowboy:


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## Knave

I think it’s nice that you love life so much you don’t have the time to fit it all in! 

That orange tree is absolutely beautiful!


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## egrogan

I love all the summery photos and the thoughts of a long day of making preserves from my own fresh fruit is dreamy right now!

My lovely husband and I are confronting something similar to what you're describing- there just simply aren't enough hours in the day for all the things we'd love to do. We've both started new jobs fairly recently, and it just feels like there isn't ever enough time to deal with everything at work and still have time for life afterwards. We have so many projects we _want_ to do on the weekends, we end up feeling even more exhausted when Monday rolls around again. But the weekend exhaustion is the "good" kind- feeling like you're working hard for things that you are really excited about around the house and the farm. We cook and bake all weekend and while the days are long, they feel so satisfying. Workweek exhaustion is a little different. But that's our reality for now- neither of us come from families that have given us gobs of money (like a lot of our friends have) so we have to keep working office jobs to fund all the other stuff. Someday that won't be the case, but certainly not while we have an old dilapidated house to renovate! :wink:


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## SueC

@egrogan, you mean some families actually give their kids money? :shock: No, we're not in that position either, but I think we'd be uncomfortable to accept any either. I suppose it might be different if one had a different sort of relationship with one's family of origin - a warm, positive, respectful one going both ways.

One of the most outrageous things about that in my life is that when we bought this place, my mother said, "Oh, that's great, now you can retire all our horses when we die." :shock: At that point they had a dozen horses, and I've been preaching at them since I was 16 that they would be in this exact situation in their 70s if they didn't stop breeding horses and hanging on to them all. At one point they had 16 horses. Way too many for the welfare of horse and humans alike.

I've no intentions of ever having more than four horses on this place. In fact, now that we have the donkeys, we think we won't be slotting another horse into Romeo's spot when he ceases to be. There's enough equines to give them a social group, and that's all I want. The fewer I have, the better I can care for them, and still have a life. Plus, horses are really rough on land, and we're also a farm producing actual food animals, and that's important to us. We've no intentions of turning our wonderful place into a feedlot for bored and ailing horses, just because certain other people didn't do their planning properly.

When I explained that to my mother, she said, "Well, then you'll be disinherited."

:rofl: Feel free. The horses we have adopted were adopted because they're old buddies, and I've taken some of the previously most isolated, bored ones that I knew weren't happy. I did it for the horses, not for my parents. You can't grow up with a bunch of horses and not get attached to a lot of them emotionally. And there's more horses like that back there, but each of us has limits, so the reality is that a lot of those horses will probably get shot when my parents go. But it's not a problem I created, so it's not one I feel obliged to solve. I've washed my hands of it a long time ago, and I make very sure I don't create problems like that myself.

Can't see them disinheriting my brother because he's not taking in their horses, even though he's got land, and horses on it he didn't get from them. Can't see them threatening him with that either. It's that sort of family. It was a great liberation for me emotionally when I stopped caring for any of them a few years ago. It was also one of the hardest things to do, because of Stockholm Syndrome etc. Now I see them as they are, and it's not a very inspirational sight.

The amazing thing was, when you stop pouring your energy and love down a bottomless pit, you have so much energy and love to give to better causes. 

@Knave, that's a really good way to look at it - thank you - and I shall!


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## bsms

Can't say I "like" what your parents did, but I've met folks like them. I had an uncle who was as nice as could be. He did very well in business...multiple homes, a couple of boats, traveled to Europe every year, etc. As nice as HE was, his wife was the opposite. Once, while he was out of the room, I said something she didn't take to (imagine that!). She turned and snarled, "You'll never get a cent of our money!" "Don't want it", I replied.

My Mom said later my uncle would have died from embarrassment if he had been in the room. We always figured he did well in business in part to avoid going home to his wife. And no, he didn't leave us a penny, nor did any of us care. I eventually adopted a couple of kids. They only met him once, but he wrote them long, nice letters regularly. THAT was an inheritance worth more than money!


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## gottatrot

Knave said:


> I think it’s nice that you love life so much you don’t have the time to fit it all in!


Exactly. It is a very good problem to have, especially when I look around and see how many people are depressed, and have nothing to live for except addictions. 

I've always thought it was a good philosophy to think of myself as responsible for myself and my life, and to not think anyone else should pay for any of it. But also, I'm not responsible to pay for your life either.  It's sad that DH's grandma thinks so highly of money that she believes it carries great weight to say someone is disinherited. DH offended her greatly by saying his mom (her daughter) was mentally ill, although now she lives in a nursing home due to this problem.


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## SueC

*TRAIL OUTING WITH CAMERA*

I wanted to take the camera (iPod) out on the horse this morning to photograph the valley floor with the Christmas trees in full bloom, and to take photographs of a follow-on trail not hitherto photographed for this journal.

As it's quite a production to do a ride photoessay, I won't be taking my camera more than once a week, and probably far less. Still, in 2019, I do want to document all the rest of the trails we regularly ride, and also explore a few new ones.

This is on the sand track behind the house. It's late summer here, and you can directly compare this with photos taken midwinter in the same location, in this post:
https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...s-other-people-479466/page150/#post1970680523

Notice there are _two_ dogs in this photograph. Our Jess is in the background, and Max is in the foreground. He is our neighbours' stock dog, and occasionally turns up to play with Jess. This morning, I was woken by the two dogs thundering around the house and growling playfully, as Kelpies will. Their games include lots of speed racing and egging each other on.










The next couple of photos are looking left and right into the bushland. We burnt this section of valley floor nine months ago, for fuel reduction and to maintain a mosaic landscape for biodiversity conservation. It's coming back nicely, and is very green considering it's midsummer, which in our Mediterranean climate means drought.

You can still see the charring on the eucalyptus trunks, and tea-trees with dead tops re-sprouting from their bases. The bush grass always regenerates from its tough subsurface structures, and thrives with the extra nutrients provided by the ash. You can also see eucalytpus seedlings here, bright green and barely nine months old. Fire causes a lot of sclerophyll seed to germinate, as it signals the availability of nutrients, space and light post-burn.



















_Sclerophyll_ literally means _hard-leaved_, as adaptation for drought tolerance typically results in comparatively hard leaves with waxy coatings. These coatings are flammable, as are the volatile oils many sclerophyll species (eucalyptus trees, tea-trees etc) produce in their leaves to deter grazing, which can easily stress plants in a harsh environment. In environments where water and minerals are more abundant, plants can more easily re-grow leaves, and aren't forced to protect them chemically.

When vegetation is flammable, it is prone to wildfires through lightning strike. As fire is inevitable in such plant communities, much of southern Australia's current natural vegetation has become gradually fire-adapted.

Aboriginal Australians have been on this continent for over 60,000 years – nearly twice as long as people have been in Europe. They began “firestick farming” – using small, frequent low-intensity fires, both to prevent devastating wildfires, and to promote high populations of animals they could eat. The Australian sclerophyll has been co-evolving with Aboriginal fire regimes for at least 35,000 years. The Aboriginal people continually burnt small patches of land to create vegetation mosaics that included old, dense, unburnt vegetation for shelter, freshly burnt ground with new shoots to attract grazing mammals, and everything in-between. We try to do the same.

Tim Flannery and various other Australian ecologists think that the post-colonial exit of Aboriginal Australians and their fire management from the countryside is a major factor in the wave of Australian mammal extinctions, and in a resurgence of devastating large-scale wildfires.










In the photo above, you can see what happens if a fire develops hot patches. (Ours did, because the tea-tree flat on the left hadn't been burnt in over 20 years and was long overdue. Generally, we try to do cool burns, like the Aboriginal people did - but since only a relatively small area of our property burnt hot, it wasn't a huge problem for the local ecology.) The eucalypts on this section of the track experienced a crown fire, which cooked their smaller branches and branchlets. When this happens, eucalypts sprout new branches, called epicormic shoots, through the bark, from dormant buds kept in reserve for such occasions.

If anyone is interested in the burn we did last autumn, there's photos and a story here:
https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...s-other-people-479466/page112/#post1970620989

So, back to the trail: This is the south gate into an adjoining property, where I have permission to ride.










This is the same neighbours who own that block also own Max. I was hoping he'd come with us on the ride so I could drop him back, but he went back to our house instead. He appears to have made his own way home today.

Next we're through the gate, heading east. I'm not back on the horse yet, because I've just done up the 8kV hot wire that protects the gate from stock - not something you should do off a horse's back.










The next set of photos are of the valley floor at the neighbour's place. Summer-green bush grasses predominate that area, and it's really pretty to ride in, on the well-formed animal trails. The introduced pasture is mostly brown this time of year. We met about a dozen kangaroos on our meander through today, in three batches, but the iPod was in my pocket each time, and they were gone by the time I had it out.



















Here's the Christmas trees (_Nuytsia floribunda_). These are hemiparasitic trees that draw sap from surrounding grass roots etc, and they also cut telephone cables. Aboriginal people used to make a mildly alcoholic drink from the blooms steeped in water. These trees are completely spectacular this time of year.




























It's party time for nectar-feeding insects when these trees are in bloom. You can spot some bees in this close-up.










If you'd like to know more about these trees, there's a wonderful short article on them here:

https://www.australiangeographic.co...05/australias-giant-parasitic-christmas-tree/

Next, we came out of the bushland, onto a narrow strip of pasture by the side of Verne Road (to the right, behind a strip of bush). This time we turned left.










Yesterday, we'd turned right, so I took a shot facing backwards as well, to show the alternative route!










It's so hot I've sweated onto the saddle! I'll have to give it some more leather dressing to prevent trouble. In this weather, I'm not going to stop sweating anytime soon, especially when I have to wear a winter trail vest with pockets for carrying the iPod safely.

If you're fascinated with maps, you can work out where we are on this map of yesterday's ride - I've not put this route on the map, but it's easy to figure out.


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## egrogan

More wonderful pictures to oooh and ahhh over! Thanks @*SueC* ! The flowering bush with the bees is beautiful. If you manage to get a "between the ears" picture of kangaroos in the bush, I think you will be my new hero! We need a kangaroo icon...

The fire issue seems so complicated. I know at least in many parts of the states, there's a refusal to acknowledge that burns are actually a needed part of many ecosystems. It seems smart that you all follow the traditional practices of using controlled burns. Here, it seems that there's a lot of opposition to that, yet if people insist on building towns and cities in the path of areas where fires _will_ occur, then humans will suffer. I had a colleague a couple of years ago who lost her home (fortunately no loss of life) when the Napa region of California burned in wildfires, and it's absolutely devastating for her and her family. And yet...fires will happen again in the places where people are rebuilding. I don't know what the solution is or what I would do if I lived in an area that regularly experienced that kind of disaster. Fortunately our snow and ice problems are temporary...

I sympathize with the problem of finding a pocket in summer riding gear. I can't bear a winter weight vest in the height of summer humidity but since I'm mostly riding by myself, I always have a cell phone on me. I've tried various strategies. I like the riding tights with the side pocket, but I have also used a thin high viz riding vest which has a couple of pockets just strong enough to hold a phone (mine is from this US company but I'm sure there are Australian options?) and even an extremely unfashionable construction worker mesh bib that also has a makeshift pocket that holds a phone. I tried one of those arm band holders made for an iPhone, but I get so sweaty it just slipped all over and I nearly lost it, even making it as tight as a blood pressure cuff!


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## SueC

We're now headed back north on the eastern edge of the same bushland remnant we came through the middle of.



















The next photo is heading east, with a view of the surrounding countryside. If you click to enlarge this one, you should be able to see one of the neighbours' Angus herds where Sunsmart's ears are pointing, against the edge of the woods. You can also see how effective the introduced African dung beetles are at breaking up large herbivore dung! There haven't been large native herbivores in Australia since the extinction of the Australian megafauna around 50,000 years ago, so special dung beetles were needed.










In the next shot, you can see the neighbours' homestead and farm buildings through the gap in the trees. This is where Max and his family lives. Neighbour Noel used to ride as well, and admits to hurting himself when doing something stupid on a horse in his twenties after watching _The Man From Snowy River_. These days, he flies an aeroplane he built himself. Much safer!










A few photos of heading up the raceway by the roadside. Note the Australia strainer assembly in the fence, and also, once again, the magic the African dung beetles wreak on the cow manure. At the moment, in the heat of the day, it takes these beetles less than 10 minutes to spread a pile of cow manure or horse droppings far and wide, and this is important, because it stops the Australian bushflies from breeding. We always have a plague of these flies in spring, because the African dung beetles can't produce large enough numbers of themselves until the weather gets really hot. Right now, we're 99% bushfly free, which is great, because these critters sit on the eyes, in the nose, on your lips and anywhere else they can sip moisture off a body, unless you shoo them constantly, and of course, the livestock can't do this.



















This is at the exit gate, from which point we take a roadside firebreak trail home:










And this is the Hound of the Baskervilles! It's worth enlarging this shot. Complete fluke!










Jess always gets excited when I get back on the horse after going through a gate, and barks a lot to encourage us to hurry up. 










Here she's being encouraging again...










The roadside trail home:



















This is the neighbours' bull paddock, for bulls not currently running with herds:










I thought I'd get a nice shot of them for @Knave especially, as she appreciates good cattle. These are Angus pedigree bulls. The neighbours just had a bull sale, of two-year-old pedigree bulls bred up especially. It's a sideline they are hoping to develop. The sale went well, so they're encouraged to continue the venture.

The freeze branding on these indicates that they are pedigree stock.










Here's a machinery shed in the bull paddock, and another Australian strainer assembly, built from local bush poles. The ceramic insulators running inside the fence carry a 9kV line, to keep the stock off the fences.


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## SueC

I made a feeble attempt to be arty with this photograph!










Today. we had a lot of practice riding at a walk with completely loose reins, whenever I was taking photographs! It was a leg-steering practice drill.

This is an Australian "cocky gate" - our north-eastern entrance gate:










A cocky gate is a loose section of fence between two strainer posts, that you drag around. The loose end has a narrow post attached via wire loops to the strainer post. We've dropped a big log in front of our cocky gate so people can't use it to drive vehicles onto our property. There's just enough room for a horse, or pedestrians. The log is hollowed out from past bushfires, which is typical for Australian eucalypts, and also one of the main ways in which wildlife shelters are created in the sclerophyll bushland. Many mammal and bird species use tree hollows for shelter and nesting, both in standing trees and in fallen old logs.










We're now on the section of our property we call "The Common" - 8ha of undivided pasture, and 50ha of bushland conservation remnant to the south of the pasture. This is where the cattle hang out most of the time, although they do come in to crash graze the two western paddocks of 2ha each as well.

This area gets winter waterlogging, as you can tell from the paperbark trees and the reeds in this section of the land. Don Quixote and Mary Lou sheltering sensibly in the shade of a paperbark tree:










Four Simmental crosses under one year old, and four Friesian steers around two years old:



















Sparkle is in the background, in the last photo. Sunsmart and I are headed for the equine group, where Nelly and Benjamin come to greet us.










The bay with the blaze is Julian, the chestnut to the left is Chasseur, and Romeo is having breakfast in the garden at this time. Aren't these paperbark trees amazing? They can fall in a storm and then keep growing anyway, with a horizontal section of what used to be the upright trunk.










My horse is asking, with his ears, "Are you getting off?" When he's not very sweaty and we return from a ride via the Common, I often just leave him with his buddies, and walk the few hundred metres back to the house.

And aren't his buddies enchanting!



















We've untacked, and Sunsmart gets straight down to morning tea.



















And I really couldn't help myself, I just had to take lots of photos of this lovely bunch of animals resting in the shade:




























Much nicer than standing on your own in a sand yard for 15 years, isn't it, Julian!


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## SueC

A few more group photos to finish. Benjamin knows he's extra cute:










He's a true dun, which is the typical colouration of wild donkeys. You can see how well he blends into the vegetation with his colour.










The paperbark trees are named this way for a reason. The bark sheds off in sheets like thick paper. I used to write little letters to my penpals back in Europe on this bark, when I first came to Australia as a kid.

A snoozy Nelly:










Chasseur and the two "new" donkeys:










Chasseur turned 25 late last year, and is looking great. He's also the horse that most resembles his French grandmother, who was my first horse.










That's this mare:



















You can really see the resemblance, and I hope Chasseur gets to be as old as Romeo! In which case, we'd have at least another nine years with him.

And a group shot to finish for today - with the tack lying in the foreground! 










Phew! Next time I'm riding without the camera, or this will start costing me sleep! :rofl:

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this vicarious horseback tour of a little bit of Australia.

:charge:


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> More wonderful pictures to oooh and ahhh over! Thanks @*SueC* ! The flowering bush with the bees is beautiful. If you manage to get a "between the ears" picture of kangaroos in the bush, I think you will be my new hero! We need a kangaroo icon...


I'm glad you enjoyed the little tour; I always enjoy your photos from another world!  I was quite surprised how well Wednesday's photos came out, considering the iPod really doesn't compare with a "proper" camera. Especially once I'd gotten off the horse and was taking group shots!

I will try very hard to capture a kangaroo photo off horseback for you! inkunicorn: Might leave the iPod in my hand while riding through that stretch. This will work fine until Sunsmart gets fitter again! :runpony:



> The fire issue seems so complicated. I know at least in many parts of the states, there's a refusal to acknowledge that burns are actually a needed part of many ecosystems. It seems smart that you all follow the traditional practices of using controlled burns. Here, it seems that there's a lot of opposition to that, yet if people insist on building towns and cities in the path of areas where fires _will_ occur, then humans will suffer.


In Australia, there's a lot of opposition to controlled burning as well, especially amongst city people who complain about the smoke and are never confronted with managing an actual ecosystem. There's usually less opposition to controlled burning when there's been another major wildfire with people, houses and livestock burnt into oblivion, such as the infamous Black Saturday in Victoria in 2009, where 1,100,000 acres were burnt completely black, destroying most of the wildlife in these areas (because too big and hot a fire to get away to safety) and damaging a lot of the flora, which copes well with cooler burns, but not with infernos from hell. In that fire, 173 people died, 414 people were injured, 3,500 buildings (including over 2,000 houses) were destroyed, and it is estimated that over 1,000,000 domestic animals and wild vertebrate animals (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians) burnt to death. 

Nobody wants to see that repeated, but we're set for more extreme bushfires, both due to climate change, and because so much of the Australian bush that remains has been neglected instead of managed since the Aboriginal people came off the land post-colonisation. Fuel loads are now higher than at any time in recorded history - often tenfold or more per acre than what they were when Aboriginal people did their firestick farming. The area around Sydney Harbour, when Europeans first encountered it, used to be open forest / open woodland, with a lot of native grasses. These days, there's thousands and thousands of acres of impenetrable thicket instead, which is like a tinderbox and burns fiercely when ignited, by lightning, arsonists etc. It would take a lot more time and resources than currently allocated to patch burn the Australian sclerophyll to the level that the Aboriginal people kept it for tens of thousands of years. However, people are slowly starting to listen to the voices of those people - especially amongst bushfire brigades:

https://volunteerfirefighters.org.au/indigenous-cool-burn-revelation

Local people in our area are also a little more positive about doing controlled burning since we had a really uncontrollable fire which became a tense, house-threatening emergency, that started less than 8km down the road from us. Boy were we glad we'd done our controlled burn that autumn, despite the opposition we ran into at the time about doing it. Our burn was legal, yet community members were trying to dissuade us. They can now see that it was the right thing to do. It was hairy enough at the cool time of year in good conditions - it would have been an inferno had it accidentally started in the summer. We're feeling much safer this summer, than we were last summer. It's been another dry, windy summer.

Thanks for the pocket gear link! I like seeing what options other people are using.  I'm considering wearing a bum bag at the moment - just a small pouch on a belt strap, that goes around the hips. The more comfortable models may work, and would be cooler than my winter vest...

I'll steer clear of the arm band holders, thanks for the hint! And I think a high-viz vest is great if you potentially encounter traffic on your rides. Not to mention, you probably need it for hunting season?


:runninghorse2:​

*7.5 FEET, A POX ON ALL MARCH FLIES, AND A LOST iPOD*

Yesterday, I'd trimmed Julian's front feet, which were hard as marble, which is why I left it at two, and focused on doing a great job on them, instead of getting all the way around. I was happy with the trim, but not so much to be doing it - normally I get out Greg Coffey for the end-summer horse trims, which is when hooves are hardest. We like to see him yearly anyway, including for feedback on the feet, so that's the best time to get him out.

Today, I worked on his rear feet. The March flies were plaguing us, which is why I got Brett to assist, and hold the horse for the rear feet, and be our March fly sentinel. I'm happy to work on a tie rail with the front feet with March flies around, but not to be working on the rear end in that situation.

Those beasties bite, and their bites really hurt. The horses hate them, and jump all over the place if they get bitten, which is also exactly what I do! Today, I managed to get 1.5 of Julian's rear hooves trimmed before the March flies got so bad that I decided to leave the proper post-nippers rasping of the offside rear hoof until later this evening, when these monsters aren't around.

I'm skipping the luxury of the midsummer trim this year because I managed to lose my iPod. :-( I don't know how this happened. The iPod is either in my pocket, or it's just inside the front door, ready to take to its permanent spot next time I go in the house. Except this time it wasn't, and I have no memory of this at all, but I must have been distracted and put the thing on the roof of the car for a moment on a particular Friday night when Brett came home, and then not noticed it for the entire weekend, even though it's white and quite large and I walked past that car a few dozen times, as our exit door connects to the carport. And then I must also not have noticed it when I got in the car to see Brett off at the front gate on the Monday morning, which is extremely strange.

But here are the facts. On that Monday evening, Brett came home and said to me, "This is so weird! There's a set of iPod headphones wrapped around the roof rack. I noticed there was this strange clicking sound when I drove home, and I pulled over and found this."

:shock: Oh no! We looked for the iPod in case there was an alternative explanation, but could not find it. So a replacement was ordered - a refurbished classic series iPod, because we like to support electronics refurbishing instead of dumping, and because we both prefer the classic models with the click controls, that don't have cameras in them either. (Brett has a modern series one though, with camera, which I borrow on the occasional documented ride.)

That was $270, ouch, so I decided I was saving $200 by not outsourcing the summer trims this year.

We'd had the lost iPod over 10 years, and it had started to develop a screen fault, so at least we got a lot of use out of it. No trace of the thing anywhere, of course. If someone picked it up in town, and it still works, they will now suffer my peculiar taste in music and podcasts, bwahahaha, and of course, you can't re-load found iPods... you're stuck with what's on them...


*DONKEY FEET PROGRESS*

The other 6 feet were all of Ben's, and Nelly's fronts. With Ben, I finally managed to level up his most badly deformed hoof today, the near fore, which had the inside hoof wall broken almost to the coronet when we first got the new donkeys. At last, enough had grown out for me to be able to lower the outside below the level of the injured inside, and so take pressure off that section, and allow it to grow properly outwards again - it's actually caved in at the moment. So he's looking good all around now in terms of angles, and the hoof walls in the broken places should be grown back where they belong in another few months.

With Nelly, who had badly collapsed heels in front, today, we got the hoof _angles_ back exactly where they should be. The heel is growing back strongly, but still somewhat deformed from having been walked on so long; but the way she's looking, and considering that there's no pressure on the backs of her heels anymore (that were part of the walking surface when she arrived mg, nor untoward pressure on the walking part of the heel, and with the mustang rolling of her toes today, her stretched white line should also grow out normal again before too long - it's already improving, but she has to replace the entire hoof at least once before we're back to completely normal.


_Attached photo: Me with the old iPod, may it rest in peace..._


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## SueC

*FARM RIDE WITH TAG-ALONGS*

As it was really humid and hot and still first thing this morning, I decided to postpone my ride till evening and do some chores instead. I opted for a little farm loop on the sand track and swamp track, because both Sunsmart's rides since resuming on Tuesday had been proper off-farm outings. Sometimes, I just want to give him something ultra easy to do in the mix, so he doesn't think he always has to be out for long.

Staying on our property gives us access to around 5km of tracks, and also comes with the advantage of volunteer tag-alongs for the ride. In the evenings, after feed time, Julian and the "new" donkeys are often keen for adventure, and today they were hanging around as I was tacking up. Then, they decided to come along. Chasseur had gone into the paddock to graze, and was either oblivious of the general exodus, or didn't mind. So going down the sand track, we had this:

:cowboy: :runningborwnhorse: onkey: onkey:

Initially, everyone was walking, and I was encouraging everyone to keep following us. A couple of hundred metres in, Sunsmart was put in a trot, and Julian, who was trailing by around 40m, really put on his speed trot to catch up! This egged Sunsmart on to want to go fast too, which is fine by me - it's so much fun when two OTSTBs decide to get into racing formation and mode on a nice wide sand track.

Halfway down the track, we slowed up again. Soon after, there was a crackling in the bushes - late in the summer afternoons, kangaroos get active again after resting through the heat of the day. Sunsmart didn't bat an eyelid, but Julian stood looking, with his tail in the air, and after half a minute, decided to run back instead of following us. We just kept trotting down the track.

At the south boundary, a kangaroo was crossing into the neighbour's property about 100m from us. We have some kangaroo gates in our perimeter fences, which the wildlife can use:



Bill Harsley (our Bill, who visits Sundays, and we all have a feast day with morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea), who grew up in the district, invented these kangaroo gates to allow kangaroos to pass through fences without destroying them and injuring themselves, while keeping livestock in. We are lucky to have several in our perimeter fencing, and the kangaroos use them happily. The bottom half metre of the fence is cut out between the pickets, and replaced with three strands of wire hanging vertically from twists in the horizontal supporting wire. The vertical wires swing freely, but keep their relative positions. Bill experimented with all sorts of configurations and materials. He says he tried hanging chains into the gap instead of wires, but these wrapped around the fence wires above when kangaroos pass through at speed. The wires occasionally hook up and have to be returned to their hanging positions, but overall it's a great system that prevents many marsupial injuries and saves much time as there are less fence repairs.

Sunsmart looked interested to see the kangaroo slip through the fence, but not in the least disturbed by the matter. This horse who was basically institutionalised from birth to age 12 has come such an astronomical long way in ten years. I'm also very happy that he's back to his normal self since starting treatment for the early PPID we detected in him five months ago; his coat is still adjusting, but everything else feels the same. He trots around eagerly, offers canters in suitable stretches of trail, steps on the accelerator going up hills, and enjoys his sight-seeing.

He was really swinging along on the swamp track into the middle meadow this evening. There, we met the Simmental crosses nibbling on bush grasses in the burn perimeter, and our three "original" donkeys on the pasture. We meandered along, enjoying the evening. Jess found her soccer ball and carried it around for a distance, until she realised I wasn't going to kick the ball for her, and neither was Sunsmart. She then dropped the ball and went haring off to the farm dam for a swim.

It was a lovely ride, and Sunsmart much enjoyed his carrots afterwards!


And I'm going to enjoy dinner in a moment. I've had Tandoori chicken in the oven while typing this, with the paste made up properly instead of bought in a jar; also wedges. We made a lovely Indian coleslaw which works well with this, or even with Cajun chicken, or any sort of baked or fried chicken. I'll finish with the recipe - I think @egrogan will like this one, if she doesn't know it already! It will be a nice bit of crunch to go with baked chicken in the wintertime too.

*INDIAN COLESLAW*

350mL natural plain yoghurt
2 tbsp clear honey
2 medium carrots, thickly sliced
1/4 head green cabbage, shredded
2 spring onions, roughly chopped
80g cashew nuts
handful fresh mint, finely chopped
1/2 tsp salt

Beat the yoghurt and honey together in your salad bowl, and mix your salad ingredients through, adding them gradually. That's it! For variation, you can add a handful of white grape halves or sultanas.

:apple:​


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## SueC

*FIREGROUND RIDE*










It was hot and humid all day, with blazing UV, and I wilt when the weather is like this. Other people go to the beach, but I just want to go indoors where it's cool and dream about autumn and winter, when it's going to be so much more pleasant to spend time outdoors. And read a few books, and watch some classic Dr Who with my husband - we're up to Colin Baker, whose intro story was in my view the worst Dr Who story ever. The next one was so-so; a Cybermen story, but the spinoff is that one of the actors in it also has a starring role in _The Day Of The Triffids_, which Brett happens to have. I've read most of John Wyndham's books, I really love his writing, and _The Midwich Cuckoos_ was so interesting, but it appears I've not read his most famous book yet. Brett thinks I should read it before we watch the film, so I can imagine it for myself first. My _tsundoku_ is getting higher! 

I really liked the third Colin Baker story, _Vengeance on Varos_, and would rate that 8-9/10. It has the most hideous villain, a sluglike thing most brilliantly acted, called Sil - the whole story has parallels with _1984_. It's an utterly bleak dystopia, screwed by corporations trying to get rich at everyone else's expense. The ideas in it are great, as is the character development in some of the figures in this tale. A more extensive (and very funny) review here, by a Dr Who devotee and his wife, who also happens to be called Sue, but resides in the UK and is some kind of media expert.

VENGEANCE ON VAROS ? Adventures with the Wife in Space

So anyway, late in the day, the steamy heat finally subsided enough to have a nice little twilight ride on the exact route shown in red on the map above. Because that was a loop we patrolled constantly during autumn burnoffs, I now refer to it as the Fireground Loop, even though things are growing back rapidly and it no longer looks like a fireground.

Horse, dog and human had fun and enjoyed the attractions, which included the general landscape, the kangaroos getting active, farm dams (highlights for Jess), and cattle silhouetted against the sunset, across the fence from the furthest out point we went to today. We mostly walked and trotted. I smuggled Sunsmart into the garden after to feed him a scoop of salty oats on the side. Today was tree lucerne day, not bucket day - we're alternating at the moment, except for old Romeo, who gets two bucket feeds a day owing to his lack of molars. So the horses had all dined out on fresh, lush, high-protein greenery before I took Sunsmart riding. Tomorrow it's a bucket feed to get mineral mix into them.

The cattle like the tagasaste as well. This was our last batch of heifers, on tagasaste to see them through a pasture shortage. We planted 1000 of these back in 2012, and have long hedgerows that are constantly growing this high-quality feed, so we rarely need hay.


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## SueC

*LATE-SUMMER SUNDAY*

It's been a good day; we went for an early morning walk with the dog out into Sleeman Creek Nature Reserve, and found her the one waterhole that still had enough water in it for a little swim. That was over an hour's brisk walking, which is useful. After that, Bill came over as usual, and I made rye waffles for our morning tea, served with our home-grown concentrated plums.



We then sat in the lounge chatting and watching odd bits of stuff on TV, while I was pitting a big bowl of our morello cherries. We don't watch TV more than once a week, so there's always a few surprises. Today's happened when I had my hands dripping with cherry juice and could do nothing about the remote control, so I was forced to sit through a looooong commercial about a new cosmetic gadget, which is essentially a mini vacuum cleaner to suck out pimples. I was gagging, and they kept showing the contents of the vacuum cleaner, which made me gag even more. I was nauseated when the horrid commercial was finally over, and made a mental note never to run a commercial TV channel again while I have my hands full.

The cherries were for a clafoutis which would be our afternoon tea. Sundays are always good feast days. Lunch was some particularly fine sausages from a local butcher, served with polenta with fennel seeds, zucchini and a garden salad, all from our own garden.

Bill, who is 84, was telling us that when he was a kid, the thing everyone really looked forward to was having bread and dripping for dinner on Friday nights. His family were local pioneers when the land was cleared, and times were tough. If we ever want to know anything about the history of the district, we just ask Bill.

Bill and Brett, on a recent Sunday, tucking into lunch:



In the evening, I even got a little on-farm ride in. None of the horses or donkeys felt like following us, so we went alone. This was the fifth session back, and tonight, he was trotting more than he was walking, by his own request. There's photos below of this evening's preparations and jaunt, but now I have to cut this short, because we are starving and the pizzas have just come out of the oven! Wholemeal crusts, one salami and onion, one supreme, which we just put together half an hour ago...

Oh, and for @Anita Anne and @greentree, I've finally managed to get a close-up wearing the HF Meet&Greet 2018 T-shirt they so kindly sent me last year.  It's very comfortable and cool, and has a great neckline - it's so hard to find anything here without big scooped necklines at the moment, and that's not good when the UV is so high... I'd rather be covered with fabric!


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## Spanish Rider

Sue, I wanted to ask about cooling. Do you use air-conditioning? You mentioned humidity, so I am assuming that you must need it, although I am sure that your bale house must also be well-insulated.


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## SueC

@Spanish Rider, I was reading the Wikipedia article on Toledo recently - wow, so much history in your city! The different architectural styles are so interesting - and bridges going back to Roman times... I was rather shocked to note that near Toledo, you only get half the annual rainfall that we do! That's really dry, no wonder you're restricted with your gardening. Are any annual crops grown in your surrounding areas - like wheat maybe? That rainfall is at the low end of what people in WA use to grow wheat crops. Can olive trees survive without irrigation?

Nominally, we have the same broad climate category you do: Mediterranean, i.e. mild winters, hot dry summers. And for the first couple of decades of living in Western Australia, our summers were exactly that: We'd get crazy heat, above 30 to 35 degrees Celsius for weeks on end, with heat peaks in the low to mid 40s, but it was dry heat, with an afternoon sea breeze if you were near the coast. The dry heat was comparatively bearable; but a couple of times in the summer, we'd have horrible humidity when there was a cyclone up north and a trough bringing the humid air down from the tropics.

In the last five years or so, the weather pattern has been changing, and we've been getting tropical humidity for much longer in the summer. This is the worst summer for that yet - it's not been particularly hot, but the humidity has been with us for long stretches. Have a look at today's synoptic chart for WA - the trough (yellow line) is sitting right there again, _without_ a tropical cyclone up north - normally, the high pressure system would have kept the trough away, but the highs are getting weaker...










Now to answer your question, we don't have air conditioning. The house stays nice and cool inside, because of its construction and because we are inland and have cool nights, so we open all the windows in the evenings and let the cool night air through the house every night. We do notice the humidity indoors as well, and then we switch on our ceiling fan, or strategically point a pedestal fan at the sofa, office chair etc. But I avoid going out in the daytime heat like the plague, except to rotate the watering stations from the solar bore (which only works when there is light)!


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## SueC

Something I noticed today: Look at Sunsmart's browband...










I figured out where that one came from:



















Same browband, Germany 1982 and Australia 2019. 37 years on, still giving regular service. They don't make'em like they used to! 

My Arabian mare also had it, early 1990s:


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## SueC

*ORDINARY LIFE REPORT*

Ordinary life resumed last week; here's a quick review how those 2019 goals are going. I've ridden five times this week - tick - and enjoyed that. This week, the aim is to repeat that, and to do two sessions of Pilates, and two practice sessions on the violin. I'll have to trim my nails extra short for that. 

Farm-wise, I'm getting on top of the horse and donkey hooves. Mary Lou had a trim this morning. She's got club feet, so needs a lot of care not to get rot near her frogs etc. Don Quixote is next, plus Nelly's rears. Then Chasseur, all this week.

After hooves, I got in a couple of hours gardening time. I'm watering, mowing and collecting manure for compost, making mulch. I also pruned the apricot tree, after Sparkle started it off this morning when she spent a little time in the garden. The mulcher blades are blunt as anything, so I had to give up halfway through the batch. I've dragged it up to the carport to see if I can figure out how to get the rotating blade out of the casings, so I can sharpen it.

I came in and started reading _The Day Of The Triffids_, for my movie date with Brett. He told me it's one of the creepiest, most effective novel intros ever, and he's right. 

This afternoon I've got a date with the paper journal; then I want to make a pumpkin-brown rice salad for this evening, and some more of these chocolate nut horns for general enjoyment, now we've eaten nearly all the Cherry Clafoutis:



The replacement iPod is very helpful for keeping my nose to the grindstone. This morning I resumed my acquaintance with The Cure's 1996 album _Wild Mood Swings_, which we acquired quite recently. Here's some impressions.


*MUSICAL INTERLUDE: WILD MOOD SWINGS*

Brett and I are currently augmenting our Cure catalogue in-between _Disintegration_ (1989) and _Bloodflowers_ (2000). The latter is our favourite album by this band, so far; just by a whisker over _Disintegration_ for me. Both of those, I've discussed in this journal previously. It's really nice to still be discovering great music by a great band we've known for ages - but The Cure are unbelievably prolific, and there's quite a bit of material to go yet. 

I'll pull out my favourite tracks so far here. The opening track, I've done a long post on before, in _The Blessing (And Art) Of Gratitude_ https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...s-other-people-479466/page116/#post1970624625, but I didn't put a clip in, so here goes:






I love the bell-like tones of the guitar here. I find it quite interesting that Robert Smith often plays guitar much like a person in a chamber orchestra would play a stringed instrument, and how in fact, the two guitars and bass often work together in a similar way a chamber orchestra works together, but set to killer drums and percussion. They're really weaving a texture. This is very evident in tracks like_ Pictures Of You_ and _Fascination Street_ from _Disintegration_ - here's a scintillating live version of the latter, which can strip paint off your walls if you turn it up loud: :happydance:






This is a great live band, and there's a selection of concerts on YouTube with the songs from _Wild Mood Swings_ specifically, worth looking up. Brett's had the pleasure of seeing these guys live; I've lived under a rock for too long! :rofl: Their bass player is a road cyclist, by the way; I suspected it when I first saw live clips, and found out this was a correct guess!

Anyway, it's lovely to be discovering new tracks with marvellous textures like that. I'm also drawn to this track; here's a live version:






Interesting lyrics; there's still a bit of existentialism around in this one. ;-)

This next one is a beautiful song... and as with any good metaphor, you can read it a few different ways. This is lovely poetry, so here's the words:

_JUPITER CRASH

She follows me down to the sound of the sea
Slips to the sand and stares up at me
"Is this how it happens? is this how it feels?
Is this how a star falls?
Is this how a star falls?"

The night turns as I try to explain
Irresistible attraction and orbital plane
"Or maybe it's more like a moth to a flame?"
She brushes my face with her smile
"Forget about stars for a while"
As she melts

Meanwhile millions of miles away in space
The incoming comet brushes Jupiter's face
And disappears away with barely a trace

"Was that it? was that the Jupiter show?
Kinda wasn't quite what I'd hoped for, you know"
Pulling away, she stands up slow
And round her the night turns
Round her the night turns

Yeah, that was it
That was the Jupiter crash
Drawn too close and gone in a flash
Just a few bruises in the region of the splash

She left to the sound of the sea
She just drifted away from me
So much for gravity

_
I love the percussion on this and am linking to the studio version here for clear sound... I find it completely unsurprising that this band still has the imagination and appreciation of a lot of people. 






I'll do a Part 2 at some point, but my to-do list beckons!


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## DanteDressageNerd

The sites are absolutely amazing!! It looks like you get to see some absolutely amazing sights and have some amazing experiences with your horses. Seems awesome! Thank you for sharing


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## Knave

You sound busy!!! Good busy though. I am a bit envious of your summer weather, but when I read about it I wonder if I could handle it. Like you I tend to wilt in too much heat.


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## Spanish Rider

I got grounded by my mum in 1986 and missed The Cure's Head on the Door Tour. Didn't talk to her for three days. LOOOOOVED them; still do.

@sue , our cereal crops are planted in the winter (some wheat, but here mostly barley and rye). Our olive, almond, pomegranate, grapevines and fig trees are native, so they do well here after becoming established (too cold for citrus - they do well on the coast). Everything else needs irrigation. Plus, we really have nothing native that provides shade, so that's why my house is surrounded by porches and pergolas, with climbers like wisteria. Can't wait 'til they fill in!

In the summer, like you, we basically make do with fans and living downstairs, where it is cooler. Plus, I do all my cooking outdoors so as not to heat up the kitchen. Our walls are probably not as thick as yours, but they are 42 cm, so better than average. But, I'm a northern girl, and I don't think I'll ever get used to the heat. However, truth be told: I find the overuse of AC in the US equally uncomfortable.


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## SueC

Wow, @Spanish Rider, grounded and missing an early Cure concert, no wonder you didn't speak to your mother for three days! :shock: It's funny, you know, my earliest memories of Australia included my family driving up and down the Kwinana Freeway in Perth in the mid-80s with the local contemporary station on, and I still have the soundtrack in my head that came with these drives - Hall & Oates, Human League, and for some reason, _Fade To Grey_ by Visage...






...and _Boys Don't Cry_ by The Cure, which is the earliest of their songs I remember. I was a bit young for that though; their first track that made me sit up and take notice, when I got serious about music at around 14, was _In-Between Days_, from that album they were touring when you got grounded. Later, I managed to miss _Disintegration_ when it came out (1989), but did catch _Lullaby_ on the radio, and when that came on, and I'd always drop everything and sit on the floor and listen, it's a wonderfully theatrical song and it just deserved my full attention. But, I didn't have much money for CDs - or concerts - and as a teenager, my parents would never have allowed me to go to a concert... after I left home, I saved up to see U2 in 1989, BB King supporting, but they had an off night that night I think, Bono wasn't singing in tune a lot, possibly because he was jumping around so much on the stage, and the whole thing was turned up so loud I actually couldn't hear it, it just hurt...

In Western Australia, cereal crops are also grown over winter. It's a little too wet for wheat where we live; it's beef and dairy grazing mostly, here. Half an hour inland from us by car, the canola and cereals start - barley and oats nearer us, wheat more inland, in the drier areas. Some rye is grown too; I buy it in big bags stone-milled on the grower's farm. Field peas, sometimes chick peas (garbanzos), as a legume crop.

In summer, I try to cook in the evenings, and then we just eat leftovers, or salads, in the daytime. Last night, I ended up making that brown rice-baked pumpkin salad, the pastries, and a big bowl of hummous for dipping carrot sticks and celery in, etc. The cool evening air flows through the house then, so no problems with accumulating heat. Our walls aren't much thicker than yours - just the width of a standard square bale plus 6-10cm of plaster either side. I hope your wisteria grows quickly!


*FIGURE EIGHT VALLEY FLOOR RIDE LOGGED*

:cowboy:

First thing this morning, Sunsmart and I did Figure 8 track through the valley floor that ends up at Verne Rd. We got home at a reasonable time, so the rest of the chores can now begin!










...to "see" it, you have to place another red line parallel to the sand track at our place - through the valley floor, about the same region as the corresponding track at the neighbour's. You can actually see our swamp track. I'm just not re-drawing the route today! 

Have a decent Tuesday, everyone! :wave:


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## gottatrot

Where we live, most houses don't have A/C. But if it gets up to 80 F/27 C we think it's "really hot" and have to get out fans.


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## SueC

I was going to do this, @gottatrot: :rofl: ...but then, I think 27 deg C is too hot as well, especially when it's humid... I'm only OK with 27 deg C if it's dry, and there's a breeze blowing. Otherwise, my head feels like it's going to blow off into space... :eek_color:

Are you still playing your musical instrument regularly? ...just starting again this week here...


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## Spanish Rider

Canola? Rapeseed (brassica napus) is a native here, but we don't use it for human consumption. It makes a great machine lubricant, though!


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## frlsgirl

@SueC I saw this and thought of you for some reason


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## SueC

Brilliant, @frlsgirl! :happydance: ...great stuff!

And reminds me:

*A SHORT GUIDE TO COMPARATIVE RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY*

*Taoism*: Shiitake happens.
*Confucianism*: Confucius say, "Shiitake happens."
*Buddhism*: If shiitake happens, it isn't really shiitake.
*Zen Buddhism*: What is the sound of shiitake happening?
*Hinduism*:	This shiitake happened before.
*Mormonism*: This shiitake is going to happen again.
*Islam*: If shiitake happens, it is the Will of Allah.
*Judaism*: Why does this shiitake always happen to us?
*Stoicism*: This shiitake is its own reward.
*Protestantism*: Let this shiitake happen to someone else.
*Calvinism*:	Shiitake happens because you don't work hard enough.
*Pentecostalism*:	In Jesus' name, heal this shiitake!
*Catholicism*: Shiitake happens because you deserve it.
*Judaism*: Why does this shiitake always happen to us?
*Zoroastrianism*: Shiitake happens half the time.
*Marxism*: This shiitake is going to hit the fan.
*Atheism*: No shiitake.
*Seventh Day Adventist*: No shiitake on Saturdays.
*Existentialism*: Absurd shiitake.
*Agnosticism*: What is this shiitake?
*Nihilism*: Who gives a shiitake?
*Deconstruction*: Shiitake happens in hegemonic meta-narratives.
*Christian Science*: Shiitake is in your mind.
*Moonies*: Only happy shiitake really happens.
*Jehovah's Witnesses*: Knock, Knock, shiitake happens.
*Scientology*: Shiitake happens on page 152 of Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard
*Hare Krishna*: Shiitake happens, Rama Rama.
*Hedonism*: There's nothing like a good shiitake happening.
*Rastafarianism*:	Let's smoke this shiitake.
*Equestrian*: Look at all the shiitake in my wheelbarrow!
*Eco-Hippy*:* Shiitake makes wonderful compost!

*That's us...


@Spanish Rider, canola is a low erucic acid cultivar of rapeseed developed in Canada in the 1970s, which makes a pretty decent cooking oil with a better omega 3 : omega 6 ratio than sunflower seed etc, plus it's mostly monounsaturated (2:1 monooly). I stock extra virgin olive oil in our pantry for salads and other non-high-temperature-cooking applications, and canola for the latter. I don't buy GM canola products, but this will probably mean having to find an alternative cooking oil in the next couple of decades...

Pretty photo - looks like that's not deliberately cultivated though? Brassicas have a fair bit of weed potential, unfortunately - as I discovered in my own garden this year, after letting a few of them set seed! :rofl:

Here's a canola field we drove past en route a Stirling Range mountain climb:


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## lostastirrup

Lostastirrup's experience:


An edit to Calvinism: you are woefully incapable of handling your spiritual shiitake without help. 
And a submission:
Protestantism: a thousand different denominations and still the same shiitake. 
Baptist: there is a great abundance of Shiitake, please bring a casserole to the potluck on Saturday. 
Lutheran: no greater shiitake than the Catholic Church, hide the beer when the Baptists come over. 


Not sure why we're analysing in the realm of Asiatic mushrooms. But okay.


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## frlsgirl

:rofl: casseroles probably wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for Baptist shindigs


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## SueC

Would those be mushroom casseroles, @frlsgirl? :Angel: I think the Mormons do those too, having been acquainted with a few. Nothing like a bit of dogma and casseroles. ;-)
@lostastirrup, love the additions! :rofl: I've come to think shiitake is just part of the human condition, regardless of any spiritual / philosophical categories humans want to classify themselves into.


*THE BOOTS ARE BACK ON - THIS IS GETTING SERIOUS!*

This morning, Sunsmart got re-acquainted with his Renegades. This is Ride No. 7 since our summer spell, so I thought it was time to fine-tune the horse's hooves, put his boots on, and hit some ridges. Just on our place at first, until I've tweaked the fit some more: The horrid biting monsters called March Flies made it impossible this morning to rasp the rear hooves sufficiently for an A1 fit, so will have to see to that this evening, when those little vampires retreat.

So we rode our two main farm loops - the ridge loop around the outside forest tracks, and the valley loop back along the swamp and sand tracks. You can find them on this aerial photograph:










It always takes Sunsmart a while to warm up if we start on the western forest track. When he turns the corner on the south boundary, he's ready to run. I let him trot down the hill at a moderate pace - he was using his heels well to brake on the downhill, and the boots had sufficient grip. @egrogan, we saw two kangaroos, including one that would have been right between the horse ears had I had a camera on me, but you know how it is! But I think eventually I'll get one on a photo while riding, and I'll let you know.

After observing a kangaroo crossing ahead of us through a wildlife gate (see https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...s-other-people-479466/page152/#post1970682253) into our neighbour's place, Sunsmart decided he wanted to move, and cracked into a fast canter, which he maintained all the way up the hill on the other side, just beating an outraged dog who had got waylaid in the swimming hole AKA stock dam in the valley floor! 

We walked and trotted the eastern forest track. Sunsmart accidentally stepped on a fist-sized round rock concealed in some leaves and rolled his foot, but recovered well. I know those blasted things, since my first acquaintance with riding in Redmond, in 2009 with a trail group, through the Reserves and well before we lived here, resulted in a badly sprained ankle when I landed on one of those when dismounting. (I'll dig up the old ride report and post it here soon.)

Veering back south when we got to the meadow, we bush-bashed a section to shortcut to the swamp track. When the nice, wide, recenlty re-made track came into view, Sunsmart saw Jess running off, and I said, "Want to race her?" and he hit the accelerator without any further encouragement from me. And _zoing_, we were in a flat-tack gallop, and I was getting my arms whipped by trackside branches leaning through the bends. :racing: 

Eventually he did catch the dog, and all three of us slowed down; but before too long, the horse decided to hit the accelerator again. He'll do this if we're doing more than one lap in our place - his attitude is, "If we're going to do another lap, let's really step on it!" In part, that's his race training past - in part, his disposition. So he went flat out again in the first section of the sand track home. I do have to admit, coming back into riding after a break, part of me has granny thoughts like, "What if we fall over at this speed?" but another part says, "You've done this all your life, don't stop!"

We had a nice wind-down at the end of the ride, and then it was wash time for the first time since our summer break. Smartie isn't very fond of being hosed down, so I only do it if he's sweaty enough to get itchy otherwise. I cold have made do with a sponge, but it was a warm morning, and I wanted to send him off for the day A1 clean, with a bit of evaporative cooling on his side. I even washed the saddle blanket in the big drinking trough, which needed cleaning and re-filling anyway.

Smartie is very fond of being towelled after a wash, especially around his ears. We recorded this in a past clip, which I will include again for anyone who's not seen it:






This was when I was making up for lost time following my foot fracture. See the coat oddities on him there? That was the week I arranged for him to be screened for PPID late last year, and he showed up as early stage, but he's responding well to treatment. The coat is better now than it was in that clip, and he's got no issues with his feet, or with insulin resistance / metabolic syndrome, so his prognosis is fine, as long as the pituitary adenoma that's presumably causing the PPID doesn't decide to have a growth spurt soon!

Since he's now working regularly and seriously again, and getting his pace up, he's getting fed extra before 45min+ training rides, usually before I ride him, but today after: A litre of oats, a handful of cubes, extra mineral mix, and a bit of salt. If he's fed before, he gets carrots after. Today, while tacking up, I offered him a Cox' Orange Pippin apple off a tree - an heirloom, mind you - and he spurned it, after taking a bite! Too sour, he said! So I ate it. I went and got him a peach off another tree then, and he thought that was OK!

:apple:


*GARDEN BOUNTIES*

And then it was straight to chores, while the horse was munching away. I continued mowing down the mint patch, which is threatening to take over the garden. The smell is heavenly! But we don't need truckloads of mint. A couple of plants will suffice. I want to plant potatoes in that bed this week. Speaking of, yesterday we harvested a batch of summer potatoes. This is a subject dear to @phantomhorse13's heart, so I have included a photograph at the end of the post. Also of the first haul of ripe pumpkins: Turks' Turbans, and Potimarron. In the blue ice cream container, a Potimarron I accidentally ran over with the mower because it was hiding in the mint patch. No great harm done, I'll just have to make it into roast wedges tonight. Also some peaches the way we like them: Just under, when they are still crunchy. Various tomatoes. I've not taken photos of beans, zucchini, silverbeet and all the other stuff coming out of the garden just now, but it's going better than ever!

On the programme still for today: Laundry (whirling away already), some annoying paperwork, some more garden pruning later, finally planting out the batch of mixed seedlings in the greenhouse now that the potato patch is available to re-plant, possibly Don Quixote's hooves if the weather cools off enough, and pitting another bowl of cherries before turning them into a Blackforest Trifle! 

...also for fun, a little ditty I made up today for my paper journal. Remember that annoying song that used to get played a lot in the 1980s, called Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll? I've revised the lyrics, to make them more relevant - we read a lot of books, and drink our green tea out of soup mugs. :Angel:


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## Spanish Rider

> Pretty photo - looks like that's not deliberately cultivated though?


No, that's the view out my dining room window.



> Brassicas have a fair bit of weed potential, unfortunately


Just imagine the battle I have every year with fields of it growing all around! UGH. I keep it under control in the front yard, but the back often gets overrun.


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## phantomhorse13

Yum to the potatoes!


Do you cook/eat the turk's head pumpkins? I have only ever seem them used as decorations during Thanksgiving..


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## Knave

What a lovely day!! It sounds like the best kind of day. 

I trimmed horses yesterday and thought about you and your donkeys. Lol.

On another note, I think it’s awesome that you don’t slow down when you have those Granny thoughts. I have them too, and I don’t quite as easily brush them away.


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## SueC

Spanish Rider said:


> No, that's the view out my dining room window.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Just imagine the battle I have every year with fields of it growing all around! UGH. I keep it under control in the front yard, but the back often gets overrun.


Yeah, I can imagine... I'm never letting brassicas set seed in my garden again!

But it does look really pretty, which is one up side. Sort of like Paterson's Curse AKA Salvation Jane, an Echium gone wild in Australia:













phantomhorse13 said:


> Do you cook/eat the turk's head pumpkins? I have only ever seem them used as decorations during Thanksgiving..


They have such a long storage life that we use them decoratively for many months before eating them, just before I put the next lot in the ground in late spring. They're one of our favourite roasting pumpkins, and also make fabulous pumpkin soup - roast the pumpkin in the oven first, for the soup! Some more information and recipes for our favourite varieties here:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...s-other-people-479466/page139/#post1970645321




Knave said:


> What a lovely day!! It sounds like the best kind of day.
> 
> I trimmed horses yesterday and thought about you and your donkeys. Lol.
> 
> On another note, I think it’s awesome that you don’t slow down when you have those Granny thoughts. I have them too, and I don’t quite as easily brush them away.


Hopefully I won't live to regret it, @Knave! :rofl: On the other hand, let me quote Thoreau:

_“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear..."_

How does your back injury cope with trimming? ...I have a back brace to help with it. Somewhere. Mislaid it somewhere and still haven't recovered it. Must have another clean-out...


And now the reason I'm up at an ungodly hour...


*PLAIN VANILLA? I FEEL SICK...* mg:

I am fuming because of a news story that's broken in Australia. You've probably heard that Archbishop George Pell was convicted of child sexual abuse - that news came through today. That didn't surprise me; I've suspected this since I first worked in a Catholic school in Sydney, in 2002.

I am so furious that a defence lawyer in a child sexual abuse case got to refer to the abuse as "plain vanilla" - here's the quote: "It was 'no more than a plain vanilla sexual penetration case where the child is not actively participating', Richter said."

Plain vanilla rape??? Talk about minimising, or "normalising"... it's appalling...

Have a look at this:

https://www.theguardian.com/austral...ight-to-jail-as-bail-application-is-withdrawn

Our David Marr, essayist, has given a nice take on all this:

https://www.theguardian.com/austral...l-waged-war-on-sex-even-as-he-abused-children

Another lucid take:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02...portunity-australian-catholic-church/10852688

Complainant statement to the media in here:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-26/george-pells-victim-responds-to-guilty-verdict/10849832

The scary thing is how this is like a Mafia that's in the highest places in the country. This guy has former PMs giving him character references for his court case, and he's going to appeal, and I bet you the boys' club will get him off on appeal, because the appeal is heard by three senior judges, who have to decide if the jury was reasonable to convict. Pell has expensive lawyers, mates in high places etc - I'm sure they're going to rig the appeal to put sympathetic judges in...

This is so appalling. And it's only the tip of the iceberg, I bet you anything. Plus as Archbishop, he's enabled the abuse of others for decades, as the Royal Commission has already shown, and he was still free after that... :frown_color:






Lyrics and Royal Commission precis here:

https://genius.com/Tim-minchin-come-home-cardinal-pell-lyrics


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## Knave

Ick to your post!

I have been working out fairly intensely over the winter. I figure health is important, and I am trying my best to be healthy. Anyways, it didn’t even hurt my back!!! To be honest though my muscles are killing me today. Lol. Five horses in one day might be a bit much for me, especially with the two old men that want to hold their back legs up in under them until they change their mind. (Eye roll inserted here) I didn’t do Lucy, but I don’t usually do the old men either and leave them for husband. Pete’s feet were horrible though. His hoof wall has decided to just flake right off. He’s club footed almost anyways, and hard to do already. Next time I probably will just leave him for husband.


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## gottatrot

SueC said:


> Are you still playing your musical instrument regularly? ...just starting again this week here...


Yes, playing the violin and DH is still working on learning the cello. We're both working on a song from Game of Thrones that is very pretty called Two Swords. It's nice because it has both cello and violin parts. He's not able to play a song yet, but I am playing along with the music. 





@Knave, I think trimming two horses in a day is plenty. I've done three, but no more. After that your muscles start shaking.
Amore has a club hoof also and it always requires some thinking because those clubs have a tendency to deform more if not kept up.


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## Spanish Rider

I'll have you know that echium is quite fashionable in the States now!

As for Pell, this case brings back memories of the Cardinal Law case in Boston. While not an accused pedophile himself, for decades he was cognisant of the abuse perpetrated by other priests within his diocese, merely moving them around to other parishes when parents started complaining. It was the Boston Globe newspaper that uncovered the scandal and did all the legwork the Boston pólice (notoriously Irish Catholic) failed to do. Sickeningly, he was never brought to trial and John Paul II took him to Vatican City, from where he could not be extradited, and he had a glorious time there, reportedly going to parties and such. He died in 2017 and, incredibly, is buried in a basilica in Rome.


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## SueC

@gottatrot, how cool your DH is learning the cello! It's a wonderful instrument. Is there anyone who doesn't love this piece?






That was moody soundtrack music you posted; it's a treat to be able to learn evocative music! :happydance: Best wishes with it, and have lots of fun!

One of my favourite string pieces is this (but I don't play it :rofl:






Here is an amazing excerpt from this long piece, done live - I just love the intensity of these musicians, and how in tune they are with each other. It's extraordinary what you can do with stringed instruments. 






And I agree with you re trimming. I prefer to do two at most, a day. Prefer just one. @Knave, five horses, wow, could you walk immediately afterwards? If I tried that, I'd turn into the Hunchback of Notre Dame...
@Spanish Rider, Echiums are nice in the garden, you just have to stop them escaping!  Speaking of backs, how is yours these days? Re the Boston scenario, I remember that one... I've spent a fair bit of time teaching at Australian Catholic schools, and have to say, the actual community is nice, but the church hierarchy isn't my cup of tea. I'm not Catholic, and was surprised the local Catholic school wanted me to do a gig involving Physics, when I'd had my first two years in secular schools. I had misgivings because a school friend of mine when I was at high school had horror stories of being beaten by nuns when she was in a Catholic primary school. I did a trial term with the school, ended up doing the rest of the year, and it became the school I actually did the most years in, both before and after travelling interstate. There were a lot of fabulous people in that school, staff as well as students, and nobody interfered with me teaching Darwinian evolution in the Biology classroom as per curriculum, because Catholics aren't Biblical literalists the way some Protestants are. (Also, nobody was beating up students.)

The only difference really between teaching Science in that system compared to the secular system is that you don't get to do the condoms-and-cucumbers practical with your students when you do human reproduction - and that exercise is standard in secular schools here. In Catholic schools, you can inform students about contraception, but you can't show them any, which is kind of weird. The cucumber exercise is done as an icebreaker; students work in pairs. :rofl: And then typically they blow them up like balloons. Total comedy and mayhem, typically. It's just to get teenagers past the "ick" and mechanically competent at handling an item which at least reduces the incidence of HIV transmission, not to mention teenage pregnancy. Australians in general, like Scandinavians, have a very practical outlook on this matter.

It's a shame that this community has to endure such asses at the top of their hierarchy. Practising Catholics were always telling me, "We don't care about the Career Catholics, that's not why we are here, and we don't care what they say, we just enjoy our community." And Brother Robert, one of the few non-laypeople I taught with, was one of my coolest colleagues ever. I said to him, "You know, I can see that what you're doing day-to-day is congruent with Christian principles, but I can't see that in the hierarchy you're working under. How do you cope?" And he said he just minded his own life, lived by his own conscience. He also told me a story about how, when he was in the monastery doing his training, he and his mates referred to Pell and the rest of the walking-red-carpet-in-pointy-hats-brigade as "The Spice Girls". :rofl:

Criminal Spice is now in jail, but for how long? And how many still roam free doing their pernicious damage?


*RIDING REPORT* :charge:



This morning, I repeated the ride I documented with 50 photographs the other day. However, it had rained overnight, and this means: Trim a set of hooves while they're nice and soft, before you do anything else! We've had a woefully dry summer; usually we have around 88mm over the first two months (long-term average), this year we've only had 19mm so far, and the bees still don't have harvestable honey, as the summer blossom has been held back so much by the lack of rain... That's the first time in eight years of having hives - we're usually doing our first take in November, and get huge 20L buckets of honey each time we take supers, which can be four times or more. This summer, the bees are dealing with a low nectar supply and cold nights, and we won't take what they need for themselves - we only take excess.

Now here's a lovely horse to trim - Chasseur, whom I can go up to and trim in the paddock, with nobody holding him.  He's the chestnut on the right in this photo:



So that's what I did this morning, with nice scratchies of itchy spots after each foot. Chasseur has great hooves, and they're pretty straightforward to trim as well. It's such a pleasure working with a friendly, easy horse.

After that, I took Sunsmart to the tie rails to tack up. Because of the opportune moisture, though, I shortened his rear hooves for him while it was easy, beforehand. Because we had a strong wind, there were no March flies bothering us today, and I could tuck the hooves right into my lap and work with two free hands, which was a bonus.

I'm also happy with how his coat is coming back chocolate, glossy and short at the moment - all the superficial fuzz is coming off with the rubber curry. Hooray for PPID treatment.

We had a lovely ride today, made a little longer by having to do a donkey delivery: Sparkle hadn't gone out with the others, but stayed with us, cadging a bit of grooming on the side - as she is wont to do when she hears me brushing anyone. As she is blind, I then have to convey her back to her friends. This just involves calling her as I ride along in front of her.

:cowboy: onkey:

Her friends were in the middle of the Common, so once she had been reunited with her usual gang, we were free to go. The quickest way to our south exit gate was now via the swamp track, so that's the way we went. It was a nice ride with the cool change and the fresh wind, and no biting flies around, and it was a quicker ride when not taking photographs!

I returned Sunsmart to his herd in the Common and walked the few hundred metres back home with his tack, as usual for rides that don't require the horse to be hosed afterwards.

And speaking of tack: I've not ridden bareback since I broke three bones in my foot last July. I had to be careful about controlled landings at the dismount for a few months, and so got out of the hang of riding bareback. Now that I can land on my left foot with full weight again, it's high time I got back into riding bareback. If you don't use it, you lose it. So I've challenged myself that my next ride will be a little bareback ride. inkunicorn:


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## Spanish Rider

Thank you for inquiring about my back. It's awesome! The accident will have been 5 years ago in April, and I am completely pain free now (thanks to small PRE horses and dressage saddles). However, I must say that I stay away from lifting heavy weights, as any bit of a bobble while carrying weight can knock me for a loop. So, now that youngest is turning 16 this month, we are getting him (and ourselves) a "home gym"/"multistation weight machine" (called different things in different places). https://www.decathlon.es/es/p/multi...os-negra-y-roja-60-kg/_/R-p-301990?mc=8503175 This way, I could start lifting heavier weights without having to worry about the bobble effect, and I'm sure there'll be a bit of healthy competition with DH. (I beat him at arm wrestling in 1991, and he has never lived that down!)


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## SueC

I'm glad to hear it, @Spanish Rider. Chronic pain is no fun, and spinal injuries can be really debilitating. Very good about the gym! What's your workout soundtrack going to be?

Haha, I've also beaten my DH at arm wrestling, but he's pretty cool about that! Says it's not his core competency.  Us horse girls, we're used to using our arms, and we have persistence, confidence, and sometimes, when necessary, sheer bloody-mindedness! :Angel:

Used to sometimes challenge my students to arm wrestles, and wasn't beaten. Probably would be these days, but not in my 20s and 30s, and not when I trim horse hooves!  Some of the teenage boys really couldn't believe it... bwahahahaha!


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## SueC

Something for @gottatrot, and possibly @Knave' little girl if she still has her violin.

20 years ago, I took violin lessons for two years, and did Suzuki method plus side projects. As an adult beginner (I was 27), the first half of Suzuki Volume 1 is completely demoralising - the musical equivalent of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and of course you're not three years old, and have somewhat more sophisticated musical tastes, and just can't get excited about stuff like that. I'd rather play scales, and that's saying something!

Once I progressed beyond the first half of Suzuki Volume 1, I never, ever went back to playing those pieces. When I have a break from playing - and I've had lengthy breaks with travelling and then house building - I've always gone back to the first decent piece in the book, which in my view is _Perpetual Motion_ and its variations. It's got that climbing up and down ladders feeling, the n+1, n-1, n+2, n-2 type pattern that you find in a lot of Bach as well, and which can really work as the backbone of music.

But I didn't get really excited until I learnt to play some simple jigs, and some violin parts to a thing called _Fiddles on Fire_, and when I actually got to play a piece of Paganini - not a Caprice, mind you, hee hee, but nevertheless, _Witches' Dance_ (near the start of Suzuki Volume 2) is very charming and very distinctly and naughtily Paganini. 

The thing that excited me about the jigs were the rhythms and the technical challenge of doing rapid string crossings. _Fiddles on Fire_ - the double stopping! It makes my hair stand on end. I ended up ad-libbing a version of _What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor_ with double stopping in it, which really spiced up that little tune. This is when I began to really, really have fun! And after that, I started going off-script so much that I had to find a violin teacher who was that way inclined herself, rather than just following a boring programme slavishly. And that was really fun. And it includes hacking away at the E-string in imitation of the _Psycho_ shower scene, and doing ambulance siren sounds. :Angel:

Anyway, I've scanned in the sheet music of the very first side projects that got me excited, in my first year of playing (should be big enough if you click on them enough). You may wish to try some of these as a warm-up sometime, if you don't already know them! The horses liked these too! :rofl: Does Hero like to hear you play, @gottatrot?


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## Knave

Actually her violin has a broken string, and we have no extra strings around. She hasn’t been playing it anyways, so we haven’t gotten it fixed.

She has however been uber focused on her flute. She can play anything. We have a great music teacher, and I have to say he had great timing the other day with a letter.

The oldest was invited on a traveling basketball team. It was a big deal, but when we showed up for the meeting we had the little one with us too. Now, she is not a star on the basketball team. She did play, but being out of shape from Elvis she struggled. Also, apparently, sometimes if you as school brilliant you are not sport brilliant, and it seemed she struggled with the game entirely.

The coach, feeling bad, offered that she be a part of the team as well. Our reaction wasn’t the best, and I said that we’d have to talk about it, with that tone that already said no. I felt guilty later, because I never want to make them feel bad. She blew it off; she knew she struggled, but I thought that maybe it hurt her feelings and wanted to apologize.

So, in the mean time I received a letter from her band teacher. He said that her and her friend were doing amazing, and he had them teaching the preschool class to play the flute. They arrived with games prepared as well as very good lesson plans. He was impressed and said she was a pleasure. She was scheduled to teach the fifth grade the following day.

I was able to use it to show her that she does have talents. Her drive for playing the flute is the kind of thing we support. It is the kind of thing she should pursue, not something that she doesn’t love and strive for. Her horses are the same way, and definitely her schooling. She seemed happy after the conversation.


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## SueC

Did she break the E-string? I was always breaking the E-string. I therefore have old sets of G, D, A kicking around that are perfectly usable, as I always restrung the lot. If you're missing a G, D or A I could mail you a "used" one. ;-)

True story: One particular string ensemble in our area is called "Well Strung". :rofl:

The flute is such a lovely instrument, I'm glad your little girl is enjoying it. It's good to play on and develop your strengths and passions, rather than just trying to struggle with your weaker areas. Having said that, a bit of that is usually good as well. I was completely lousy at public speaking when I was younger, but really wanted to teach. Many people were telling me I shouldn't do it as I was so bad at it. But I worked on it and became very good at it, and then it became such a wonderful part of my life and purpose. It was mostly just nerves with me, and lack of confidence, and I'm glad I didn't do as suggested, and drop the idea. I was passionate about that idea, and knew that in my case, it was to do with overcoming my past, my childhood, and I really needed to overcome that, and take my place in the world. It was the skills and confidence that were missing, not the passion. You can acquire skills and confidence, but passion, not so much! 

Give a big hug to your girls and horses from me! :hug:


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## Knave

I don’t know which string it is... I’ll have to ask her. 

Yes, I completely agree with you about continuing hard things for a passion. That is wherein the problem lies. Maybe she has a mild like for basketball. She says she likes the bus rides to games. Lol. 

She doesn’t like practice. She doesn’t like watching the games from the bench, or even any other games. She doesn’t even like shooting hoops with her sister. She just doesn’t have a passion for it. If she was simply bad at it I think she could completely become successful. I told her that if she wanted it I would fully support it if she would work at it.

That’s what I meant by the passion I guess. I know she is already good at the flute and at her schooling, but she also has a passion for them she was born with. Animals too, and definitely teaching. At the basketball tournaments, when it wasn’t her games, she would collect all of the preschool aged children in the audience and go take them to the hall and organize games and circle times. Lol. 

We all tease she should become a teacher.


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## Knave

Oh, to add, thank you so much for the offer of mailing a string! You are such a very kind and good adopted sister. 

Also, I’m not sure I agree with you about flute music. I don’t like flute music!! Just don’t tell little girl. Shh...


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## gottatrot

Thanks for the music! I'll play them tonight.
I have never played for the horses yet, LOL. The dog and cats seem to like string music, they usually lay down and go to sleep.

Have you ever played O'Carolan's Concerto? I like that one, it's a jig too I think.









My brother and I took lessons together for about three years when we were teens. It was very fun, and our teacher didn't use any traditional method. He ran an instrument repair shop, and said he could play any instrument, which I believe was true because when we'd come in for our lesson he was always playing something different. He was quite good at the violin, and once we knew our scales he would just give us a different piece to practice each week. 
@Knave, it sounds like you are very smart about not pushing your daughter into things she doesn't care for. We all have different interests and talents in life. By the way, it used to be that when a string broke you'd have to go find a music store in town and look around for what you wanted. The last time my violin string broke, I realized you can just order a new one on Amazon and they're pretty cheap.


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## gottatrot

Here's what O'Carolan's Concerto sounds like:




I can't do all the fancy slurs with that great timing like the guy in the video does though. Or the double stops without making it sound bad.


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## SueC

This is a lovely tutorial, thank you, @gottatrot. :bowwdown:

I will add this to my practice pieces.

Of course, the one I really want to play is the slip jig at the start of this piece. I think if I practice lots, this is a possibility...






I saw this show back in the late 1990s. It was wonderful - and does it remind anyone else of dressage for humans? 

And how's this one? This is from 1997, when I saw this performer in London, in a street concert:






I love the Devil's Trill Sonata, and have lots of different recordings of it. And if I'm completely honest, there is actually a lot of stuff in the above version that grates on me - namely the backing band, and things about the presentation. I really really dislike this sort of cheap pop and all the shenanigans that go with it. But, the reason I posted this clip anyway is because Vanessa Mae's violin playing is really arresting, and so well done. I actually also like the idea of doing fusions like this, I just wish she had a better backing band, but I suppose this is the style she enjoys.

I also take my hat off to her for something else: Namely, she actually went out and represented the UK at skiing in the Winter Olympics. It was just a goal she had. She was widely lambasted for it, you know, "Just a music star trying to be precious" etc etc, but the way I see it, she qualified fair and square for the competition, and I don't care that she had no realistic hope of getting a medal - others cared very much about this (the armchair critics) - I think just to get selected for the Olympics is a fabulous thing, and I think competing well, and for the right reasons, is more important than winning. She came second last, from memory, but deserves a huge round of applause anyway - this is a person who's a 24/7 violinist, and good on her for trying to do something else with her life.

See, I'd _love_ to play things at that level of difficulty, but I also understand that it takes basically many many years of music being the number one priority in life to be able to play like that, and it's not my number one priority - it's just something I really really enjoy, but so are lots of other things, and so I'd rather dabble in ten things I love than become a world expert at one.

I can't understand how anyone gets bored. If I had 1000 years, instead of perhaps 80, I could actually realistically get really good at a lot of stuff, and enjoy doing very high-level things. My main problem is just lack of time and energy to fit everything in, and so I have to prioritise etc, and spread things out a bit.

Your violin teacher of yore sounds cool! 

Funny story: When I was in Sydney in 2002-2004, I actually had a teacher who played in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. It came about like this: I asked the girls in my class at Marist Sisters' College in 2002 if any of them did violin and could recommend a teacher. One girl said, "Yeah, my dad plays violin and teaches, here's his number!" When I found out he was in the Symphony, I back pedalled really quickly, and said to him, "You really don't want a student whose prize piece is_ What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor_!" But turns out he didn't care, he taught anyone who was interested. And when I moved house, he suggested it would be easier for me if I just took lessons at The Opera House with some of his other students. But I couldn't bear the idea of playing my stuff in The Opera House, of all places! :rofl: Brett says he'd have jumped at the chance, but I preferred to remain unobtrusive. :Angel:

My Sydney teacher told me the most hilarious stories about composers and conductors, and also about his own penchant for losing his $30,000 violin on a regular basis. :rofl: His elderly mother was always praying to the Patron Saint of Desperate Cases (there actually is one, I've just forgotten which one it is), that he would be re-united with his violin. He'd leave it behind at the bus stop by accident, etc. But it was in a battered old case, and the instrument itself looked worn, so he always got it back! :rofl:


@Knave, at your sisterly service! ;-) And your little girl would make a great teacher! I expect she'll always be one anyway, even if she doesn't end up doing it as a career. You have one cool family and I'm honoured to be adopted. :bowwdown:


OK, I said last time that the next ride would be bareback, and so it was. Attached are some photos, since I realised this morning I actually have no photos at all of my bareback rides on this horse. His snake face at the dog in various photos is so funny! :rofl: She's a bit of a pest, baying like the Hound of the Baskervilles when I get on the horse, and jumping around us until we assume what she considers a reasonable pace. In a photo session, that was not going to happen!

After the photos were taken, we went around the valley floor in our own property, and I left him with the gang out in the Common as usual. Bonus photo: I went "shopping" in our garden this morning, and this is what I brought in!


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## SueC

In postscript: Trotting bareback has things in common with violin playing. If you slip into autopilot and let your brain do its thing, all is well. If you start thinking about it too much, things fall apart. It's a fine art using just enough of your brain, and the right regions, and not too much, or the wrong regions!

Very happy to have gone bareback again for the first time since breaking my foot last July. :happydance:

Sunsmart says 3-4 sessions a week would be enough for him, if I wanted to spend 1-2 sessions a week with Julian to resume his saddle education... and fair enough, 4 solid rides a week would certainly help his fitness, and he's 22 and probably enjoying his sofa more these days, just as I am, and I don't want him to lose his enthusiasm by overdoing frequency...


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## SueC

*JULIAN'S WORLD EXPANDS AGAIN*

This morning, we resumed taking Julian for walks with the dog again, as part of his preparation for saddle training. It's always a great idea to get horses familiar with the trails they will be starting on before you try it under saddle, when your horse is going to be just starting out under saddle for the first time. Exactly the same thing was done with all the horses on our place when they were initially harness trained in their past life, where I was their "babysitter" - the person leading them the first time they went around a track with a cart and driver.

Julian is familiar with all the tracks around our farm from our walks before I broke my foot last year, so today we decided to show him more of the world, and take him into the neighbour's block where we have permission to walk and ride.

Photos:

1. Jess, Brett, Julian and invisible me on the sand track going out.
2. Julian after crossing the gate into the neighbour's place.
3-4. Playing on the sand heap next to the dam, which is also a good lookout point.
5. Approaching another dam.
6-10. Familiarising Julian with the dam wall and the water's edge - very sticky mud!


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## SueC

As you can see, this horse is walking comfortably on a long lead and calmly exploring the "new world". Julian has always enjoyed looking at new things and going new places, and today was no exception. He was already over the moon to be free ranging with a herd of three other horses, and five donkeys, at our place after spending 15 years mostly alone in a sand yard on day turnout, and locked in a stable at night. You can see every day how much that horse enjoys his life and surroundings. And today, we showed him a bit more of this world - including taking him to the biggest open paddock he's ever seen in his life!

When I take horses anywhere new on the lead, I encourage them to look around and to put their noses on the ground - to do what they would do if they came there in their herd; other than, of course, I can't run as fast as them! Keeping them on a short lead and insisting on them having their heads up would not help them get properly familiar with the place. But, as you can see, the horse has good manners and doesn't try to drag me around - which I also make sure all my horses learn to do properly. Julian is very much walking _with me_.

11. Hello!
12-20. The biggest open paddock he's ever seen!


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## SueC

I think you can't expect a horse to be calm unless you're calm yourself, so I have to be Ms Buddha around horses, and that transfers really well to them. This is a lovely horse, and I'm really looking forward to riding him. He'll see so much more of this world again when we can go under saddle - and then he will find out that middle age is actually the best time of your life, as we did! 

21-23. On the huge open paddock. On the third photo you can see how the horses will "snuggle in" with you sometimes when they're familiar with you. He's not on top of me, he's just snuggling up. After all, I was his babysitter when he was a yearling! 
24-25. Finishing the walk on our swamp track. After photo 24, I took off his halter and just kept walking with him. A couple of minutes later, I'd stopped to talk to Brett and was walking behind him, but because he's harness trained, he thinks that's still "in contact"! He's used to having the person he's working with behind him, and paying attention.
26-27. Sunsmart and Julian, after Julian returned to his herd. You can tell these are by the same stallion (The Sunbird Hanover).
28-30. Some cute donkey photos, because they always want to say hello when you're out there with them.


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## gottatrot

Great pictures!!

I had a dream that I visited you. It was quite a funny dream, because you wanted to show me all the rabbits you kept inside your house, and I wanted to go outside and meet your horses. You were quite concerned because I hadn't given you notice before showing up, so you didn't have any food ready. I was impatient while you talked about the food, because I just wanted to go outside and see the horses!
Also you had the biggest Irish Wolfhound I'd ever seen, walking around inside the house.
Dreams are so bizarre. 

I liked playing the new music, especially Soldier's Joy and the Devil's Dream got more fun the faster I played them. :smile:


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## SueC

Those two tracks are like that!  When I first started playing them and got the hang of the notes, I just kept accelerating the pace for fun... especially that part when you're skipping from one string to the other! 

I can see that similarities in the kinds of horses we like seem to also correlate with similarities in what we enjoy about music. I love to let my hair down when riding, and when playing music. A past violin teacher said, "You're sort of attacking the violin with your bow!" :rofl: I prefer that crisp sound, and therefore staccato and spiccato to legato - I prefer there to be a lot of energy, rather than just tickling the thing and going "eeee, eeee, eeee" like a mosquito. I don't like the E-string in general, and will translate things one string down often, unless it means I'm going to run out of low notes. So my teacher said to me, "Why don't you play viola?" Well, I actually like the E-string _as contrast_ to low notes - as a counterpoint in notes, so to speak. But to play up and down the E-string is like strangling a cat, in my humble opinion. It's like fingernails down the blackboard. By the way, you can get a gold E-string that has a much mellower sound and doesn't screech, and I tend to use that instead of a normal E, or it'd kill me.

I never liked violins when I just heard them in mainstream classical recordings - but when I heard Irish and Scottish jigs, I was seized with a desire to play this instrument. For a long time I did nothing about it, because someone I knew who was a classical music buff said I could forget about taking up violin if I was older than six. :rofl: but I actually believed her for a while, until I met an Irish fiddler in the place we did our Gaelic language lessons, and was sighing about how much I'd like to play, and he said, "Well, why don't you? Don't let anyone tell you it can't be done." And he was right. And, he's not the only one saying it:

https://musilesson.com/4-reasons-youre-not-old-play-music/

Classical music does actually have nice pieces for violin when you go looking. This is one of the first ones I liked:






It's the energy, I think. Just like these two people on feature violins are showing:






The feel of that is like the feel of riding a horse at a wonderful free gallop up and over a big hill, where you almost feel like you're flying.

I don't hoon around all the time, by the way - not on the horse or on my feet - I think it's as important to be able to relax and be mellow, as it is to be able to run and jump with joy. But even as I relax, I like to know that the ability to go into full flight is there under the surface.  In life, in riding, in music.
@gottatrot, I forgot to tell you that the two middle pieces on the page with the four jigs on are rather pedestrian, so I avoid them. They're good if you've got an insomniac in the house, but apart from that, I prefer the first and last on that page. 

Now about your dream! :Angel:

1) The only rabbits I've ever had in the house have been in the freezer. 
2) Our refrigerator is always filled with at least one thing that can be eaten if there is no time to cook - and often, there's enough to feed a small army. At the moment, we've still got four servings of moussaka (a Greek layered bake with zucchini, potatoes and meat sauce, topped with cheese sauce), some home-made hummous, and nearly a whole bowl of Blackforest Trifle with chocolate sponge, our own Morello cherries, brandy, home-made custard, whipped cream and chocolate curls. Plus there's mixed grain sunflower bread and fresh apples and peaches etc, and about a dozen things that could be whipped up at short notice. So if you find a :tardis: it is very safe to drop in anytime! ;-)
3) Of course you'd see the horses first, unless you were starving and needed immediate sustenance!
4) Our dog is quite small, but has a huge personality.

The weirdest dream I ever had, back in high school, is that I rode my Arabian mare through the Swiss Alps to a U2 concert in Bunbury Western Australia that ended up being held in a daycare centre and I had to find someone to hold my horse for me, and when I went in, I was really worried that the young children would be politically indoctrinated by the concert! :rofl:


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## egrogan

Beautiful pictures of a beautiful day! I have really come to love "taking my horse for a walk" - like walking a dog but so much better, in my opinion. Present weather aside, it's been so critical for Izzy since her Lyme diagnosis as she so clearly enjoys seeing the world. Looking at Izzy this weekend, I'm feeling confident she's regained enough condition that I can start riding her again this spring, but before I do we will do some long walks to see how she's feeling. And for Fizz, it's been huge relationship building. She's the most "dog like" of mine, she will walk and walk with her nose on the ground investigating and is very curious about what's going on all around her. 

At our last boarding barn, I was out hand walking Fizz down the road once when another boarder's farrier drove past us on his way to the barn. He was working on the other boarder's horse when we got back, and casually asked if Fizz was injured and restricted to only handwalks. When I said, no, sometimes I just liked to go for long walks instead of riding, he was surprised but really complimentary, telling me he thought more people should spend time doing things like that with their horse to get to know them, rather than just showing up at the barn, throwing the saddle on and then turning them back out. Of course that's a gross generalization, but things can feel so rushed when you're boarding it's easy to get into that routine so I knew what he meant and appreciated the observation.


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## SueC

Here's a good anthem:






Just ignore anything said after 3.00 minutes in, that's to do with the movie, which wasn't a bad movie, it had a huge twist in it that seems completely, forehead-slappingly obvious when you come to it...
@egrogan, when you're not just riding, you're getting multi-dimensional horseness!  Since living on the same land as my horses, I ride less than before, but get more horse time than before - it's just gotten broader... and I don't regret that at all...


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## frlsgirl

Your herd clearly trusts and respects you; lovely pictures.


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## SueC

*IT ALL STARTED WITH A CARAVAN*

_The other day on 40+ I had a question about the size of our farm, and what is a "ha". In answering the question, I again felt how extraordinary it was to have ended up here. So here's what I wrote on 40+ about it after that recent trail ride photoessay, and also, as attachments, the Grass Roots article from the last issue about our caravan days before the house:_

"ha" is short for hectare, the metric measurement for area (1ha = 10,000 m2). We've got 12 ha (=30 acres) of pasture and 50ha (=124 acres) of bush.

And since neither of us are rich, or have benefactors, we were really amazed to actually find a bit of land like this that we could afford. It was a fluke - in part it was that there was so much bushland, which requires a lot of fire management - but Brett has been in the Volunteer Bushfire Brigade for 30 years, and I trained as a biologist / environmental scientist, so it was right down our street. The other part was no electricity or landline phone connection. We have a solar off-grid system, and use a mobile phone with absolutely shocking reception. But the Internet works fine here!









It was also only possible for us because the farmer who sold up had been unable to sell his farm as combined titles, so he split it into its four titles to sell, and we were just able to afford the smallest of those blocks.

We also had to build the house ourselves to be able to afford to do it, and that took 5 years. We pinch ourselves every morning when we wake up here. Never in a million years did I think we'd end up like this without a Lotto win.









Apart from Romeo, the animals don't cost us much to keep. They get 99% of their calories from the land, which we manage well and don't overstock - I mostly just top them up with vitamin/mineral mix, in a small feed for the horses and donkeys, and as a lick block for the cattle, plus we planted 1000 tree lucerne seedlings that have matured into long fodder hedges and give us green feed for all the stock in the summer drought, so we don't have to buy hay. And I trim all the horse and donkey feet myself. Speaking of, I have an appointment with Julian's feet this morning!

Oh, and we're basically hippies and grow ever increasing amounts of our own fruit and vegetables, so we spend half the national average on groceries. We have bee hives and sell excess honey, and swap it for a friend's excess free range eggs. The beef cattle cover land rates and insurance for us and leave a little extra for farm maintenance expenses. We eat kangaroo a fair bit when neighbours cull population excesses (as you guys do with deer in the US) - a carcass is dropped to us at such times, and I hang it off a tree, and process it. It actually tastes similar to beef or venison, and is very lean, not to mention organically grown, and free-range.

Anyway, if any of you are still dreaming about various things that haven't happened, don't give up on your dreams.









_GR excerpt follows, click and click again to enlarge to readable size._


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## SueC

*RIDING LOG, EQUINE WALKS, MORE BAREBACK, AND GENERAL FITNESS*

:charge:

Two more rides completed!

On Tuesday, I put the boots on Sunsmart, and rode our main farm tracks with him in the morning. We warmed up on the western ridge, where he is, for some reason, always extra sleepy - something about that track. By the time we turn the corner and hit the southern track, though, he wakes up and wants to trot down the big hill, and across the flat, and to race the dog up the next hill. Then it's back to walking and trotting on the eastern ridge, on a normal ride of those tracks. We cut back across the meadow to reach the swamp track, and this is where Sunsmart gets into dog-racing mode again. We had a flat gallop and lots of cantering there,and the horse was keen to keep cantering when we got back to the southern boundary. Turning into the sand track towards home, he hared off again at speed, before settling into a canter for most of the rest of the way home. I just cooled him off walking and trotting for the last couple of minutes. A very good work session! 

In the evening, we took Julian with us when walking the dog, and got company. Photos at the end show myself, Julian, Chasseur, Don Quixote and Mary Lou walking up the hill from the sand track to the western ridge track. Those were the animals interested in tagging along that night, while Sunsmart stayed in the pasture with Nelly, Benjamin and Sparkle. The last photo shows us on the western ridge, in the forest. Shortly after the photo was taken, Don Quixote and Chasseur decided to head back to the others, but Mary Lou was determined to come along, and walked next to Brett all the way. 

This evening, after a day of nonstop light rain, I hopped on Sunsmart bareback and we did the valley floor loop (sand track/swamp track), mostly at a trot. I am rather riled that I tore a few fibres, probably muscle, maybe ligament, in my left upper arm on my first attempt to mount bareback. I didn't quite have enough momentum, and attempted to hold myself in position temporarily with my arms to see if I could swing across anyway, and _krrrrrrk_! At least it was me, not the horse. So I cheated and went to a little sand hill and mounted off that, to avoid further injury and annoyance. After that, we had a great little ride. I thanked the horse with two peaches off our tree, which were happily slurped up. And when I got back inside, I immediately started Pilates - that was back on the menu this week, and the _krrrrk_ sound gave me a wake-up call that I really do need to work on stretching and core strength regularly if I want to continue to do all the things I've been used to doing all my life.

That aspect was easier when I could go to group Pilates sessions when we lived in town. I loved the social aspect, and am by nature competitive when in a group exercise situation - I am far lazier at home. But, this evening I finally overcame my resistance, got out my exercise mat, put on a really good CD that suits Pilates, and set my timer for 20 minutes - the bare minimum I've undertaken to do twice a week - any more is a bonus. After 20 minutes, I didn't want to stop, and ended up doing over 30 minutes as a first session, remembering all sorts of targeted exercises and writing them down afterwards to design a getting-back-into-it programme. It actually is nice to do when you get into it, God only knows why we humans put things like that off and off for so long. I was also back on the bicycle this week, for the first time since breaking my foot - Brett and I did a 12km intro ride, which took under half an hour and was a good start. We're committed to doing that once a week to start with; more distance and frequency later.

I hope everyone out there reading is also having some success doing more of the things that we all know are good for us this year.


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## SueC

*RIDE IN A RAINCLOUD*

The weather here is presently very unusual - it's being sucked down from the tropics via a trough again. This means we've had nonstop drizzle grading to soft rain for two days, with more weather like this forecast for the next couple of days. The current satellite image shows why:


















We're located in the southwest corner of Western Australia, which is currently sitting _in_ a cloud. As it's been one of the driest summers on record - so dry we've not harvested any honey for the first summer in eight years of bee-keeping - we're not complaining about rain, no matter where it's coming from.

Because of the rain, the first thing I did this morning is trim hooves while they are nice and soft: Don Quixote all around, and Romeo's front while he was finishing his usual big breakfast. Then I did a few different things to get my back stretched out again, before getting Sunsmart in for a pre-ride feed. When he goes for a moderate to strenuous trail riding session over an hour long (lots of fast trotting and cantering - i.e. endurance pace), he gets one litre of oats per hour I'm going to work him, which this morning meant 1.5L of feed. (The maximum oats I feed before riding is 2L, and if I ride longer than two hours, it will be at a less intense pace to compensate.) It makes a big difference to the way horses perform in their workout, in my experience with various horses doing fitness work. It's like me going bike riding after eating a muesli bar, versus just hopping on my bike.

"Normal" trail riders generally don't do this, but also go at a more leisurely pace than endurance horse pace. I grew up riding endurance training and competitions, so the speed at which we go is considered "too fast" for leisurely trail riders. I've ridden with "normal" trail groups, and they spent most of their time walking their horses. Horses like endurance line Arabians and racing breeds mostly like to move, and prefer to spend most of their time trotting or faster. Sunsmart is one of these types of horses, and three weeks into resuming fitness training, he's ready to do moderate to strenuous work - provided he's getting fed properly to perform like this.

Today we explored Sleeman Creek Nature Reserve on the other side of the creek that floods from about May to about October each year. There are lots of steep hills beyond the creek, so it was nice to have a cool day to do this on. It was too wet to take a camera, plus I don't want to fiddle with things like that when I introduce a horse to trail sections that are unfamiliar to it. When it's "old hat" I'll take my camera, on a nice day.

I'm going to reconstitute the ride from pre-existing photographs, and the deal is that you have to superimpose a low, misty raincloud and drizzle on it in your imagination! 

We started on our sand track, walking and doing some slow trotting to warm up.










At the south boundary, we turned east and raced the dog up the hill; and then turned north at the eastern boundary. I have no photographs of this section of our trail yet, but will get some when I take the camera on this route sometime this southern autumn.

We exited at the "cocky gate" on the northeastern corner of our property:










This is a drag-around section of fence between two strainer posts, and thank goodness Sunsmart is sensible and doesn't go leaping about randomly when we have to go through something like this. The cocky gate has lots of barbed wire, and were a horse to get its feet caught in it, bad injuries could result.

We crossed the bitumen and immediately turned left into Halls Road.










Then we rode through Sleeman Creek Nature Reserve to Sleeman Creek:



















That photo was taken last time we tried this, before summer, when the creek was in flood, and it's not safe to cross by horse when it is in that condition. This time, the floodway was dry, and Sunsmart picked his way carefully across the big boulders. Then we made our way up the big hill, cantering, trotting and walking in turn.

Here's a photo we took of that hill series from a dog walk in springtime a couple of years back:



You actually can't see most of it, because there is lots more beyond the crest in the distance.

And this is looking back towards our place, at the start of that hill:



Beyond that, I don't have photos, but it goes on over about four sections of hill and involves another minor creek crossing. There were cattle following us along in the paddocks to our left, with very young calves. At the minor creek crossing, I had to negotiate with Sunsmart as this was a new one for him. I got off and walked through ahead of him, and in doing so, got my hiking boots covered in anaerobic mud, but thankfully they are waterproof. Sunsmart took some convincing, as usual for new crossings - he's a total hydrophobe, but with age and practice, at least it's not a long process anymore to get him across a new yucky water crossing.

We rode up to the northern end of the track, and turned home again at the corner - as he gets fitter, we'll explore further. This time, instead of going back through the creek crossing, we took the alternative route through the bush, which you can see on the map at the end of the post. Then, down the long, long hill again, and back via the approach track and Halls Road. The horse was all lovely again as I was dragging our cocky gate around, not moving till I told he he could walk safely now, and then we returned along the top of our Common. This is a picture from about a week back, so this is what the colours are actually like this time of year. However: Imagine it in a misty raincloud, in drizzle.










At the "equine rest area" under the Paperbark trees, we found our three original donkeys, and Sunsmart told me he'd like to join them. Since he didn't need washing - the drizzle had kept him cool, so he'd not had to sweat much - I was happy to remove all his gear, including his boots, and carry that the last few hundred metres back home, so he could graze with some friends. As I was leaving, Nelly and Benjamin came running at a fast trot to say hello, and joined Sunsmart and the three original donkeys under the Paperbarks. Julian and Chasseur were off in the forest somewhere, and Romeo was grazing in the garden, and happy to have me back.

The horse pulled up really well and looked fabulous at tagasaste feeding time this evening. I didn't have to rug him, as the drizzle stopped and it wasn't windy. He was practically dry. I don't shampoo him, so he doesn't lose his natural waterproofing under the top of his coat. You can part his hair, and in this kind of light rain, the skin and most of the hair under the surface will be dry.

I'm definitely tired though, and so is the dog! :ZZZ:


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## gottatrot

Some great rides and photos! 

I've learned to feed before rides also, and it helps in many ways. The horse has energy (not always needed for mine), it prevents ulcers, and helps with the attitude since it's more natural for horses to exercise with food in their stomach. I usually give some hay, and beet pulp or alfalfa/hay pellets. 
People for some reason look down on feeding a horse while they are being tacked up, but I think it is a great practice because it helps keep the horse occupied and happy, while also making sure they are not going out on an empty stomach. Even though ours are on pasture, who knows if they were just loafing and napping for the past hour? 
People seem to think of horses eating before riding like they think about people eating before swimming, but horses are not actually meant to be running around on an empty stomach.


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## SueC

With the racehorses, they got a reasonably large grain feed three hours before the race (much more than I'll feed Sunsmart for a trail workout), leaving enough time beforehand not to interfere with hard exercise, much of it anaerobic. With endurance and trails at equivalent speed, most (not all, but most) of the work is aerobic. When I was doing road cycling trials in my 20s, I similarly had to space the food beforehand more than I did for normal bike rides for fun and fitness. The road cycling trials were basically just pushing yourself as hard as you could for the whole distance, just on the edge of nausea actually, and you really would lose your stomach contents if you ate heavily less than an hour or two beforehand - except perhaps a muesli bar.

I actually don't think the horse's stomach would empty completely in an hour of not grazing. Have you read any studies on that? They have quicker transition time than ruminants, but it's still a trickle system, so that it partly empties during rest periods, when horses are free to forage, and they just ensure it doesn't get completely empty by topping up regularly. It would be interesting to know how long it is before a horse without access to food has a completely empty stomach.

But I do agree that it's not harmful for a horse who's going out on moderate to strenuous training to have a snack beforehand. I make it a relatively low volume quick-release snack, just as I do when I'm cycling.


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## Knave

What a nice ride!! I wish I was there, that road looks lovely to just long trot or lope down.


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## SueC

I wish we all had a :tardis:, then we could all ride at each other's places!  But seriously, it's already great just to know you at all, and share rides in the virtual world.

I've got a postscript on feeding I wrote for @bsms on his journal, which I will copy to my journal as well, as it sort of began here. It doesn't mean it has to be discussed in both places necessarily, it's just for continuity!


Quote:
Originally Posted by *bsms* View Post 
_https://www.horseforum.com/member-jo...post1970688815

Mia came from racing lines, and Bandit certainly spent a few years racing cross country. Both prefer to walk fast, but neither show(ed) a burning desire to trot all the time. It would be interesting to know...is it me? Is it how rocky and uneven the ground is? Is it the feed?_

First of all, our horses here don't have a burning desire to trot _all the time_, they just have a desire to have a good solid run, with their mates in the paddock or with their monkeys. As they get fitter, that desire increases.

I don't think it's you, if you mean as a rider. I was a novice rider when I started with the French Trotter mare, and she was like that. She didn't do anything impolite, but she'd let you know she would like a good run. So had the German Trotter they had at the riding school where I learnt - he was known as a "hot" horse amongst the clientele, so some liked to avoid him, and some of us hoped he'd be allocated to us. His name was Ali! He was very different from the Warmbloods.

Once my Arabian mare got fit, it'd be "snort, snort, snort" if we were walking and she wanted to pick up pace. I've noticed that our horses here do the same sort of snorting at each other when they're about to run off together - it's a "let's go" snort.

Even hot horses won't want to pick up speed on terrain that is uncomfortable for their feet, unless they are really amped. Possibly it's partly that. Possibly it's lack of cardiovascular fitness. Just thinking out loud - all the Trotters I've ridden, including Ali and the French mare, were off-track, and had therefore had fitness training from the go-get. My Arabian mare was lunged a lot in sand at the trot and canter from the time she was a yearling, so also got reasonably fit before she was ridden. (When she was hand-walked, we did a lot of running intervals too - that was a good way for _me_ to get fit!) She did also, from the time she was about two, start to prefer trotting to walking on the lunge. The STBs show the same inclination pretty early on as well. Athletes are a combination of genes and environment to become it though.

Whenever I've been at peak fitness, I've been the same. Flat walking is boring then, so I head for the mountains - I'm a lousy runner, but if there weren't any mountains on hand, I'd sprint intervals on the beach. It was just a need to move, and to push the boundaries. When I lose fitness, I become more fond of walking on flat ground. Because I don't want to turn into a blimp or lose muscle tone, I then have to _make_ myself overcome a sort of inertia to get to that need to move again.

Possibly the "hot" horses get more addicted to the vigorous-exercise endorphins.







But I do think there are differences apparent in the paddock already when horses like that are young, before they start to work, compared with show breeds, WBs etc. It's an interesting topic to think about.

Sunsmart needs a good warm-up before he becomes inclined to trot. He's quite happy to sleepwalk for ten minutes on most days before the snorting starts. About twenty minutes in, he starts to really look for races with the dog. He's very sensible like that - my Arabian mare wanted to trot pretty much at the outset.

Also, there's a world of difference between horses exercising off mostly forage or hay, and horses exercising off hard feed - except during the spring flush here, when they get very goey on the pasture alone because on a rising nutritional plane. That's when I have to exercise Sunsmart a whole lot, or put him on pasture restrictions, so he doesn't blimp out. But I do think that when horses work hard, they need extra energy through hard feed to be able to sustain that work. You couldn't put a Trotter through its pre-race fitness programme without giving it concentrate feeds like oats, canola, copra etc, and either good pasture and/or high-quality hay, preferably good meadow hay with a good clover content. They need extra carbohydrate, and they need extra protein, plus enough vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, antioxidants etc, just like human athletes - otherwise they will wilt, and get worn out and tired and frustrated. They need to have energy to spare to work hard.

To give you an idea, young STBs starting their jogwork would typically get two hard feeds a day - morning and evening - with about 2L of oats or equivalent each, plus extra protein as canola or crushed legumes or lucerne hay (alfalfa) or high-clover meadow hay. As they build up to pacework, their oats or equivalent are increased incrementally. Horses doing interval training and/or actually racing are getting around 3-3.5L of oats or equivalent twice daily, sometimes more, depending on the horse. The maximum ends up at around 8L a day for a horse who needs it; beyond that level, there would be problems with digestion, colic, metabolism etc - as there would be if horses fed like that didn't work hard, and consistently.

In the German riding school, horses were getting around 2L of oats and/or cube feeds twice daily to sustain their long hours of ridden work. This is about the same people were feeding their riding horses on serious work days. As the quality of the pasture and tree fodder here in Redmond is very good, I do not feed that much concentrate to Sunsmart - he gets a baseline of 1L oats and a cup of canola a day, plus pre-work feeds of 1L oats per hour he's going to be working at moderate to strenuous intensity. In the spring flush, we cut out the baseline grain, and feed their mineral mix to them in mostly chaff. (The mineral mix is necessary here due to soil deficiencies.)

A lot of recreational riders in Australia are bamboozled by these amounts of hard feed, but then, a lot of their horses don't work hard enough to need it, not if their job is mostly walking or slow trotting, with the occasional faster trot and canter, unless they do it all day, and few do. Forage and/or hay suffices for that level of work; those horses are doing less than they would be in a roaming wild herd, which often covers in excess of 30km daily, at slow to moderate paces, and a proportion of that just walking around grazing.

Hope that information helps you with your question!


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## Knave

I give quite a bit of oats when my horses are working hard too @SueC. People teased about how much Bones was always eating when I was using him hard. However, he was hard and needed the extra calories. He doesn’t do well on sweet feed, so I changed to rice bran and eventually oats. All of our horses now only get the oats instead of any grain, because I love that it’s cold calories. 

They also only get them when they are in work.


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## bsms

The jogger in me suspects the difference is a combination of marginal feed and the toughness of any running here. Roughly 4,000' MSL, no level terrain, and the near level spots usually have gullies and rocks. I'm trying to get back into running after being knocked out of it largely for the last year due to my foot. It is a half-mile from my house to the main road, but while smooth (paved), it is almost all uphill. I cannot do it without stopping. Yet. If someone drops me off at the top, I can certainly handle it without stopping - downhill!

The poor quality of the feed may be a big issue. I've been doing what just about everyone here does...but I'm a bit bothered by how much better the horses are looking on pelleted feed instead of hay! The manufacturer can test the hay coming in and supplement calcium or fat or any one of a number of trace minerals.

A guilty secret: I actually LIKE McDonald's. As best I can tell, I may be the last person left alive in America who admits it, which leaves me wondering how so many of them stay in business. Still, if I had to eat there 3 meals a day, getting into any kind of decent shape would be a challenge. My horses may be like someone asked to be minimally athletic - while required to eat all their meals off the value menu at McDonald's!

More wind and rain today and maybe tomorrow, so they will be on pellets again today. And maybe that isn't all bad...


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## SueC

Have you visited Mia since she's been re-homed, @bsms? Do you know if she's more goey where she is now? The terrain is presumably nicer underfoot.

That's very funny about the McDonalds! Especially the roaring business and people not admitting they like it. :rofl: I kind of don't, but it smells good. As a teenager I ate it and liked it, but my tastes sort of changed, and then I thought their cheese tasted like plastic, which it probably does for a logical reason, like it's actually plastic... Hungry Jacks used to make a thing called an Aussie Burger which both Brett and I would occasionally eat, if the mood was upon us. It had a beef patty, less plasticky cheese, actual egg and beetroot, gherkins, tomatoes, salad, mayonnaise etc. They deleted it a few years back, then brought back a pale imitation we refuse to eat again. And anyway, a good steak sandwich made at home, on nice toasted sourdough bread, with decent salad leaves instead of limp iceberg lettuce, and proper tomatoes instead of tasteless ones, and beetroot and cucumber and real cheese, and mustard and whole-egg mayonnaise, and sauteed onions, mushrooms and capsicum (bell peppers) on the side - mmmmhhh, you can't beat that, and it's not much effort to make! 

My guilty secret was always toasted cheese sandwiches made in one of those scallopped sandwich presses, which allows you to put extraordinary amounts of cheese into two pieces of sandwich bread. The highest possible cheese : bread ratio! And I looooove cheese, so that was irresistible... so much so, I gave my sandwich press to charity in my 20s and have never replaced it... I'd just eat one of those and then another and another, and you actually can't live on bread and cheese and tomato sauce alone...

It must be a real bummer to have to feed all imported stuff, and so expensive. If you do move, maybe to an area with pasture? The right kind, of course, so you don't have to deal with laminitis... Is your soil sandy? Do you have irrigation water? Tagasaste (tree lucerne) does really well on sandy soil with little water, so you'd not have to give it much where you are, and it's amazing horse feed, grows like a weed!


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## bsms

I've never visited Mia. We swap texts and photos about once a year. He came and visited friends and also visited Bandit, and we talked then. If I hadn't traded her for Bandit, maybe Mia & I would have eventually achieved a breakthrough. Or she might have killed us both a week later spooking in a place where spooks were dangerous.

At best, I might someday have some grazing land to supplement the horse's feed. Certainly not enough for them to rely on grazing. In the Intermountain West, winters mean horses need feed due to snow. OR it means they need feed because it is too hot & dry. Almost everywhere, water is at a premium:










https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermountain_West​
I'm hoping going to two meals a day of pellets plus dinner of bermuda hay will give them decent nutrition plus enough fiber and 'grass in gut' time. Bandit is likely to be the only one ridden enough to make for much of a difference, although I'm glad to see Trooper growing better hooves too.


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## gottatrot

I actually like McDonald's too. :smile: I'm not one for fried foods, but if you just came back from a long hike and need some carbs and salt, a small french fry is very helpful for electrolytes and also replenishing your glycogen stores. Same with a cheeseburger, which gives you some protein, carbs and electrolytes. Sometimes after work I'll get scrambled eggs.

One source I read said that horses actually process food faster if they have been eating regularly, versus if they have been fasted. They can actually digest food through their stomach in as little as 15 minutes. 

As far as feeding oats, I was once all on board with it until I had my issues with Halla. Now I'm quite convinced that even with intense exercise, horses do best with feeds they can digest in a natural fashion, without upsetting their normal flora and bacteria. Here are some articles that are interesting on the subject of feeding and exercise:
https://feedxl.com/16-feeding-before-exercise/
https://www.smartpakequine.com/content/horse-digestion
https://thehorse.com/14103/pre-exercise-feeding/


> Never feed grain within 4 to 5 hours of a ride or exercise, and that includes any feed that is high in starches or sugar. The starches and sugars in these feeds are absorbed from the small intestine largely as glucose, which triggers the release of insulin from the horse’s pancreas. Blood glucose and insulin levels following a grain feed generally peak at 2 to 3 hours following a meal and return to normal within 4 to 5 hours. Insulin is a hormone that instructs the horse’s muscles and organs to store away glucose.
> 
> *So if there is insulin in a horse’s blood when exercise starts, the horse isn’t able to mobilize glucose stores to burn and fuel the muscles during work (because insulin is there telling the muscles to store all the glucose away). The horse’s ability to burn fat as an energy source is also reduced when insulin is present. The result of feeding a grain or high starch and sugar feed too close to when the horse is exercised is the horse that will run out of muscle energy supplies and fatigue quickly.*
> 
> This concept is particularly important for high intensity exercise where a horse’s glucose supplies are burnt up very quickly. In endurance type activities, large grain meals should not be fed within 4 to 5 hours prior to the start of exercise, however smaller grain meals may be fed during exercise to top up muscle glycogen stores and prolong the time to fatigue.


Just like with humans, horses depend on the liver and muscles for glycogen stores to turn into glucose and fuel exercise.
Edit: I should add that I've experimented with exercising horses hard on only forages versus feeds that are high in starch/sugar like oats and other grains. I'm convinced they do as well or better on quality forage.


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## SueC

I like nutrition discussions (as long as they're not sponsored by food corporations, aiming either at humans or animals! ;-)), and it's going to be interesting to compare notes and to do some collaborative thinking! 




gottatrot said:


> I actually like McDonald's too. :smile: I'm not one for fried foods, but if you just came back from a long hike and need some carbs and salt, a small french fry is very helpful for electrolytes and also replenishing your glycogen stores. Same with a cheeseburger, which gives you some protein, carbs and electrolytes. Sometimes after work I'll get scrambled eggs.


Yeah, true, those components are useful. But, one of my home-made foodie steak sandwiches with lots of different salad and side vegetables, plus crispy baked wedges from our home-grown potatoes would supply all that useful stuff, and much more, and have very low levels of the things I actively avoid, such as added sugar, refined flour, transfats, flavourings, preservatives, plasticisers (from food storage etc), fillers, etc etc - and give you a fantastic flavour experience as well as a healthy satiety after - no McBrick, bloating etc. Plus, the ingredients are locally sourced, and come from free-range animals and sustainable, organically based farms, including our own. ;-)

So that's the sort of thing we generally arrange for post-hiking food, and pack our own lunches etc.

And that's not to say that we don't occasionally eat commercially prepared foods - but not very often. We just feel so much better on what we grow and prepare ourselves.

This is not intended as a lecture, I'm just a foodie and a sort of hippie and that's how I talk, and people are welcome to come and eat at our place! :cheers:




> One source I read said that horses actually process food faster if they have been eating regularly, versus if they have been fasted. They can actually digest food through their stomach in as little as 15 minutes.


By that do you mean that they start absorbing it in that time, or that food has been shown to clear a horse stomach to the intestine within 15 minutes from being swallowed? The former is obviously true - digestion _and_ absorption actually begin in the mouth, during chewing; salts and small molecules like glucose start passing through the epithelia immediately. Proteins and fats are digested from the stomach onwards, and that takes longer; but the moment they're down to their constituent amino acids and fatty acids, they start getting absorbed.

The pyloric sphincter between the stomach and the intestines acts as a sort of valve to let through food ready for further processing; there's some size sorting etc there to keep back things that need further processing before they go on. In trickle feeders like horses, the stomach wouldn't generally be completely empty unless they are unable to access any food. In beef abattoirs, there's generally a 24-hour food (but not water) fast to clear out the stomach, and partially clear intestines before slaughter - local horse abattoirs also usually do at least an overnight food fast. I'd imagine a horse _stomach_ would be empty well before this.




> As far as feeding oats, I was once all on board with it until I had my issues with Halla. *Now I'm quite convinced that even with intense exercise, horses do best with feeds they can digest in a natural fashion, without upsetting their normal flora and bacteria.*


I _completely_ agree with the statement I've highlighted, for humans and horses. (And that also means no casual oral antibiotic treatment!) 

I just think that oats can for many horses be a part of that equation as long as you don't feed silly amounts, and the quantities are tailored to the work the horse does. Horses grazing on grasslands (pasture or wild) do eat seed heads as part of their diet, and often actively select for them. The spring flush doesn't coincide with the seed head set, which _follows_ spring flush - the stalks are then losing nutritional value, but the seeds have concentrated the plant's nutrients for the next generation of seedlings. Obviously, there's a limit to how much seed a horse can accumulate by selecting for it when foraging, but the quantities of grass seeds (as oats) I feed to my own horse when he works could conceivably be accumulated on an early-summer pasture, and are offset against physically demanding activities.

Nutrition is a big and complex area, and we're just discussing basics here. One thing I am very aware of is the potential for "improved pasture" used for beef fattening and dairying (as in our district) to create metabolic problems for grazing animals - and I've seen that happen with my late Arabian mare (who never reacted adversely to oats when in work). There were a number of reasons for this - as I'm sure you are aware, Arabian horses and donkeys are basically canaries in the coalmine when it comes to over-rich nutrition. They are desert animals who are tailored to calorie restriction and poor forage, and will be the first to let us know that something is wrong with the way we are feeding (and, also really important, whether they have enough exercise, including incidental self-exercise!). We had to manage my Arabian mare differently to the other horses (all STBs) during spring flush - she was on pasture restrictions. Two of our donkeys have to wear grazing muzzles for the whole of spring when out on pasture.

We don't hothouse our pasture - we don't use superphosphate, we don't overstock, and we don't remove sedges and wild grasses. We're consciously letting it go back to less "hot" food - and we're still raising cattle on it, but we're not interested in getting mega-fat cattle either, that's not good for cattle, or for people eating steak. Greg Coffey, the local racehorse farrier, says that there are numerous cases of horses foundering around the district the spring after superphosphate was applied. Sugars are one part of the problem, trace element imbalances on the forage are another.

Our horses (besides geriatric Romeo who's a special feeding case) are 95% subsisting off our pasture and tree forages we cut for them, and are looking great on it (plus mineral supplementation). If they show signs of weight gain, I restrict the areas they can access, and with my working horse, I work him more. When it's not spring flush, my working horse gets extra oats when he's in moderate to heavy work, as outlined in a previous post.

Why I use oats: Because it's not created any problems for any of my horses past or present, and because the only problems I've seen with oat feeding is when people have fed too much in proportion to the work a horse is doing, or have fed oats to a horse with pre-existing metabolic issues. That's just my own experiences, mind you, and that's not necessarily the be-all and end-all of it. Basically though, if it's not broken, I don't fix it.

Oats and work horses go back a long way, and I when I feed my horses, I want them to eat things grown on a field, not things manufactured by the horse food industry. I don't trust any nutrition research that's linked to or funded by the horse food industry, the same as I don't trust human nutrition research sponsored by processed food manufacturers. We all saw what happened when the tobacco lobby sponsored scientific research - and I've seen what happens when companies like ALCOA sponsor environmental research, as well. It's not even necessarily the companies exerting overt pressure to get certain results, although that does happen as well - it's that the money leaves when findings are adverse to company interests, and that scientists want to have job security as well. Scientists aren't necessarily consciously selling their principles, but all humans rationalise psychologically to further their own survival.

Brett and I eat a lot of oats ourselves, and along with brown rice, find it to be among the grains that never give us stomach upsets, bloating or icky feelings, even if we eat a lot of these. This is not the case for wheat - one issue is that wheat is very hothoused, genetically as well as when it's grown. Cultivated oats, while different from their wild progenitors, are closer to these than wheat to theirs. We still eat wheat, but not nearly as much of it as average Australians, and we avoid refined wheat flour. Most of the wheat we eat is in the form of wholemeal, stone-ground, biodynamically grown wheat from a local farmer, which I use to make breads, etc (but I use just as much rye flour as wheat, etc).

Oats are considered by wholefoods nutritionists to be one of the best grains you can feed to humans. They have higher protein levels (15-20%) and higher levels of healthy fats than wheat, barley, rye etc - in particular, linoleic acid, which is part of the omega-6 family modern humans are in rather short supply of, compared to omega-3s. They are comparatively high in Vitamin E, zinc, calcium, magnesium, iron, B-group vitamins, etc. 

Oats actually received a lot of attention recently over their ability to maintain stable blood sugar levels in humans. They are a comparatively slow-releasing carbohydrate. Their richness in protein and a fibre called beta-glucan acts to slow down the glucose release to the human body.

So, they agree with us very much, and I can see the biochemical reasons why they do. This doesn't mean they are going to agree with everyone, but everyone has to work out what works best for them. And, of course, the animals in their care.

The notes on oats above are also important for how horses process them. As horses are grazers, you can't fill their stomachs with oats like you can in humans and get a trouble-free outcome - horses need a lot more roughage than omnivores do, and a lot more slow-release carbohydrate. I am not in favour of feeding horses large amounts of grains, or other concentrates. But, I've found them a very valuable dietary supplement for working horses compared to other grains, and compared to the pelleted products produced by the horse food industry - having tried a lot of things, and tailored feeding to horses' responses, performance and health issues.

Horses eat their oats unhulled, unlike humans, and this further delays the release of carbohydrates from them. A proportion of the oat seed coats are never cracked, and go through to produce seedlings germinating in a pile of organic fertiliser! Which is one of the ways the species favoured by grazers get spread around in nature.

My hunch is that the avalanche of metabolic disorders in domestic horses these days is majorly related to their too-sedentary lifestyles, lack of constant incidental exercise etc, and to being on forages that are too far removed from what they would naturally eat in the wild. Ditto the human epidemic of obesity and metabolic disorders. So with horses and humans in my care, I try to address those issues as best as I can, and I'm constantly learning!

Other factors include things like endocrine-disrupting hormone mimics (from plastic food containers, detergents, various industrial chemicals now widespread in the environment, etc), which we can discuss another time - now there's something that's had little attention in animal nutrition!




> Here are some articles that are interesting on the subject of feeding and exercise:
> https://feedxl.com/16-feeding-before-exercise/
> https://www.smartpakequine.com/content/horse-digestion
> https://thehorse.com/14103/pre-exercise-feeding/


I'll read those later and then get back to you about them. Busy day! Thanks for the links. Looking forward to discussing them with you.


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## gottatrot

Glad you are willing to discuss.  
Of course not trying to say "you're doing it wrong" to others feeding oats, more of verbalizing my experiences and also I've arrived at skepticism about oats after noticing that those who advocate feeding them often don't have a good record for horses with healthy digestive systems and hooves (those who manage racehorses) and after Halla's issues I reread many of the articles promoting oats as healthy and "natural," "whole food," for horses and saw they were often being paid for by people who profited from oat sales.

When voices are too loud, or begin to become extreme, I become skeptical. (These are just some musings)...I agree 100% about eating home grown foods, whole and natural, and that just seems obviously the healthiest way to eat. As far as McDonald's goes, I would never say it is "healthy," but rather I think people overestimate the unhealthiness of it as compared with other things they eat regularly. Especially if you consider it as a rare part of the diet.

What my observations are around where I live, is people who are quite worried about their diets, and taking extreme views, while remaining unhealthy. It is very, very rare to find someone who actually eats regularly homemade food from farm fresh products. 

Instead, there is a lot of posturing and talk about how a diet is so healthy and good (keto, paleo, low carb, etc), while the person observed over time does not become sleek, muscular and healthy (like a horse on a good diet), but rather appears even after months and years on the healthy diet to be still pale, overweight and flabby. 

A horse is not going to be harmed by a couple handfuls of corn or oats, but horses are quite different from humans, so I think we have to be careful not to try to apply the same rules. The principles, yes, such as less processed may be better, but I also understand this is largely dependent on what you have available. As @bsms has been describing, with the "more natural" hay producing less health in his horses than the pelleted feed. Your situation is quite ideal but rare, with varied grazing land that has not been improved. 

Back to the principles, there is a lot of science behind how feeds effect horses digestion, and as I understand it we began feeding horses grain due to wanting horses to work hard for hours without having to stop for grazing. Human convenience and such are not necessarily what is ideal. In those times ten year old horses were too old for hard work, at least in the cities I read horses would retire after seven years, some only lasted three years. Also, many things that are quite healthy for humans such as grapes and garlic are toxic to other animals such as dogs. At one barn I was at, the owner loved garlic for the health benefits, and transferred this to feeding large amounts to the horses, which can cause anemia. 

So...I wander but we have to do the best with what we have, but my belief is that when we look at a horse's ideal digestion, high NSC foods are not needed or ideal, and I've met many endurance riders who fueled their horses on only low starch/sugar foods. I do believe Arabs, Donkeys, Ponies and Mustangs are genetically selected to tolerate a higher calorie/starch/sugar diet less well, and racehorses are perhaps the best adapted. However, I don't believe this means it is ideal for them or necessary. 

The science makes sense to me that high circulating insulin levels are always bad, even if the hooves don't visibly break down. Even if it doesn't lead to insulin resistance in some horses (just like some humans don't end up with diabetes despite a terrible diet), we can't really know which ones are going to be predisposed, so the best bet is to avoid it and to feed what is less likely to cause problems. Horses in the wild in studies also show signs of laminitis after periods where there is too much rich food, so a horse coming across areas where grains have overbloomed in the wild might have issues also.

I guess in my mind, feeding oats for better exercise tolerance is more similar to eating a candy bar before going for a big hike. It can be helpful for readily available energy. It can also spike the insulin too much, causing too much glucose to go back into the cells rather than being available for energy. For regular workouts and practice, it's going to be more helpful to consciously load the muscles and liver with glycogen stores, that can be drawn on continuously, which is true for both anaerobic and aerobic exercise. You'll use the glycogen up faster during sprinting, or slower during endurance, but the gradual conditioning of the horse is what helps build the amount of glycogen the muscles can store. The horse's endurance will not depend on a feeding of oats, but rather on the glycogen stores available to turn into glucose for fuel.

Yes, I've read that horses can empty the stomach in as little as 15 minutes, so I think our perceptions of them never having an empty stomach is not actually true. Their stomachs secrete acid all the time, so perhaps when the acid levels get high enough, they are stimulated to eat again. But horses only eat up to 18 hours a day, and sometimes take several of those hours off eating in a row, naturally, for sleeping or loafing. I would guess that they naturally have a drive to eat before exercising, however, when their stomach is empty.


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## tinyliny

I don't come here often, . . not often enough.


Some questions: Can you go hunt the kangaroos? What is the state of gun control in Australia?


When you race the horses up that hill, do you have to worry about somekind of 'gopher' like animal that would create dangerous holes in the ground?


That square net wire fencing . . . Don't horses put their legs through and cause injury?


Are those mini donkeys or full size?


That photo with you and the donkeys is just too cute! you should take some of the donkeys faces, for me , as a reference for sketches or paintings.


ps: I love long, steady trots, too.


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## SueC

tinyliny said:


> I don't come here often, . . not often enough.


Hello! :wave:

I can't read everything I'd like to here either, or all the books I want to. Brett says that the time may come when we can just upload all this stuff into our heads, but I don't know it would be the same experience! 




> Some questions: Can you go hunt the kangaroos? What is the state of gun control in Australia?


Firearms require licenses, and people presumed to be of good character can get these, provided they show reason why they need them, and fulfil requirements like gun club membership, if they are suburbanites anyway; and safe locked storage. Farmers traditionally get firearms licenses because they need them for emergency destruction of livestock, home kills for eating etc, and I don't think they need to be gun club members if they have livestock. I'll ask my neighbour sometime.

Farmers can hunt kangaroos on their own property; and can give others permission to hunt on their own property. To shoot kangaroos on public land, permits are required from the conservation and land management department, and these are allocated according to the population size of the kangaroos in various areas etc. Kangaroos no longer have natural enemies in the farming districts, and are managed like deer in Europe (for the same reason), by hunters getting licenses to take certain amounts of them, so the population doesn't exceed what can be carried, and doesn't interfere too much with livestock keeping.




> When you race the horses up that hill, do you have to worry about somekind of 'gopher' like animal that would create dangerous holes in the ground?


Thankfully, this is not a problem we have very much in Southwestern Australia. I know @Knave has to consider that problem when she's riding in her part of the USA. Burrowing animals are really small here, and don't make burrows or holes on open tracks. Introduced, feral rabbits may dig small depressions, or make burrows, but they do this mostly in sandy country, and make their burrows mostly near trees, not in open areas if they have the choice. I've also always made sure I know my "flat-out" tracks very well; I'd never let a horse run at speed on a track I didn't know.

I'm currently only racing one horse up that hill - Sunsmart - and he sets his own pace, which is helpful, as he looks where he's going. Julian is getting a bit of groundwork in preparation for saddle training, but I've got enough on my plate riding just one horse properly... so will have to do that gradually. Romeo's 34, and Chasseur 25, so these two are just enjoying retirement.

But Romeo, when he was a young horse, was the fastest horse I've ever ridden - he had a sprint that was unbelievable. He _paced_ 55 seconds for 800m in training, back when average pacers took 60 seconds. It's a shame there weren't any 800m races! He galloped even faster, and had a rocket-like take-off. When he got going, he really got going, so the one place I let him go flat out was up a very long, gently inclined hill with nice safe sandy footing that was well maintained as a firebreak, where he could run for at least a minute at his speed, before being asked to slow down. As the hill crested and the rest was downhill, I did slow him down on the crest, as I don't think going at speed down a hill is a safe thing to do when riding a horse. That was my "running" hill, and my Arabian mare liked that hill too.




> That square net wire fencing . . . Don't horses put their legs through and cause injury?


Yes, they do, so we don't have it on our property. You probably saw that in the photos where I'm walking Julian or riding Sunsmart on the neighbours' property, which is a beef property with the option of running sheep, and that's very secure sheep fencing. If we did have any of it on our property, we'd run outriggers off the posts and an electric line inside to keep the horses clear of such fencing, as we do for our (pre-existing) barbed wire boundary fences in the internally fenced paddocks. We aren't running outriggers on the forest fences though, as the horses are unlikely to stick their legs through them just walking on the tracks. This tends to happen more when horses are trying to cross to interesting forage, or when there are horses on the other side of the fence.




> Are those mini donkeys or full size?


Minis are smaller. They're about average for Australian donkeys; the three largest ones could be ridden by children. Adults I know who have donkeys usually drive them, or have bigger donkeys for riding. We don't tend to have many big donkeys like people in the US though!




> That photo with you and the donkeys is just too cute! you should take some of the donkeys faces, for me , as a reference for sketches or paintings.
> 
> ps: I love long, steady trots, too.


Yeah, isn't all that great? Every day I wonder at the incredibleness of the very basics, like the sunshine, and photosynthesis, and the fact that we can ride on other creature's backs like we do, and have it be fun for both species... 

You may find some suitable reference photos here, in our donkey photo album:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/albums/72157689060389665

If not, let me know what sort of photos / angles exactly you'd like!


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## Knave

I am on the oat boat. Lol. I get what you are saying @gottatrot, but it confuses me a bit too because I think oats are much less a candy bar than corn or three way of course. I think of them as cold calories, and Bones for sure did better transferring, although I’m not sure any other horse showed actual effect of anything different in changing as they really don’t get much. 

I think they are probably fine without anything, but when I am working hard and long hours I think it is nice in my mind for them to have the extra calories. Bones, for the last couple years, was usually loping around seven miles a day in summer besides working a cow or some sort of more specific training, and working long miles in fall. Spring is mostly shorter work days and winter just was short upkeep rides (not bad ground most of the time those last couple years).

So, say in fall when he is out working with me for the whole day, I feel like the excess is a good thing. Until now he has always been hard. That is what my grandpa called a horse in good health and yet very fit. He was for me probably the most fit horse I have ridden.

Now, maybe in towns were horses retired after a couple years, but that isn’t the history I know from around here. It was about the same as it is now, although I know the general horses had more work. Their care was important, just like it is important now. I know they used oats for the calories, but they probably would have used whatever they could get. So, if three way was a thing they would have used it. Things weren’t as over analyzed usually.

Not that I’m sure there weren’t temperaments like ours who like to think things out, but there wasn’t the easy availability of information. So, you probably thought what you thought, but you weren’t inundated with studies and opinions and everything else. Maybe you wondered... which I laugh because we no longer wonder, we google. 

Anyways, I digress. It is likely I have just become attached to tradition, but it does make me feel good to give a horse a scoop of grain before I use him. I like the oats better than three-way, which is what is common around here. Maybe I am simply one of those processed sugar haters, and I relate it to my horses. Lol. Like the garlic guy, I have this major issue with processed sugar. That said I occasionally indulge and I can’t seem to keep my family from loving it. I will give my milk cow three-way once she is milking too. 

My husband gives oats after he rides instead of before. It isn’t because he thinks anything about the nutrition of it, but because he says they didn’t earn them until the ride is over.


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## bsms

I've never fed a horse grain, but my horses don't work hard either.

I generally eat at McDonald's because I'm not able to eat at home - either on the road, or been hiking a few hours away from home. And once in a great while, I eat there just because I can.

Page AZ to Kanab UT, about 75 miles:










Pulling into Kanab (pop 4,000) with a French exchange student, we introduced him to the "Value Menu" mode of eating - 2 double cheeseburgers and a 16 oz soda for $4/person. He fell in love with cheap, fast and safe food, along with the amazing idea of "free refills"! I'd never advocate eating at McDonald's all the time, but I've never gotten sick at one while on the road. I can't say that about small independent diners...


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## SueC

*WEEKEND!*

We had a really good weekend, despite no horse ride for me! Sunsmart and I had done a long ride Friday, so he had a weekend off for once. I rode him again today, but caught him at his sleepy time just pre noon, so we just ambled casually around the fireground loop today, mostly just walking. That's OK too; occasionally horses or humans want to take it easy. Having said that, Sunsmart was racing around with the others regularly all weekend, and got very enthusiastic. He's getting a real spring in his step at the moment - as am I - and I think it's because both of us are getting fitter! He's gotten all glossy again and is doing high-jinks, like throwing his hind legs in the air when running with his friends. I'm glad the PPID treatment seems to be helping his coat return to normal.

So the weekend was time for us humans to do fitness things. On Saturday, we did the Point Possession walk on the coast. The sign on the trailhead says to allow 2.5 hours return, but we think that's on one leg, because it can be comfortably done in just over an hour, and we're fit enough again to do that, thanks to successful New Year's Resolutions to make that our main health focus this year.

It's ridiculous that living on a farm has actually made it harder for us to do cardiovascular exercise regularly, but when you're doing tiring outdoors stuff a lot that doesn't actually get your heart rate up very much, you still feel like collapsing on the sofa at the end of the day. On an office job I always used to be like a racehorse at the starting gate when I finished for the day - chomping at the bit to exercise hard. I'd go up a coastal hillside or two, or get on my bicycle or rollerblades, or go climb around the rocky shores like an ant, or interval train on the beach. Sydney, Hobart, Launceston and Albany were all wonderfully suited to this outdoorsy stuff - so many different scenic walks involving hills, so much coast, so many lovely bicycle trails. Inland, it's not like that.

So, we made some health commitments, and I'm now back to working with Julian or Sunsmart five times a week, and we cycle at least once a week, and walk most days on our own hills, and I'm actually back doing Pilates twice a week minimum, and enjoying it. The exercise music helps - it's a soundtrack compilation called The Celts. Here's a sample:






https://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Celts-A-Companion-To-The-TV-Series/release/9121696

I have a countdown timer I set, and off I go. The minimum I have set myself to do is 20 minutes a session, but I find once I get into it, I want to do more than that usually. If I set a 60 minutes minimum, it's too overwhelming to start, so I've gone for easy minima, knowing I'll likely do more anyway. The main problem is always starting. My skipping rope has also arrived, and it's not made of plastic! It's leather with wooden handles, and I'm trying it out this week. I skipped sometimes in my 20s, but never had a proper rope like this before.

It's very important for us not to let fitness slide, because we're well into our 40s now and it's harder to get back what you lose, than in your 30s. We're lucky to have a good level of baseline fitness and hobbies like mountain hiking. Things just went by the wayside setting up the farm and building our house. Plastering gave us amazing arms, but not much of a cardio workout! It was more a combination of endurance exercise and weightlifting - hauling the heavy buckets up the scaffold and plastering 4-8 hours a day on plastering days, of which there were many, since we had to do three coats inside and out.





And that was the best workout we got while building.

Anyway, Point Possession is a beautiful coastal walk with amazing views, hills and rocks to climb. Here's a few photos to show how lovely it is.



The walk starts on the far side of the hill on the other side of the isthmus, and goes up and over, then down on the harbour beach, up and over the granite hill the photo is taken from, down to the ocean beach, and up and over the first hill again.





This time, not only did we do this track in a good time, but I also wasn't feeling awful for any of it. Like on the uphills, where I've felt horrible for years. For the first time in a long time, I actually enjoyed going up the hills, rather than just gritting my teeth and getting through it because I know I need to do it. I actually _wanted_ to take each next step, and was happy to be moving, and it felt good. On every single climb on that track! And that's very much how it used to be, pre-farm, pre-house build.

Next day, I _wanted_ to go bike riding - not because it was something I'd committed to, but because I actually wanted to turn those pedals and feel the swoosh of the air. I not only enjoyed the ride, I also, for the first time in years, put in half a dozen sprints to get really out of breath, because it felt good to really push it. And this is great, because this means I'm now past the stage where lack of fitness is making these things a drag. This means I won't be having to _make_ myself do strenuous exercise, I'll be naturally wanting to again.

It seems my horse and I are both getting to that point at around the same time, on this all-around health kick. 

Peach harvest has been late this year. Yesterday, I took the remaining peaches off the tree. The kitchen is flooded with peaches, and I'm about halfway through stewing and freezing them for winter peach - coconut crumbles, a breakfast with the summer sunshine in it. The rain means we may get eucalyptus blossom, but it's too late in the season, I think, for us to get any honey from it - the nights are too cold now. Last night, I had to rug Chasseur because he's 25 and gets cold easily. Sunsmart and Julian are still fine without rugs, but once the season breaks and the rain starts, they'll be in their rain sheets overnight, and during rain. The wind chill here gets incredible. It's good use of pasture for us to stop horses having to eat and eat just to try to stay warm, too. It makes a big difference to their intake, as well as their comfort.

I've now got to get serious about harvesting and freezing our mountain corn cobs, and making up seedling trays for winter vegetables. I've got a big packet from Eden Seeds sitting on the table for this coming year...


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## gottatrot

Sounds like you had some great and healthy outdoor activity. I think it is so good for the brain too. We have a digital photo frame in our living room that plays through pictures of trips we've taken and yesterday when I was looking over at it I saw photos of your beautiful coastline scrolling by. I'm still amazed that the water was really that color it appears in your photos. What an amazing place!
@Knave, there are so many interesting things on this journal, I may add a couple thoughts about horse diet on mine in order to not clog this up with boring stuff.


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## SueC

Some of my own thoughts were added on that thread. Baby / bathwater, etc.

Returning to normal, fun programming now! Everyone welcome. :cowboy:


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## SueC

*PAPER JOURNAL STUFF*

I'm both writing a 2019 paper journal, and re-visiting old paper journals which I previously did from 1984-2013. I'm mostly interested in 2010-2013 at present, and how the place and life has changed for us since I last kept a paper journal.

I dug up some cute stuff: My first ride on Sunsmart on our own property, back in 2010. If you look in the photograph, there's absolutely nothing there except pasture, internal fencing and a tie-down, and the bushland. No shed, no rainwater tank, no house, no bird-attracting garden, no permaculture food mandala, no orchard, no fodder hedges, no shelter belts (except a start, in grow bags), no shade clumps (ditto), no donkey shelter, no woodshed. We've been very busy since that photo was taken.

Also, a review of a drama programme called _Desperate Romantics_, which we saw at the time. That really made me laugh! I've never viewed Dante Gabriel Rosetti the same since...

And last of all, a little circle of words written for our 11th Wedding Anniversary last month.


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## SueC

*FIREBREAK MAINTENANCE, TRIFFIDS AND VALLEY FLOOR RIDE* :cowboy:

After Monday's leisurely ride during the horse's nap time, I didn't have a chance to ride again until this morning. Tuesday and Wednesday I was doing firebreak maintenance with the 4-wheeler we borrow from the neighbours, in turn for doing their inkweed control on it for about five years now. They had an infestation, and I whittled away at it, and in turn I get to borrow the thing to do our firebreak spray-out. I'd prefer not to spray out the seedlings that appear on the forest firebreaks and our access tracks, but we don't have a tractor and we have 5km of track to maintain, and even people with tractors do it this way, because it's the fastest and simplest thing. At least we're not using anything particularly nasty. It's mainly glyphosate, which breaks down quickly, and metsulfuron, which persists in soil to counter germination but allegedly has low toxicity to animals. This is exactly how it was done here before we bought the place; and if you don't do it, your forest tracks will overgrow so quickly that you'll need to hire a bulldozer to re-do them all, and that's not cheap.

Between the track maintenance and various other chores, I had no energy to do active leisure activities for those two days, and on Thursday, Brett's day off, my battery was flat and I read _The Day Of The Triffids_ for much of the day, in-between running some loads of washing. It was my reading assignment for a screen adaptation date with Brett. John Wyndham is an amazing writer. I'm no science fiction buff in general, but I just love his books. He's super perceptive and he creates really well-constructed characters. His novels are very thought-provoking and deal so well with the human condition. The tendency of a lot of other sci-fi, especially movies, is to sensationalise various monsters - _Alien_ does this, and that's actually one of the better sci-fi monster movies, but that's all it does, and with John Wyndham, any monsters are more peripheral, and the human interactions are centre stage, together with a good dash of philosophy and humour. Also, John Wyndham understands that humans are often monsters as well, so he doesn't do the nauseating stereotype of "valiant and worthy humans defeat evil monsters", which is so arrogant, and so projecting actually, on a psychological level.

So _The Day Of The Triffids_ isn't about mutated plant forms as much as it is about humans and human responses, in the face of the collapse of civilisation. We're now watching the 1981 BBC serial production of it (and I'm going, "I remember those cars! And those clothes!" :shock - it's not that true to the novel, because it has to summarise, basically; but the episodes we have watched have been interesting.

_Triffids_ was actually the one Wyndham book I'd not read yet, and it's his most famous. _The Midwich Cuckoos_, _The Kraken Wakes_, _The Chrysalids_, _Web_ were all excellent and will be re-read. I got stuck midway in _The Trouble With Lichen_ though... but will give it another shot. _Chrysalids_ was a book we had to read in Year 11 back in 1986 - the rest came with Brett's voluminous book collection, which also introduced me to Haruki Murakami and Raymond Chandler, along with many many other excellent things.

So, after a day actively recharging batteries, I usually have a super-productive day, and that happened today. As the forecast was for 31 degrees C and humidity, I got up early and went riding first thing.

:charge:

The sun was beating down already when it was still beaming horizontally - it's had such a bite this summer. Today, we got trotting and cantering going on the valley floor ride across to Verne Road, and then back through the big pasture to our gate, and the swamp track back to the common. This map contains most of the ride, but hasn't got a red line on the swamp track, which you can easily see parallel to the sand track though.










There are photographs of this general ride in this post:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...s-other-people-479466/page150/#post1970680523

A funny thing at the start of the ride: When I got on Sunsmart, the saddle slid, and I thought, "Oops, looks like I didn't do the girth up to the correct hole." But I had! This means Sunsmart has lost some of the extra fat he had after spring flush this year, through these last four weeks back in training. I actually had to go one hole tighter on the offside! Checking over the horse, sure enough, the shallow adipose deposits either side of the tail have gone, and you can easily feel his ribs now, though you can't see them. Super! He's now at an acceptable condition score, and with any luck and no more broken bones, I should be able to keep him at this weight this year. His fitness will still improve, but he's doing well. He's also getting really shiny again.

If I can get out of bed tomorrow morning, I might take the iPod to take some photos of the Sleeman Creek Reserve trails off horseback. I'm saying "if" because it was a super busy day today, and I did truckloads of work and am very happy to be sitting on the sofa. However, I'm sort of in the mood for that ride...


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## Spanish Rider

Sue, just popped in because I thought of you today.

Believe it or not, I visited you in my dreams last night. (I should preface this story by saying that I have been quite ill - exacerbation of my lung disease, complicated by bronchitis and an infection - been to the GP 3x and ER 2x in 10 days, and now on lots of antibiotics as well as inhaled & systemic corticosteroids, producing the loveliest of dreams.) Yes! I did. You were so kind to show me around your home and garden, visiting with all your animals (you were nursing some injured koalas and wombats, too). I had a grand ol' time, but woke up before my ride on Sunsmart. Maybe I'll be luckier later this evening.

And, then I thought of you again this afternoon! I was catching up on my political satire, when I saw this little ditty - at the end there is a good laugh about a koala that you might know of (and in the middle there is a good laugh about some unmentionables). 








Off to drug myself up a bit more...


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## Spanish Rider

OOOOPS! Sorry, I swear I posted it because of the koala at the end. Oh, well. Like I said, I'm on drugs. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!


I sincerely hope not to offend anyone.


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## SueC

There is a koala at the end! :rofl: We had a good laugh at that, and that ridiculous wearable penis camera, and a few other things too. Nothing like a good satirical review of weekly events! We loved CNNNN and Chaser here in Australia; similar gig. That presenter is very funny! 

I'm so sorry to hear you are unwell; get better soon! :hug: I thought of you too when I remembered this:










By the way, there are no koalas or wombats west of the Nullarbor, except in wildlife parks! So for this evening's dream, you can substitute wallabies and bandicoots and maybe emus for me to nurse if you'd like a more realistic experience, and echidnas if you want a more hilarious one! 










And in keeping with one of the topics presented in your clip, do you remember this classic from the 1990s? Enjoy! :rofl:


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## egrogan

Feel better @Spanish_Rider! We miss you.


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## SueC

*RIDE REPORT*

After a sweltering 31 degree C day yesterday, the weather was dark and blustery today. I waited for it to get more pleasant, and when it didn't, decided to ride after lunch, but not in Sleeman Creek Reserve. I didn't fancy trying to take photographs with an iPod while there were wind gusts whipping the place up; horses get a bit toey then, especially in unknown terrain, and next time I go to Sleeman Creek Reserve, I want to ride its north boundary. So, that was postponed until more favourable weather, and I went around all our farm tracks with Sunsmart instead - all the ones I painstakingly did maintenance on earlier this week. Since most of these are in the forest, we were quite sheltered from the winds.










You can see them on the map - we started on the broad sand track through the valley floor, behind the house, but veered straight up the hill on that other little track you can see that takes you to the fence corner on the boundary where the land becomes T-shaped. We turned south on the boundary track - the western firebreak in the forest, up on the ridge. When we got to the south boundary, Sunsmart wanted to trot, and I let him; our cattle were lying on the track adjacent to the neighbour's farm dam though, so I slowed him up a bit. The cattle went sideways through the scrub, and Sunsmart and Jess raced each other up the hill. We then followed the eastern boundary and some of the northern boundary, before tracing the line of the woodland into the little tongue of pasture we call the Middle Meadow. At the end of that is our swamp track, along which Sunsmart was keen to canter today - and he continued to want to go as we went around the south boundary track back to the sand track that leads back to the house. So, we had quite a fast ride there; near the end, I turned him back up that little track we'd gone out on, and rode the L-shape of the boundary, heading west and then north - that's a big uphill, which he cantered, and a big downhill when you turn the corner, with great views of the valley. We then went along a little forest trail the horses constantly use on their own as a group when they're out, back towards the house.

Nice, uneventful ride; the dog was happy too. I'd forgotten to take a carrot to the shed and so when I asked the horse if he wanted one, he followed me up to the house and waited for me to make the trip to the kitchen and back. Munch munch munch, happy horse!

:apple:


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## gottatrot

Spanish Rider said:


> Believe it or not, I visited you in my dreams last night....


What is it about @SueC that we dream about her? I posted recently that I had a dream of visiting her too. I guess we all have thought about how we'd love to pop over and see her farm, her house and visit her animals. Except the imaginary animals I dreamed about at her house were different.


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## Spanish Rider

> do you remember this classic from the 1990s?


No, I can honestly (proudly?) say that I do not. :rofl:

Taking a closer look at your map, I see that I inexplicably got the orientation and lay of the land right in my dream. Proof that I actually did visit you!:smile: Of course, I am joking (am I?), but my husband insists that I have secret powers (I actually descend from 2 Salem "witches" and one "warlock", 2 of which were hung and one freed). But actually, I think it's just because his brain is easy to control.



> What is it about @SueC that we dream about her?


Probably because, realistically, the only way I'd be able to visit her is in my dreams as the airfare is so high. I have a cousin who lives near Melbourne (married to a German woman), and the only way we ever get to see him is because he works for Quantas. Sue, get to work on that Tardis-thingy!


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## SueC

gottatrot said:


> What is it about @SueC that we dream about her? I posted recently that I had a dream of visiting her too. I guess we all have thought about how we'd love to pop over and see her farm, her house and visit her animals. Except the imaginary animals I dreamed about at her house were different.


What it is, is my Italian hospitality DNA beaming signals throughout the universe. :Angel:

You're all getting the animals wrong, other than the horses! :rofl:

But it wouldn't be a dream if it wasn't weird in some way!




Spanish Rider said:


> No, I can honestly (proudly?) say that I do not. :rofl:


It was all over the radio here in the 90s. Well, Triple J anyway, who I suppose specialise in the absurd. But what a great piece of creative writing set to music. Bwahahaha! :rofl:




> Taking a closer look at your map, I see that I inexplicably got the orientation and lay of the land right in my dream. Proof that I actually did visit you!:smile: Of course, I am joking (am I?), but my husband insists that I have secret powers (I actually descend from 2 Salem "witches" and one "warlock", 2 of which were hung and one freed). But actually, I think it's just because his brain is easy to control.


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Well, male brains appear to jam when they see female anatomy, for starters. It's quite comedic. Mid-sentence the gears jam and the thread is lost as the jaw hits the ground. And we're married 11 years. I can't have a fluent conversation with my husband unless I am appropriately covered for the duration of it. Conversely, DH nudity doesn't affect my, or my female friends that I've compared notes with, ability to hold a conversation. It's not lack of aesthetics or sex appeal on his part. It's a difference in brain wiring, I think. It must be so inconvenient to be male. It's so quaint. They are so easily distracted and side-tracked.

How cool to have that sort of ancestry. I'm sure I'd have been burnt at the stake in Salem...

Hat off to your magic powers which include correct geography (if faintly misplaced wildlife:Angel!




> Probably because, realistically, the only way I'd be able to visit her is in my dreams as the airfare is so high. I have a cousin who lives near Melbourne (married to a German woman), and the only way we ever get to see him is because he works for Quantas. Sue, get to work on that Tardis-thingy!


I'm trying, but this is the best I've been able to influence into existence so far: :tardis:

...a virtual version. Do you reckon your witch powers would produce better results? We could all use a real one of these...

Next time you're in Melbourne, leap across the Nullarbor! 

Do you like Federation Square?


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## SueC

@Spanish Rider, just on that song... I am fantasising this morning about which artists I'd love to hear a cover of it from, if they accepted the request. Here's my list:

*The Cure:* Because of the sheer incongruency of it. I don't know that Robert Smith would accept that challenge, the whole thing might be beneath him musically. I don't know that he would deign to do even mock-shred guitars for comedic effect. On the other hand, it might depend on how much beer he's had. And they have done some very hilarious things, such as, in their youth, gone out and busked _Home On The Range_ on the streets of London - not long past Smith's stint playing guitar for Siouxsie and the Banshees. I saw that on a YouTube clip but unfortunately couldn't locate it for you this morning. When I do... :rofl:

*Enya*: Would she sing it in Latin, do you think, or perhaps in Gaelic? :rofl: What's "detachable penis" in those languages, anyone?

*ZZ Top*: Would introduce a completely different sound. Also, the beards and the rotating guitars and choreographed moves... 

*Led Zeppelin*: It would be so interesting to see what they would do with the song. I imagine their version would be at least twice as long and have amazing instrumental complexity...

*Paul McCartney*: Brett's request, "Because it's just disturbing on so many levels...most of his lyrics and singing style is so infantile..." ...a medley perhaps? _Detachable penis, yeah yeah yeah!_ (to the tune of _She Loves Me_)

*Weird Al Yankovic*: Brett's request, "Because it would be a real challenge to satirise an already satirical song!"

Would anyone like to volunteer other artists for this list?


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## SueC

...this morning, we decided to add three more artists for our "please cover this song" request list:

*The Mamas And Papas*: For those sublime harmonies...

*The Bee Gees*: AKA Meaningless Songs In Very High Voices: For a disco version. 

*Spandau Ballet*: To give us a New Romantics 1980s interpretation. 

And while we're having fun, I'm going to re-post some funny true stories I've just written for another thread:

https://www.horseforum.com/general-off-topic-discussion/fart-stories-we-all-got-em-801771/

It's high time to give this thread a little boot up the backside to get it going again.

So, I refer you to one of our thread exhibits, @*AndyTheCornbread* , compromising his good name as a young man by following the call of the wild, in a wilderness somewhat more populated by _**** sapiens_ than he imagined it would be when he snatched that interlude with his wife. And, compromising a sense of order and decorum by strewing his clothes willy-nilly all over the bushes... that really wouldn't impress Marie Kondo, the delightful Japanese tidy house guru. She would say that this disarray doesn't _spark joy_ (her words), and I quite agree. I would find it unthinkable to have a marital interlude with untidy rumpled clothes heaps in sight - or even out of sight - I still know they are there; the universe is unbalanced - I refer you to Marie Kondo for more information:





 

Anyway, his story sparked a memory where someone else rather embarrassed themselves that way, but after the fact. Yours truly was an innocent little undergraduate in the Biological/Environmental Science programme at Murdoch University, just minding my own business in a laboratory session for the Cell Biology course. We were performing those ubiquitous cheek cell smears on ourselves that are run of the mill basic cytology exercises - you know, "Wow, proof even _I_ am made up of cells! My world is shaking!" So I was peering down the light microscope at a mount of my very own oral ephitelial cells, when I heard an exclamation from a fellow female student. "There's something strange here. It's got a tail." The demonstrator went over, took a look, and said, "That, my dear, is male gamete..."

These laboratory sessions were three-hour affairs, and this happened in the first hour of the laboratory. The poor girl was blushing like a beetroot for the rest of the afternoon - probably the worst of it was being a person studying to become a professional biologist, and she didn't recognise what she was looking at, and thereby compromised her privacy...










I have another little story, this one set in a Biology classroom in Year 11, when yours truly was an even littler, even more innocent student, and a mere 15 years old. So innocent was I, in fact, that I did not understand the punchline of a joke our teacher was telling us to get our attention at the beginning of one particular lesson. Mr Ron Turner ascended onto the platform behind the teacher's laboratory demonstration bench, and asked his motley teenage crew, "Why does Humpty Dumpty no longer fall off the wall? ...Because now he's got a girlfriend, and he's always knocking _her_ off."

In my defense, English is my second language, and I'd been speaking it five years at that point. While I was representing my school at spelling competitions and winning creative writing prizes only two years after arriving in Australia at age 11, it took me somewhat longer to get used to all the colloquialisms. So I was sitting in the class, scratching my head, and saying, "But why would he do that? Why would he be so mean? What's the point in having a girlfriend if you're going to push her off the wall for your amusement?" People around me were going





















at both the joke, and my total lack of comprehension in the matter. It took me a few more years before someone finally explained that colloquialism to me. This is pre-internet. Now you can just google these things...


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## bsms

Nothing says "Dork!" quite like hearing a joke, spending 3 minutes of intense activity on one's smart phone, and then laughing....

and now that I've got a smart phone, that describes me. :evil:


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## SueC

*BLOODY ANIMALS!* :angrily_smileys:

Yesterday was Sunday; Brett had to attend the Mt Barker races in the afternoon, because he does their photo finishes. Neither of us are racing fans in particular, but he says it's a nice gig to get $200 for an afternoon of taking 8-10 finish photos, with half an hour of leisure to read a book between each effort. And, he doesn't have to talk to anyone. Bonus.

Anyway, so I drove up to the main gate with him as usual to handle the gate and smooch him on the way out - it's a nice little tradition. The three original donkeys were in the garden behind white tape - not electrified just now, as they were respecting it. In the couple of minutes it took me to get back to the house, Don Quixote had jumped the barriers to get into the citrus orchard, where he was threatening my young trees and eating mouthfuls of young kangaroo paw - I was not impressed and chased him back, and he jumped clean back over the barrier, kicking his heels jauntily into the air at the game. Sparkle had ducked under the tape to get into my vegie garden and was dining out on tomato plants. This isn't good for my tomato harvest, or for the animal - they can end up with solanine poisoning. Sparkle is blind, so I had to gently lead her out under the tape. Then I ejected the whole lot of them into the Common, on the other side of a three-string electric fence, and wished them a good day.

Meanwhile, the dog had run through the deep mud patch by the fence as part of our seeing-Brett-off-to-work ceremony - she chases the car, on the inside of our fence - and had gotten into our bedroom through the French door open for airing, where this mud monster was lying on a freshly washed bedside mat, and had evidently dragged dirt throughout the room before deciding on her place of repose. I was not impressed. This was the third time in 24 hours one of us had had to vacuum and/or mop the bedroom because of the dog getting in when she shouldn't. It's always where there's a distraction that she does it, grrrr.

By the time the room was clean again, I was sweaty - it's been humid for weeks. I set up a pedestal fan by the sofa and watched Landline with Bill, who was laughing about how the animals keep me on my toes. He loves our dog - his own dog was poisoned with strychnine years ago, and he never replaced it, he said never again will he witness something like that. Anyway, on Landline they had a story about a gluten-free barley strain for coeliacs who'd like to drink beer. :cheers: Later on, on Gardening Australia, I was admiring Costa's beard:










It was particularly luxuriant on yesterday's show. I wonder if he's got volumising mousse in it, or if it's just a particularly good crop at the moment. Bill always says, "Why would anyone have a beard like that?" and "Wouldn't half his food get stuck in it?" I've been explaining that Costa is a proud Greek-origin Australian, and that all the famous Greek philosophers of yore were bearded, so why not? My personal question, having never dated anyone with a beard, was whether kissing someone with a beard was...how can I put this delicately?...sort of a similar experience at both ends. I asked a housemate who was dating a bearded man that question when I lived in Sydney, and it scandalised her, and I honestly don't know why...:Angel:

Bill cackled when I raised this issue. We all live in the country here and are very practical. Anyway, when Brett got home he volunteered to grow a beard so I could find out. He's always happy to assist me with getting to the bottom of questions that can be solved with an empirical approach. We make a really good team, in so many ways. 

Yesterday, at Mount Barker, apparently it was mayhem. The photo finish camera was broken, they had no backup, and media techs managed to fix it when the horses in the first race were 100m from the finish line. No pressure. :rofl: And this on Mt Barker Cup day - their big cheese of the season! Women were running around in fascinators, and one woman who'd evidently had a fight with her boyfriend asked Brett's opinion of her hair. He said he saw nothing wrong with it, and she was mollified. "People!" he says to me. 

We snatched a bicycle ride when he got home - at dusk, in drizzle, with just enough light for the trip. I was pleased to find out that our current training ride - to Redmond townsite and back - isn't 12 km, it's actually 15km. It _felt_ :icon_rolleyes: more like 15km, and now we've measured it! And it will do for a start. I'd warmed up with Pilates and pumped up all the tyres and fed the horses, and done the dishes even though Brett normally thinks of dishes as his job, because I was being a good girl scout, and I didn't think he needed to do more work when coming home from work, when all I'd done all afternoon was pitted several hundred cherries to make a delicious, very alcoholic Blackforest Trifle, and chin-wagged with Bill about world events. 

So after the bike ride it was showers, then pizza and Dr Who and snuggling, as promised to my beloved earlier - you do need to give your poor spouse something to look forward to when they spend a Sunday afternoon abroad working. I made wholemeal bases; one salami/onion/capsicum pizza, one potato pizza with sweet chilli sauce. We dined on that, and then the Trifle. The alcohol in the trifle made me go :ZZZ: and I had to go to bed 20 minutes into Dr Who. Brett laughed and told me I was a cheap drunk. :rofl:


*I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE*

This morning, Brett had a late start and we took his bicycle into town to be serviced. I usually do the general maintenance on our bicycles, but Brett's steed needed new pedals, new brakes, and a bit of a general overhaul. Also he's had trouble with his new ergonomic seat for males, and I felt he needed to talk to another male on how to fix that - the bike shop proprietor is really excellent. While they chatted adjustments, I looked at the halfprice rack and found a nice jersey to go with the padded cycling shorts I bought last time - not lycra, and a sort of two-tiered arrangement, with a washable detachable padded liner and an outer shell made from wicking fabric, that looks like normal shorts. I actually love those shorts, they're ultra comfortable and practical, and have made cycling so much more enjoyable for me. No chafing, no pressure points, just sitting on a little cloud. Once you get past feeling like you've got an incontinence pad in your pants, it's actually very cool. And yep, even when I time trialled way back, I used to ride in gym shorts not padded bicycle lycra - with a cotton cycling jersey my sole concession to the sport, clobber-wise.

*THE QUESTION BOX*

In the shop, I ran into the parents of one Tom I taught 20 years ago at North Albany Senior High School, who's now Dr Tom PhD, Geologist.  He and his mates Kim and Lachlan were such a fun bunch, and I remember that I could instantly tell a particular question that ended up in the anonymous question box was from them... I had one of those, for the reproductive biology section of Year 9 Science. Your friendly Science teacher will now answer all your pertinent science questions, and you don't need to risk losing face, just pop your paper in this box and we'll go through it all.

You get all sorts of questions, typically like, "Can you get pregnant standing up?" and usually questions about the intricacies of the anatomical construction of the gender that's complimentary to the one asking the question. Even, "How can boys ride bicycles without painful accidents involving gonads?" Anyway, this one question cracked me up, and I've always remembered it: "What is the average pressure in psi of the average erection?" And I'm going, "Aha, I know exactly who's asking this, it's so stylistically obvious, but don't worry, I won't tell!" - three boys in the front row are smiling at this point - "And do you know, offhand I can't answer that question, but: Can anyone think of how to design an experiment to find out the answer? ...please note that with this kind of sensitive experiment, you need to meet experimental ethics considerations, and you also can't have people self-measuring because they might be inclined to exaggerate..." ...and the three boys in the front row put their heads together, and Tom goes, "Sphygmomanometer, Miss!" :rofl: 

Anyway, Dr Tom apparently wants to owner build one day, so we may get a little visit sometime.  It's pretty neat how these little chickens just hatch and go out into the world to wreak mighty works of their own! :happydance:


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## gottatrot

Your dog's escapade in the dirt reminds me of when my long haired cat decided to sleep in the potting soil at the base of the Yucca tree in the sun room, then trail the soil around the house. Our other cat was indoors since being a tiny kitten, so never thought of sleeping in dirt.


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## Knave

Animals! Lol. What a pain, but I do hope you laughed.


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## frlsgirl

Lol on the dog dragging mud through the bedroom. 

We have a strict no dogs allowed in the bedrooms policy and because it is forbidden, it makes it even more interesting and appealing. 

Recently Lou managed to sneak through the laundry room into the freshly vacuumed walk in closet where our 3 way mirror is located. He snuck back out before I could catch him but I followed the paw print indentations in the carpet and apparently, he spent some time admiring his reflection in the mirror


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## SueC

*CYCLONES NOW IN STEREO*

I'd like to show everyone the interesting satellite map of Australia's weather as we speak. We have two cyclones sitting in our tropics - Veronica on our side in the west, and Trevor over in Queensland.


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## SueC

...last time I tried to show everyone our weather, I pasted a picture link, and of course it disappeared within a day. This time I downloaded the satellite image and attached it to the post, so it's going to be a permanent feature. I then had to break the post, because I've still not figured out how to put attached photos in the middle of posts the first time around. I know how to re-use attachment photos that way, but not how to get text around them in the first place!

So anyway, this is yet another example of us in the south-western corner of the state getting moist tropical air fed down to us via troughs. It's happened much of this just-past summer, resulting in horrible and unusual humidity. I _loathe_ humidity! And now that we've got Veronica sitting off the northwest, things have gotten extra interesting. Veronica is currently Category 4 and has not yet made landfall - it's got sustained winds of 165km/h (103mph) with gusts up 230km/h (143mph). It's expected to make a mess as it crosses the northwest coast this weekend.

It's unlikely to come down here - only one tropical cyclone did that, Alby in 1978: Tropical Cyclone Alby


*THUNDERSTORMS WORTHY OF THOR*

However, conditions in the south have been rather spectacular with the cyclone building off the northwest. On Tuesday, we had crashing thunderstorms _all day long_ - a very rare thing. It was mostly electrical storms and very little precipitation. The sky was dark and moody, and the crashing sounds were deafening even indoors. Guess who didn't get to go riding and had to do indoors stuff. But, I actually enjoy thunderstorms - unlike my maternal grandmother, who used to hide everyone under the staircase when thunder and lightning were about...

Wednesday was without thunder, but the humidity was such that the air felt like treacle. This morning, we were woken at 6am by a peal of thunder that shook the whole house. It's Brett's day off, and he was complaining, "I turned off my alarm clock, and look what happens anyway!" He muttered that he should have been asleep until 8am and then had a mug of tea or two to ease into his day off in a civilised manner. I explained to him that thunderstorms were romantic, and he was sounding like an octogenarian already.

We've had downpours of rain and hail already this morning, which will be nice for our water tank, and for the garden, and the bushland - the eucalypts didn't flower this summer because it was too dry, and we're wondering if they're going to bloom now... although it will be a bit late for honey... no honey harvest this summer, for the first time in eight years...

We've had a cool change at last, and with any luck, I can get a ride in later, when Thor ceases hammering up there.


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## SueC

*SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT?*

While preparing some soup for lunch, my husband and I talked about how it is that a sense of entitlement gets created in people. Compare and contrast some aspects of his upbringing with some of mine, and you will appreciate some of the reasons for the huge difference in attitude between my husband and my uber-entitled brother. My husband always pitches in, my brother enjoys having people wait on him hand and foot - not as an occasional treat, but as a general principle, and he feels no need to return the favour.

My husband was one of two boys. I've no idea how things would have been different if there had been a girl born to the family, but these two boys were pitching in with the washing-up, vacuuming, floor mopping and cooking from the go-get, and did their own laundry from the time they were teenagers. They weren't more important than anybody else, and the household jobs got shared pretty equally.

In my family of origin there was one firstborn son, and me. I never saw my brother do dishes in the family household, or mop floors. He usually sat around watching television or listening to his latest upgraded hi-fi system while other people did the work. I was required to pitch in with serving up, clearing the table and washing up, but not that precious boy, he wasn't supposed to get his fingers dirty. He turned into an insufferable little prince. He was still living at home having his cut lunch made for him and all his cooking done for him, at the age of 33. He argued about being asked to pitch in to pay for groceries, although he earnt well. My mother was still making his bed, and if I was visiting, early in the mornings when I woke up, I'd hear the familiar refrain of, "Darling, can I bring you a cup of tea to bed?" and my mother wasn't talking to her husband, or to me for that matter.

My brother was _paid_ to do "important" work like the business accounting and technical stuff, from the time he was a teenager. "Women's work" was considered generally unimportant - women were basically scullions and general servants. My mother thought it was unnatural and unfeminine that I was excelling at science and maths, at school. When I was sent to stay with my brother in an apartment during the week when he was at university and I was starting Senior High School in the city, he said to me, "Good, now you can do the cleaning." I went:







...and informed him that _if_ and only if he deigned to clean up the year's mess he had made in the apartment since starting at university, I would _consider_ taking turns. Meanwhile, I was going to be in my room, which I was keeping clean, and he could live in his mess everywhere else if he chose. There were dead slaters and spiders piled up on the lounge carpet, to give you an idea. I stayed in my room and got on with the business of doing well at school and getting my ticket out of that family.

I don't think everyone necessarily has to do 50% of every job. I think division of labour, even as in one person keeping house and the other going to an office, is fine as long as we don't mandate which is which by gender, as long as both people are happy, and as long as neither person thinks that what they are doing is more important than what the other person is doing. That's partnership just as much as splitting everything down 50% would be. I spent some of my childhood living in Italy, at a time where there was a traditional division of labour, but the women in our neighbourhood weren't treated as minions - their cooking was really appreciated, as was their gardening and all their other efforts. It was the same when I worked in Sydney and met a Lebanese family, with whom I ate some weekends - they grew their own vegetables in their backyard, the mother did the cooking, but everybody was basically applauding at the table and paying compliments. I'm sure not every Italian or Middle Eastern family is great that way, but it was nice to meet some.

The basic problem is people looking down their noses at others, and also, in cases I've seen, people raising people to look down their noses at others. It's not always done consciously - much of it can be cultural habit, but if we don't want to have entitled princes and princesses in our lives, we need to reflect on the way we ourselves might have been brainwashed, and stop letting other people think they are more important than us. It's a process, and it helps to do it supported.

Best wishes to all of you.


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## gottatrot

Ahh, what a good post. Great timing too, it helped me get rid of some of the detritus I had clinging to me after dealing with a very entitled person at work last night. How is it that a person can wreck their health at a young age by shooting up drugs, and then demand that you keep them in perfect comfort while meanwhile they yell and curse at you, because of course they deserve better than the poor service you can provide. Better not take more than two seconds running to see what they need when they scream, or they will report you to your manager. 

Your mother, bringing your brother tea in bed?!? Just wow. 
:eek_color::eek_color::eek_color:




SueC said:


> I don't think everyone necessarily has to do 50% of every job. I think division of labour, even as in one person keeping house and the other going to an office, is fine as long as we don't mandate which is which by gender, as long as both people are happy, and as long as neither person thinks that what they are doing is more important than what the other person is doing. That's partnership just as much as splitting everything down 50% would be.


I quite like this, since my relationship is very non-traditional. My perspective is that in a partnership people should do what they are most talented at. It's impossible to measure the worth of one person's contribution versus another's, so why try? 

I'm good at being a dependable wage earner, going to work day after day and being a good employee. My DH was never good at that, and had many different types of work over the years, and eclectic studies in college (we met when he was 32). We quickly realized that I was more comfortable knowing the finances were secure, and that we could have the lifestyle my career would provide. 

I am not talented in both working and also keeping up with all the rest of life, because when I am off work I want to have some fun. Since my DH takes care of the important things at home when I am working, it makes me feel less like I'm constantly having to take care of life chores, and like I actually have time to enjoy life. It's very nice. I don't have to shop very often, and I dislike shopping. 

I never try to figure out if what DH does is equitable to what I do in time or value. The thing is, it takes both of us to create a good life. We both are doing our best at it, so there would be no point in trying to push either of us to do more. We're trying not to live for some unknown future we may not make it to, but instead to enjoy life as we go along. 

Now if DH thought he should sit around like a king while I worked and did housework and waited on him, that would be simply ridiculous to me. My brother had a Russian friend whose job was to be the "king" of the household. His mother, sisters and wife were supposed to feel lucky that he was there to "protect" them. So he sat at home, they all shared a big house and the women went out to work, came home and waited on him hand and foot. He did nothing except eat, sleep and spend money on whatever he wanted like nice cars.


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## SueC

I'm glad someone got something out of that, because it's an edgy topic!

mg: @gottatrot, that Russian - and all the women running rings around him, when they could be setting the standard instead and they could unite in not taking that entitled BS from him. This, psychologically, is classical co-dependency: Enabling another person in a destructive behaviour, to your own detriment. It's what my own family of origin was based upon - not respectful interdependency of mature and responsible people, interacting in an adult to adult manner, but twisted co-dependencies in people interacting in a child to child, parent to child, child to parent, parent to parent manner, even when everyone was over 18. (Transactional Analysis introduced me to these sorts of interaction styles; to child vs parent vs adult interactions - it's quite eye-opening, also its extension to how human societies are run!)

And the thing that's drummed into you about love if you grow up with co-dependent caregivers is that it necessarily hurts and that you'll necessarily cry and that you'll miss out and sacrifice, or it's not love, and that you should always be on your toes. :shock: There is also a huge difference between making a sacrifice in time and / or resources for someone, and making a sacrifice of your integrity and dignity and authenticity.

Cherilyn from the Little Red Survivor website put it beautifully: "I will no longer set myself on fire to keep you warm." Bono, in the song _The Troubles,_ talked about a childhood like that as "taking on the shape of someone else's pain."

Sounds like you and I both are fortunate to live in egalitarian households now where people appreciate each other, and each other's contributions, without counting up a balance sheet. It's a good spot to be. Until we lived on a farm, I never was a stay-at-home partner, but it just evolved that way, because the farm is a lot of work and my background and inclinations are more suited to running it, than Brett's are. Also, my writing gets done from home, and I'd never have had the space to do it if I was in fulltime employment - it's something my husband believes should be seriously supported and was important, regardless of how much it was earning us. As a result of his support with that, I've become a regular contributor to an Australian DIY/self-sufficiency magazine - since 2011, and haven't missed an issue for years - have been contributing to an owner builder magazine continuously for over a year, and been in odd things like an Australasian Poultry magazine writing about the characteristics of heritage versus hybrid corn. A story about our donkeys recently appeared in a Canadian magazine, and Brett, who's a writer himself and happens to know a lot about the getting-published side, keeps on encouraging me to send manuscripts around to various places.

I never had that kind of support for something that wasn't immediately financially lucrative before, not with past BFs and not with my family of origin, who did little to support me in the areas at which I was talented as a child, especially emotionally. I did not have an opportunity to do music lessons, although they had the money. I did not do any extracurricular stuff related to school - I got to sail a dinghy, mostly because my family was into sailing, and I got to ride horses, but only after a primary school friend whose parents earnt significantly less than mine took lessons and they had to keep up with the Joneses then, I think. I wasn't even thinking on that level, I just liked animals and wanted to ride... At school, it was my teachers who supported me to do well, and who suggested competitions I might like to try, and entered me into them if I was interested. It was my Biology teacher who found me a university science scholarship to apply to - it was decided by academic performance and an essay, and I ended up winning it. I didn't have emotional support for any of this at home - if I won a competition prize, and mentioned it, it was "Very nice, pass the butter, go put that piece of paper in your room." And these people lived around my father's sailing trophies, and winning horse-race photos all over the walls of the house - but other people's achievements weren't welcome. My childhood paintings weren't welcome either, and I used to wonder at how other parents would display those on their walls and refrigerators, and express happiness about them. The only people who expressed happiness at my paintings and put them up on walls were my teachers, thank God for those.

They say that one of the characteristics of a thinking midlife is to make up for deficiencies you had to live with as a young person. I'm not talking about red sports cars and people ditching spouses to date people half their age because they don't have a mature attitude to ageing and their own mortality. I've got to say, my midlife has made up for the hurts of my childhood, as well as the crazy overwork of my young professional life, which had me running on empty so often. It's so nice now that when I'm tired, I can just sleep - I don't have to go jump up and down to shake myself awake, and mark another stack of essays and examination papers late in the evening. When I'm fatigued, I can just rest instead of having to push through into that horrible jagged empty-battery feeling into burnout. And my husband encourages me to listen to my body, instead of running with the classical overdoing that's characteristic of a Type A personality.

So we support each other in areas of personal importance, and cheer each other on, and are happy for each other, and we don't use money as a measure of what something is worth. That was, by the way, a really bad aspect of my childhood - the way money was used by my father as a measure of importance. Not so much in status symbols, although he had those (while at the same time contriving to make people believe he was modest about those), but in measuring the worth of someone's time. I was a child, my time was worth zero dollars per hour. His time as important Mr-Systems-Analyst-IT-Guru, which he did until his early 40s and retired upon, was worth $100+ per hour. My mother's was reckoned to be worth a cleaner's / housekeeper's wage, say $20/hour, so it was like she constantly owed him, because there weren't enough hours in the day for her to work five times as long as him to become equal in his eyes. And as a child, you were just a nobody depending on the largesse of others. You can see how completely effed up this is, and I don't use this expression often, but I think this is a time it's totally apt.

Once, in my early 20s, I went to my father for advice on a particular situation. I'd had a one-year research contract straight out of university. My employer was offering me another three years, which in public service terms meant I would be in a permanent position after satisfactorily completing the first two years. It was $28K annually, which was about what was paid for science research in the mid-1990s. It wasn't above average, but you could buy a house on it then, once you had permanency. And my then-BF had been offered a one-year contract earning $50K in IT in another town. And my father said, "The person who makes more money decides where the couple lives." That didn't sit well with me, but because of the tangled web of family dysfunction, it did push me in the direction of not accepting my employer's good offer. Otherwise, my BF was well within his rights to break us up, according to that philosophy. And I never made the mistake of listening to my father for career advice again.

Thankfully, the silver lining was that this got me into education, which was far more meaningful to me than research which, while intellectually satisfying, is ignored by the governments who commission it anyway (in my fields), and so is a waste of your intellect and creativity. You may as well not be there, other than that you're earning money. It doesn't change things for the better like education can. I've never regretted transitioning into education professionally. It made 100% use of everything positive you could possibly give as a human being. It mattered, in a way that few modern occupations matter. It's why idealists end up in caring professions.

Your :shock: at my mother bringing tea to my brother in bed, @gottatrot: In psychology, that's called emotional incest. It's a common feature of dysfunctional families where the marriage is disrespectful and unhappy. Spouses then select an opposite-sex child to lavish inappropriate things upon, in order to play the opposite-sex child off against the spouse. My parents were both at it, resulting in very poisoned and twisted upbringings. I was forever feeling guilty for the few scraps of attention and affection I was getting, because they were inappropriate. It wasn't my fault they were inappropriate, but children assume guilt automatically in these situations. It takes a lot of untangling when you grow up, in order to arrive at a healthy idea of love. People often like to bash religion, but I will still categorically state that reading the gospels from age 14 introduced me to a far healthier take on love than what I was learning at home, and had me able to stand back and critique what was going on at home from quite early on. Those are the sorts of things that helped me to survive.

It's really satisfying to suddenly live as we do - not driven by money or competition, with more time for each other than we ever had before, and living in our own house despite the fact that I spent most of my professional life in education!  Animals all around us that have a good life here, growing our own food, being able to just breathe.

And now I have to go put in a batch of potatoes! ;-) Trim some feet, do various chores, finally get on the horse now the thunder has stopped. Last night we just walked a bunch of them around the property tracks with the dog. We took Julian, and managed to cajole Chasseur and Sunsmart into tagging along, and Nellie and Ben were also in the party.

:runningborwnhorse: :runningborwnhorse: :runningborwnhorse: onkey: onkey:


Hope everyone has a great Friday!


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## SueC

gottatrot said:


> Ahh, what a good post. Great timing too, it helped me get rid of some of the detritus I had clinging to me after dealing with a very entitled person at work last night. How is it that a person can wreck their health at a young age by shooting up drugs, and then demand that you keep them in perfect comfort while meanwhile they yell and curse at you, because of course they deserve better than the poor service you can provide. Better not take more than two seconds running to see what they need when they scream, or they will report you to your manager.


I hope you have a no-BS manager. I am appalled at how these things are going in Australia, where drug-crazed and aggressive-drunk persons turn up at ER and can spit upon everyone and still have to receive treatment. I think the law needs to be changed: No manners, no service. I think people working in the medical industry should have a legal right to refuse treatment to people who are abusive towards them, physically, verbally, generally. And if a few of these people die in the process, I don't think it's the medical staff who should be feeling guilty. I think everyone should have the right not to be abused in their workplace, and to withdraw themselves from abusers, even if this means the abuser bleeds out or whatever. I don't think we are responsible for the bad choices of others in how they treat people, or that we are obliged morally or ethically to help people who endanger our lives and/or our mental health, and our dignity as a person. Or that we should be able to be sued or that we should be at risk of losing our jobs when we say no to that sort of treatment, and don't help a person who isn't treating us with respect.




> I never try to figure out if what DH does is equitable to what I do in time or value. The thing is, it takes both of us to create a good life. We both are doing our best at it, so there would be no point in trying to push either of us to do more. We're trying not to live for some unknown future we may not make it to, but instead to enjoy life as we go along.


I just wanted to say: I really like that. It puts it very elegantly and concisely, in a nutshell. It's also how we live. There's this real joy in seeing something well expressed that you can relate to, but haven't used those particular words to describe!


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## Knave

Ugh! I had a big long reply and it got eaten up. Lol


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## egrogan

I wouldn't want to be married if it wasn't a truly equal partnership based on honesty. We both have demanding jobs, his is "more prestigious" and mine is "more lucrative." Around the house, I'd say our division of labor is both traditional and non-traditional. I cook, he fixes things. But, he also does all the laundry and bakes. I'm "messy," he's "neat." My job is based in statistics, but he does the family banking. I mostly take care of the animals and run the errands because I work virtually and have a little more flexibility during the day; he gets to hang out with them for the "fun time." I think the way we have things set up works for both of us for a couple of reasons- one, we both were clear when we met that we didn't want to and weren't planning on having kids. I think that really messes things up for people who aren't honest about what they truly want-we've seen too many friends where one person tried to use kids (either presence or absence of) as a weapon against their partner, and it's such a miserable disaster when people do that. Two, we both had families where our parents had uneven relationships that made everyone miserable, and we both have siblings who have been through a string of failed marriages. Being the "family misfits" gives us a lot of common ground, if that makes sense.


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## SueC

I like that, @egrogan. :hug: It always makes me happy to hear of people who've found happiness, in the face of obstacles.

I think Cookie Monster is hiding in cyberspace, @Knave! :smile:

Hello, @weeedlady! ;-) How's Raven? How's retirement?


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## SueC

*PAPER JOURNAL STUFF*

Here's a few more bits from my current paper journal that I don't mind sharing. One of the pages shows a task sheet I've been using to try to cover broader ground this year. It's still a work in progress, but it's been helpful as a focus. Green ticks are weekend add-ons; the programme doesn't run on the weekend officially.


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## Spanish Rider

@sue, do you mind if I propose a conversation (note my aversion to the use of 'debate')?

What you wrote about the division of duties in the home between yourself and your brother, compared to yourself and Brett, brings back the sting of a surprisingly heated discussion I had last weekend with my SIL, in front of our husbands and teenage children. Her argument was that feminism is no longer necessary, as she has a daughter in medical school and we now have female soldiers, pilots and policewomen. My argument was that our generation lived a sort of transition, where women were granted equality, the benefits our children's generation is now experiencing. Yet, I am more concerned about the still-current sexual objectification of women, seen on Spanish TV, *****houses with neon lights along the highways and sexual violence. The equality of the sexes in the workplace has still not been so firmly established in society-at-large, al least in my experience.

I understand that feminism has virtually become a four-letter world in certain countries. In political "applications", feminism has somehow been weaponized, and this effect has now reached Spain in the context of our upcoming elections. But, since I don't watch television or listen to radio talkshows, I feel a bit out of the loop on the subject of modern feminism. So, if I may ask, I am interested to hear opinions from you and others: what it is, what it isn't, and what it should be?; is it necessary/unnecessary in today's world?; has it gone too far/not far enough? Do you feel truely equal?


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> Do you feel truely equal?


 @*Spanish Rider* , this question keeps me unsettled, as it's something I've been thinking about so much in the #MeToo era. My personal answer is, yes, I do feel truly equal. I have had a successful career and have been managed almost exclusively by very inspiring, driven, talented women. I have a PhD based in quantitative research, and was trained by economists and sociologists- I'd say an equal mix of men and women. I never felt excluded even when I was the only female student in some esoteric statistics class. I never felt like people didn't offer me the same attention in public presentations of my research that they did other presenters, male or female. I've written and published on how to encourage more high school girls to pursue science, tech, and math fields in college, and if you look at the college-going statistics, women are far outpacing men in enrollment and graduation, and closing gaps in sciences. I've spoken on a bazillion panels to mostly female students about how to be a successful graduate student in a quantitative field. 

But then just last week, I read this article about how female economists are being literally sexually assaulted by their male colleagues- some of those named in that article I know personally. And it makes me think about the number of female friends and colleagues that I have who have been assaulted, harassed, raped. So- do we need feminism and #MeToo? Obviously, yes. Why I have had the path I've had is something I don't know how to explain. I guess it sort of comes down to the fact that no single person's individual experience disproves structural bias. I guess it just makes me lucky. Or oblivious, I don't know.


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## SueC

@Spanish Rider, great question and observations. I'll start with this: A couple of years ago, given Brett's socialisation as a child into doing various household tasks without reference to gender, I asked my MIL if she was a feminist and it really offended her. When I mentioned my surprise about this to Brett, he said, "That's very strange - _I_'m a feminist. I don't know why she's offended!"

In Australia, do I feel equal? Not by a long shot. Women here get more than half the science degrees and score better in them than men on average, yet at every subsequent step in their careers, they are underrepresented - and not because they aren't interested in pursuing careers in science. They are particularly underrepresented in the senior positions. The glass ceiling is very real in this country.

Personally, I graduated top graduate from my science degree programme, and did immediately get a research position with the Western Australian Department of Agriculture. There, I was one of only a handful of females in non-secretarial positions, despite the fact that more than half the science graduates were female. When I eventually wanted to teach at high school and put my name down with the Education Department, I spent two years working at university in education without ever hearing from them. Then I got a call from a Departmental stooge, "Would you like to teach horseriding in Meekatharra?" At the time I was teaching environmental biology undergraduates at Curtin University. I was like, "Say what? I put myself down for a science teaching position. I'm teaching science at university. Why on earth do you want me to teach horseriding? And in Meekatharra?" The staffer said, "It says on your CV you ride horses as a hobby, so we thought you might like to do it." And I said, "You reportedly have a shortage of good science teachers, don't you have a science teaching position to offer me?" I was bamboozled, and no, I had absolutely no interest in leaving science education at tertiary level in order to teach a hobby on my CV.

In the end, I went to London because that's where my first term offer of secondary science teaching was, and because I could combine it with travel. It did seem extremely odd to me that the Education Department locally was apparently not interested in employing a female double-science graduate with a string of academic prizes. Later on, I heard similar stories from top female mathematics degree graduates who similarly were not offered employment by our Education Department to teach mathematics, and who worked in private industry instead though it was not their first choice.

I came back to Australia with an offer of a local environmental management position, and with a couple of months to fill before it started, I did some relief teaching in the local area. I worked at Australind Senior High School, and a week later, their principal offered me a 0.71 FTE teaching position for the rest of that year, crucially with a Year 12 English class - something on my wish list, since I am as passionate about English and English Literature as I am about the Sciences. It was the dealbreaker - I couldn't say no to that! I did ask, "And what about next year? The environmental management position I've been offered is fulltime, three years." The principal explained his frustration with the Education Department, which made all staffing decisions centrally for fulltime positions and for permanency, and only allowed him to staff part-time positions that expired at the end of each academic year, and that he had no idea if he could fandangle a part-time position the following year, but he had been able to in this instance and really wanted me on his staff, based on my CV and walking into classrooms when I was teaching.

I was in a position to negotiate a delayed start for the environmental management position, so accepted the offer. I had a whale of a time, it was a great school, and had my fingers firmly crossed for the following year - that the central department might offer me a fulltime position there given I was already there and working part-time. When the offers came around from central office, I didn't get one, despite now additionally having been performance reviewed and highly recommended by the school's departmental heads in Science and English. Since there was no certainty about having an equivalent role to the one the principal had made for me the following year, I reluctantly went into the environmental management position in order to have some employment security, and moved back to Albany (where I'd started out as a graduate in science research) after my Year 12s graduated.

Two months into this position, one week from the start of the new academic year, at the end of the long summer school holidays, I had an unexpected call from the Education Department offering me a one-year fulltime science teaching contract with Year 12 Biology and Year 11 Human Biology plus middle school general science. I asked, "Why couldn't you offer me this when I asked you late last year? Accepting your offer would now require me to jump ship two months into an environmental management position, which is pretty much professional suicide should I wish to work in that side of things again in the future!" But I went to the school, liked what I saw, really really wanted to teach more than anything, and quit my job to take up the offer.

Later on, I learnt that the reason the central people had offered me the position wasn't because of my qualifications and experience, but because the only female science teacher in that school was on maternity leave, and they needed a token female science teacher to satisfy equal opportunity legislation that said you couldn't have an all-male science department. You can imagine how I felt about that. Academically, I was the most highly qualified person on that science staff - the majority of science teachers in Western Australia simply had Bachelors of Education majoring in Science; I was a subject specialist with a double science degree, the top graduate prize, science research experience, and three years teaching science undergraduates at a number of Western Australian universities - but that's not why they employed me! I put in for a genuine opening at the same school the following year, but that ended up being given to a male Bachelor of Education teacher wishing to transfer in from a remote school - and they'd not have been able to do that unless the other female teacher was coming back off maternity leave, to be their token female teacher for that year.

Around about the same time, I'd been part of an online ABC science discussion panel where qualified people answer the general public's science-related questions. After a while, I noticed that all their "official" panellists were male. When I remarked on it, it started a storm of vitriol from various male people on the discussion panel, suggesting that I needed to accept that those people were there based on their qualifications, and stop having feminist conniptions. Say what? One of those panellists who knew me and a few other people then said, "I am far less formally qualified to answer science questions than Sue is, or XYZ other female people on this panel, how can you say that!" I found myself unable to raise the question without being accused of sour grapes because I wasn't a hand-picked official panellist. A couple of weeks later, the ABC offered official panellist status to myself and three other proficient females there, but because I'd been accused of asking the question in the first place merely for personal gain and out of jealousy, I turned down the offer and said, "Couldn't you have opened your eyes before?" In the end, I completely stopped participating, because the vitriol had spoilt it all for me, so I no longer wished to volunteer, or hang out with various now-poisonous males present there. Science in Australia was, and is, very much a boys' club - statistically and experientially, and despite female qualifications to participate on an equal and more than equal footing.

I'd seen the same thing at the most prestigious WA university, when teaching pre my high school jump. You see things like that when you're in these environments. The most shocking thing there was the scandal in the archaeology department where a PhD student had been pressured by her supervisor, a prominent tenured lecturer, into having sex with him if she wanted to be passed on the next stage of her PhD. She refused, and was failed, and had things fabricated against her. She tried to fight it, and had the student guild on her side, but the expensive university lawyers had the lecturer covered. The thing got into national newspapers, but that odious individual continued merrily on in his tenured position, and he wasn't the only lecturer there trying to blackmail female students into sex, or into other things on their personal wishlists. They were all covering each other's backs and all under the protection of their expensive lawyers who twisted it into essentially young women trying to throw themselves at prominent lecturers in order to advance their careers.

After my fulltime year teaching Science in that school in Albany, I decided to leave the public education sector because of the employment insecurity which should not have been experienced by people who'd worked their backsides off at university to become highly qualified in their subject area, and I started teaching at Catholic schools. I taught Year 11 Physics and general middle school science at the Catholic high school in Albany next academic year, and the following year, started teaching in Catholic schools in Tasmania and later Sydney. Their employment ethos was more equitable than what I had experienced in the public education sector, and even though I'm not Catholic, they were my main employer in my 15 years of teaching high school, from then on.

That's my personal experience of workplaces - and I'll say one other thing, that neither I nor other highly qualified women teaching in high schools had ever seen a male with our qualifications who wasn't in a permanent fulltime position in either the public or the private sector, but we'd all had to scrabble. And men with mediocre qualifications were getting permanency offers ahead of us, and senior positions ahead of us.

You just need to look at Australian politics though, and Australian management executives, and Australian board members etc etc - it's no secret Australia is amongst the most underachieving countries in the world in terms of female equality in the workplace. We have briefly had one female prime minister, who was dogged for her entire prime ministership by vitriol and misogyny, and had to field comments about how she dressed on a regular basis - something that male PMs have never been asked on an ongoing basis, or even at all. New Zealand has been streets ahead of Australia in all these matters, and quite a few of us wish we could have their PM standing at our upcoming federal election to represent us.

My general experience living in Australian society as a female: As a high school student, I was frequently wolf whistled and inappropriately propositioned by males of all ages walking from various bus stops to various destinations, and it riled me then, and that kind of disrespect to anyone riles me now. As a university student, I was riding my bicycle one day when I was harassed by a group of young men who kept driving their car in front of my bike and who said all sorts of vile sexual things to me through their open car window. I took their number plate and attempted to report them to the police. The constables in the local police station laughed at me and refused to follow up. One of them said, "With legs like that, of course you're going to get that."

Once I was walking along Circular Quay in Sydney minding my own business when a street performer thought it would be fun to pinch my bottom. At this point, I was in my early 30s and had had enough, and I smacked the closed umbrella I was carrying on the top of his head, and stood my ground. He was then going, "Oh yes, beat me, beat me!" and offering me his posterior. The crowd around mostly thought it in bad taste, and supported me. Sydney is quite socially conscious like that, and a comparatively enlightened place to live.

I just don't think anyone, regardless of gender, should be subjected to that kind of stuff. This very week, an action photograph of a young female footballer was published on an Australian news site, and trolls descended with such vile comments that the site took the photo down, and later apologised, put it up again, and attempted to deal with the trolls. This is currently starting a national debate on community hate and misogynistic trolling, in the aftermath of the Christchurch hate crime against Muslims as well.

I know many wonderful people, male and female. But that doesn't mean that it's possible to realistically feel equal in Australian society if you're female, or ethnic, or in any way not playing the game of the dominant power group. Equal in abilities and qualifications, yes, that's the easy part. Equal in the way we're employed or treated in the workplace or street, no, definitely not.


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## Rob55

First. Someone please tell me how to get the @SueC @Spanish Rider in my response so I don’t feel the need to quote a passage. 

Then the problem with “Feminism” is it has become a wedge issue poorly defined and used as a verbal club. Bret’s mother was probably offended because she thought she was being accused of things totally different than the things Brett puts in the circle of his ven diagram labeled feminist. 

There are cultural, gender, National, religious and age differences that make the indiscriminate use of some terms difficult, even dangerous in some settings. Language is so important and it seems we get sloppier and sloppier as we use it. Not to mention those who intentionally misuse it. These are things that need to be discussed in open civil settings.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Rob55

Well. I answered my own question about @SueC. If only the discussion of feminism was that easy.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## SueC

*A BIRTHDAY REFLECTION*

I participate over on _Krones & Kodger_s, as a sort of underage drinker, because the kind, mostly 60+ folk there welcomed me and I even got a cheerleader outfit from someone else who'd started underage and had since graduated! ;-) Great conversations and stories there. I was asked a question there today which has just turned into my sort of birthday reflection, so I'm re-posting it here.

Quote:
Originally Posted by *tinyliny* View Post 
_And, @*SueC* . . . you are pretty far from 60, aren't you? Does all this talk of aches and pains, and challenges to keep riding even when we fear broken bone falls, and our compatriots are leaving riding . . does it strike a chord? or does it scare you?_

Dear @*tinyliny* , I turned 48 yesterday (although in the US it's still my birthday!), and considering how fast the last 12 years have gone, distance is becoming relative and time is getting rather timey-wimey!







:tardis:

It was two days before my 36th birthday 12 years ago that I first met Brett in person, after an interval of exchanging long emails on books, art, and life with him, and some telephone conversations that went into the wee hours and included accounts of how personalised hot chocolates get made (in my case, with a piece of ginger and vanilla essence and actual cocoa). We're sitting here these past three days recalling every moment of that weekend in sequence, like it was recorded on video camera - what we ate at each meal, where we walked and went sightseeing, the big hikes we did: The 4-hour uphill-downhill Bald Head track at the end of the Torndirrup Peninsula, and next day the drive down to the Valley of the Giants, and him holding tomatoes from the Elleker store on the way back home where we had Lamb and Tabbouleh on flatbread for dinner. And chocolate cake. And the hug Brett gave me when he got back on the bus to Perth at the end of the weekend!







I floated home after meeting such a nice person. Later that year he proposed to me on a mountain climb, and last month was our 11th wedding anniversary.

This was last year, on Brett's birthday, and another climb (Mt Talyuberlup, which has a cave on top):



I didn't have much luck with birth family, but it was the total opposite with my lovely husband.









Now I'll try to answer your actual question!









Since noone over 40 heals up as well as a teenager, there are some striking chords there, but mostly on this thread I am inspired by the determination people have to live their lives to the fullest each day, and not to succumb to common stereotypes of how they should be. People here are people first and 60+ is just data, like having two feet. That piece of data does mean the illusion of immortality is long gone (remember being 25?







), but it also means a lot of accrued life experience and learning, for those people who didn't feel like they were complete and had nothing left to learn at some point in their adulthood, as some people unfortunately do, but I don't think anyone on this thread does that. So there are interesting conversations here, for one thing!







And, I'm totally taking notes on how various persons are solving various problems that are coming up for them, so they can continue to live full and meaningful lives. This is ultra relevant to everyone who has lost the illusion of immortality!









About scared, the musicians who were a decade up from Brett and me are turning 60 at the moment - Robert Smith from The Cure is 60 next month, for instance, and Bono isn't far behind. I had some moments where my heart was in my throat when I saw how Mr Smith changed from age 40 to age 60. It is sad to see a person go from their youth and their physical prime into age. In the case of Mr Smith and Bono, their cultural drinking excesses haven't helped their livers and general appearance any, but those are often very much lifestyle related problems, because many people look great in their 60s and 70s. (My friend Alice is 84 and looks wonderful!) It's a different kind of great to the way people look in their youth, but lifestyle issues can make people look unhealthy and not their best at any age, starting from childhood. I love the saying, "Beautiful young people are works of nature, beautiful old people are works of art."

And then, of course, appearance is only the wrapping paper, and the person is still the person. I sort of see people as being very much like trees with their annular rings inside. I think we still have each year we were inside of us, with the little sapling right at the centre. I think we can still access all of these years and be all that is inside of us. Some people perhaps don't look, or perhaps don't want to have anything to do with the parts of them close to the core, but I've always found that the most mature and integrated people have embraced all the ages they've ever been, and live from that totality, without throwing anything away - and that's a great way to live!
















and best wishes to all of you!


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## egrogan

Happy birthday to you @*SueC* ! Glad to have connected with such an interesting and thoughtful person through these mysterious interwebs
:happy-birthday8:


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## knightrider

> Happy birthday to you @SueC ! Glad to have connected with such an interesting and thoughtful person through these mysterious interwebs


Me too! Same here!


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## SueC

Thank you, @egrogan and @knightrider! :hug:

You do realise one reason this Internet business doesn't faze me as a mode of connecting with actual humans is that it's how I met my husband? :rofl:

I spent so long unsuccessfully trying to find another unattached non-mainstream person when I was looking for a partner. It was pointed out to me that to find a needle in a haystack, a database can be very helpful! 

And this was correct!

And I think you guys are needles in a haystack too! Very glad to have met you all - on this virtual level, but it's still real, like writing letters or reading books are real, and human things. People always talk about how you can be fake online, but that's also true in real life. Jack the Ripper was married and his wife apparently had no idea. Also, I think because of these minority sociopaths, while we should be careful, we should also not let it get in the way of meeting the many wonderful people out there, hiding in the big haystack!


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## Knave

Happy happy birthday!!! I hope it was absolutely lovely.


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## SueC

Thank you, @Knave! :hug: Hope you are enjoying spring break! :cowboy: :cowboy: :cowboy: :cowboy:


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## Knave

I am! It did snow over the weekend, but it has already cleared off. The wind has helped with that, but to be honest wind makes me edgy. lol


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## SueC

You are very like a horse, @Knave! ;-) :runpony:


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## Knave

You have no idea how right you are @SueC. Lol. Maybe that is why I so dislike the wind. I am spooky too. Sometimes I think some of us get too bred up. lol. Hot little cowhorses that lose a bit of those cold blooded traits...


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## SueC

Rob55 said:


> First. Someone please tell me how to get the @*SueC* @*Spanish Rider* in my response so I don’t feel the need to quote a passage.
> 
> Then the problem with “Feminism” is it has become a wedge issue poorly defined and used as a verbal club. Brett’s mother was probably offended because she thought she was being accused of things totally different than the things Brett puts in the circle of his ven diagram labeled feminist.
> 
> There are cultural, gender, National, religious and age differences that make the indiscriminate use of some terms difficult, even dangerous in some settings. Language is so important and it seems we get sloppier and sloppier as we use it. Not to mention those who intentionally misuse it. These are things that need to be discussed in open civil settings.
> _Posted via Mobile Device_


Hello and welcome, @Rob55! 

I think you're right that language and its careful use are crucial in these kinds of discussions. That's why philosophers are so pedantic! 

You can see it with discussions of love. The Greeks did much better at that because they had many different words for different aspects of love, like the Inuit have many words for snow. I've sometimes wanted to throw the word away and start again because it's gotten quite grubby with all the handling, and all the dysfunctional ideas imposed upon it.

Perhaps it's the same with the word "feminism". I was thinking about the word, and I don't like that it's kind of gendered, although of course that's inevitable, but I'd like a word that was more like "equal-opportunist" but you can see that because of the quirks of the English language, that's actually very amusing instead of serious, and of course it's also incomplete.

We need a word that expresses this concept: Affording equal respect and opportunity and decent treatment to people regardless of gender, skin colour, cultural background, sexual orientation, age, disability, etc.

I'm grateful to the women, and men too, that went before me who spoke out about how unjust it was that women were considered second-class citizens who weren't allowed to vote, own property, get equal pay for equal work, state opinions etc etc etc. I'm also grateful for people like Martin Luther King doing the same thing for African Americans, and humanity in general. All these people were slandered and spat upon and hissed at and even assaulted, by Neanderthals amongst us, as well as a lot of misguided people not well versed in critical thinking, love and justice.

And I think in remembrance of these people, and because it's the decent thing to do, we all, as individuals and a community, need to do our level best to embrace critical thinking, love and justice, and to treat each other well. I don't think we ever arrive, we're always a work in progress, as individuals and as a community.


Topical:

We had a massacre in NZ last week, and this stuff unfortunately happens on a regular basis. But while it was deeply horrible what that idiot white supremacist terrorist did at Christchurch, I was lifted to see the response from NZ, and the glowing leadership of their 38-year-old Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern - that's glowing light coming out of horrible darkness. A couple of days ago the congregation went back to their mosque for Friday prayers one week post-massacre, and half of Christchurch was there with them, filling up the streets, non-Muslim women wearing headscarves... and the masses of flowers and the beautiful messages on the cards and posters left by the community - I've seen a lot of mindless violence, but never quite this sort of response from both leadership and nation. It was amazing. Here's some links to ABC articles with photos that capture some of it.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-...ctims/10909878

This one's from Annabel Crabb, one of my favourite Australian commentators:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-...times/10912018

...she's a real imp too, if you click on her name you'll see it in her photo. Marvellous sense of humour, no BS, heart in the right place.

The underbelly in Australia:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-...shing/10909394

The young female NZ PM is amazing. Gave birth last year, weathered a lot of misogyny blah blah. Could give all the world leaders a lesson in how to handle this sort of thing. She was asked how she felt and just said, "I'm sad." She's been in schools, public meetings, hugging people. She's speaking Arabic, Maori and English. She won't say the perpetrator's name (no notoriety idea) and won't read his so-called manifesto. She's remembering and naming all the people killed and good things about them.

It's very lifting to see this response from leadership and people. It makes one have hope in fellow humans, which is exactly the opposite of what the terrorist act did. It does show that light overcomes darkness. Even a single candle will do that, but this was so much more.










In Australia, many people were going to mosques in support of the Muslim community, on that Friday-after. The nearest mosque here is in Katanning, about 2 hours' drive - wish I could have been there. I'd have worn a headscarf and brought love hearts. Because this means something to the people who were hurt as a community, and that's so important.

We're all brothers and sisters, no matter what football club or culture we belong to. :hug:


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## gottatrot

Yes, Happy Birthday!!

It's great you met your husband online. I agree that people can be just as fake in person. Other serial killers like Ted Bundy, John Gacy and BTK were also very nice and people liked them. 

My sister is still working on finding that right person, she's 40 and I hope she can find the needle in the haystack sometime. I'm biased, but to me it's crazy she's always been single. She's really cute, athletic, owns a couple houses, has her master's degree, a great career, is a great cook, very social, in other words she's a much better catch than I ever was! 
She's trying online, but there's a lot of weeding to do apparently.

Did you meet on a dating site? I wonder if she'd have better luck meeting the right person on a hobby forum...


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## tinyliny

my son met his current sweetie, and likely fiancee, online. "xxit happens!"


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## SueC

Thank you, @gottatrot, and best of luck to your sister! (Who probably intimidates the bejesus out of insecure men, of which there are a lot, so you get this a lot!  Insecure men want to be one-up, or a bazillion-up, on all aspects of life compared to their chosen female, so they can feel better about themselves. With the possible exception of appearance. Insecure people don't have authentic selves, they're just role-playing really, and instead of valuing each other fully, and cheering on the other person's achievements and breakthroughs, and feeling happy for them, they just sort of stagnate and turn green and zombie-coloured and want to stomp a lot.)

We met on RSVP - it's a site that lets you do a lot of easy weeding! ;-) You had to create a profile that was really detailed, and included things like philosophies, attitudes, the kinds of books and movies you enjoy and why, attitude to relationships and family etc etc, what you thought was important in life, and important in a relationship and a partner. People only saw your photo after you gave them a password to it. You could block rude people on the internal PM system, and report them - and there are a lot of rude men when you're not interested, so this is a good feature to have.

Oh, and my future husband could spell, and used words with more than one or two syllables! Very important! :Angel: I related totally to his basic ethic. He had his heart in completely the right place, and was clever and eloquent and handsome to boot, and he's just this total gentleman with great manners (_most_ of the time, we all have our moments in life! :rofl, and a lot of fun to talk to and be around, for me anyway! Plus, you should have seen his dowry! Bwahahahaha. Shelves and shelves of interesting books, and an amazing music collection, and excellent kitchenware, and a great assortment of BBC drama and documentary DVDs.

And many dating women turned their nose up at my treasure because he doesn't go around blowing his own trumpet or trying to impress people with status symbols, for which he gives as much of a fig as I do - which is no fig at all. Because he lived modestly in a small duplex and took the train to work so he could pay off his mortgage earlier, by not having the expense of a car, and because he liked to read on the train and because walking to the train station is healthy. Because he doesn't have a view of himself that's more grandiose than the reality of him. Who wants to date a man without a car? Well, I thought that was excellent! I only had a car because I didn't live in the city. I don't think you're a nobody if you don't have a car - a car is just transport, and has financial and environmental downsides. We're neither of us conventional, mainstream thinkers.

I also wouldn't want anyone to think that we didn't have adjustment difficulties after coming down from the Cloud-9 of endorphins and various reproductive hormones that's usual for a relationship's honeymoon phase. Then you have to work on all your psychological stuff, of which we both have lots, and that can be tough, and we had some really rough stretches in the first couple of years of marriage especially because of this. It wasn't a given we were going to make it through that, but thankfully we did, and interestingly, the love and appreciation you feel at the other side of that, if you still feel it, are more solid and real and hard-fought than the rose-tinted stuff at the beginning. You can never take your relationship for granted, you always have to give it thought and consideration and effort, but that's something both of us really want to do, and generally enjoy doing. 

It's impossible I think to be stagnant and to have a good relationship. I think you have to be willing to grow, and to take a regular good look at yourself, even if it's not flattering. Above all though, the difference between a healthy relationship and a dysfunctional one is that respect is at the core of it on both sides, no matter what issues and foibles you are having to nut out. And that you will say sorry and mean it, and own your own bad behaviour that's at times going to be inevitable, and work on that, instead of just using sorry as a band-aid.

Hmm, got to have breakfast now I think!


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## SueC

tinyliny said:


> my son met his current sweetie, and likely fiancee, online. "xxit happens!"


:rofl:, @tinyliny, great clip! 

Best wishes to your son and sweetie! inkunicorn::blueunicorn:

One of the great things I discovered as I grew wrinklier and wiser is that shiitake makes great fertiliser! ;-) It's amazing what flowers will grow in it!

PS: And magic happens too!


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## SueC

@gottatrot, I forgot to give you this: :hug: - so here it is! ;-)


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## SueC

*OFFICIAL ROMEO DAYS*

I'm having two official Romeo days where I'm spending as much time as possible with him and spoiling him rotten. This photo was just taken outside the office, with an extra snack of chaff with bran and copra. He was a bit sniffy that the extra food wasn't the rich mix, but we can't push that any further without risking colic and laminitis. He's still amazingly shiny despite his lean condition, but I'm drawing the line now, he's lost weight the last week or so and I don't want him to end up suffering or even uncomfortable. He's had episodes where his respiratory rate is higher than normal and I don't like it. I'm getting the feeling that he's starting to be hungry and not able to do anything about it, which is why I'm carefully putting extra chaff in his direction, with just enough goodies in it for him to want to eat it.

We can't feed him more concentrate without risking colic and laminitis, and he can't handle the roughage he needs as well as he needs to in order to make it through the winter. He's having to spit more and more of the grass he tries to eat back out, and I don't think this is fair. There's no dentures for horses, unfortunately, but it's a miracle in itself that he did so well these last 5 years since we stopped being able to do dentistry with him because of loose molars that were falling out. For half a decade, the twice-daily supplementary feeds were enough to top him up on the grass he was able to gather.

He's had five extra years over and above what he could have had unassisted, and they've been wonderful years for him and us. He's literally been living in our garden for over a year now - he's gone out less and less the older he got. No horse deserved it more than he did.

The vet is excellent and professional. Romeo won't know a thing. He'll have been loved and well cared for to the end and he will not have to leave his comfort zone, he'll be in familiar surroundings. Brett is going to feed him Weet-Bix, which he loves, and that's the last thing he's going to know. And he won't have to get hungry this winter.

But we're going to miss him.


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## DanteDressageNerd

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! Hope it was a special day to enjoy :-D

I also agree on relationships. They will always be work and you have to grow individually, as well as together for it to work. Also think it has to mostly be happy, if it's mostly stress and frustration it isnt worth it. I think a lot of people call it quits when it gets hard. We're imperfect people and there are things we wont like about each other but it needs to be mutually respectful. It takes work and open communication. If something bothers you have to communicate or it becomes a problem. 

I think you can't fake chemistry and a lot of people go into "SO shopping" with a set check list and try to rush things along trying to weed people out without getting to know people. I know from my guy friends they've said a big problem is women over 30 want to rush things and tend to manipulate situations to test a guy's response because they're impatient and not willing to let a relationship grow naturally. They're in such a rush to the finish line that my guy friends said they called it quits. Said a girl might be great but terrible at relationships. Or they go on a date with a girl who may be great but she is so impersonal and fixated on the checklist that they feel like a date is a job interview, rather than a date. I've seen a lot of people like that, they're good people but they are not good in relationships or dont know how to be a partner and tend to be really defensive and unwilling to be vulnerable or act entitled like a man should be pouring himself into a woman and bending over backwards to please her while she gives back almost nothing or vice versa. Some people go in expecting to be catered to and expect the other person to change or bend over backwards to please and it just doesnt work for relationships. It should be give and take and go both ways. Sometimes one may need more than the other but it has to be a two way street. 

The masque is a really sad event too, as well as the flooding in Mozambique. And the Christian's killed in the middle east. Think there is a lot of intolerance in the world and a lot of injustices and evils we cant fathom and a lot dont make headlines. Like with the flooding in Mozambique that the president in a disaster was having a couch helicopter lifted for him. While foreigners were sending aid to help the people. 

It sounds like that is for the best for Romeo. I hope it is a soft and good transition for him met with peace. He's really lucky to have had your love and consideration to lead such a good life  lucky boy!


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## gottatrot

Aww, sweet Romeo. I think it is so beautiful he has had a peaceful time in the garden. When I think of how old horses must end up dying when humans are not around, in a feral state, it makes me sad and I think they have it much better when we are there to care for them.


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## Spanish Rider

@sue ! Hope you had the happiest of birthdays! Was it on the 24th? If so, I won't ever forget it, because that's also my youngest son's birthday.


As for your Australian footballer, I hate to say that she also made the news in Spain. Unfortunately, she was the only woman in the sports reporting of the day.


Romeo looks so incredibly good for his age. Must be all the love and good caretaking!


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## egrogan

Seems like a very fitting celebration of Romeo-loved and spoiled with all his favorite things by his favorite people, what more could any of us want?


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## SueC

@Spanish Rider , it was the 25th - apparently I'm born on the same day as Aretha Franklin! ;-) But Brett and I first met on a 23rd of March, and now I know of something significant about the 24th! 

I got to go for a trail ride yesterday - the same as the long one I documented a bit back that was multiple posts. :hide:

I also did a lot of jobs around the place because I'm so jittery with being about to lose Romeo. Keeping physically busy is helpful, and also the horse likes to have me around. He's getting lots of bear hugs, which he always reciprocates. I've been sitting at his feet as he's snoozed at lunchtime today, saying, "Do you remember when?"

Romeo was born in 1984, the same year the French mare who was my first riding horse died. I was 13 years old. I first met Romeo when he was three when my father returned from a dog food auction with him. We had his full sister, who was two then and who became the family's most successful race mare. The reasons why he ended up at a dog food auction were recounted at length before, on this journal, and I might post a link to that sometime, but essentially he was a foal out of a famous mare whose every offspring were winners, and greedy people bought him, and ended up using an electric whip on him in his training, so he jumped the track rail with cart and driver attached and smashed everything up. :clap: :clap: :clap: 

Stupid, stupid people. He's a horse with a wonderful nature, and was so glad to end up being treated decently. I rode him a lot when I was younger, and he was without any question the fastest horse I've ever ridden. He did 800m in 55 seconds on a regular basis at the pace, which was as fast as the Interdominion horses back in his day, and was faster still galloping under saddle. There was one long sand hill with a soft incline I used to let him run up full speed - the only place I felt that was safe! And it was like sitting in an aeroplane at lift-off - the sudden enormous kick forward that made your gut feel like you were on a rollercoaster. When you ride a horse like that, it's like you're flying. A horse like that is your wings. It's like a hippogriff.

A friend of mine used to visit, who'd show-jumped in England, and she jumped him for fun and said he was just amazing. I once watched this horse casually jump a four-foot paddock fence without a run-up, from a standstill, just to get to the other side where his companion horse was, instead of going back through the open gate! Boing - like a big kangaroo. I was gobsmacked. And he did it without fanfare, and immediately returned to grazing on the other side of the fence.

I've got a clip of him having an extra snack at lunchtime today. It's through a flyscreen, in case you're wondering.






Also, I managed to get some kangaroo footage for @egrogan, though not off the horse! ;-) (Yet!) Romeo usually asks to go graze with the other horses at night every second night, and he did that last night. I walked along with him out into the paddock because he likes it when I just go walking along with him, and I noticed we had more than a dozen kangaroos in our hill paddock! So, I snuck back to get the camera. The film is wobbly because I had to stand far away and use the telephoto lens; kangaroos panic when they see a person coming. There was no time to set up a tripod either. Anyway, you can see some kangaroos in this clip. Romeo is in the blue-check to the right of them, facing away. The horse in the faded red rug is Chasseur. Julian is hiding somewhere. You can see a few donkeys, and we end on Sunsmart.

There are screeching noises and "bunyip, bunyip" sounds, which is endangered Black Cockatoos. Also an Australian Raven cawing briefly near the start.


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## egrogan

Fascinating footage @SueC! Don't see that through the woods here, thank you for sharing :grin:


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## SueC

Here's something fun that happened sort of by accident this evening. Julian, Chasseur and Smartie wanted to come up into the higher level of the garden where they've been allowed occasional quiet grazing lately, and I let them, but forgot that the back garden wasn't blocked off - where the young citrus trees are, and I trust no-one but Romeo with these. And suddenly, all five donkeys were in the garden as well.

The horse in the halter pruning the tagasaste is Sunsmart (and that's OK as that's the livestock fodder and it grows back), the one with the blaze is Julian, the chestnut is Chasseur. Romeo is in the mandala section behind the hedge at that point. It's amazing how much mayhem eight equines can create in a few minutes.

Nelly is the curious donkey who goes straight into the carport. Ben is eating by the bird bath. And you can hear why Chasseur's nickname is Mr Buzzy. This is the first time these horses have been in the back garden, so they're a bit cautious. We had to evict everyone soon after, because Ben started eating a citrus tree...






Brett came home and just went: :rofl: _We've had an invasion!!_


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## Knave

What a happy yard you have! I love when horses are in our yard hanging out with us. The only one I trust to not go anywhere bad though is Bones, because he just wants to hang out. The donkey reminded me of how Zeus would be. lol 

Bones jumped the fence flat footed once too. I think if he didn’t love cows so much he would be a great little jumping pony. He loves to jump. He jumped a brush one time with my oldest girl yesterday. She didn’t fall off and got him stopped! Lol. Once he starts jumping he keeps jumping usually. 

I think that everyone in your yard looked happy. You have such shiny and healthy animals.


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## egrogan

^^It's like a little girl's fairy tale come true- walking outside to a yard full of beautiful horses!


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## SueC

Hello @DanteDressageNerd! How's spring in Denmark? Thanks for your wishes re Romeo, we hope the same.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on world issues and relationships; you're a very thorough and careful thinker!  That's why I always enjoy reading what you write.

One thing where I wanted to offer another perspective:



DanteDressageNerd said:


> I think you can't fake chemistry and a lot of people go into "SO shopping" with a set check list and try to rush things along trying to weed people out without getting to know people. I know from my guy friends they've said a big problem is women over 30 want to rush things and tend to manipulate situations to test a guy's response because they're impatient and not willing to let a relationship grow naturally. They're in such a rush to the finish line that my guy friends said they called it quits. Said a girl might be great but terrible at relationships. Or they go on a date with a girl who may be great but she is so impersonal and fixated on the checklist that they feel like a date is a job interview, rather than a date.


There's genuinely that, but there's also a genuine reason why many women get that way when they get to 30. It often involves having been stuffed around by a few guys who were never looking at long-term in their hearts but didn't have the honesty to admit it. It's OK if a guy is up-front and tells you he's not interested in marriage and family generally, and to keep shopping if that's one avenue you'd like to be a possibility in a relationship after a while. But that's not generally what happens: Generally a lot of guys will make a lot of misleading or ambiguous noises because they fancy a girl sexually and want to have a thing with her until something possibly better comes along - and meanwhile also have the convenience and companionship that goes with it. So they're not honest, and women invest a good chunk of their 20s in them, and when marriage and children come up, the men break up. So, it would have been better for those women to have not wasted their time with them, and had a relationship with someone who was honest about whether they wanted marriage and family or not (and knew themselves well enough to make that call, which is one of the problems).

At 30, the reality of the biological clock starts to chime for women - while it's not a big issue for men. If you're wanting a family and you've not met anyone serious or suitable at that point, panic can set in, especially if you've already had some misplaced emotional investments - not because casual relationships where a spade is called a spade are necessarily misplaced, but if the life goals of the two parties were incompatible to start with, but one of them wasn't honest enough to admit it or didn't know themselves enough, or because communication wasn't clear. And then women want to make sure that doesn't happen to them again.

One of the really great things about the RSVP setup for me was that I could automatically screen out anyone who said they were disinterested in marriage and family, and look at the people who were. When you're in a sort of impersonal written environment where you don't even have to show someone what you look like until you feel that there might be some common ground, there's less chance of some guy BSing you because he likes your physical appearance, and taking you for an unfair ride that ultimately wastes more of your time. Things are a lot more above-board and clear-cut that way.

Another advantage over trying to screen people face to face is that you can't be side-tracked yourself by just sexual chemistry, which will play all sorts of tricks on you, or by being dysfunctionally attracted to a person who somehow replicates the abusive patterns of your upbringing (if that was the case - it was for me, and is for a fair percentage of the population). When I got into my 30s, I'd had enough of all of that and I did decide that in order to get a decent partner with common ground that you could perhaps have a long-term future with, a technical, job interview approach was in my own best interests for the screening part of the dating - for deciding whom I'd consent to actually meet, after writing PMs and perhaps progressing to phone calls.

And while that sounds terribly clinical and unromantic, it actually wasn't, in my case, in the part of the process where it mattered - once I actually met someone. And the funny thing is, Brett actually found and approached me on the database, he'd been on it for half a year and I was new, and he wanted someone unconventional and genuine, as did I. We immediately had loads to write to each other about because of our common interests in literature, art, music etc - it's funny, all my friends are actually avid readers - that's the one single thing they all have in common, even though they're a diverse bunch in other ways, so that to me was also really important in a romantic relationship. We already clicked over that in a way I really hadn't with the other people I'd exchanged PMs with.

And it just went from there. When we had our first phone call, he bowled me over with his lovely speaking voice, which I could just listen to for hours, sort of like when someone has a Scottish or Irish accent! And that lovely speaking voice was talking sense, and being funny, and he was so wonderfully appropriate - not at all casual. That first conversation we had was three hours long and I had to wrench myself away because I had to teach the next day, and be awake for that! Instead of running out of things to talk about, we found ourselves wanting to go into all sorts of topics and depths more and more - it was like a snowball rolling down a hill and just getting bigger all the time - and you know, twelve years and four days later, it's still like that - we've still not run out of things to have conversations about, and we never will, because we're both continuously learning and experiencing.

More long phone conversations like that, and then it was Valentine's Day, and I really liked this guy, as a human being, and I felt that someone like that deserved a happy Valentine's Day regardless of anything, and sent him a little parcel with nice things in it - I sent him _Sophie's World_, which he'd not read yet, and some incense, and seashells off our beach, and lemon-scented gum soap (which turned out to be one of our favourite smells, for both of us - we could sniff it for hours!), and a few other nice knick-knacks I knew he'd enjoy. And this was really apt, because do you know, nobody had ever given him anything for Valentine's Day before!

I got an "Oh wow, thank you!" phone call, and then a little parcel arrived for me. There was this CD of Baroque music, but the cover had me puzzled: It had my seashells on it, and a little note with my handwriting. Did I mention he was a graphic designer? Turns out he thought the original CD cover was crap, and he wanted to make me a nice personalised one.










He also got me an excellent and thought-provoking graphic novel called _Death The High Cost Of Living_.

There was a lot of overlap on all sorts of Venn diagrams for us, but also a lot of individuality, a lot of interesting things the other person could introduce us to. I think it's important to have both - the common ground, and the mutual "cultural / life curation". And none of that has slowed down for us twelve years later! 

And at that point we'd not even met yet. He came down for a weekend's walking, and I remember it was so strange at first sitting in the car with him when I collected him from the bus, and actually talking to his face instead of a disembodied voice! It's sort of like when you're ice skating and you come off the ice rink and try to walk again on dry land, so to speak - it's strange at first, and then it rights itself.

We immediately did some walk trails around the town, because he'd come off a six-hour bus trip, and I'd come out of a day in the classroom. We went out to Frenchmans Bay for a beach walk, and chatted non-stop like on the phone. There was this little bay of rocks against one of the headlands I took him to, and I said to him, "If I was a kid, I'd be making a pirate camp here, with a pirate flag!" It's not the sort of thing I could have said to many people without raising an eyebrow, but he immediately got me, and elaborated on what needed to be in that camp, and why it was a spot that conjured this idea. And I remember that very well, because this was an instance of his inner ten-year-old connecting with my inner ten-year-old - we were interacting across the annular rings of our internal trees already, so to speak. It was way beyond the superficial. It's great how all the ages inside each of us connect with each other's. I'd never had a friend quite like that before - and this was a male looking for a long-term relationship, to boot!

We became the ultimate best friends within weeks, and that was the foundation for everything else, and has remained that foundation. That it worked romantically as well was a bonus. The whole thing actually, after the initial "here's the selection criteria, let's shortlist candidates", was a very traditional courtship, nothing was rushed, and everything was so respectful. It was almost like being back a century, but in a good way. I've never been a "sleep with someone you've just met, ask questions later" type person. While I'm not judging people who do that, I personally don't want to toy with people and their feelings, and I don't like the whole "disposable date / disposable human" thing.

So isn't it funny how the aftermath of good job interviewing can be so romantic, and to lead to lasting happiness and connection!


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## DanteDressageNerd

Thank you. I enjoy the conversations with you also, you're very thoughtful and have a lot of insight. Spring seems well in Denmark, still cold but warmer than it was. I really do want the best for Romeo and I think he is so blessed to have been in your care for so many years. A horse is very lucky to have someone who loves and aims to understand them.

I think sometimes to women assume a guy wants what they want and then get upset when they finally ask and the guy tells them I dont want to marry you. I also think the women can change a guy's mind where they may start out saying I want kids and marriage but then they get to a point of they dont want that with that woman and dont know how to break up or dont realize they dont want to be with that woman themselves until something happens and they leave. Some people stay too long in relationships that should have ended long ago. I've done it, I think most of us have because sometimes it's hard to realize when you're no longer compatible or see a future with someone. I know from guy friends they've been with women for years and didnt know when they stopped seeing a future with them and didnt leave because it didnt occur to them to. The relationship was comfortable enough but not it. Some guys will be with a woman for years and not want to marry her then meet someone else and end up marrying that one and not know why they could marry the 2nd one but not the 1st one *Shrugs* guys can be pretty emotionally dense. Sometimes something is obviously dysfunctional and other times it's less obvious. Emotions interfere with objectivity. I think sometimes it can be confusing when you love someone but you dont see or want a future with them. Sometimes there is nothing wrong with either person, it's just a bad match. It's such a tricky, subjective subject and what works for everyone is quite different. Relationships are complicated :lol:

Think this is applicable to a lot of women who get frustrated too, some are such good talkers and dont back up any of it. It's all talk.





I know I asked Miguel once what made me different from all the other girls he dated and he said I dont know everything is different. And then he said well I see a future with you, I didnt with them. He's also 11yrs older than I am. Plus there is Wonder and think he wants to continue seeing Wonder ;-) they have such a special bond. I think Wonder would go through fire for him.

I understand the biological clock but I truly believe a lot of women set themselves up for failure trying to force something to work so they have their picket fence and 2 kids. But I guess how I look at it is if I have kids, I have kids and if I dont, I dont. I'd rather have a good, authentic relationship than be in a rush to have something. The relationship is to be enjoyed and grow naturally, not to end up somewhere. I think people end up unhappy when they fixate on the goal and not the inbetween. But I look at it as having kids is something that should happen naturally with someone you really love and have a stable relationship with built on more than heat or a desire to procreate. But Im also someone who isnt at all interested in having a child just to procreate. For me the pleasure is in sharing that journey with that special someone and only if it feels right, else it's not worth it to me. 

I think a basic list can work but I think it also needs some flexibility. I think some criteria needs to be rigid and firm and others more flexible, I think valuing the person in the relationship and being compatible out weighs the lust and hormones of sexual drive. I think there needs to be some sexual attraction and drive (obviously) but it's not the generator. Sexual compatibility is important but I think real compatibility comes from having similar life goals and acceptance of bumps along the way and being able to appreciate each other as is. If someone has to change to be together, it's the wrong relationship. Trying to make someone change who is fine as they are is basically saying, I dont actually want you. I want someone else but you're convenient and it'd be nice for me if youd change. Meet a lot of women who think they can change a man and I'm like he is who he is, if you're not happy with who he is find someone else. And vice versa for men who try to change a woman who is perfect as she is. And me being an outsider, I can see that vs being in the situation it's hard to see clearly because emotion clouds judgment. 

Can also say I've experienced the dysfunctional attraction, understand that all too well. I think sometimes we do it because of a lack of self love and understanding or as you said to replicate familiar patterns or find someone who treats us how we feel we deserve. I know I had very unhealthy attractions to psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists or people with deep issues. I think it's normal as we discover ourselves to have people along the way to mess with us and show us how strong we are and mess with us enough that we find our true selves. I think when things are comfortable and easy it is easy to be whoever we want to think ourselves to be and when thing are tough and we cant live in our built upon self perceptions we really see ourselves and the truth and I think relationships bring a lot of that out and the reality of who we are. All our insecurities and damaged parts, as well as the best of ourselves. It's a special thing and I think you learn a lot about yourself in a relationship and grow. I saw a quote once about how little does my ex know how much better he/she made me for the next one.

**** he has a lot of personality, I love the pictures! You guys are so cute, you can see the pure joy! It's special when you find someone whose wierdness matches your own, it's like a harmony in your soul that says the weirdness in me sees and appreciates the weirdness in you. It's wonderful when you find someone who just suits you and your life, especially if you're an unconventional or especially unique person. I think it can be harder to find a good fit but I think more rewarding and magical when you can really just be yourself around someone. You have to continue to grow as an individual, as well as together else is gets dull. It looks fun  Miguel and I have a lot of pictures like that too :lol:


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## SueC

Yes, I've seen your photos, @DanteDressageNerd!  A sense of humour is a really important life skill - not to mention a constant source of endorphins! ;-)
@Knave, I've seen photos of you jumping on Bones too, which you posted last year!  It's nice to have multi-talented horses.
@egrogan, nice to see your trails seem to be becoming semi-passable!

You'll have to excuse me for being short, I've got a jittery brain. Romeo needs his breakfast and the vet is coming later. So I'm going to lie low for a bit. It's Brett's day off and he's staying with the horse later after I set things up, because I particularly don't want to have any memories of this one dead. The horse is fully fine with him as Brett has fed him about a thousand times in the last five years (3650 supplementary feeds for him in that time alone). We've had three euthanasias of oldies now in five years, which is one of the inevitabilities of giving old horses I've known since I was at school a dream retirement. Romeo was born in 1984 and is the last of the "old guard", and I'd rather remember him alive.


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## egrogan

Sending a virtual hug to you and Brett, and a long comforting pat to Romeo.


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## Knave

It deleted my last post, so I will try again. 

I think his life has progressed beautifully. It seems each chapter for him was better than the prior. I wonder if he will race through the heavens as an important chariot horse.

A great big hug sent your way.


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## Knave

A little something


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## SueC

Thank you, @Knave - that's so completely apt. :hug: I wasn't crying till I read it, but that's fine - it's always like this - until it happens I feel like there's liquid mercury running through my veins and everything is just shut in, and I can't breathe properly till after, or cry, and I feel less awful when I do.

Thank you, @egrogan, the hugs and pats were appreciated. Also to everyone else who thought of Romeo, and of us.  I know there's nothing we can do when things like this happen, but people just reaching out makes a difference.

Romeo had a big breakfast with lots of cuddles and him rubbing his head on me - I was taking some laundry off the line nearby and popped in and out of his range. After breakfast, he decided he wanted to go snooze in the animal shelter in the donkey paddock - he often does this when he's really full, and the other horses are in the Common. It's like he says, "Goodie, I've got the house to myself, I'm having a nice little nap while I digest this load." And he was just going, _Zzzzzzzzzzzz_. He had an hour of that before the vet turned up. We went to the shelter and all just hung around him for a bit - he's a "stranger danger" horse, quite suspicious of new people unless they are children, so we got him used to everyone (Myles plus young female vet). I fed him a nice juicy peach, and then showed him I had more peaches and Weet-Bix in his feed bin, which I placed on the grass outside the shelter. We stood near him companionably as he ate. The horse was relaxed and settled, and I excused myself this time, and went in the house, because just this once I don't want to have any memories of the horse in death, and my continued presence wasn't necessary - he had Brett, and he was fine, and enjoying the peaches.

So I went in the house, and this time I even put my iPod earphones in, and turned up a JK Rowling interview super loud, because I didn't even want to hear the shot. I got busy in the kitchen, making chocolate nut horns, and after a couple of minutes Brett came in and gave me a big hug. Everything went OK, just like it had with Sunsmart's mother 18 months ago - perfect placement, instant oblivion, the horse not even kicking.

It's strange that I wanted to completely bury my head in the sand today - it's the first time I've ever done that, and I've seen so many horses die. Not just the two prior ones here, but a dozen or more of my family's, in horrible circumstances - broken leg, impaction colic, sand colics, twisted bowels, postpartum haemorrhage - but this was the last of the old guard. This horse was born on October 30, 1984, two months after I first saw a horse die - the French mare I rode as a child bleeding out after foaling, as I sat helplessly on the ground with her just hours after coming back from school camp at age 13. Romeo was the last of the old guard - the last horse we had alive that was born in my childhood. And just this once, it was good not to see it, and to just remember him as he was in his lifetime.


*Romeo, track name Durham Town (Romeo Hanover-Honest Talk), October 30, 1984 - March 28, 2019.*

Fly free, old friend. :runpony:


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## SueC

A photo from 1986, with Romeo's full sister Classic Juliet being cart educated as a yearling - 15-year-old me in the cart. She's the reason Romeo was brought home from the dog food auction the following year. Classic Juliet was the family's most successful race mare (7 wins, 6 seconds, 4 thirds), and showed a lot of promise from the beginning.










The mare died in her mid-20s a while back. Her only foal, Classic Julian, is retired with us. So, we've still got Romeo's nephew, seen here in-between Sunsmart and Chasseur.



He's a lovely horse, and though he hasn't got Romeo's height and long legs, he has a lot of his cleverness, independence and sense of fun - and a certain expression about his face.


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## gottatrot

I am so sorry for you. I know you will miss him a lot, and see his shadow around the corners, and look for his presence that is not there. I admire your courage in doing the right thing, even knowing how much it will hurt, and facing that pain with bravery because of the love you have for your horse, putting his needs above yours. 

I feel happy for Romeo too, passing out of the world in an instant, without having to suffer in agony or exist with dull eyes and inner pain while a human wrestles with the idea of loss. It's good all your memories will be of him alive, with no bad memories. It's not really easier if a horse is old, or sick when they die, unfortunately. But it's always good when a horse does not have to suffer.

Here is a quote for Romeo, from his namesake:



> _When he shall die,
> Take him and cut him out in little stars
> And he will make the face of heaven so fine
> That all the world will be in love with night..._


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## SueC

For Romeo - a tune that is eloquent of his long and lovely old age here with us, since 2010.


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## DanteDressageNerd

Im so sorry for your loss but I think he was so lucky to have you provide for him, love him and have the courage to do what is best for him. Even when it hurts. Excusing yourself seemed the right thing too, so all your memories arent shadowed. He's a really lucky horse to have had dignity in life and passing. And of course that he got to enjoy some peaches, that was well deserved. 

May Romeo rest in horsey heaven with all of his friends and endless fields of grass and peaches.


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## SueC

Thank you again everyone, for your thoughts and lovely messages. 

Big thanks to Elizabeth, who had thoughts sitting there for me to read when I got up at 3am last night to have some cereal so I could get back to sleep. And also for the lovely images she sent through this morning: A truckful of flowers, and making virtual tea for me. A picture can speak a thousand words...


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## SueC

I'll get back to people properly when I've had some sleep. I've been sleeping pretty badly since we made the booking on Monday. I'd like to post a song that's really helped me today - a beautiful song that's so eloquent about life and mortality - and which manages to carry joy in the face of sorrow. It's mostly instrumental - it does this musically as well as lyrically. The words to this are also so lovely if you are grieving, and again, are so much light and celebration in the face of darkness.

This is a live version, because it has even more dimensions live.






*PLAINSONG
*_
I think it's dark and it looks like it's rain, you said
And the wind is blowing like it's the end of the world, you said
And it's so cold, it's like the cold if you were dead
And you smiled for a second

I think I'm old and I'm feeling pain, you said
And it's all running out like it's the end of the world, you said
And it's so cold, it's like the cold if you were dead
And you smiled for a second

Sometimes you make me feel
Like I'm living at the edge of the world
Like I'm living at the edge of the world
It's just the way I smile, you said_


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## SwissMiss

Sue, I am so sorry for your loss. Romeo was such a lucky horse to spend his last years in your loving care and being allowed to travel on while he was still feeling good. :hug:


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## QueenofFrance08

So sorry about Romeo! He couldn't have lived a better life or asked for better horse parents!


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## QueenofFrance08

So sorry about Romeo! He couldn't have lived a better life or asked for better horse parents!


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## Spanish Rider

@sue, so sorry. But, I must say that if I were a horse and had a choice, I would have wanted to live my life out like Romeo, with free range of the garden to smell flowers and investigate birds & bugs, with soft cushy grass to take a nap, peeking into your windows to see what you're up to, all the while knowing that later you'll come out to talk and let me slurp the plum juice off the back of your hand.


I have had several losses over the past few years, and the pragmatic, nerdy side of me keeps going back to this excerpt, which my sister read at our Dad's funeral. It 'works' for horses, too.


*You Want a Physicist to Speak at Your Funeral*

-by NPR commentator Aaron Freeman 

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every BTU of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got. 

And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him/her that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let him/her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her/his eyes, that those photons created within her/him constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives. 

And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly. 

Amen.


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## SueC

@Spanish Rider , love it - so apt. It goes with a reflection I wrote after losing the last horse 18 months ago - I'll re-post it, because it's true for any death.


*FLOWER MEMORIALS*

The week after the chestnut mare was put down last November, Mt Barker Veterinary hospital sent a card and a packet of wildflower seeds – now that was a great idea. When my Arabian mare was buried back in 2014, I'd wanted to plant a beautiful tree on top to mark the spot, but the cattle found any human attempt to grow a seedling tree irresistible and promptly removed anything like that. We considered rigging up a small temporary electric fence, but then needed the back-up energiser unit to do exactly that around our new solar bore. What to do?

Wildflower seeds – so obvious in hindsight! So when they sent that packet of Australian Everlastings, I planned on splitting the seeds between the two grave sites when the winter rains set in. And now they finally have.










So yesterday was Flower Memorial day. In the early afternoon, I packed the old dinner fork I use for planting out seedlings and seeds in the vegetable garden into my pocket, along with the seed packet, and told the dog we were going for a walk. This is when a lovely thing happened.



Julian, who had been grazing with his herd, saw we were leaving and made a beeline straight for us. He and I greeted each other, and then he decided to tag along! He simply came walking with us, at liberty, away from the pasture and the other horses, around behind the house and onto the central sand track that leads through our bushland conservation area and down to the gates with our southern neighbours.










It's a really special thing when a horse just decides to go for a walk with a human and a dog. Julian, of course, loves to explore and at 17 is the youngest member of his herd – and with a lifetime of being locked into his loose box and small sand run by himself day in, day out until he came here last November, he has a lot of lost time to make up for. When he first arrived, he fell in love with all the space of his giant natural playground, and thrived on being social in a herd – but would leave the grazing herd to walk here and there and sniff this and that and do big exploratory loops around the place, looking with great interest at various things in succession. If I came out of the house to do some work in the treeline, for instance, and the herd was a collection of little dots grazing at the far end of The Common, pretty soon a bay horse with a blaze and socks would be heading in my direction to come and see what I was doing, and just to have a “chat”.



It's moments like these that I have treasured since we bought this place in 2010 – horses very much set free at our place, with 62ha to roam, watching them enjoy this and each other day in, day out, and that they are always choosing to take the time to come and touch base with me. If I want the horses and they are far away, I just call them, and then come sounds of distant thunder that soon distinguish into hoofbeats, as the group comes running up like a bunch of racehorses, which of course they all are. It's a spectacular sight to see them running like this.



So today, Julian accompanied me halfway to my first destination up the central sand track, and I was chatting to him and showing him bush grasses he could eat, and he was looking at me and sniffing things I held out to him and putting his muzzle softly against me from time to time, the same way a friend might put his hand on your shoulder occasionally. I explained that I was going to put flower seeds in the ground for the girls, whom he both knew by sight from back in the old days. It doesn't matter that they don't get all of what we say to them, because they get so much from it – and they learn so much about you when you chat to them. They enjoy it anyway, playing their ears at the sound and looking at you with those little pleasure crinkles around their eyes, so I tend to tell them things.


French Revolution 14/11/1989 - 2/11/2017 by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Halfway to my first destination, there was a sudden and alarming ruckus coming from the local access road, and Julian took to his heels. He wasn't particularly alarmed – this horse was never very spooky – but racehorses seem to enjoy having excuses to run, so off he went at speed, back down the sand track to the pasture. I was left with a smile on my face at this little interlude.



Five minutes later I turned left onto a little bush track. Soon I was on charred ground with large bones scattered around. The fire came through here in May when it flared into the swamp, but you can still see the spot where we laid the chestnut mare on the earth the day she died. Where her belly was there is a flat patch of manure, and into this I planted some of the flower seeds. Most of them, I planted in a number of scattered clumps around the area where she had lain. And as I was making the little grooves with my fork and scattering seeds and tamping moist earth back over them, I talked to the mare. Obviously she couldn't hear me, but that's not the point. You know how they say, Write a letter to someone who has done bad things to you expressing all you feel and then don't send it, this was for you? It was kind of like that, but also a nice thing to do in her memory, to tell her what I would tell her if she could hear me.


French Revolution 14/11/1989 - 2/11/2017 by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

So I told her I was glad I knew her, and glad to look after her for the last three years of her long life. Glad of the freedom she had here, and the friendships, and the room to roam. Glad she was re-united with her only foal here for her last three years, and their enjoyment of that reunion. I told her how she'd helped Sunsmart over the loss of his first best buddy, the Arabian mare, whom I was going to bring the other half of the seeds. How it was the grey mare's passing that made the room for us to retire her and her brother, and how her own passing had made a space for a horse who really appreciated it – Julian, who'd come halfway to her grave area with me just then and who is now walking where he chooses and no longer lonely in his new life. How death was sad but made room for more life, and how she was going to make flowers bloom, and if this seed packet didn't take, I'd bring out more until they did. How she had made the birds fly when she died, and stopped living things from being hungry.



And I thanked her for looking after the herd as lead mare after the herd was bereft of their original lead mare, and for producing Sunsmart all those years ago and looking after him, a wonderful horse who takes me places on his back and has had all sorts of adventures with me in the wider world for nearly ten years. How I was taking good care of him and always would. And that I missed her, and her lovely personality and her friendly cuddles and nuzzles, and scratching her itchy spots. 



How I missed the grassy smell of her breath when she sniffed my face, and her bright chestnut shape so like her French grandmother's, and that floaty trot and the way both of them dropped their hindquarters and went base wide when really gathering speed. How I'd loved to watch her doing that in the paddock, and how it had reminded me of my first horse whom I had lost in great sadness and much too soon a long time ago, but whose death had allowed them to live in turn. And how there was always life, and how even in death you are part of that life, a physical part of it in other living creatures, in birds and flowers and butterflies, but also in all the legacies you've left behind and in the minds and memories and lives of those who knew you, whom you are still affecting. How she had contributed even to the culture of her herd and changed it in ways that still persist with her gone. How her friendliness and affection towards others had softened the whole lot of the boys I was left with. And how when I was thinking of her, I was thinking good things.



I then took my leave and continued on the central sand track to the back of our property, and turned left along the boundary, and left again into a little area where we had buried the Arabian mare. On a patch of raised dirt there, I made her a sort of headstone of flowers while I talked to her about her life and times, and life in general, and thanked her for being my childhood companion and being my friend right through to middle age, my longest-standing continuous friend, over three decades of friendship and adventures that had given me such freedom in difficult times, and that I was so glad to have brought her home for her last three years, to freedom and friendships, and if I had to bury her, to have buried her at home, where I would always live and where I'd like to be buried myself alongside them.



Then the dog, who'd been watching me planting, wagged her tail and started digging a hole, which made me laugh. She also does this in the vegetable garden when I'm planting out, or harvesting potatoes. “Look, I'm helping!” And when I laughed, she wagged her tail more and started digging very theatrically, with sideways glances in my direction, and I laughed even more, and she started making assorted growly noises while digging furiously. I went over to her and thanked her for her contribution, let her sniff the seed packet, which she did with great interest, partly backfilled her crater, and then scattered the last of the flower seeds in that loose earth before covering them lightly with more earth. The dog and I had a cuddle and an impromptu game, and then we both went on our way, walking a loop of bush tracks and enjoying each other, the sun and air, the ground beneath our feet and the sky above and the life all around us.











http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/674...x2-940x627.jpg










_To see the other forms of life to which our girls are now contributing out on the conservation reserve, here is a selection of beautiful flora and fauna amongst which they now are:
_
https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoo...57632759314682





 
_A song which conveys what I wanted to with these words. If the embedded video doesn't work, click the direct YouTube link._​


----------



## knightrider

Such a sad time. Everyone's tributes are so beautiful, and I agree with all of them. ((((Hugs)))))


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## SueC

*THE DAY AFTER*

It's the day after. Last night, our neighbour got held up and ran out of light for his tractor. Brett had covered the body with a tarp and an old rug not to upset the horses too much, and so that I could work outside. The horses and donkeys came in from the Common for evening feed time, and due to the tractor delay, I fed them all in the 5-acre hill paddock out west instead of the utility area, and locked them into it until the machinery had come and gone. Our neighbour dropped by to arrange a suitable time for today, and we agreed on just after lunch.

Elizabeth wrote to ask if I can eat when I'm grieving - because I'd made chocolate nut horns yesterday morning. The worst time for me, actually, is always the lead-up to the death, and not afterwards. You're counting hours and counting last this and that, even though you're telling yourself not to. You're standing there with the horse's head against you feeling its warm breath, and something primal inside you screams at the idea of the breath stopping and the body going cold, and at a whole universe ending - all the thoughts, experiences, memories, quirks of a dear friend just dissolving.

I'm functional in the things I need to be functional in - I'm pretty good at disaster drill - and I'm pretty good at holding myself together around the horse I'm about to lose, because I always want our last days and hours together to be good ones, not ones where my distress spills over and infects a perceptive animal. But this holding things together is pretty stressful - not that it's necessarily any more stressful than falling apart - and when I'm stressed out, while I can function and walk around and hold rational conversations and do necessary tasks, it sort of feels like the flu physically: Aching muscles, headaches, nausea, loss of appetite, reduced energy - and the energy you do have is just adrenaline and cortisol and other stress biochemistry kicking in.

I hold it together, not by pretending some kind of alternative reality or by burying my head in the sand, but by focusing on the reality I can make, and that I can contribute to, in the given circumstances. I can choose what I do, if not how I feel - but by doing, you also influence feeling. Basically, I want to make caring acts to the friend I am about to lose, and to everyone else in my care, and I can't do that by focusing on how rotten I'm feeling, or letting my mind wander to the unsavoury things that are going to happen.

So you can spend time with the horse, groom it, focus on all the itchy spots, be friendly with it, talk to it, do all the things you always did, but more of it - and you have to be positive for the horse. I don't mean fake - I think horses can read our feelings well anyway - but just to focus on caring and being friendly and not being this wet blanket, even if your heart is breaking. You can deal with your broken heart after you lose your horse, or when you're not in its face - you simply put the horse first, when you're face to face with it. If you don't, then both of you are going to miss out in terms of the quality of your goodbye.

The hour that Romeo was in the shelter snoozing yesterday and I was waiting for the veterinarian to arrive was the worst of all. I was making pastries in the kitchen just to keep myself from going mad, and of course we do have to eat. When Brett told me the vet had come, I had an important final job to do, and I did it - to get the horse settled and comfortable in the presence of strangers, and eating something nice. I really do have to say that it was a real luxury not to be required for the conclusion of that job, just this once - I've been at many deaths, but I don't find that it gets any easier. But, if the horse hadn't known and trusted Brett for years, I'd have stayed anyway.

When it's over, all that restrained anxiety starts to drain away, like a weight coming off my shoulders, and it's a relief that the very worst thing has already happened, and nothing can hurt the horse now, and I'm no longer in a situation where the worst is yet to come. Instead of being in the grip of stress, you can then just be sad, and start putting your life back together. First of all, though, tiredness hits, and you have to make up for lack of sleep. So, in the days following, you're kind to yourself, you get extra rest, and you focus on eating healthy things, getting gentle exercise, and resuming your normal activities.

So, last night I was tired, but it was also the first time since making the booking on Monday that we had some semblance of normal time with each other - something we didn't have on my birthday, which was that same Monday - and we needed to make up for that. I cooked Pasta Carbonara and we watched a classic Dr Who, which was actually hilarious, and it was good to laugh - I think it's a sort of misguided piety to mooch around in honour of the dead, because I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want my death to cause someone else to feel they shouldn't live their life and have happiness. I think acts of service are great when someone is alive, but pretty pointless when someone is dead. I think then, your job (as always) is to live as well as possible, and to focus on being constructive.

With the awful tension draining away, I slept well last night, for the first time since probably last week (the actual decision was made Friday night, and then the jitters started). This morning, I went into town with Brett, who was going to physio for his shoulder and then work. I walked the dog around Lake Seppings, did some grocery shopping and banking, and picked up his bicycle from its service. At home, I had to cycle up the sand track on said mountain-bike to place some markers for the horse burial, since I didn't want to come along on the tractor. Then I cooked a big batch of Spaghetti Marinara (seafood sauce). Noel arrived and took Romeo to the burial ground, and I let the horses and donkeys back out of the hill paddock to have the run of the place as usual. Sunsmart and Chasseur - both of whom have lost close buddies before - went straight to the place where Romeo had died, and looked around with big eyes and nostrils before resuming grazing, keeping close to each other. They were all far away yesterday when Romeo was put down, but they sort of recognise it anyway.

I'm about to head back to town for some more chores, and then I'll pick up Brett for a walk on Mt Clarence. Jess is enjoying going to town twice today - she loves town walks, and rides in the car, and barking at passing trucks etc.  Exercise will do us both a world of good at this point especially.

:runpony:

Thanks again to everyone leaving kind messages. :hug: For those of you who don't know @QueenofFrance08, she only very recently had to put down a youngster who slipped on ice and injured himself irreparably. It's especially sad that this was a young horse - for the horse, and for the owners and their dreams for the horse.

@gottatrot, loved the Shakespeare, and thanks for your thoughts on the situation, I think you're spot on that it's about the horse, not the owner, ideally.

@DanteDressageNerd, @egrogan, @Knave, @Spanish Rider, @QueenofFrance08, @SwissMiss, @knightrider, thanks again for your thoughts and well-wishes, it's much appreciated, and it's very helpful to read what you have all written. :hug: We all have either been there, or are going to be, and it's good to reach out to one another when people have to face these less wonderful aspects of life.


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## Spanish Rider

Sue, yes, I remember you planting the seeds. Do I dare ask if they ever came up? I planted 4 packages of delphinium in different areas around my garden after my dad died, and not a single one came up. Added frustration, but apropos to an extent.


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## SueC

@Spanish Rider, they did come up, especially around the chestnut mare's site - surface burial, more nutrients, whereas my Arabian mare was actually buried in the ground (we don't do that anymore). They grew very well for a while, but then we had a ridiculously dry winter and spring, and between that and the bushfire we had in the surface burial area, they never bloomed. I can try again this year.

By the way, Lynda thanks you for the invite for riding, but alas is not a horse rider of any description she says, although she's very happy on her bicycle! Also, she apparently won't be near Toledo on this particular trip, which is only a short house sitting trip and of course she has to keep working 9-5 weekdays. ...I've done working holidays myself, but the sort where you have to turn up to a workplace in the morning and stay there. I would find it really difficult to work from home while in a new and exciting place - so much self discipline required, and so little structure and peer pressure!

With all this talk of Spain, I remembered something funny. When I was a kid, we were in Spain once for a week, somewhere on its south coast with a lot of ugly medium-rise concrete buildings (a disease the world over), not in the charming places with historical buildings. Anyway, on a beach there I found a skull, which turned out to be a rabbit skull. I was very excited by this find, and kept it in a hinged watch box with cotton wool in it. I would have been 8 or 9 years old. When we emigrated to Australia a couple of years later, I was told I couldn't take any animal parts. I was very attached to the skull, as well as to a dried puffer fish someone had brought me from the North Sea, but they were not allowed and I was supposed to part with them. So, this is what I did: I carefully opened the main suture of my big teddy bear, dug to its centre, made a cavity, and hid my treasures there. I put the teddy bear stuffing all around it so you couldn't feel it on casual examination, and carefully stitched the teddy bear shut again. ...I still have these two childhood treasures today! The skull is much the same, the fish is worse for wear - it came out of the teddy bear with broken fin spines, and seems to be a dust magnet. Several decades of dust...

:Angel:​
Jess has been acting funny all week. At first, I think it was because she picked up that I was upset - she tends to get upset when she feels that I am. And now, I'm under the impression she is missing her "garden sheep" - her whole routine has changed. For the whole of her existence with us, we'd start the day asking her, "Do you want to come feed Mr Wohohohoho?" And she'd wag her tail, and she knew exactly what I would do - take the kibble soaking bucket from the laundry out to the shed, pile dry ingredients into Romeo's big tub, and mix it all up to moist Bounty bar filling consistency, take the horse who was always in tow to a good, clean, short bit of grass in the garden so that he could pick up what he dropped easily afterwards - of which scatterings Jess partook with delight, and Romeo let her. (A couple of weeks ago, Max, the neighbour's dog and also a kelpie, tried it, but Romeo put his ears back and rushed at him!)

Despite the first morning without Romeo including an early-morning car trip to town and a walk there etc, in the middle of the day I found the dog had hidden herself in the toilet cubicle, where she lay sighing when I discovered her. She never lies in the toilet cubicle... And she's far more sooky and cuddly, and far less playful than normal at the moment...


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## DanteDressageNerd

I think the way you approach the horse before it's passing is very thoughtful, even though it's really really hard. I cant imagine but I think baking can be quite therapeutic or gardening and just going about day by day. Dont think there ever is a "feel better" solution but a way of living that makes it a little more livable. I think healthy distraction is good and doing to keep the mind a bit more settled. Else is just coping but wish you all the best.


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## phantomhorse13

So very sorry you had to say goodbye to a friend. They are never with us long enough.


As an aside, I was surprised to see the Hanover in his name.. guess they are a big name in Standies around the world.


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## Caledonian

I’m so very sorry for your loss. Romeo was such a special guy. He always looked so calm and content in his videos and I only wish that every horse had such a kind and gentle end to their life. 

:hug:


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## SueC

phantomhorse13 said:


> As an aside, I was surprised to see the Hanover in his name.. guess they are a big name in Standies around the world.


Romeo's registered name was Durham Town, his dam Honest Talk, his sire Romeo Hanover. A lot of American stallions come over to Australia after a couple of years producing foals in the US. Romeo Hanover is one of many "Mr Hanovers" who came to Australia as STB sires. Another is Sunsmart and Julian's sire, The Sunbird Hanover. He was an ultra-fast 3yo in the US, who retired to stud after injury and eventually got sent to Australia, where there was interest in his bloodlines. Romeo's full sister Classic Juliet was bred to him - hence Classic Julian - unsuccessfully at first, the mare didn't take for years and had a lot of miscarriages. A couple of years later my birth family had a phone call. The owner had had a traffic accident that left him paralysed and unable to look after the horse, who was coming to the end of commercial viability as a stud stallion, but would still be fine for small stud work. Classic Juliet had been re-booked to him for another attempt that season - he had a handful of other bookings, could we handle them?

That's how we got Sunsmart, Sunset Coast and Classic Julian.


The Sunbird Hanover:










He was a son of the legendary US pacer Albatross:











The Sunbird Hanover was a wonderful, gentle, clever stallion with a keen sense of humour. He was one of my all-time favourite horses, and I am so pleased that I have one of his sons who also happens to be the great-grandson of the mare I rode as a child in the years immediately after finishing the basic riding and dressage course in Germany and before I met my Arabian mare:










And also Julian, another son of The Sunbird Hanover, who also happens to be a nephew of Romeo. Two very nice boys.










Not to forget Chasseur - he's not by a Hanover, he's by the orphan foal left behind when the French mare died in 1984, and looks the most like her of any of her descendants:




And the adorable donkeys (definitely no Hanovers there :rofl:





I'm pretty happy with my menagerie, and with the fact that three other horses who were really significant to me were also part of the place for their retirements. While it wasn't nice to lose them, I'm so glad that we had them, and were able to fill their last years with freedom, fun and TLC.


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## SueC

Capercaillie's incomparable Karen Matheson is on vocals for this very beautiful song about life.






_The wheels of life keep turning.
Spinning without control;
The wheels of the heart keep yearning.
For the sound of the singing soul.
And nights are full with weeping.
For sins of the past we've sown;
But, tomorrow is ours for the keeping,
Tomorrow the future's shown.

Lift your eyes and see the glory.
Where the circle of life is drawn;
See the never-ending story,
Come with me to the Gates of Dawn._


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## SueC

Another beautiful song by the same combination of musicians. This one's for Romeo.






_I remember a meadow one morning in May
With a sky full of dreams that sailed in that day
I was dancing through green waves of grass like the sea
For a moment in time I could feel I was free

There are waves of forgiveness and waves of regret
And the first waves of true love I'll never forget
In the meadow that morning as I wandered alone
There were green waves of yearning for life
Still unknown

Take me home to the meadow that cradles my heart
Where the waves reach as far as you can see
Take me home to the meadow we've been too long apart
I can still hear you calling for me

Take me home to the meadow that cradles my heart
Where the waves reach as far as you can see
Take me home to the meadow we've been too long apart
I can still hear you calling for me

What I'd give to remember that heavenly state
Just a moment in time all mine to create
As I'm taking my last breath, I know what I'll see
There'll be green waves forever out there waiting for me

Take me home to the meadow that cradles my heart
Where the waves reach as far as you can see
Take me home to the meadow we've been too long apart
I can still hear you calling for me_


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## SueC

*THE LEGO OF LIFE*

We had a good Saturday. Brett did some vacuuming and I some washing and culinary tinkering, and gardening. I took Sunsmart for a ride in the afternoon, first time since Monday, and Jess was ecstatic. The weather was nice - warm and sunny with a refreshing breeze. Late in the afternoon I walked through the food garden in golden light to harvest some tomatoes, and instead of having a heavy heart and missing the horse in it, I suddenly saw the garden from the horse's perspective - walking in his footsteps, which are still all over the ground - he made a lot of paths. It was a really warm and peaceful thing - to know how at home he was in that beautiful spot for over six years. It's a lovely, sheltering garden, with expanses of lush grass and fruit trees and vegetable beds - and he was the only horse in the world allowed the full run of this place. It was so nice that we were able to create that space and share it with him. He really fitted right in, and the lush garden extended his life for years. 

Instead of missing the horse, it was like I _was_ the horse somehow, for those minutes when I was walking through that golden light. Very lovely experience.

:cowboy:

Our ride was the fireground loop; a figure-8 through the valley floor at our place and the neighbour's, as far as his second stock dam. We used the sand track to get to the exit gate, but won't be able to for 4-6 weeks in a day or two. The horse lies where the chestnut mare lay, under a group of trees in the valley floor, a little off the track. The weather is warm, and the decomposition process will be accelerating shortly, with the usual noxious phase at the start. Decomposition is not a spectator sport, but it's a very important ecological process. If we didn't have it, the world would have ground to a halt with dead bodies piled up everywhere, locking up the nutrients that are supposed to cycle and be returned to life, and to the service of living things.

In this part of the world, this is standard burial of large animals that aren't redeemed for pet food. We're surrounded by many thousands of acres of native woodlands and heathlands, and can let things happen as they would in nature. While burial in the earth is "out of sight, out of mind", surface burial, where you can do it, returns the nutrients to the biomass more quickly, and allows a broader number of species to access them. All dead bodies decompose - or at least they should - some people are so attached to their remains after life that they get themselves embalmed to slow the process, or even pay to go into "cryogenic suspension" hoping that technology will eventually be able to resurrect them. Me, I'd be happy for my body to be placed under that group of trees when I depart from life, but since this isn't a legal option for humans here, I'm going to donate my body to a medical training facility for students to learn anatomy and dissection instead. It's a useful thing to do, doesn't tie up any land, and it's quite apt that a person who spent much of their life passionate about being a professional educator should be educational to the last drop. And of course, in my 20s I spent three years doing the dissection labs with zoology students - demos and showing them what to do.

A few years back there was a brilliant Japanese film called _Departures_, which Brett and I watched:






I loved how in the Japanese culture, bodies aren't inevitably just whisked away from view and put in a box like they are in the West - people don't sweep things under the mat the same way about death and dying. Of course, partly the movie is about the disdain some people have for those who work with dead bodies, but shows how valuable and beautiful a service they perform for the families of the deceased, and how they ought to be respected and not spat upon. The movie also gets people to actually think about death, and not just to push it away.

There's so many cultural taboos about dead bodies. Some of them are necessary for preventing disease, but others are more about wanting to avoid the reality of death. Put your relative in a box, put them in the ground, and imagine they're going to stay like that, maybe, and depending on your religious views, be up again and tunnelling out at the trumpet call.

I understand that it's distressing for us when the interfaces of those we have loved dissolve back into their constituents, so I don't suggest anyone actually watch the process. But, to understand a little more about it can help people to see that it's not all bad, viewed from a wider perspective.

Natural decomposition in surface burial involves mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, fungi, bacteria etc re-using the materials in a dead body and recycling them back into the biomass. Our bodies are made from the Lego blocks of nature: Atoms in various arrangements with other atoms, bonded together to make a cohesive whole. In life, the Lego blocks are constantly being replaced by other Lego blocks as we breathe in, breathe out, eat, drink, excrete, grow, heal, replace ourselves etc. The really amazing thing is that the Lego blocks are _stardust_ - created by dying suns. Think about that for a minute... it's wonderful. And, that this stardust has been used and re-used by living things since life began. There are atoms inside you right now that were once part of a dinosaur, of a rainforest tree, of a flower, of a bird... We're all familiar with atoms in our food becoming part of our bodies, so we can see how some of our building blocks were previously in lettuce, apples, rice, barbecued chicken etc. But dinosaurs, we don't think about. Nature is so connected through time and space by the recycling of our building blocks over and over again, and continuously, including after death.

One mole of elemental carbon is 12 grams of the stuff and has 6.02 x 10^23 atoms (= 1 mol) in it. (I don't know how to do superscripts in this interface!) One billion, by comparison, is written as 1 x 10^9. To visualise the size of Avogadro's number, the pea analogy gets used: If you had Avogadro's number of peas, it would cover 602 earth sized planets 1m (3.3 ft) deep with peas. (Many of my chemistry students, learning this number, really wanted a mole of chocolates, but of course they'd explode trying to eat even a fraction of that! :rofl And that's just the number of carbon atoms in 12 grams of elemental carbon. How much do you weigh? While of course carbon isn't our sole constituent (hydrogen is 1g/mol, oxygen 16g/mol etc), this will give you an idea of numbers, and of the inevitability that you're carrying "dinosaur atoms" inside you right now.

If you look at the history of how our building blocks are recycled, it's actually very beautiful how that connects everything - and how it connects everything ultimately to the dying suns that produced our building blocks in the first place.






:hug: to all.


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## SueC

*ARCHIVE DIGGING*

I'm digging through our photo archives for a magazine article, and coming across some stuff along the way which has me going, "Wow, did we come a long way with our cow paddock!"

1. Brett tree planting, mid-2010 - we did that from the weekend the property settlement went through. The internal pastures behind him hadn't even been fenced! The horses were yet to arrive. Our priorities were putting up some polybraid fences for them, and getting shade and shelter in that bare pasture started.

2. That's me in our now-bedroom, late 2011. By this time, we'd built the farm shed to the left, and the polybraid fencing of the western pastures was done. You can actually just see my grey Arabian mare if you look closely - about waist height on me and just to the right, next to the avenue of plastic bubbles which these days is a well-grown shelterbelt.

3. The foundations, ready for the concrete pour. This part, we sub-contracted out, same as the timber framing and roofing. Once that was done, we started doing DIY.

4. Concrete pouring day. It was beastly hot that December day. and we had to sacrifice rainwater from the tank to pour on the slab so it wouldn't crack too much as a result of the weather. This was important because this concrete floor, once sealed, would be our finish floor, except in the wet areas, which I tiled.

5. The frame going up - most internal walls and the rear corners of the building framed conventionally, and ladder frames where the strawbale walls were going up, with posts for roof support to come.

6. The ladder frames in our bedroom; living area beyond. A nice corn crop by the rainwater tank. Sunsmart partially concealed by the car, my Arabian mare just behind.

7. Trying out the attic! Arabian mare to the right, in the pasture. The other horses are concealed.

8. Brett harvesting potatoes on roofing day, January 2012. Chris and his team did a marvellous job on the framing and roofing for us, and now we had a "hay shed" ready to turn into a house!

9. Notching a bale so it can fit around the post behind, February 2012. This was the fun part - the walls went up very quickly, with just the two of us building.

10. Brett cutting trench mesh for the top plate, March 2012. At that stage, I was still afraid of the angle grinder, but that changed quickly when I did my kitchen backsplash and needed to cut corners off my field tiles to insert a little bling - little red feature tiles at each junction...


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## SueC

*AUTUMN HARVEST*

Autumn is the best season we get in Redmond - the heat is mostly over, and you get clear, sunny days with cool breezes - great outdoors weather for riding, walking, gardening, doing farm jobs etc. Some photos to show what the autumn harvest is bringing us:

1. A summer berry tart made with our own berries - frozen boysenberries. The custard is made from local milk not bought in the shops, and eggs from down the road we swap for honey. The pastry is an invention of mine. I loathe shortcrust, and whenever a recipe calls for it, I fandangle something from porridge oats, wholemeal flour, ground almonds, melted butter and a little water. It's far tastier and more nutritious than shortcrust.

2. The last of the Painted Mountain Corn, which I harvested today. Delicious, colourful, full of antioxidants, lower in sugar and higher in protein than hybrid sweetcorn - Brett and I really prefer this stuff, it's tasty, very nutty, and satisfying - one steamed cob fills you up like a big handful of peanuts. We served this to guest with children weekend before last as a side, and everyone loved it. The family took home seeds to grow their own.

3. The Friesian steers and donkeys getting into the corn plants I cut off for them, and the substandard cobs, this morning. No waste! Broad beans will now be sown into the sweetcorn patches for winter and spring. A legume is a perfect following crop, and _Aquadulce_ broad beans make plentiful and tender eating all spring.

4. Seed tray in the greenhouse.

5. Peas germinating for early planting, out in the sun for the day. I raise them in the greenhouse and plant them out when they are sturdy - it's easier than direct seeding, weeding and slug control. Survival is excellent this way.

6. The Sundowner apple tree is only a few years old and yielding like mad. These apples are wonderful eating.

7. Tomato season - I spread them on a towel indoors in the sun when they start to tinge orange. That way, I don't have to put nets over them to dissuade the birds. They ripen beautifully in that spot. This year I have assorted salad tomatoes including Tommy Toe and Tigerella, plus Roma tomatoes, Amish Paste, and Nono's Italian Pear - all grown here from seed, like all my vegetables.

8. Selected pumpkins - a few Turks' Turbans, lots of Potimarron. The cucurbits didn't do very well this year because of the strange summer we've had, but we've been eating lots of pumpkins, and I'm making a brown rice, pumpkin, seed and green salad later which is delicious.

9. Pumpkins under the hand print wall. More than half the people who were involved in building this house have now "printed and signed" - including Ophelie, who was pregnant at the time when she helped Tim put the doors in, and came back to print both her hand and her little boy's on our wall. 

10. The freezer is loaded with excess summer F&V: Stewed nectarines and peaches, condensed plums, frozen tomatoes, Mountain corn, grated and diced zucchini, and berries. I don't have enough tomatoes to make them into paste yet, so I freeze as I go, and then cook with defrosted tomatoes in winter. The honey frames are in there to stop them getting eaten by moths while off the hive.


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## SueC

..HF has been spitting the dummy on uploads for over 20 minutes, so here's the rest of the photos referred to above (hopefully):


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## Knave

I just think you have the prettiest home and yard, and even your food is pretty! It all shows your hard work, but also a beauty of nature. I love all your photos.


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## SueC

*LANDSCAPING FOR BUSHFIRE SAFETY AND BIODIVERSITY*

This is from the current issue of _The Owner Builder_ - this article kept me really busy for a while, and with my Biology/Environmental science hat firmly on. And, I think I forgot to post the last one before that on my journal, so I'll do that soon. Plus Brett and I both have things in the current _Grass Roots_, that we'll get around to scanning and posting sometime.

Click several times to enlarge to reading size! But, this is a monster of an article. There are prizes for finding the mistake on the garden diagram - it's one you can deduce by logic! But we were too bleary-eyed to see it before deadline.


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## SueC

I was kind of reviewing _Wild Mood Swings_ before we lost Romeo. Quite topical then is this song about love and mortality, one of my favourites off the album. It's like those immortal poems you learn in English literature courses, but set to very lush music. This is _Treasure_.


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## SueC

Apparently I am not just reviewing them, but now dreaming about them! This is from the "Crazy Dreams" thread:

I actually had another weird dream! But I have to explain something before I tell it. About a year ago I bought these really comfortable pyjama pants, three pairs of them - a lovely soft cotton, and with cute prints. They are so nice I started wearing them around the house as bottoms in summer because they were so comfortable and cute and not too warm. Also, when I have to write a serious article, I have this writer tradition of changing into my pyjama pants and then working on the laptop in my "horizontal office" - sitting on the bed or sofa - and getting into my "officewear" really gets me in the writing zone.

And because of that, I am starting to wear some holes into the backs of some of these pyjama pants. It's really annoying - you actually can't mend them. I've tried - stitching is pointless because the fabric is threadbare in the "Swiss Cheese" area, and ironing on patches makes you feel like you're sitting on pork crackling, plus it rips along the edges of the patch. The latest pair this has been happening to, I have been wearing around the house anyway when not in company - because I am in pyjama demise denial.

Now to the dream. I dreamt I was writing in my "office attire" - civilised top with bra and everything, pyjama bottoms - when there was a knock at the door. I got up and answered the door and it was Robert Smith and his wife Mary. I blinked - surely I was hallucinating (how meta is that!) - but they didn't disappear, so I greeted them and asked would they like a cup of tea. This seemed fine to them, so I stepped back on the threshold to let them in, and then explained that I would be walking backwards facing them along the corridor (a sort of human rein-back demonstration) because my pyjama pants posterior was a Swiss Cheese. And as I was walking backwards, I was going, "Bre-ett, please put the kettle on, I have to go change my pants!"

Hee hee. Brett (in real life) said to me, "Oh, that's an anxiety dream!"


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## SueC

*RIDING REPORTS*

Tough calls can inhibit riding. Anyway, on my birthday Monday before last I managed to do the same trail that I photographed as a multipost photoessay when the Christmas trees were in full, fiery bloom: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page38/#post1970681183

And I've also done the "Fireground Loop" again, last weekend. Since then, tiredness, having to catch up on tasks and crazy weather have kept me from riding - but I hope to be back on the horse as normal again this coming week. I won't have a camera with me for previously documented rides, but when I get a decent day, I'll explore the northern boundary of the Sleeman Creek Reserve, that I did the "reconstituted" post on here: https://www.horseforum.com/trail-rid...post1970688827

I'll have a camera for that.










The newest ride report is that I rode the multi-post photographed loop in the opposite direction on Friday! ...And on Saturday I rode my bicycle. Today was Sunday lunch: Zucchini, ricotta and feta soup (texture like vichyssoise, the classic leek and potato soup), home-baked flatbread with tabbouleh from our garden ingredients, and lamb and feta, drizzled with sweet chilli sauce. Cherry clafoutis for afters, own cherries. Officially too torpid after that to ride! :Angel:


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## SueC

*THE BIRD PUZZLE*

On Tuesday, I felt flat because of an AGM that had gone on until late Monday night, and spent some time just chilling and reading a book. It's an excellent book - _The Cuckoo's Calling_, a detective novel by JK Rowling under pseudonym - it's written with delicious use of language and sharp social observation, and the detective and his clever secretary are completely endearing, plus the puzzle too is excellent, so I'm trying to write this post and get back to it to find out whodunnit...

Anyway, I was engrossed in this thing when suddenly I became conscious that the birds in our garden were making a loud and riotous cacophony, and that these were dozens and dozens of tiny little birds - mostly silvereyes (the size of a mouse) and a few willy wagtails - sitting in the one bush, about four metres from me, with their chatter growing increasingly frantic. So, I opened the French door and stood on the paving, watching intently. The first thing that struck me is that none of the birds were flying away on my account - they were tightly bunched in the bush, twittering incessantly, even as I moved closer. I was standing really still trying to see what sorts of birds they were, as they were much hidden by foliage and it was difficult to see an entire one - when I saw a long, narrow movement going through the bush. Next thing, a little reptilian face turned, with golden colouring under its neck and a little tongue flicking in and out. A tiger snake, actually climbing around in the bush! And the little birds, ganging up, collecting around it in tight chattering groups, just out of striking range. Wow! This isn't something I've seen before!

We live with a few hundred acres of bushland at the back of us, including a swampy valley floor teeming with frogs. Dugites and tiger snakes are very common on our block - we must have hundreds around, but they are mostly shy - you don't see them out in the open that often, even though they are there. Both types are highly venomous, and grow around 2m or more in length. The main problem is dogs, if they search for and attack them, but our kelpie really has snake sense, probably from her dingo ancestors in the hereditary mix of the breed. Snakes are put off by vibrations in the ground, and try therefore to keep away from large animals, and from humans if they can hear them. So, if you're in dugite or tiger snake territory and can't see your footing, stomp a lot (preferably not on a snake though!). I occasionally see one riding, but always on the retreat.

You have to be careful to wear adequate footwear when bush-bashing - walking in concealed footing - and also in your vegetable garden, with where you put your hands and feet. It's just commonsense really. We have a big frog pond in the middle of our vegetable garden, and occasionally I see a snake in it. Basically, don't step on them, don't get your hands near them, always assume there is one where you can't see the ground, and you'll behave safely. If you do have an accident, the hospitals have good antivenenes, and the majority of people survive bites - it's infants and the elderly that are at particular risk, plus people bitten in unfortunate places or too far from hospital. In Australia, more people die falling out of bed each year than from snakebite. Really! In 2007-2016 in Australia, there were 25 deaths from venomous snakes and lizards, and 523 deaths from falling out of bed! See this article on the actual statistics:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-18/how-your-worst-fears-stack-up-against-reality/9277098

By the time I had the camera the other day, the snake had disappeared. But, I found this clip of a tiger snake climbing a tree on YouTube - isn't it clever how they can do that despite not having any appendages?






I mentioned the little incident to my husband when he got home, and he said, "Wow, we've not seen one in the upper garden for years!" And then, "Of course! It's because Romeo isn't running around the garden anymore. He was always going _ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump_ all around the house, vibrating the ground, and it kept the snakes away, especially as he was spending more than 12 hours a day in the garden each day, in the last few years of his life!"

So, I'll have to be a little more alert now around the garden.


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## Knave

That is so neat! We get groups of birds like that, and the noise always catches my attention. They fly around just like a school of fish in the sky, and I get mesmerized. 

Every time I watch the birds like that I feel like it is a gift from God.


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## SueC

Or colourful clouds, or scalloped beach edges, or wildflowers, etc etc etc... it's a beautiful thought!


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## gottatrot

That's very interesting. I think snakes are beautiful creatures, but we also don't have any poisonous ones.
We have these garter snakes that eat slugs and bugs, so are very useful.








As kids we called them yellow racers.

We also have these cute little salamanders. Only poisonous if you eat them.


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## Spanish Rider

Well, we have _*******a_ snakes (yes, you understood that Spanish word, right?), which have venom, but their fangs are located way back in their palate, designed to incapacitate small animals. I have seen some around 6 feet in length and a good 3-4 inches thick, and I've also seen them jump. I actually unintentionally drove over one at night (light Renault SUV, 4 people in the car) with all 4 wheels ("bum-BUM, bum-BUM"), stopped the car, turned around to see how big it was,... AND IT WAS GONE!!! Tough sons of guns.

Then we also have small vipers, which are highly poisonous, but I've only ever seen one. Basically, we stay away from rocky areas and long grasses in the summer.


Sue, I read and thoroughly enjoyed your bush fire article, especially the bits about the plants and garden organization. It is very interesting how one's climate affects one's garden and landscaping. Here, bush fires are not a problem because we have summer drought (no rain = no storms = no lightening = no fires), even though our native bushes and trees are of the sclerophyll type you mention. Plus, our homes don't have a speck of wood in them except for interior doors, so that would help ward off an "ember attack". Actually, because our brick-and-mortar homes absorb heat and quickly develop a brick-oven effect, we are more concerned with creating shade on the southern and western façades with trees and climbers, which is diametrically opposed to your bush fire protection "protocol". Quite curious.


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## Spanish Rider

The archaic censoring of words on HF really peeves me. At the beginning of my previous comment, I discussed [email protected] snakes, which is their true common name, not an insult, not slang. UGH! Here's proof: 

https://www.faunaiberica.org/culebra-*******a 
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malpolon_monspessulanus
Culebra *******a (Malpolon monspessulanus). Familia COLUBRIDAE - Región de Murcia Digital


OMG, the censoring even blocks out the URL address. There is no hope.


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## Knave

We have snakes, but not around my yard. Snakes never bothered me much, and I would always catch them big ol bull snakes and pack them around as a kid. 

When I was a teenager I was killing rattlers, and I decided I wanted to catch one a tote it around (I never claimed to be smart). I finally got the poor guy caught (my friend and I were riding up a canyon), and I went to mount my mare.

Now, she was a fiery little thing, but I had this one coming. When I went to put my foot in the stirrup holding that rattler she said “Nope.” She flew sideways kind of pulling my foot for a second, just enough to create a tiny stumble. Anyways, that loosened my grip on the snake. He reached around to bite me and I chucked him fast. 

Accidentally the trajectory of that throw sent him straight into my friend’s direction. She was yelling at me and managed to avoid the snake. She was laughing and I killed the poor snake who had been half tolerant of all of this so my mare would allow me to pack him.

My father almost killed me when we told him the story. Lol. I’d kill my girls too. 

I felt kind of bad for killing that particular snake. However, around here most anyone kills the rattlers they come across. Anymore I don’t kill them unless they are around somewhere someone would be going through. If they are in the mountains I leave them alone.


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## bsms

I kill rattlers in the yard, particularly close to the house. In the desert, I leave them alone. My two acres has a half-acre I never use. Mostly a deep wash or land just beyond the wash. Rattlers would be fine there since none of us go there.

Non-poisonous snakes are welcome in the yard and/or close to the house. Pack rats are murder on car engines. Anything that eats them and won't kill me or any kids/dogs is very welcome.


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## Caledonian

Our only snake is the Adder. It's protected by law and, while it is venomous, the bite is not considered severe for most people. They're not aggressive and will bite only as a last resort. 

I've never seen one as they spend most of their time either hibernating or hiding; i may have passed one on the moors without knowing. Very few people have been killed by them. A quick search said 10 in the last 100 years.


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## SueC

Spanish Rider said:


> The archaic censoring of words on HF really peeves me. At the beginning of my previous comment, I discussed [email protected] snakes, which is their true common name, not an insult, not slang. UGH! Here's proof:
> 
> https://www.faunaiberica.org/culebra-*******a
> https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malpolon_monspessulanus
> Culebra *******a (Malpolon monspessulanus). Familia COLUBRIDAE - Región de Murcia Digital
> 
> 
> OMG, the censoring even blocks out the URL address. There is no hope.


:hug: Come sit down and have a nice cool drink, you're amongst friends.

Years ago, discussing a house building technicality on HF, I had to put in an apostrophe to be able to use the construction term "diffusion ret'arder" - and then got a little note saying, "You really shouldn't be naughty and bypass the censoring system!" Well, how was I going to discuss that aspect of building then??? "Please guess the correct term for a sort of vapour barrier thingy but not quite..."

I do much appreciate the friendly atmosphere and absence of verbal abuse and profanities on HF. This makes it a rarity on the Sodom and Gomorrah of internet discussion pages - a gleaming jewel, in fact. Maybe the censorship software needs to be programmed to allow related non-insulting words that contain the insulting word? As in, "allow these"? Such as, when the term is obviously encased by other letters?


@gottatrot, that garter snake is extremely cute!!! :dance-smiley05:

@Knave, :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: 

OK, I did crazy things too, as a kid. Once, at around age 14, I picked up a bull-ant - these things are over an inch long and bite like crazy and have a sting in their tails, like the ancient wasps the are related to.










And I was going, "Pretty pretty bull-ant! Nothing to this! Hullo hullo, I can feel your footsteps, and see, I'm not dangerous so you don't have to bite me!" And for a good 30 seconds or so, things were indeed peaceful. But then, I suddenly panicked - perhaps my strange cerebrum stopped being able to override my reptile brain survival instincts - and tried to fling the ant off me by flicking my hand. And then it bit me, repeatedly...and hung on with its jaws... 

@Caledonian, have you seen the Loch Ness monster in your travels? (And if not you, perhaps your horse?)

@bsms, rodents are also hell on car electrics in Australia... They just love chewing the cables...

And now, some Leunig:










Micheal Leunig is a national treasure... does wonderful quirky poems and marvellous cartoons and art, and not all of them naughty like the above!

https://www.leunig.com.au/


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## SueC

*VALÉ NOTECHIS SCUTATUS*

In postscript to this post: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page42/#post1970704825

I had to kill the snake this afternoon, because it had hung around all week. Tiger snakes are quite territorial, so relocating them doesn't work too well, unless you take them a long way away, and then, ecologically, since they're not in short supply, they'll be making life harder for their fellow snakes in the relocation area (and for the prey animals) if relocated...

We unfortunately have to do this sometimes, since we're not willing to risk accidental bites to us or our critters (and associated huge veterinary bills - kelpie Max next door cost $800 to treat when he was bitten recently) when they hang around at such close quarters all the time. My safe-to-humans, quick-for-snake technique involves a long-handled metal-tooth rake, and a sharp spade. It's a one-two action: You pin the snake with the rake, and when you're sure it can't wiggle out of the restraint, you take its head off quickly and cleanly with the spade. Make sure your spade is sharp - I still shudder in recollection of one time I killed a snake with a blunt spade twenty years ago, when it became a choking session, instead of a quick kill - because of the blunt spade coupled with soft ground...

This tiger snake was about 1.5m long and very well fed, presumably on all the frogs in our garden. It's a pity, it was a beautiful creature, but the frogs are applauding already...


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## Caledonian

I certainly wouldn't want a Tiger Snake so close to the house and animals. It was the best and quickest way to deal with it given the options.

I still shudder when I remember how i failed to kill a tiny, wild and very ill bunny on my first attempt. It was screeching and wandering, blindly, around the field and i thought the best thing to do was to end it's misery. I never realised how difficult it would be to use a spade hard enough to end a life. While everyone was sympathetic (i was in my teens at the time), both my mum and dad came from families where hunting, fishing and growing your own produce was normal and they felt that it was sad but a part of life. :|

No, I haven't seen the Loch Ness Monster LOL... of course i tend to stay around the Fort Augustus area and I think she prefers the Castle and north end! ;-) :lol:


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## SueC

mg: @Caledonian, I had a similar horrible experience as a middle schooler, trying to kill an injured rabbit! I'd gotten off the school bus, nobody was home but I didn't have a house key either, so I had to wait, grrrr. (Why should I have a house key, I only live there! :evil Anyway, then I noticed this half-grown rabbit on the grass near the house. It was sort of twitching. On closer examination, it had a broken back, and was paralysed in the hindquarters. Probably a dog shook it and abandoned it. I felt sorry for the poor thing and wanted to put it out of its misery. I'd killed chickens etc, but with an axe, and I couldn't find the axe, or anything useful like that. I found a pair of secateurs lying around. :hide: I had no idea these aren't great for breaking something's neck. I would have been better off picking up a heavy rock or a brick and banging it on the back of its skull with force, but it takes an experience like the one I had to develop the necessary mindset to do that...


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## bsms

I flew over Loch Ness many times (and Loch Lochy and Loch Linnhe, if I've read the maps correctly). We called it the loch run - a way to go VFR under the clouds from one side of Scotland to the other. Never saw any monsters. Maybe the F-111 made too much noise.










https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...-f-111-aardvark-at-the-height-of-the-cold-war​


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## SueC

I've got a flying question for you, @bsms. With the jets you were flying, if the pilot for some reason loses consciousness (embolism, first episode of epilepsy, stroke, bad memory of MIL etc), does the plane necessarily crash? Are these things flown solo?

Also, wasn't that interesting about the Boeing 737s crashing because of some automated nose-down programme... even more interesting that a CEO unreservedly accepted responsibility for the fault on behalf of his company...


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## Caledonian

@*SueC* - It's a horror film for rabbits! Sometimes we have to learn the hard way. I can't imagine killing chickens with an axe, yet i eat chicken every week. My Grandmother thought nothing about doing it and my Grandfather would come home with rabbits, salmon and deer. I realize how sanitized my life has been in comparison

@*bsms* - yes, Sea Loch Linnhe, Loch Lochy then Loch Ness as you head north east. It’s a natural path along the faultline.

Jets and other aircraft are regular visitors in some parts. I love to see them flying low along the mountains, especially the larger ones, such as the Hercules or even the Chinook. I always stop to watch. Unfortunately, we usually see the Chinook when people are lost in the mountains and lives are at risk. 

Good questions; I never thought about that before @*SueC* .


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## bsms

Depends. The F-111 had dual flight controls. I wasn't rated as a pilot, but pilots would teach WSOs the basics so an incapacitated pilot didn't require a crash. Not sure it could be landed, though, because the wing sweep and flaps were on the pilot's side. The EF-111 was modified by a company that did a lot of work for the navy, and they took out the second set of flight controls. If the pilot of an EF-111 was incapacitated, ejection was the only option.

Fly by wire systems like the F-16 allowed the plane to be designed in a way that was unstable - difficult to fly manually, but easy with the help of the flight computers. An unstable plane is more maneuverable than one designed for stability. Which is good in a fighter, but seems really STUPID in a passenger plane! 

The F-111 had a primitive version. There were computer errors that required turning off the computer, but I never experienced one. I gather they made it awkward to fly, but not to the point of not being able to control the plane. I dislike any sort of computer assist where the computer can totally override the pilot. The pilot, after all, has a lot more incentive to keep the plane airborne than the software engineer! My experience with software engineers during my time working in test & evaluation was that they were smart people who thought they were much smarter than anyone else.

I'm thinking what Boeing did had to be REALLY BAD for the CEO to say what he said. Having a plane do the opposite of what your flight control inputs were asking had to be terrifying. At least in fighters we had ejection seats! Angle of Attack sensors do fail sometimes. The flip side is pilots sometimes become disoriented by visual illusions. But I'd rather trust an Air Force fighter pilot than a software engineer with no skin in the game!

This video gives a good feel for what a low level is like in a jet fighter. I was in F-4s before F-111s so I remember front & back seating as well as the F-111's side by side:


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## Caledonian

My IT lecturer at college always said that if people understood how easy it was for software to fail they'd never fly.


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## SueC

Our Bill, age 84, is disillusioned with people and thinks things will be better "when robots rule the world". We've been trying to explain that robots are programmed by humans, and therefore neither infallible, nor incorruptible!

That flight footage looks very fun! A bit more exciting than passenger plane flight. Mind you, I love the kick when the engines come in properly before take-off in a jumbo. Wheee! Only being on a turbo-charged horse going from standstill to flat out in nothing flat is anything like it. Acceleration in cars is very pedestrian, it doesn't give you the feeling of flight like a horse does. Acceleration on a bicycle is way better than in a car too.

Re *Loch Lochy*: That's a spoofy name! Reminds me of _Gorilla gorilla_, and a few fun Australian place names: Wagga Wagga in NSW (and it's said "Wogga Wogga"), Woollomooloo in harbourside Sydney. Paradise, Nowhere Else and Lower Crackpot in Tasmania. In Perth, Western Australia, there are two suburbs which give rise to the local joke: Where would you rather live, Innaloo or Upper Swan? And here in Albany, there are localities called Lower King and Bayonet Head. Once, we were driving through these, on the way to a nice bushwalk, when Brett said, in instructional voice, "Lower King! Bayonet Head!" :rofl:


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## SueC

*UGH AND ANTIDOTES*

OK, I've already gone all around and told the joke about how many politicians does it take to milk a cow. (24. Four hold on to the teats, twenty lift the cow up and down, in case you missed it.) That's because Australia has an election campaign, and so we're watching even less TV than normal.

A few posts back, I linked to some work by our national treasure Michael Leunig. We have another: _First Dog On The Moon_. Amongst other things, he's the only guy you need to read on Australian politics - he sums it up succinctly. And alas, here are the depths of the gutter of Australian politics at present, conveyed economically and vividly by this recent cartoon (click, and click again to get full size):










That was the ugh. Here's an antidote:










We do a lot of antidote stuff...


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## Caledonian

Great flying footage. It's as close as I'll ever get to flying a jet!:smile:


There’s nothing like the sound and feel of the wind when you’re on a galloping horse. I’ve lost count of the number of horses I’ve mounted yet, I still get the adrenaline rush when I put my foot in the stirrup. Cars are too predictable and there’s nothing better than when the horse shows that it’s also enjoying the freedom.

I know, Loch Lochy (Lòchaidh) is only slightly better than the remote Loch Loch :icon_rolleyes:. So remote that they couldn’t be bothered thinking of a name! The majority of our names are from Scots Gaelic, Norse and other long-lost languages.

If you’re excitable, you could move to the village of Dull, which is twinned with Bland in New South Wales and Boring in Oregon.

Ecclefechan is on the mainland and Longa Tonga, Willa Minga Honga, Cuppa Water, Fografiddle, Helliglobo, Drongi Taing and Loomi Shun are on the islands of Orkney and Shetland. They could be from a fantasy novel! I knew that the islands had the best names but it wasn't until i did a search that i realised that they're that strange. 

There’s a lot of Backsides and the hamlet of Brokenwind in the north east, while Rotten Bottom is in the south of Scotland.:rofl:


That’s a good cow/politician joke!

My list of nice things for today:
My garden coming to life
Sunshine
Strangers who talk to me like family
The beagle dog who dropped his ball at my feet, inviting me to play:smile:


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## SueC

*RANTING, LETTERS AND DONKEYS*

...I will do a proper list soon, @Caledonian - it's a very nice idea! And get back to aircraft too, @bsms!

But for now, I thought I'd share a letter I got from an elderly gentleman from our Grass Roots community in Australia, in response to having a good rant about various idiocies that was published in the Feedback section recently... It's such a hilarious and cheerful letter. He sent it to me "via Albany / Denmark district" as he didn't have my actual address, and amazingly, it got here! Grass Roots readers / contributors have a long history of sending things randomly or regularly to each other, which is fun. You make really good friends, and hear from all sorts of people. Last week, I mailed out scented gumleaves to about ten people... 

I'll include my rant, this particular letter I got in response, and also a mysterious picture that came in the same envelope! The edges of the letter seem to have been burnt over a small fire - I'm sure we've all done that at some stage of our lives... 

...and also, some photos of what was going on in the garden while I was photographing these items. Don Quixote discovered that I was in the room, looking through the window! :rofl:


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## Knave

Oh, that makes me so happy!


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## SueC

It's those donkeys, @Knave - instant laughter. :rofl:

Tell you what's making me laugh this morning though, bwahahahaha:










These cartoons appear in The Guardian online, and aren't always political, but at election time they are - in the drollest possible way! :twisted: 
@loosie, I know you don't do journals, but have you seen this cartoon yet? So therapeutic! :happydance:

I'd better get back to digging my ditches! Photos soon. Hope everyone has a good week!


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## bsms

It was still legal to sell raw milk in Montana in 1980 although the folks who did mostly sold to people they knew and trusted. A few years later it was made illegal. I checked and to this day it is illegal to sell milk fresh from the cow!


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## SueC

In Australia, it's also not generally legal to make or import cheese made from unpasteurised milk, such as Roquefort! When Australian cheesemaker Will Studd imported some into Australia, it resulted in a court case and in Mr Studd being ordered to either re-export the cheese or dispose of it by deep burial. He put the cheese in a coffin, ordered a hearse, draped the French flag over it, invited the French press, and buried it. Outrage in France, and justly so...

Will Studd was born in Europe and educates Australians on cheese:

The Cheese | Selected by Will Studd | Australia and the U.S.

It's also illegal in Australia to sell your excess eggs from your backyard chickens without an expensive and prohibitive license from the Egg Marketing Board. Everybody ignores that - backyard eggs are openly sold at almost every workplace, by employees with backyard chickens - and I don't think the police have arrested anyone over that, but people have been fined by the big dairy bodies for selling milk directly, and commercial dairy farmers who do it are in danger of losing their licenses - except in cases of selling it to someone with an orphaned animal. Angel: I am an orphaned animal! :rofl

And it's illegal to sell home-grown potatoes - only people with expensive commercial licenses are allowed to. Or to have beehives without paying the same license fee as a commercial operator, even if you only have a single hive in your backyard for personal use. Etc etc - I didn't have space in the rant to include those examples, it was already so long. The pattern is obvious: Protect the big players and the corporate sector, and discourage small business and cottage industries, which were long the lifeblood of economies worldwide, when ordinary people sold and traded to ordinary people without middle men and licensing authorities extracting their pounds of flesh. And this is why civil disobedience and activism is as important to restoring these kinds of freedoms as it was in the 60s for MLK's cause to stop discrimination against persons on account of their race / ethnic background.

I really loathe how they keep appealing to things like "health" and "disability" as a cover to protect their monopolies - it's a smokescreen. Woolworths and Coles, Australia's biggest supermarket chains, were importing prawns from regions with White Spot disease, and authorities were turning a blind eye. Australian prawn farmers agitated about it for years before the actual disaster happened: Supermarket prawns got used as bait by recreational fishermen, and the virus got into Australian waterways, destroying many small prawn farmers here. :evil: It was so predictable. The Quarantine mob were supposed to be testing (independent, privately financed testing found that imported White Spot was in many samples taken from supermarket delis). This is the same mob who recently burnt some plant samples sent from a French museum to the Australian herbarium on loan, of original samples from Botany Bay... irreplacable... 

There is such idiocy in this world! :angrily_smileys:


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## egrogan

We are a major dairy state (though even here dairies are barely hanging on) and fortunately finding raw milk is fairly easy, though there is a lot of “winking and nodding” to comply with the laws. Still a hard living for farmers though: https://m.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/is-selling-raw-milk-viable-in-rural-vermont/Content?oid=2412240

I have to be honest I’ve never looked at any laws about selling backyard eggs-I used to sell to my neighbors for $3/dozen, but now all my neighbors have their own chickens so I give all my extra to the local food bank (I’m amazed laws allow them to be accepted, actually!) My hens are back in full swing with these longer days and I’ve already got about 5 doz too many-will have to run down to the food shelf soon!


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> I have to be honest I’ve never looked at any laws about selling backyard eggs-I used to sell to my neighbors for $3/dozen, but now all my neighbors have their own chickens so I give all my extra to the local food bank (I’m amazed laws allow them to be accepted, actually!)


The laws allow them to be accepted because donating to food banks is not putting you in competition with the big players in the marketplace. It's the same with donating to any charity. It's why cakes and biscuits and jam are perfectly legal to be made in anyone's home kitchen for a charity sale or for fundraising for schools etc, but not for any other reason. It's got nothing to do with health (although that's the purported excuse) - everything to do with not competing with the people making our rules in our lovely so-called democracies... which are really serial dictatorships by people interested in upholding their own advantages via the law, no matter who you vote for... :evil:

PS: Thanks for a great link!  It looks like the laws around dairy are a little less draconian in Vermont than Australia, but still I notice there is prohibitive hoop-jumping required... :angrily_smileys:


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## SueC

@*bsms* , that flying footage you posted the other day is fabulous! :happydance: We watched that several times - it's so different from a commercial jet flight! What amazing machines these are. And isn't it a shame that we don't live on a sort of Malacandra, which would have invented these kinds of technologies simply because they are amazing and beautiful and clever, and not because it gives people a defence advantage (since Malacandra is not a "silent planet" and therefore its people aren't corrupt). Imagine if F-111s were basically like carousels or road bikes or skateboards or rollerblades or helicopters... Expensive I know, but no more expensive on Malacandra than on Earth - and one goes a long way with community sharing... although they'd have to have space for a passenger or two... do they?

I've been up in my neighbour's plane, he built it from kit in his shed as a long-term hobby project - took him over a decade. Now he's in his 60s and flying it for fun when not working with his cows. It's great fun getting the bird perspective, and in a small plane, you actually get more of a bird feeling than an airborne bus feeling! (Shame about my useless semi-circular canals, because I would have quite enjoyed aerobatics otherwise! But I go green even just on a boat going out on a swell...)

Brett and I went ballooning as a treat for his 35th birthday a decade ago... that was great fun too. Brett actually knew what F-111s were... and that they've apparently been retired now...

I've just added a few of the pictures from when we went in a hot air balloon - highly recommended! Very floaty and serene...










http://photography.coulstock.id.au/g...img_7208-1.jpg


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> The laws allow them to be accepted because donating to food banks is not putting you in competition with the big players in the marketplace...It's got nothing to do with health (although that's the purported excuse) - everything to do with not competing with the people making our rules in our lovely so-called democracies... which are really serial dictatorships by people interested in upholding their own advantages via the law, no matter who you vote for... :evil:


Sadly I’m sure you’re exactly right. Sigh.


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## SueC

I'm only not "liking" this because it's so depressing (for good reasons). :hug: But, @egrogan, the nice thing is that we can all shine our lights in our own little circles of influence, and in our own little microcosms, such as your farm and ours and @Knave's and everyone's domains here! I really think that's an important response, so that our own souls aren't blighted by this rubbish, and it also makes a difference to people we come into contact with, and animals, and landscapes... All we are responsible for, ultimately, is our own lives and our own microcosms, and that we're decent to others, regardless of what crazy people in leadership or elsewhere are doing. Those are sort of giant gnats. Occasionally you can swat one :rofl: but - probably the most useful thing is to make their environment less comfortable for them. They don't like light... and you can deny them your blood... ;-)


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## bsms

I loved flying. Wish it wasn't so expensive. I had a private pilot's license a long time ago but couldn't afford to fly private planes. Had to choose between flying or buying the kids clothes. Now? Looks like a couple of hours a month of very regulated flying would force me to sell my horses.

Speaking of regulation. The church I go to is very small. It was built before the county had a building code. We have an old stove, grandfathered in as pre-code. It is used maybe twice a year to cook something. We looked at trying to build a classroom and moving the kitchen. If we call the stove a "warming stove" - no cooking anything from scratch - we can keep it. If we want a stove stove, one you can cook fresh chili on, then we are considered a commercial operation and would need to install a commercial restaurant fan and air recycling system. We were told that would cost us $40,000! We will obviously keep the old stove and just reheat things...:evil:


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## SueC

And guess who's laughing all the way to the bank: The manufacturers of overpriced "commercial kitchens" (and they are overpriced for what they are... probably in major part because they are legislated to people so often... and you can imagine how the legal requirement for that sort of inflated expense for even selling excess jam you make at home completely takes a lot of people out of contention for doing that. I mean, how much jam do you have to sell before even just break even on a $40,000 expense like that? And then the inspection fees etc. It keeps a lot of small people from contributing, with often very nice produce / jam / cakes etc - which they _can_ give to charity or foodbanks etc though... (and the big guys won't have to blah blah)... _And it never used to be like this._ This is all relatively recent shiitake...

And all your church would need is to spend $200 at auction for a very serviceable oven, either runout or second-hand but excellent condition (because people over-upgrade these things, to 6-burners, fashion colours etc)... No health issues... Grrrrr... :evil:


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## Knave

I had heard a rumor that they were going to try and make the selling of raw milk legal again in my county. I don’t know if they ever got it done, or much about it. I knew it was illegal, but lots of people sell eggs and produce in the summer, so maybe we aren’t as regulated as others, or maybe a blind eye is just turned to it. I highly doubt around here that anyone would be persecuted for selling raw milk either though, so I don’t know why all the drama was occurring.


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## bsms

Arizona allows the sale of raw milk in stores if it is labelled as such. It is one of 4 states that allow it. Surprisingly, California is one of the other 3.

"_In Maine, barbers must be at least 17 years old, have completed 10th grade or its equivalent, have finished a 1,500-hour course of instruction or a 2,500-hour apprenticeship, passed an approved examination and paid a $20 fee (renewed annually, of course)....Yet Maine requires those seeking to become an EMT-Basic to only undergo 120 hours of training.._."

https://www.themainewire.com/2016/05/takes-1500-hours-barber-maine/

"_Then, one day, she got an email from a stranger. "It is illegal in the state of Utah to do any form of extensions without a valid cosmetology license," the e-mail read. "Please delete your ad, or you will be reported." It takes nearly two years of school and about $16,000 in tuition to get a cosmetology license in Utah. And schools teach little or nothing about African hair braiding. Clayton wound up closing her business_."

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/...y-its-illegal-to-braid-hair-without-a-license

I sometimes wake up, read the news, and walk outside expecting to see two suns in the sky...:rofl:...although it is no laughing matter to poor people who are being shut out of jobs and opportunities. My son used to be a volunteer firefighter. He had less training on entering a burning building than is required in most states to cut someone's hair.


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## SueC

Yeah, ha ha... I'm in the Volunteer Bushfire Brigade. I had 6 hours of theory training and it was just basic middle school science, apart from learning to use radios and the phonetic radio alphabet. That was four years ago and I've been to exactly one roadside arson that was suitable _practical_ training - nothing else. I was asked to attend an emergency fire up in the Perth area that burnt down most of the small town of Yarloop and around 70,000 hectares of surrounding country (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01...vastating-western-australian-bushfire/7109708) and said, "What, with basically no practical training? Not unless I get comfortable with the truck and its equipment first - you don't learn that in the bloody lectures, or from one three-hour mop-up since then!" And the theory course was also a joke because we had an "examination" at the end - and then the instructor got us to mark the correct answers on our papers before handing them in, and thus everyone "passed" - even the people who'd got very little right in the first place. It was flabbergasting, and completely bogus.

Oh, we did get called into the Brigade a few years ago to have "fire blanket training" - basically, how to roll yourself in a blanket in case of a burnover. The bloody blankets were made for pygmies. I'm 5'11" and was taller than the blanket I was supposed to wrap myself in, and then fit myself back in the front seat of the fire truck. It was insane. I was going to have a burnt head or burnt feet. I can't believe people's time is wasted on that sort of "training" and that they pay megabucks for undersized blankets like that, and then the bloody organisers can tick their box that says, "Everyone is now safer!" and cover their legal asses, although the situation is actually still unsafe, unless you're a midget...

(Please excuse my use of mild profanities, but I'm steamed up about this...)

The real training I had in the past four years is doing our own controlled burns in our own bushland, to reduce wildfire risk and to create small-scale vegetation mosaics for biodiversity conservation. That wasn't in the course, by the way, they just burn willy-nilly the few times they actually go out and do hazard reduction - which is not at all in the four years since I've joined, and sclerophyll requires burning every 5-15 years - and in patches, on a rotational basis, so you have to burn something every year. I know how to do that side of things because I'm a trained biologist. My husband has been in the Volunteer Brigade for over 30 years now, and saw, at the start of that, 15 years of very active service in a very pro-active brigade in the Perth Hills. They did controlled burnoffs every weekend during the fire season, on a roster basis, so he was out on that at least once a month. Also, he fought severe wildfires where buildings were lost - having been properly trained by his particular brigade. Thankfully, he can pass a lot of stuff onto me, that my own brigade isn't teaching me. And I get to do actual hands-on stuff!

But, not with the community-funded firetruck or fast attack vehicles - just with a shovel and rake and accelerant and the right wind conditions, because it has become policy in a few brigades lately not to allow volunteers to use brigade equipment for private burnoffs, which they've been disinterested in doing as practical training exercises (which is how it used to be done). They say, "Go for it, call us if it gets out of hand, then we'll bring in people and equipment." :shock: Apparently it's about insurance small print - it always is, isn't it? So you can volunteer 30 years for an organisation, and not be allowed to use any of the community's equipment that's just sitting in the shed courtesy of our rates and taxes, and which we're "qualified" to use, but expected to use our own equipment for work on our own properties (unless it becomes an escaped wildfire). Ludicrous doesn't begin to describe it...

Here's a post on what our on-farm burn-offs look like, "Day In The Life Of" style, with photos: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page28/#post1970620989 - it appeared in _Grass Roots_ as a public education thing, and we've just done another, way more technical, biological article for a different magazine: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page42/#post1970701461 ...once an educator, always an educator, and that's what seems to be required: Public education on the subject (although it can be hard to compete with the gossip rags on which celebrity is allegedly bedding which at the moment). You wouldn't believe the misconceptions that abound in Australia about bushfires, including from very public figures (with no ecological / natural history training, or firefighting training) - Australia has a far more urbanised population than the States has, yet have this romance about being really country, even though most of them live in suburbia and many actually don't know where their food comes from, other than, "From the shops!"

Hmmm. Do all y'all think I've done enough venting, lamenting, breast-beating and complaining for the day? :Angel: I promise to come up with something more inspirational for my next journal topic. I think for every unpleasant topic like this, I want to compensate by having topics that show the good and the sense that actually still exists out there...somewhere...mostly in ordinary people's lives. 

By the way, I have no issues with any of you wanting to have a good vent here. I'll even provide metaphorical tissues, pastries and coffee (if only I had a space-time dumbwaiter though! ;-)).


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## SueC

*OUT OF LEFT FIELD*

Brett told me today that I had a message from my father on email - a single sentence saying I might like to check out a particular race replay.

Regular readers of this journal will know I don't have a happy relationship with my birth family, for a variety of reasons going back to early childhood. However, I now have happy relationships with family of my own choosing.

So anyway, it appears Baralu had his first race start.

You may have met this horse before, four and a half years ago, at the start of this journal. He was rising four then, and being allowed to mature as fine-boned. Here's some photos from back then, and a little background:










I really liked the look of this one: He reminds me of an Andalusian in his bearing, plus face, mane and tail. 










Baralu is a rig - he has retained testicles in his body cavity - which means he is a sterile stallion. Baralu was very friendly to people, but overly playful and boisterous, and still a bit of a handful in the early stages of his education.





































Here's the race:

https://www-harness-org-au.akamaized.net/wa/PAC15041901.mp4

My father isn't driving in this race, he's nearly 80, but he's the trainer. It's nice to know the fitness training is working out.


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## SueC

Spanish Rider said:


> Sue, I read and thoroughly enjoyed your bush fire article, especially the bits about the plants and garden organization. It is very interesting how one's climate affects one's garden and landscaping. Here, bush fires are not a problem because we have summer drought (no rain = no storms = no lightening = no fires), even though our native bushes and trees are of the sclerophyll type you mention. Plus, our homes don't have a speck of wood in them except for interior doors, so that would help ward off an "ember attack". Actually, because our brick-and-mortar homes absorb heat and quickly develop a brick-oven effect, we are more concerned with creating shade on the southern and western façades with trees and climbers, which is diametrically opposed to your bush fire protection "protocol". Quite curious.


It's taken me a while to get back around to this, but I'm glad you got something out of the comparison, and I'm surprised too that you have no wildfire issues where you are!  It's good to learn about different parts of the world. Can you remember if it was France that had bad wildfires a while back? Before the ones in Greece?

So in WA, we have a wildfire problem with a summer drought, and Sydney, there is a wildfire problem despite summer rains. Everything gets tinder dry in WA in summer, and a single match will start an inferno on a bad day - hot, windy days are the worst. Or a piece of glass in the roadside. Or the spark from an angle grinder - that set the whole Porongorup National Park alight back in 2007. Just a farmer angle grinding a piece of steel in his paddock, and it ignited the grass, instant grass fire racing across the paddock, and then it got into the national park...

Thunderstorms happen in summer both in WA and over in the Sydney area, and also cause sparks. This is why the Aboriginal people did fire management via mosaic burning of sclerophyll for over 30,000 years - as I'd noted in the article, but not everyone is going to trawl through that, so I thought I'd just repeat it for anyone who isn't trawling. ;-)

The presence of wood in a house isn't an issue as long as it's not accessible to embers, and that obviously means you can't clad houses in the stuff if you want to be fire safe. But, houses do burn down here that were built entirely with double brick walls and steel roof trusses (double brick is standard in WA, even though not suited to the climate). Once the windows cave in, the house interiors are open, and filled with flammable materials: Soft furnishing, sofas, furniture, clothing, paint on the walls, carpet etc etc. When that happens, it matters little anymore what your house is made from, you're going to lose it. The heat of Australian bushfires is unbelievable. 



















The brick constructions buckle and explode with the heat, and generally even the walls won't be re-usable when fire gets into a house like that:



















This old stone church did a little better: Higher quality walls... probably re-usable, like Notre Dame.










Steel roof trusses can distort from the approaching heat (thermal expansion of metals), which opens gaps in the overlying roofing, which allows embers into the house.

According to CSIRO testing, Strawbale constructions like ours perform better than conventional constructions, all things being equal - the inside of the house stays cooler in a fire, and the thick lime render has been shown to resist blowtorch tests for hours. This is, of course, assuming your windows and doors aren't weak points. Earthbag houses also perform well. Having said that, conventional construction in Australia isn't built very well, even double brick. Compare the brick house photos above to the church photo...

Shading your house isn't an issue if you have deciduous or fire-retardant trees to do it, and you don't have them too close to the house, in general. That's a common thing here too - the main problem is people not being choosy enough and planting flammable vegetation for shade etc too close to the house.

Have you ever had wildfires in Spain since you moved there?


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## Spanish Rider

Sue, I think that the fire you are referring to was in Portugal, where more than 60 people died in 2017 in a mountainous, pine-covered area with only one road in/out. Both northern Portugal and Spain (Galicia) have a propensity towards forest fires (pine/eucaliptus), but we do not have forests in my area. In fact, we hardly have any trees. Here's an old blog post so you can see our local flora (mostly grasses): Lady of LaMancha: Going native I have lived here for 15 years (in central Spain for almost 30) and there has never been a wildfire in the area. In fact, the village has no fire brigade, volunteer or otherwise, and no machinery, pumps, etc. That is typical in areas with such low populations with few resources (we also have no police). Instead, it is the provincial government that has professional brigades, although these are located in the mountains for potential forest fires. The army trains with water bombers on the reservoir in the photos seen in the blog link, and these can be moved anywhere within the country in just over an hour (small country!). But here, a fire wouldn't have much fuel to feed off of.


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## SueC

Guess who's in Galicia, @Spanish Rider? With her walking shoes and otherwise just public transport?  My editor from TOB has been enlightening me on the phenomenon of huge rural depopulation in Spain in recent decades... extraordinary... She says the weather is very cold at the moment!


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## bsms

"_Last month, she voiced her support for [Arizona] House Bill 2011, which would removing blow-drying from the state’s cosmetology licensing requirements. Under current law, using a blow-dryer on someone else’s hair, for money, requires more than 1,000 hours of training and an expensive state-issued license. Blow-drying hair without a license could—incredibly—land you in jail for up to six months._"

https://reason.com/2018/02/02/inside-the-insane-battle-over-arizonas-d

"_A year ago, Arizona cosmetology student Juan Carlos Montesdeoca was threatened with six months in jail for the high crime of offering free haircuts to Tucson’s homeless population as a way to honor his mother’s battle with cancer....The [Arizona] governor went on to note that state bureaucrats are still going after hardworking taxpayers like Juan Carlos, stating that Arizona regulations require “people who simply want to make a living blow-drying hair” without even using scissors to undergo 1,000 hours (about 25 weeks ) of training. This licensing requirement makes it more difficult to legally blow-dry hair in Arizona than become an EMT, certified nursing assistant or truck driver._"

https://ij.org/arizona-governor-ask-government-still-adding-red-tape/

Just heard on the radio that the Gov signed the bill repealing this requirement. One small step toward sanity in Arizona. Very small, but it is nice to win one for a change. :winetime: Only took a YEAR!


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## Spanish Rider

The rural depopulation of Spain started during the Spanish Civil War (540,000 deaths, 100,000 disappeared and an immediate drop in expected births of 600,000, all in the context of a country of 20 million). When Franco came into power, good or bad, his plan for the impoverished, uneducated rural population was to offer them housing and factory jobs in large metropolitan areas, where there was clean drinking water, sewage, and their children would have an education and healthcare. Many rural families jumped at the opportunity, especially in the 1950s and 60s. 

In the last 20 years, however, families and young people are being forced out of the larger urban areas because of home prices, overcrowding and a desire to raise their children in a healthier environment (our case). Plus, the advent of internet has afforded many professionals the ability to work from anywhere (also our case). 

Below is the population chart of our town. We began our rural property search in 2000 and bought our land in 2003. You can see how the population has grown since.

Thus, Spanish rural areas are actually experiencing a renaissance that should hopefully be reaching Galicia, too.


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## Knave

What a pretty horse and a great race! I am surprised your father is still training at 80; that is something in itself. I hope I am still doing so much at 80.

I wonder if when the horse raced so well he was sad he didn’t have you to share it with and so he reached out... not to say that in defense of his past, but just wondering if he is feeling... I can’t think of the word I want. I know the feeling, but not a word for it.


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## SueC

Viewed from the outside, from a sort of space cam, that race is hilarious! Things like that don't happen very often - an eight-year-old stallion turns up for his first race, gets to the front, and you never see him again! :rofl: And the margin by which he won!

It reminds me of that joke about the Outback Horse Race, a free-for-all. Some guy turns up with an unknown, unraced 10-year-old, who wins the race by 30 metres. Afterwards they ask the trainer, "Why is he only racing now?" and he says, "I was never able to catch him!" :rofl:

I'm sure he's sad he couldn't share it with me, @Knave. But it was such a one-way street. He's never shown any genuine interest in what I'm doing with my life. Strangers on the bus are more interested in that than he is. I'd win a Geography competition at school, and nobody at home was interested in reading the winning essay. Sometimes, as a kid, I'd slap it on the kitchen table and say, "Read it, dammit. This was a statewide competition, and I was two years younger than some of the other entrants!" Most of the time I just took it back to my room, whatever it was, and wished I had different parents: The kind who put their kids' artwork and merit certificates on the refrigerator with magnets - which is what most people in Australia do. I'd study Science at university, on a scholarship, and there were zero questions on what I was learning, even when it was directly related to some problems they had farming - and if I mentioned anything about solving a particular problem, I was just ignored - yet when I graduated, people paid me for my opinions on the matter, and cared what I thought. When I started teaching, the only comment was, "What a waste of your education. And why would you want to bother yourself with other people's children?" And I started writing in national magazines back in 2011, after our tree change. I told them about it, they don't care. They go into a newsagency on a weekly basis, buying junk rags, and never go open something I write for (they know the titles, they were informed), to look, and maybe make a comment in conversation / when they email. My God, if we'd been able to have children, you couldn't have kept us away from looking at their artworks and stories and later on, their professional output - it's so interesting, and when I was teaching, that genuine interest in the human beings I was teaching was one of the big driving forces that made me enjoy my job...

I'm not directing this rant at you, @Knave. :hug: I understand what you mean. It's just a general rant about having a non-relationship with birth family. You don't even have to stop being involved in their lives to have a non-relationship - that was already how it was from the beginning. The psychology books call it parentification: Parents who expect their children to cheerlead them for their achievements, and to act as counsellors/confidantes for their marriage and personal problems, and to soothe their emotional pain, while providing no such support for their actual children - when in the parent-child relationship, it's the parent's role to nurture the child, not vice versa - while the child is still a child... my parents have to idea how to nurture children emotionally and socially. And it puzzles me, because I never had any problems with it when I was in a pseudo-parental role with children. It's like a mother hen thing, it just wells up in you when you work with young people. At least for me. The, "Ooooh, they're so cute! If anyone harms them, I will rip their arms off!" type instinct, for one thing. The intellectual curiosity, for another.

So now, my father is experiencing what I was experiencing all my life long with my birth family. And this wasn't a thing I staged for revenge, it was what happened when I decided I wanted equal relationships, not emotional vampire relationships, and that I wasn't offering my jugular anymore. Blood is kind of useful stuff for having energy and oxygenating everything. It's like a Greek tragedy, really, the way this turned out.
@bsms, those stories you're citing are exactly one of the major things that are wrong with our society. Where is free enterprise? What happened to it? I understand that we have to regulate mining corporations to try to stop them dumping toxic wastes into waterways etc (which unfortunately they still do anyway in many cases, but I won't go there). But I can't understand why hair braiding and blow-drying should be regulated, for heaven's sake. It's human repertoire, not something esoteric you need a degree for. Has anyone ever been blow-dried to death???
@Spanish Rider, that's really interesting information, thank you!  Glad you found your place in the sun.
@egrogan, you like races - this one should be fun for you. ;-) I generally find races boring, but this was a fun scenario!


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## SueC

By the way, 1:56:0 for the mile is the fastest any of my father's horses ever ran for a race win. Romeo could do it at home in training, but unfortunately there weren't as many mile races back then to enter into, and he drew back draws for the few he entered, which makes it much harder when your horse insists he's going to lead from the go-get - the horse then has to put in too much running at the start to make it to the finish.

Chip, his multiple metropolitan winner and overall stable star, ran 1:58:5 as his record in 1997 - of course, this was 20 years ago, and tracks were slower.

Classic Juliet, the best race mare he had, won first-up as well, and her fastest win was 1:58:5, in 1993.

Classic Julian, her only foal, ran 1:59:4 as his best winning time. His first win was his second race, back in 2006.

Le Chasseur ran 2:00:6 for his fastest win, in 1998.

Kiwi Logan ran 2:03 as a youngster, back in 1986, and unfortunately died at the age of 3 of an embolism. She was the family's first racehorse, and was runner-up in a 2-year-old classic in Gloucester Park. She was huge and comparatively mature early, and only lightly raced - she was so much faster than most of her contemporaries that she didn't have to be pushed, and could race easily. However, the decision was taken not to race 2-year-olds again - a good decision.

Mediterranean, one of the horses my father did his reinsman license with so he could drive the horses he trained himself in races, time trialled at 2:03:4 as a 3-year-old, and got three wins, and 15 placings back in the late 1980s. Her contemporary, Alfa Dynasty, paced 2:06:6 in a country win on a really rough track, and had 14 placings. Teen Force ran 2:02:6 in her best win in 1991, but unfortunately broke her leg at trials later that year and had to be put down.

1:56:0 is a remarkable time for a C0 classification race. You can win metropolitan races with that time. I am actually happy for my father. Racing seems to be the only thing that has any emotional significance to him. Which is sad. I have sent him a little "congratulations" note. I'm not holding my breath to be congratulated on any of my own achievements by him though. I think that part of him is broken.


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## waresbear

You guys are getting into heavy discussions. I just wanted to chime in and say I'm really into Thai food at the moment


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## SueC

:rofl: I love that too, @waresbear. Tom Kha soup, yummy! The curries! The lemongrass, chilli, coriander, fish sauce, all that. Mmmmhh, delicious. :loveshower:


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## waresbear

Hubby likes the green curry, I prefer the glass noodles and vegetables in Thai peanut hot sauce.


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## SueC

mg: @waresbear! You're making me hungry, and I've only just had breakfast. (We baked rye waffles and had maple syrup on top. Total foodies here too...) :dance-smiley05:


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## waresbear

My day started late I worked graveyard last night. Just got finished riding the horses, so I think I am going to make vegetables and glass noodles and Thai peanut sauce and burn my mouth off and drink beer.


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## SueC

Sounds like a plan! :cheers: You have yourself a wonderful evening! 

I think I'm getting up now! :rofl:

Easter long weekend here, and it started early for us, because Brett is always home Thursdays. Looks like good riding weather today too. I think I'll go trim some feet...


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## egrogan

@SueC, it’s always exciting to see a horse I “know” win a race so I appreciate seeing one of your old friends win and look like he’s really enjoying it. He had a really happy expression on his way down the stretch.

I too got an “out of the blue” message from my parents this week-apparently a parent of a former softball teammate of mine tracked down my 80 year old grandmother to say that the old team was planning a celebration of the 25th anniversary of a state championship we won when we were teens, and my grandmother told my parents who in turn reached out to me. People with normal relationships with their families would probably think that was neat, but I got a text message telling me this and felt like it was creepy and stalkerish. I haven’t lived in the town where I grew up for 20+ years and always get a knot in my stomach when I have to think about people from there.


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## SueC

Friends are your chosen family, @egrogan. :hug: I'm glad you met someone nice to have a nice cosy "nest" with.  It's a good feeling, especially when the nest you grew up in was a prickly and wind-blown one.

I re-watched the clip a bit and noticed that the horse has his ears pricked forward for most of the race. This is unusual when horses run flat out, as it turns the ears into insect collectors and wind tunnels! :rofl: He did look very "oooh-aaah" - or maybe it was a case of, "mg: I've never been in such a tumultuous, large crowd before, I think I'll run away!" :rofl: Trials generally have 4-5 horses where he trials, sometimes less. So this will have been his biggest field, and if my father is still doing his standard hermit training, his horse will be doing most of his training solo, without other horses present to run with...


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## SueC

Caledonian said:


> My list of nice things for today:
> My garden coming to life
> Sunshine
> Strangers who talk to me like family
> The beagle dog who dropped his ball at my feet, inviting me to play:smile:


I wanted to get back to this. For the last 24h:

Doing an A1 foot trim on Sunsmart - textbook. I don't always get it 100% how I want it, especially in summer, when the hooves are rock-hard. It's always good enough to fit his boots, but not textbook. Yesterday, his feet were textbook when I finished with them. 

Beautiful sunny day - too humid to work outdoors on the drainage though.

Going on a twilight ride yesterday evening, around our rocky ridges, with the boots on. Sunsmart was really laid-back, except for racing the dog up the hill - he'd have to be ill to miss that! :rofl: He's such a lovely horse.

Watching an episode of _The Good Place_ with Brett while eating home-made pizza. Very funny series about living a worthy life, heaven, hell, bureaucratic demons etc.

Rain on the roof when we woke up in the morning. Rain is welcome after a dry start to the year.

Then hail!  And my two good-doer horses not rugged because it was so warm last night. Saw that the forecast maximum was 9 deg C and we had a sheep weather warning! (Hypothermia risk for livestock due to cold, wet conditions with strong winds.) ...after a balmy 25 deg C day yesterday... so went and rugged Julian and Sunsmart, who said, "Yes, that's useful!" ...the new donkeys are in the shelter in this weather, clever things - the "old" group crawls into the bushes, and we rug the one that's not overweight.

The good thing about this: Albany magic! It always does this on long weekends, when the tourists come down - it saves us from being overrun with people who want to move here! It's uncanny how often this happens on the first day of a long weekend. :rofl:

Coming indoors to gingery, citrusy, spicy scents - Brett is brewing ginger beer again!

Horses warm and happy in rugs, humans warm and happy in the house. Dealing with the ongoing mountainous zucchini and tomato harvests. I chop and freeze tomatoes, and grate and freeze zucchini for hash browns, soups etc. Made hash browns (zucchini/potato) for morning tea while the beef and pumpkin were roasting away in the oven. Tomato soup is bubbling away on the stove. It's nice and cosy to cook on days like this.

(My DH says I've written a G-rated version of the last 24 h... the incorrigible imp! :shock

Frogs croaking because ecstatic with the weather.

The prospect of having Brett home five days running. 

And it looks like my neoplasm where the reins run was frozen off properly last time, when Dr Jim did it - he's such a science buff he told me he worked with a themocouple on his patients to work out how long it took to freeze to a certain depth, since no data was available in the literature when he started medicine... :rofl:


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## Spanish Rider

Thai food? Oh, gosh. Yum. I would have to say that the ONLY disadvantage to leaving the city for the country is the lack of ethnic restaurants. Sue, do you have any in your area? Or have you learned to make things yourself?

Ginger beer? Oh, my. That sounds delicious, although I have never had it before.

My eye keeps going to the food comments! It is almost lunch time - our main meal - can you tell? Here, we have lunch at 2:30 or 3pm, and dinner is very light at 8 pm. Today's lunch is Spanish lentils with chorizo (blech! that gets cooked outside the pot).


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## SueC

It's nothing compared to Sydney, which is the foodie capital of Australia as far as that is concerned, @Spanish Rider (and people from Melbourne are going to disagree with me on this :rofl - but we do have a good Thai restaurant down here in Albany. Also an excellent Turkish place run by real Turkish people. We used to have a fabulous little Japanese place - I couldn't believe how good it was, until I found out the chef was from Tokyo! Unfortunately, he ended up with cancer, and the restaurant was closed. But that was the best non-Anglo place in Albany. There's plenty of Italian, but so overpriced... and I can cook Italian blindfolded at home. I do learn how to make things I like - such as Thai Beef Salad, Tom Kha soup, various curries - and Brett is Mr World Class Stir Fry, so I don't make those anymore, he has that role now...

Is that "blech" about the chorizos? What's wrong with them?


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## egrogan

Mmm, also a huge fan of Thai food. I was in St Louis all week for work and ended the conference with a wonderful lunch with some colleagues at a Thai restaurant (our conversation was so engrossing I almost missed my flight home, and one of my friends did!! ) We have to drive 45 minutes from home to find good Thai food in a nearby university town. Same for Indian or Japanese. I have become reasonably good at cooking Indian food (thank you Madhur Jaffrey and Raghavan Iyer!) but there's something about the textures and flavors of excellent Thai food that escapes me in the kitchen. So, it's something I always seek out when I'm traveling.


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## Spanish Rider

Yes, the "blech" is about chorizos. The smell is too much for me - somewhere between dirty feet and necrotic tissue. And all that fat! I cook them in a smaller pot and add it to the stew after I've served myself.

I envy Brett's cooking abilities. I would love to learn stir-fry cooking, or anything Asian. My son's college roomate is from Pakistan, and his mum makes them lovely things that he raves about. Once I meet her, I'll ask if she could teach me a bit. The groom at my old barn is from Morocco, and I asked his sister to come to my house to teach me how to make couscous. So yummy, and so easy when you know how.


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## SueC

Spanish Rider said:


> Yes, the "blech" is about chorizos. The smell is too much for me - somewhere between dirty feet and necrotic tissue.


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Perhaps chorizos contain both? ;-)

I always think beer smells the way it does because it contains the socks a company of soldiers wore on a forced one-week march in the tropics. So I can't drink it. I know @egrogan doesn't have this issue, and nor does @waresbear, and I think @bsms can drink it too, if I remember correctly. :cheers:

Yeah, with Thai, I can only make the Beef Salad and the Tom Kha as well as a native. The comments about the texture are spot on... Also with stir fries, I've never managed to get them to be like my husband does. He chops up all the vegetables beforehand and knows exactly when to add each type so they're cooked, but not overdone... St Louis sounds exotic, @egrogan!


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## egrogan

@SueC, there are a couple of types of beer that are becoming very popular here right now- gose (a little salty, a little sour, sometimes a little fruity) and sours (well...sour and a little funky sometimes). Of course, people have been drinking these beers in Europe forever, and we're just catching up. They aren't "beery" beers to me, maybe something to try? I do love a good spicy ginger beer though. And I know you don't drink much alcohol, but with a homemade ginger beer I can't think of anything better than a Moscow mule.

I had only been to St. Louis once before on a college cross-country road trip, but I was surprised at how much I liked it (at least the old, Central West End neighborhood I spent my time in). It is famous for being home of the Gateway Arch (we could just barely see the tip from our hotel)









It is also home to the Cathedral Basilica of St Louis- I am not a church goer, but we visited this just to see the beautiful mosaics inside





It had a very vibrant downtown with tons of great restaurants as there are several major universities and medical centers there. All in all, a good place to visit for a week!


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## SueC

*EASTER SUNDAY*

The weather this Easter has been extraordinary. After a warm, humid Thursday which reached 25 degrees C, Friday's cold, rain and hailstorms broke a number of local records, including coldest April day in over 40 years. Officially our maximum was 8 degrees C, but the wind chill made the temperature go below freezing for much of the day, which is why the sheep weather warning (livestock hypothermia alert) was current. And when I say wind chill, most people can't imagine the ferocity of the wind in even a typical cold front down here on the South Coast. On Friday, it was really blowing, and pelting down at the same time. We had 60mm of rain, a fair bit of it as fierce hailstorms. We were sitting in the house just listening to deafening noise each time a wave of hail hit.

Some footage here:






The horses, alas, were warm in their rugs, as was Sparkle - she's blind, so we have to take extra care of her. The four other donkeys actually use the shelter provided in bad weather, and the cattle shelter in the woodland. The dog was completely ensconced on her sofa.



So much for our planned Good Friday early-morning bicycle ride... and there was no break in the weather for even a small lap of our tracks late in the day. Saturday morning dawned fairly dry and clear, but with a killer cold wind. We went for a long walk up Halls Road into the Sleeman Creek Reserve, to check out the actual creek, which had been dry all summer. And - it was flowing, but the causeway across it was passable, so shouldn't interfere with my planned Easter Monday ride.



Easter Sunday dawned fine and sunny, so we finally had a chance to go for our bicycle ride. This is one fitness goal that's really worked out this year - getting back into cycling. I've gone from my body saying "Don't want to!" to looking forward to bicycle time. My quadriceps are beginning to get a road cyclist's definition again, and I feel good while spinning the pedals. Brett now rides with toe clips as well, but being on a mountain bike disadvantages him on the road, compared to me being on a aluminium-frame road racing bike, even with touring tyres. I'm trying to teach him to slipstream, which involves riding really close but offset enough not to stack it, but he's not comfortable getting close enough to catch that golden zone yet. It freaks him out to ride that close, but I rode with road cyclists a lot in my teens and twenties, so it's second nature to me to do these things.

When we get back to doing our extended loop to the townsite, then Redmond West Rd, and the unsealed Verne Road back to our road, things will be more even, as Brett has the advantage on the gravel road. I'm actually looking forward to doing extended rides - our 16km getting-back-into-it training route is now feeling too short for me. The most I've ever done in a day is 120km, but that's a bit tedious; I think 40km rides would be nice to aim for this autumn, and exploring the local area more.



Brett had to rush off before lunch today because of the big Easter Sunday race meeting - an extended meeting due to the tourist crowd. He had his laptop with him for between photo finishes. He always tells me funny horse names - there's a local horse called _Kebab_, for instance. The other day I saw a good one: _Friarsandice_. Hahaha, poor race caller. :rofl: It's like the old joke about calling your racehorse _Red Leather, Yellow Leather_.

Bill was present, as it's a Sunday, and his sister is rather mean, so he prefers to spend festive days with us. I picked silverbeet in the garden and made gozleme, which is something he's really taken a shine to (so I also always sneak a spare gozleme into a paper bag and put it in his carry case to take home). I use a proper full-fat feta that partly melts when heated, and a great deal of freshly ground pepper, to mix in with the steamed and chopped silverbeet. Also, completely wholemeal dough.







Crunchy, delicious, satisfying - and nice with tomato soup or tomato salad on the side. After lunch, we headed out to the garden - you can't not go outdoors on a sunny autumn day like this. Bill sat in a chair basking in the cosmic rays being a lizard, and I resumed wheelbarrowing gravel to my drainage project. I'll have photos of that when it's done. I'd had to chase a few cows around, so after five loads of gravel, I needed to head indoors for a drink or three. Australia was playing Belarus in the Fed Cup, with Viktoria Azarenka outclassing our Sam Stosur - whom our Ash Barty had beaten. It was 2:2 after the four singles matches, so there was a live doubles decider. I didn't stay around to watch much of it, but the Aussies actually managed to snag this one, despite a rip-roaring start from Team Belarus - their girls were super-impressive.

I was going to only do another three loads of gravel, but our three original donkeys turned up, and started hanging out with Bill. At first it was Sparkle, snuggling up to him as this cuddlebug will do the moment she discovers any person in a reasonably stationary position. Then, the other two moved in. Bill had Sparkle virtually on his lap, and two donkeys standing behind his chair so that he had a donkey head over each shoulder. It was hilarious, and so I did extra loads of gravel not to break up the scenario.

Bill had been rather annoyed at some young people he's helped out who were supposed to come split some wood for him not keeping their end of the bargain, and I'd had an idea. A really dry, huge eucalyptus branch fell onto the roadside in a recent storm, so I cajoled Bill into taking a drive with me in his van. I took the pole saw, which is a small lithium-battery operated chainsaw with removable extension poles, and cut the convoluted, multi-section branch into 2m sections we could load into his van. A short time later, we returned home with a van full of firewood, having cleared the roadverge of debris. The dog got to jump through the cocky gate at the eastern end of our property and race us from the inside of the fence line.


The Common – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Redmond-Hay River Road – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Once home, we pulled up the van next to the shed, and I arranged an extension cord, my drop saw and a whole lot of empty feed bags. Bill got the job of sitting in the chair, donning gloves, and breaking up the tiny branches for kindling; I cut the logs and branches into fire-ready portions. It only took us half an hour - drop saws are great. I don't know why anyone chainsaws things, other than to make transportable sections you can take home and drop saw, it's so quick. We ended up with two feed bags of fine kindling, and five big chaff bags of cut logs and branches, bundled back into his van. Instant wood heater fuel, no further processing required, and tinder dry after a hot summer. This will buy him time to chase up those people who owe him a favour, without having to freeze in the interim when fronts are coming through.

A very nice Easter Sunday. I'll finish with some lovely photos Brett took around our garden, woodland and paddocks recently.


Frog – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Summer Paddocks – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Christmas Spider Webs III – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Forest Firebreak – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Fallen Leaves – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Casuarina Leaves – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


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## Spanish Rider

Sue, it is so interesting to see the lavandula stoechas blooming in Australia at the exact same time it is blooming here in its natural Mediterranean habitat. Curious how the change in hemisphere has not affected its blooming schedule, so our spring bloomer has become your fall bloomer. Are there any other transplants that do the same?


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## SueC

I'm not sure, @Spanish Rider. The lavender blooms most of the year around here, if I irrigate it through the summer. The fruit trees blossom up in late winter/spring, around September here, and bear through the summer and autumn, from around Christmas to May. We're about midway through getting our Sundowner apples off the tree - we've been harvesting those for a month. Kalamata olives are just ripening. Stone fruit were all done by late March...

@egrogan, we just loved that cathedral. I particularly liked that most of the art there was 2D, without much competing 3D stuff - it basically left things uncluttered for the magnificent murals and mosaics. I love the internal architectural style too. Public buildings like this are so important; normal people would never have access to this sort of stuff otherwise. Brett was saying, "Now why is this not a library? It could have murals of dragons and castles,_ Narnia_ and _Lord of The Rings_ and _Harry Potter_ and _Mary Poppins_, and author murals, and owls, and Cybermen. and lots of gargoyles. If I were in charge, we would have the most awesome libraries, and the most literate population. They would be _compelled_ to be literate." I opined that you'd probably have to shoot half the population for what was left to be honestly able to be described as really literate.

One cathedral that really surprised me was Sacred Heart Cathedral in Bendigo, a rural town, not huge, in Victoria. I was driving up to Sydney on my travels, and stopped at this cathedral when I saw it on the skyline. I couldn't believe anything this huge could exist in such a small town:



















The interior was minimalist in terms of decoration, but architecturally a soaring, beautiful, light-filled space, and the construction materials were gorgeous, and highlighted by the lack of decoration:





































It's actually the third tallest cathedral in Australia. Not even Sydney has one this size...


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## Knave

I am so glad you cut the wood for him, and that he was able to spend Easter with you. It makes me happy, as I am sure it makes you. Happy Easter!!!


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## gottatrot

Does Eucalyptus wood smell very strong when it is burning? I love that smell.


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## SueC

Yes, and with Eucalyptus, you often get a wonderful smell just cutting the wood too, with a saw - as you do with cedar, that stuff in particular is like incense. Eucalypts and the family they belong to, the Myrtaceae, all contain essential oils, in the leaves especially, but also in the wood. In part it's a chemical defence against being eaten, necessary in areas with poor soils or other resource shortages that make it difficult for plants to grow back leaves.

One of the nicest smells I know, apart from the smell of crushed leaves of lemon-scented gum, is the smell of dried lavender when you use it for kindling for your wood heater. We have lots of lavender in the garden, and I dry the pruned material for this purpose instead of making it into mulch or compost, as it makes the whole house smell like a sanctuary - both when I'm drying it on the sunny floor in the bay of the French door, and when we burn it. Because of the high amount of essential oils in lavender, it burns ferociously and is a great fire starter. You don't even need paper when you're kindling your fire with dried lavender prunings... also we use the stuff in our bee smokers... Lavender belongs to the mint family, which is another family whose plants are famous for their essential oils...

With all this amazing stuff in nature, I wonder why people are so fascinated with consumer goods. It's like a fake planet...


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## egrogan

_April is the cruelest month_...I guess that applies regardless of your hemisphere. Funny how there is that bit of overlap! Snow, sleet? Yep, that happened here last week! Streams filling where they didn't exist before? Yep, that's what's happening in my pasture right now  Wild temperature fluctuations? Yep, wearing shortsleeves and sandals today but it's supposed to go to freezing tomorrow night.

Spring is not my favorite season, but the one part I do love is listening to the "peepers" serenading from their vernal pools. Fizz and I stood and listened to them sing for a bit yesterday. (Be sure sound is on!)





We also have these little orange guys everywhere- I believe they are called "efts" of the red spotted newt, according to my field guide. :grin:


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## Caledonian

I've always had trouble keeping my Lavandula stoechas. I've started treating it as an annual plant, as a few bad days of weather and they're gone. It's interesting to see the plant considered a weed and invasive in other countries. 



Our spring weather has been changeable as well, although not with such large swings. Our winter has been very dry and warm and it seems to be continuing with the hottest Easter on record. According to the car thermometer, it reached 24 C today. The temperature drops away pretty quickly at night and there's a noticeable chill in the mornings.


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## SueC

I love the frog calls, @egrogan! And you listening to them with Fizz. That's something a horse will do along with you - listen to birds or frogs, or look at wildlife running in the distance, or climb onto a crest or other lookout with you and then stop and just look at the view. My Arabian mare used to look left and right and do little breathy sighs when she was enjoying a view. The more extensive the view because the higher the lookout, the longer she would just stand and look. If I got off her at that point, her head would be on my shoulder and she'd be softly exhaling her breath against my cheek. 

In many ways, horses actually brought me up and taught me things about the world that I'm very grateful for. When people focus all the time on what they want to teach a horse, they miss those things, and they are things all of us would benefit from. So I've tried to do it 50:50 - to train horses for riding, and to do various things, but also to listen to what they have to say to me, and what they find important, and enjoyable, and what they can teach me. Otherwise it's sort of like taking a holiday in Tibet and just earbashing the locals on Western culture, and never stopping to listen to what they can tell you about their own way of life, their own place on this planet, their own observations and thoughts and ideas and traditions. It's a funny thing how you can't learn if you're always doing the talking. There's this saying, "You have two ears and one mouth. Use them in that ratio."
@Caledonian, sounds like we're all getting variable weather just now! I really do love autumn here, it's the best time of year in this part of the world, I think - so many nice, clear, cool, sunny days, and regular rain to keep everything fresh. Also I love the mists and fogs in the morning.


Autumn Mist – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Sun and Mist - Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Sunsmart and Sunlight IV – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Also, we get wonderful cloud formations in autumn, with dazzling light and colour at sunset:


Stormclouds II – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

And sunrises are frequently colourful...


Autumn Sunrise – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

I want to say a big hello to Kay! :welcome: She's a fellow member of our Australian _Grass Roots_ community (we're the hippies and the outliers ;-)), and told me yesterday she's been reading this journal for a while. Can we tempt you to sign in and talk to us? :Angel: I'm sure we'd all love another Aussie to talk to, even if you don't have a horse. You can borrow mine, anyway!   :racing: She told me about her dog, cats, galah, possum, turtle, and rescuing wildlife.  She says shopping malls are the cathedrals worshipping materialism - loved that analogy. When I taught in Sydney back in 2002-2004, I spent some time working in the Northern Beaches district, and discovered that shopping malls are the natural habitat of many of the teenagers there. When we took them on a bushwalk near the Blue Mountains, they screamed at spiderwebs and stopped to dab each other's legs with baby wipes whenever they got little splashes of mud on them, and they kept saying, "Are we there yet?" and I kept telling them, "Yes, as a matter of fact!" I'm sure Kay could tell us all some stories too... :happydance:


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## SueC

Oh, @egrogan, I forgot to ask you a question I had about the Moscow mule... So, first of all, to me, vodka = paint stripper. So why would a person ruin a perfectly good ginger beer by putting paint stripper in it? The lime juice, I can really get, and I already add that regularly. But the paint stripper?  :confused_color: :winetime:

Brett reckons people add paint stripper because they like to get tiddly. I thought this effect, if desired, could be achieved by drinking more ginger beer... but Brett thinks "normal" people like to get tiddly in the fast lane, and also perhaps have different tongues to ours?


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## SueC

All right, the other day on a weight critique thread, I was posting some photographs of good condition, using my late Arabian mare in endurance training as an example, along with lots of other horses both in work and retired. And someone said to me, "Oh Sue, your pale face girl is beautiful!" ...and I went all maudlin because she's been dead five years this month, and posted a long double on her life in photos. I'm going to repeat that series here, but with an addition: A song that really fits, to look at the photos by...






This one shared the road with me from the time I was 11 to the time I was 43...

Yes, she was beautiful... in all her stages of colour and maturity...







...except when I first picked her up, she was half-starved in the drought and looked like a bicycle wearing a moth-eaten wool blanket... the only reason I could afford her, she was half-price, and I needed to arrange a mortgage with my parents to pay the half I couldn't cover from selling worldly possessions, and accrued savings...

Sorry to be off topic, but she's buried here and I miss her, and like to think of her life...

My eventually fleabitten grey mare at birth:










Her Crabbet sire Centurion, grandson of Sala, who was from your neck of the woods:










Her Polish racing line dam Iraki Noire, an Autumn Sunshine granddaughter:










This was her as a skeletal drought yearling, and we took this photo when we thought she wasn't so bad anymore:



















Some early ground training at the time - I was also hand walking / jogging her lots:



















Rising two:



















At age two - now working on the lunge regularly as well:


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## SueC

At four and a half, the week before our first ever endurance ride - I was 15:










At age six, in peak endurance condition:



















At age 10:










At age 27, the year before she retired from riding:














































At age 30, in the paddock with Sunsmart - and you can see she needed to slim down...





 

You can lose your horse, but not lose your love of your horse.


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Oh, @*egrogan* , I forgot to ask you a question I had about the Moscow mule... So, first of all, to me, vodka = paint stripper. So why would a person ruin a perfectly good ginger beer by putting paint stripper in it? The lime juice, I can really get, and I already add that regularly. But the paint stripper?  :confused_color: :winetime:
> 
> Brett reckons people add paint stripper because they like to get tiddly. I thought this effect, if desired, could be achieved by drinking more ginger beer... but Brett thinks "normal" people like to get tiddly in the fast lane, and also perhaps have different tongues to ours?



Haha, well when you put it _THAT WAY_ 


I guess it just doesn't register as "paint stripper" to me. It doesn't really register so much as any particular flavor, but more as a slightly pleasant warming. Not sure how else to explain it. I don't drink enough that I get tipsy very often, it's usually just a glass of something with dinner, so I guess the reason I have it is because I like the flavor of the whole beverage. With your delicious homemade ginger beer, I'm sure I'd enjoy a non-alcoholic Moscow Mule just as much as the "traditional" one! And when it comes to beer, I'd absolutely rather have a big glass of water than something cheap and "beer" flavored. Taste is one thing that is so hard to put into written words, isn't it!?


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## SueC

*TRAIL REPORT AND MORTALITY MUSINGS*

No photos as it's just a "repeat", but there will be for the next one. Yesterday afternoon, after finishing the gravel walkway / drainage project, I had a shower, changed into clean clothes, made myself a big cool glass of malted milk, bolted it down and went out to collect my horse and gear for a ride without sitting down, because if I had, I really wouldn't have gotten up again. I'd done ten wheelbarrow loads of gravel, and cleaned the side of the shed and tank as well, and that's after trimming a set of feet in the morning.

We tacked up quickly and headed out along our eastern forest track, which is up on the ridge, so the horse had boots on. I can't use the sand track through the centre of our place at the moment because of the dead horse - it's going to be another two to three weeks before that changes. You can't ride the eastern boundary when there's a west wind blowing; you basically pick your side depending on the wind direction. If you can't go along the eastern boundary, you can divert to the swamp track or western boundary. We've got no vultures in Australia; Bill says that the blowflies are Australia's vultures. Their life cycle is 14-16 days from egg to adult, and they, plus microbes, are the main players in around 250kg of soft tissue to process. If anyone thinks all this is gross, I've just heard a segment on the radio talking about the ecological cost of burials, and both cremation and traditional deep burial don't come out well. The former has a massive carbon footprint from incineration, which takes hours and uses lots of fossil fuels - and is also responsible for around 15% of atmospheric mercury emissions in the UK, due to dental fillings (in humans). The latter has the cost of things like coffins and their embodied energy, and that most of the decomposition is anaerobic, therefore releasing large amounts of methane instead of carbon dioxide.  And, the use to the food chain of either is nil. In cremation, the minerals only can get re-used if they are returned to the earth. In deep burial, if you're really lucky, a deep-rooted tree will pick up some nutrients years after burial.

Some Himalayan tribes have sky burial, which sounds lovely, but involves cutting up corpses into chunks the vultures can carry off. The person in the village assigned the task usually gets drunk first. The up side is that the ecological cost is zero, and that the nutrient recycling is instant and 100% - something neither cremation nor deep burial achieve. Death is never picturesque, but can be shoved away into a box or into a hole in the ground and be "out of sight, out of mind" - and the majority of the West does exactly this (except when eating steak etc, but even that comes in anonymous plastic packets). I prefer to confront stuff like this, and consider the best interests of the planet. It's funny how nature deals better with it than humans generally do. Wrapping paper is wrapping paper. When the gift is unwrapped, the wrapping paper is left behind. I wrote a piece called _Flower Memorials _here about a year ago to get to the other side of all this, where there is actual beauty in resource reallocation, and in the recycling of all our building blocks back into other forms of life. ( https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page42/#post1970698951 ) It's the gift you can make when you depart, to honour the gift of many other forms of life having sustained you in your own days on earth, the gift that goes way back, far past the dinosaurs and to the ancient stardust from which all of us are made.

So, it's going to be a few weeks yet before we can use our sand track again. And eventually, I'm going back to see for myself what state the horse's teeth were in - we'd not had a clear view since his last dentistry appointment half a decade earlier.

I have an approximate ride map. I just can't be bothered to alter it for the actual course:










This shows the way we took out of our place, into our neighbour's valley floor, and then back along his pasture. It's a beautiful ride. We really enjoy the "pathfinding" section in the bushland in the valley floor - here's a recycled photo:










Once at the end, you hit Verne Road. We turned right and headed across the pasture, cantered up the hill, then saw one of the neighbours' herds on the horizon - about 60 cows with newly dropped calves. They noticed us, and some of them decided to run away, while others ran towards us. They don't generally come close, and if you turn and face them, they always head off again. It's a shame I didn't have a camera, because there would have been interesting photos, also of two kangaoos bounding across the paddock. There was a four-wheeler next door, apparently checking their own cattle, across the fence from where we were.

This is the same huge paddock we walked Julian in recently - and I'm borrowing the photo:










We trotted back to our gate, closed it, and continued home along the swamp track, which I've not marked in red on the map, but you can see it - it's on the same line as the red track marked in the neighbour's valley floor!

We arrived home the same time Brett was coming home from work, and I could hear him laughing at the gate because I was trotting my horse, and Nelly and Benjamin were cantering behind me playing tag - we picked those two up going past the farm dam! :rofl: Sunsmart was a little sweaty on his head and girth, and between the back legs, so I sponge bathed those areas, towelled him dry, and cut tagasaste for the lot of them. Then I had to cut acacia branches for the cattle, who heard my pole saw and came running across the Common, lining up at the gate near the house. They're in good shape, and let you know when they want something - four foghorns and four little tubas mooing away.

Once I got in, Brett had a lovely sweet green tea with lime juice waiting for me, and helped me chop vegetables for a pea and ham soup, because I was feeling and looking disembodied at this point. Thanks to teamwork, it was boiling away within 20 minutes, and we had leftover roast, potatoes and pumpkin in the interim. And I had more green tea, which both of us drink out of the biggest soup mugs we could find. And more green tea. And I had fruit salad. And toast with ricotta and plum sauce - I'd hardly stopped to eat during the day, and was filling legs gone hollow.

We watched a little _Wire In The Blood_ ("Nocebo") - I'm really enjoying the Alex Kingston character, who is an unscripted replacement for Carol Jordan, because the actress departed, and so the books and the dramatisation had to go on different paths. I can't tell you which I enjoy more, Val McDermid's books or the series. But, the departure of Carol Jordan from the series has made things both less edgy, and less annoying. She's a brilliant character, but incredibly wearying, plus there is also such a thing as too much UST (unresolved sexual tension, for those who don't throw around drama acronyms at home). I much prefer Alex actually, she's far less wrist-slitting to watch, and interesting in her own right. I like the fact that she's not workaholic, and goes home to a little boy, and wrestles with life. She's more multi-dimensional than Carol Jordan. I didn't like how the Carol Jordan story turned out in the books, so I'm actually enjoying this alternative universe, where a brilliant and warm human - Tony Hill - isn't sacrificing himself on the altar of unrequited love - in the books, he threw himself under a metaphorical bus to save Carol, who had stepped out in front of the same metaphorical bus, of her own free will. It wasn't fair that he should be taking the fall for her decisions, and to me not in keeping with the character.

But who knows, it's early days - Season 5 - and maybe the scriptwriters will want to imitate that quagmire... meanwhile, I'm enjoying the puzzles, the human interactions and the psychology. Last episode, I picked the culprit immediately, even though it was left field and she clearly wasn't being presented as a suspect. I had the psychology, the why she did it, the whole thing within minutes of "meeting" her. That's because I saw the exact same patterns in my own mother - functional narcissism, emotional three-year-old, won't see people as people but as extensions of herself, it's always about her, attempts to control others, hitting her toddler / young child / adolescent out of narcissistic rage and immaturity and the complete inability to see them as human beings in their own right, wanting all the attention and limelight and for the whole universe to be at her disposal, while feigning love for her daughter to the outside world. And when they showed the scene where the mother hit the daughter who fell and fatally hit her head on the floor, that scene, the start of it, without the falling over accidentally dying aspect obviously, was something I went through countless times as a child as well, it was such a mirror to my own experience. And Brett said, "Wow, you called it!" 

Yeah well, I've picked up a lot of expertise at this niche stuff, to use a nice euphemism. It's really strange to see it represented. I even picked Munchhausen's by proxy in those couple of minutes at the start - never thought about whether that was part of why I was always dragged to the doctor, until now - yes I was ill a lot, failure to thrive, recurrent bronchitis, and when I look back, none of it managed well - I found photos of myself at age three, in a tiny bikini even though it wasn't summer, and remember feeling cold, with the wind blowing, for instance. That was the year I got pneumonia... and that only the intervention of a neighbour saved my life... It's interesting to look back at your own life forensically, sometimes. It clears up a lot of confusion.

I really recommend that drama series. Maybe don't watch the pilot episode, as it's truly sickening. Excellent, but really awful. I also nominate the theme tune, by The Insects, as the best piece of music ever written for a forensic crime drama. It just nails it...






Robson Green interview:


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## SueC

*DRAINAGE PROJECT / GRAVEL PATH*

A project over the past week has been to get a lot of the drainage around the shed and tank done that we were supposed to put in last year (but I broke my foot). This is so we don't have to wear Wellington boots to get into our shed after rain. I ordered gravel, which came last Monday, and spent a couple of days shifting earth, digging ditches, laying pipe and shifting two tonnes of gravel with a wheelbarrow. The week I did that, I did no Pilates or rope-skipping! :rofl: I did go for several rides on bicycle and horse though. :Angel:

Thank goodness for iPods! Nothing like a good song to help you shovel gravel efficiently. Here's an excellent one that energises me for this sort of work:






Other favourites for this kind of work:











I didn't take any "before" photos, but the problem was that we never put in any drainage when building the shed and tank, and so for five months every year, there would be major puddles, turning at intervals into a swamp or even a temporary sort of creek. This actually eroded a channel into the sandy walkway between the tank and shed - not helped by Romeo's habit of coming to watch me make food for the whole entourage every evening (he just loved cooking shows  ), and walking up and down the path in excitement when he thought his feed was getting close.

We had originally covered all that area in woodchips, but these degraded, washed away etc, and a more permanent solution was needed. So, I ordered some gravel, both to make drainage lines and to make a decent permanent path between the shed and the water tank. Then, I started carving out the excess sand that had blown dune-like up against the shed and tank walls - ten wheelbarrows full! I shifted this out to a hole near a gateway I also want to fix this year. After that, I dug a ditch for a slotted pipe and gravel - and only then started taking photos.

Photos 1 - 3: Stormwater pipe that was left over from our house build, and that I'd slotted with an angle grinder every 40mm or so before placing it in the ditch, ensuring it had the correct fall, and glueing the sections together. Loose sand in the bottom of the ditch was checked with a spirit level and raked to suit before the pipe was placed in the ditch, and the pipe was re-checked after placement for correct fall.

Photo 4: Bedding the pipe on one side before adding gravel into the ditch.

Photo 5: The gravel... 4 tonnes, in 3 cubic metres of volume.

Photos 6-10: Thick layer of gravel now in place over drainage pipes and ditch, creating a nice walkway that won't blow in the wind or wash out. You can see at the bottom end that I still have to connect the outlet pipe from this area to a pipe leading to a little pond we have dug to receive stormwater. The pond itself will have an overflow pipe that leads directly into the ditch besides the driveway.  These are the next stages of the project... I'll start that in a few days, but have some urgent work to do in the food garden first. Nice to see the progress though...


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## DanteDressageNerd

Beautiful, beautiful pictures! The beach ride looks like paradise!


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## Knave

It looks really good! Lots of work too I know... my favorite part of your day though was Brett having tea for you. That was the nicest thing and made me smile.


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## phantomhorse13

Just looking at that gravel pile made my body ache.. but sure looks nice all done!


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## AtokaGhosthorse

Came here after reading the trail riding thread. About dead horses... and cows too - as... difficult as it is to admit it, leaving their carcass to the elements, and for us here in Oklahoma, scavengers (Buzzards and coyotes) is the way Nature 'has done it' for millions of years. We put our cows at the far end of the 75 acres... husband will always say: Coyotes gotta eat too.


It horrified me, one time, when I was prowling in the woods on our neighbor's back 40, and I ran across this MASSIVE oak tree in the middle of a cleared area. It was huge, a giant of a tree and the most perfectly shaped oak I'd ever seen. I prowled the woods a LOT as a kid, and I'd never seen one this huge, with limbs as big around as trees themselves. Then I noticed why - at it's base was the place where our neighbor would lay his horses to rest.... either by putting them down there, or taking the carcass by tractor to that tree and leaving it there.


It bothered me greatly as a kid... then I grew up to understand why he left them there. And knowing that tree grew stronger for it meant the horses had served another purpose in death, and like that song The Highwayman says: _Or I may simply be a single drop of rain, but I'll be back again, and again... and again...._ Those horses are there, in a way, in that tree.

In 2011 a tornado hit Tushka, where I live now (I didn't then). It destroyed most of the ancient red oaks, some of which were my 'friends' as a lonely kid. I knew them all. It left me grief stricken to see them so decimated. The tree the horses had been laid to rest at is still standing though, and from what I can tell (Since it's now almost in my backyard) it didn't lose a single limb. 

That pasture has been divided off into a 30 acre tract and a 10 acre tract. That tree is on the 10 acre tract and that tract is for sale. It shares a fence with our property. Hubs has been negotiating, off and on, with the owner trying to get it bought.


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## Caledonian

@*SueC* - Beautiful photos, especially the ones with clouds and mists. Your endurance mare looks like a different horse in every photo, she's gorgeous in the one where she looks like a buckskin. 

@*AtokaGhosthorse* - I like the idea of an oak marking the place where loved ones have been put to rest. My Grandfather used to take neighbours' horses and bury them under a large grape vine in his plant nursery. While we can still bury pet horses, we wouldn't be allowed to put one where it could affect people and water supplies. 


I think the strangest and nicest farewell that I've ever seen, was for a little Shetland. He'd was cremated and they held a funeral with a Padre and piper. Even a large number of people turned out to say their goodbyes, despite it being a stormy day. A rose bush (white if i remember correctly) and a plaque were used to mark his position.


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## SueC

@DanteDressageNerd, that beach ride also felt like paradise!  It's the only time I've ever ridden on Cosy Corner Beach, or any ocean beach - I don't have a towing vehicle or horse float, and the way this ride happened is that the horse-buddy on the palomino was agisting at the same place in Albany at the time (pre-farm), and had a towing vehicle, and I hired a float, and we took the horses to the beach together as a special treat. Brett came with us, with the camera - which was an interesting exercise while driving there and back, as the ute that was towing had only two seats in it. So, Brett and I sat on the same seat, sharing the one seatbelt, sort of like Siamese twins sandwiched on top of each other. inkunicorn::blueunicorn: I should post some other photos from that day here sometime... I loved your Morocco photos, by the way, and your travel accounts back at your "house"! Looks so exotic! 

@Knave, you have an uncanny knack for picking which are the best aspects of life!  Are you planting your garden yet, or is it still too early?

@phantomhorse13, I took lots of Vitamin E, so didn't ache badly afterwards, I just ran out of energy and felt like a deflated balloon, and wished for a crane to shift me around in the evening, or perhaps a trolley with a kind operator. I've learnt a thing or two from endurance riding. :rofl: Will you tell me what you've personally learnt from endurance riding, that you are applying to your own body / fitness?

@AtokaGhosthorse, hello! :wave: Thank you for a beautiful story. It's true that when you think about it, life doesn't just end, it begins again in other life. Good luck buying that 10 acres! 

On that topic I'm trying to index this increasingly unwleldy journal so I don't lose various topics in this giant haystack...so, in addition to _Flower Memorials_ (https://www.horseforum.com/member-jo...post1970698951), another recent reflection on this topic, _The Lego Of Life_, is at https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page42/#post1970699663.

@Caledonian, thanks also for a lovely story. :hug: Bagpipes always make me weep when I am sad, and I think this might be very therapeutic at a funeral. Do Scots have upper lips anywhere near as stiff as the English culturally, or are they more emotional beasts?


*NELLY AND BENJAMIN EAR SCRATCHES AND FOOT UPDATES*

I'm only back at the house because I was hyperventillating after cutting Chasseur's front feet, and needed a drink or two before doing the hind feet. In part, it's because I played "Eat and Feet" with him - the horses are grazing in the garden this morning, and when I do front feet, I occasionally cut them while a horse is eating. Because Chasseur was grazing, this meant a lot of putting hooves down and picking them up again - which doesn't happen when they have a bucket.  So, later on I'll tie him for doing the last two hooves.

But speaking of hooves, Nelly and Benjamin had their trims earlier this week and have nearly normal hooves again! When we first got these donkeys six months ago, Nelly had completely collapsed heels - now she's got nearly an inch of heel already, with nice springy frog material growing back. Ben's hoof walls were broken halfway up the hoof in two big patches at the sides, on all hooves - possibly from having untreated seedy toe in the sides in the past, and/or trace element deficiencies. They're on our usual vitamin/mineral supplement now, and this has really improved the horn. Also, the Stockholm tar got rid of the rot. It was important to get that done before winter, and we've achieved that. Now, we'll keep up the Stockholm tar weekly whenever the grass is wet.

The best part about trimming the donkeys was lying in the grass afterwards looking at the sky, and having the donkeys come up and sniff at me before deciding they were keeping me company. Nelly positioned herself so I could scratch her shoulder blades from lying on my back on the ground! 

Here's some photos of them cadging an ear scratch in the paddock the other day when we passed by walking the dog...


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## SueC

*ANZAC DAY ADVENTURES*

Yesterday was the ANZAC Day holiday, and we had a very active day, I trimmed Julian in the morning while Brett vacuumed the whole house, and then we took Julian for a walk with us. He enjoys exploring, and we may as well take him when we take the dog for walks and he's around. Since he'll be ridden at some point later this year, it's really useful to familiarise him with the whole area anyway, so he will be completely cool bananas when ridden on the same trails. He already is cool bananas anyway, he's never been frightened of emus or kangaroos or anything like that. When he was track training, I remember a time when an emu was running along with him and he was actually racing it with his ears flat back, and very successfully! Emus will do this from time to time on people's home training tracks. Some horses spook, but not this one. This one didn't even spook when the emu on the training track was running in the opposite direction! :rofl:

Julian in his racing days:










...and Julian on our walk yesterday. Two donkeys followed us along - our newbies are quite athletic and adventurous - but we had to leave them on our side of the fence when crossing into the neighbour's place!


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## SueC

In the afternoon, I went riding. I posted this to the 2019 Happy Trails thread last night, so you may have seen it already.


*EXPLORING SLEEMAN CREEK NATURE RESERVE*

Today was a public holiday in Australia, and I was able to catch up on a ride I had originally planned to do over Easter. However, on Good Friday we had apocalyptic weather! After a warm, humid Thursday which reached 25 deg C (77 deg F), Friday's cold, rain and hailstorms broke a number of local records, including coldest April day in over 40 years. Officially our maximum was 8 deg C (46 deg F), but the wind chill made the temperature go below freezing for much of the day (down to -2 deg C / 28 deg F), which is why the sheep weather warning (livestock hypothermia alert) was current. And when I say wind chill, most people can't imagine the ferocity of the wind in even a typical cold front down here on the South Coast. On Friday, it was really blowing, and pelting down at the same time. We had 60mm of rain, a fair bit of it as fierce hailstorms. We were sitting in the house just listening to deafening noise each time a wave of hail hit.

Some footage here:





 
Today was lovely weather again, so I finally got to do the Sleeman Creek Reserve ride. We did it late afternoon, so the light was amazing, and I have lots of lovely photos, so please excuse that I will have to break the posts to fit it all in. I don't do new trail sections very often, and when I do, I really document it - and last time I did that (https://www.horseforum.com/trail-rid...post1970681301), in my first post to this thread, people enjoyed seeing a bit of Australia. So here's another lot of photos, and I hope you enjoy.









I'll start with the trail map:


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## SueC

The white dot in the pasture (near the red hairpin bend loop on the left of the map) is our starting point - it's where our house is. I warmed the horse up on a loop of our own farm tracks. Ignore the white tracks - everything we did today is marked red. We headed out east across our pasture, swung south along our swamp track, then headed around our southern and eastern boundaries before leaving through our NE exit gate.

This is heading out across the place we call the common. Jess the kelpie is along for the ride.










I managed to get a good shot of our shadow as well here:










This is turning south into our middle meadow:



















This is our swamp track:










Another shadow shot - the plant over the top of my head there is a Blackboy (_Xanthorroea preissii_), a sort of grass tree whose stem grows really slowly. It takes 10 years for a trunk to even form. The specimen in the photo has a stem as tall as me and is approximately 200 years old.










This is the tea tree flat we burnt last May (https://www.horseforum.com/member-jo...post1970620989), and it has regenerated beautifully, with lush growth that attracts a lot of wildlife. If anyone is interested in Australian bushfire management, I've written a recent magazine article on that here: https://www.horseforum.com/member-jo...post1970701461










These are Paperbark trees, with shrubby Tea-Trees in-between:










This is the southern end of our swamp track:










Turning the corner and heading east, we are at the base of the hill up which the dog and horse like to race each other - you can see Jess is waiting for it! A couple of seconds after this shot, we were pelting up the hill.










Turning left at the top of the hill, we rode along our eastern boundary. Our neighbour has a gravel pit bordering on our fence line:










A little further along is a machinery shed:










We rode to the end of the boundary and out our "cocky gate" to cross the Redmond-Hay River Road, and ride the unsealed Halls Road to the Sleeman Creek Nature Reserve:



















This is an internal trail traversing the southern end of this reserve:


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## SueC

This is in the southern end of the Sleeman Creek Nature Reserve:










Sleeman Creek just started running again, after our Good Friday weather dumped 60mm (2.5 inches) of rain and hail in 24 hours. Over the summer it is usually reduced to a few stagnant pools. There is a narrow rock causeway here, which was only ankle-deep in water - the rest of the creek is running nearly 1m deep at the moment. 










For those who don't know it, Sunsmart is a hydrophobe and has been that way since birth - he's never liked puddles. So, it's nice that he's learnt to cross things like this with me. This was a new one to him - we've not crossed this in flood before - so he took some persuading, but finally he gave himself a push and crossed the causeway. After that, we headed up the big hill.










There's an emu in the photo above. If you click to enlarge it, you can just see it in the distance between the straight and the crooked fence post. It's an emu-shaped black shape. And for @*egrogan* , there actually is a kangaroo in the next two photos:



















It's really hard to spot. There's a sandy patch ahead on the track, before it gets grassy again, and the kangaroo is squatting at the boundary of the sand and grass, near a horizontal log that shows up bright white in the photo. It was doing a "freeze". I saw about half a dozen kangaroos with this one before I could get the camera out. One day, I'll get lucky and snap one that's not a dot in the landscape. They came quite close to the horse several times today, but always on the move, and by the time the camera is out, they are usually gone.

If you look at the ride map before all these photos, you will notice a little side diversion from the straight track up the hill in the reserve. This is a lovely little diversion which also means you don't have to ride through a bog. We've just turned into it, and you can see the dog haring off after a kangaroo here:










At the end of this little detour, we met the boundary track again heading north, and came up to the NW corner of the reserve:



















The days are getting shorter here now, and the sun was starting to drop low:










And now - drum roll - the corner beyond which we've never previously explored, as we used to ride mostly in the extensive forests to the west of our farm (which I will have to go out and take photos of for the trail group on this thread):





































This is really gorgeous scenery. You can see on the ride map that it's theoretically possible to ride all the way around the reserve (barring deep creeks and bogs), and I definitely want to do that this year. But today, I had to head back, as the sun was setting!

I turned Sunsmart around, and took a photo. 










After that, he had a good long canter all the way back to the corner. From there to the detour, we mostly trotted. This is the start of the detour track:










It's a downhill - uphill section. Once we got to the uphill, Sunsmart had a flat-out gallop, in which he passed a very surprised Jess, who is not used to being overtaken!


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## SueC

At the top of the hill we met some cattle that had strayed into the reserve:










Then we headed back along the reserve's western boundary:



















Sleeman Creek, which Sunsmart crossed really well on the way home, so I told him how clever he was etc:










Back through the southern end of the reserve:










Returning along Halls Road:










This is back on our Common - you can see the house amongst the trees:










Don Quixote to the left of the Paperbark tree, and Benjamin to the right:










And this is a new feature I am adding: *TailCam!!!* Our donkeys like to tag along when I go riding...



















Hmmm. I must learn to keep my horizons straight when doing a contortionist trick to implement TailCam... :Angel:

Don Quixote, with Chasseur behind him, Julian off camera, and more donkeys and cattle to the right:










And the concluding photograph, a whole lot of beasties.










Apart from the three horses, five donkeys and Jess, there's currently four 2-year-old Friesian steers, and four nearly yearling Simmental cross steers. Also, many kangaroos, emus, possums, snakes, lizards, frogs, etc; and countless birds, insects etc, living in our on-farm bushland reserve and shelter belts.

It was getting cold quickly, and Brett brought us two buckets of hot water from the house, which I used to make warm water to wash my horse, who'd gotten a bit sweaty. Sunsmart tells me he always wants warm water from now on - didn't move a step while I was actually washing him, unlike the situation you saw in the recent clip on this thread, with cold water. He was actually enjoying being washed today, and especially the towel drying after using the squeegee...and tucking into his feed afterwards! Later on, he was nearly dry, and I rugged him and the other horses, as there's a cold night ahead.

Brett asked me to rate this ride. I give it 10/10 - it was hugely enjoyable. Perfect weather, beautiful scenery, gorgeous golden afternoon light, a super horse, wildlife, exploration, and donkey antics - what more could I possibly want?


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## Spanish Rider

Can I give this post a "Love" instead of a "Like"?


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## Knave

Wow! What a pretty ride. I loved the pictures.

On the gardening question, no, it’s still too early. It doesn’t feel like it these last couple days, and the grass is green and some flowers have bloomed, but the standing rule is June 1. Sometimes I cheat into May, but sometimes it freezes on June 15 too.


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## egrogan

Oooohh that beautiful green grass and blue sky. Jealous!!


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## Caledonian

@SueC - It looks like it was a great ride. Very autumnal. 

I don’t think we’re at ‘emotional beasts’ yet LOL, as it’ll take more than a few decades to change centuries of programming. Many Scots would scoff and say that ‘stiff upper lips’ only apply to the English. I think we’re just as bad, if not worse, as Scots men in particular had to be seen as tough. Gender stereotypes and history are to blame, especially over the last two or three hundred years.We can see a change though, as many men realise that they can talk about their problems and show emotions and they don’t need to be warriors, providers and problem solvers. They can be house-husbands, partners and problem solvers! Women have had it slightly easier as we’re allowed to cry.

@Knave – What a beautiful picture; the colours and light are amazing.


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## SueC

Both Brett and I have articles in the current issue of _Grass Roots_. Mine is about food, and Brett has written the second part of his ethical computing article, about software, and why we use freeware. He's written it up so well for a non- or semi-computer literate target audience, and he has me in stitches at regular intervals with his comparisons and side comments. :rofl: His first article in his IT series, about hardware, is here: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page35/#post1970645321

Last issue's articles are here: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page39/#post1970688051

_Current GR excerpt follows, click and click again to enlarge to readable size._


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## SueC

*BEN EXPRESSING HIS FEELINGS*

If you say hello, Ben usually talks back. If you start making pathetic noises like he does, it amplifies the whole thing. This is a relatively minor exchange. I shall be looking out for more opportunities to film his operatic proclivities this week.


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## SueC

*BUTTERFLIES FOR ROMEO*

We visited the grave site yesterday. I came home and wrote about it in my paper journal. Click to enlarge to readable size.


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## SueC

*DIFFICULT TO WRITE WELL ABOUT?*

One of the topics that gets the most awful and clumsy writing in the general public sphere is that of sexuality - unless you're reading a clinical textbook, which is just clinical, and to the point, and inoffensive. There actually is an annual "worst sex scene in literature" award because of this. A lot of people's attempts are so cringeworthy - like the Mills & Boon (AKA Bilge & Swoon) stuff, which is full of horrendous clichés about the hero's "thrusting manhood" etc etc - I can't understand why it is so popular. Or for that matter, >95% of written erotica - it's also bilge, just with more X-rated language. I don't know how anyone finds that exciting, but clearly, a lot of people do. Ho hum.

So Brett and I had a chat about this phenomenon, and tried to come up with songs about the topic we thought were good efforts. In doing so, we also came up with a lot of songs we really loathe - one of which, for me, is _I Can't Get No Satisfaction_ by the Rolling Stones (I call them the _Rolling Stoned_) - it's a narcissistic sex song, so why am I not surprised. This is a band both of us generally dislike, but even they came up with four songs we like: _Painted Black_, _Ruby Tuesday_, _You Can't Always Get What You Want_, and _Sympathy For The Devil_.

Also, I _detest_ U2's _Even Better Than The Real Thing_ - I've considered carrying industrial earplugs in my pockets at all times in case I hear that in a shopping centre... and it would come in handy for many other songs as well. :Angel: Having said that, I do like a lot of U2's music, and they've actually written a number of good songs on this topic. The first was written when they were still teenagers. A live version of _An Cat Dubh_ - from way back, at Red Rocks, Colorado:






Here's another, from 1987's _The Joshua Tree_, which was the last studio album of theirs I liked for a long time:






The next one, _Velvet Dress_, is extraordinarily atmospheric, and a standout on this particular album, for me:






Also, who could possibly go past Nick Cave's brilliant _The Ship Song_ - I think that's one of the best songs ever on this topic:






A most honourable mention also to Mike Scott and The Waterboys, for these two:











Sinead O'Connor has done a few nice tracks on this topic too, and here's this _incredible_ singer doing her interpretation of the traditional Irish song _My Lagan Love_ - it always makes my hair stand on end - _wow_, the singing...






Previously mentioned on this journal was The Cure's _Jupiter Crash_. The words to this would have got them an A+ from me had they been in my English class - it's a fabulous piece about the problems with having excessively high expectations of things like astronomical events and sex, and then getting disappointed, and actually missing things in the process as well. This is such a well-written piece, full of lovely, gentle metaphors, that neither get twee nor compromising.






This later one is rather more edgy, and to me skirts around the dangerous ground of just how much you're willing to reveal about your private life, as a writer. Having said that, hat completely off for the candour and honesty of this person, at age 50 writing this one, after a lifetime with the same person since age 15, and showing that while there might be snow on the roof, the fire _definitely_ isn't out (no matter what he might have thought when he wrote _39_ :rofl: - and this is sort of like an antidote). I don't yet have this album, and rather blushed reading through these lyrics out of context the first time, they're anything but subtle - but set to music they get away with it, plus with that impish smile at the end of the clip...






I do think that people need to talk more sensibly and sensitively about this topic. These songs - even the last one - to me show that this can be done, and can further our discourse about an often taboo subject...

I actually do write about this from time to time, and here's what I wish I'd known at age 30:


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## SueC

*HO HUM*

Ever spend two days working furiously on a project which seems wonderful on Day One and then, halfway through Day Two, all you can see is what's wrong with it?

The weather's been so overcast, cold and windy I've hidden in the house two days, working on this Thing Which Seemed Like A Great Idea At The Time. The horses have stayed in their warm rugs - I contemplated riding once or twice, but the moment I stepped out the front door and the cold wind and drizzle hit me, I changed my mind and went back indoors...

This has got to be a record. I've not taken a walk in two days - hopefully tomorrow will be a "normal" day again. I'm still up in the middle of the night drinking tea. Maybe I'm going to become a nocturnal animal...

Hope everyone is well! inkunicorn:


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## Knave

Will you surprise us with what the project is?


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## Caledonian

It sounds like your body's trying to hibernate LOL. I feel the same when the weather turns cold in the Autumn.


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## SueC

I think you're right, @Caledonian. inkunicorn: I need to go find a cave somewhere... Ooops, that's right: _**** sapiens_ lives in houses now, and we have one of those. And I'm sitting in it. Maybe I need to put up a sign on the front door that says "cave." Could be a nice little decoration project! How's the crocuses?

@Knave, it's a strange thing. I read a really awful essay online on a topic I'm interested in. It's got badly supported points and it caricatures people and goes for narrow meanings of artistic works. I thought it was the work of an amateur submitting an opinion piece, when I initially saw it last year. But earlier this week, I found a link to this piece on an official website for the Vivid Festival which is coming up in Sydney, and it surprised me. I read it again, still felt the same way, and words appeared in my head. I sat down as the weather was shocking anyway, and spent the rest of the afternoon working on a counter-piece. It evolved into a 7000 words and counting essay offering an alternative perspective. It still needs a bit of editing. Then I found out that the person who wrote the essay is actually an international journalist who writes frequently for the New Yorker on the general topic. It doesn't make her essay any better, it just gives me a headache. My writing friends often remark that people get away with all sorts of badly researched, badly supported stuff once they have a high-profile gig in the public eye. But now the piece I've written, in that context, seems like a vanity attack, although it's not. I'm still going to try to get it out there, I'm just going to have to clarify a few things...


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## Knave

I think that goes for anything. Someone with the right name, position, past accomplishments, etc. can get away with utter nonsense.


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## Rob55

Hi All

Sorry I checked out for a while. My dear wife had a heart attack. 7 days in the hospital and many follow ups.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Knave

Oh no @Rob55, I am sorry to hear that. I hope she is okay now.

Sue, the next freeze took the butterflies, so I never did get a picture.  It was nice to see though.


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## bsms

Can't "like" your post, @Rob55, but you have my sympathy and prayers. I may get frustrated by my wife at times - less often than she does with me, perhaps - but I'd be tied in knots if she had a heart attack. It would scare the living daylights out of me!


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## SueC

@Rob55, I'm sorry to hear that. :-( Are things OK now? One of my good friends in Albany, early 60s, had a heart attack and didn't even realise at first, which could have cost her dearly. She thought she was just having indigestion. It's only because she mentioned it to a friend on the phone, and that person said, "I'm coming around to take you to the hospital just in case - don't protest, no skin off your nose if it's nothing serious!" that she went to get checked out. She said there was no telltale pain in the arm, it really was indistinguishable from cases of bad indigestion she had had. I've read since that women's heart attack signs are often less clearcut than men's. How did your wife's case present? What did she notice?

Good Antipodean vibes and very best wishes to both of you. :hug:

@bsms, how long have you been married? 30-ish years or so? It's an art holding things together and keeping them happy. Date nights are great. Foregrounding and commenting on the things you love about your partner, and doing it often. Noticing kindness, courage, humour, originality, going the second mile, thoughtfulness, etc etc - and naming and appreciating these in conversation (with a big hug). Taking nothing for granted - looking with fresh eyes. Little surprises. ...Naughty example: Recently I was in a newsagency and laughing over the cards. There was one that said, "Happy birthday - another year older and you still don't need Viagra." :rofl: On an impulse, I bought it and put a message in it for him and hid it under his pillow. He had a good laugh and is displaying it in his office.  He often surprises me with a book or CD he knows I'd like. I make him little treats, like chocolate nut horns, cherry clafoutis, chocolate and walnut biscuits, and spring them on him. You can secretly buy concert tickets etc. So much fun stuff you can do!... Going back to old adventures you've had - looking at photos of trips etc. Counting all your blessings. I'm well aware you've been married longer than us and could therefore give us a tip or two as well. I'm just thinking about what works well for us. I had zero good role modelling for having a happy marriage in my birth family, and of course if you have it there, then you'll already have a lot of the behaviour patterns by osmosis and on autopilot that predispose towards good relationships. For me it was the opposite, and I had to work really hard at it.

We had a tough time for a couple of years after we were married because of a lot of unresolved baggage for both of us. It can become so easy to foreground the negatives, and to forget why you fell in love in the first place - and it nearly killed us. We only just got through it, but it made us stronger, and I am so glad we didn't give up. Negative stuff spirals, but so can positive stuff. I think also that men often have difficulty sharing things emotionally, because of gender socialisation norms, so they don't always voice their thoughts when that would be good for their wives to actually hear. It's good to give yourself a push sometimes. There are times I have to literally interview Brett to hear what's on his mind. 

One funny anecdote to come out of those tough times we had early is the one and only time I have seen my husband drunk. He just went for the cooking brandy and had way too much of it because upset about an impasse we had. They say that intoxication brings out pre-existing proclivities in people, and amplifies them. So, for instance, lots of people get aggressive and rude when drunk. What my husband did was to want to have irrational conversations, and when I declined and went to bed, he took books off the bookshelves in the lounge (this is before we lived on our farm) and arranged them all over the floor. He then came to tell me, "Sue, I've made a great work of art, you really must come see it!" :rofl: He kept going on about how he was going to exhibit it and win an art prize.

I can laugh about it now, but at the time, it wasn't simple fun. Brett says, by the way, that his marriage tip for other guys is, "Washing the dishes is men's work!" ;-)

This little book has lots of ideas and tips I found helpful: https://www.amazon.com/Shatterproof-Your-Marriage-Couples-Up/dp/0757307094 ...the comment online is a bit hyped, but don't let it put you off. We're in a happy relationship now (with the same speed bumps at times as everyone who's doing the long haul), but even with a happy relationship, there's still some really great ideas in that book.

@Knave, I'm imagining a cloud of snowflakes. Are the butterflies likely to come back as the weather warms up for you?


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## Knave

I don’t know Sue. I think that it is unlikely, only because I have never seen it like it was before. I see butterflies often, but I’ve never seen what amounts to an infestation of them! Lol. A happy infestation.

I think it is going to be a heavy bug year. I don’t know why I say that really. However, a lot of animals are already having ticks pulled off of them, and people too of course. Also, when we were turning out there were areas of mosquitoes that made you crazy. Bones and I were having a conniption, while when Cash and I hit them he didn’t have much to say about it. I did use a little fly spray on him though, so maybe that made all of the difference. It does seem some horses handle bugs better than others though, and people too. 

I am one that doesn’t do great with them on an overall note. I am not horrible, but I get swollen up over any bites and am seriously allergic to ants. Bones does too, so maybe that is why he gets so upset. I can handle them to an extent, but I start loosing my cool when they are all in my face. 

Bees and wasps are hard for me. I appreciate them, but I can panic about them too. I have to intentionally make myself act calm. 

One day, when Bones was three, we were walking off the side of a mountain, and I was freaking out about a bee. I wasn’t riding and he walked to close to a dead tree, sticking a branch through the stirrup. He panicked and the branch broke, following us down the side of the mountain for a moment before falling out. I dislocated my hip (not traumatic, I have really bad hips). It reminded me how stupid freaking out about bees is though...

You can imagine the two of us having a breakdown together over the bugs. Lol. We roll that way. It will be nice if Cash just wonders why I am such a child. 

So, although I hope the butterflies are back, I am a bit concerned over all of the bad bugs they may foretell.


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## SueC

*FIRST WEEK OF MAY*

Most of it disappeared in a flurry of essay writing, and I ended up with roughly 7000 words I was happy with. As the weather was mostly bad, and I have an injury, that was OK. Elizabeth did a review and edit for me  and told me to send it to _Rolling Stone_. :Angel: Not sure they take submissions, we'll see; but _The Monthly_, where the original essay I was reacting to appeared, when I enquired if they would give me a right of reply to their music critic's essay, told me to send it through, and I did that on Friday.

By the way, I did gradually adjust my viewpoint to the original essay. At first I was so annoyed by the tunnel vision, narrow interpretations and caricaturing I saw little else, but by the end of the writing process, I told myself to re-read what I was responding to, and pretend it was one of my students I liked, that I was giving feedback to. When I did that, I decided that the original essay also contained a personal account and a contextualised band history that were generally good. It's just that the sort of thing that was going on with stuff like not getting facts right or not supporting assertions with sufficient evidence would, for a university essay, have resulted in a C at best no matter how good other aspects were. The good parts of that essay were about a B+. At high school, we're not quite as anal about the research, so there, it would have scored a B+ overall.

For a public-space essay, I tend to judge it like an undergraduate essay. After all, these are mostly written by professional people with degrees or equivalent. That's why I was so aghast at first.

I would really love for the essay I wrote to see the light of day. I'd like to give something back from an audience perspective - a viewpoint not too often heard... the way I felt after I'd finished it, it was like I'd written it with my own blood. As our Davis Cup tennis players often say, "I left it all out there."

Eventually I'm going to put it on my journal too, but with serious things, you can't put them online when you're actually aiming to get them into publications.

In other news, this week we went for a walk on which three donkeys decided to accompany us:






I had a couple of short on-farm rides with Sunsmart, but routine and no photos.

Here's some photos from recent times:

Three of Jess on her dog sofa. The reason she has coloured light on her face is that it's coming through one of my painted-glass highlight windows - the one that looks like Kermit on a Jimi Hendrix album cover. I looove the way Jess has one ear that sticks straight up, and one that flips over a little at the tip. 

One from wash day, with Nelly and Benjamin keeping me company in the garden.

Six from our donkey walk - the start and end of it, on the sand track and swamp track respectively. The video was taken in the middle.


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## SueC

*BIG BICYCLE JAUNT*

One thing that's really come along this year is the fitness training, which had lagged and needed putting in order. I'm feeling so much better, and really toning up. I now look forward to going for training rides on our bikes, when at the start of the year, I was hiding and procrastinating. It feels good now to be doing this, when actually on the bicycle - which is how it always was, when we lived in town, before the farm.

We've been starting off with a commitment to do a 16km (10 mile) training ride at least once a week, just to start us off. We've achieved that, and sometimes we go twice a week. While that's not much, it's making a significant difference to the muscle tone and bulk of my quadriceps and calves, as well as trunk.

Today, when we got to Redmond townsite, which is usually our turnaround point, I requested of Brett that we do the extended loop we'd done when fitter a couple of years back, just for something different to see. He said yes - which was lovely. So we did the loop around Redmond West Rd to Verne Rd (which is a gravel road, but Brett is on a mountain bike, and I have touring tyres on my road bike) and back to Redmond-Hay River Road. It was a 24km ride (15 miles) and I really enjoyed it, but by the time we got halfway down Verne Rd, both of us were hitting hypoglycaemia... because we'd only had Cherry Clafoutis for breakfast, which is mostly fruit and egg with very little carbohydrate (just flour to thicken the batter), and it was now way past morning teatime.

So when we got home, Brett ate some pre-existing quiche and I made waffles which we had with home-made plum sauce. Wholemeal, locally grown, stoneground flour and lots of antioxidants on top.



Bill was there as usual on Sunday, and for lunch I made gozleme (Turkish silverbeet/feta pockets) with sliced tomatoes on the side, and a pumpkin soup. Gozleme:



For afternoon tea I made spiced pear / chocolate tart:



After that, I was pretty much ready to go to sleep... :ZZZ:

But alas, I had horses and donkeys to feed, and horses to rug (front coming through tonight and unlike the donkeys, they don't use the shelter). Then we had leftover salmon and avocado sushi for dinner. With the last dregs of my energy, I am writing this. A nice, warm, soft bed beckons, and Brett is already toasting it for me.

Attached are a photo of my roadbike, from when we still lived in town - we haven't taken any bicycle photos since! Also a shot of today's ride map, and the proper bicycle clothes I have as of this year - a proper jersey and nice bike pants that have shorts over the top, not just the padded tights that look like incontinence knickers... All my life, I've ridden in conventional shorts or yoga pants, and normal T-shirt, even when time trialling in my 20s...


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## SueC

Hullo @lostastirrup!  How were exams etc? Are you well? How's Nick? :runpony:


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## SueC

*STRESS FRACTURE*

So, the injury I mentioned a couple of days ago is definitely a stress fracture of a metatarsal. I've been asked if I've had my bone density checked - excellent question!  Bone density is great - presumably because I load my bones quite a bit and eat well. But that was my first question last year as well - having never broken anything before, I thought it was outrageous that I should break three bones at once from an uncomplicated fall during a spook _at the walk_... They said to me, "You know the most common cause we see here for your injury? People slipping in the bathtub. So yes, you can get it falling from a height too."

And they were so impressed that I'd not had a major injury from horse riding for 26 years! :rofl: Apparently a lot of their regulars are riders... :falloff:

Basically, the most likely explanation for what happened is that I behaved inappropriately like a teenager, although I'm actually 48. It's the way I dismount from my horse.  Because my bones healed up quickly last year and have been completely trouble free for half a year (10 months post fracture), I reverted back to all my old wild behaviours, including jumping off my horse with abandon and crashing back to earth, sometimes not on both feet. This is how the hairline fracture most likely initially formed, and you don't feel it at the time. The classic presentation of a stress fracture is when it becomes increasingly unstable with normal use, you get a little swelling on the top of your foot without any apparent explanation - the painless hairline rupture happened days (sometimes weeks) earlier, and took time to get loosened up and bleeding with everyday stresses afterwards. That's when the swelling and pain starts, and it increases as the days go by as the fracture gets increasingly unstable. Eventually you can't walk normally on it, and then it's obvious what's happened. Stress fractures have an intact periosteum (membrane around the bone) and aren't displaced, but are in danger of fracturing "properly" with additional stress or impact, or of not healing firmly if not splinted/rested sufficiently.

It's likely that the fracture is close to one of the healed fractures from last year (X-rays don't show stress fractures until after they start forming callus, about three weeks in) - when acute fractures heal, the part of the bone that was broken is temporarily stronger than the original bone. It can take a year or two for the bone to remodel to the extent that it reverts to about the same strength as the rest of the bone, and until then, you're actually at increased risk of fracturing just up from the healed section because of this regional disparity. But I hadn't thought about that when going back to life as usual, which is rather wild I suppose, because I've not really started doing things that differently yet compared to when I was younger. :hide: Here's a wake-up call.

The good news is that I am totally stable in my astronaut boot and can walk with it and do normal things, like mow the lawn (did that this afternoon), with no pain or problems for the stress fracture. I just can't do striding walking for 4-8 weeks (grrrr) - I can roll over the ball of the foot, but not push with the toes because that won't allow the fracture to heal. So no speed walking. Cycling is perfectly OK, as is horse riding, as long as I modify my dismount.

And on that note, I just came back from an evening loop ride with Sunsmart. No issues mounting from the ground - it's not a thing that stresses my foot - the horse is medium sized and I'm tall, so not much of a step up for me at all. No pain riding, all good. And I managed a nice sliding-down-the-horse dismount at the end, landing softly on my right (uninjured) foot only, so no further aggravation. In my hiking boots, of course, because you can't wear an astronaut boot on a horse, or bicycle. You wear supportive footwear and have to be really careful not to twist your foot or push with your toes. Of course, this isn't an issue when riding.  :charge:

I'm glad to be riding!  Last time, that wasn't allowed for months. I finally snuck back on eight weeks post-fractures! (Didn't tell the doctor. He didn't want me anywhere near a horse, but I was walking 10km at this point and honestly...)

inkunicorn:

PS: I blame _Disintegration_. Look what happened last year when Brett bought the album. Three bone fractures, just like that. And last week was the 30th anniversary of this same album, and I get a stress fracture that same week. I ask you!


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## Knave

That is terrible luck! Also, that is how I dismount as well, and my foot was hurting last year for a while... hmmm. Husband blamed it on Cash jumping onto it, but it had been hurting before that. I blamed it on your fractured foot! Lol


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## gottatrot

Oh no! Glad it's not a bad injury, but still...it's too soon. There should be a grace period or something.

I'm trying to teach myself not to get off horses like that either. You can step in a hole so easily, thinking it's solid ground.
My knee I injured awhile back is holding up to hard running and riding, but still it aches at strange times.


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## SueC

I'm glad your knee is nearly back to normal, @gottatrot.  And it's a good wake-up call to realise that it would be better to get off a horse very gently instead of leaping off it like one of those toy frogs with springs in them... without having gotten an acute fracture out of it, which could also have happened...

Maybe we all need to act more our age. :hide: By which I mean, not actually immortal and unbreakable. :Angel:
@Knave, bwahahaha! :rofl: You blamed your foot pain of my fractures, and I blame my fractures on an album called _Disintegration_! It's such fun to be aggressively irrational sometimes, when you're normally governed by rationality... :Angel:


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## SueC

On a rather more sombre note, in the 1990s we had a horse who got a hairline fracture kicking in the trailer (we didn't know obviously) and then her kicking leg (she favoured kicking with the nearside hind leg) shattered under her in the home turn of a race. With hairline fractures, this can happen under load. Thick, soft rubber mats highly recommended if you have a kicker in the trailer...


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## Knave

That’s too bad @SueC. I haven’t had a trailer kicker as of yet. I did have a horse who kicked other horses in the trailer. Runt was terrible for it, dragging a shoe through the leg of the paint horse once. She always trailered in back after without issue. She was a nasty thing to other horses. It made me laugh, but not anyone else and not me in the trailer situation.

A funny thing to offset your sad story. Once I had a goat. Bertha was her name, and my parents bought her for me to practice goat tying. The guy sold her cheap because she was gay. No joke. Probably she had some sort of hormone imbalance. She had all the features of a billy goat and became a great big thing.

Sad for the poor goat I tried to tie in competition, who I threw completely over my head and slammed into the ground. I felt absolutely guilty, but it was a muscle memory thing. I digress.

Bertha was loose to do whatever. She had a bad habit of running at the horses and butting them off of their feed. One day Runt had enough and kicked her all the way across the corral. Dad laughed, either it will kill Bertha or teach her a lesson. It did neither.


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## SueC

Do goats have freemartins, I wonder, @Knave?

Funny!  And I'm sitting here thinking, _goat tying_??? First I ever heard of it. Loving all this cultural exchange. Must think of something weird and Aussie. Ah yes - of course - _Vegemite_! :rofl:

We had a goat called Hilda in the late 1980s, a Saanen with horns on who used to get in the horse paddocks and push horses off their hay if you didn't tie her on her grazing chain. One day Hilda tried it with the big chestnut French mare who's Sunsmart's great-grandmother. She pinned her ears right back, picked up Hilda by the scruff of her neck, lifted her own great long neck like a crane, and dangled a bleating Hilda in mid-air, just holding her there. I'll never forget the grim look on that mare's face. My mother ran screaming into the paddock, "Let her go!" She did, without lowering her neck first. The goat high-tailed out of there and never tried to push the big chestnut mare off her hay again. :rofl:


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## Knave

Lol! Runt often did the same type of thing. She made me laugh with her bad attitude.

Goat tying is a competition where a goat is on a stake and you run down (on a horse of course), jump off and tie it down. Come to find out the goats are really small. Bertha was big, like a milk bred buck. 

I never did get very into goat tying. I used the paint one year, and he had never seen a goat at that time. I jumped off and the paint almost came back over the top of me! Lol. The guy judging started to laugh (he knew me). 

I didn’t go to many high school rodeos, and that was mostly the only place one could goat tie. When I did go I was competitive in the barrels and poles on Runt, but was mainly there to team rope. I don’t think I ever entered the goat tying there or even the break away. It is an expensive thing to do that high school rodeoing. 

My husband did it and went to college to rodeo. He wanted to let the girls, but I think my oldest isn’t very interested and if my youngest wants to I’d rather take her somewhere she could win money instead of just spending it.


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## SueC

*TOWN THURSDAY*

Brett usually has a day off on Thursday, but a colleague was sick today, so he went to cover the morning for them. I took the opportunity to go into town with him, do a little early morning shopping, and return home to un-rug the horses after the frosty night - it was nice and sunny by the time I was home, and the horses lined up for my attention before rolling in the big sand patch. I meant to plant all my greenhouse peas out today, but had a big bucket of tomatoes to harvest all over the garden, so ended up doing only one tray out of three, but I'm making tomato soup this evening (and there's more for the freezer). It was lovely to be in the garden in the autumn sun, with some jigs playing through the open window - even the donkeys lined up to listen.

I had only an hour before turning around and going back to town for a haircut, and then a lunch date. I have an ultra-cool hairdresser called Dee. She is excellent at making me look civilised, has interesting stories to tell, and laughs when I say we're all only three meals and a haircut away from savagery. Because we're going into winter now, I had my hair shaped up at the back, off my neck. Over the summer I have it long at the back to protect me from sunburn.

After that, I collected my lovely husband for our lunch date at the Turkish bakery in York Street. We love this place, unpretentious, excellent, and run by actual Turkish people! They make outstanding kebabs - we both had steak kebabs served in crispy flatbread, with salad, egg, cheese, and sauces of our choice. Leaves even the best hamburger completely for dead. While waiting, we held hands on the table and gazed into each other's eyes like honeymooners, which is amusing, because we've been married over 11 years. There _was_ some evidence of being long-time married in the irreverence and the teasing going on as well. :rofl: We just love going on little dates like this, and should do it more... Coffee and hot chocolate to go with baklava rounded out the meal nicely.

Next, we headed for the beach. Because of my stress fracture I can't walk fast or a long way at the moment, so we brought the dog's ball slinger and had a great time just ambling up and down the beach a bit, watching the dog chase the waves, playing ball with her when she'd finished with the waves, and just taking in the picture-postcard scene. The weather was completely glorious - cool and sunny, with a light breeze - and the colours down at Mistaken Island were amazing - hundreds of shades of blue in the sea, set against snow-white sand, orange and grey rocks, hundreds of shades of green in the vegetation, and a cerulean sky. The islands further out looked gorgeous too. It's such an acutely beautiful place. We didn't take a camera, so I'll post a few good pictures off the web today.




























It's really worth clicking on the last photo to enlarge, and see all the amazing colours!


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## Knave

What a nice day! I love eating out. We don’t do it often, and it makes me feel like I’m on some sort of vacation or something.

I love the pictures! I can’t believe all the seashells.


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## SueC

Every time we go do something like that, we say, "We really should make this a weekly thing, to have a kebab at the Turkish place or coffee at Dylan's, and then do a nice walk on that wonderful coastline." We'll have to work on it - the scenery is so gorgeous and we should get out more...

I really do wish there were 100 hours in a day. I could sleep for 40 hours and then have 60 hours in which to do lots of things...


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## SueC

*SLIGHTLY CRACKED RIDER, CRACKING RIDE!*

Just reporting that I had a nice long trail ride this afternoon through the valley floor including at the neighbour's place. Very pretty ride, here's some of the scenery (composite from past shots):














































This is the actual ride map:










The "pathfinding" along the animal tracks through the bush is great fun for both of us - Sunsmart really loves that kind of terrain, and choosing routes through it. He's good at it, so I let him. The best part today was coming out of the end of that bushland section, near the property boundary, where you turn right and go up the hill. The horse said, "May I?" and I said, "Of course! _Wheeeeee_!" and off he galloped up the hill, and I had the wind whistling past my ears - it was great!









...especially since I am speed limited on my own two feet at the moment due to that stress fracture https://www.horseforum.com/member-jo...post1970716561. So it was lovely to be going fast. I'm also allowed on the bicycle, and my husband and I are going for a training ride in the morning where I plan on going fast to make up for all the slowcoaching I have to do on foot at the moment...

After our merry gallop, it was walking alternating with fast trotting, all the way home. Happy horse and happy rider.


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## CopperLove

I've eyeballed this thread a few times and have nothing of interest to contribute myself but I just wanted to tell you @SueC that I am fascinated by looking at the landscapes in photos you share of your rides. I've never had the opportunity to travel outside of the US though I badly want to. Even within the US the first thing that strikes me when traveling is the way the trees change, seeing the different native plant life.

Your descriptions earlier of pacing vs. trotting and how they are used in racing was really interesting also. In my area, perhaps just because of what my family prefers and the people they know, people tend to prefer a "gaited" horse. And that's what people will ask you... not what kind of gait or what breed but whether your horse is gaited, I have no idea if that's how people put it in other areas as well. Some of the common ones seen in this area or crosses thereof are Tennessee Walking Horses, Kentucky Mountain Saddle Horses, Paso Finos, Spotted Saddle Horses and Rocky Mountains.

The moment any other person who doesn't know me finds out I've become the recent owner of a horse they ask me if she's gaited. My family (except for my mother) all tell me if I try a saddle horse I'll never go back. Even the young man I went to school with who came to ride her just to see how she did and what she knew said to mom... "You know she's not gaited right?" :rofl: Yes I know, I think I'll happily survive.


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## SueC

Ooooh, you got yourself a horse, @CopperLove? :happydance: Excuse me a minute while I look through your posts... inkunicorn:

You've got a photo album!  I too am really interested to see the "local reports" from people all over the world, and to see the world through their eyes. I'm always looking at the vegetation and the architecture and the weather, and of course the horses. And at the fencing, how it's done elsewhere.

Dreama looks lovely, I think you'll survive very well indeed! ;-) Gaited horses are an addiction, so if you stay away from them, you won't catch it! :rofl: And anyway, this mare looks significantly Arabian, and those horses step up a gear just like gaited horses do... my late Arabian mare could trot nearly as fast as the Trotters under saddle... and many of the working lines are capable of fabulous trots, endless floaty canters, and sparkling gallops too! :charge: ...you will have a lot of fun! Congratulations on following your dream. Realising our dreams is a strange mixture of inspiration and perspiration! :rofl:

I see you like reading  and knitting. Later on I'm going to post a photo of an amazing sort of knitted dreamcoat a writer friend made - it's colourful and quirky and just the fit for her personality! I can knit, just basics (cable etc), and used to as a teenager, but unfortunately my jumpers always turned out too large and so I had to give them to other people... with scarves it doesn't matter, of course. (Are any of the others reading knitters too, I wonder?) Who taught you to knit, by the way, @CopperLove? I'm a little fossilised, so back in the day it was taught at school, and my grandmother and I spent a lot of quality time doing handicrafts including knitting when I was a child... You can talk and tell jokes when knitting, and my grandmother was a devil for telling jokes!  She was also a crossword fiend, and I inherited the shape of her capital A because of it...

I missed this the first time around, thanks for posting it: https://www.horseforum.com/horse-talk/touching-horse-child-story-803321/#post1970718235 ...sad and wonderful...

Thanks for popping in and chatting! And you're very welcome. :welcome:


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## CopperLove

@SueC Ha, the first time mom saw her she instantly proclaimed she was an Arabian mix. I know... not very much about these things, but mom loved her so much and isn't in good enough shape physical to take on full responsibility for a new horse, and I wanted to keep her so... we did exactly what you're never supposed to do and took on a horse we had no history on for a beginner :rofl: But I've found a fabulous family in the town I live in who tame and train mustangs and I've been taking riding lessons with them and will soon be boarding her with them so I can work with her more through the week and can get some training help for both of us along with the riding lessons.

Of the times I have ridden her at a trot (unwillingly even, might I add), I can definitely tell it's different than a trot on the mustangs. No one in the family but mom knows what they're missing out on. Perhaps I should start telling them that THEY need an Arabian. :lol: 

So, I am lucky enough to live near a locally owned bookstore/coffee shop combo that is also a magical yarn shop. I worked on the coffee shop side through college. I learned to crochet on my own following youtube videos, but the owner of the bookstore taught me to knit. There is a rainbow fairy coat pattern that is my dream coat to knit one day as well. I'm not sure if this link will work as it's from instagram, but I made this crochet dress as part of a display for my graduate thesis show: https://www.instagram.com/p/BSKTKEgAwYG/

I'm a much better crochet/knitter than a rider at this point :rofl:

And thank you!


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## SueC

...Brett is an IT whiz and went to the source info so we could post your lovely crochet dress directly:










  

This is amazing. If you end up riding halfway as well as knitting and crocheting, they'd better reserve a place on the US Olympic team for you! ;-)

What's your graduate thesis topic?

And you must talk to @knightrider. She'll have you in a side-saddle wearing that dress on your horse in no time... :Angel:


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## Knave

It is beautiful!!


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## CopperLove

@SueC Ah, thank you  Ha, I highly doubt I'll ever be the equivalent as a rider to my knitting and crochet ability. I've never been a very a very physically talented individual, I'd be thrilled with a good average riding level :lol:

I was finishing my MA with a focus in graphic design... so the dress wasn't really a piece that counted toward a grade of any kind, it was just a personal project I was working on at the time that I used for a big display piece as part of a craft/business style set up to go with a front-end mock design of a mobile app (The EcoFiber logo in the background was part of the actual project.) My thesis show was mainly based around a book of fairy tales I had collected, done the layout for, illustrated in a simple digital style and then had printed in hardcover. I framed some larger versions of the illustrations and had the book on a stand. But after all that, mainly everyone remembers the dress lol.

Side-saddle sounds... intriguing but horrifying. I've never actually seen someone ride side-saddle in person.
@Knave thank you


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## SueC

Don't worry, @CopperLove, it can take barely six months to go from beginner rider to up to all sorts of insanities! :Angel:

And here's an open secret: I was not a coordinated child. Not great at sports etc. As an adult, I tend to bump into furniture, and I'm a lousy dancer. But I can ride!  Something about horses just clicked,,,

Here's the knitted coat Jenny Lloyd made:


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## CopperLove

@SueC That's good to know :rofl:

That is lovely. Granny squares (the main pattern used in this coat) were considered outdated in fashion for a long time, but now they are gaining favor in patterns again as "retro" things come back in style. I think they are really cute in a combo of colors like this.


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## SueC

@CopperLove, I'm sure you'll be much inspired by @Knave, too:










:Angel:

Yeah, looks like a patchwork quilt, doesn't it? I think perhaps you have to be 40+ to seriously consider wearing such things, because you no longer care about what other people think, and just do what you want (very liberating). Unless you're precocious at not caring what other people think - then you can wear this at any age! 

What would you wear it to?

Me, I'd wear it to formal meetings. Possibly funerals.


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## MissLulu

@SueC I love the "horse ears" photos. I keep thinking that soon that will be me. I will be exploring the world with my horse and all my lovely views will have horse ears!:loveshower:I usually wear boring colours but I love pretty things and that coat is amazing! I really wish I had a pretty coat like that for my daughters when they were young.


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## SueC

Hello, @MissLulu!  It was HF that got me into doing horse ears photos... (significant peer pressure :rofl: ...actually, it's a nice way to portray the world...) and I do them with an iPod, not a GoPro or anything that technical, so I have to ride hands-free when taking the shot... and try not to drop the thing because that would surely kill it and then I would cry... I've gotten good at holding the dangly bit of the iPod cover between thumb and forefinger for safekeeping... and then the thing disappears into my pocket, and I have to ride with a special pocketed sleeveless jacket when taking photos, because as you know, there really aren't decent pockets in riding wear, or in ladieswear full stop (I think it's a ruse to sell us handbags...).

I'm thinking though, what would those photos be like if you were riding a donkey?










So when is your horse going to be finished with the trainer? Are you going to ride her at some stage in the training, with the trainer's feedback etc?

I just read your pigeons thread... whew!  Julian's mother killed a sheep once, just tore the skin off half of its body when it went into her yard - it was a neighbour's stray sheep, and although we saw it (birth family) and legged it over to try to stop the attack, she was too quick. In her defence, she was depressed and bored in retirement, living solitary in a small sand yard - I won't keep horses like that. Julian was going the same way before Brett and I adopted him late 2017. He's a changed horse and loves life now, and socialising, and exploring. True story: He came down on a horse bus when we adopted him, and had never been on one before (he went in a two-horse trailer to races all his life), and had a good look at it when he came off it at our gate. Following month, our friend Bill turned up in his similar-looking full-size white-painted old bus that he converted into a camping vehicle. Julian saw it and hid himself for the rest of the day. We wonder if he thought he was going back? :rofl:














Julians's original arrival and integration into the herd:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page10/#post1970517327

His recent adventures:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page39/#post1970686529


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## MissLulu

Poor Julian! I bet he was thinking, "Don't send me back! I love it here!"


Wow, killing a sheep. Poor horse, she must have been so stressed. I have two Border Collies and when I got Lulu I would tell people that I was told she was a Quarter Horse but I think she is a Border Horse because of the level of energy, her intelligence, and her need to burn off physical and mental energy. I'm getting to ride her often. I usually have one lesson on her a week and then the other times I ride her when the trainer can keep an eye on me and help me if I need it (she is usually teaching another lesson or training another horse). Those times are for me to try to work things out for myself because I'm going to have to do that when I take my mare home! I am thinking I will keep her with the trainer through June and then bring her home for the summer. After a few months when we have cooler temperatures I plan to take her back to the trainer. We will both benefit from more training!


I need to look for a sleeveless jacket. I have two lightweight jackets that have pockets with zippers and they are great for riding but I have had to retire them to the closet now that it is getting warmer.



I love your horses. They are stunning! As a child and a teen was always impressed by the really over-the-top pretty horses but I am older now and appreciate a really lovely horse that isn't so flashy. I loved the story of Romeo and hope my Miss Lulu lives that long.


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## CopperLove

@SueC @Knave Oh my LORD! mg: What is a stunt like that called? That is so much talent (and by talent I mean so much work and practice and skill :clap:

Having come to maturity in the art department of a university, I'd wear a coat like that anywhere I wanted :lol: I'm also a Renaissance Fair nerd, so I'm totally in for anything that looks a bit costumey but fits my personality. Anything handmade is even better.


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## Knave

I don’t remember the name of that trick @CopperLove. To be honest I love it for starting a horse to trick riding, but the only handstand I do at a lope is on the shoulder and toward the horse. I would be hesitant to do it that way with speed.

My cousin and I always joke about wanting to go to a renaissance fair. She is particularly beautiful, and her sister and I said we could be maids to a princess. It sounds like a lot of fun. An old coworker of mine (who is my friend) said she went to a few when she was younger. Things like that don’t exist in my neck of the woods.


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## CopperLove

@Knave I actually went looking for an album but then realized that I apparently don't know how to find other user's albums. Trick riding, like so many other things to me, is amazing to watch.

We usually only go to one a year. There is one in my state but I've heard it's not as big as the one we go to. We like to go to the one in Ohio, even though it's about a 2 hour drive away. It could still be a day trip, but one of my college roommates lives near it and a friend or two and I usually go stay with her for the weekend. If you get the chance to travel to one it's a pretty cool place to browse through handmade goods.


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## Knave

I don’t have an album @CopperLove. I have a journal, and I put pictures in it. 

That sounds like a lot of fun! Two hours isn’t bad. We do that just for groceries or a doctor. Our closest fast food is that far too. Lol


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## CopperLove

@Knave That could be why then, ha!


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## Spanish Rider

@CopperLove , that dress is amazing! Although I am no an accomplished crocheter, I have made the odd doily, and I am quite good at knitting. But, I have never had the patience to complete a garment, so kudos to you!
@Knave, I had no idea you were a daredevil!



> Me, I'd wear it to formal meetings. Possibly funerals.


Why am I not surprised?

This actually made me chuckle, and it reminds me of my father's funeral when, after my mother told us that she expected us all to wear black, she wore blue! Maybe I could wear something like that to _her_ funeral?

Sue, that was a beautiful ride through you neighbor's property. Do you go often?


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## SueC

Here's a few pastries to go with chat and coffee around here:


Chocolate Nut Horns V – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

Seriously, I wish I had a space-time dumbwaiter to pass these around on to make virtual chats more real and cosy. Or even better, one of these:

:tardis:

@Spanish Rider, as much as possible - and hopefully again today. Last night we did a simple loop around our own valley floor tracks, just a 15 minute jaunt as darkness set in, post a big gardening day putting in a new flower bed etc. It was a nice ride - we all seem to enjoy dusk riding and animal activity in the bush increasing (horse, rider, dog). Towards the end of the ride, Nelly and Benjamin met us at the junction of the Middle Meadow at the end of the swamp track - they'd actually come looking for us!  They were most excited to find us, and immediately tagged single file after the horse. Thirty seconds later, they were overcome by high spirits and gallopped past us, bucking and kicking up their heels - you'd think they were racing donkeys! :rofl:










You can see the valley floor in the centre, bordered by two internal tracks. 

@CopperLove, @MissLulu, photos and stories of your own horses are always welcome on my journal, as are hyperlinks to other places you are discussing them! 

Just the idea of a Renaissance Fair is making me salivate.

Now I'd better get on with chores for the day! ;-)


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## SueC

*FOR THOSE WITH DIFFICULT MOTHER'S DAYS*

I don't mean to dampen the mood, and I don't need sympathy as I've worked through all this stuff; I'm just posting this for anyone here who's had a difficult time growing up, and wants to talk about it (or at least know that other people out there exist who get it). :hug:

This morning, one of my adopted sisters and I were discussing Mother's Day and our mixed feelings about it personally, due to our own mothers. Here's what I wrote for an emotional abuse website a couple of years ago when I was still doing a lot of processing post my complex PTSD diagnosis from growing up in a violent and emotionally unsupportive environment.

_When I was a tiny little girl and in kindergarten for the first year, we all did an art project for Mother’s Day. We made paper mache clowns, with big paper tunics for bodies and colourful wool for hair. We painted the faces and tunics, and then our teachers gave us chocolates with which to fill up their tunics. These were taped shut at the bottom and this made a solid base for the clown to stand on. The project took weeks and I was so excited. Such colourful clowns filled with chocolate! I mean, a *clown*! *Chocolate*! And the two put together like that! It seemed like total genius to little me and like the other kids, I couldn’t wait for Mother’s Day to arrive.

I woke up very early in the morning and excitedly carried the clown into my parents’ bedroom. I said to my mother, “Happy Mother’s Day!” And she frowned and, “What is *that*???” I said, “It’s a clown. I made it. It’s full of chocolate!” And she said, “I don’t like it.” I ran out of the room bawling. I heard my father remonstrating with my mother, and my mother saying, “I’m not going to lie!”

That was the first Mother’s Day I remember. And really, nothing ever changed. Handmade projects from school were shrugged off – the workmanship clearly wasn’t of a high enough standard. So after a while I bought things, and got, “You couldn’t even be bothered making something for me!” But that was better than having my work belittled. Nothing I ever bought was ever good enough either. I remember when I was a university student, and living below the poverty line on a government living allowance. I’d spent $2 on a beaten-up scratched old aluminium frypan with a faulty regulator for my own use. I’d noticed my mother’s electric frypan was scratched and worse for wear on a visit home, and spent half a year saving up over $50 to buy her a lovely, state-of-the-art, gleaming new electric frypan for Mother’s Day. She did like to cook, and had no recreational hobbies, so not an easy person to get something for. When I presented her with the electric frypan and a smile, she said, “What’s this? Something for the kitchen? Is that all you think I’m good for? A kitchen slave?”

She was always complaining about having no dishwasher, so when I started my very first paid work after university, I spent my very first fortnightly pay cheque going halves on a super-modern, top-range dishwasher with a sibling. That managed to fall flat as well – she didn’t like the dishwasher. No rational reason she could give. She did use it, but was never happy about it. She didn’t maintain it by cleaning the seals, filters and arms, and so the arms clogged up and the dishwasher started leaking, and she’d complain about what a crappy dishwasher it was at the next opportunity. We’d show her how to clean the seals and clean out the arms etc, and she’d say, “What’s the point of having a dishwasher if you have to do things like that?” After that I stopped giving presents that required saving up and thought, and gave little throwaway trinkets and a card; occasionally Interflora flowers.

Twenty years later, I only sent a card for the first time in my life, and wasn’t around to hear the moaning about what a cheapskate I am and how I don’t honour my own mother after all she did for me. This year, she won’t even get a card; nor will my father. Having been diagnosed with PTSD in my early 40s from multiple childhood trauma – witnessing domestic violence from a very early age, being the target of domestic violence from a very early age, being the family scapegoat, being physically and emotionally abused and emotionally neglected throughout my childhood, never being able to talk about it as a child for fear of repercussions – things began to make sense and I started to see things very differently, to stop participating in their surface show of “happy families”, and to stop making excuses for my parents’ behaviour and putting up with that behaviour.

I went no contact just over a year ago and it was the best decision I ever made with regards to them, and I wish I’d done it much earlier. I don’t visit, I don’t take phone calls, their emails go into the junk bin unread, I ignore and give away their presents after sending them back didn’t work. I don’t owe them any of my time or thoughts; these are so much better used in the consideration of the many other human beings around who benefit from a person’s time and thoughts. No more trying to talk it through, no more listening to excuses or stories of what an awful child I was, no more waiting for an apology, no more arguing about what constitutes appropriate behaviour or loving behaviour, no more services bestowed, no more, full stop.

This is simply about living a positive life and no longer giving any time and effort to things that have no positive value.

All the best to all of you out there who have been there too._

If you relate, you might like this article:

https://theinvisiblescar.wordpress....-a-card-candy-or-quality-time-on-mothers-day/

...and that website in general. Kudos to Veronica for starting this site, it's an excellent resource. :hug:

PS: These days I'm low-contact with my family of origin. I don't respond to any crap on email, and I don't take phone calls. Occasionally short messages are exchanged, mostly about the horses I have adopted. An attempt made to give them another chance a year or so after I wrote the above marooned, as always happened before, and as always will unless people are willing to listen, and to take a good look at themselves.


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## Knave

I “like” it only because you wrote it well and because of your ability to take a step away. I am sorry Mother’s Day is difficult for you. I cannot even imagine reacting to my children’s excitement with that sort of expression. Any show of their love is a huge excitement for me, and I wish that your mother had felt the way about you that I do about my children. 

I wish all parents felt a love for their children, and had an ability to express that love.


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## MissLulu

@SueC I'm so sorry! :hug: I grew up in a "Yours Mine and Ours" family and your post reminded me to message my sister. Mother's day can be difficult for her.


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## SueC

I second that, @Knave. ...clearly, some people's capacity to love is either nonexistent or broken. No wishing changes it, and I'd like people to know that.

Your Mother's Day entry on your journal, though, made my day. :loveshower: Just because sometimes there is no cause for celebration, doesn't mean there aren't lots of mothers worth celebrating too.  I love the stories where love is present, and am always so happy for the people in it. Happy Mother's Day, @Knave! :hug:


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## SueC

MissLulu said:


> @SueC I'm so sorry! :hug: I grew up in a "Yours Mine and Ours" family and your post reminded me to message my sister. Mother's day can be difficult for her.


Ah, so you'll know all about that then! ;-) And I'm sure you've also found, like many people in our position, that friends are your chosen family, and can more than compensate for not having much luck in your family of origin. :hug: Best wishes to you, @MissLulu.


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## Spanish Rider

I can relate. My mother was Army-raised, and during/after WWII, I know how important her behavior was on Base, as it reflected her father's respectability (especially when he was head officer on their base in Yokohama during reconstruction). So, I fully comprehend that, as she lived in a demanding environment as a child, the environment I was raised in was equally demanding, even though I believe she made a conscious effort to take it down a notch.

So, being aware of this, I have also been trying to take things down a notch in raising my own children. There are times that I actually compare myself to her and think, "Oh, no! Did I just say something my mother would have said?" In fact, to take stress off my kids, I don't even ask them their grades, as I see that they are already demanding with themselves, so I do not want to add to that stress. Instead, they willingly come to me with their grades, looking for approval and advice, which I take to be a good thing.

Having my mother on the other side of the world can be a blessing. However, when I go to the States, I have to live with her for several weeks. Of course, everything must be done on her terms, but her quarrels were never with me and always with my father.

Since my father's death, inevitably, the family dynamic has changed, and last summer I saw her pick fights with my sister, BIL and myself. And, after her sister's recent demise and death from Alzheimer's, I have started to witness other suspicious changes in her demeanor. Perhaps she is started her own decline? So, it is hard for me to now say whether it is her personality, perhaps affected by depression, or her physical state. The one thing I cannot get out of my head was how, this past August and in front of my children, she called me a "blonde bimbo" because I was dressed to go out. All I can remember is the wide-eyed look on my sons' faces. Was she intentially inappropriate, or was her brain chosing inappropriate words for "pretty"? Are her social filters shutting down? Either way, it is something I cannot tolerate in front of my kids this summer.

Gut-spilling done.


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## SueC

mg:, @Spanish Rider , you - a bimbo??? That's extraordinary. Is your mother jealous of your intellect? Or just generally trying to make herself feel better by putting you down? ...loss of faculties with age is one thing, but like alcohol, I sort of think it just brings out what was already under the surface. If people get nasty, then I think it was already in them; they just have a weaker filter for it. So tell me how you really feel, mother! :shock:

I don't know why some people think that having children entitles them to treat their children like crap. Because that's what this is.

Big :hug: to you. You might like the Invisible Scar website. It took me quite a while as an adult to figure out just how unacceptable my parents' behaviour towards me was - I'd been so conditioned. Of course I could see it if someone else was treated like that by somebody else, but with them and me, it's how it always was, and intellectual understanding of their behaviour being unacceptable was a far easier thing to acquire (had that as a teenager, and left home at 16, with the help of my university) than emotional understanding (that wasn't till my early 40s). Not until the wall came down I'd had to put up as a child just to survive emotionally. Everything is so different since that happened. Have you ever looked up Stockholm syndrome? Yet some people grow up like that...

It's so nice that you were able to make things better for your own family than they had been for you. And it's great that you care. I don't have the answers for all this stuff, but I can tell the difference between someone who cares about others, and someone who really doesn't, no matter how much lip service they pay to the idea.

Another big :hug: to you. And I'm looking forward to hearing about your trail riding date! inkunicorn: :blueunicorn:


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## Spanish Rider

Please don't get me wrong! My mother is not a bad mother. She has always been supportive of both my sister and myself, and she has spent the last 8 years taking care of my ill father and aunt all alone (I am very far away, and my sister's daughter has cystic fibrosis, which is a disease that requires daily treatments every morning and evening.). So, I believe that that has taken it's toll, both physically and psychologically.

I'd hate to think what my children will say about _me_ in the future!


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## Knave

Reminded me of you this morning.


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## SueC

That's a beautiful song, @Knave , thanks for bringing it into my world!  A lot of people write about this, don't they? And it's a really common thread that adversity is part of what brings out the best in us - well, for some of us. An alternative response is apparently to make other people suffer once you get the chance - a road taken by bullies, and narcissists, and sociopaths in general. I've never understood that - why someone who has known hurt should want to make others suffer - but crime dramas are full of specimens like that! ;-)

I think you and your girls will like this one:


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## SueC

Spanish Rider said:


> Please don't get me wrong! My mother is not a bad mother. She has always been supportive of both my sister and myself, and she has spent the last 8 years taking care of my ill father and aunt all alone (I am very far away, and my sister's daughter has cystic fibrosis, which is a disease that requires daily treatments every morning and evening.). So, I believe that that has taken it's toll, both physically and psychologically.
> 
> I'd hate to think what my children will say about _me_ in the future!


I bet you don't call them himbos, @Spanish Rider . :rofl:

Yeah, I'm happy if your mother was supportive (as parents ought to be - children don't ask to be born, parents make that decision), but it still doesn't excuse her being rude to you like that, and neither does her taking care of your ailing father. Those things don't stand up when you're dissing a colleague in the workplace, and equally shouldn't stand up in a family situation.

"But officer, I only called you an *** because I've got a sister in chemotherapy!" Nope. Stupid excuse. Manners are manners and respect is respect. They aren't optional. I understand that none of us are perfect, but this is why we have, "I'm truly sorry - that was so out of line of me" and "I thought about what I said to you the other day, and it was really rude of me - please accept my apologies." (But no fauxpologies, as in, "I'm sorry you see it that way / I'm sorry you took it the wrong way" etc) And why we make reparations, instead of expecting others to put up with our crap because we feel entitled, or because we're not thinking about it. Has your mother apologised yet?

Here's a good song for when the world (or subsections thereof) is insane.


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## Knave

Wow Sue! That about made me cry, and I am sure that when the girls listen to it tonight the little one will cry. She actually hates when I show her songs that are sad, and yet she loves them too. She is just a big heart wrapped in a little package.

A boy is being picked on at her school. He is her friend. She sits with him and tells him to just ignore the other boys. She says she would do something about it, but she is a bit of a nerd herself and it wouldn’t help but make it worse. I think being his friend is something enough. She threatens to tell her sister though, lol, and everyone is scared of her.


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## SueC

That's so funny - big sisters can be so useful! 

Please give both of them a big hug from me! :hug:

Also they might like this:

_“To summarize briefly: A white rabbit is pulled out of a top hat. Because it is an extremely large rabbit, the trick takes many billions of years. All mortals are born at the very tip of the rabbit's fine hairs, where they are in a position to wonder at the impossibility of the trick. But as they grow older they work themselves ever deeper into the fur. And there they stay. They become so comfortable they never risk crawling back up the fragile hairs again. Only philosophers embark on this perilous expedition to the outermost reaches of language and existence. Some of the fall off, but other cling on desperately and yell at the people nestling deep in the snug softness, stuffing themselves with delicious food and drink.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' they yell, 'we are floating in space!' but none of the people down there care.

'What a bunch of troublemakers!' they say. And they keep on chatting: Would you pass the butter, please? How much have our stocks risen today? What is the price of tomatoes? Have you heard that Princess Di is expecting again?
_
― Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World


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## knightrider

The discussion about Renaissance Festivals is long past, but I had to chime in a little bit. I worked the Maryland Renaissance Festival for 17 years. I also worked one season at the Pennsylvania Renaissance Festival and a couple of weekends at the one in upstate New York.

I had piles and piles of interesting stories and adventures doing Ren Fair. For the most part, I really loved it. When we moved to North Central Florida, I discovered I was close to Hoggtowne Medieval Faire and most likely could have auditioned and won a place there. I certainly could have gone back to my old employer who jousts there. But my kids were half grown and I realized I had moved on. It was great fun, but now days I have more fun just moseying down the trail with my Paso Finos. When I look at the old videos and pictures, I do sometimes wish I was still jousting and performing.
@Knave, you will get a kick out of this: one year the fair entertainment director announced that she wanted something different from our joust troupe and we were to do trick riding. I had to tell her that trick riding is a very specialized skill with extremely well trained skilled horses, and something for young folks. At age forty-something, I was not going to be able to "just do some trick riding" that year. Ha!


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## Spanish Rider

@knightrider , you rode ON THE MALL? That is too cool!

Speaking of Renaissance Fairs, have you heard of the historical theme park Puy du Fou?Puy du Fou

Well, they are going to be opening a historical theme park here in Spain, about 10 minutes from my house. They've been calling local barns looking for horses and riders, and some recent grads have jumped at the chance to go to France for "training". Evening shows will be starting in September!


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## knightrider

@Spanish Rider, if I had lived near you back when I was young, I would have JUMPED at the chance to try out for that show. It looks so cool. When I was in Spain, I went to a joust show in Torremolinos that was quite good. We never could have done the stunts they did in Torremolinos. They sword fought up and down the seats where the patrons were sitting . . . and other things that might have impacted patrons. It was such a good show.

In my flurry of getting rid of stuff, I recently gave my Torremolinos Joust tee shirt to the thrift store. Oh well, I hadn't worn it in years.


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## Knave

@knightrider I love your stories from the fairs. It sounds like so very much fun!

If we had been friends then I could have had you do some trick riding easy. 

ETA: you are right that the horses are the hardest aspect of that. I’ve only had one who was great in town. Bones would be a great horse for it, at home of course, because he can’t handle town.


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## SueC

@knightrider, I love those photos!  It's like another world entirely, and additionally, a lot of really specialised horse training. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!! 

@Spanish Rider, wow, will you be going to look? The pricing seems reasonable to us - or is Australia just overpriced? I mean, 250 Euros from what I'm gathering includes accommodation and activities for a weekend for two people? If that includes food as well, that would be unheard of in Australia...

On a related note, have any of you seen Horrible Histories? :rofl:


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## Knave

The girls liked the song, but I accidentally opened the Ruth B song first, and then I explained to them the Mother’s Day story and why I put the song there.

They were so upset about your mother and the gift that they only half listened to the song. The little girl said she couldn’t stop thinking about it, and the oldest girl said she didn’t want to hear stories that were of a child not being loved, “That is real and I cannot listen to stories like that!”

They send hugs back.


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## SueC

Awwww, @Knave. You can tell them I'm 100% happy now, it's OK!  And I suppose that there are a lot of people in the world with these stories - I think it's important to look out for the ones who haven't found their feet yet, who are still isolated and unloved and unconnected, or at least under-loved and under-connected. I think your little girl is doing that with her solidarity with the boy in her class people are unkind to. The flip side of horrible stories is what a difference we can all make to each other, and by including the people on the fringes.

Has anyone else noticed HF has gone all weird? It's losing posts and likes etc at the moment.


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## egrogan

Yes, I click on a “new” post but it brings me to that post several pages back in a thread, not to the last page.


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## SueC

This is actually the last page, it is labelled incorrectly though and has phantom posts after that don't actually exist (unless prior posts are currently missing, way back). On another thread, though, actual posts aren't displaying, it's like a Swiss Cheese. And here, many likes from the last couple of days have been lost. If your post doesn't have a "like" from me on it, that's why, and I'm not re-liking these posts at present in case it confuses the software when/if it gets it data back. The faults have already been reported in the techie section.

Hope everyone has a fabulous week.

@Knave, that really is such a beautiful song... looks like I've got another theme song to love.


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## CopperLove

@knightrider You jousted!  I wish the one near us would add more horse trick/show bits, they only do jousting and it's one of my favorite bits... because horses obviously :lol:


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## Spanish Rider

Sue, I just added the link for the sake of pictures. I did not check out the pricing.


In Spain, we are quite poor. Our economy is still recovering from the 2008 crisis, and there has still been no trickle-down effect. Comparatively, I would be making more money flipping burgers in the US than I do here, and I am actually earning less than I did 15 years ago. The situation:

1) Minimum wage is €4.50 an hour. In the US, it is $11/hr.

2) Sales tax is 21% (for essentials, like food, it is lower at 7-16%).

2) My husband's company is international (he is an SAP consultant). Engineers doing the same work as he at the same company in Germany earn 3.5 times more.

3) The average yearly salary in Spain is €24,000. The average salary in Castilla-LaMancha (my province) is €17,500/yr. However, most average Joes (gas station attendant, workers at supermarket, cashiers, etc) make only €1000/month. 

4) When you factor in living expenses, most people are living hand-to-mouth. A friend of mine, a widow with a son, is an ER physician. She does not earn enough to pay to heat her house in the winter, and her mother has to pay it for her.

5) Pensioners receive only €675/month (in the case of my in-laws, that is for 2 people). 


Thus, to answer your question, yes, €250 is a lot of money for us to go to a theme park.


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## SueC

Current exchange rate: 250 Euros = A$400
Average Australian annual income is around $60,000 (skewed by the top end)

In Australia, a lot of people are quite cash poor because of inflated housing prices and rent - it's the "upper" section of society which runs all the investment properties they rent back to the wage earners who can't afford their own housing - which is increasingly many. We scraped in because we're frugal and we built our house ourselves - which was an incredibly good financial thing for us to do, as the repayments on the small mortgage we took out to do the build are less than a crappy 2-bedroom in an ugly area would be to rent (we have no electricity or water costs as we DIY all that at our place, so that was another bonus of what we did). Generation Y in Australia - the people ten years after us - was the first where the majority of that generation isn't going to have an apartment or house of their own, ugly area or not, because it's no longer affordable for so many of them. If we were in that generation, we'd be seriously looking building a Tiny House instead of renting (although municipalities are making so many regulations against building these).

To stay at B&Bs was always out of our league even as a professional dual-income couple; you're looking at $200 per night per couple, breakfast and accommodation _only_. Motels are $70 - $100+ a night and usually quite lousy, so we often camped on holidays - off the beaten track if we could. At caravan parks, even a tent site for the night is usually $20 - $50. We once spent $80 for the privilege of pitching our tent for a single night at a caravan park at St Helens, Tasmania. The gouging is unbelievable, so we try to camp (usually illegally) off the beaten track. Laws are now being made that prohibit people from hosting caravans with travelling visitors for more than three days at their own properties - which really erodes our civil rights and puts more money in the pockets of the caravan park / hotel / accommodation businesses, who are so overpriced.

So you know, $400 for a weekend for a couple with the nice accommodation shown in the link and presumably access to all the activities and displays for the weekend and meals presumably included would be a really fair deal for us compared to what we're getting. If the meals weren't included and there were no cooking facilities, then we'd pass. But yeah, that's the sort of thing you might do once a year if it was available, just for something different and interesting. Over here, that price would get us a weekend in a B&B with breakfast only, no special activities. Even going to a concert is $50 - $100+ for international acts per ticket, so something we'd do once in a blue moon...

Going from dual-income professionals to living off an 0.8FTE income and what I make from writing and the food I grow here, plus everything that we can in-source with me on the farm, in combination with building our own no-electricity-or-water-bills house, has actually left us better off than we were before financially, in real terms - although we have to argue with the bank each time we want to repay capital on the loan because they say we're under the poverty line ($40,000 taxable income is considered that, and of course with the farm write-offs we don't hit that figure most years). It's really amusing to us because we are eating better than ever before and living in a really comfortable house, and best of all - and this was the most important thing - we have so, so much more time for each other than when we were both working fulltime professionally, and a far better quality of life. This is called downshifting, and a growing number of Australian "alternative" people like us are now doing this. I've never regretted it. Eventually we'll replace that 0.8 salary with farmstay hosting and more writing. Right now, we're happy as we are.

I think the problem in Australia is that you're systematically kept on a stressful treadmill unless you do what we did the moment you can afford to leap sideways, which for most people is around age 40, if they've got frugal habits. If you're living in standard housing, you're paying through your nose for mortgage / rent, and heating and cooling (house design is complete crap, so we designed our own) or suffering, as we often did before we built our own house - we used to wear thermal underwear and mountaineering layers and thermal gloves inside our last rental in winter to avoid the huge heating costs of an uninsulated house. We could see our breath on the air in the mornings, and we'd retreat to the bedroom with electric blankets on and cups of tea to read books after dinner. We put our heating savings in our "build our own house" fund. A lot of people just heat their houses and pay up, and then have little money left to save for better arrangements, so they get stuck. I think the system is very much designed to keep you stuck, here in Australia, and to funnel much of the money you make to the big end of town, via rent, mortgages, electricity bills, insurance etc, and accommodation if you go on holidays.

It did take us half the statistical life span to be able to jump off and do this, and we consider ourselves lucky. Horses cost me very little as I trim them myself and they are mostly self-sufficient off the pasture and tree fodder, and the small amount of beef cattle we run cover significant chunks of farm maintenance costs, land rates, insurance etc. If I had to feed them hay then I certainly wouldn't have 3 horses and 5 donkeys...


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## Knave

We were kind of similar to you Sue. Husband was a cowboy when we got married, and then when I had our first daughter he took a good paying job. He stayed there for ten years. We got used to having a lot of money, and that combined with a couple medical emergencies, left us without saving as much as we should have.

When the company he worked for sold out, he was offered to keep his job for the new owners. Everything would be just as good as it was, with even better insurance. We talked about it a lot, but he simply wasn’t happy. We decided to let go of all of that. We paid our debts, and we went to work on the ranch.

I love it! He is happy, we spend so much time together and with our girls, and we are doing what we love. It is harder to live paycheck to paycheck, and we go without some things, but I think that the quality of our lives has dramatically improved. 

There was a time frame there I started to panic and almost got a town job, but I’m really glad I didn’t.


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## egrogan

We figure we have to invest 10 more years in careers like we have now before we can step off the treadmill. It's exhausting, but neither of us come from money of any kind so everything we have, we've had to pay for from our salaries. We do have a mortgage but through lots of saving we don't have any other debt, and once that mortgage is gone our intention is to continue with no debt, barring any tragedy...


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## Spanish Rider

We, unfortunately, will not be retiring at a reasonable age. Even with the whopping merit scholarship my son got at a Massachusetts techie school, the part we still have to pay is my entire salary. So, we are going through our savings. FAST.

Like Sue, by building our own home in the country (passive solar), we were able to save quite a bit, as it cost less to build than the price of our flat in Madrid (which we bought when I was 24). We still own the flat, which we rent, and that is the only way we are surviving.

As I'm sure the rest of you do, we live quite frugally. No designer coffees or restaurant meals, I cut everyone's hair, no air conditioning, no new clothes for DH or me (we work at home - no one can see us!), we only have one car and my favorite mantra is the WWII saying, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without!" And, once my youngest is off to college and I get back those 2-3 hours I drive him to the city for school each day (no school buses or public trans out here), I am going to kick my war-economy mindset up a notch and start my winter Victory Garden. Then I can be more like Sue (_sans_ horses and donkeys). 



> the problem in Australia is that you're systematically kept on a stressful treadmill


Yes, it's basic economics. The first world cannot survive without the third world, and the upper class cannot survive without the lower classes. And that is true wherever you live. Basically, Sue, we are all screwed, whether we live in the US, Australia or Spain.

Oh, and @egrogan , as far as "coming from money" is concerned, my aunt (widow, no children, my sister & I are her heirs) just died from Alzheimer's/dementia in January. At the time of her death, her care cost more than $15,000 per month, and in the 9 years she was ill she went through one million dollars. So, yeah, that backup plan is gone, too.


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## Spanish Rider

oops! I forgot to mention that in my World Politics 101 class my first year of college, back in 1988, Professor Ferraro warned us that the predictions of that time were that our generation would be the first generation not to surpass the quality of life of the generation of our parents, as each generation had done before. This was based on population studies analyzing parameters such as education, income, illness, life expectancy, population density, etc. In my personal case, not only have I not surpassed my parents' quality of life, but I have yet to equal it. I can only hope that this downward trend stalls in my sons' generation (hmmm… maybe I need to call Professor Ferraro?).


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## SueC

_(HF is gone funny again and there are posts not displaying presently that I am responding to below.)_

Reading all that though, I think everyone who posted replies to this is collectively _less_ screwed than they were before they used their ingenuity and drive and values to make non-mainstream decisions, and get a better present / future for themselves. I gather we've all started with no leg-up, rich relatives or not, and I applaud you all for getting to your current places in your journeys. :clap:

Brett and I feel decidedly less screwed now that we're no longer working two high-pressure jobs that we loved, but that increasingly exhausted us to the point that we could do little more than eat, fall into bed, snuggle up and sleep, and then get up and do it all over again. My job was highly meaningful and worth spending my time on, and I've never regretted spending nearly 20 years in science and education - teaching in particular was wonderful. What I did regret is that most of the money I made was disappearing down a funnel to the big end of society, frugal as we were - I really dislike social injustice and rigged systems. Also, the time was right to get out and to make more time for ourselves. We're the racehorses who went on to have trail riding lives (after a five-year detour impersonating draught horses!).  We love the peace in our lives and all around us in this remote location. @Spanish Rider, are you remote enough at your place to save money on clothes by not wearing any for significant stretches of time? ;-) Especially effective if you've got apples to harvest. :Angel 

I look around me on our smallholding and can't feel screwed when I know that more than 90% of the planet is living in wage slavery, or actual slavery. I feel solidarity with this part of the population, and though I have known poverty as a young person, and briefly even homelessness, even at my most dire circumstances, there were always many millions who were having it worse than me, and I really feel that, and I think that's the part that is particularly screwed, and needs addressing. By stepping off the treadmill when we could, and now funnelling one income less to the upper echelons while we DIY, grow our own, write etc, we are finally able to make a significant difference not just to our own quality of life, but with who our money goes to and how much damage is done to the planet or to social justice in the process. We no longer subsidise the coal behemoths - our energy money, when we built, went to the alternative energy industry, to a local business who supplied and installed and supported their own families off helping other people to live on 100% renewable electricity for the rest of their days.

Our car is a Hyundai i20, a super-mini with incredible fuel economy (but still very zippy, which is important on rural roads) - masses of Australians drive 4WDs without needing them. Their fuel costs (and so on-road fossil fuel use) are quadruple ours, but they complain about how they are battling to anyone who will listen. Self-inflicted, say I. We're hoping it will soon be economical to convert our car to dual petrol / electric, as we have so much spare solar energy going begging in the middle of the day from spring to autumn, which could be used to charge a battery for an electric vehicle. We buy / swap "civil disobedience" milk and eggs directly from farmers around us, often bartering with honey - all of which has had regulations made against it by the big end of town - as has selling potatoes from your garden, that's not allowed either, you're supposed to get an expensive license from the potato marketing board! Our grass roots movement is saying, "Enough is enough, we're claiming our ancient rights to free trade not involving the top end of town back!"

There is a lot of _unscrewing_ that happens when you start to do things like this. 

I also find it really hard to feel screwed when I am breathing fresh air, surrounded by birdsong, and warm sun is falling on my skin - when we eat every day from what the garden is producing, and are ecstatic with the flavours of fresh heirloom fruit and vegetables - when we have time to laugh and hug each other and just be. Most of the things we value aren't able to be taxed - sunshine, love, friendship, humour, the countryside, the wildlife, the three horses roaming free having interesting and sociable lives after lonely and experientially deprived beginnings, etc etc,etc.

@Spanish Rider, you're at an expensive phase of life, launching two fine boys into adulthood. Love and a good education are the best things you can give a child and will go far in giving them a shot at a happy, fulfilled life. But you will get through the other end, and find time to breathe again. :hug: And will you tell us more about the building of your house in Spain? We find it's an ongoing buzz to live in a nest we made with our own hands... how nice that you have that too.

@egrogan, I was so happy for you when you were able to get a rural place and have all your horses at home. :happydance: The first five years here were the most stressful for us financially and in terms of time, then it got better. You're a few years younger than us, and I think you too will get to a place where things will be less hectic. Meanwhile, enjoy the views from your window when you're on your computer, and the ability to go out anytime and hug a horse! :hug:

@Knave, I feel very happy when I see how much time you have for your children and each other.  This is something which is going to stay with you in so many ways, even when your children grow up and launch into lives of their own. The ripples of this time will extend right through your lives - all of your lives - and also into the lives of your children's children, one day.


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## SueC

In a PS to @Knave, I found a version of the song you got me into which shows us the actual singer - and isn't she young to be so profound!  Because that needs supporting, Brett says that when he gets home this afternoon, he's going to buy her EP for me off iTunes, as a reward for finishing this quarter's business paperwork which I'm finishing today.


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## SueC

Time for a song on the general theme...


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## gottatrot

Spanish Rider said:


> 3) The average yearly salary in Spain is €24,000. The average salary in Castilla-LaMancha (my province) is €17,500/yr. However, most average Joes (gas station attendant, workers at supermarket, cashiers, etc) make only €1000/month.


I don't know what I'd do if I lived there...I spend the average Joe salary on my horses every month.


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## Knave

That was a good post and a pretty song Sue. I like your grassroots movement. The way you wrote your post made me think more about the injustice of not being able to sell or buy or trade for a gallon of milk or anything of the sort which is just silly. We can’t either here.

On a different note, I also like Ruth B, and I have that album of hers. I listened to her because of that Lost Boy song, and I loved a lot of her music. Lost Boy is still my favorite though.


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## Knave

I was thinking of your movement, and then I was thinking about how laws like this come to be.

I was in a public position once, which I really didn’t like, but I did learn a ton and start to understand things a bit more. There was a point when we had too much power. It was the school board, and with a superintendent being pushed out we inherited the power to hire the principals. Once a new superintendent was hired, they refused to take that step back and allow him to hire the principals. 

It was odd, like any touch of power they received they refused to let go of. Now, these weren’t bad people, so it confused me. They truly believed they were better apt to make decisions than the people under them, and so they ruled areas where, in my opinion, the people with the knowledge were now unable to make decisions.

So, things that are obnoxious like that, the law to not sell raw milk, I believe came to be with an honest intention of protection. Maybe in the beginning, like the Taylor grazing act, it was even a necessity for some reason, but then the hinderance of over governing came to be.

I have a really hard time using words to explain my thoughts, but maybe I touched the edges enough for you to understand what I mean.


----------



## Spanish Rider

> I don't know what I'd do if I lived there...I spend the average Joe salary on my horses every month.


 @gottatrot , then you would be like me and ride other peoples' horses.
@sue, when I say that 'we built' our house, it was not with our own two hands like you & Brett! I designed the house, my BIL the architect made modifications to make sure it wouldn't fall down, and then we hired a builder. That was the easy part. Then, I got bids and bought materials and hired/coordinated all the tradesmen (many of whom I am sure considered me "the crazy American"). Building is still very much a male sport in Spain, but I have to say that everyone was very open to working with me and professional in demeanor. I was only duped by the kitchen cabinet maker, who took our €5,000 deposit and ran, but that was when the economic crisis was in full swing and companies were folding left and right. In fact, ours was the last house the builder finished before declaring bankruptcy.

Do you have any regrets about building? Things you would change or would have done differently? I am quite pleased with how it came out, but one thing I had wanted to do was a grey water collection system, but they are illegal here. Have you done something along those lines?

And, yes, you are correct in pointing out that we are in a very high-expenditure phase of life. I just hope I am still healthy and lucid when we finally see a turn-around!


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## SueC

@Spanish Rider , we've got no regrets really, other than that we would never have called one particular contractor when we needed help after someone rammed up the back of my car and totalled it mid-build, which caused my old back injury to flare up. He did a shoddy job we had to go to court over, and he's the prime suspect in a building site burglary that cost us a lot of money (tools weren't covered by insurance, and we didn't realise this). This guy had form - a lot of people came out of the woodwork to tell us about theft, assault, intimidation etc after similar experiences with him, when it got around what had happened at our place. He had a fishing knife to one woman's throat etc, and left a suitcase full of sex toys on her doorstep. At our place, he hung my underwear (from the rag bin) up all over the house, slashed our mattress and poisoned the horse food (but I noticed, so didn't feed it out). We were still living in town at that stage and commuting to the build. After that, we moved on-site into a caravan a neighbour loaned us. In the gap, a retired neighbour moved onto our property with his own caravan and a shotgun, to make sure he didn't come back and do more damage.

We do have a greywater system. Because we have compost toilets, there's no blackwater; all the greywater collects in a tank we can pump from; else it goes into a French drain which has bottlebrushes etc planted against it, and when we don't pump it, these plants use it directly. We used to use the greywater to flood sections of lawn, but since we had a bore installed two years back, we're letting the bottlebrushes have the greywater. And for what it's worth: Pumping greywater is illegal too, but lots of environmentally conscious Australians ignore that. The main thing is not to aerosolise it - use it for flooding, or in large-droplet sprinklers.


Constructing the Rubble Trench - Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Completion of Rubble Trench - Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

You can see the tank lid here - in another life I want to pretty it up with a sunflower mosaic:



You're still a house designer and owner-builder, just like us!  We just used less contractors than you did - mostly because straw is more conducive to doing DIY. We did outsource the slab, the frame and the roofing. Oh and I'd love to see your floor plan / elevations - ours are back here: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page34/#post1970635935

@Knave , yes, I do understand what you mean and that makes sense. I think it's a big problem with centralisation everywhere - you get people a long way removed from a situation making the rules, when they aren't in a good position to do it, but they always think they are... Having now earnt my RuthB EP reward, by the way, I'll let you know how her other songs go for me, when I've been in iPod-land a while. 


*ANOTHER GRASS ROOTS LETTER*

One of the Grass Roots _Feedback_ characters, John Chester, has featured in this journal before when he wrote me a classic letter in response to a big rant I had in _Feedback_: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page43/#post1970706797

GRs often exchange letters / emails, so I replied to him the next time I did a batch of snailmail, which turned into a general sendout of _Eucalyptus citriodora_ leaves as scratch-and-sniff (heavenly scent!), with jokes about the upcoming federal election etc. Well, today Brett came home brandishing an envelope which he said was totally bonkum. I said, "Oh, that's just John Chester being creative!" That's his style in Feedback as well. He's 70 and lives in a caravan in Hopetoun, about an hour from us. Turns out he's a horse-person and had a few horse anecdotes in his letter. I've also attached his unusual envelope art!


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## SueC

*PAPER JOURNAL STUFF*

Here I am posting at an ungodly hour because I didn't get to do outdoorsy things or exercise today - made myself do all the paperwork instead, which is deadly boring but unfortunately necessary. I finished with sending the quarterly business activity statement to the ATO online at around 9pm and woke up at 1am because paperwork days always wind me up. The forecast cold front is coming in as we speak - rain, hail and squalls are forecast for tomorrow, and the horses, plus blind Sparkle, are all rugged up (the other four donkeys actually use the shelter). I'll go back to bed in a minute; the rain on the roof will be conducive to sleep. Brett has a day off tomorrow, so we can sleep in - best thing to do given the weather forecast. I do hope we can get outdoors at all tomorrow, or else I'll have to do endless Pilates, and maybe Brett and I can chase each other and the dog around the dining table, as we sometimes do for fun and exercise. :Angel:

Anyway, attached are a nice piece I found on autumn in this region, which I wrote in 2010; and also something from last week, about intimate relationships. My excellent friend, fellow writer and sister Elizabeth (of the amazing memoir which she's just finishing off now) says my brain has an "acid trip" setting apparently, no mushrooms required. :rofl: However, journals are nice places for bashing out metaphors, and generally reflecting.

My husband, after reading _Stars_, said, "I think you're turned up to an 11/10 setting experientially, while I plod along at a 7/10." inkunicorn::blueunicorn: Hmmm, maybe women just have a more complex imagination! ;-)

The _Stars_ scan came out funny - the ink is actually purple. That's an Artline pen drying up, so hard to write neatly with. My standard blue is a uni-ball eye micro pen and doesn't drag against the paper, so easier to shape things nicely with. The 2010 journal has finer-quality paper, not as absorptive, so it was possible to write especially neatly in it.


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## SueC

*AUSTRALIAN NATURE SNAPSHOT*

Occasionally I pull out some nice photographs of Australian scenery because this is an international forum, and lots of us like having windows into other places.

On the topic of Australian trees:

Here's some nice Karri (_Eucalyptus diversicolor_) trees, by the roadside:










These are Paperbarks:










These are eucalypts I've not identified, near Wineglass Bay in Tasmania - gorgeous old-growth trees, existing on quite an arid coastline:



















The bark is so beautiful; the squiggly patterns are made by moth larvae...










These are Kingias, a type of grass tree. They take 10 years to start a stem, and then 10 years for every 4 inches or so of stem length... This is at Mt Hassell, in the Stirling Ranges... all these are hiking photos...



















Those three are nearly as tall as me, so 150-200 years old... and they grow back no problems after hot fires, they just lose their "hair"









Heath and woodland approaching the Nullarbor Plain:










Eucalypts growing in paddocks near the Flinders Ranges in South Australia:



















Woodland near Cradle Mountain, Tasmania:










Ancient pencil pines, Tasmanian highlands:



















I was looking for a rainforest photo but couldn't find one this morning. Maybe next time. Anyway, you can see why we're so attached to the outdoors here... magnificent scenery...

You can't ride in these places, they're protected, which is one reason we do a lot of hiking. The other is that it's something we do together as a couple, and because we need exercise...


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## MissLulu

I love the grass trees. They look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book! Beautiful photos, I love seeing other parts of the world.


I just got to thinking. Do you have Dr. Seuss books in Australia?


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## SueC

MissLulu said:


> I love the grass trees. They look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book! Beautiful photos, I love seeing other parts of the world.
> 
> I just got to thinking. Do you have Dr. Seuss books in Australia?



Yes, we do, @MissLulu!  I really like _Green Eggs And Ham_. :rofl: I would not eat them with a fox, I would not eat them in a box etc! 

I love the grass trees too. I came to Australia from Europe at age 11 and have never gotten over the wonder of these extraordinary ancient Gondwanan plants and animals.  I am amazed daily.


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## SueC

*MAY MORNING IN THE GARDEN*

The morning dawned sunny, which was welcome after yesterday's cold, rain and hail. The rain was welcome too though; we're still running at way below average for annual rainfall so far this year, and it has stunted the pasture, so that the cattle are in need of topping up with our fodder trees and with bush grass growing in the tea tree flat that burnt last year.

The wind was cold when I got outside, and intermittent showers were still coming over, so I let the horses into the Common without removing their rugs. I took the opportunity to take an abbreviated walk with Jess and her soccer ball along the north boundary. I'm limited for at least another month to walking in a splint to heal the hairline fracture in my foot, so this limits my distance as well - although thank goodness I can cycle and ride my horse as normal (other than having to do ultra-careful dismounts). The splint is in the form of my old astronaut boot from when I broke three bones in my foot properly last year in an accident. If you walk in it too much, you get blisters on your heel, although I'm trying to glue padding into it to prevent that.

So, walking across the Common playing soccer with Jess (I kick with my good foot) is a fun way to start the morning, and all the horses and donkeys follow us out. I wish I'd taken the camera because it's so funny to have a string of eight equines of various shapes and sizes walking with you. Sunsmart was walking right next to me for quite a while, catching my sleeve and playing affectionate games. At the far end of the Common, I sat down on a fallen tree, and he grazed a few metres from me, in a good patch of grass. Julian soon caught up to us, and Ben, Nelly and Don Quixote went to play in the woods, literally - sniffing branches and bark, and mock-chasing each other in turns. Mary Lou and Sparkle grazed near me, and Chasseur was a little way out under a tree.

After a while I left this pleasant scene and headed for the garden. When I was over halfway back home, I heard the sound of thundering hooves, and when I turned around, saw the three horses running flat out across the pasture, before swerving behind the house into the forest, kicking up their heels in fun. It's a heart-lifting spectacle to see these magnificent animals at speed. Chasseur was pacing free-legged and flat out in his check paddock rug (he inherited it from Romeo); the other two did racing trots and canters in their maroon and purple rain sheets (those two don't need much insulating, just keeping dry).

:gallop::gallop::gallop:​
As the horses were disappearing in the forest, the Common behind me was alive with running donkeys, trying to catch up with the horses and moving at more sedate speeds. The two newbies are the fastest of this lot, and ran inside the fenced paddocks parallel to the forest. Our three original donkeys followed me into the garden. I put up the tape to limit them to the front of our house, and went to the F&V area to pull kikuyu runners from the clump grasses and lavenders around the frog pond, and from the pond itself - a job I've long been putting off. The donkeys queued up for the runners, which encouraged me to keep working at it. In half an hour I'd cleared over half the pond, and I'll get back to it later.

onkey:onkey:onkey:onkey:onkey:​
I had a net to take off a tree; the rest of the Sundowner apples were all ready to come off. I've got a photo of that last apple haul included along with other stuff from this morning. I went around harvesting more tomatoes; if I get them before they are really red, I don't have to put nets around them, and that suits me. I ripen them on towels near the north-facing French door in the dining room, where the winter sun comes in deep and heats up the floor. Once ready to process, they either go into my cooking directly (lots of tomato soup, pasta sauces, salads etc at the moment) or into the freezer, because I've not been bothered to make passata or tomato paste yet.

Photos attached also show the new brassicas I planted out this week (protected inside the plastic rings), and an "old" bed of the same - Brussels sprouts, cabbages, broccoli. We actually had our very first home-grown cabbage ever this week - a real milestone - I'd never managed to grow these from seed before (and I grow all the vegetables and herbs from heirloom seeds). It's really tricky with brassicas - that bed looks great, but they grew at the wrong time of year for a lot of them to head properly, so I've not managed to get any Brussels sprouts off the huge plants at all. However, @egrogan's Brussels sprouts recipe is lying on the kitchen bench ready to use - in the photo, under my brand new red handlebar tape which I've not yet managed to put on my bicycle - but I'll get around to it! Red will be a nice replacement for the white tape from 12 years ago that's gone all dirty and disgusting and has lost so much of its cushioning that I get pins and needles in my hands after 15 minutes on the bike... we all know red handlebar tape makes bicycles faster too (placebo effect :Angel.

Also, pictures of oven-roasted pumpkins: Potimarron variety, tastes like roasted chestnuts but has to be used quickly as the shelf life is short, so we're eating a lot of pumpkin at the moment - in soup, in curries, roasted as wedges with beef or lamb and all the trimmings, in risotto (thanks again @egrogan ), in salads, mixed into dough to make gorgeous bright orange bread, and in my pumpkin / citrus /almond cake. No complaints. Photo of lunch today attached - pumpkin soup with a hint of chilli, home-made walnut bread, an apple fresh off the tree, extra walnuts, and in a concession to the outside world, a tin of tuna, because I need complete protein at every meal if I'm going to get this hairline fracture healed up in time to go mountain climbing with Brett on his upcoming birthday in mid-July...

Now, it's time to get into the afternoon to-do list: Finish that weeding, do a Pilates session, get back to music practice, make the custard for the Blackforest Trifle, pit the cherries, stick them in the crumbled chocolate sponge I made last night, add lots of brandy, pour over the custard, top it with whipped cream and flaked almonds, and wonder if it's going to last more than 24 hours. :rofl: Prepare some more seed trays, ride the horse, miscellaneous chores...

:charge:


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## SueC

I didn't get to go on that ride I was hoping for. I'd already dressed in riding gear and gone out when a big cloud came over and it rained for the rest of the afternoon. Today we went bicycle riding early to vote at our bloody election which was Coco the Clown versus Bozo the Clown, and Bozo won, ho hum, thank goodness we have our own little world at Red Moon Sanctuary and don't follow TV news and are engaged in some grassroots movements, because positive change basically has to come from the bottom up, not from the top down - those people in power are such leeches it makes me ill to think about them, so I avoid that and focus on positive things we can do.

At least we got 16km of training out of the thing. We were home for lunch - more of the fabulous curry I made last night (it just worked - a little beef, lots of pumpkin, tomatoes and celery from the garden, onions, chilli, lots of ginger and coconut cream, on a bed of brown jasmine rice) and Painted Mountain Corn as a side; followed by Blackforest Trifle. We meant to retire to bed to read our books for half an hour and ended up falling asleep, so there went my afternoon ride, because we had a date with some of Brett's work crew for dinner at Due South starting 5pm, then a local production of Beauty and the Beast which Lauren was a Silly Girl and Can Can Dancer in. Lovely time over dinner, everyone hugging everyone - such a nice crew, happy conversation etc. The views out of the huge windows overlooking the water were lovely as the sun was setting.

As a follow-on, we're going to host a lunch and donkey cuddling session for the girls at our place on an upcoming Sunday; plus Bec is horse obsessed and has a horse float and jumped at the chance to come out to Redmond on a fine day for a trail ride into Sleeman Creek Nature Reserve with me. She has an 18yo OTSTB she's had 5 years and was showing me photos. There will be photos when it happens.


*BEAUTY AND THE BEAST*

Fabulous production!  Neither of us had ever seen the film or a production. Great story, and wonderfully presented by the local light opera company. Their singers, choreography and costumes blew us away - and the jokes made us crack up regularly, e.g. "If it's not Ba-roque, don't fix it!" and the clock being sensitive about its pendulum, and the vanity continuing to open its top doors in a sort of mock exposure. Audience in stitches! Some official photos:


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## Knave

The photos didn’t show for me today. It sounds like a lovely day, of course besides the election.

I have a picture I think you would like today! I didn’t get a ride in either. Yesterday it snowed, so I didn’t ride that day, and today the snow was gone but it was a bit cold anyways, so I jumped at the chance to go fishing!

I cooked the gut hooked fish for dinner, but since I am the only one in my home who is willing to eat fish I will have to cook myself at least another meal of them.


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## SueC

What a lovely lake, @Knave! What sorts of fish are there in it? And snow in mid-May!

Bon appetit!


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## Spanish Rider

OK, I'm going to ask a dumb question: why do you oven-roast your squash? Are they difficult to peel?

Here, we only have butternut squash, and I pressure-cook them with leeks, broth, a couple of potatoes and a bay leaf. Et voilà, puré de calabaza!

When I make "pumpkin" bread, though, I do roast them. Do you eat pumpkin bread in the fall? In my house, it's a mainstay.


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## Knave

The fish we were catching were rainbow trout. Little girl caught the biggest rainbow I’d ever seen! We all did catch lots of fish though, and released the majority.

Also, the snow... yes, snow.  lol. I am grateful for the moisture. This morning is beautiful as it is raining and raining. Speaking of snow, let me show you this from a hike the day before Mother’s Day. It was very neat.

My grandparents celebrated their 60th, and we went on a picnic. My young aunt, her husband, myself and mine, took off on four wheelers and then on a hike. We ended up climbing a snow bank and skiing down on our feet. It was a blast. We also saw a snow motel, and hiked to it (it is a think made to measure snow fall).

This is a picture I took before we were close to the snow banks, and it was the neatest thing. The husbands went and walked its span too, and they didn’t fall!


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## SueC

Spanish Rider said:


> OK, I'm going to ask a dumb question: why do you oven-roast your squash? Are they difficult to peel?
> 
> Here, we only have butternut squash, and I pressure-cook them with leeks, broth, a couple of potatoes and a bay leaf. Et voilà, puré de calabaza!


Yeah, that sounds really yummy. I'd love to come eat at your place! :tardis:

I steam pumpkin or cook it directly for stews, curries etc, but I find the flavour of soups improves if you oven-roast the pumpkin first; and also, it's easier to just split the pumpkin afterwards, take out the seeds, take off the stem and any yucky bits of skin on varieties where the skin is thin and edible (like Potimarron, shown in the photos), or separate flesh from thick skin easily.

Butternut is an Australian variety originally, and was developed from the Pennsylvania Crookneck. We love to grow the original variety, it's got such cool shapes, and the neck parts are very long and easy to process - less seed cavity overall. Tastes the same, but the Butternut was developed for easy transport and storage in supermarket situations - try stacking these:













> When I make "pumpkin" bread, though, I do roast them. Do you eat pumpkin bread in the fall? In my house, it's a mainstay.


We do; as mentioned in a recent post, but as there are about 100 recent posts, I don't expect anyone to read them all! :rofl:

I've usually steamed them for pumpkin bread, or roasted if the oven was going anyway. In the bread, do you think roasting makes a flavour difference? For my pumpkin bread, I just make 1/4 to 1/3 of my bread mix pumpkin, and reduce the liquid accordingly; and then we enjoy bright orange, antioxidant-enhanced loaves. I'd love to know how you make yours - I could give that a shot tomorrow, as it's baking day! 

@egrogan sent me a wonderful recipe for a pumpkin and sage risotto a few years ago. The recipe is probably searchable on the advanced functions by looking for "risotto" in the journals section. Basically, pumpkin and sage cooked into a classic risotto, so you get orange and very delicious, earthy risotto!

@Knave, rainbow trout, that's super yummy! And you can smoke these, they really suit. There's a treat, if you're the only pescivore in your house! A nice way to preserve the fish and enjoy it often. Of course, freezers also work...

I didn't know you lived on the equator! ;-) ...isn't it a pain how picture rotation doesn't always code correctly for a forum posting? I now rotate certain photos in our image manipulation software before attaching to an HF post, because the photo software rotation doesn't stick...

That's exceptionally neat how the stream is running underneath the snow and ice, and how the dog is not actually falling through it!  That whole day sounds like a blast. Skiing on your feet! Snow motel! :dance-smiley05:


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## Knave

It was fun Sue! My uncle was down from Oregon, and it is always nice to see him. Everyone was together, except my oldest who wasn’t supposed to be there but playing her last basketball game far away, but she ended up with the flu. It was sad, but I made her stay home because she was very sick.

We sat around and grilled steaks on the fire, then some of us snuck off. My littlest played with her tiny cousins, and one particularly precocious tiny girl accidentally fell into the very cold creek. Little girl walked her back in her sweater which drowned the poor child, and they sat her by the fire in an extra set of clothes her mother luckily had.

It was the funniest thing. I asked this same child to tell me a story while she was warming up. She is just a toddler, and she told me she didn’t know how to tell a story. I teased her that she did, and she told me a very long story which included a part for everyone there, even the dogs. She was overly animated, and made herself big for the monster parts and tiny quiet for the secret parts. She was so funny. 

She also told me all about Blossom. I knew who Blossom was from branding there the day before. Blossom is a deformed calf with a giant forehead. She is gentle too, allowing the ground crew to walk up and pet her, and not getting out of the way when dragging calves. She was very noticeable in any case, but to me she seemed healthy.

This toddler’s big sister is five. She jumped in to tell me that Grandma had a plan for Blossom. They couldn’t sell her you know, and they couldn’t milk her because Grandma said no. It was the cutest thing. She didn’t know what it was, but there was a plan made.

It was the kind of day that I think you would really enjoy. Grandpa told me a story of a person he knew who was a horse thief (grandpa is super moral, but he didn’t get into his judgment of the situation). The law was seriously after him, and he escaped hiding in a box car filled with a group of gathered mustangs. He didn’t know how the man managed getting into the car or surviving the trip, but he did get away and wasn’t caught. I laughed that he must have known horses well, and he said, “Yes, he did know horses.”


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## Spanish Rider

> I've usually steamed them for pumpkin bread, or roasted if the oven was going anyway. In the bread, do you think roasting makes a flavour difference?


 @SueC , I do not proclaim to be an expert, nor have Me _et al._ published any comparison studies regarding this question. However, the moisture variable resulting from roasting, which is the object of our single-center analysis, has been approved by a participant series of 4 likewise non-expert individuals, as determined by use of a specifically developed visual analogue scale from 1 to 10 (1 = “_This sucks._” to 10 = “_This is awesome! Can I have more?_”). Nevertheless, that is not to say that the taste variable may be affected to some extent, although not to such a degree as to be perceptible to said group of Spanish guinea pigs (_Cavia porcellus hispanicus_).

We, the authors, are aware of possible biases that may have arisen in the procurement of our data and analysis of our results, especially as our study participants were neither age- nor sex-matched. In future analyses, randomized controlled studies of larger series would, of course, provide more reliable data.

Nonetheless, with regards to the taste variable, we would refer you to the Spanish proverb: _Sobre gustos no hay nada escrito_, or "In questions of taste, nothing is set in stone."


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## SueC

Thank you for providing marvellous pre-dinner reading, @Spanish Rider and @Knave!  Brett and I both enjoyed it - a lovely virtual day in Nevada with lots of interesting landscape, people and activity factors, and then a Spanish analysis of gastronomic variables. 

I don't have much to report and still no riding, grrrr. I keep falling asleep after lunch. It's been happening three days in a row. At the start of the month I had a week where I didn't have much sleep at all because I decided to go off SSRIs. I really don't need them anymore, although they were useful for the first couple of years after the cPTSD diagnosis to deal with night terrors, insomnia and generally feeling crappy when processing all the stuff that came out from years ago (it's typical for when you shove things aside all your life to have a pretend life with a dysfunctional family - stop doing it, and all the stuff you've shoved under the carpet since childhood emotionally comes out like a fountain). I'd tapered down to a half dose within six months of commencing them anyway, but when you come off them, you get rebound insomnia, so the main reason I actually went back on the half-dose for the last year or so is because the rebound insomnia is so ridiculous.

But, that's not a good reason in my opinion to be on these things, so I decided to grin and bear it. I had a week where I wasn't sleeping more than 1-3 hours a night - I simply didn't get tired. It was as if someone had put matchsticks between my eyelids to prop them permanently open. :shock: It's because the brain needs to readjust, and to re-equilibrate its relationship with serotonin. I used that week, which also featured horrible weather, to good effect by writing a long cultural type essay I am hoping to place... really, really hoping because it's very much written from the heart. Fingers still very much crossed.

The day I finished the essay - it was a Friday - I got tired normally, went to bed and was out like a light for over 8 hours. Hooray! That was helped by the massive sleep debt though, and hasn't stayed entirely that way - I'm sometimes up reading for an hour or two in the middle of the night at the moment. That would be OK, but then I pay for it with these ridiculous post-lunch collapses into a snoring heap like this: :ZZZ:

This doesn't help me get my farm jobs done, or to get rides in, but at least I'm successfully off SSRIs and in the process of adjusting. This afternoon, I did manage to get a solid start made on our roadverge rehabilitation planting for the year. Today was a town day - grocery shopping, and then a visit to the nursery to collect two seedling trays of native bushes - 32 each of Robin Redbreast Bush, Bottlebrush, Peppermint and Hillock Bush. At least I managed to get some of them into the ground after my snoozefest. I'm enjoying this job, and look forward to doing lots more tomorrow - before lunch, when at least I won't have a significant nap risk... The western road verge bordering the paddocks on the north side had lost all its native vegetation when we bought the place - choked out by runner grasses - and we've been controlling the grasses and replanting native vegetation since we bought the place, with excellent results now starting to be evident. I'll take a camera sometime to show everyone what it looks like!

Hope everyone has a happy, productive week!


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## AndyTheCornbread

Knave said:


> I have a picture I think you would like today! I didn’t get a ride in either. Yesterday it snowed, so I didn’t ride that day, and today the snow was gone but it was a bit cold anyways, so I jumped at the chance to go fishing!
> 
> I cooked the gut hooked fish for dinner, but since I am the only one in my home who is willing to eat fish I will have to cook myself at least another meal of them.


That's so different than my kids. All of them LOVE fish and so we end up eating quite a bit of it as I enjoy fishing and they enjoy eating fish. My oldest son and youngest daughter are the only two that seem to actually like the fishing part, the rest just like the eating part.


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## Knave

Lol @AndyTheCornbread. Mine are the opposite, they love to fish but won’t touch it unless it is a cheap fish stick. My uncle brings halibut and salmon to us, and I make the best fish sticks from the halibut, but they won’t eat it! At least my husband will eat that.

My littlest did clean some of the fish we kept for the first time that day. I was proud of her for that. I don’t think she’s ever done that kind of thing before, although she did love helping me flesh a buffalo hide.


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## Knave

Sue, I hope that you get your essay a good home. I am glad you are feeling good enough to come off the SSRIs, and I hope your sleep levels out.


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## Knave

It was a huge job @AndyTheCornbread! I had fleshed and tanned several coyotes and didn’t quite know what I was getting into when I started the buffalo. I did find that different tools were very helpful, but it took me more than one day to accomplish it, probably closer to a week! Both girls helped a bit, but the littlest was much more interested. 

The oldest will gut a deer or cut up meat, but the idea of fleshing and tanning is just too monotonous for her I think.


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## Spanish Rider

Holy cow, Andy, that is quite the troop!

Fishing. Conjurs up all sorts of memories. Growing up, we were all women, and my family has a summer house on a lake in Maine. So, when my aunt got married, guess who had to accompany her new husband fishing every dang day at 4 am? Yes, me, the oldest niece. All sorts of reasons, like "you know how the boat runs" and "you know where all the rocks are" to convince me to go, but in hindsight I think I was just babysitting.

Thirty years down the road, and God blesses me with two boys. Who want to go fishing. What is it about men and fishing? My husband is a city boy who had never gone fishing a day in his life, even though his father had a fish market in Madrid, so I had to teach all 3 not to hook each other. I bought crawlers and a couple of kiddie rods, and took them fishing in canoes, which they thought was great fun (NOT at 4 am, mind you). One day, though, after youngest son brought up a white perch that had swallowed the hook and had it stuck in the gills, the amount of blood was enough to turn him off of fishing forever. Hallelujah! Oh, well. At least they have learnt a survival skill for the zombie apocalypse.


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## Knave

Sue, I am sorry we took our coffee break in your journal and got so sidetracked.  

I hope that you have been sleeping good now, and that the weather is more friendly so you can ride. It’s been icky here.


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## Spanish Rider

@Knave , did we scare her away?


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## Knave

I doubt that @Spanish Rider. She probably just got a bit busy with something.


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## Knave

I apologize Sue, that was my fault. I will try and be more respectful. (Embarrassed and hides under your counter)


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## SueC

No, @Knave, it was _*not*_ your fault - please come out from under the counter! You've done nothing wrong. You're not responsible for the behaviour of other people, whether or not you know them. The breach was 100% due to failure of the new person to observe polite etiquette.

:hug: for you. D'you think perhaps (and especially as women) we've been socialised to take the blame for other people's bad behaviour? We should not. inkunicorn:


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## Spanish Rider

Oh, gosh. Now I'm trying to remember things I wrote. I hope I was not out of line at any time.

I will say that your journal has continued to conjure up stange dreams in my brain. Did I ever mention that I had an Australian flame back in high school? He was an exchange student here in the US, and we were like 2 peas in a pod. Very sad when he inevitably went back to Sydney, but we kept in touch for years. He used to send me mix tapes of whatever music was popular (I think your music sparked the memories), and also two Eurogliders tapes, which I know by heart and must be in some box somewhere.

So, yes, I had a very vivid dream the other night and I looked him up online. NOT what I expected. I much preferred my dream!


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## SueC

Dear @Spanish Rider, you've said nothing out of line - what is it with the very people who are polite and lovely second-guessing themselves, while one barely ever receives an apology from someone who has been very rude? 

That's so interesting that you have an old romantic link to Australia. Has he lost all his hair? Grown into a Michelin Man? Now - at midlife - is the _perfect_ time to start getting out your old copy of _The Velveteen Rabbit_, and to see that when you've had all your hair loved off and your eyes are falling out and you're tatty, you have become _real_, and that when you are real, you cannot be ugly except to someone who doesn't understand. ...that actually gives me goosebumps...

The Eurogliders - now I have to tell you an Australianism... We always used to joke that they were a brand of condom! :Angel: Speaking of, our high school Biology teacher, back in the days of my innocence, asked us, "How many condoms can you make out of a used tyre? ...365 if it's a _Goodyear_..."

Imagination often trumps the real thing. This is one reason the universes you enter through the portal of books are often preferable to the real one. 

Have a good day in Spain! ...I hear Nadal was back up to old tricks winning yet another major clay court tournament. He appears to have two settings these days - in hospital having surgery, or winning tournaments...


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## SueC

*RIDES, TREES AND SLEEP*

I can log two rides for the last three days - a simple loop track of our valley floor for Tuesday evening, and then this morning, out through our south gate to do an extended tour of the neighbour's bushland reserve and pastures, before returning along the roadside reserve to our north boundary. This exact ride was documented here:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page38/#post1970681183

I was going to ride Wednesday afternoon after tree planting and actually had the time for it, but as previously mentioned, had regrettably turned into rubber and was unable to muster any energy for further activities. I was horizontal with a book and a cup of tea for the rest of the afternoon before getting enough energy back to feed horses, make dinner etc. Sleep, by the way, has been fine ever since the night after I whinged about it on this journal - have slept through eight hours each night every night since. :ZZZ: This is great, since I actually really like sleeping. Hopefully, that's most of the post-SSRIs adjustment done. I really didn't want that to be a long-term thing, though initially it was really really useful for dealing with the nightmares I got after all those old traumatic memories that I had sat on all my life came back. I'm way past that phase, and am reconciled to all this stuff now.

Brett said to me, "No wonder you were exhausted, tree planting is actually a very physical job!" - and this morning, he went out early to take some photos of the new trees, and the older ones, while the sun was still rising. He also got two very cute ones of Mary Lou, which I will post along with the others.

At the moment I'm planting the northwest road verge. You can see it on our farm map, along with the main shelter belts we've been planting in our pastures since 2010 - all by hand. 










The photos show the new seedlings in their protective bubbles, as well as bushes and trees that are two and three years old. I missed tree planting last winter because of my foot fractures, but that's the only winter we've not continued planting shelterbelts or rehabilitating the road verge. You can also see older trees in the background.

Photos 1-2: Mary Lou

Photos 3-: Habitat rehabilitation, western road verge


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## egrogan

Love the photos of Miss Mary Lou!

I miss a lot of things about our old house, but one of my regrets is that the beautiful hydrangea bushes we put in early on were thriving beautifully when we left. It's hard to walk away from a multi-year investment of time, patience, and love when it's finally paying off. These were just little sticks when they went in!









I hope your new trees thrive. :grin:


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## SueC

We hope so too, @egrogan! I often find myself saying, as I'm bedding a seedling into the ground, "Good luck, little one - grow huge and outlive us!"  Many of them will do just that.

Those are gorgeous hydrangeas. Have you planted some at your new place yet? Were you able to take cuttings of your old ones, to "take them with you"?


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## egrogan

We haven't planted any new ones yet as we first need to tear out some hideous overgrown evergreen monstrosities that don't belong in the front of the house. We'll probably put new baby hydrangeas in during the fall planting window- sadly though we didn't take any cuttings of the old ones. 

We were pleasantly surprised last year to find that there's actually a nice, thoughtful cottage garden out in front of the house and it's just starting to wake up. It probably could stand a little thinning out and cleaning up, so if it would ever stop raining I could do that!


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## SueC

A few more explanations on the photos: 

Photo 3 shows a lot of naturally regenerating tea-trees that have sprung up from seed reserves since we've been controlling the runner grasses in the road verge - kikuyu is great in the paddock, but an invasive species in the bush. Our plantings from two years ago are near the fence and mostly still in bubbles. We are thrilled that some of the original vegetation is actually coming back and we don't have to replant everything. This means some of the local genetics get preserved, instead of lost forever.

For this and all the other photos, it's important to understand that >95% of this road verge was just runner grass, with only a few scattered bushes left, when we started to rehabilitate it for wildlife habitat.

Photos 4 and 5 show seedlings planted two and three years ago still in their bubbles, under a line of Tasmanian ******** we planted in that verge seven years ago - and aren't they tall? 

Photos 6 to 10 are our northwestern property boundary, where the verge was waist-deep in overgrown runner grasses and bare of all useful habitat when we bought the place. It took us several years just to knock down the runner grasses sufficiently (with glyphosate) to even be able to think about planting. The fence there was _buried_ in the runner grasses when we bought the place in 2010! :shock: The little bushes by the fence are around three years old; the bubbles are mostly hat I've planted this week - although a couple of older plants still needed the protection and retain the bubbles. Mostly though, I'm taking them off the older plantings and using them for the new seedlings.


One more batch of photos from this morning follow below...

Photos 11-20 are all of the north-west property boundary; with seven-year-old Tasmanian ******** showing halfway to our front gate from there. You can also see this on the farm map in the above post - these eucalypts are planted like a T, first along the internal fence line that divides our two fenced western paddocks, and then extending out to the right and left in the verge (they were tray leftovers when we planted, so I stuck them in the verge ;-)).

That's one tray planted out, another to go tomorrow - each tray has 64 seedlings. Then I'm aiming at another three trays for the rest of winter, plus relocating tagasaste seedlings to make more fodder hedges.


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## SueC

*BLAST FROM THE PAST: OUR ORIGINAL TREE PLANTING IN 2010*

Brett and I were just looking through old photos of when we first got this place, and oohing and aahing over the changes! We were out there planting the weekend after property settlement went through.

Photo 1: The very first tree we planted on the property!

Photo 2: Brett with some cell trays of seedlings being planted out.

Photo 3: Brett and a suspiciously new spade...

Photo 4: The northwest property corner - "boggy corner" then, for obvious reasons - with a cup of tea on the fence... we always brought a thermos for planting, and the wooden fence end was the only dry thing we could sit on back then, when we came to plant...

Photo 5: As I said, this was the only dry place to sit to have tea...

Photo 6: This was our hill paddock, before all the shelter belts and shade clumps grew...

Photo 7: Planting some trees and bushes for a shade clump...

Photo 8: Brett near our front gate planting more trees and bushes...

Photo 9 and 10: For lunch, we would remove ourselves to the edge of the remnant bushland, find a reasonably dry spot, and have a picnic....

I'm going to do more blasts from the past on my journal this year... including of when I had my Arabian mare agisted in Albany in 2008, and Sunsmart there in 2009...


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## Spanish Rider

Wow, Sue, that certainly is a lot of work! And I am sure you doubly enjoy every little bit of shade around your property because you had to work for it. Our property was completely barren, and we are finally to start to enjoy a bit of shade. Our native trees, though, are veeeery slow-growing, so we also have others on a drip system

I feel the need to ask about your boundaries and road maintenance. Does the local/provincial gov't have a right of way at that distance from the road? I would not want them to come and mow it all down!

I find your fodder hedges very intelligent, although I had never heard of tagasaste. But, lo nd behold, I googled it and found it is a cytisus from Spain! However, it is a variety not found on the península, but on the Canary Islands instead. How interesting that you smart Australians are using it for fodder, while here we don't. Is it cold-hardy? The native cytisus we have in our yard has extremely small leaves (maybe because it is subjected to such harsh drought conditions here?); the rabbits don't even pay attention to it, so I can't imagine it is very edible. It's great as a fire starter in the chimney, though! But, seriously, I am very interested to find out whether it can be easily grown here.


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## SueC

Dear @Spanish Rider , tagasaste grows very well in deep sandy soils and doesn't need much water for establishment - just a little in the first year; after that it sends roots deep and fends for itself. It can't stand waterlogging / excessive wet, this will kill it - and doesn't like clay too close to the surface. The dry tolerance makes it popular in the wheat belt, which is around 400-500mm annual rainfall (and it can do with less). We're generally at around 800mm annually here, although we've been in drought conditions two years running now, and getting in the 500s at best.

The Road Reserve is under the auspices of the Main Roads Department, and they don't generally mow down rehabilitation work. Even if they did, after four years or so of growing, most of the seedlings I planted would stand up to mowing, and regenerate (in bushier form). It's why I plant _Agonis_ nearest the road - it's fast-growing and will shield the other species if someone wants to mow; but they never mowed it when it was just overgrown grass that nearly reached to your waist either. They do spray out blackberries, but haven't interfered with our rehabilitation at all. They mow the immediate vicinity of the shoulder of the road for visibility, but we don't plant that close to the road.

Flickr is down for maintenance now, so I can't post some photos I wanted to show you until later.

However: Compare this:










With this, from around 18 months ago:






Blurry and recent - you can see our main shelter belts, which are enormous now:






And from the rooftop at midsummer recently, showing the tagasaste hedges and three main shelter belts etc:






Here's the Tasmanian ******* / Acacia line that separates our two western fenced paddocks, which is now seven years old. The eucalypt is a specially selected fast-growing line for shade (there's another strain for forestry that grows straight and tall); the Acacia is a West Australian species that doubles as a fodder tree, so we lop branches for feeding regularly - it grows back amazingly, as it is a legume - like tagasaste. Both double as a green firebreak because they are comparatively lush and hard to set alight, so will catch embers harmlessly during a bushfire, and cool down any fire that burns through them, instead of heating it up... and all these are important considerations...


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## Spanish Rider

Such a difference! It is amazing how fast everything has grown. In northern Spain (Galicia, where your friend is), years ago they did some reforestation with eucalyptus, and it completely drowned the native vegetation, to the extent that eucalyptus is now prohibited here.

And, your horses are so beautiful. Very special, indeed.

Oh, I do wish you could offer me a real cup of herbal tea. Which do you prefer? Now that the warm weather is coming, I like cold infusions; my current favorite is rooibos, clementine and carrot. You?



> doesn't like clay too close to the surface.


Well, that explains why it won't grow here. Our clay turns hard as a terracotta pot in summer.

I must admit that I know nothing about Austalian politics, but since you mentioned it on the other thread, I thought I'd mention it here (and not step on toes). We have elections on Sunday, but I cannot vote, of course. Scarily, European politics is becoming increasingly polarized, and we now have a new right-wing party in Spain, with a strong anti-immigration program. Of course, as an immigrant, this is unnerving because I have read their election proposals, and they make no distinction between legal and illegal immigrants. And, when you consider that many of us do not have the right to vote, well, it gets even scarier.

Today, the party members were at the end of my street, giving out propaganda. We waved and drove past. Further up the road, my son and I came across an ENORMOUS turtle trying to cross the road. We stopped to help it, and the son of a gun ran like the Dickens to hid under our car! So, as DS and I are trying to fish it out with an umbrella, along comes one of the far-right party members to help. When it finally comes out, he identifies the species, saying, "That turtle's not from around here. It's one of those tropical ones. It should be killed."

CHILLS ran down my spine.


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## SueC

That's shocking, @Spanish Rider . :shock: I'm amazed you can't vote - you're married to a Spanish national, aren't you? In Australia, that's automatic citizenship. We've got a nasty far-right undercurrent here too, and have seen it from the go-get of landing in this place in 1982 - that element has always been around. I'm currently reading a Camilla Lackberg whodunnit and was interested to note that this 2017 novel was written at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis and she includes a subplot on it to show the ugliness of the far right in Sweden, and the things people say about and to refugees and general immigrants. I'm glad she chose to include it. She also included a historical subplot on the Swedish witch hunts 300 years previously, just to show the nasty side of people that's always been there, and how some people relish abusing other people simply because they have the power to do so.

This puts in nice context a song I wanted to post here anyway, from our wonderful Warumpi Band - you couldn't say it better than these guys do! 






This next one is also amazing - just love the didgeridoo...






... re tea: My mainstay is jasmine green tea with a teaspoon of honey and 1/3 milk (just like in chai tea, which is my other favourite), served in the biggest soup mug we could find - we're both doing that, and have done it for over a decade - saves making multiple cups of tea...

Herbal: I like Rooibos, and rosehip, and sometimes peppermint, or even mint from the garden - with lemon or lime is often nice. Or as iced tea... often we do a green iced tea with some orange juice squeezed in...


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## Spanish Rider

Those links didn't work for me, Sue, but I was able to find the first (black/white fella). I remember the Warumpi Band's Island Home song, too.



> I'm amazed you can't vote - you're married to a Spanish national, aren't you? In Australia, that's automatic citizenship.


Well, it comes at a price. There is no dual-citizenship accord between the US and Spain. So, although I can become a Spanish citizenship after 2 years of marriage to a Spaniard and taking/passing a couple of tests, I would have to fortfit my American passport. Which I am not willing to do. Plus, even if, for the sake of argument, I decided to turn in my American passport to be able to vote, reclaiming my US citizenship is a sticky process (and expensive - a few years ago it was $2500), and I own property in the US. Plus, it won't look good when I run for US President.


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## tinyliny

My back hurts just looking at those photos of treeling after treeling, planted in the hard earth.
What do you suppose will be the survival rate? How big will they eventually grow to?


People used to plant trees a lot more than they do nowadays. You drive out in teh country here, and you'll see long lines of giant cottonwoods, now in the last years of their arboreal lifespan, broken and partially naked of leaves. These oldsters were tiny whips, planted in a row by some farmer who wanted to get a windbreak, or to get shade for his house out on the prairie. What an investment!


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## lostastirrup

"the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time to plant one is now." I think some Buddhist guy said that. 

I love the garden pictures. I have a porch vegetable garden, but I must live vicariously through your trees.


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## Spanish Rider

> the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago


Yup. I keep planting and planting in an attempt at creating a speck of shade in my yard, all the while knowing that my grandchildren are going to inherit one heck of a garden!


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## SueC

@tinyliny, the earth here is mercifully soft and sandy on top - the main thing is dealing with kikuyu runners, and the best way is to spray them out before you aim to plant, so you don't deal with their root mats - and you have to spray kikuyu anyway, before or after planting, or it will choke your seedlings. It's an aggressive runner grass and can wreak much habitat destruction, and that's why the roadside needs rehabilitating anyway - because the kikuyu killed the native plants. We use glyphosate - and despite its bad press lately, alcohol causes more cancers than glyphosate, but is anybody trying to ban that? I'd like to see a ban on broad-scale applications of glyphosate to crops etc - but not for spot applications in habitat rehabilitation - it's a relatively benign herbicide which degrades quickly in the environment, unlike a lot of other types. Its overuse in agriculture should not lead to its removal from the tiny arsenal environmentalists have for dealing with invasive weeds. It's like with antibiotics - don't abuse them or overuse them, but if you do have a life-threatening infection, then absolutely feel free to use them.

I use a mattock to turn the soil, and that's really easy compared to a spade. Just two or three thumps, like using an axe, and you've got your planting spot. And I stretch after a tree planting session - back etc.

@Spanish Rider, I can see why you opted to keep your citizenship... You'd be so much better as the President - why do fewer decent people run for that, than sociopaths? Same problem here. Many in Australia wish they could move to NZ, or that NZ would annexe us...

@lostastirrup, one day you will be able to settle down to a spot with a garden, I'm sure!  What are you growing on your porch?


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## lostastirrup

I have spinach, kale, cabbage, lettuce, carrots and a potato in a feed bag. I had an herb garden until and incident with a drunk neighbor. Not to mention the tragic death of the cucumbers which I started too early and they got got by a cold snap. I planted again, but they're just starts inside right now. I thought about putting a sapling on the porch. .. my pastor offered me one from his backyard, but it seemed unfair to plant it in a bucket on the porch.


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## SueC

Wow, that's dedication, @lostastirrup! In a small space like that, well done. Have you had a potato harvest before? We find the taste of home-grown potatoes incomparable... they are so flavoursome, and crisp up so well too as not so waterlogged...

It actually took me five years until I managed to successfully grow a cabbage from seed. The first year or two, the seedlings got fungal diseases or dried out. Once I got my mini-greenhouse, the seedlings survived, and I planted some out a year ago, and they are huge plants now, but most of them aren't heading! One did, though - and we ate that one last week! ...kale is so much easier to grow...

We're in different climates and all that, but have you got any special tricks with cabbage growing?

...and what did the drunk neighbour do with the herbs?


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## SueC

...I forgot to answer the questions on survival rate and expected growth. For eucalypts, survival has been exceeding 90% here. For everything else, around 70-80%, providing we knock the kikuyu back regularly so it doesn't choke them, and that we water them regularly through the first summer.

When you buy the seedlings, you get information on height at maturity. Karri trees can get over 40m tall; mallees (various species of dwarf eucalypts) can be as low as 3m at maturity. Most of our eucalypts will mature out at over 20m. When these trees get to around 100-200 years old, they have such enormous trunks that you can stand up in the hollows that usually form in them, like a cubby house. The understorey species vary - some bushes grow to 2-3m, others to over 5m. Half the verge area we're rehabilitating near the west end of the property is planted to bushes below 4m only, so that we can maintain our view of the hills across the road...


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## LoriF

You have a beautiful property, I love it.


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## Knave

@Spanish Rider, I don’t think it will take as long as you think. Look at Sue’s progress! It is beautiful.

Ten years ago my yard was only the grass, and a year or two before that it was just a sandy crested wheat corner. I look back at pictures with some sort of shock. The kids and the trees have sure grown. Lol

I planted just tiny starts, about an inch or two long. Although my yard is still young, it does throw some shade and have its own beauty already.


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## lostastirrup

The drunk neighbor tried the chives and then ate the basil. Then got angry and shoved them off the railing and they landed below. Thyme survived but only just. And then it died about a week later. 

I have not tricks for cabbage, but it's shady enough here that they don't go to flower too quick..


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## Knave

@lostastirrup that is a sad but kinda funny story. I wish it didn’t break your planter. 

Cabbage grows great for me. I don’t have tricks either though. My aunt who seems to be able to grow anything struggles with some of the things I get easily, like carrots, and she does well with things that seem impossible to me. 

So, I figure our own little differences, even though impossible to see, like maybe how long water is left on and what time of day we tend towards going out to do it, make some major differences. 

I must seem like the lazy version of gardener. I refuse to read directions and wide row plant. I rake in my seeds and try to do companion planting my best. Then I just water and weed and hope for the best.

I want to can instead of waste this year. Even giving away carrots I rotivated in hundreds this year that I wasted last, and probably thirty cabbage heads went the same way. I’m sure they would have kept nicely if I took care of them before winter hit.


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## Spanish Rider

Maybe we should start a gardening thread? Because I'd love to see everyone's progress, and it is so interesting to compare what's happening in different climates. Also, I'm sort of a garden freak and have a mini-blog, so I could talk about this for hours!


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## Knave

That’s neat @Spanish Rider! I think it is evident that I am kind of a weirdo about it too. I just love my yard and doing the work in it. Seeing the progress makes me very happy. 

Sue seems to be the same way. I am envious of her ability to take it from the garden to the table so beautifully. I usually do alright growing it, but I am rather boring at taking it to the table. Eating makes me happy, cooking not so much.


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## tinyliny

I like the idea of a gardening thread!!


Is kikuyu native, or an invasive import?


is glyphosant (spell?) the same thing as Round up?


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## SueC

Kikuyu is an African import, @tinyliny - from Kenya and surrounds, if I remember correctly. It's an excellent, tough pasture perennial, and one of the mainstays of animal production in this part of the world. It is, however, also a horribly invasive environmental weed when it creeps off your pastures to choke the native vegetation - just as blackberries will do here. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup - in toxicology terms, it's synonymous. The patent expired for Monsanto, so now you can buy it from other evil corporations that aren't the supremely evil Monsanto. Glyphosate kills kikuyu effectively without affecting the soil microflora directly - unlike solarisation (black plastic sheeting), which also kills a lot of soil microbes, while taking many months to be as effective as glyphosate - and leaving the problem of plastic waste. Solarisation is an alternative option used by organic gardeners to get rid of runner grasses and weeds, and can work well in small areas when people have months to leave an area fallow etc. 

It's not an option for large-scale environmental rehabilitation, which is why glyphosate is the herbicide of choice in Australian environmental rehabilitation work. It's the least persistent, and doesn't bioamplify in the body fat. We don't touch other recommended herbicides with a barge pole if we can avoid it, because they are more persistent and have greater toxicity etc. We'd rather use the less problematic herbicide several times a year than use a persistent herbicide once a year. And while we wish we wouldn't have to use it at all, like antibiotics, sometimes the situation does require it. We'd never have gotten all the trees and bushes to survive without it - and the completely organic farm down the road's tree planting programmes largely failed because of that. They were getting less than 5% survival - we're getting around 80% survival, and now have habitat rows used by nesting birds, many many insects, reptiles etc.

When we first bought the place, we could never hear birdsong in the actual pasture - we heard it remotely, from the bush. Now it's everywhere we walk - the birds now have refuge all over the pasture. Let me introduce some of the species of birds to you that we've photographed in the re-planted areas: 


Grey Shrike-Thrush I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


New Holland Honeyeater II – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Fairy Wren in Our Garden – Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Austra by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Firetail Finches – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Western Rosella - Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Redbreast Robin on Bird Bath – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Swamp Quail Pair in Native Garden – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Golden Whistler I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Western Spinebill – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Magpie - Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Twenty-Eight Parrot - Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Red-Tailed Black Cockatoos - Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

We also have these fellas, who like strawberries, so we leave strawberries out for them when they're around:


Blue-Tongue – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

We love that we were able, by putting seedlings in the ground and taking care of them, to make new homes for these creatures, which provide them with food, shelter and nesting sites. :happydance:

@LoriF, hello and welcome to this journal! Getting any riding in at the moment?

Everyone else - I have to run - work to do - but I second the gardening thread - who's going to start it? Have an excellent evening all - the days are short here, and there's enough light now to get on with outdoors tasks for the day...


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## tinyliny

Those are so exotic to me. It's a birdwatchers paradise! Our birds are much duller in coloration. We do have some pretty jays that are all blue, and some yellow finches ,but mostly variations of brown.


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## Spanish Rider

> I second the gardening thread - who's going to start it?


I'll give it a go.


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## Spanish Rider

Done.

https://www.horseforum.com/general-off-topic-discussion/hf-gardening-thread-804313/


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## knightrider

@SueC, I finished reading the book you recommended, Borrowed Light. I liked it very much. I have a lot of things I'd like to discuss and questions to ask you. Would you rather keep it on the Private Messages or here? Thanks for recommending the book. I ordered it from the library. If they don't have a certain book you want, they'll scour the country until they find it and get it sent to them. Pretty nice for a tiny rural country library!


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## SueC

Chat away about it here if you like, @knightrider - I could chat about this book for weeks - or PM if you prefer - I will leave that completely up to you.  Sorry I've not gotten back to you yet re your nerd question. In brief, Brett and I are both nerds, and happy to be so. ;-) Maybe whether you find nerds interesting or not depends on your overlap with their areas of interest. We're both broad-spectrum nerds. :Angel:


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## SueC

*THE CURE SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE GIG THURSDAY MAY 30 2019*

I have to...what's the opposite of rant?...wax lyrical now. We've just finished watching the live stream of the last of the gigs The Cure did for the Vivid Festival at the Sydney Opera House. Wow!  Because I have to go to bed, here's what we've just posted on Reddit under this topic:

We were watching from Western Australia and honestly have no idea what anybody has been complaining about all week. Fabulous concert, and we, for one, really enjoy this side of The Cure, and would rather listen to any of the songs they played tonight than "Friday I'm In Love" - this was our kind of concert, and we had to laugh when Robert Smith talked about sticking to his guns about that, and that in an alternative universe, all these songs were hits anyway.

The warm-up was excellent and so was everything that followed. We don't necessarily love everything on Disintegration - most of it, we do - but because of the professionalism of this band, it wasn't a hardship to listen to anything they played all night. The encore set was tremendous - from "Burn" which both of us love to bits, right down to "Pirate Ships" which neither of us had heard before, but we heard the dissing from the critics all week, and it makes us think of those armchair critics in The Muppet Show. That was a _beautiful_ song - and so nice to hear a musician singing something someone else wrote which they've liked. Robert Smith's voice was lovely on this - totally different style to what he normally does - and we had goosebumps. The critics can all go jump in the lake.

Also, we have a hypothesis at our house that Simon Gallop and Jason Cooper wear some kind of calorie counting gadgets and compete for most energy burned during the concert. Both of them are veritable poster children for the benefits of regular exercise. Reeves Gabrels suits very well as a Cure guitarist, and amuses us with his laid-backness and his sort of "Hey kids, let me help you out!" vibe. And it would drive both of us spare to have to stand up in the same spot all night like poor Roger O'Donnell, so he's probably more patient than we are.

Lights and backdrops A1 and never annoying, and it's rare we can say that. It's like these people study how to make things beautiful visually. Very happy that this event was streamed live. <3

PS: If you like this comment, you can read another 7000 words here. Bwahahaha. But what would we know, we're just a bunch of hippies.  Music Reviews Get Curiouser And Curiouser ? Sue Coulstock

Pirate Ships, from 30 years ago, and if anything, he sang it better:






Fascination Street, which they played tonight, is an old favourite of mine - stratospheric levels of energy, and yet no overcrowding. I've got a clip here from the Trilogy concert, which we have the DVD of - which makes them all look so young as it's 17 years ago, but they played it with equal panache this evening. This is the kind of loud I like - loud with wonderful textures, with space in the music, with amazing atmosphere, and with meaning...






On this one, the second guitarist is Perry Bamonte, who disbanded a while back (unfortunately, we think, as we liked him better than the original, but Reeves Gabrel, ex Bowie, who's been doing this gig for the past couple of years, works well also).

Just found a clip of said guitarist talking about his favourite Cure songs, very interesting take:






Wonderful to have sounds of rain and thunder in the loop tape before and between sets.  These people are always an experience...

:ZZZ: :ZZZ:


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## knightrider

@SueC, I would love to talk about Borrowed Light. First, a discussion about nerds. Clearly my definition of a nerd and your definition are quite different. 

I think of nerds as people who are not socially skilled and also lack empathy. They are not aware . . . or not thinking about how other people might feel. This is clearly NOT you . . . or your husband, so I would not classify you as nerds.

Nerds are not arrogant or selfish. They are just . . . clueless. They don't seem to have a good filter on human interaction. So, basically, they are not fun to be around because they are not tuned into other people's needs or wants.

The mother, Caroline, and the grandmother in Borrowed Light wouldn't be classified as nerds in my definition because they were quite deft at social interaction. Caroline cared about her "sad ladies" and did what she could to help them. The grandmother had her circle of astronomers that she could interact with. They were sort of nerds because they didn't listen to their children. But lots of parents don't listen to their children. Caroline was sort of unbelievable because she was so incompetent as a mother.

Of course, lots of nerds get along fine with other nerds, so my definition is not clear-cut. But I know one when I see one. We had lots of them in my medieval organization. They were kind of socially inappropriate. Hard to define. Easy to spot.

Calisto's division of people into moons and stars was way too simple. I think just about everyone is a combination of moon and star. I know I certainly am. It is important to me to please people, but I have no problem with going my own way and doing my own thing and shining by myself. On the other hand, I think I wasn't strict enough with my children because I enjoyed making them happy and doing things for them. I know I was the peacemaker in my family growing up. I was the one who made people happy when the fighting and arguing and fussing started up.

In high school, I made no effort to get in with the "in" crowd. I didn't like them (as Calisto didn't) so I didn't want to do things with them. I had a set of very close friends and didn't need those popular kids or want them.

How far along in the story did you figure out that Gany was a firstborn who died?

It would be a whole 'nother story, so I can understand why Anna Fienberg did not address this issue directly, but I have known about 4 people who got abortions and it damages the woman. You don't just "take care of it." All the people I know who got abortions can tell you the "birth" date of the child and how old they would have been. There is no easy answer to the question of abortion. I know those women struggle with the sorrow, and for most of them, it is a secret sorrow. One of my students got an abortion, and it pushed her over the edge and into a mental hospital. She told me she was going to get the abortion, and I tried hard to help her think it through before going through with it because I had a hunch she wouldn't be able to handle the loss. She was so blasé about it and I tried to get her to step back and think of all the repercussions. She wouldn't.

I am not opposed to abortion, but I am well aware that it isn't something to be done lightly. I understand there are valid reasons to get an abortion. But the woman is never the same afterwards. I'm sure some are, of course, I just don't know them. Probably not the kind of folks I would bother to get to know. And it's not something that people tell about later. You kind of have to be there when it is happening. . . which I was at the time.

Enough of my babbling on. What are some of your thoughts about the book?


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## gottatrot

knightrider said:


> It would be a whole 'nother story, so I can understand why Anna Fienberg did not address this issue directly, but I have known about 4 people who got abortions and it damages the woman. You don't just "take care of it." All the people I know who got abortions can tell you the "birth" date of the child and how old they would have been.


The book sounds interesting.
This is something I have learned also, from relatives. It is sad to see how people get scarred from it. Men can also, especially if they were against it. 
I've also seen very tiny babies, alive and dead, and that changed me as a person. Tiny dead babies are amazingly beautiful. In pictures they look strange, but in person they are cute like baby gerbils or birds. For some reason the fingers and toes are what are the most fascinating to me. How can they be so tiny? 

I helped with a 2 lb baby awhile ago that should have been born in a much larger hospital, but she was doing fine and it made me wonder...the way technology is going, soon we may be able to help babies survive even sooner than 21 or 22 weeks, which is where we are now. Then what will people think?

It was interesting to me that see that some of the transport teams for tiny babies are pairs of large men. I didn't think I was biased, but it still was surprising to see how they handled all the very small equipment and were so confident about everything. They told me to put some antibiotic gel in the baby's eyes but I was not confident that I wouldn't squish the eyes or something. One man laughed and did it so delicately, it was amazing. Also put tiny IV needles in the tiny little veins.


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## DanteDressageNerd

Your nature photos are absolutely stunning, I was really intrigued by the blue tongue lizard! Impressive!

As for the abortion topic, I am pro-choice but I agree with knightrider. I've had friends who have done it and they had good reasons for doing it (health related) but it traumatized them. They absolutely didnt make decisions lightly. I told one friends I wish I was there for her when she did it. Her bf was there to support though. She was in so much pain she passed out and got a concussion. It was really hard on her and shed cried for days. She mourned the loss but with her health, just she cant. She thought on it for 2 weeks. She really wanted to keep the baby but the reality of how it would impact her health was she probably cant be a mother. Even with protection it can happen.


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## SueC

Hello all! :wave:

I understand that Americans tend to have very different perceptions about abortions than Europeans do, and while I appreciate everyone expressing their thoughts on the matter, and recognise everyone's right to their own point of view, you're going to find I think differently in some respects. So - I'm a typical European as far as that goes. I'm pro-choice, and have no issue with early-term abortions. At near eight weeks you can start to really visually distinguish a human embryo from other mammalian embryos, but I'm also a biologist and that's "so what?" to me, because I'm interested in more than just the human species, and I don't think humans are somehow more worthy or more important ethically than other species - which I know is not a mainstream perspective. I guess I'm more like an indigenous person with the way I think about that. I see the whole web of life and am personally far more concerned about the extinctions of entire biological species because of what humans are doing to the planet, than I am about whether every human embryo ought to become a baby and be born. Early-term abortions happen before eight weeks' gestation, and the developmental stage of such embryos is still very primitive. At that point, an adult housefly is way more developed - as a point of neurological comparison (stating a fact, not inviting implications here). I personally start having ethical problems with abortions when they aren't early-term, but I do uphold a woman's right to choose, and understand that there are some circumstances where later-term abortions are still preferable to the alternative of that particular case.

So, that's how I think about it. And no, from what I have seen, not every woman is going to feel traumatised for the rest of her life or be damaged. I know people who were, and people who were not - and I think that which category they are going to be in is pretty correlated with cultural ideas about it - i.e. with the culture they're in. Having said that, I personally don't know anyone who's ever taken an abortion lightly, either side of this debate. I'm sure such people exist, but imagine they would be in the minority. At the very least, one thing that's sure is that few people enjoy having invasive procedures performed on them, and so, most people want to avoid that (I mean, does anyone here enjoy having their Pap smears?). Even with RU-486, it's not exactly a pleasant process for the woman, although it's less invasive and more private. So I think this image of careless women who don't care about having an abortion is largely a fiction.

And on the other side of the debate - on the side of unplanned, not-happy-accident pregnancies going to term, as an educator I have seen so many children grow up unloved and very little cared for, and this kind of damage can (and frequently does) carry on for generations, unless the cycle of lack of love and understanding is broken, which unfortunately it often isn't, creating more human misery down the track. I've had classrooms full of children, in a couple of schools where I taught, where most of them were damaged by growing up in dysfunctional families. I wish people used contraceptives so they wouldn't bring children into the world they are not going to love and adequately care for, and if that fails for them, I feel that they should have a backup option to end the pregnancy. I wish all children born into this world were born wanted and loved, with parents who will care well for them, but many are not in that position.

I'm happy for the people who normally already post here to fully express their own views on this matter, and we can all see where each other are coming from. I'd not be happy for someone who never normally posts here to jump in and start berating people because of their views on this matter - or trying to change their minds, or judge them, etc. Debates about abortion can quickly turn ugly, and it would be really unfortunate if that happened on someone's journal, which is a sort of sanctuary. So let's make sure this doesn't happen.

Now about _Borrowed Light_!  It's an excellent book for getting teenagers to stop and think about the realities of unplanned pregnancies - and to think about healthy versus dysfunctional relationships. As such, we used it at a Catholic school I taught in, where I actually first came across it, in the school library! I used it as a teaching text for Year 9 girls in their all-girls English classes (they ran boys and girls separately in English and Health classes for that year). The girls were riveted, and it got them really contemplating and discussing the subjects of dysfunctional families, healthy relationships, consent, the circumstances under which people lose their virginity, why did Callisto have these bad experiences when this is not how she had wanted it to be (either the way her first sexual encounter turned out, or the unplanned pregnancy), why does this happen so much to teenagers, how can I try to prevent that happening to me. Also, what sort of parenting is good parenting, what sorts of things are unhelpful, why and how can bad patterns be passed through generations, how does a person in Callisto's family of origin situation get help.

The book is cleverly set up so that most readers will judge Caroline for her distant mothering when they first meet her, and want to tell her to wake up! And then we read her diaries, and understand where she's at, as a human being, and the load she has been carrying - and we develop compassion for her. And the girls in class were saying things like, "I've got an aunt / uncle who have this really bad flaw, and I wonder why that happened." They were looking beneath the surface, understanding that people's limitations are often caused by unresolved traumas from their past. It was really incredible how insightful these fourteen-year-old girls were in their class discussions, essays etc on this topic. They really, really impressed me - but it's up to us as educators to provide them with opportunities to learn about these things, and to discuss them with each other. _Borrowed Light_ is a book that makes an excellent springboard for discussion. All the girls can relate to Callisto, even though she's non-mainstream - they can relate to her being a girl, to problems in her family life, to her romantic hopes, to her problems with body image, to her falling down holes in life. And they care about Callisto, and so, they get engaged on all these topics, without it having to be a discussion about a "real" person.

I'll have to get back to your specific questions later, @knightrider - it's bedtime here! :ZZZ:

Have a good day, everyone!


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## egrogan

Well, like with anything, Americans are not a monolithic bunch and I was going to say basically what you did @SueC, as this has been my experience too...



> And no, from what I have seen, not every woman is going to feel traumatised for the rest of her life or be damaged. I know people who were, and people who were not - and I think that which category they are going to be in is pretty correlated with cultural ideas about it - i.e. with the culture they're in. Having said that, I personally don't know anyone who's ever taken an abortion lightly, either side of this debate.


Of my friends and relatives who have had to make such decisions, I've seen far more trauma carried by those who delivered an unwanted baby and gave it up for adoption, or, much worse, were essentially forced by those who were supposed to be looking out for their best interest to have and keep a child they had absolutely no capacity to care for. I won't go into how those children are fairing now that they are late teens/young adults, but it wouldn't have been hard to predict those outcomes before those children were even born.

All this to say...I just can't see how anyone outside of the person who is actually faced with having the child should have any role in the decision whatsoever.


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## Spanish Rider

Abortion in Spain is a total taboo topic. But, of course, with Catholicism being the official religion, which is taught in public schools (albeit not mandatory) from pre-school up through high school, and even offered in college, it is no surprise that women do not discuss abortion openly. In fact, I don't know of anyone here who has had one.

However, with the newly formed waaaaay right-wing VOX party, concerns about abortion rights are back on the table. While there has been no talk of stricter control like the new fetal heartbeat laws in the US, changes might come about in abortions performed in government-owned national healthcare system facilities. Of course, this would mostly affect the poorest women. Like always.

As for the ethical side of abortions, working in medicine wakes you up to a lot of things. When death is a daily occurrence in your work, you become more pragmatic. And, as I do a lot of work in organ transplantation (meanwhile I have a niece who will most likely require a double-organ transplant in her twenties), you start questioning the ethics of organ transplants going to patients whose conditions are a direct result of their abusing toxic substances. This is not to say that abortion is a similar circumstance, but there are other practices in modern medicine that many would not consider ethical if they were fully understood by the general public, so I tend to have a hardened shell.

I do not believe that abortion is a black or white issue. There are too many grey areas, too many personal extenuating circumstances, for it to be. I consider myself a feminist, and I respect a woman's right to choose, while being offending by some men's perceived right to decide. Their right to decide ended the moment they chose not to put on the condom. Because, let's face it, men cause unwanted pregnancies, not women. And yet, I am a mother, and I find all life precious, especially after saving my 2-month baby's life during a SIDS episode. Once you start mentally planning for your own child's funeral, I don't think you can ever look at the right-to-life debate in the same way again.

Thus, I am truly thankful that abortion is a decision I have never been faced with.

In skirting around the grey areas, my rational brain finds a hard time agreeing with many facets of the newly-imposed fetal heartbeat laws, for example in cases of rape, incest, very young minors, health risks and non-viable fetuses. The youngest mother on record was a Peruvian girl of just 5 years of age; and, not long ago (2 or 3 years?) a 9-year-old girl was denied an abortion in Argentina. I will not even address these abhorrences, yet we must be realistic about abortion data. Another aspect of these laws that is difficult to digest is the logistics of the heartbeat law. If a woman has irregular periods and becomes pregnant, she’s not going to figure it out on day 29. I did not realize that I was pregnant with my first son until I was one-ish week “late”, and by the time I was given an appointment with my gynecologist some days later, I was already 5+ weeks pregnant. So that would have given me less than a week (5 business days) to become informed, make a decision, schedule an abortion and have the procedure. And that is without considering holidays, vacations, my gynecologist’s schedule, etc. So if, as a self-aware, intelligent woman at the age of 30, I would have had only a few days to make a potential decision, you can be sure that there is NO WAY an inexperienced minor or young rape/incest victim is going to figure out that they’re pregnant, approach a parent or trustworthy adult and seek medical help before the 6-week cutoff. Impossible.
@SueC, thank you for providing a safe place for us to express our opinions.


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## SueC

@Spanish Rider, you're most welcome, I aim for that to be the case, but it takes everyone interacting here to make that a reality, so thank you very much everybody, for your unfailing courtesy and respect, and for your willingness to share your points of view, and your ability to think in a friendly way of people who may have different views on touchy subjects to your own.  

The heartbeat line, as a biologist, I see as emotive rather than rational. A heartbeat only means the embryo is now of a size that it requires a circulatory system to effectively distribute nutrients and oxygen, and to get rid of wastes - something that's handled by diffusion in the early stages. People tend to conflate the physical pump with our emotional ideas of what a heart is. A human embryo develops a circulatory system a very long time before it has anything like a personality, or a substantial, rather than vague, consciousness. And a human embryo develops that circulatory system the same way any other mammalian embryo does, or chicken embryo, or reptile embryo, etc etc. Earthworms have closed circulatory systems too.

And yet, many humans have very little trouble routinely killing things that have not only a heartbeat, but also a personality, and a developed consciousness, and a social system, and friends - because we need to eat, and many of us actually require complete animal protein and heme-form iron in order not to get ill. The food chain is one of those realities of nature and of Earth's ecology, which on the one hand is sad and horrific, but on the other, has led to the shaping of our beautiful biosphere and to the development of many unique species - an explosion of diversity and life. Reading the book _Deep Ecology - Living As If Nature Mattered_ helped me come to grips with this stuff when I was a university student, and flirting with being vegetarian. I now eat what I require in order to maintain good health, but am thankful for the lives that went, and still go, into the continuation of my own life - animal, plant, fungi, protists, microbes - and I understand that one day it will be my turn to give up my own resources, and when I do, I hope they will widely benefit other living things. And while I am alive, I go out of my way to provide habitat for other forms of life, so that hopefully, I am nurturing more than I am destroying by dint of my existence.

I also no longer see death as the worst possible thing, but as a part of life we all must encounter, and not just at the ends of our own existences. We raise food animals on our farm here, with an emphasis on good quality of life while they are alive, and a determination that these animals will be able to express their natural behaviours, interact freely socially, have room to roam and interesting things to explore, and be treated with kindness and respect, and that when they come to die, it is done in as humane a manner as we can provide. And while this is still very sad, it's also generally less stressful than being torn apart by a pack of wolves, and the death by predation will continue to go on as long as there are carnivores and omnivores around, no matter what we humans choose to do, and indeed has to go on in order for the biosphere to be healthy and diverse. (Indigenous people generally have a deep understanding of this.) When our food animals here die, they will all have had a good life worth living, albeit a relatively short one - but then, in nature, most lives are very short. Most of us are just too disconnected from nature to see that - with the privileged and artificially lengthened life span of human beings, and their pets.

When you see things in the context of wider nature, it's a very different perspective to the mainstream perspective that privileges humans and their existences, and sees our species as "above" others and somehow separate from the rest of the biosphere. It's that kind of thinking that has gotten our whole planet into dire trouble, and will backfire even on us (having already backfired on many other species and caused a lot of extinction) unless we change our ways.


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## SueC

knightrider said:


> @SueC, I would love to talk about Borrowed Light. First, a discussion about nerds. Clearly my definition of a nerd and your definition are quite different.
> 
> I think of nerds as people who are not socially skilled and also lack empathy. They are not aware . . . or not thinking about how other people might feel. This is clearly NOT you . . . or your husband, so I would not classify you as nerds.
> 
> Nerds are not arrogant or selfish. They are just . . . clueless. They don't seem to have a good filter on human interaction. So, basically, they are not fun to be around because they are not tuned into other people's needs or wants.


The definition of nerd seems to have changed significantly over the years - I notice that the definition in my 35-year-old Macquarie Dictionary simply has "a foolish person - an idiot" under that entry, even though this dictionary was contemporary with my schooldays. When Brett and I were teenagers in the 80s, a nerd was someone who got top marks in class, was interested in studying, had esoteric interests, tended to go deeper into interests general to everybody than the average person, tended to have science and / or technology proclivities, tended to have large vocabularies and spend a lot of time with their noses happily in books, and tended not to care about fashion or celebrity gossip. Therefore, Brett and I were both considered nerds, and had that epithet applied to us many times. We learnt to wear it proudly. 

A contemporary definition from Wikipedia:

_A nerd is a person seen as overly intellectual, obsessive, introverted or lacking social skills. Such a person may spend inordinate amounts of time on unpopular, little known, or non-mainstream activities, which are generally either highly technical, abstract, or relating to topics of science fiction or fantasy, to the exclusion of more mainstream activities. Additionally, many so-called nerds are described as being shy, quirky, pedantic, and unattractive.

Originally derogatory, the term "nerd" was a stereotype, but as with other pejoratives, it has been reclaimed and redefined by some as a term of pride and group identity. _

From the Urban Dictionary:

_An individual who:
1. Enjoys learning
2. Does not adhere to social norms_

So Brett, I, Callisto from _Borrowed Light_, Hermione from _Harry Potter_ etc would all be classed as nerds under contemporary definitions of that word. By the way, the perception of lacking social skills is often just that. Some of us don't find some of the stuff classed as such important, but do fine where it matters.

Also straight from the front page of Google:

*Acting Like a Nerd*

Lose yourself in your passion. ...
Don't be afraid to go beyond the ordinary. ...
Be polite. ...
Always be learning. ...
Use the right words. ...
Read voraciously. ...
Pay attention in school. ...
Channel any anger or disappointment you may have into your passions.

Here's an excellent link: https://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Nerd

...when I was teaching, I made "nerd" a compliment in the classroom, and a lot of my students found they enjoyed being nerdy, and having a nerdy teacher! 

Have you noticed how the word "gay" has gone through several transformations in main meaning in the space of one lifetime? It used to mean "merry" - then it became "same-sex attracted" - and then it even started meaning "naff / stupid", as in, "Oh, that's so _gay_, Miss!" :rofl:




> ...lots of parents don't listen to their children. Caroline was sort of unbelievable because she was so incompetent as a mother.


Yet Caroline makes my own mother look like an angel - and many people's mothers, in the real world. Caroline at least attempted to have important conversations with them, and she didn't go around beating either of her kids black and blue, or verbally abusing them, or speaking badly of any of her children to anyone who would listen and refusing to see the good in them, or rejecting their presents and offerings, or turning one into a scapegoat and the other into a golden child, or making herself into a martyr for tolerating either of her children in her home, and for feeding them and providing shelter and clothing.

The domestic violence rate around our district, according to a friend who works in social services, is probably significantly above 20% of households. The emotional neglect rate is higher. Caroline's parenting falls under the category of emotional neglect - and in her case, and in many cases of emotional neglect, it's due to her own hollowness from past unresolved trauma. She is a more "benign" example of dysfunctional parenting, but even this level of dysfunction can be very damaging to children.

It was hugely positive that at the end of the book, Caroline was self-reflecting and modifying her parenting.




> Calisto's division of people into moons and stars was way too simple. I think just about everyone is a combination of moon and star. I know I certainly am. It is important to me to please people, but I have no problem with going my own way and doing my own thing and shining by myself. On the other hand, I think I wasn't strict enough with my children because I enjoyed making them happy and doing things for them. I know I was the peacemaker in my family growing up. I was the one who made people happy when the fighting and arguing and fussing started up.


Yeah, a lot of the categorisations used in psychology, and made up by people more generally, run into significant limitations because they are binary, and life generally isn't binary. Another example is introvert versus extrovert - I part-time at both, and don't fit neatly into either category. I love interacting with people, it energises me - but I also need a lot of quiet time for reflection, and don't feel at sea when I am on my own. For me, the introverted side improves my extroverted side, and vice versa.

A lot of the girls in my class found the moon / sun idea really interesting to contemplate. It's a great starting point to think - _Where do I sit here? And why am I sitting here?_ And in class we become aware, with discussion and sharing, that sun and moon are extremes at the opposite end of a spectrum, and we can start to place ourselves at a rough spot in that spectrum (or be part-time at both), and compare that to where we might have been in the past, and where we might aspire to be in the future.

Philosophy often has the same problem you've raised here, @knightrider - much of it works by someone making a thesis, and then someone else reacting with the complete antithesis at the opposite end of the spectrum, and then they argue till they're blue in the face about who has it right. And yet, as one of my favourite sayings in philosophy goes, the truth is usually found neither in the thesis or in the antithesis, but in the synthesis that reconciles the two. And this is why discussing things with other people and sharing our different points of view can be so valuable.




> In high school, I made no effort to get in with the "in" crowd. I didn't like them (as Calisto didn't) so I didn't want to do things with them. I had a set of very close friends and didn't need those popular kids or want them.


My experience here was identical in that respect to yours - as was Brett's.




> How far along in the story did you figure out that Gany was a firstborn who died?


I first read this book nearly 20 years ago, so can't remember precisely, other than it took me a lot longer to figure that out than I felt it should have, in retrospect!  But, I think it was deliberately written to keep us thinking, "Why the heck is she so concerned about her son that she's not even mentioning her daughter? It's like she doesn't ever exist, grrrr." And of course, it's because she actually didn't! 

It's really excellent that the book is written with these traps in it, because most of us fall into them, and then we go, "Oops, how often do I do that in real life?"

The overall effect reading that book had on me, and on many of the girls I worked with, is that it made us more careful about leaping to conclusions and judging people - and made us aware that we're frequently doing both. It made us want to be careful and to think about the puzzle pieces we were probably missing.

inkunicorn:​
Re the abortion, one of the reasons I was cleared to use this book with my Year 9 class, in _Catholic_ school, as their major study novel, is that the overall effect of reading this book is to get students to contemplate the realities of unplanned pregnancies happening, and the why (which is often complex and psychological, rather than the simplistic way it's frequently portrayed), and the consequences of such scenarios, in a very serious way, so that the net effect is protective and so that the girls are more likely _not_ to have an unplanned pregnancy, and _not_ to enter into or stay in dysfunctional romantic relationships, and to get help with family issues that may be driving them into the arms of unsuitable people and relationships.

The Studies Coordinator was very aware I'm not Catholic and that I'm pro-choice, but also that a lot of Catholics are privately pro-choice and don't agree with the official line taken by the Vatican on contraception, and/or on abortion. Plus, she understood that what both sides of the debate had in common is a desire to avoid unplanned pregnancies in the first place - even if the Career Catholics are very unrealistic about how that might be achieved. ;-)

In addition, the unfolding paedophilia scandal from the side of the Career Catholics left them, quite rightly, without the unquestioned moral authority they like to claim for themselves. I've always found the actual Catholic congregation very different from the careerists who want to tell them what to do. And by the way, so were some of the priests and religious brothers and sisters I worked with - they rejected the upper echelons too, and worked in metaphorical sandals rather than on red carpet, and with a modicum of personal humility.


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## gottatrot

Spanish Rider said:


> Because, let's face it, men cause unwanted pregnancies, not women.


Yes, this can be a tricky subject. I do like to hear perspectives, however. 

Even the above does not cover all circumstances. There are those men who have been with irresponsible women who lie and say they are using birth control, so the pregnancy is not the man's fault. Or both parties think they are using adequate birth control that fails. That can't be blamed on a man just because he was half of the equation - both parties were involved. It also happens that both were high on drugs, so there was no responsible person involved at all, which is also not just the man's fault.

I'm not saying this as a theoretical, but as something that has happened to someone I know. A man may not only feel responsible at the moment a baby is born, but as soon as the woman is pregnant. Which means he may think about and decide to be responsible for the baby (in the case I know of, with assistance from family), but then it can be devastating that he has no say if she decides to have an abortion. 

That is one area where I could imagine science in the future might have an effect. This sounds very sci-fi, but if babies could live outside of a woman's body from a very early age, then it wouldn't become an issue about carrying a pregnancy anymore, and then there might be a different perspective where the baby could be removed from the woman early, like an abortion, but custody given to another biologically interested party. 

I also think reproductive rights are protected too much, in the cases of those who are on drugs and have baby after baby born affected by drugs and taken away to be in the system. At some point it seems it could be ethical to force birth control, require shots or sterilization. One of my co-workers has two kids she adopted, both were born to the same drug-addicted mother a year apart. She has other kids in the system too. 

I agree that it is hypocritical to value human life and suffering above all other creatures, but see other animal lives as not valuable. The difference for me is that I think if we can't even value life that is as close to us as another human, then the other creatures have no hope. We have to start somewhere, and people tend to care most about what they understand more, what is closest to their experience. I don't see death as the worst possible thing either, but there is a lot to consider between life and death. How life is taken is important, as is who takes the life. How does that affect us all and the other creatures on the planet? 

Many in my sphere think I have been ridiculous to spend time and effort taking care of orphaned rats or an injured opossum. Many have a bias against certain lives that they believe are less valuable than others. Murderers and serial killers very frequently start out by killing and torturing animals. The attitude we have about life and the suffering of other creatures is important, I believe.


----------



## SueC

Just posting a few more virtual pastries for people that I'd love to send out if I had a space-time dumbwaiter! 

These are wholemeal apple pockets. In the absence of the required gadget for distributing these to everyone here, I can share the recipe with anyone who wants it. These are so easy if you have a breadmaker!



People's favourite treats photos and recipes always welcome here!


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## Knave

I find your discussions interesting. Abortion is a topic my mind likes to avoid too much contemplation about, but you all gave me a lot to ponder.

The nerd discussion was interesting too! I am a nerd I think. I was very good at school and I am more than a bit socially inept. Unlike you guys, I tried to fit in which made it much worse. 

My littlest is quite the nerd. She is brilliant, and sometimes I think lacking social skills, but as I look deeper I think differently. She is actually very intensely made. She is emotional and empathetic to an extreme, but from the outside it seems like she cannot read people, which is a confusing mix. However, when one gets her to talk, she explains it differently.

She makes choices intentionally which appear to lack social judgement. However, she explains she rather sits at the table of misfits, because the cool kids are required to pretend. She doesn’t care for anything that is not real. She sees the stories behind actions of her peers, and she reacts accordingly and intentionally. Why does she allow one boy to be such a jerk and tolerate his nature without becoming insulted or trying to interact? Well, this boy’s father killed his mother and is now in prison, and he acts in a certain way because of that. 

Why does she sit with a child being bullied and not get defensive? She understands her reaction would detriment the boy instead of help, so instead she simply offers him a friend. She doesn’t react to the kids who try and offend her, because she doesn’t care. She doesn’t take any of it personally.

So, maybe her social skills are actually above the norm. She doesn’t hurt anyone, and she is a nurturing person to her core, but she also sees people must deal with their own realities. It is hard to explain because it is hard to see. She was born with more depth than I could process in a small child.

My oldest is far from a nerd, but being related to many she does defend them.  Her teachers have always complemented her to me for that. She will not tolerate someone being bullied, sadly unless it is herself. We are working on that.


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## SueC

your post, @Knave. :happydance:

On that current discussion re men, responsibility and condoms that @Spanish Rider and @gottatrot are exploring at the moment - I do agree that it's not entirely the man's fault _unless_ he's lying about having had a vasectomy, or putting a hole in the condom, or surreptitiously taking it off halfway through; or raping the woman obviously, all of which have been known to happen. 

In general though, I think it's blanket irresponsible from an STD perspective for men to not be wearing condoms (regardless of whether the woman is using contraception or not) unless they are in committed relationships where any necessary STD checks have taken place and where the partners aren't cheating on each other. (Usually, unfortunately, the person cheated on doesn't know at first, and gets exposed to infection risk - and a lot of STDs including HIV are transmitted to unwitting spouses.)

Barrier contraception remains the most reliable method of significantly reducing STD spread during sexual contact. A female condom now exists as well, which is progress, but it's a bit more unwieldy to use, and quite expensive.

Something I'm really seeing on the topic of unplanned pregnancies is a statistical difference on who gets "blamed". It's still overwhelmingly the girl or woman who gets shouldered with blame and stigma in the community for a situation that generally (but not always, as we've seen) takes two people to create. Girls and women are often s!ut-shamed in this scenario, and also in scenarios where they are perceived as being interested in intercourse for their own sexual pleasure, and not just as an accessory to the male's pleasure (huge double standard) - even if that wasn't the actuality of the situation, as it's often not, and on that aside, here's an interesting panel discussion that explores what that actually looks like, recently held at the Sydney Opera House (like lots of good things ;-)):

https://www.abc.net.au/radio/progra...k/ladies-live:-closing-the-orgasm-gap/9998716

What the blurb isn't telling you is that the gap goes to 50% / 4% in casual sex, which we found really amusing considering we're often told we're boring and unliberated because we're married, and can't possibly be having as much fun as people playing the field. :rofl: Not that the "soccer scores" are the be-all and end-all of quality indicators, either... but yeah, now I've got some ammunition next time someone smugly classes us as vanilla! :Angel:

That's a good podcast series, by the way, made by our ABC in the interests of women's health and sexuality, and is really well presented. There's a whole raft of things it's bringing out into the open that are really helpful to many women.


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## SueC

PS: But re unplanned pregnancy, how often have I heard comments along the lines of, "She should have kept her legs closed!" :shock: - and how rarely have I heard, "He should have kept it zipped!" Neither comment is particularly useful - and the former, so often used, is so dripping with judgement, and with double standard. The really sad thing is that at its best, human sexuality is a really beautiful thing, and yet these kinds of attitudes, and the way sexuality is often represented these days (objectified, commercialised, scripted etc) really make social and personal roadblocks to the possibility of finding our way to beauty and intimacy.


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## DanteDressageNerd

I absolutely agree that we need to stop shaming women and condemning them. I generally accept any reason for a woman to choose an abortion, that is her right and dont think it should be taken away. I generally avoid saying I dont care about a heart beat because scientifically it has no consciousness until much further in the pregnancy and to me that is when I consider it life. Pregnancy can happen even with the use of protection. It is much less likely but can still happen. If a woman isnt ready to be a mother, she shouldnt have to be or be shamed for her choice. Fully okay to talk to her and tell her all opinions and educate but ultimately respect her choice and not hate her for it.

Nobody says "he should have kept it zipped." because I think we're more accepting of male's sexuality and make more excuses for men's behavior and expect responsibility from women. It's as if society treats men as sex crazed, driven animals with no self control and exempt from choice due to their animal urges. I watched a documentary on polyamory and how cheating should be acceptable and I was like nah just excuses and justification for disrespect, selfishness and bad behavior. But that is society it's a rooted tradition for centuries. Women could get pregnant and there wasnt really birth control, so women were controlled and expected to behave because their husband wanted to be sure who the father was. While men were given free rein to behave however they wanted, sleep with whoever they wanted and it was just "boys being boys." There was also a belief at one point that a woman's body was like a field of soil. In that if a man had relations with her that at any point that seed could fertilize and become a child. So if you wed a non-virgin can you ever be sure the child is yours? Was the thought process and is still present today, men arent totally exempt of responsibility but there is a lot more leniency where as women are held accountable. Kinda shows society respects women in some strange way and that men are slaves to hormones (generalizing).

Even in the case of rape people will say things like "well she shouldn't have worn that" or "she shouldnt have drank" or "she should have known better" or "what did she expect." Which takes the responsibility away from men and that makes me sick. My guy friends generally agree, they say it's an insult to men that society makes excuses for rape. Or they'll even say things like "she's too ugly to have been raped." I've heard that before and it made me sick to my stomach. Cheating, rape, any of it is all about sexual domination and gratification. It has NOTHING to do with how attractive or unattractive someone is. Teach men to value to women, teach men to respect women and see us as more than objects of pleasure and a good number of men are good but there are so many that are just trash. And think it is okay to play and manipulate (I mean yes women do it too) but people are sickening sometimes in their behavior. I wish the hot messes of humanity could all be sent on an island together and leave the rest of us alone.


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## SueC

DanteDressageNerd said:


> I wish the hot messes of humanity could all be sent on an island together and leave the rest of us alone.


We'd need a big island. Maybe Antarctica would be good. :Angel: The leopard seals could have a (frozen) banquet!


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## DanteDressageNerd

HAHA perfect!! That sounds perfect, leopard seal banquet and buffet. Maybe polar bears can join too!


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## SueC

You'd have to buy them an airline ticket to fly south! ;-)


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## SueC

*LOCAL TRAILS*

:cowboy:
I'm riding at least every second day on the tracks closer to home. Sunsmart is great fun; raced the dog up the big green hill on the neighbour's place yesterday with no prompting from me, just an "OK!" and _whooooosh_!  The horse is 22 and has mild Cushings, but he still rides better than the average young riding school type horse. And his sense of humour, and his enjoyment of exploring his surroundings and looking at views, make riding him in scenery like hiking with a really good friend. 

*THE HAUNTED MICROWAVE OVEN*

I don't have much in the way of news at present - the most exciting thing I can think up is that we have two haunted electrical appliances at home - the microwave and the stereo system. The microwave oven's turntable round-and-round thing broke years ago, but since we're old enough to remember pre-turntable microwaves, we simply pretended it was one of those, and put up with the odd exploding potato and volcanic eruption. And now something strange is happening: When we open the microwave and the light switches itself on inside, the turntable starts to turn slowly around and around when you're trying to put stuff in there.







And then it stops when you close the door and heat your food. The moment you open the door, the turntable springs back to life and slowly, ominously turns around again... _ wooowoooowoooo..._

The stereo is funny too... the CD player stopped working, worked again for no discernible reason (it can't have been that I shook it and said some rude words to it, can it?), and then stopped working again for no discernible reason. Maybe I need to shake it and recite the same words again? These days, you can't easily open these things to take all the dust out that's probably causing the problem... not made to be fixed grrrrr...







It's not our only CD player, but still annoying...


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## gottatrot

We had a haunted microwave too. It made a coarse buzzing noise when we turned it on. I thought it must be going out, but the food still heated. Then one day, I looked in the vent that came down from the ceiling and there was a bee in there! The vent went outside from over the stove and connected to the top of the microwave. Some bees had made a nest near the roof, and some were getting lost down the vent. Poor things, we were able to get nest out and screen it off.


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## Spanish Rider

Sorry to go back to the previous topic, but I would like to respond to this:



> That can't be blamed on a man just because he was half of the equation


It was not my intent to play the 'blame game'. I was merely referring to the physiological mechanics of impregnation. There are plenty of other sexual practices that do not involve risk of pregnancy, and men need to take more reponsibility for their actions. In raising 2 teenage boys, I have been very clear with them on this point.

And, in reference to the protection of condoms, I was surprised to just check and find that the protection rate is now listed at 98%. Well, I don't know what's happened in the past 30 years, but I remember that in the AIDS-hooplah era, they were supposedly 99.8% effective. Looks like the boys have got to get their act together.

This is probably TMI, but, for medical reasons, I am not able to use hormone-based contraception, so my DH uses condoms. In doing the math, over our twenty-odd-year marriage, if condoms really are only 98% effective, I should have a couple dozen extra little Spanish Riders galloping around. Just sayin'.


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## gottatrot

Spanish Rider said:


> In doing the math, over our twenty-odd-year marriage, if condoms really are only 98% effective, I should have a couple dozen extra little Spanish Riders galloping around. Just sayin'.


Maybe the statistics are like our local weather reports. If they say there is a 5% chance of rain, it really means there is a 5% chance that it will rain all day.


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## SueC

:rofl:. @gottatrot!



Spanish Rider said:


> There are plenty of other sexual practices that do not involve risk of pregnancy, and men need to take more reponsibility for their actions. In raising 2 teenage boys, I have been very clear with them on this point.


This is very laudable! :clap::clap::clap:

And it means it's likely there's some BS their partners won't have to confront, that we've had to confront in our generation.

When my brother, in his early 40s and married, decided to jump into bed with his secretary just out of school and barely in her 20s, my (incidentally church-going!) mother saw nothing wrong with that. She didn't like his wife, who'd brought two children from a previous relationship into their marriage, and thought that wasn't really a marriage. When the girl got pregnant, it was considered her responsibility. I was fuming with my entire family - this was not just about cheating on a partner you were still married to (marriage on rocks or not, I don't think it's right to sleep with someone if you're still formally a couple with someone else, living with them etc), it was also a huge breach of duty of care of an older employer to a young employee. It's NOT OK ethically, in my book, for someone in a power position through being the employer to be having sex with a really young person in their employ - for a middle-aged man to be making eyes at a girl barely out of high school. This power imbalance also applies in some other circumstances, e.g. university lecturers who are grading students shouldn't be sleeping with them, even if both parties are over the age of consent. ...I suppose my mother really wanted a little virgin bride for her golden boy (no joke, she had been shopping for one and set up dates before my brother met his wife-to-be), who would carry his slippers for him too, and know her place. Don't get me started on misogyny and how women themselves perpetuate it too - not just men. :evil:




> And, in reference to the protection of condoms, I was surprised to just check and find that the protection rate is now listed at 98%. Well, I don't know what's happened in the past 30 years, but I remember that in the AIDS-hooplah era, they were supposedly 99.8% effective. Looks like the boys have got to get their act together.


I think it depends on the sample group etc. Also, at the peak of the HIV panic in the 1980s and 90s, condoms with nonoxynol-9 tended to be very popular, because this chemical fairly reliably kills the HIV virus as well as sperm, providing very good protection from HIV and pregnancy even in case of condom breakage / unnoticed leakage (effectiveness cited as about that figure; non-spermicidal condoms are less effective). Of course, even 99.8% effective means 2 in 1000 people are going to get pregnant in any given year using that method (and potentially get HIV - the risk rate for that is higher than for pregnancy since you can get it at any stage in the female cycle), which is not good if you happen to be those people.



> This is probably TMI, but, for medical reasons, I am not able to use hormone-based contraception, so my DH uses condoms. In doing the math, over our twenty-odd-year marriage, if condoms really are only 98% effective, I should have a couple dozen extra little Spanish Riders galloping around. Just sayin'.


On the other hand, couples who use barrier contraception tend to notice if a condom "blew up" and then use morning-after contraception as a backstop - giving them excellent pregnancy prevention statistics. It's when you _don't_ notice that it becomes a problem, which is another case for keeping the light on! ;-)

This gets me back to the old family planning joke: How many condoms can you make out of a used tyre? ...365 if it's a Goodyear. :Angel:


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> It's when you _don't_ notice that it becomes a problem, which is another case for keeping the light on! ;-)



My husband had a sex ed teacher in middle school- Miss Bailey- who he and his friends still talk about today because she was so memorable. Her most memorable line, on the theme above: "Students- you must INSPECT YOUR PARTNER. Turn those lights on and get to know them!"


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## SueC

:rofl: And watch out for jewellery - metal and latex don't mix well! :Angel:

Our SexEd teacher blushed like a beetroot, and he made us fill out anatomical diagrams and role play "no". I swore I'd do better when I started teaching! 

Horse testicles were always a hit, especially in Chinese take-away containers... :Angel:


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## DanteDressageNerd

SueC said:


> This gets me back to the old family planning joke: How many condoms can you make out of a used tyre? ...365 if it's a Goodyear. :Angel:


This made me cry of laughter :lol: 

Also interested about the spermicide condoms vs regular condoms. I think spermicides are less popular because of the chemicals and there isnt as much as fear of HIV, thought maybe there should be? 

I really think men and women are lacking a proper sexual education, I dont really remember a lot of sex education but it had barely anything to do about sex. Just about the parts of boys and girls, what they do and how sex works. But not how to put on a condom. More how to say no and that you can still pregnant, even with protection. The teacher teaching got pregnant in High School while on the pill, taking it at the correct time daily and her bf using a condom. I dont think she was lying, I think just bad luck. I also dont think she was prude, just had to teach by the districts requirement.

But gotta say seems most sex ed is on self discovery and education, rather than in a class room which is not comprehensive at all and barely covers female anatomy and sexual function. Always about men and how they ejaculate and that leads to conception. With nothing in terms of female enjoyment or pleasure. Just not a great dialog.

Think anything public is still exceptionally prude in the western world.


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## Spanish Rider

@SueC , I can't believe that Sunsmart is 22! He is in great shape. And, after my horrendous 'trail' ride this past weekend, 
I have unfortunately been reminded of what an "average riding school type horse" can be like. But, do you have plans to bring a younger horse into training?


My mother was a middle school health, well-being and sex educator (BS in Phys Ed and M.Ed. in health/special needs). Having said that, she simply gave me a couple of books to read and said, "Read this and tell me if you have any questions."

Anyway, in her classroom, she had an open-door policy: anyone could ask anything, but if you were too embarrassed you could talk to her outside of class or slip her a note and she would answer the question in class.

She has always said that the most embarrassingly difficult era to be a sex ed teacher was during the Clinton administration!

But, I have the feeling that sex ed was much more explicit (in my experience in Massachusetts, a historically liberal, revolutionary state) in the 1980's and early 90's because parents were scared senseless about their kids getting HIV and dying from AIDs. Unfortunately, here in Spain there is no sex ed at all, other than the human reproduction classes that are part of the biology curriculum. And sexually-transmitted diseases are not often discussed, so we now have the highest HIV rate in Europe, with 10 new diagnoses per day (pop. 45 million), although 54% of these diagnoses are homosexual men, and only 25% infections through heterosexual sex.
@Dante , in reference to the spermicide, I get a reaction from it, so we don't use it.



> When the girl got pregnant, it was considered her responsibility.


 @SueC , I have a very strong aversion to the phrase, "She got pregnant." It puts all the responsibility on the woman, as if the man had nothing to do with it. When a male friend told me about why he got married so young, he said, "...and she got pregnant." To which I replied, "You mean _you_ got her pregnant, because she certainly didn't do it herself." The look on his face! :shock:

Re-educating the masses...


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## egrogan

@*Spanish Rider* ....there's also the bizarre phrase I heard someone utter once: "she had become pregnant..." As though it was immaculate conception or something that didn't involve two somewhat irresponsible people??? :think:


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## lostastirrup

DanteDressageNerd said:


> This made me cry of laughter :lol:
> 
> Also interested about the spermicide condoms vs regular condoms. I think spermicides are less popular because of the chemicals and there isnt as much as fear of HIV, thought maybe there should be?
> 
> I really think men and women are lacking a proper sexual education, I dont really remember a lot of sex education but it had barely anything to do about sex. Just about the parts of boys and girls, what they do and how sex works. But not how to put on a condom. More how to say no and that you can still pregnant, even with protection. The teacher teaching got pregnant in High School while on the pill, taking it at the correct time daily and her bf using a condom. I dont think she was lying, I think just bad luck. I also dont think she was prude, just had to teach by the districts requirement.
> 
> But gotta say seems most sex ed is on self discovery and education, rather than in a class room which is not comprehensive at all and barely covers female anatomy and sexual function. Always about men and how they ejaculate and that leads to conception. With nothing in terms of female enjoyment or pleasure. Just not a great dialog.
> 
> Think anything public is still exceptionally prude in the western world.


They could always introduce a few issues of the Cosmopolitan magazine for "requires reading" should cover most of the main points

On a Christian note: Song of Solomon, one of the old testament books of the Bible has quite a lot to say on sex and it's mutual enjoyment. I will say that THAT was an illuminating evening at the Bible study. My 19yo self was quite surprised since up until that point SoS was just a dull poetry book with weird beauty standards for women (your hair is like a flock of sheep on the hillside?!?!). I believe the lady teaching the class did a great job explaining the ancient inuendos and held back no details on the topic. 

Those are my thoughts on the topic as an unmarried virgin lol.


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## knightrider

from @Spanish Rider,


> And, after my horrendous 'trail' ride this past weekend,
> I have unfortunately been reminded of what an "average riding school type horse" can be like


Did I miss this interesting story? Did you tell it somewhere else? Can we hear about your horrendous trail ride?


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## SueC

DanteDressageNerd said:


> This made me cry of laughter :lol:
> 
> Also interested about the spermicide condoms vs regular condoms. I think spermicides are less popular because of the chemicals and there isnt as much as fear of HIV, thought maybe there should be?


It's because it's no longer untreatable, but I certainly wouldn't want to put myself at risk of it. HIV infection rates are currently up again in Australia because people have become more blasé about condoms.

The saddest thing is infection of unwitting spouses by cheating partners.




> I really think men and women are lacking a proper sexual education, I dont really remember a lot of sex education but it had barely anything to do about sex. Just about the parts of boys and girls, what they do and how sex works. But not how to put on a condom.


In Australian secular schools, for the Year 10 human reproduction topic, the carrots-and-condoms practical is traditional (carrots are cheaper than cucumbers, and more resilient and reusable), with students working in pairs to practice correct application techniques. This is a good icebreaker for young people to get over embarrassment and “icky” – plus it’s so much better to have practice runs in a rational frame of mind and with good lighting and expertise present. As an added bonus, once proficiency has been achieved, you can all have a balloon party.




> More how to say no and that you can still pregnant, even with protection. The teacher teaching got pregnant in High School while on the pill, taking it at the correct time daily and her bf using a condom. I dont think she was lying, I think just bad luck. I also dont think she was prude, just had to teach by the districts requirement.


Countries that focus on teaching abstinence have the highest teenage pregnancy rates, while those who educate about contraceptive choices without moral judgement have the lowest teenage pregnancy rates. Scandinavian countries are world leaders here.




> But gotta say seems most sex ed is on self discovery and education, rather than in a class room which is not comprehensive at all and barely covers female anatomy and sexual function. Always about men and how they ejaculate and that leads to conception. With nothing in terms of female enjoyment or pleasure. Just not a great dialog.


Yes, it's been a huge issue that sex education curricula in schools (and often elsewhere) focus more on male anatomy and sexuality than on female anatomy and sexuality. Everybody talks about penises, erections and wet dreams, but few people even show an anatomically correct diagram of female anatomy, let alone discuss female sexuality as more than just a receptacle for a penis.

In my classroom, any science-related question to do with sex was answered - personal ones were not (working with minors means you have to be really conservative about that). We also weren't doing the Kama Sutra, but people can find that in the library anyway. I had a question box where people could post their question for the next discussion session. It was sent around the classroom and everyone was asked to post a question. This way, everyone participated, but questions were anonymous.

The funniest question I ever had in the box was, "What is the pressure in psi of the average male erection?" :rofl: I said I didn't know this offhand, but asked if anyone had any ideas on how to design an experiment that would answer their question - and it had to get past the ethics committee - and you couldn't have people self-reporting because they might be tempted to exaggerate. Three kids put their heads together and then one of them said, "Sphygmomanometer, Miss!" :rofl:

Usually, people asked things like if it was possible to get pregnant standing up etc, and a whole bunch of basic technical questions like that. Sometimes it got philosophical, e.g. "Why do people have orgasms?" Well...evolutionary reward for behaviour involved in propagating the species... and also, if people didn't, they would spend much more time on the activity instead of reverting to other behaviours, like preparing good food or doing their chores. :Angel:

The anatomy my students learnt was egalitarian - properly detailed plumbing for males and females, function of each "bit", tested with fanfare. Students sometimes argued, "But I can ride a bicycle without reading the manual!" and I told them about the amount of people who get admitted each year to A&E because of having gym weights and other objects irrecoverably stuck to their penises. This statistic is based on the misapprehension that the penis is operated by big muscles which respond to training. The most common mislabelling for the corpus cavernosum / corpus spongiosum is "muscle" - but that's bound to happen if you only teach anatomical terms without teaching anatomical function. I taught both, so they got the idea of hydrostatic pressure and the mechanisms behind inflation and deflation, and why it's a really bad idea to put narrow constricting objects around the penis (and other appendages).

Of course, the students always want to know how doctors deal with such unfortunate scenarios. I would say that there were convincing arguments that Darwinism should be allowed to follow its course, but doctors can't invoke the laws of natural selection, and therefore usually try things like ice packs and, if that doesn't work, partial drainage of the engorged blood via hypodermic syringes. (That always had them crossing their legs.)

If you've got everyone laughing, it's always a good start. 

I do agree with many social commentators in Australia that there is a case for teaching specifically about female arousal and sexuality because a whole lot of young women still have little idea, and they shouldn't be forced to learn these things from _Cosmopolitan_, peer gossip and pornography - the latter, unfortunately, is one of the main "educators" on the subject for teenagers, and it presents a terribly superficial, objectified, scripted version of sex which is then used as a template by many young people; and this template isn't actually very helpful - as recent research on increasing levels of sexual dysfunction in young adults has shown.


----------



## SueC

knightrider said:


> from @Spanish Rider,
> 
> Did I miss this interesting story? Did you tell it somewhere else? Can we hear about your horrendous trail ride?


I second this - we absolutely must hear about that! :cowboy::cowboy:

And how did DH hold up on that excursion?


----------



## SueC

Spanish Rider said:


> @SueC , I can't believe that Sunsmart is 22! He is in great shape. And, after my horrendous 'trail' ride this past weekend,
> I have unfortunately been reminded of what an "average riding school type horse" can be like. But, do you have plans to bring a younger horse into training?


Sunsmart says thanks you for the compliments. :blueunicorn: He is wearing about 40kg more fat than I'd like him to just now, which I guess matches my own excess 5kg. ;-) In part that's because I fractured my foot last year and he had eight weeks off going into spring flush. He's always had to be kept in quite intense work not to stack it on, even when he was dry lot fed in his previous existence. I actually had him in consistent endurance shape before we built our house, but that became hard to do when they closed off the western forests and our main fitness trails (20km loops) with a big padlock. :-( That sort of put a damper on things until our neighbour allowed me to ride on his adjoining block - and last bushfire season he even put a direct gate in for us, so I didn't have to go on the road first! :happydance:

This is him with the gang after coming back from a trail ride in late summer:



This is Sunsmart with his younger half-brother Julian (same sire).










I don't like to contemplate the fact that Sunsmart will be retired in around five years... and my dog old...

Julian is 18 and I've been hand walking him around trails in preparation for saddle training because he wants to work. He often tags along with Sunsmart and me when we do farm tracks. He always loved his harness work, so I decided I would saddle train him as a second trail horse - but my foot fracture last year and then my stress fracture a month ago again dropped that off my to-do list. However, he is now very familiar with the nearby trails, and taking a horse from harness training to saddle is in my experience simple and the basics only take a day or two once you hop on.

I've done this with a half dozen or so harness horses - Sunsmart obviously, but also Romeo, Mediterranean, Chip, Chip's sister, Sunsmart's mother, etc. They all already know how to work, they just need to get used to carrying a rider, and different signalling. It's funny, they only seem to need a lap or so of a training track with a rider on and someone leading them to be used to the idea of carrying someone. Then, it's starting with verbal communication and a riding crop to tap them on the hindquarters (as they are signalled with a driving whip when in harness), while you simultaneously teach them the leg and seat aids. My stress fracture is mostly healed now, so I suppose I'll stick a saddle on Julian later this month, and go from there. They are really cooperative horses and very professional already.

Julian and me on walks recently:



















Julian in harness days:










He's only 14.3hh, to Sunsmart's 15.2hh, so just a smidgen taller than my Arabian mare was, but very strong and solid and will be fine to carry me.










So that should give me statistically another four years after Sunsmart retires. After that, we'll see.

This is Julian with Chasseur, Nelly and Benjamin.



Chasseur is our "oldie" now at age 25; he's the grandson of the French mare I rode as a child, and looks the most like her. He had a track injury and was paddock sound only after that, so never ridden. His late full sister is Sunsmart's mother. He's also the nicest horse just to have around, he has a beautiful nature...


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## Rob55

I’ve been out of the network again. My wife, Joannah, just spent a week in the hospital. @ctually that was a few weeks ago, but getting her home and settled and Dr appointments. . . .

I’m intrigued by the discussion on pregnancy and abortion, but reluctant as an old entitled male to get involved. I acknowledge it takes two to tango. My youngest is testament to the fact birth control doesn’t always work even for well educated consenting couples, but, there is some very interesting data based literature that indicates developed countries with good access to health care, contraception and abortion have much fewer abortions than developing countries, AND! the USA has the the highest abortion rate of developed countries even surpassing some developing countries. 

My experience supports the belief abortion leaves emotional and spiritual scars. 

How does the USA stop yelling pro life. Pro choice and develop meaningful dialogue about sex and procreation that leads to change? What economic changes would help?
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Spanish Rider

> How does the USA stop yelling pro life. Pro choice and develop meaningful dialogue about sex and procreation that leads to change? What economic changes would help?


Oh, I definitely do not want to feign superior intelligence on this one. As I said before, there are just too many grey areas. However, my opinion is that during sex ed classes, I also believe that the flip side needs to be seriously addressed: what the actual process of abortion entails (with graphics) as well as fetal development at different stages and the psychological effects it has on women/girls forced to make these choices, along with their testimony. And abstinence should always be put forth as the gold-standard contraceptive method! Ethics and morality should also be discussed, but the separation between church and State should really be respected on this point.



> Did I miss this interesting story? Did you tell it somewhere else? Can we hear about your horrendous trail ride?


 @knightrider and @SueC , ugh. It is all my fault, really. Nothing exceptionally bad happened: a 40-min walk around a couple of fields on an old lesson horse. DH made the awesome effort of making the appt. and actually getting on a horse (a PRE). He was relaxed & chatty and would definitely do it again, so everything was great in that sense.

But, I am the problem. I guess I have too many unrealistic expectations, and sometimes it is still hard for me to come to terms with the fact that I no longer have a horse. So, yes, I have to put up with the horses that I am given (I was given a crop to get the poor dear to walk). Sad circumstances for the horse, I got depressed, had to constantly put leg on and wound up screwing up my back. I could not drive afterwards and slept with a heating pad. 

So, now I am more aware of my brokenness, and now I wonder: why bother? I guess I am just destined to ride kids' lesson ponies, which is the only way I have been able to ride without pain. Perhaps I have just been fooling myself for the past 18 months. 

As a result, I skipped class on Tuesday. Today's class will be crap because of my mental state, but I have to get through it. I am thinking about walking away from it all, though.


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## SueC

@Rob55, welcome back, how is Joannah doing? I hope she has a speedy and full recovery. We've just had to deal with a similar situation with a friend who usually comes to eat with us on Sundays - Bill, who's 84 and was born in this district, and who did a lot of the fencing and hazard reduction burning on this piece of land we're on before we bought it back in 2010. He's a wonderful amateur naturalist and storyteller, and basically a history textbook of the local district. Unfortunately he collapsed with a heart attack just over a week ago. Had this happened at his home, he would not have survived (he lives alone), but it happened in a shopping centre and people with first aid skills were immediately helping, plus there was a defibrillator, and he was right next door to the regional hospital as well. We heard the news from his neighbour when Brett tried to drop some of our baking off to him in town. He was flown to a hospital in Perth 400km away and had stents inserted, as well as a pacemaker. We've been unable to contact him because his phone battery went flat, but have just had a call from one of his daughters to say he is doing OK. He is a little confused, but he recognised everyone and understands what has happened to him,

This is him here, with Brett, at one of our Sunday lunches - we always use it as an excuse to make a feast day:



If anyone has good vibes to beam to him, it would be much appreciated. It's nice to know people care, and I do think it makes a difference when they do - and in wider ways than to a particular situation.

Brett and I will beam good vibes over to you and Joannah. :hug:

Thank you for your contribution to the current discussion here.  While there was a pregnancy and abortion in the novel which gave rise to the discussion, the novel was very much trying to make the point that family dysfunction is behind so much pain in this world, and behind so many mistakes that people make. Anna Fienberg set out to show that simplistic thinking is unhelpful in scenarios like this, as is moral judgement, especially considering we live in a secular society where people with diverse sets of beliefs are living side by side. She wrote a compassionate and engaging account of growing up in a dysfunctional family, and its consequences through several generations - and unfortunately, the majority of children grow up in families with significant problems. Therefore, compassion and understanding are needed when approaching such issues.

I agree heartily with many of your points, and thank you for your manner of engaging in this discussion.  And I personally think it's important that men _and_ women (and boys _and_ girls _and_ intersexes etc too) are involved in such discussions.

Re emotional scarring from abortion though, there are women who are significantly affected by this, and also women who are not - so both sides exist. Furthermore, a lot of women who have given up babies for adoption have emotional scarring, and usually far worse emotional scarring than those who had abortions - there are no guarantees that the adopting family will be lovely and the child happy, and also, in adoption, a mother is giving up a complete, full-term (or near it) baby which she has given birth to, and this is not comparable biologically (and generally emotionally) either with having an early miscarriage, or having an early-term abortion. And for those who keep their babies after birth, there may be significant emotional scarring from not being able to bring the child into the kind of situation that they would really have wanted for a child of their own - such as having a supportive father, a healthy loving relationship, reasonable means instead of poverty, absence of huge life stressors such as mental or physical illness - and the chances of reducing family dysfunction from their own family of origin patterns may in such situations be much reduced.


@Spanish Rider, I do think we have to distinguish between who is physically pregnant (pregnancy means carrying developing offspring in your body), and who is ethically responsible. So, in humans, as with most mammals, it's the females who get pregnant - who incubate the offspring in their own bodies until they are able to survive in the outside environment. I say in _most_ mammals, because here in Australia we have monotremes, who lay eggs! 

The platypus:















The echidna - showing eggs, baby echidna, and an adult...




























In Australia, we also have viviparous snakes, and gastric-brooding frogs. With the snakes, it's the females who basically hold on to the eggs internally until they hatch there. With gastric-brooding frogs, males can be involved in incubating the young - and with seahorses, it's the males who get physically pregnant:










Here's a fascinating article on the similarities between human and seahorse pregnancies:

https://sydney.edu.au/dam/corporate...ntent/renditions/cq5dam.web.1440.2099.2x.jpeg

I completely agree with you that (in consenting sex) a male and female human are both ethically responsible for a pregnancy. I don't mind people saying "This couple is pregnant" because it underscores the mutual responsibility for the condition. But, I do think that biologists need to be able to continue to distinguish between which gender is carrying the young. So, when a couple is pregnant, the male is not physically _pregnant_ - but he _is_ potentially reproducing! In horses, the mares get pregnant, not the stallions - but both sexes _reproduce_ via this arrangement.

And wouldn't life be so much simpler if humans just laid eggs, like emus do... :Angel:


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## egrogan

@*SueC* , sorry to hear about your friend Bill. Hope he is able to recover and come home.

@*Spanish Rider* , I'm sure it doesn't help, but I guess I'll say that we probably all go through highs and lows with riding and wondering if it's worth it. I got a boost from going to the clinics a couple of weeks ago, but now with weather, Fizz having scratches, etc. I think it might be another week before I can ride again. In a pessimistic moment, I'm wondering what the point is of having the horses only to putter around the lawn and not do much of anything with them. They're bored, they're out of shape, and so am I! :hide: 

I hope next time you get on a horse, you get a little of the inspiration back. I remember reading something you wrote recently on another thread, about your lesson horse being so enthusiastic about your ride he was offering one tempis- doesn't sound like a plodding kids horse to me :wink:


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## SueC

*THE RIDE THAT WASN'T, ELECTRIC FENCE BLUES, BROKEN GLASS AND THE DELUGE THAT'S COMING*

We have a huge cold front coming in, just sitting off the West Coast, and are scrambling to get ready for the gale-force winds, torrential downpours, cold and hail forecast to go on for the better part of four days. The gales arrived this morning, the deluge is coming overnight. Brett and I finished some outdoors chores and then hauled in fallen dry banksia and eucalyptus branches to saw up into firewood. We got four large bags, all sizes from kindling to logs, sitting in the carport for what's coming, and also stuck a wheelbarrow load extra into the well-stocked woodshed. (It's just a chance to grab dry wood that's still out there, before the winter wet really sets in - very belatedly, I might add - we've had less than 150mm so far this year, which is about a third of normal precipitation to the end of May...)

Brett had an extra work shift this afternoon, on his usual day off, because a colleague was on holiday. We had a lovely lunch of T-bone steaks, mashed potato and pumpkin from the garden, and carrots with our own kale. Stewed peaches and cream for afters - our own peaches. I'm liking this F&V self-sufficiency quest.

My afternoon plans were: To fix up the section of fencing around our solar bore pump the cattle had broken, and then to take Sunsmart for a ride in the shelter of our bushland before the wet sets in. This was his exercise day - I aim to ride at least every second day - and it looked like it would be difficult until the middle of next week to go out on a trail.

The reason the fencing was broken is because we needed the little unit that normally runs that little fence as backup when a fence fault developed in our main fence over summer. And I could-not-find-the-fault!!! So I had to run the fence in two sections, in sort of limp mode, until I did. The cheapest battery-operated energiser units in local retail outlet are $170  and I wasn't keen to spend that sort of money to get another unit, while we were borrowing the backup unit for the main fence.

I found the fault this week. It wasn't in the fence itself, it was in the way it was wired to earth - initially it had been set up correctly, but for some reason, the splice line that connected both earth wires to earth had disappeared. I'd not paid attention to this, because I was looking for a hard fault, and because how does a splice line disappear? Anyway, because both earth lines are insulated, and connected to a proper earth point, this meant the earth peg was attached to an _unearthed_ earth wire. And this upset the fence energiser. so that the fence tester read as if we had a huge hard fault somewhere.

Huge sigh of relief, after five months of looking - and I was able to collect the backup unit, for re-installing at the solar bore. The cattle had broken through that fence several times, and turned off the bore several times. I was sweating that they would begin to eat electronics, and things would get expensive. So it was with a spring in my step that I pushed my wheelbarrow filled with fencing gear, solar panel, car battery and energiser unit towards the solar bore which is about 800m from the house, while playing soccer with Jess the Kelpie, for whom just walking is never enough. 

I spent around 40 minutes taking out wonky star pickets, repositioning them, replacing half-eaten polybraid (cattle think that stuff is lollies when it's not electric), and tightening everything up. I placed the car battery and solar panel in a good spot inside the enclosure, got the fence energiser unit, connected it up, and started dreaming of riding the horse. The lights were showing as they should on the energiser panel. I tested the polybraid - nothing. I tested the clips against each other - no spark. I checked both sides of the clip connections before opening up the unit - which was hard to do, because I had no flat edge on me, so had to improvise with fence pliers.

These Gallagher units aren't sealed properly, and ants get in and make havoc unless you coat the units in residual insecticide every three months, and sometimes they still get in anyway. :evil: Death unto electronic equipment-invading ants! :evil: We've had both the main and the backup repaired for ant damage several times already since 2010, at never under $100 per repair - despite increasingly assiduous spraying with ever-more-horrible surface sprays. And ants had gotten into the unit again recently, I'd evicted them, and thought the unit was still working because all the appropriate lights were flashing. Only it wasn't. The speedo was going, but the car was stationary, so to speak.

And I find this out when I've already spent nearly an hour reconstructing a fence that's going to get mauled within a week unless I have a working unit to energise it. :shock: I spend time trying to fix the unit out in the field, and I see my ride slipping away... a while later, I find the problem and realise I can't fix it myself. My mood as I was packing the defective unit and fencing tools back onto the wheelbarrow was very black indeed.

At home, I phoned the local supplier of agricultural equipment to see if he had a micro-unit in stock. He didn't; his cheapest energiser was $170. I'd seen tiny units good enough to run the 10m of fence around the bore for $40 on the Internet, so thence I repaired, hunting direct, more affordable solutions. I bought a reasonable, properly sealed unit online for under $80 which they assured me would get here Wednesday the latest - and three 500m reels of turbo braid, at under $60 each with free postage, which is about half what the agricultural suppliers charge. So good news, while I've had to spend money, I've also found an outlet that saves us money in the process.

And it wasn't dark yet, so I pulled on my riding tights, and told the dog we could at least ride the short loop before feeding the horses. Cue excited dog. On the way out, I noticed the fire in our wood heater had burnt down, so I fetched some logs from the carport and stocked the heater. I turned and walked away - then heard a thump and a crack. I turned to face the heater and discovered that the glass front was in smithereens.

And now I was panicking and calling the shop where we bought the heater. I just managed to get them before closing time. With four days of horrible weather coming up, I really didn't want to have our sole source of backup water heating out of commission, nor have to forego a cosy fire when the rain is pouring down outside. Yvonne at the other end of the line was cheerful and chirpy. They would replace the glass for us tomorrow: _Take off the door and bring it in, we'll see you right for the upcoming deluge! _  I could have kissed her. I've never had broken glass on a heater before and had no idea how long that was going to take to fix up...

But I could also kiss my ride goodbye, because you can't leave a heater full of red-hot logs with a shattered glass front unattended unless you're interested in a house fire, and we really aren't...

The horse ride that wasn't, and a trying afternoon. Have to say though, after more steak and vegetables, and more peaches and cream, and a good rant here, I feel much better. (There were other things to eat, of course, but I enjoyed lunch so much I wanted an exact replica!)

Tomorrow I'll see if I can't don rain gear to plant some peas out, and perhaps dig a ditch that needs digging. And I'll be looking out for an opportunity to sneak in a ride if the weather gets half bearable. For now, I'm headed for an appalling episode of classic Dr Who with Colin Baker. I know it's appalling because we've started it, and Brett _told_ me it was going to be appalling. But, I'm watching because I'm a completist and we're watching the whole classic series from start to end. To save my sanity, I shall be pitting cherries for a Blackforest Trifle.

:tardis:


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## egrogan

Having just shelled out around $175 for an energizer to bear-proof the barn, I can empathize! Hurray for helpful local businesses saving you in a pinch.


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## SueC

Bear-proofing! 

Maybe I should count my blessings. Electronics-invading ants, or shed-invading bears? What do you think? 

It's absurd these units are so expensive. They're just a circuit board and a few capacitors etc. I'm never buying another Gallagher. I'll buy non-name-brand sealed units, thank you very much! :evil:

Best wishes to you, @egrogan, from one gourmet, horse-dabbling smallholder to another!


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## egrogan

That's a tough one! When I lived in Louisiana, I discovered that "fire ants" were a thing. Getting stung by those things is one of the most painful insect bites I've experienced, swelling up into a puss-filled sore for days. One of my lowest moments as a teacher was forcing a student in "time out" to sit next to me on the playground despite his protests that he was sitting "too close to ants." I had just moved there and had never heard of fire ants- they don't exist where I grew up- and couldn't understand why he complained. Little did I know...and I felt awful!











So, maybe I'd pick...neither?!


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## knightrider

Hmmm, we are struggling with ants in our electric water pump system. Our water keeps going out because of the ants.

And we have fire ants . . . and they are awful. We have some that have gotten in the kitchen. They are super difficult to get rid of too, kind of indestructible.

I certainly hope that Bill makes a full and complete recovery. I feel like I know him from your journal.

Since this is such a loving and caring journal, my daughter's serious boyfriend dumped her on Friday. She is devastated--won't eat, can't sleep, cries all the time. It's so hard on a parent to see your child in such pain.


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## bsms

Ants blew out my AC a couple of summers ago. They love electronics.

Went to get hay for the horses yesterday. Truck wouldn't start. Turned out pack rats had eaten a hole in a wiring harness along the frame of the truck, shorting out the starter. Managed to fix it in near 100 degree heat and no shade. Hope this evening to wrap that section in wire screen, then cover with tape - although that will only SLOW a pack rat. I may put out poison. I'm not a big fan of poison, but maybe I should figure anything that crawls inside the engine compartment is fair game...


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## SueC

Well, it's great to know we're all having such fun at the moment! :shock:

@egrogan, despite what I said about Gallaghers, they actually have completely sealed units for smallholders' fencing needs at really reasonable prices and free shipping in the USA - the M10 and M30 aren't even available from Australian retailers, and to ship them from the US is prohibitive for us at the moment because the exchange rate is so unfavourable for us. (You might want to buy from Australian suppliers though! ;-) ) Look here: https://www.gallagherfence.net/collections/fence-chargers-energizers

Also eBay is interesting for electric fencing and farm gear - including secondhand:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?LH_...sacat=&_sadis=&_sop=12&_udhi=&_udlo=&_fosrp=1


Ants - ecologically indispensable, but such nuisances if they mess with us. We have little Argentine ants and also various bush ants that try to colonise our house, especially in spring and summer. We bait these with ANT-RID, which is a bait solution with borax, and as long as we're always baiting, we're winning that one. For the ants not attracted by sugar, we can buy protein bait stations, also based on borax.

Fire ants made it to Queensland a while back from something shipped from the USA, and are now a spreading nuisance there. Our bitiest ants locally are Bull Ants, an inch long with huge jaws; that's bad enough, but some species have stings as well, like wasps, and the most painful bite I've ever had from anything is from that kind of ant in the bushland behind our house...

@bsms, I wonder why they're so keen on electronics - it's not just the housing, it's something about actual electronics, whether it's the associated chemicals in circuit boards etc, or the actual current. ...I've just wondered this to the search engine, and it has this: https://articles.extension.org/pages/30057/ants-and-electrical-equipment

Re rodents, we bait here, in the shed (with traps in the house for monitoring - if I have a mouse in a trap in the house, I know the bait has run out in the shed), after trying trapping-only options. With mice it's not an issue because they will crawl under something when they feel sick (another reason not to bait in the house, including the ceiling space - unless you like mausoleum smells - or should that be _mouse-oleum_ smells?); some rats go in the open, and then get picked up by raptors etc, who can die from the passed-on poison load. Having said that, raptors tend not to hang around close to human habitations where we live. And you do have to do something to stop rodents damaging your belongings and expensive equipment. It's best to bait continuously so the populations never build up - reduces potential by-kill from carcasses as well.

@knightrider, that's really sad; it's always extra painful when young people have their first serious break-up. After that most people develop a sort of emergency mode which they can re-activate at subsequent break-ups. It's no use telling young people that the first person they are serious about in all probability won't be the person who'll be their life partner - in a few rare cases it is, but generally not, and generally for good reasons, although it doesn't feel like it at the time. I remember how devastated I was after my first serious break-up from my university days; I actually thought he was the one, but it's extraordinary, once the rose-tinted glasses came off post break-up, the realisation how unsuited we actually were to each other. I just didn't know any better and was running around in the typical biochemical haze of the first pair bond, which seems to impede objective thinking.

People grow and develop so much in their teens and twenties that it's a rare thing to end up on the same page with early relationships - and some people actually end up stunting their personal growth just to remain "compatible" with their partner. Real compatibility is about sharing fundamental values and life goals, and also about personalities and inclinations. With hobbies, I think a Venn diagram which has overlap as well as separate areas of interest is great - so that people have hobbies they share, but also can extend each other - and have some things that are just for them, with the partner not particularly involved. With my DH, every conversation we have, we're learning something from each other; and we laugh so often on a daily basis that we're wearing each others' faces out!  This was never a feature of earlier relationships.

@lostastirrup, you're the second Song of Solomon fan I've met in my life - the other was a Catholic nun in 2000!!!  Your tour guide must have been excellent. I'm afraid that the metaphors are so un-relatable to me (breasts like twin goats? eyes like the fishpools of Hesbon?) that were someone to try those lines on me, I'd say, "Sorry, I'm washing my hair, loverboy!" ...what I tend to do with SOS is to make up more material, such as, "Thy member is verily like unto the gargantuan serpent that creepeth mightily in Eden, and wreaketh mighty works… yawn!" - but we also do similar stuff when accidentally listening to opera and the male and female protagonists are screeching at each other; we start doing running translations of what they are singing - "Are we having potatoes AGAIN for dinner?" - "What's wrong with potatoes?" - "A man wants to see something other than potatoes at least once a month!" - "You are so ungrateful, Giovanni, why don't you do your own cooking?" etc - try it sometime, it's a good game on long car trips if your classic station is playing ghastly screechy duets... :rofl:

@Spanish Rider, I'm sorry you had a mediocre experience and that your back went out as a result. Is it feeling better again? ...are there other trail places you could ride which perhaps have horses who are forward as well, for more experienced riders? Or someone who is looking for someone to trail ride with them, and has extra horses? If you had a TARDIS, @knightrider, for instance!  How positive that your DH went to all that effort and rode cheerily despite being a non-rider!

About feeling blue, that's completely human, we all feel like that sometimes with things that challenge us. I think you've done so wonderfully well with getting on dressage horses and coming all this way after your ghastly accident. It shows so much grit and determination, and a talent for living in spite of obstacles. Do you know the saying, _Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain? _ You've been dancing in the rain, and every now and then (or maybe multiple times a week, depending on your load), you're going to feel cold and miserable and exhausted. That's normal - and at the first signs of potential hypothermia, get yourself out of the rain and into a nice warm cosy nest so you can recover. Like, a sun lounge in your lovely herb garden, or in winter, curling up in a bed with an electric blanket, hot chocolate and a good book, and your lovely cat. We need to give ourselves a break sometimes. When we do, our optimism and joie de vivre will return in time. Sort of like batteries need recharging between bouts of action. It also looks like you have a lot on your plate at this point in your life anyway, so take extra good care of yourself! :hug: I think you're fabulous, and I'm sure others in the HF community admire how you've handled that particular curveball life threw at you (and it's surely not the only curveball, these things tend to come in clusters).


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## SueC

A little song for anyone who's feeling down.


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## MissLulu

I grew up in Oregon and ants were annoying but benign creatures. Then I moved to the desert and we built our home and since we were owner builders the house was open to the elements longer then most houses and we got ants. The first time I encountered desert ants I ignored them until I felt them bite! It was like someone was stabbing a needle into my hands. And then the blisters formed. I don't know if everyone experiences this or if I am sensitive but the blisters are horrible! So anytime I encounter ants I make sure they don't get on me and I grab gloves. 



I love the quote "_Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain". _Many years ago my oldest daughter received a gift of a wood box with tea inside and that quote printed on the lid. My daughter lives in London and has gotten rid of or taken most of her possessions with her. I am still storing a few boxes for her but the little box with the quote sits on one of my bookcases because I like it so much. 



Yesterday, I hit the dirt. I somehow managed to not stay on Miss Lulu. I have a lovely saucer sized bruise on my hip. I will talk to the trainer to see what I did wrong. The day before Miss Lulu was a dream to ride so I don't know what happened. Life with a (green) horse, I guess??


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## DanteDressageNerd

As far as sex ed goes, fair enough. It should be a sexual education course, in terms of experiments and in depth stuff they can learn from books, porn, etc but they should have comprehensive classes because I think adults with experience could learn a lot from those courses but of course it be optional and not public school curriculum :lol:

I also believe that in terms of Scandinavian countries, people are pretty responsible here. I think there is also less stigma of women owning their sexuality and knowing what they want and taking charge. It's pretty egalitarian in the North ! I dont think people should run hog wild with it but there is something to reduced stigma and people being responsible. The Nordics in general are very different IMO from the rest of Europe. There is the law of Jante here. It makes a difference. I think there is still a sense of individuality but the big thing of it is not exploiting each other or having such a high sense of entitlement that you genuinely believe you're better or more important than anyone else. Sometimes they take it too far and in some ways I think it holds people back from reaching their full potential but there is also a real fight and determination. Not a perfect society but a good one.

Also note Finland and Iceland are NOT a part of Scandiavia. Just Denmark, Norway and Sweden which is why I say the Nordics which include Finland and Iceland. Greenland is considered a part of Denmark (Sort of) and the Farroe Islands. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante
What is Janteloven? The Law of Jante in Scandinavian Society

I also get SUPER annoyed with Americans who try to host Denmark as the example to completely misunderstand the political, legal and cultural system to perpetuate their ideas and Im like you guys dont understand The Nordic or Scandinavian ways at all. The way the Danes do things would NEVER work in America, had long discussion with Danes about it they all agree. America is too corrupt vs the vikings would be up in arms over running the capital and over throwing the government if their government was as shady and corrupt as in the US or southern european countries. The viking blood is still there!! Sorry I love my home and I am 70% Scandinavian :lol:

As for the song of Solomon, I think the Bible is full of lust, sex and seduction. It preaches one way but people behave another. David and Bathsheba to produce Solomon for example and the crimes against God David committed to obtain Bathsheba.

This song is supposedly about that. And it's just a great song.


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## Spanish Rider

Electronics: the fewer, the better. The cheaper, the better. In building our house, we went with the "best" brand: Siemens. Within 6 months, the fridge had died, and within 8 the washing machine. And not just a little bit, either. We're talking full-out electonic systems being replaced. Anyway, a few complaint letters later, and they extended the warrantees.

Ants: these are the only insects I actually kill. No fire ants here, just biting ants, so you don't want those near your outdoor dining areas. If they get near my figs, I also kill them. One year, while we were on vacation, they at every last fig on the tree.

PIGEONS!! It is nesting season here, and they are a major PITA. All over our balconies, trying to nest between the beams of the porch. We used to have a kestrel living on the porch, and I really wish he'd come back... Any suggestions?

Danes & Scandinavians: I am often asked if I am Scandinavian, and I have even had Danes and Swedes approach me in their languages in Madrid. I have often though it would be fun to visit a Scandinavian country to experience the feeling of "fitting in", which I never get here. I stick out like a sore thumb and turns heads in Spain.

My mum's cousin (diplomat) married a Danish woman. They were not able to have children, so they adopted two children while stationed in Korea in the 70's (so, the kids are my age). Apparently, they had lots of fun shocking people in Copenhagen by speaking perfect Danish, way back when before there were Asians in Europe.


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## Spanish Rider

To not take over your thread, I will answer trail ride comments on Over 40. But, since our @egrogan is a wee babe, I'll thank her here. :hug:

P.S. It was two-tempis, not one.


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## SueC

Last time I looked, @Spanish Rider, there wasn't any quota on how long a thread can be. It's sort of, "How long is a piece of string?" ;-) Have you got any photos to post on the Trail Riding Thread? ...I guess I'll have to mosey over and see! :cowboy:

Hello, @MissLulu! Sorry you got bruised! Interesting hobby we have, no? ;-)

Hope you're enjoying your study break, @DanteDressageNerd!

I'm a bit like this: :ZZZ: ...so will return here when more awake! Have a good day, everybody!


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> To not take over your thread, I will answer trail ride comments on Over 40. But, since our @egrogan is a wee babe, I'll thank her here. :hug:
> 
> P.S. It was two-tempis, not one.


Haha, in three more months my eligibility kicks in :grin:

Any flying changes I ride are accidental so twos or ones look equally magical to me!


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## bsms

Flying changes are like collection: I never ask for them, but I sometimes get them. I generally prefer them to collection. Collection is pretty worthless for most of where & how I ride, although Bandit can do it fine when he feels a need. Slipping between the desert cactus is mostly done at a walk.

Ants: They may be wired to respond a certain way to electronic signals. You can force fish to come to you using electricity. In the old days, they called it "dialing for fish" because the equipment used with hand-crank phones could also create the electrical charge that resulted in fish swimming to one electrode. I did it a long time ago as part of a biological study on fish populations.

Once the ants die, their little ant bodies emit pheromones that draw other ants to attack. Who then die. My AC had thousands of ant bodies in it. 

Pack rats: I've had $2,000 in damage done in one night. I don't feel bad killing them near the house and my cars.


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## knightrider

Thank you so much @SueC, for your kind words and loving song. I showed them to my daughter. She is struggling along as best she can. I think the worst is over, and now she is just slogging.

I am so sorry that you missed out on your ride, Sue, because of all the needed repairs you had to do. I hope you get many more rides in the future. I used to get my work done and reward myself with a ride. But as I got older, I started enjoying the rides first thing in the morning no matter what work needed to be done. I've gotten kind of addicted to those dawn rides now and feel quite deprived when I can't do them. Ride first; take care of everything else later.
@DanteDressageNerd, I love that Hallelulia song. Thanks for posting that.
@Spanish Rider, I wish we'd get that tardis.:tardis: I would so love to have someone share my morning rides and I have lively extra horses that you would love. I have 11 saddles so surely we could find one that didn't bother your back. I've found that the horse and the saddle make a big difference in the riders' comfort. Some horses make me tired and others give me energy.


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## egrogan

Aww, @*knightrider* , I missed the post about your daughter. It's so hard to break up with someone we love. When I graduated from college and had my first teaching job, I had my first serious relationship. It happened through a series of events that made it seem like the universe was in control- I was at the grocery store one night buying a few things to bring to a friend's house to make dinner. The line was long to check out, and I was standing behind a solo guy who was very cute. We struck up a flirty banter, the line moved, and we both checked out and went our separate ways. About a month later, that same friend whose house I went to for dinner talked me into a blind double date with a friend/colleague of her boyfriend. I showed up at her house, and who was my blind date but the grocery store guy!? It felt like fate. And truthfully, we did have a great relationship and I would say he was my first love. About a year later, I thought we were getting ready to move in together...and he broke up with me. I was so floored and unmoored I actually had to physically get out of town-as in, literally move from Baton Rouge to Philly, where another friend was moving and needed a roommate. I had no job, knew no one there, heck, I had never even been there. But I had such a visceral reaction to being so devastated, that all I could think was "get out now and go far, far away." (To be clear, nothing physically or emotionally threatening happened to me, he was and is a wonderful person but just didn't want the same level of serious relationship I wanted- I think my reaction shows I had a different interpretation of the intensity of the relationship than he did!! :hide. I was pretty sad the first few weeks I lived in Philly- I still distinctly remember sitting on a bench in a beautiful park across the street from my apartment, just sort of sobbing quietly, when a homeless man passed me, only to return a few minutes later with a bottle of juice and a flower he picked for me, telling me that "I looked like I was really going through something and needed cheering up." I made some dumb relationship choices in the short term, but moving to Philly turned out to be an amazing step in my professional life and my sense of independence, so while I would never want to go through that breakup with J again, it set me on a path I am 100% sure I wouldn't have gone down had it not happened. I'll be honest, that was nearly 20 years ago, and it still hurts to think about it. So I don't believe that you move on and "get over" things like that, but you figure out how to file it away with other big life events and put it in context. Hope her next steps are positive ones! (you too @*DanteDressageNerd* !)


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## Spanish Rider

Yes, that Tardis would come in handy, wouldn't it? I'll get my eldest to start working on it straight away… right after he finishes inventing light sabers.
@knightrider , I'll have you know that I was once in Florida. Spring break, 1990. I had a friend from high school who was studying aeronautics at Embry Riddle and living in Daytona Beach at a gated community with a landing strip so you could land and 'drive' your little Cessna up to your house and park it in the driveway. Very chic-chic frou-frou. We did the beach thing, the bar thing and the Disneyworld thing. None of it was my cup of tea, and I would have much preferred meeting you and your horses then!

Thought of you: tryouts for the Puy du Fou re-enactment riding team is on Monday, and a 19yo girl from the barn is trying out. It's been so funny to watch her practice riding one-handed, swinging dressage whips around and screaming like a banshee on Salomon, a big 17yo dressage horse. Makes me wonder about the accuracy of the re-enactment: how many women will they hire? Will the women dress as women, or men? I mean, medieval accuracy is in direct conflict with contemporary equal rights on this point, so I wonder how they'll resolve that issue.


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## knightrider

There are very few women doing theatrical jousting. The armor can weigh 100 pounds and the lances are 6 foot closet poles. When I did theatrical jousting, I had "mithrael" armor that I made from aluminum and jousted with a bamboo pole. I simply was not strong enough to manage the weight. Since it was my troupe, I could do what I liked--if show producers didn't like it, they could decide to not hire us.

In many professional troupes, I would not have been chosen to joust. I know of only one woman who rode in that kind of armor with the real lance that they use . . . and she didn't do it for very long. I think now there are some women jousters, but they are amazons. I wasn't.


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## SueC

You all are such a cool bunch, I love reading your comments and conversations!  And would love to chime in right now, but it's morning and we have some sun before the next front moves in later today, and the dog wants walking, and I can probably sneak a ride as well, hooray! :happydance:

So I will return here when it's dark and join in, but meanwhile I wanted to leave metaphorical food for everyone. Since I unfortunately don't have the technology to serve it up internationally, the thought will have to count, and of course recipes are always available (plus, anyone here want to post their favourite treats / recipes?).

Rye waffles with home-made concentrated plums (from the Satsuma tree):


@Spanish Rider, Brett would like to order two light sabres, please!  Both in red...


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## SueC

I was up late watching the French Open Women's Final - our Ash Barty won it - as did our Dylan Alcott for the Wheelchair Men's Singles - so it was a big day for the Aussies! 










And she's such a lovely girl too - very nice human being!

So I'm a little comatose today - and there's still tonight's Men's Final to go...

Meanwhile: @MissLulu, I would love to know more about your owner build! Why did you decide to, what did you want to build and why, how did you stay sane, has it lives up to expectations etc?


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## MissLulu

@SueC, those waffles look amazing!



It is an interesting hobby! I also like photography. I'm not very good at it but I enjoy it. I have a nice camera that my husband gave me for Christmas a few years ago. I really like my camera. It allows me to take photos and show other people how I see the world. But I don't love my camera, I like it. Last night I was just about asleep when my daughter's Border Collie jumped up on the bed and curled up next to me. My daughter wanted to do agility so five years ago I put a deposit down for this dog before she was born and we brought her home as a nine week old puppy. I love this little dog. I love her so much I adopted another Border Collie from a rescue so now I have two. It is quite interesting to have a hobby where you love the thing that allows you to do that hobby. 



I talked to my trainer today. She doesn't feel I did anything wrong the day I got tossed into the dirt. Just Miss Lulu being green and not tolerating me not being perfect. I still love my sassy horse so all is well.


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## MissLulu

@*SueC* We built our home in 2002 and are still working on it! It is rammed earth so our exterior walls and some of the interior walls are 18" (46? cm) thick. My husband wanted to build a home and before building our home had built just about everything except a house. Bridges, dams, prisons.... He sort of has experience building everything! Our house is about two feet (.6 meters, I think) wider then originally planned because I insisted that our pickup should fit in the garage. It barely fits. I can close the garage door and if you want to get to the other side of the garage you either have to climb over the bed or crawl through the cab. But it fits!


Here is a photo of my cat sitting on a ladder next to our walls.


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## SueC

Ooooh, that's lovely, and rammed earth just right for the climate too! 

I will be more coherent when I recover from watching two late-night French Open finals, and spending all day today writing an article I've just sent off hooray...

:ZZZ:


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## Spanish Rider

> two late-night French Open finals


¡¡¡ Rafa, Rafa, Rafa !!! 
@MissLulu , super cool house! You got us beat by 4 cm - our walls are only 42 cm thick.:smile:


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## DanteDressageNerd

Spanish Rider said:


> Danes & Scandinavians: I am often asked if I am Scandinavian, and I have even had Danes and Swedes approach me in their languages in Madrid. I have often though it would be fun to visit a Scandinavian country to experience the feeling of "fitting in", which I never get here. I stick out like a sore thumb and turns heads in Spain.
> 
> My mum's cousin (diplomat) married a Danish woman. They were not able to have children, so they adopted two children while stationed in Korea in the 70's (so, the kids are my age). Apparently, they had lots of fun shocking people in Copenhagen by speaking perfect Danish, way back when before there were Asians in Europe.


lol well there you go. The Danes have a very particular language and loyalty to each other. I also think it's why the Norwegians and Swedes and even many Danes say Danish is a garbage language. They make it so distinct in sound from Norwegian and Swedish that it really is quite terrible to hear :lol: it's all based on old norse but pronunciation is terribly different. 

Maybe you should try Scandinavia and see if you feel at home here. Scandinavians are pretty welcoming but I will say they do 
@egrogan incredible story. I think everything happens for a reason, even the painful ones. Maybe you werent meant to make this great change, move away and meet that homeless man to help you. I really believe God sends up people we are meant to meet at different stages in our lives to learn, grow and know there is hope. And to bring us to where we're meant to be. It doesnt always have to make sense but we get there!

With everything going on with my ex, I met two men randomly. One in London and one on a bus ride to Copenhagen. We exchanged stories and spoke. The one in London was struggling with overcoming an ex who was a lovely person but distance was too much and how he has a moral code and he finds it sad that today's way is just fast and loose without self respect or actively thinking about the choices you make, just take and do and dont care about the consequences. It's all about feeling good in the moment, not thinking about the road ahead. We exchanged a lot of stories and he showed me there are far better men out there than the one I was broke up with and there is better waiting for me. The other man on the bus had lived in Africa for a few years, married a psychopathic African woman and had a child. We exchanged stories and I helped him see that the psychopathic woman choosing him wasnt a sign that he is weak but a sign of his character and who he is as a person. He is someone who works to understand and work through problems without blaming or pointing fingers. Really good soul. I told him psychopaths dont go after weak, stupid, or unsuccessful people. They prey on the best they can find and think they can keep. They go for big hearts and smart people who may be naive to their manipulation and conditioning. He also told me "you deserve so much better than what has happened to you," and "he never truly loved you if he could do all those things, when I love a woman she is the only one I want." And he said "better is coming for you, dont lose faith in that." And I told him the same. Better is coming, have faith even when it is dark. 

I've had a few ugly relationships. Truly this last one is by far the best, and the break up the cleanest I've ever had. I think women learn to love themselves with more fierce determination with each one. I think you learn to be more independent and to stand for yourself, your value and who you are with less sway. I also think women figure out it is better being alone without someone lying to my face and disrespecting them with selfishness. Being able to focus on themselves, their interests and what makes them passionate. I think it's important for women to prioritize themselves. It's too easy in relationships to prioritize the relationship or the other person.


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## Spanish Rider

When it comes to relationships, I admit that I have never been the most trusting of people. In fact, I have only had one true relationship: my husband. At an early age, I realized that many handsome, outgoing men have been around and slept around, so I deliberately became more interested in the 'less handsome' men who were shy. You know the type: the geeky, nerdy ones who have a hard time expressing themselves and stutter when around a pretty girl. Perhaps not a fool-proof system, but it saved me lots of problems, I dare say.

But, now I am on the flip side and have a shy, geeky-nerdy son. And I have to wonder whether a nice girl will ever pay attention to him. (shoulder-shrug emoji) Oh, the karma of it all!


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## DanteDressageNerd

lol I liked the shy, nerdy-geeky guys and they were still players! I had the same theory that maybe the shy, geeky less attractive but not unattractive guys would be better, sadly no :-( I wish it were a fool-proof system. I think I was just more fooled and dumb founded when I found the truth. I like engineers and scientists because I like having something to learn, as well as talk to someone about but dare I say I think those shy guys when they gain a little confidence have something to prove and sometimes sleep around. Vs the more confident ones when they grow up are like well I've done that, I have nothing to prove. That wasnt right of me and learn from it and are confident when with a strong, independent and attractive woman vs the shy ones might lose confidence and seek confidence else where or not feel good enough to be with you and do things to make it so. Anymore I'm more trusting of a secure, confident man who knows himself, what he wants and doesnt hide or beat around the bush. The shy ones are harder to read and arent as direct. Though I have quite a few shy, geeky but secure and confident male friends who are just A+ awesome and havent really found someone because they're not really looking and prefer to be alone than with a girl who will use and mistreat them. It's so hard for both sexes, I think :-(

I hope your son isnt that type and grows into a good man who honestly respects women. But I think if he's a good young man with a good heart and is honest, then he'll grow into a good man. Good upbringing helps but then is their choice. I think nerdy guys sometimes gets used and taken advantage of like good girls but I think in the end they end up happier and more fulfilled. If they stay to their core of doing right by others.


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## gottatrot

For me I wasn't very trusting of men who tried to impress me or seemed wonderful. I just knew that everyone has faults, and it seemed false to try to appear more sensitive or caring about things just to get someone interested in you. 

When I met my husband, it was obvious he was completely real. He told me a couple weeks after we started dating that he had been fired, because he wasn't willing to be on call 24/7 for a low paying job. When we went to the laundromat together, he told me I folded terribly and had a lot to learn. Not teasing, completely serious. He was like these are my faults, and I see yours too, but these are my good qualities and you're the most incredible woman I've ever met. 

My favorite thing he said was that he wanted me to have dreams, and he would support them, and he hoped I would support his dreams too. So I trusted him, gave him two years to be certain before getting married, and did not go wrong. My dreams were of horses, and his were of traveling, and we both support each other in those things.


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## SueC

Spanish Rider said:


> But, now I am on the flip side and have a shy, geeky-nerdy son. And I have to wonder whether a nice girl will ever pay attention to him. (shoulder-shrug emoji) Oh, the karma of it all!


A quality girl will pay attention to him! 

My DH is a shy, geeky-nerdy type. He's less shy now he's spent over a decade with me, but he's still wonderfully polite and geeky-nerdy!  He's so much more fun than a "normal" person.










Tell him to aim _high_. No party girls - lady geeky-nerdy types that will "get" him - girls who will discuss astrophysics with him and read the Thesaurus for fun (we do that here). And then you'll have a high chance of geeky-nerdy grandkids as well! ;-)


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## Spanish Rider

@SueC , I have to laugh! When I wrote "geeky-nerdy", I also had Brett in mind. I mean, he ordered two light sabers!

I love using a thesaurus, and I think the right button click option for synonyms on Microsoft Word is one of the greatest word processing inventions of all time (even though most peole do not know it exists). A highlight of mine in 2018 was discovering a misspelled entry in the Merriam-Webster dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/med...kuBg-c9V5TdBjIyumJWXOdcgqu9mW0cTHgc1wV0yDMLgU

I contacted them online and on their FB page, but no one responded, so the incorrect entry still stands. Perhaps if you clicked on the comment section and 'liked' my comment someone would pay attention?


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## SueC

*FINALLY GOT TO RIDE* :cowboy:

Well, I'd not ridden in a week, what with the Murphy's law f fixing things I wrote about on Friday, and then the deluge all weekend and into this week. On top of it all, Brett has been home with the lurgy all week. I drove into town for supplies, and cough suppressant, as he'd not slept a wink last night despite Vapo-Rub, anti-inflammatories, paracetamol, cloves, Port wine etc etc - he'll need the proper codeine to sit on his nerve endings so he doesn't cough non-stop. He coughed so badly on Monday he couldn't keep any food or drink down, but at least he was able to eat again a little yesterday and today.

It was a big errands run - oats and cubes at the stock feeds, paint at the building supply place, a gas bottle swap and a chainsaw chain sharpening machine at the hardware store, mail at the Post office - a parcel out, and picking up our new energiser for that solar bore fence I cursed about last Friday. Then to the outdoor place for grey cargo pants, two pairs of camouflage army pants (I love their pockets and that they are all cotton, and have just worn out my last old pair), a black Merino thermal top for Brett, and a pair of Keen outdoors shoes that were fortuitously on special. Target for two new pillows, the baker's for a cheese and bacon pie and a beesting for lunch, the food wholesaler for a 10kg bag of stoneground locally grown wholemeal flour, the nursery for another 64 native seedlings for habitat rehabilitation, and then a walk with Jess along the harbour front. It's a beautiful spot, and the weather was nice:











Then to the pharmacy for cough suppressant mixture, Woolworths for some groceries (I'd not been for three weeks), and the scrap metal place on the way out to recycle the old flue cowl I had to replace recently. It was nearly 3pm when I left town, and by the time I'd put everything away, had a cup of tea, and gotten changed, it was 4.30pm, but I hopped on my horse for the first time in exactly one week and did the Fireground loop with him - a half-hour figure-eight through the valley floor, half on our side, half on the south neighbour's.





































It was nice to be back on the horse. After that was feed time, making a cosy fire for the evening, and next will be dinner and some very good Dr Who - we're re-watching _Day of The Doctor_, from the modern series with Matt Smith - the 50th anniversary special - to reward ourselves for making it through the appalling _Timelash_ with Colin Baker, from the classic series - probably even worse than _The Twin Dilemma_, which usually gets voted worst Dr Who story ever.

:tardis:

Also - I've got another article in _Grass Roots_.


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## knightrider

Love this discussion! Although my definition of "geeky-nerdy" is different, I'll go along with the majority's definition.

My mother thought just like @Spanish Rider and looked around for a homely, geeky scientist and married him. And like DanteDressageNerd said, he had something to prove and cheated on my mom multiple times. Of course, my mother was a miserable harpy to live with, but as we 3 siblings agreed, he married her, not us, so he should deal with it, not us.

My dad was "my" definition of a nerd in that he was not involved with our lives--he was self-centered--and left my mean cruel mother to raise us. We siblings resented the fact that he left us to her and didn't defend us, but ran around on her instead, finding his own pleasure.

So, my point is, like DDD, there can be all kinds of husbands and geeks don't necessarily make good husbands or fathers and suave debonair guys could be possibly great or selfish snakes.

I married my first husband because I was wild about his family, and particularly his dad. I thought if my husband was half as great as his dad, I would have quite a catch. Nope. Debonair sweet considerate selfish snake. Oh well.


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## DanteDressageNerd

SueC- that is wonderful!! Really neat to be included in a magazine and stunning photos! The things you and your herd get to see are really astounding!!

I LOVED the Matt Smith version of the Dr! He did a great job, I loved it. I kinda quite watching after he left though. I didnt especially like Clara, she bored me and I just didnt stay with it after that. Glad you two enjoyed your night together 

knightrider- that's a real shame :-( my last "geek" (not that is was long ago) was really self centered too but didnt seem that way. He was always supportive of my "issues" and would listen to me, make me dinner and Id make him dinner. He seemed like a real sweetheart and my animals loved him and trusted him right away. I was really shocked when I found out the truth about him. Very self centered, selfish person. No real empathy. It's all just an act, even animals can be fooled. They're not fool-proof.

Sometimes you just cant tell. A good looking guy who is well spoken, debonair and all that can be a real stand up guy who honors his lady and an unattractive nerdy geek who is shy and awkward can be a player. Seriously I think the geeks who are players sometimes have something on their side because the women dont suspect these sweet, nice, friendly guys are playing and manipulating them. They're less on guard than with the hot guy. Unfortunately "type" isnt fool proof and with those "shy" guys it can all just be an act. And they're totally playing a woman, just more subtle about it and tactful because they're clever. Ladies like nice guys, so they do the whole routine to fool them and are clever about dismantling defenses. They listen, are thoughtful, considerate, remember little details and boom they're just playing a game. Totally aware of what they're doing the whole time. 

To some people romance and life is just one big game. It can be really hard to tell who it is a game with and who isnt. I wish finding a geek was the solution :lol: but smart people can simply be better manipulators and better liars because they're smart and are less likely to make mistakes or get caught.

Some guys, especially guys that dont feel attractive or werent cool when young are insecure and can feel like they have something to prove to make up for "lost" time. Vs a guy who was secure and confident might be wild as a young man then grow out of it and be a great man. Im starting to find men who are secure in themselves (genuinely, not the big talkers or showers) the ones who are genuinely happy and secure in themselves are the ones to trust. But that's my theory and my track record is sh!t so what do I know? :lol:


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## SueC

Excellent discussions here!  It's great to know I can take a day off and quality posts will still be appearing on this journal as if by magic! 
@DanteDressageNerd, my personal favourite Dr Who of the ones I've seen so far (William Hartnell through to Colin Baker so far in our trawl through the classic series, and David Tennant through Jodie Whittaker in the modern series) is Matt Smith, because of the endearing personality he brought to the part. I heard him interviewed on Desert Island Discs the other day, and he sounds completely different to his character - speaks with a lisp, is shy, and has a completely different tone. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09tc5zb So - great actor!

My favourite classic Dr Who so far is Tom Baker in his early years - he did a great job there. I also think Jodie Whittaker is doing an amazing job and can't wait to see more episodes, but unfortunately they're having a long break from filming at present. She was great in Broadchurch too - as was David Tennant, actually - I thought he was brilliant in that show, but really didn't like his Dr Who, which kind of sets me apart since he's nearly everyone's favourite all-time ever. I found his Dr Who really annoying, and just because he's good-looking doesn't make that any less of an issue to me. Sometimes I think people forgive all sorts of things of people who are physically attractive, that they wouldn't otherwise. Which could bring us back to dating! ;-)

...I thought it was a great advantage, when I was first getting to know Brett, that I wasn't doing that face to face - letter writing was a more objective process, not clouded by sexual chemistry, and more likely not to be hooked by dysfunctional stuff that comes from sexual scripts constructed in a dysfunctional family of origin. By the way, it's not that there's a problem with sexual chemistry per se, it's just that to me, it's not a great thing to have with the wrong person (unless someone is just looking for a fling, but then they better be upfront and on the same page about that rather than waste one person's time). I found it a more reliable process to see whether a person was exceptional friendship material first, and then see if romantic and sexual chemistry would also happen, than to start with romantic and sexual chemistry only to find, a few months later, that the guy was actually living with someone and not telling you, or that he was a sociopath, or playing a constructed role, or any other reason he wasn't the sort of person you could be close friends with.

Speaking of geeky/nerdy people, I wanted to challenge a stereotype created by the media of skinny eggheads with coke bottle glasses etc. Geeky/nerdy people are no less likely to be physically attractive than average - but they are more likely not to be interested in following fashions. So, confirmed geeky/nerdy people, well, me, Brett, @DanteDressageNerd, and @Spanish Rider describes herself as nerdy and certainly fills the shoes with all her _Me et al._ etc :rofl:, and @gottatrot has key traits, and so does @Knave and her youngest daughter - anyone else, hands up? Anyway, none of these people are unattractive - and none of us wear coke bottle glasses - and look at the smiles! I don't think any of that sample are slavish fashion devotees, but I prefer authenticity anyway. I guess too that my definition of who is physically attractive is much broader than the narrow views of the media, and of fashion followers and youth worshippers - and I would pretty much bet that's also the case for everyone I've cited.

@gottatrot, that's beautiful!  I think it's great when people can say, "These are my faults that I'm working on, and this is stuff I want to learn to do better!" instead of pretending they're something they are not. You do have to be careful to match alike in that attitude - I've seen situations where other people use that as an excuse to load you up with all sorts of blame, while they pretend they are better than you - "You've already said you need to work on XYZ blah blah and yeah, you really do, etc" - it can be used by other people to try to manipulate you, or put you down, and pretend they have no flaws, and nothing they should be working on. Offense as defense, etc.

@knightrider, I will attempt to follow your advice today and use the best time for riding, regardless of whether I'm in the middle of a job or not! :hug: Early afternoon should be lovely and sunny...


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## SueC

...and as Roald Dahl rightly surmised in _The Twits_...


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## SueC

...if only it were that simple, though - since some really shallow people who do nasty things can have an outward appearance that tricks us... seeing whether a smile _reaches the eyes_ though is one helpful sorting tool - still not perfectly reliable, but a start...

...and of course, people who habitually think and do lovely things can be horribly disfigured in accidents...

...but I still think there's a lot of truth is that concept above!


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## egrogan

Well, having just spent the past three hours on a work project pondering, reading, and writing code in a couple of different statistical analysis programs to try to calculate average annual changes in trends for key milestones for high school students, I suppose you can put me solidly into "nerd" territory :rofl: I need a HF break!

This is a question I've thought about nearly all my life, at least as long as I knew there were "nerds" and "cool kids." Somehow I've always sort of spanned this weird middle ground- school was something I always loved because it came pretty easily to me, so I had to work a lot harder at trying to be cool. I was lucky I was good at sports, that helped me make a wide circle of friends outside of all the honors classes (though I had great friends there too). I was one of those kids in high school that had groups of friends that didn't overlap on the venn diagram at all except through me. I also got away with tons of "bad" things because no one ever thinks the quiet nerds would be up to no good. I think I tried to break rules because it would never occur to adults to imagine I was breaking them and I wanted to see how much I could push until someone paid attention; even that didn't work. Fortunately I never got into serious trouble or got hurt, but I probably put myself in compromising situations which, in hindsight, I'd never want someone else to be in. I think that translated into dating an eclectic set of guys; everyone from the son of an astrophysics professor who was taking college classes when we were teenagers to the star of the football team. Same stuff in college; I was the president of a sorority who was also in the Honors college and graduated a semester early because I was finished with a double major- so I pretty much just hung out on campus until my job start after graduation and partied a lot (that got boring really fast). 

My lovely husband was much more "straight and narrow" than me when he was in high school, and he compensated, like a lot of people do, by getting a little crazy in college. We often joke that we would have really disliked each other if we had met in college; he would have thought I was too dorky with all my student activities and I would have thought his "loud" attention seeking personality was irritating. But we met the first day of orientation in our graduate school program, started dating a couple of weeks later, and moved in together just a couple of months after that. While I'm really grateful we both were able to complete our doctorates and get really intellectually interesting (read: nerdy) jobs that we like, sometimes we worry that we are far too serious for our own good and could use a little "dumb" fun in our lives. So I think being nerdy can be a double edge sword. Life is generally interesting, but geez, it can get exhausting to be constantly living in your head with someone else who tends to be the same way...

Not sure if any of that makes sense...my brain is swimming in average yearly trend change equations and it's way too close to my bedtime to be doing math!


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## MissLulu

@SueC The pelican photos are amazing! (And love your dog, she is so cute!) Many years ago my husband built a prison in Washington state and our two children and I went with him to visit the area. It was the first time I saw pelicans. I was really amazed a how awkward they are on the ground but how graceful they are in flight. Oddly enough, we were in one of the only areas in the state that has pelicans. 



I hope Brett is feeling better. My daughter lives in London so I knew that paracetamol is what we call Tylenol here in the states. We took a vacation to Texas to see my son graduate from Air Force basic training and when we got home both my daughter and husband got really sick so I have been trying to get them healthy again.


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## SueC

Have you been to visit her in London, @MissLulu? The art galleries and museums there are amazing; it probably helps that the British pilfered the world as a colonial power. ;-) Some local Aboriginal tribes are only just getting their relatives' bones returned to them - there was a long debate about what's an archaeological artefact and what's a relative...

Pelicans are super cute. It's so funny when they fly, they remind me of sea-landing planes with big "foot" gear and a top-heavy appearance.

I hope your family recovers soon - are you able to feed them garlic? I can't feed it to Brett unless I am really surreptitious about it... I, of course, can eat pesto morning noon and night as a topping on Ryvita... and used to put six or seven cloves in my spaghetti sauce, but have had to scale that back a bit! Brett is very British in DNA and habits. :rofl: I'm part Italian... the rest is largely Germanic and Viking...


@egrogan, that's really interesting!  I taught a girl back in 1999 who was an all-rounder like you described yourself, and she was like a bridge between everyone - she was also amazingly emotionally mature. She was top of the class, but nobody made that into an issue, in a negative way. She also knew these people all her life. When we moved to Australia, it was made into a huge issue by some of the other students - the bullies and the brainless, analysing in retrospect, and there's a bit of it about - when I started topping classes and winning school competitions. People would beat me up, step on my shoes, verbally abuse me, steal things from me when I wasn't looking, or even when I was - it was thoroughly nasty. By the time I got to Senior High School though - Years 11 and 12 - that was a totally different experience, and I loved it. People in general were lovely, just a few bad apples. I suppose most of the bullies etc hadn't gotten into the academic courses which back then constituted Senior High School in Australia. It was mostly university preparation; everyone else left at the end of Year 10 for apprenticeships or technical college or jobs. I really enjoyed my senior schooling, it was a good bunch. Very friendly and lots of discussions about all sorts of things, and nobody made an issue of people topping classes or winning prizes. It was really congenial.

Dumb fun suggestions: Why don't you try impersonating kangaroos and hopping around the dining table chasing each other? It's great incidental exercise and you'll laugh so much. It's probably best not to do it when you have visitors, unless they are equally insane! :rofl:

@DanteDressageNerd, I think what you were describing at the end of an earlier post is getting close to authenticity, and being comfortable with who you are. I don't know how you'd tell straight away though if someone was truly authentic or pretending (though intuition can help out there), but you'd find out sooner or later. I think someone who is authentic isn't going to want to create a facade to manipulate other people - it's too important to them to be what they are. It's "what you see is what you get" - and I think authentic people generally are OK with admitting they make mistakes and have things to learn. Now if there was some kind of "fake" detection kit, that would surely help people on dates...


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## DanteDressageNerd

SueC said:


> Excellent discussions here!  It's great to know I can take a day off and quality posts will still be appearing on this journal as if by magic!
> 
> @DanteDressageNerd, my personal favourite Dr Who of the ones I've seen so far (William Hartnell through to Colin Baker so far in our trawl through the classic series, and David Tennant through Jodie Whittaker in the modern series) is Matt Smith, because of the endearing personality he brought to the part. I heard him interviewed on Desert Island Discs the other day, and he sounds completely different to his character - speaks with a lisp, is shy, and has a completely different tone. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09tc5zb So - great actor!
> 
> My favourite classic Dr Who so far is Tom Baker in his early years - he did a great job there. I also think Jodie Whittaker is doing an amazing job and can't wait to see more episodes, but unfortunately they're having a long break from filming at present. She was great in Broadchurch too - as was David Tennant, actually - I thought he was brilliant in that show, but really didn't like his Dr Who, which kind of sets me apart since he's nearly everyone's favourite all-time ever. I found his Dr Who really annoying, and just because he's good-looking doesn't make that any less of an issue to me. Sometimes I think people forgive all sorts of things of people who are physically attractive, that they wouldn't otherwise. Which could bring us back to dating! ;-)
> 
> ...I thought it was a great advantage, when I was first getting to know Brett, that I wasn't doing that face to face - letter writing was a more objective process, not clouded by sexual chemistry, and more likely not to be hooked by dysfunctional stuff that comes from sexual scripts constructed in a dysfunctional family of origin. By the way, it's not that there's a problem with sexual chemistry per se, it's just that to me, it's not a great thing to have with the wrong person (unless someone is just looking for a fling, but then they better be upfront and on the same page about that rather than waste one person's time). I found it a more reliable process to see whether a person was exceptional friendship material first, and then see if romantic and sexual chemistry would also happen, than to start with romantic and sexual chemistry only to find, a few months later, that the guy was actually living with someone and not telling you, or that he was a sociopath, or playing a constructed role, or any other reason he wasn't the sort of person you could be close friends with.
> 
> Speaking of geeky/nerdy people, I wanted to challenge a stereotype created by the media of skinny eggheads with coke bottle glasses etc. Geeky/nerdy people are no less likely to be physically attractive than average - but they are more likely not to be interested in following fashions. So, confirmed geeky/nerdy people, well, me, Brett, @DanteDressageNerd, and @Spanish Rider describes herself as nerdy and certainly fills the shoes with all her _Me et al._ etc :rofl:, and @gottatrot has key traits, and so does @Knave and her youngest daughter - anyone else, hands up? Anyway, none of these people are unattractive - and none of us wear coke bottle glasses - and look at the smiles! I don't think any of that sample are slavish fashion devotees, but I prefer authenticity anyway. I guess too that my definition of who is physically attractive is much broader than the narrow views of the media, and of fashion followers and youth worshippers - and I would pretty much bet that's also the case for everyone I've cited.
> 
> 
> @gottatrot, that's beautiful!  I think it's great when people can say, "These are my faults that I'm working on, and this is stuff I want to learn to do better!" instead of pretending they're something they are not. You do have to be careful to match alike in that attitude - I've seen situations where other people use that as an excuse to load you up with all sorts of blame, while they pretend they are better than you - "You've already said you need to work on XYZ blah blah and yeah, you really do, etc" - it can be used by other people to try to manipulate you, or put you down, and pretend they have no flaws, and nothing they should be working on. Offense as defense, etc.


I agree I prefer Matt Smith to David Tennant, I found his Dr to be an obnoxious player and overly sensitive. Not as much a fan as Matt Smith's version who was quirky and zany but had a real depth and inner knowing or torment you could see in moments. He did a brilliant job. Far better than David imo.

Unfortunately I think time is the only real indicator and there are little clues and intuitive feelings or vibrations we pick up on. Some people are better at disarming the alarm bells than others. I think intelligent men who can read people are very very good at what they do. And I think if they appear shy, we are less on guard than around a confident, suave, handsome man. I've been tricked a lot and each time I think I have it figured it out or I know how to tell and I'm fooled. I've dated 2 psychopaths and 1 1/2 sociopaths. They ALWAYS seemed like amazing, genuine and sweet, not over the top guys when I met them. They werent too sweet or too charming or too perfect. One we'd sit up at night talking about theoretical physics. I just dont know that it is possible to tell in the beginning or even for a few months or even years. Some are just REALLY good actors. And when they're grumpy or have a bad day, you just think oh that's how it is. Anyone can be grumpy or have a bad day, that's part of being human. 

With Miguel, he really seemed so sincere and so genuine. I always had a feeling he was hiding something or really private about his past but I thought it was because of the abuse he experienced as a child and in general being a private, shy person and trying to protect me. I was totally blind sided when I found out about his true nature and behavior. Anyone who met him said oh he's super shy but he seems really sweet. He wouldnt even make eye contact with my friends because he was nervous. And granted they're attractive women but surprising to realize it's all an act. At parties if a woman even put her arm around him, even if he didnt know I was watching but his friends were around, he'd duck out and position himself differently. His friends didnt have a clue about his behavior. I think he told enough truths to seem genuine. He seemed very thoughtful, considerate and introvert but in reality was a liar, manipulator and a player bordering on sociopath but not a full sociopath but pretty close. Everyone, even my parents thought he was my one. I literally couldn't wrap my head around what he had done when I first heard, I was so dumb struck. I just dont think you can tell. Never seen someone lie like he can. My point and why it is relevant is that you just cant always tell and I think that is the worst part. It'd be nice if we could just know but truthfully had the woman he took to Paris hadnt told me, I dont know I would have caught on for a long-long time. I thank God for her telling me because I wouldn't have had a clue otherwise.

Literally when he talked about the women he had hooked up with and conned, it was as if he was talking about a used dirty napkin. No feeling or care for them AT ALL, then tried to claim he loved me and I was the only one he ever cared about or had feelings for.

I show pictures to show not even animals can tell. I just dont think you can tell from outward appearance, how they smile or even how they make you feel. I talked to him at least a month before meeting him. He just seemed really sweet and kind. And he was to my face, behind my back on dating apps looking for women to hook up with, talking to old F*ck buddies to hook up with, planning sexual adventure trips with other women. I was shaking and shared my torment from exs with him and days later he hooked up with a fugly chick. He wasnt picky at all, put my life in danger and never cared about me at all but did a really good show of it. Men can lie so well, you dont even feel like they're lying. I used to think you'd have a sense of pick up on it but nope. Again whole point being, I just dont think you can tell even if you're an intuitive person. I think he was born a kind hearted, sensitive person and warped by his abusive childhood, selfishness and bad decisions. That is my theory as to why he seems like such a kind, genuine person with a sensitive soul. He's an electrical engineer. He's also emotionally sensitive, he picks up on emotional energy really well and I think that is also why he's so good at lying as though he were telling the truth and totally genuine and sincere.


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## knightrider

Speaking of unattractive people becoming more beautiful, there isn't any hero I admire more than Eleanor Roosevelt, who was so singularly unattractive and yet a beautiful amazing person.

https://www.history101.com/eleanor-roosevelt/

Bruised and buffeted all her life, she remained steadfast with a beautiful soul. What wonderful quirk of nature allowed her to rise so far above what people tried to force her to be?


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## bsms

The ability to lie and lie well isn't tied to the Y chromosome. I've met ample women who would smile very nicely while planning to put a knife between your shoulder blades. I also don't believe in tying it to a mysterious abusive past. It will soon be the two year anniversary of the last time my oldest daughter spoke to us. She's done it multiple times since becoming an adult. "Punishing" us by refusing to talk, or message, or allow any contact between us and her kids. Usually for 2-3 months. Once before for a year. This time nearing 2 and likely to last much longer because I'm tired of it. One gets tired of touching a hot stove and eventually learns not to.

During her periods of no contact, we've heard second & third-hand how we abused her as a child. I don't remember it. Neither does her brother. Or our youngest daughter. Doesn't match any of the photos of her growing up. Nor does it match her glowing accounts of us as parents when she has been on speaking terms. But if you met her now and talked to her, I'm sure you would be shocked at how horribly we treated her. :evil:

Abuse exists, of course. No doubt. But as with dogs and horses, abuse can be an excuse as well as a reality. I had a dog we put down for meanness. We had her from when she was 8 weeks old. I've owned plenty of dogs. All friendly, happy-go-lucky dogs. Except that one. Honestly? She was a pretty mean puppy, and didn't improve any with time. Got worse, if anything. And I'm darned good with dogs. Good enough to feel very comfortable saying there was just something wrong inside that one. Not my fault.

I don't know why our oldest daughter has alternated between being great friends and despising us. She's in her 30s now and I honestly don't care any longer. Well, I do. I guess. If I come across a picture of me carrying her on my shoulders on a hike, or her playing with her brother, or smiling and happy with her Mom, it feels like being stabbed. But I can't imagine going back to being close friends any more. We weren't perfect parents. But we sure didn't abuse her either!


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## knightrider

Awww @bsms, so sorry to read that. Isn't life such a mystery? Some children such as yours (and mine) get lots of breaks, loving parents, adventures, challenges, and support. Yet they don't respond.

And other people, like Eleanor Roosevelt, which I posted above, are beaten down, wounded, and damaged, yet they respond with giving open hearts.

Then there are people who expect the world to be simplistic and say, "Oh you did _________ wrong or __________wrong in raising your son. If you had just _____________, he would have turned out fine."

My son gets upset with us because our daughter doesn't have near the restrictions on her freedom that we put on our son. He says, "Why doesn't SHE have the limits you put on me?" My answer is, "It didn't work for you. Why would we think it would work for her?" She is turning out well, by the way.


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## bsms

A few years back, my oldest daughter complained, "_You didn't let ME have Internet streaming in high school!_" My son looked at her funny. "_NO ONE had Internet streaming when we were in high school. It was invented when we were in our 20s!_"

She might have meant she didn't have a computer in her bedroom. We were in military housing when she was in high school. There was ONE place in the house to connect to the Internet - in the living room. Download speeds were 200-250 BYTES/second. We ran our Internet "text only" - an option back then.

And people think I'm weird when I say I prefer dogs and horses to people...


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## DanteDressageNerd

I dont understand that. I cant understand how children can dis their parents so badly (unless it is true). But I've met quite a few people who are just compulsive liars or honestly not that great of people, despite having really good upbringing and parenting. Some people are just whatever they are and you can't help them. My psychologist says if you see a burning building, dont run in. Get away. Some people just cant help themselves and it isnt that they didnt have good parents, they just are who they are. Same with some people can come from bad situations and be stellar, awesome people. It just depends on the individual. 

I think all parents make mistakes or arent perfect but it doesnt make them bad parents. It's trial and error right? And I think some structure and guidance is important but not too much. Have fixed, consistent rules and keep to them. Be fair but not a door mat but what do I know, Im not a parent and no plans to be anytime in the next 5yrs. 

I love my parents, they werent perfect and we dont talk all the time but we talk regularly and I would never say they were bad people. I'd say I cant relate to my Dad emotionally (he is too logical and just doesnt understand) but a good person and my mom is lovely, very sweet and strong. My Mom really fights for me and cares so so much, I owe them both a lot. I feel what I call catholic guilt if I dont live up to their expectations or I let them down because I feel they deserve better than me and they say live your life, do what is right for you and do it well. They're really good parents. Theyve been together 39yrs? They still love each other and are each others best friends. It's pretty amazing.


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## SueC

bsms said:


> The ability to lie and lie well isn't tied to the Y chromosome. I've met ample women who would smile very nicely while planning to put a knife between your shoulder blades.


Yeah, and so have I!  It's just that a bunch of females were having a dating discussion here and happened to have dated men, and so we didn't talk about how women can do the dirty on people. But they can and do. Now that we've got a male in the discussion, we can look at the other side, so to speak!

I've mostly come across unethical, backstabbing women in the workplace. I generally found it easier to deal with men there because they are generally more up-front, rather than smiling at your face while making havoc behind your back. In my own workplace experiences over 20 years, roughly equal numbers of bosses or colleagues from both genders did really unethical things, but the men were more obvious about it and it didn't catch you quite as much by surprise, as some of the women. I remember a male colleague in my first year of teaching, when I remarked on this stuff, saying, "If a man is upset with you, he'll bluster and he'll throw punches. If a woman is upset, she'll smile sweetly and pretend to be your friend, and five years later you'll find a knife in your back." 

Obviously that's an overgeneralisation; probably there are men too who are covert and duplicitous at work. I suppose too that it's physically safer for men to throw their weight around when upset, than for women, so different strategies may get used because of that. However, I've always preferred people to be up front with me, and not beat around the bush. I think in part that's cultural German-ness, preferring that directness, versus the Anglo so-called diplomacy which often just becomes saying one thing to a person, while thinking another, and saying something quite different to other people.

I do talk about the boys' club at work in Australia, though, in relation to science and technology, and general power positions. People in power positions can do more damage to others than people in the general workforce. In Australia, a lot of the power positions are disproportionally occupied by males, and by Anglo-background people, compared to women and non-Anglo people. I've seen a lot of damage done by males in a boys' club colluding to do unethical things, and mostly getting away with it, time and again, without their jobs being in any sort of danger, or any other serious consequence. That includes PhD supervisors of the archaeology department at a local prestigious sandstone university trying to pressure female candidates into sex by threatening to fail them. That one went on for many years... and things like it.




> I also don't believe in tying it to a mysterious abusive past.


Yeah, I agree with that - because a lot of people experience family violence, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, even sexual assault in their childhoods, but they don't all turn out to be posterior orifices, like @DanteDressageNerd's last specimen. Some of the nicest people I know had horrific things happen to them as children. One of my best friends was raped by her stepfather from about age eight to around age twelve, and he mother didn't believe her, so she carried it alone and couldn't find a way to make it stop, and as usual with these cases, blamed herself for what happened - that's what children do. Her mother still doesn't believe her... (and that is actually a form of emotional abuse - to deny the painful reality another person genuinely suffered, and to say they were making it up - of course, some people do make things up, but I think you can appreciate the point here - and her mother doesn't see herself as being emotionally abusive, of course - because of the psychology of her own denial, and because she never intended to be abusive).

Another person I'm really close to was molested by an uncle from toddlerhood to middle childhood, while people in her family apparently walked around with blindfolds on. She didn't say anything for years because when she started objecting, he told her he'd do it to her younger siblings if she didn't comply - her parents worked several jobs and she was the quasi-mother of the family to her younger siblings, and felt really responsible for them. Eventually it burst out of her during a family function. Her family eventually believed her, but didn't deal wonderfully with it either.

She ended up becoming a trauma therapist, and a writer. She has no explanation or excuse for what the person she refers to as "The Gargoyle" did. I think some people are just gargoyles. It makes me sick when people try to excuse crimes and nastiness on their abusive childhoods, precisely because I know so many people with horrendous experiences in childhood who care more than the average person about how they treat others. I think people have a choice in how they respond, and that some people simply enjoy causing pain and consternation to others, while other find that notion repulsive, after experiencing so much of it themselves. Some perhaps don't care about how they affect others, one way or the other.





> It will soon be the two year anniversary of the last time my oldest daughter spoke to us. She's done it multiple times since becoming an adult. "Punishing" us by refusing to talk, or message, or allow any contact between us and her kids. Usually for 2-3 months. Once before for a year. This time nearing 2 and likely to last much longer because I'm tired of it. One gets tired of touching a hot stove and eventually learns not to.


I'm sorry you've got this situation to deal with. As a person who doesn't encourage contact with my own family of origin, I just wanted to clarify that a genuine low-contact or no-contact position due to unresolved issues is never about punishing the family of origin, it's about getting emotional distance and protecting your own emotional and mental health. Of course, my own parents perceive it as my punishing them and being a nasty piece of work, even though that's not what it is. There's very few people I know who are in no-contact or low-contact situations with FOOs who are not perceived by those people as doing the dirty on them. To believe otherwise would mean they would have to confront these issues, and my parents don't want to do that, they prefer to hang on to the lifelong cover story which is their narrative about what happened. Sort of like my friend's mother still prefers to think her boyfriend was interested in her, not her underage daughter, and she blames the mental illnesses that resulted from that for my friend as being the reason she "makes these things up". It's so very sad, for both mother and daughter, when you think about it, but there's nothing my friend can do about it. Her mother is going to go to her grave thinking this didn't happen.

Some people with a sense of entitlement do feel abused whenever they don't get their own way, or don't have the latest material things etc. This also makes me sad, because that's not what abuse is. It's like this situation when I was in my mid-20s and teaching in London - I had this class that had Jamaicans in it and also Muslim kids. The Jamaicans on the whole were awfully rude and threw around expletives that would have gotten them expelled from some of the places I taught in, in Australia. The Muslim kids just sat there with their eyes on stalks when the Jamaican kids mouthed off. And if I pulled up a Jamaican student for their rudeness, I was instantly accused of racism. That was a cheap card, and I told them so, "I don't care if you're black or white or yellow or purple, this is not the sort of behaviour I am going to put up with, and these will be the consequences of such rudeness and disrespect towards other human beings, whether teachers or fellow students!" The class next door was sexually harrassing a young male graduate, who was just pleading with them to stop. It was disgusting.

And school management kept saying, "Most of these kids are abused kids!" And I kept saying, "So? That doesn't mean we should lower our expectations for them, and excuse disrespectful behaviour. If their parents are letting them down at home, that doesn't mean we have to let them down here, by never teaching them appropriate social behaviour, or believing they can be decent human beings - so we need to set boundaries. How else will that cycle not be repeated? If their parents don't care, or can't care, isn't it our responsibility to care? And to teach, rather than to excuse!"

The best schools I've ever worked at actually were from comparable socioeconomic areas, where management did believe that you had to set boundaries and that excuses don't cut it. If you don't do that, you will rarely have an opportunity to reward positive behavior in a meaningful way, in those sorts of communities. But if you do, it's amazing how the kids will blossom, and learn other ways of engaging with life.


@DanteDressageNerd, yeah, the photos had me completely fooled, because there was nothing at all untoward I was able to pick up, and I still can't. Some people do act very convincingly, it seems... I guess this is what people call a persona, rather than a personality. It's just a facade, but so convincing. I still feel bad about the fact that I thought he would work out well for you, after your animals liked him! That old saying about the book and the cover springs to mind...

All I can say is, I dated two sociopaths in my life, and had romantic ideas about a third, and in each of these cases I had a strong intuitive reaction when I met them that there was something not right here. Not something you could have picked from looking at them - just some sixth sense. But I ignored it, with each of them, chiding myself that I was prejudiced and had no objective reasons for reacting negatively to them emotionally, and making myself give them the benefit of the doubt. That didn't work out too well for me!  I finally learnt not to argue with those alarm bells (which also became reliable in the workplace for picking out those sorts and being wary of them). I probably have them because of my dysfunctional upbringing - there's probably some _subconscious_ cues I was reacting to, that I was well versed in from my own experience. And genuinely nice people have never, so far, tripped that alarm in me face to face. It's not to say it can't happen, that it's foolproof either way, but I do say to people now, "Trust your intuition, and be careful if your alarm goes off."

_If_ it goes off... and plenty of people don't have these alarms going off with those people...

It's a good thing that one of the women he was doing as a "side" got in touch with you. I was just reading a story where a woman explained how she had got evidence of her husband cheating on her, after suspecting it for a while only to be told it was all in her imagination. His mobile phone was PIN-coded, and she watched him carefully one night when he'd had too much to drink, and memorised the PIN. When he'd passed out, she went through his phone, and found stacks of photos of his affair, as well as messages, all of which had been set not to her name, but to an old school friend's, for cover. He had said things to his "side" like, "I'm sorry, I did have to have sex with my wife or she would have got suspicious, but it really disgusted me to do it!" She was out of there, with the baby, the next day. She's doing OK now. I bet she hopes the a-hole genes aren't in that kid.

I'm always mildly amused by humanists, who think the majority of people are wonderful, and the rest merely misguided... :rofl:


@knightrider, Eleanor Roosevelt has such a lovely story!


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## SueC

On Eleanor Roosevelt, I'd read her story before and it always says that she was plain. And in the photos in that article you linked to, @knightrider, I honestly can't see what the objection is supposed to be. They were obviously using very narrow definitions of beauty. I think she's beautiful - especially in that photo of her at the top where you can see all her character lines etched into her face. 

Reading through that link, it seems her mother was a classical narcissist who can't love a person for who they are, only for whether or not they conform to the image they have in their mind. And her father was an alcoholic, and so, neither parents were providing for the emotional needs of their daughter in a consistent and healthy way. The mother was seemingly a complete loss. Her father tried - but to have people with serious substance addictions as parents always leaves its mark on the children, and means they have to grow up fast and meet their own needs as best as they can, and sort through a whole lot of baggage later on. A good mitigator would be a grandmother or aunt or some other trustworthy adult with whom a child can have a close relationship as a child, where they are consistently nurtured emotionally.

Basically, Eleanor was thrown into "service mode" from the time she was little - it was the only thing for which she was consistently valued. I wonder if any of the relationship with her father was emotionally incestuous from the father's side - such relationships with that sort of family pattern often are. If he wasn't happy with his marriage - and he'd have had to have low standards to be happy with a woman who was making their children feel inferior from toddlerhood - then almost inevitably, some of the tenderness that would normally go to the life partner will then go to to the daughter. If emotional lines are crossed, and obviously if physical lines are crossed, then you've got emotional incest, which creates a lot of difficulty for the sexual scripts children acquire by osmosis in their childhood, and for the children's partnering and relationship to self later on.

Eleanor's story is in some elements very similar to Frank McCourt's - his father was an alcoholic who created both heaven and hell for his starved children, his mother a defeated figure who seemed to loathe Frank for his resemblance to his father. Frank was bashed and verbally abused and belittled by his mother, and certainly emotionally neglected, and if you read through his trilogy of autobiographies, you can see how that came back to bite him in his adult life. Of course, the mother herself had had an antrocious childhood, and obviously her marriage wasn't healthy and nurturing either. Frank always said she did the best she could, but I do wonder, with cases where kids get bashed in the face, how true that assertion is. It's true that if you don't learn healthy parenting in your own home, you'll need to pick it up elsewhere, and many people may not have that opportunity, especially when they're starving and barely keeping body and soul together, and sometimes not even that (a number of Frank's siblings died essentially from malnutrition).

So Frank grew up repeating some of that cycle - although he was a more functional alcoholic than his father had been - but he also ended up with a big heart, which really showed up in the classrooms he was teaching in as an adult in New York, if you've read _Teacher Man_. I think he managed to improve on his childhood experience for his own children, which is progress in the right direction for the next generation, but obviously still left a lot to sort through.

I think if we'd had children, we would very much have improved on the experience they would have had, compared to what mine had been. For starters, I really like watching people's personalities unfold - that was one of the really nice aspects of teaching, when you could see people go from age 12 to age 17 if you were at a school for long enough, and I was, with one particular school - and you could see how they were growing into themselves. My parents didn't - because they were only interested in how far I would conform to the image they had in mind for me. My own parents have never really known me, not as a child, and not as an adult, but of course they _think_ they know me - their definition of what that means is very different to mine. It's like the universe they inhabit is two-dimensional and focused mainly on exterior appearances, rather than understanding that people have hearts, and souls, and minds, and personalities - and that this is really _important_, and beautiful. They see people as sort of flat cardboard cut-outs - not as full human beings. Essentially this is a form of blindness. How much of it is passed on by genetics and upbringing, and how much of it is personal choice, I don't know. Either way, it's a very destructive way to be, in this world.

So I was able to enjoy and celebrate young people, and be happy about the different colours and patterns on their butterfly wings, and in their thoughts and dreams, in a way my parents were never able to. I think the same was true for Frank McCourt. I think it's really lovely to have that capacity for seeing the beauty in things, because you'll be a better person for others to be around, and also because you can then truly enjoy life, and find meaning, and become a sort of lighthouse as well, even though still a human being with flaws. I've asked myself to what extent our lives shape us here, and to what extent we make conscious choices. I know that for me, both applied. Life shaped me in some fundamental ways, but I also made choices, especially as I got older and could understand what was going on better. And I was really lucky that the right people came into my life at regular intervals, in the classrooms I attended as a child, on the bus, and also in books and poetry and music which showed me the some worlds I might want to live in, and some ways of being that might work for me.

I think in our lifetimes, all of us will have done some regrettable things, and hopefully learnt from that too, no matter how good our intentions are. I think the problem is if we don't learn from it; if we keep our eyes firmly closed, like my friend's mother, and carry on with a sort of simulation of reality - and if we never acknowledge it, and say sorry, genuinely, and try to repair what we've broken in the instances where we have broken stuff - and not leave that for other people to try to do.

Life certainly isn't simple... I need one of these:


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## DanteDressageNerd

I love talking about personalities and psychology, love discussing humans. And I agree whoever thinks people are fundamentally good are seriously misguided. People are fundamentally selfish and do what is in their best interest, every person's idea of best interest is different in what is good to them.

I've met a lot of "evil" women. I worked for a narcissist. Came from a great family but totally unable to empathize, just fake it. Super self righteous and grandiose sense of self importance. Just an awful human, great trainer but awful. She was really awful to other females, would just beat them down, marginalize and attack them like a punching bag. If a person is weak, she goes after them and is SO SO SO nasty. If a person is strong, she is scared. She was scared to talk to me but when I pulled my mare from her because she was ruining her, lying to me and charging me a lot of money. She got really nasty. Kicked Wonder and I out of the stable. So we had to find lodging fast. That was when Wonder broke my wrist. There are genuinely evil, twisted people out there. They're monsters and the only thing you can do is get away. Her parents and family are AMAZING, solid genuinely good people. It's a shame.

Sometimes people come out for the better from a rough upbrining and others use it as an excuse for their sh!tty behavior. I think it comes down to choice. A person makes a choice of who they are the moment the thought crawl inside their mind. With every choice in how we think and react, we are choosing who we are going to be. A lot of people live in duplicity, saying one thing and meaning another and lie so well to themselves and others, they dont even know who they are. Hard to tell whose real and who isnt. 

Yes a rough child hood can EXPLAIN behavior but it is NEVER an excuse! It is a choice. 

I feel so bad for your friend, some people are just gargoyles and have something really twisted and evil inside that they rain on everyone around them. I absolutely believe there is a special place in hell for those monsters. I cant believe her family could be so cold to her, I mean if someone does something wicked. Sure it's hard to face that reality but to deny and attack the victim makes me sick and yet it is such a common phenomenon and I dont get that.

I can say I have a few family members who had to exchange sexual favors in order to receive their Doctorate as women in psychology or sociology. Universities are highly corrupt in that regard. I hope it gets better but they really protect their Professors, even if they were abusive. It's WAY uglier and under reported imo than the military. The military takes it really seriously, universities talk a good game but really cover the @ss of their own. 

I think this is relevant and interesting




 
I can say with Miguel, my alarm bells were going off. Not in the beginning but starting around Christmas when he was in Asia. Something felt wrong. And something continued to feel wrong up until the trip. I wrote it off at the time thinking well Im bipolar, Im paranoid, and with what my exs did. I cant take my issues out on him but I didnt trust him. I knew he was hiding something but I thought it was something far less serious and at the time it was easier to call myself crazy than to blame him for setting me off. Im still incredibly angry at him and his behavior. I have no idea how many times he actually cheated on me and I will never know. He disgusts me to my core. Tried to blame me and avoid responsibility. Saying it was one mistake. What I learned is my instincts are wiser than logic and I was a fool not to listen to them. My psychologist says my greatest gift is my intuition and emotional awareness, he says most people simply dont have that and youre tying this gift behind you and crippling yourself by trying to mask it with logic and write it off as irrational. He was right. 

He has a good energy to him and he seems really kind. Just super selfish and self centered. I dont think he's evil, just selfish and absolutely needs to be single and on his own to do whatever he wants. He isnt capable of a meaningful relationship or love. And sometimes I wonder if I should pity him, instead of be so angry. Because he will never know what it feels like to care that much about someone or what it feels like to have that much hope or optimism or to really feel attachment. He will never appreciate the love he had or what it feels like to really love someone. He simply isnt capable of loyalty or love.

Psychopaths and sociopaths are such curious creatures. By all appearances they look human but inside they are an empty waste land. Incapable of love, empathy or real feelings. They're just hollowed husks of what it means to be human and are so capable of evil because of it. Im sorry youre familiar with them too. They're unlike anything else. I think some people are just magnets for them. I think they're attracted to people who are highly empathetic with a healing energy. They like intelligent people with vibrant energy to suck off of. I almost feel like they feel more human by being around someone vibrant and full of life and just slowly drain it away. They're awful.

I find people who have experienced deep trauma either end up extremely empathetic or without emotion or liars. It affects everyone differently and I dont know what makes people so different from one another with more extreme trauma.


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## SueC

@DanteDressageNerd, if you ever accidentally bump into your ex again, you could always give him a latex surgical glove. You know, for safe sex (with himself, in case that's not clear.) ;-)

I enjoy reading your reflections on life and people. 

Have now run out of my HF quota for this morning and will return after dark. Hope everyone has a good evening / day! :wave:


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## SueC

@Spanish Rider, I did some reading and came across an article you might like: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/05/male-birth-control-step-up-responsibility

@bsms, we just finished watching a British documentary that looked at gender and domestic violence. Here in Australia, there has been a fashion for calling domestic violence a predominantly male issue, which I've always objected to, because that was not my experience, neither with school bullies (girls bashed up classmates on a regular basis, and as a girl you were more likely to be beaten up by girls than boys - as in public at least, boys seen bashing girls is seen as less cool than boys bashing boys, though of course no violence is cool), nor at home (my mother was doing just as much hitting as my father and brother, and though she was physically at a disadvantage against the males, she still hit and threw stuff at them, but until I was taller and faster than her, she hit me on a regular basis - courtesy of her, I got bashed in the face, slapped hard on the side of the head so that my ear rang, kicked in the shins, chased with a broomstick which would be applied if she caught me, had her dig her fingers into my shoulders and shake me, was hit with a metal hairbrush, had a cutting board split over my head on one occasion, and had things thrown at me, all accompanied by threats and loud yelling - and of course, I always "deserved" it, and child abuse was when parents held their toddlers' arms under boiling water, or threw battery acid on their skin - which is of course horrific, but it's interesting that it's never what the person concerned does, it's always what someone else does that's abusive...). 

Anyway, so I've always gone, "Oh yeah?" when I've read how domestic violence is all about the patriarchy, and "almost exclusively male". What is >90% a male thing statistically is killing another family member. This British documentary was looking at across-the-board violence though, and said that for the "lower levels of domestic violence" - yelling, hitting, slapping, kicking, throwing things etc - the split was right down the middle. Violence with weapons skewed towards males, but that's not the exclusive property of men either - they were talking to social workers about stabbings from females in their jurisdictions, and followed one to court. They were also talking to a number of women who had multiple convictions for assault, in the general community. Alcohol was often involved (a factor, but not an excuse) - across the board. And sometimes, women kill partners and children.

So, while I think it's true that something needs to change about male culture so that violence isn't excused or seen as cool or understandable or whatever, and that power needs to be more equitably shared in our society to be representative of gender and ethnicity etc, I think that the general culture has to change too, and also, that we have to acknowledge that abuse of women and girls is more broadly perpetuated by women and girls than some people think - as well as by men and boys. I'm not playing down the seriousness of male violence in society, but I do feel we need to tell the whole story, or we won't deal effectively with these problems.

I'd be really interested in other people's observations re gender and workplace bullying, and domestic violence, and general violence, from their own experiential sampling. If you were affected, you don't need to be out with it if you're not comfortable, you could just talk in general terms. Nobody is going to grill anyone here, I think...


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## waresbear

Interesting thing I heard, most women who are murdered, are killed by someone they were once intimate with.


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## bsms

Murder in the US:

"_Victims: In 2017, most (78.4 percent) of the 15,129 murder victims for whom supplemental data were received were male. Of the murder victims for whom race was known, 51.9 percent were Black or African American, 43.5 percent were White, and 3.0 percent were of other races. Race was unknown for 243 victims.

Offenders: Of the offenders for whom gender was known, 88.1 percent were male. When the race of the offender was known, 54.2 percent were Black or African American, 43.1 percent were White, and 2.6 percent were of other races. The race was unknown for 5,368 offenders. 

More than 72 percent (72.6) of the homicides for which the FBI received weapons data in 2017 involved the use of firearms. Handguns comprised 64.0 percent of the firearms used in murder and nonnegligent manslaughter incidents in 2017._" [Note: I would have expect this to be higher.]

"_In 2017, 28.0 percent of homicide victims were killed by someone they knew other than family members (acquaintance, neighbor, friend, boyfriend, etc.), 12.3 percent were slain by family members, and 9.7 percent were killed by strangers. The relationship between murder victims and offenders was unknown in 50.0 percent of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter incidents.

Circumstances were known for 59.8 percent of murders for which supplementary details were reported in 2017. Of those, 39.0 percent of victims were murdered during arguments and romantic triangles. Felony-type murders (i.e., murders that occurred in conjunction with the commission of another felony crime such as rape, robbery, burglary, etc.) accounted for 24.7 percent of homicides for which circumstances were known._"

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/topic-pages/expanded-homicide

I thought it interesting that hammers were used more often than rifles: 472 vs 374.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u....016/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-4.xls










The statistics on domestic violence seem to vary considerably. These seemed as reputable as any I found:

"_The CDC analyzed the murders of women in 18 states from 2003 to 2014, finding a total of 10,018 deaths. Of those, 55 percent were intimate partner violence-related, meaning they occurred at the hands of a former or current partner or the partner’s family or friends. In 93 percent of *those* cases, the culprit was a current or former romantic partner. [Note: 93% of 55% = 51% of the total murders.] The report also bucks the strangers-in-dark-alleys narrative common to televised crime dramas: Strangers perpetrated just 16 percent of all female homicides, fewer than acquaintances and just slightly more than parents.

About a third of the time, the couple had argued right before the homicide took place, and about 12 percent of the deaths were associated with jealousy. The majority of the victims were under the age of 40, and 15 percent were pregnant. About 54 percent were gun deaths.

Black women were most likely to die by homicide of any kind, at 4.4 deaths per 100,000 people, followed by Native American women, Hispanics, and finally whites and Asians. Data from earlier reports suggest a far smaller percentage of men—around 5 to 7 percent—were killed by intimate partners._"

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/07/homicides-women/534306/

In my own observation, I've known men who were attacked by their spouses, but I've never known a man who reported it. My son's first marriage was very short (weeks). They separated after she showed up at the fire station he worked at, with a baseball bat, threatening to kill him for being late for dinner! :eek_color: Another man got the bat away from her. No report filed, although she was told they would call the cops if she ever tried it again. They separated that evening and divorced a month later.

It is hard for me to relate to domestic violence. My parents were not perfect but I could not imagine either one hitting or slapping the other. Never heard of it among my aunts and uncles - who were not above dishing the dirt on each other. Never heard a hint of it from cousins. My sister has been married 40 years without any hint. After 40 years of marriage, my observation of them suggests they adore each other...probably more than either deserves, but excessive care for each other isn't a bad thing! :smile: My BIL's Dad used to hit his Mom (and the kids, severely). My BIL & his brother seemed to have responded with "never again" rather than imitation. Honestly, I come from a bunch of domestically boring people.

One exception. One relative adopted several siblings. All have criminal records now. All have had drug abuse issues. I think two still do. Most pregnancies were out of wedlock, to spouses who then disappeared. Before adoption, all three grew up in an abusive, drug-using home. They were not put up for adoption because of how loving their home life had been! There are certainly those who overcome growing up in an abusive home (my BIL and some of those posting here), or who grew up in a nice one and then became abusers. But I'm pretty sure those cousins imitated their early childhood.


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## SueC

Thank you for digging up that data and the anecdotal stuff, @bsms. Seems like your BIL and his brother responded like many of the people I know - and I don't hang with the other kind, it seems, but they do exist. It's not always straightforward to un-programme some of the stuff you learn in an abusive home, but what is straightforward is the decision that you don't want to behave like the people in your FOO, and that you'll educate and re-programme yourself, and learn better behaviour patterns. I was really helped with that by having great alternative role models in my life, from the time I was in Grade 1 primary school - I've mentioned my wonderful Grade 1/2 teacher before. I just noticed lovely people, right from tiny, and it always gave me so much hope that they existed.



*GENERAL REFLECTIONS ON FAMILY BACKGROUND*

My parents didn't extensively share about their own childhoods, but I expect they probably didn't have a better deal overall. What I do know about them is this: My mother was conceived out of wedlock, and my grandmother's fiance ran away before she was born, because _his_ mother had some notion that she and her son were "blue-blooded" and shouldn't marry commoners. It was some ridiculous thing about being distantly related to some courtier at the last Bavarian royal court, but of course it would have been equally ridiculous if they had been directly descended from the last Bavarian king or any "royal" person, since all of us are human beings, and hereditary privilege is not a virtue, nor does it make a person better than another. So, my biological grandfather's mother said, "Marry her and I'll disown you!" - and I think she was likely a classical narcissist. My grandmother decided not to have a pregnancy termination, in part because her fiance stuck around for a while saying he'd do the right thing.

She was 23, and she most probably got terrible blowback from her own parents. I don't know much about them, but the general impression from various sources was that they weren't nice people. (I've often wished I had a TARDIS and could go back in time and talk to my grandmother about all this stuff, adult to adult. She was the one person in my extended family I had a truly warm relationship with, and whom I felt accepted and loved by, but of course we left Europe when I was 11, and after that we were confined to prolific letter-writing and the odd phone call, with the exception of a visit she made to Australia when I was 15... and she cried so much when we met again. I would have loved to get her side of the whole story, and to learn what she knew, as an adult, but I could never afford to go back to Europe, until the year after she died, ironically...)

So anyway, my grandmother opened a boutique and made her living that way, and my mother spent a lot of time with her grandparents as a child. I'm not sure what sort of parent my grandmother was to my mother, but she apparently said, "If it wasn't for you, my life would have been so different!" a lot. I've no way of verifying this. My mother lied a lot about me, and my character, and terrible things I supposedly did, but really didn't; and it recently occurred to me that she could also have lied about other people and their characters, and made up terrible deeds for them as well, so it's not necessarily a case of bad mothering repeating down the line.

What is pretty certain is that my mother copped a lot of abuse from the general community as a child for being "illegitimate" - she was called a "[email protected]" in the street, etc. And obviously, her own father had abandoned her. She didn't hear from him at all, but did hear from his widow when she was in her late 30s and I was in primary school. His widow said his conscience had always been plagued. He suffered from stomach ulcers, and died of a perforated ulcer, on the operating table, while still quite young - in his 50s, if I remember correctly. I met my biological grandfather's widow, and I remember her well. I would have been 9 or 10. We actually got on well - of course, I wanted to get on with any adult who was warm to me and wanted to know me as a human being. Her name was Hilde. She actually sat with me and made eye contact when talking, and asked questions, and replied to mine, and we talked for ages. She loved art and was very interested in science (my biological grandfather had a B.Sc. in Chemistry). We bonded over that, and a general curiosity about the world. Again, I wish I could get in a TARDIS and have an adult-adult conversation with her now, but she too died many years ago.

She told me my grandfather had loved music (the type who cries over music, as I sometimes do) and had played the piano. I loved the music I was learning at school, and was good at it - and art, and science, so clearly she saw some of her late husband's traits reflected in me - nobody else in my immediate family loved music and art, and _making_ both of these. (My brother played heavy metal bands loudly enough to shake the whole house, but that's not the same thing. I played the recorder and sang because everyone at my primary school had the opportunity to do that, but met indifference and mockery at home over it. Not with my grandmother though, and not with Hilde. They encouraged me, and talked to me about music.)

Hilde bought me some science books I was interested in - one of them was about social insects, another about microscopy. She said she wanted to get me a special present, a big thing, what would I like? And I ended up getting a junior microscopy kit, with a reasonable starting microscope, not quite the same as we use with high schoolers in school science laboratories, but pretty good, and I had a lot of fun and discovery with that. I remember Hilde sitting and looking at one of the prepared slides of a bee leg with me, that came included in the kit. Also there was a booklet on how to make dry and wet mounts, with suggested subjects like onion skin etc. All the basic equipment was there - even basic stains like eosin. It was really fascinating. Hilde had not been able to have children, and I think she probably would have liked to have me in her life as a grandchild. And I wouldn't have objected to that, although I think it would have caused some tensions with my grandmother.

My parents saw her buying these books and the microscope kit for me as a low attempt to buy my affection. I don't think that's what it was, personally. As an adult looking back, I do think it's remarkable that I could apparently never be allowed to enjoy warmth and attention from other people without somehow being made to feel bad about it in some way, when I was little. It was the same when I got on well with a teenage girl who was the daughter of family friends, when I was ten - I was told it was an inappropriate relationship because I was four years younger than her, and because she smoked. That's funny actually - because I remember saying to her, when she snuck cigarettes when we were away from adults, "Aren't you afraid of lung cancer, and early death?" There was never any question that I was going to smoke; but I didn't judge her for it, I was just concerned for her health and safety. :rofl: She also didn't try to push smoking on me. She was great to talk to, and like a big caring sister to me - genuinely, in the way my brother was never a brother to me. I really enjoyed her company, and the conversations we had.

Equally, I was getting on well with Hilde, that week she stayed with us. I do remember that Hilde took exception to my family's behaviour and attitudes, though - and so she was never invited back. I lost contact with her, as with pretty much everyone else my family objected to, or didn't want me to talk to.

I'm trying to see it through her eyes. Looking back with adult eyes at my child's memories, I think Hilde had an authenticity to her that my parents and brother did not, and that she connected with life and with people in a way they do not, but in a way that I do - connecting about more than the surface. She had loved my grandfather, whatever his flaws, and had admired certain things about him which she could now see reflected in his granddaughter - a real love for music, art, science, nature, just life. My grandfather had perhaps been a coward, but he'd not been a bully (his mother was the bully). My parents and brother are bullies, and I am not.

So she comes into a wealthy household where the little girl is basically Cinderella, and I think she was astute enough to see it, and to see that my interests and talents were not being fostered in a way parents normally foster these things if they have the means to do so. Brett, for example, was from a family of average means, but had tons more books than me as a kid, and a microscope kit, and a chemistry kit, and an electronics kit, and Lego, and a Commodore-64, and really good toy trains, and art and craft materials with which his mother actually engaged with him, and spent time with him making things. He had the opportunity of music lessons, and took martial arts lessons, and did archery and scuba diving, and was offered many different activities and opportunities. His parents had migrated from England before he was born, and they made sure that their children went back to meet their extended family - the whole family travelled back to Europe together four times, and Brett only paid for the last trip back, because he had an adult income by then.

It wasn't like that for me. I had a shelf of books, and a bunch of soft toys, a basic watercolour kit and coloured pencils and textas, my school recorder which was a required purchase, and I collected rocks and pressed flowers off the back of library books I was borrowing regularly, some of which had interesting activities to try. My whole childhood, I was doing activities from books, when I was at home, which I organised myself. I had a bicycle, and rode to school on it, and rode it recreationally with my friends; I hung out at the circus when it was in town, and at the dairy farm, learning to milk cows, and borrowing brushes so I could brush them, with my friends. I was quite astonished that my friends' parents sat down and did creative activities with them. My own family sat down to play board games with us sometimes, and cards, and that was the extent of it. I loved when my grandmother made cookies with me, or taught me to knit and make things. My mother didn't do that - I wasn't allowed in the kitchen, except to pass her things and to wash up - reasons: I was incompetent, and made a mess, apparently.

I noticed sometimes that my school friends had more toys than I did, and that several of them had music and ballet and skiing and swimming lessons, and when I sometimes remarked on it, I was told that they were spoilt brats. I find that ironic, looking back, considering my brother had anything and everything he wanted, and his room was crammed full of stuff - the latest hi-fi gear, tons of records and tapes, stacks of speciality hobby magazines, model aeroplane kits, expensive photography books, a television (highly extravagant in the 70s; and I actually don't think kids having TVs in their bedrooms is great, ditto computers...). I had Lego chiefly because it was passed down from him when he lost interest in it; ditto some toy cars, and marbles. I also had a cast-off mono cassette recorder with a tiny speaker, and a couple of mix tapes various people had made for me.

I had two extracurricular activities as a kid - the first was dinghy sailing. I got to do a course with Optimist class dinghies one summer in Italy (we spent holidays in Italy in a holiday house) when I was 8, at my parents' yacht club, and I got a second-hand Optimist when I graduated from the course. To put it in perspective, my parents had a racing yacht, and my brother a Laser class dinghy. Sailing was my father's interest, and I was basically doing a course at his club, and I think it got me out from under their feet that summer. I loved being with actual people for the summer, although my Italian was so basic that the other kids and I had often to use sign language to communicate. The course instructor had several languages, so spoke German to me if I was about to capsize or crash into a cliff when sailing. I really enjoyed the social aspect of dinghy sailing, and being out in nature, on the water, and not thinking about regattas and prizes and strategies. From the time I had a dinghy, I passed on going out on the racing yacht much of the time. The Italian kids were nice to me, and we laughed a lot, and had fun, beyond the sailing - we swam a lot, and dived off the big mooring posts, and skin-dived - my parents granted a request of basic goggles and flippers.

The other extracurricular activity was riding lessons, when I was nine, and my friends Ute and Nicole (from socioeconomically average backgrounds) already went, and I think that's the main reason that happened for me. Later on my parents bought a horse, and that story is already in this journal, albeit skeletally, without all this context, in the early sections of this journal. And so, of course, from that time on, my parents could point out what a spoilt girl I was materially because I "had a horse" (allegedly, but those of you who've read this journal will know that I really didn't, and what really happened there).

So anyway, I think Hilde could see what I saw when I was an adult looking back at my childhood. As a child, I actually didn't really see it, except the odd ??? moment. And I think that's a big reason why she was so interested in getting me science stuff, and more books, etc. I also happen to know that Hilde had several paintings she had thought about giving to my mother - one of them a small painting by a famous artist called Albrecht Dürer. This is my favourite of his paintings, and not the one she had:










I've never seen a more alive painting of an animal, than that one.

Anyway, Hilde decided (rightly) that my parents weren't true art appreciators, and she bequeathed her art collection to her local art museum when she died, so that people who loved art could see those paintings, rather than that they be seen as status symbols and financial investments. My parents, of course, felt that my mother had been cheated out of an inheritance, but I don't see it that way.

Now on my father's side, I know that his father was a policeman before Hitler's army forcibly recruited him, and that he spent seven years in a Siberian prison camp during my father's primary school years. So he too had an absent father during much of childhood, albeit for different reasons, and he was forced to leave school at age 14, although mathematically gifted, in order to help feed his older siblings, his mother and himself. I never met my paternal grandmother - she died of bowel cancer in her 50s, when I was newborn. Rumours from various family members I asked about her - including my mother's half-sister, by email, a couple of years ago - were that she wasn't a nice person, and that she spent a lot of her time sitting in bed reading fashion magazines, and that she had my grandfather's German shepherd shot when he was in prison camp, because she didn't want the burden of feeding the animal - not quite necessary, as they lived in a farming area and weren't actually short of food, since the three kids worked as farm helpers and general dog's bodies. I've no idea what she did, to help her family out during wartime. My mother's sister met her and didn't take to her. Again, I think it's likely she was a classical narcissist.

(This post is overlength, and must be broken in two! :Angel


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## SueC

My paternal grandfather wasn't, from my own recollections of him; but he was really scarred from his time in the Siberian prison camp, where he had almost died. He cried a lot, was very emotional. I didn't see that much of him - he lived many hundreds of kilometres away, and we have had roughly annual visits - he sometimes came to see us, and we sometimes went to see him. He re-married, a woman much younger than him with a child, which apparently caused much friction with his other children. I don't know that side of the family; only saw my paternal uncle and aunt once that I can remember, when my cousin Felicitas got married and we were invited to the wedding, and I would have been around age nine, if that. I remember the wedding, and I remember my father making caustic remarks about the groom when we were sitting at the table, and my mother remonstrating with him. He used the word "blowhard". Felicitas was nice - she sat and had a chat with me, on her wedding day; I didn't recall meeting her before... and she bequeathed me her old study organ, there and then, because we clicked over music. Just gave it to me! I couldn't get over it; but again, here's a fellow music enthusiast helping another. Again, here's someone I really would have liked to have had a chance to spend more time with, but it never happened.

I also remember we stayed at my paternal aunt's for that visit, and that she had a traditional German Kachelofen - a tile fire with a bench you could sit on, very like this one, but hers was green:










I'd never seen anything like that, and my aunt explained how it worked, and had good chats with me those couple of days, and actually spent time doing craft projects with me. She got me a few art materials as presents as well. Again, I would have liked to have spent more time with this person, but I never saw her again. My family didn't visit with my father's siblings; officially, they were too far away (this is _before_ we emigrated to Australia), and jealous of my father's professional success and wealth. And again, what I'd give to have a TARDIS and hear their side of the story.

I do know that my father's older brother was an alcoholic (for my family, read: leper), and that they had competed for my mother's affections when they were teenagers. I also remember him ringing when I was a teenager, after his marriage breakup, and proposing my mother return to Germany and live with him, since she wasn't happy. I overheard that conversation. I've never been furnished with names and contact details for anyone from my father's family - my grandfather died many years ago, but we kept in touch with his widow - she was an "allowed" contact for me, as was my mother's family, although my father often denigrated both my grandmother and my maternal aunt's family. So, while I did see a lot of them as a child, it was mainly visiting with my mother only.

I've tried quizzing my aunt about family history, a few years back, and she told me a few things I already half knew, but she went completely cold when I summarised what things had really been like after the family emigrated to Australia, behind the official facade, and why I was curious about a number of other things she might be able to fill me in on. I didn't hear from her again. She's in her mid-70s though, and my uncle had just died, and I think she wasn't prepared for more complications. But, she was the only person I could ask, as she was the only person whose contact details I had, who was still alive.

...if only I had Felicitas' contact details...

The organ Felicitas bequeathed me got taken home, by the way, albeit grudgingly, but my parents couldn't very well be seen to turn down such a generous gift from the bride to her young cousin. It didn't result in music lessons, unfortunately, but I improvised, much to my brother's chagrin - which was pretty hypocritical, considering he annoyed the whole neighbourhood with his violent music played loudly through open windows, with professional quality amplifiers and speakers. My little friends and I collected dying butterflies that autumn, when the frosts came, and put them in matchboxes lined with pretty fabric scraps, and played them funeral dirges on my organ, before going out to bury them with sombre ceremony. Then we flew kites in the autumn gales.

The organ never made it to Australia - even though my family took a whole shipping container of their own effects, and their racing yacht, and two horses. I was pressured into consenting to give it to a friend of my mother's for her child when we moved - and as an adult, this infuriates me - I loved music, and this was a sentimentally meaningful present from my cousin's wedding day. All my brother's equipment made it onto the container... When we got to Australia, a box I'd packed with my favourite, gorgeously illustrated children's fairytales, and other books of great sentimental value to me, and paintings and craft items I'd made in primary school, had disappeared as well. My parents always shrugged their shoulders and blamed the shipping company, but none of their things went missing, and these days I believe they took that box and disposed of its contents - it's far more likely than this particular box being misplaced or stolen by the shipping company, or some opportunistic thief. It's also consistent with my mother giving away items from my room as a teenager to other people's children, when I wasn't home - and when I got mad about it, she'd tell me I was being childish and ungenerous; and then more things would disappear. I developed the habit of hiding my most treasured things, like my journal, or taking them wherever I went in my backpack. And, I left home at age 16, in my first year at university - and was of course painted black for doing so.

So, in summary: My parents grew up in wartime, and were both in "safe" Dresden as toddlers when it was bombed, and remember the bombs. They had absent fathers, and probably very unhappy home lives as children, emotionally - and they went through material privations because of the war. My father's education was cut short - later on, the company he started working for sent him on education courses, and he became an IT professional and systems analyst in the early days of IT when that was megabucks. My parents got together as teenagers and, from what I can see, played "house" - made a family life from the outside, based on notions of what families should look like, and not an actual understanding of people and relationships. It was like a giant role-play. When my father became wealthy - before I was born - they got a lot of "respect" from the community, and got away with a lot of things poor people do not. Then they emigrated to Australia - my mother under duress - where my father could hide better what was already majorly falling apart, on a remote farm, away from all extended family and existing social networks - and where he was in ultimate financial and social control of my mother and me (until I left home), and he could do what he wanted with the rest of his life, without any ramifications from that family and social network, and with few possibilities of assistance from that network from me (I would have almost certainly moved in with my grandmother as a teenager, at the latest, after that incident with the blood nose over putting a pop star poster up in my room at age 13 - but I never told her what happened, because I didn't want her to fret about it - had I been able to physically get to her, however...).

If you ask them - and this is basically what they've always said to me, when I've tried to discuss what it was like from my perspective with them, as a teenager and again as an adult, at intervals - they just tell me I was a spoilt brat who didn't appreciate what I had - which is untrue on both counts, and which describes their pattern towards me better than mine towards them, even as a child and teenager - I was forever thanking them and writing them cards and helping them with their own stuff, and was actually parentified in the process, from a psychology perspective - like an alcoholic's child, I spent more time looking out for my parents emotionally than they ever spent looking out for me emotionally, and I have no idea if they are even capable of looking after anybody or anything emotionally, because I've never seen healthy emotional patterns from either of them, in any interpersonal situation. So I guess the answer is no. They can fake things well enough on the outside to pass casual observation, but not if you've seen them from an inside perspective. And the problem is never with them; and in that family, officially I am the problem - because I have always asked the questions, and challenged what was going on.

If I confront them over the beatings, and with the worst traumas I went through - seeing my father put my mother in the rubbish bin when I was little, all the yelling and threats and violence in that family, the situation with the blood nose and the pop star poster, the time my brother beat me and left a haematoma and I went to the police in disgust at age 14, walking 25 kilometres to the nearest town cross-country rather than along the main road so they wouldn't intercept me, to get help and there was nobody I knew well enough there, so it defaulted to the police, and what my mother did to me after my brother (age 21 to my 14) was cautioned over domestic violence, and the time I got dragged on the road behind a car by him and a public witness picked me up and wanted to take me to a police station, but I asked her to take me to a friend's house instead, and her mother cried and hugged me after getting off the phone from my mother and the things she said about me, so many things like that, too many things like that, and no happy graduations or school balls or other milestones even though I was a model student and ended up dux of middle school, senior school and my university degree, I'm always told the same thing: It didn't happen / it didn't happen like that, it was your own fault, why are you bringing up the past.

I've had a trauma specialist look over various adult correspondence about these matters, and the assessment was: You're coming from an adult perspective, they're responding immaturely and in a really stunted way. You've left the options open, they close them down. They're not seeing you, hearing you, understanding you, or trying to - they're deflecting, blaming, changing the topic, getting back into their comfort zones. They don't want to acknowledge what happened, it's so much easier to say it didn't happen, or that it was someone else's fault. You can't have a genuine, healthy relationship with people who act like this.

And from their perspective, I would guess that the wartime material privations of their childhoods would have been compared with what their own children had in their own heads, and even I had so much more, and was never bombed either, so from that perspective, they probably feel like they were good parents. Also from the perspective that both their children had university educations, though I hasten to add to US readers that I got in on a scholarship and was on an independent living allowance from the time I went to the university student welfare officer at age 16, when my home circumstances became especially intolerable. She said, "My gosh, you're living with that? It's completely unacceptable!" and organised that allowance for me, and helped me find independent accommodation. (My brother, who was in his final year at the same university, told lies about me and called the student officer a "brown-rice, hairy legs lesbian feminist" - the worst insults his petty mind could come up with. My parents labelled her a destroyer of the nuclear family, and an enemy of family values.) I paid back my part-tuition fees through a student loan scheme when I started drawing a salary, incrementally each year until my mid-30s.

My parents like to say they put me through university, but they really didn't. I was the one who sat down on my own backside all day and three hours every evening from the time I was in senior school, to the time I finished my degree, with no encouragement from them, and with muted responses when I won prizes. I was the one who won the scholarship, encouraged by my Biology teacher to enter, and I paid for my own tuition fees after I graduated, and had been on a special living allowance for young people from difficult family backgrounds. My father insisted on paying for my course textbooks, which was about $300 a semester. This was a tiny fraction of the cost of my tertiary education, and my basic living expenses. And I was emotionally invested in education because I saw it as my ticket to financial independence, and because I loved learning, from a very young age. I would have gone to university no matter what.

My father also said to me, in that correspondence, "Look at everything you have achieved, and thank your parents." That made me blink, because of their acute lack of interest in my studies, and my subsequent work life. My parents didn't even turn up to my _wedding_ - but I think that's a blessing in disguise. I achieved many things in my life in spite of my parents, not because of them, and it was so, so hard, when I was a teenager and in my 20s, to live with the emotional baggage of my upbringing, and to try to acquire social skills and emotional maturity which were never modelled for me at home. It felt like such an obstacle course, and at dark times like hell itself.

My father will still email me to trumpet about his own achievements, like when his last horse won his first race start, probably to get approval and admiration, as I had been trained all my childhood to provide, and which I no longer do as a conditioned reflex - I want to honour the girl and young woman I was, who had no such nurturing from her parents, but was expected to provide it for them. I send short messages back in such instances, with measured responses, and I don't let myself get hooked back into the old conditioning.

In a way, people are their own karma. I don't hate my parents, but it's impossible to have a healthy relationship with them. I don't want a dysfunctional relationship with them, so I prefer to have a minimal relationship, or a non-relationship, and a nice buffer of emotional distance. I have found real happiness in my life, in spite of everything, and healthy relationships with my husband, and friends, and chosen family. Having my birth family in my life, even when I was a mature adult, was always a drain on my happiness and on my personal resources, and I've had enough of that. I used to wish more than anything that things would change, but came to accept years ago that they almost certainly never will.

Since I have protected myself emotionally from my parents, in my early 40s, after the cPTSD diagnosis, I've had a lot of extra time and energy freed up for things that have been really worthwhile, and that make a real difference, to the planet, to other beings. It's so much better than standing near the event horizon of a black hole, and getting sucked down and obliterated.

It's been really ironic that the people who used to blame me for significant amounts of their violence and personal unhappiness never needed my presence to continue to be violent and unhappy. They've continued on that road for the last 30-odd years, while I've gone off the beaten track and found real peace and happiness, and I've lived a full life professionally too, and now I'm enjoying our tree change. As a teenager, I sometimes wished that a benevolent God would hold my parents to account one day, and expose their ill-treatment of me, and their lies. These days, I see how unnecessary this is, because people who behave like that are their own karma - and I don't think that's poetic justice either, I think it's sad.

A couple of years ago, I touched base with a friend from primary school in Germany - one of my butterfly-serenading friends. We compared journeys, and we reminisced. We talked about our childhoods. She said as a child she could sense, in our house, that something was wrong. That was the main reason we spent the majority of our time together either outdoors, or at her place. As children we didn't talk about it, but as adults we did. I was agonising at the time over whether my parents were simply too damaged to have ever been warm, supportive parents, or whether they could have chosen differently. And my friend said, "Sue, my parents suffered in the war too, and had awful experiences, but this never stopped them from treating their children well. My sister and I always knew, and felt, that our parents loved us, and we really had a happy childhood. Our parents always went in to bat for us, and always cared, and we knew it. Please don't think the war excuses the way your parents were to you. No parent is perfect, but this is something else."

:runninghorse2:​
*THIS WEEKEND AT REDMOND*

Brett and I officially have the lurgy. On Thursday, Brett went to a GP. He's still pretty sick, and it's the flu. The worst thing for him is almost non-stop coughing at night, and it's not responsive to codeine. I have it low-level, and I too am spending a lot of time indoors keeping warm and hydrated, which is why I've written loads this weekend, and not just above. Brett is currently writing about cybermen!  He feels a little better today. We had freshly made macaroni with three cheeses at 2am, when we actually felt like eating, and had a fair amount of rest last night.

The last couple of days, I felt good enough to do some outdoors jobs in the warmer part of the day. The energiser unit I ordered online arrived, and I went to install it on Friday. The little fence around the solar bore is now running at 10kV bwahahaha! I'd had to re-string it because of course the cattle couldn't leave it alone even for a couple of days without an energiser, and I'd love to be a fly on the wall next time one of these ******s tries to barge through that little fence.  Then I went and fed tree fodder to said ******s, and pulled a few large fallen eucalyptus branches out of the driveway shelter belt. They went on an existing branch stack - tree fodder always gives us excess branches - and I made a bonfire. Because of my pyromaniac tendencies, this was very satisfying. The steers came to watch, and hung around the fire.

Yesterday I pruned some tall trees, and did some washing, and generally tidied in the garden. At intervals, I came in and collapsed on the sofa with warm tea. In the afternoon, I went out, touched up Sunsmart's feet - the toes were getting long - and stuck him in his boots. Then we did the big loop around our property, on the forest ridges. That was nice, but it was a bit late in the day, and the air was cold. Hopefully, I can get some nice sunny weather in the middle of the day sometime, to go a bit further afield. Today doesn't look good - it's cold and blustery, and we have a forecast of "showers increasing"... but I'll go and do some more outdoors stuff now, the sun is just breaking through the clouds.

Hope everyone has a lovely Sunday! :gallop:


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## waresbear

I have known three people that have been murdered, all three were women. All three were murdered by someone who they were once intimate with. One was a mother and her two sons, her husband shot her and both their sons, one son lived because he played dead. When he was sure his father had left, he crawled to the neighbors. Another lady's husband shot her, then he turned the gun on himself. The final one was just a few years ago, the lady broke up with her boyfriend, but they were still living in the same house for a short period of time. He had his son with him and was just making arrangements to move out. He shot and killed her, waited for his teenage son to get home from school, then they both fled to another province. He was apprehended, it is still unclear if the son seen the woman dead. I believe the statistics I heard.


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## SueC

It's shocking, @waresbear. The gun violence, I find really scary, as an Australian - we don't have nearly as much of that here. Still, women get killed, children get killed, some men too, in domestic violence in Australia - strangled, head trauma, knifed, drowned, sometimes shot. The latest stats for NSW popped up here:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-06/domestic-violence-murders-double-in-past-year-in-nsw/11186298

The side bar has other related articles.


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## waresbear

Most have long guns here for hunting, livestock protection, things of that nature. Handguns are vary rare here. Because these rifles are kept at home, they are used in domestic violence tragedies. Very sad and very disturbing when children are involved.


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## DanteDressageNerd

It really interesting to read your childhood and family stories. I wonder if your parents just dont have a high degree of emotional intelligence and from their early childhood pushed the emotional side outwards until their sense of self became what other people thought of them? Maybe think all of life is one big broadway performance? It doesnt matter what's on the inside of what is true, only what is perceived and believed? It seems a very shallow, sorry existence and these types are always able to skew the truth to make themselves look favorable. I think limited exposure and distance is wise. They're not emotionally healthy and will never be, so just have to keep distance. Cant save or help people like that. To them there is nothing wrong with them and everything wrong with everyone else, masters of deflection.

I think genetics definitely has an effect on who people become but I also dont think people are defined or doomed based on their heritage. I also think person to person it depends on the extent of nature vs nurture has an influence. I think choice and emotional awareness is a factor.. Twin studies are fascinating. They did quite a few separated twin studies and found they often lived almost parallel lives despite being raised in different locations and by different families.






My Dad had a friend who didnt believe in the nature argument until he married a woman with two kids by two different dads. The biological fathers had no interaction with the children. Then my Dad's friend and his wife had 1 biological child. Each child turned out exactly like their father. The first one ran away from home, the 2nd one became a pedophile and the 3rd (his daughter) became an honors student and graduated from law school. He raised the kids from an early stage but it didnt make too much difference. Heredity is definitely a factor in brain structure and behavior. I've often wondered how much people's chemistry affects them and how much is choice and structure. How we think and how we live influences our brain and genes. To what extent nobody knows but it's sort of an interesting chicken or egg argument to think about.


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## Caledonian

I find gun violence in some countries extremely scary, even seeing police with guns makes me uneasy. 

Violence and crime levels in Scotland are down. Murder is at its lowest for forty years, down by 40%. There were 59 cases last year; of these, 2 were killed by guns. Still too many though.

It’s shocking that the figures show women were more likely to be killed by partners and ex-partners (men by acquaintances). There were 14 cases in 2017-2018. Even worse, in the last 10 years, 36 children under the age of 16 years (15 under a year old), were killed by one of their parents. :sad:

It’s really sad that domestic violence jumps to the thousands when you look at the number of reported cases which didn’t lead to murder. Figures even show spikes after sporting teams lose! How much isn’t reported? The slaps that are dismissed because ‘he’s/she’s sorry’ or the sarcastic remarks and put downs that slowly work at their self-worth. 

Handguns are banned here but you can own some sporting rifles or shotguns with a license. The Police ask you to justify why you’d want other types of weapons and that you're no danger to the public. It means that hands and/or sharp objects are the main weapons of choice. It’s far easier to put your hand in the kitchen drawer.

I’ll never understand how you can do that to someone you love or once loved.


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## bsms

Haven't read all the posts since last night nor can I now. Just two quick points:

Border Collie breeders tell me they can breed a Border Collie to work closer to sheep or from further away. They can breed for a dog who will swing wide and then come in, or not. And of course, much of what Border Collies do is bred into them. So...if Border Collies behave they way they do largely from breeding, then why would human behavior be totally voluntary?

Gun violence in the US: It is extremely local. Much of it is related to criminal behavior. In Chicago, 80% of the VICTIMS have criminal records. And in Chicago, IIRC, almost all the gun violence comes in less than 10% of the city. I own a variety of handguns. I'd need some time to think to count them up. Yet I also leave my doors unlocked most of the time. In Arizona, no permit or training is needed to carry a gun concealed. When the law changed to that, the prediction was the street would flow with blood. Didn't change much, though. The folks doing the vast majority of the killing were already content to break the law and carry concealed (often carrying stolen guns). And law-abiding people don't pull their guns out and start shooting for no reason. I'll carry a gun in church today. Churches (and synagogues) seem to be desirable targets in recent years - like movie theaters used to be. If someone wants to shoot up our small church (often <35), they had better plan on some return fire. I doubt I'll be the only one carrying, too. But of course, the odds are we'll go the next 10 years without a hint of violence.

I'll also admit that at 61, I value the right to carry more than I did at 35. I also understand why a lot of women carry here. Gun violence? It isn't the guns that are violent. My neighborhood is floating in them without any violence. But 20 miles away are places I won't willingly go at night, and would not consider going at night unarmed. In America, we have very violent inner cities. Outside of those areas, we have a very safe society. 68% of US murders take place in 5% of the counties. And in my county, I'd guess 80% plus take place in 5% of the county.

"_The Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) said in a new report that there is a “geographical concentration” of murders, with 68 percent of killings occurring in just 5 percent of the nation’s counties. The homicides also tend to be concentrated to relatively small pockets of those counties, the report said....

In 2014, the U.S. murder rate was 4.4 per 100,000 people, according to the data of the report. If the deadliest 5 percent of the counties were removed, the U.S. murder rate would be 2.56 per 100,000 people, the report showed.

More than half of last year’s murders occurred in only 2 percent of the nation’s counties.

Looking at the historical data, the CPRC said that murders were even more geographically concentrated in decades past. On average, 73 percent of counties in any given year had zero murders from 1977 to 2000._"








https://www.foxnews.com/us/us-murders-concentrated-in-5-percent-of-counties

My county is pretty red. But the violence is almost all within a 2 mile corridor running along I-19 to I-10, from the Mexico border to Phoenix. Avoid the I-19/I-10 corridor at night and you can feel very safe strolling around the neighborhood. Drugs running from Mexico to Phoenix. If I moved to central Utah, I'd probably never carry a gun again. I went to school in Utah in a county that had never recorded a single murder. Ever.

PS: "Mr. Weisburd said that in his studies of larger cities, about 1 percent of the streets produce 25 percent of the crime and about 5 percent of the streets produce 50 percent of the crime."

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/apr/25/most-murders-occurred-in-5-percent-of-countys-says/


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## waresbear

The part about dog breeding, true BUT, environment plays a very big role. Put that border collie in a city apartment and see what kind of dog you'll get! Chances are an neurotic one.


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## waresbear

With the border collie dog breeding thing, while I agree genetics play a big role, environment plays a role as well. Take that same border collie and put them in a city apartment with not much stimulus or exercise, and see what kind of a dog you end up with. However, take a French bulldog and put it on the ranch, you won't have a good dog there either. I believe humans are like that as well, our genetics are not the same therefore they need different types of upbringing, stimulus and environments. Unfortunately how do we figure out who needs what?


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## waresbear

Sorry about the double post, The forum is being silly, I didn't want to post the first one I meant to correct it, Sheesh!


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## bsms

I don't doubt environment and training also plays a big role, as it does for humans. But if there is a genetic tendency for herding sheep, and a genetic tendency for specific sheep herding behaviors, then isn't it reasonable that our own tendencies have a genetic component? 

But that would be a tendency, or a temptation, not a requirement. I may have inherited my anger from my Dad, but how I deal with anger is up to me. My BIL have have inherited a temper from HIS Dad, but the kid who was slugged grew up to be a father who NEVER hit his kids! And with all my temper, the fights I got into when I was a kid mostly taught me I hate fighting. If backed into a corner, I'll fight. But I learned decades ago to avoid corners!

Horses have helped me. I get ****ed at Bandit sometimes. He gets ****ed at me sometimes. But neither of us gain any benefit from being mad, so we are both learning to channel our anger more productively. Kind of wish I had owned some horses as a kid! And yet...I've seen people who frankly seem to have become MORE abusive and less understanding around horses. There are a lot of bullies in the world of riding. So maybe - I'll show my Baptist side here - maybe God kept me from horses until 50 because that was when I was ready to learn from them? And if my first horse hadn't been a wonderful free-thinking Arabian mare, maybe riding would have made me worse instead of better? But how do you resist a face like this?


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## gottatrot

Here in Oregon we have Tonya Harding, who threw a hubcap at her boyfriend and then beat him up. :smile:
My mom threw a carrot at my dad once, and that was a bit traumatizing to us kids. My dad didn't throw it back though.

Drugs and mental illness (and the way they interact) seem to cause most of the violence where I live. People sometimes use guns, but they also use knives, machetes, baseball bats, or run over people with vehicles. Those who have mental issues and also the ability to think creatively can make bigger plans, and spread gas through underground subways or hide with automatic weapons above crowds and kill many more than others. Or mail bombs around. 

Since I don't know who is suffering from psychosis and also within my close environment, I prefer to have the ability to keep a gun to protect myself. We see a lot of cases of severe psychosis in the hospital, and you wouldn't want to meet any of those people when they were in a battle with the aliens. It's not like you can rationalize with them.


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## SueC

*LOW WASTE BUILDING SITE*

This is from the current issue of _The Owner Builder_. I've already sent in the next article, which is about successful downshifting - how to leave the rat race.


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## SueC

Lovely post, @bsms.  Being human isn't a picnic... but can be wonderful too. - Thanks for the stats post too. This is a very educational group of people! :loveshower:

Hullo, @Caledonian! :wave: We were looking though the Guardian the other day at hill and mountain walks in the UK. If we had a TARDIS... (my broken record!) ...so much amazing walking. Some real Lord of the Rings country up in Scotland. And those islands...

@waresbear, how're you and DH - enough time for fun, or busy busy? How's the _hoss_?

@knightrider, how's morning riding and your family friend? Is she over not riding Chorro?

@Knave is busy, I know, but :wave: if you're reading!

@gottatrot, I can sort of see it. I really like my sharp pitchfork! Very good, and if you watch _Pride & Prejudice & Zombies_, you can learn new moves with such things! :rofl: You really can't be defenseless, on that I think we can all agree - because of metaphorical zombies etc...

@DanteDressageNerd, I love TED talks! And she's really spot on, isn't she. The real causes of various issues aren't "just biochemical" - there's actual _reasons_... We've got to look more holistically, and less in isolation at things...

Oh yeah, and gun violence / violence - yesterday morning, Brett had to go on jury duty. They turned out his pockets and got all weird over his Swiss Army knife - a multitool you can legally carry, and we use it all the time. He wasn't allowed to carry it in the courthouse. It's nearly as silly as the stuff with the airplanes - do you know how many nail clippers get confiscated? Including a pair of mine. I mean - nail clippers!!! Who do you know who's been killed with nail clippers? Maybe you could choke on nail clippers, but I find it very hard to see any other way of killing someone with them. Maybe put them in a shotgut and fire them at high velocity? Whereas, nylon stockings have been used many times to strangle people, but nobody is banning those on planes. Or chopsticks, with which you can easily kill people if you know how. Ho hum.

Brett got let off jury duty because he's got the flu, so he came home again. He's still recovering, but at least he slept through for the first time in over a week, last night. The GP gave him another week off, but I hope we'll both be OK again by maybe Thursday. I've got to avoid cold air just now because the virus is sitting in the lungs, which is curtailing my riding and outdoors activity. Today is nice and sunny though and now warm enough to take rugs off horses for the first time in days!


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## gottatrot

SueC said:


> Very good, and if you watch _Pride & Prejudice & Zombies_, you can learn new moves with such things! :rofl: You really can't be defenseless, on that I think we can all agree - because of metaphorical zombies etc...


My sister and I watched that movie in the theater. It was strange though, because it didn't seem like the other people watching had seen or read any Jane Austen or else didn't understand the jokes. We were the only ones laughing. That happened to us once at a Shakespeare play also. We were cracking up and everyone else just sat there silently. It was as if they didn't understand the old English or the humor was not obvious enough.


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## knightrider

Thank you for asking, @SueC! Speaking of Middle Earth, yesterday I did a solo ride on Acicate, and it was so magical, I felt like I was in Middle Earth. I wondered if I would come across an elf or a hobbit. Part of where I ride is full of ancient oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. The air felt mysterious and magical, and it was so lovely.

Our family friend is getting along better with Acicate. She gets to ride Chorro once or twice a week and he is staying sound. I cannot figure out what was causing Chorro to be "off." But, so far, so good. We took her tubing down the Itchnetucknee River on Saturday and everyone had a grand time. So, that predicament seems to be smoothing itself out.


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## egrogan

Thought the science lovers here would get a chuckle out of this story I heard on NPR this morning:


> A woman in England who recently celebrated her birthday requested a cake decorated with a picture of her favorite singer, Mariah Carey. However the birthday girl was probably feeling emotions when she saw the result, which was topped not with the singer of "Hero" but with the face of one of science's heroes: Marie Curie, who conducted groundbreaking work on radioactivity.


A more in-depth report available below :rofl:

https://www.livescience.com/65726-marie-curie-cake.html


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## bsms

I'd rate Marie Curie above Mariah Carey in the big scheme of things, but I'm an old guy who believes playing Mariah Carey songs to prisoners of war would violate the Geneva conventions. Better looking, too:


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## egrogan

@bsms, you're not wrong on all of the above!


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## SueC

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

We'd much rather the Marie Curie cake and anything else for that matter. Thank you @egrogan for our daily hilarity, and @bsms for amusing commentary. Indeed!

The way you feel about Mariah Carey being against the Geneva convention - does anyone here know that crime against humanity called _Achy Breaky Heart_? I mean, do any of you know a song that is actually _worse_ than that one? If so, please tell! Acoustic torture, indeed... I had to grit my teeth through the abovementioned song at a wedding once... Has anyone here got any stories like that, of having to endure really bad music?

Worse still than Mariah Carey, to me, has been Whitney Houston. (Now someone here is going to love one or both or might even have walked down the aisle to _Achy Breaky Heart_, and if that's you, thank you for putting up with this exchange, and you don't have to hide, you can tell us, and I promise not to make fun of you. Tastes do vary...)

An English teacher pointed out to me when I was 16 and our class was doing a music project that "I don't personally like" and "this is crap" are not actually the same thing - and neither are "I love" and "this is brilliant."  Granted, I still find it hard to apply that with things like Whitney Houston, and any other kind of yowling (see!), where my kneejerk reaction would be very similar, but I just never went to her concerts because of it, and tried very hard to bite my tongue around people who adored Whitney Houston's music - which includes a really good friend of mine, actually, so I once endured that eardrum-shattering bilge (see! this is the uncensored thinking, but it doesn't make it objectively right, or polite, or a good idea to say it, no matter how much short-term satisfaction it might give my shadow self) at high volume during a four-hour car trip, giving a credible impression of a poker face, and being sociable and warm - because I love my friend - when under any other circumstances I would have run screaming and disinfected myself...
@knightrider, that was such a lovely scene you painted.  Glad you enjoyed your ride, and things are working out re Chorro. When's the last time he was off?


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## egrogan

_Achy Breaky Heart _is quite bad, but I'd submit it can actually be worse.


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## SueC

mg:, @egrogan! The pit goes deeper than I thought!


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## bsms

I liked Whitney Houston's voice, but I often felt her singing was about showing off her voice instead of bringing out the meaning of the song. My daughter is a huge Sinatra fan. I respect his singing but rarely listen to his songs. Still, he acted his songs, so to speak. I don't drink - not a religious objection, just don't like the taste - but I can "feel" this song. I've pulled enough guys out of bars at 2 AM to have some feel for it, but it is mostly Sinatra making me believe:


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## SueC

gottatrot said:


> My sister and I watched that movie in the theater. It was strange though, because it didn't seem like the other people watching had seen or read any Jane Austen or else didn't understand the jokes. We were the only ones laughing. That happened to us once at a Shakespeare play also. We were cracking up and everyone else just sat there silently. It was as if they didn't understand the old English or the humor was not obvious enough.


Isn't that sad? Here in Australia, they've been taking Shakespeare off the curriculum more and more. The language is so rich... it's such a shame that such decisions get made.

Ever read _The Screwtape Letters_? This song to me is Screwtape running the education system, TV programming etc...






Mike Scott had been having fun with distortion and being noisy, after spending some years in Ireland doing traditional Irish music influenced material...







Wasn't the proposal scene hilarious in the Zombies version? :rofl: The funniest thing of it all I think was when Darcy was dusting himself off after all that combat, apologised, and politely wished Lizzy all the best for her future etc! :rofl:


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## Spanish Rider

My taste in literature and film is quite bipolar. My favorites are Jane Austen and The Walking Dead, so when they came out with the zombie versión of Pride and Prejudice, I was so excited, but no one has wanted to watch it with me. So now you have inspired me to re-re-reread P&P and find the film online. 


Gun violence in Spain is practically non-existent. Handguns are illegal and licenses for hunting rifles are strictly controlled. However, terrorist violence here has always involved explosives. Can't say one is better than the other, but I feel zero need for a gun.

@Caledonian mentioned the death rate resulting from violence against women. This week, the Spanish government released a chilling statistic: *1000 women* in Spain have died at the hands of their significant others or former significant others since 2003, which is the year when these data started to be registered. Without handguns, most of these deaths were stabbings, strangulations or beatings. When there is a will, there is way.


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## gottatrot

Spanish Rider said:


> My taste in literature and film is quite bipolar.


A very caring, gentle nurse I used to work with had an extensive barbie collection and also loved slasher movies. There is no accounting for taste. 
For some reason I quite like John Wick in the movies (haven't seen the 3rd one). I think the dog angle got to me. My DH does not understand the attraction. A reviewer said the movies are "A ballet of violence." 
When heroes seem too vulnerable it frustrates me. If you're going to be Superman, then be extra super. There's real, and there's fantasy, and in the fantasy I expect something fantastical. If things are trying to be realistic, I see the flaws. If they are admittedly fake, then it becomes enjoyable. 
:smile::smile:


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## Knave

I am like that too @gottatrot! I love the whole Bruce Willis type of character. I serious BA always excites me. I want my tough guys extreme. 

To be honest I don’t truly enjoy most Shakespeare. There are a couple I really like, but not all of them. I’m just not a fan of plays in most cases. I wondered though if people didn’t laugh because they were too high class for that. Lol

ETA: That being said, my family explains I am the worst movie watcher alive. I want to know the end before watching. I can’t stand not knowing. I read the last chapter of books before the book.


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## Rob55

@SueC

Sue your calm and thoughtful comments are so different than responses in the good old USA. I’ve often commented if we could discuss sex like we do oral hygiene; we could prevent unwanted pregnancy like we prevent tooth decay. Many developed countries prove this point. I strongly agree an event like abortion can be unbelievably traumatic for some and no big deal for others. Hoping we break the barriers to real communication regarding this issue over here. 

Thank for remembering Joannah. She had, and gave me, a real scare. First words from her primary care physician were, “ You almost died.” Most of my time lately is helping her coordinate and travel to care. Her meds do not allow her to drive. 

I feel for your friend Bill. Glad he was surrounded by competent care when he had his event. Good vibes are definitely being sent in his direction. I pray he has full recovery and independence. 

I believe Joannah would not have made it had I not been home. The week prior to her event I was coordinating with an agency in British Columbia to visit a standardbred gelding retiring from the tracks with the intent of acquiring him. All that has changed. We are learning a new normal and hoping for Joannah’s full recovery and independence. 

Love the pictures and YouTube clip. A guess you are about finished Autumn as we anticipate Summer. Enjoy the seasons. 

Blessings 

Rob
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Rob55

All involved: NetFlix describes my movie preference as dark and gritty. The novels I read are the same.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Rob55

waresbear said:


> The part about dog breeding, true BUT, environment plays a very big role. Put that border collie in a city apartment and see what kind of dog you'll get! Chances are an neurotic one.


Not to start a fuss, but this kind of makes me wonder at folks who can’t understand why a horse with no turnout can be so high energy.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Spanish Rider

> For some reason I quite like John Wick in the movies (haven't seen the 3rd one). I think the dog angle got to me.


We just saw the third with our son this weekend. I did not like it as much, if at all. There is virtually no dialogue & no character development. It's all kill, kill… and lots of ridiculously repetitive smashing of things. Not enough comic relief in this film, and the dog does not play much of a part, either. A shame. My 16yo son really liked it, though.


@SueC , speaking of weddings and poor song choices, I once went to a wedding reception in Madrid where the restaurant brought out the roasted lamb with low lighting, laser lights and sparklers stuck in the meat, all to the theme of Star Wars. Good thing the music was loud enough to mask our laughter. Later on in the evening, the lights were lowered once again, the laser lights came back on, and the wedding cake was lowered from the ceiling to the tune of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I kid you not.


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## SueC

Spanish Rider said:


> My taste in literature and film is quite bipolar. My favorites are Jane Austen and The Walking Dead, so when they came out with the zombie versión of Pride and Prejudice, I was so excited, but no one has wanted to watch it with me. So now you have inspired me to re-re-reread P&P and find the film online.


If I had a TARDIS we could have a movie night with popcorn. I've watched this twice now and am re-watching the horse and rider scenes. All the actors did their own riding in this one, and an excellent job. Beautiful horses - really cresty, large, striking black horses - some kind of Renaissance breed? - and ditto greys, possibly Spanish horses? As usual, not a single horse in a snaffle - all in pelhams or other curb bits, one of them appeared to be in a bitless setup. It was the same in _Lord of the Rings_ etc. I've always said this - snaffles don't suit this kind of riding, like they don't suit polo. This way, noone gets hurt - you can see the horses are comfortable. No bracing, no noses in the air, no gaping mouths, no fights, no "ouch".

You'll enjoy this one!  And prepping by re-reading - it's always nice to have an excuse to re-read Austen. Also, you could re-watch the BBC's original 1990s production, and enjoy watching Colin Firth get into the bathtub! ;-) That scene is as famous as the pottery wheel scene in _Ghost_. :Angel: 




gottatrot said:


> When heroes seem too vulnerable it frustrates me. If you're going to be Superman, then be extra super. There's real, and there's fantasy, and in the fantasy I expect something fantastical. If things are trying to be realistic, I see the flaws. If they are admittedly fake, then it becomes enjoyable.
> :smile::smile:


I'm enjoying your perspective!  Brett went to see that third John Wick film, by the way. That's too violent for me, but I'm thinking of finally catching _The Crow_ - because it's a cult classic, rather than because I'm likely to agree with the philosophies in it.

I really enjoyed the make-believe of _Lord Of The RIngs_ and _Harry Potter_ - a completely alternative universe, but with a deep humanity you could relate to, and the same struggle between light and darkness. Their heroes were vulnerable, but then they weren't superheroes either, the whole point of these stories was that Frodo and his friends, and Harry and his friends, were ordinary people who had to do great things, and in doing so, they grew tremendously as people (and friendship and love made much of this growth possible for them). It's saying, "This is your blueprint, this is what you need to do!" instead of waiting for someone else to come along and be Superman and rescue you.

So I preferred watching Christopher Reeve on horseback (sad about the accident, but he was a good rider). One of my favourite cartoons is _Groo_, he's such an antihero! :rofl: Love _Asterix_ too, they're relatable people with a few magic tricks up their sleeves.




Knave said:


> To be honest I don’t truly enjoy most Shakespeare. There are a couple I really like, but not all of them. I’m just not a fan of plays in most cases. I wondered though if people didn’t laugh because they were too high class for that. Lol


That's funny, because in Shakespeare's time, of course, going to his plays wasn't a highbrow thing at all! It seems to have become so, though, like eating caviar etc. Shame really, because it means a lot of people are going to Shakespeare plays to be seen to be going to them! :rofl:

To enjoy Shakespeare, you do generally have to understand a lot of the history behind the story being portrayed, and pick up some of that antique vocabulary (which is such fun, though! - very versatile language). So that's why in literature classes, you're always giving the contexts and explaining the history etc. But underneath are the same old human themes that there always were, still are and always will be. Love, death, friendship, loyalty, goodness, evil, jealousy, ambition, politics, plotting, spin etc etc. Shakespeare is also really naughty - he's always making jokes on the side. I really recommend the graveyard scene in Hamlet, where the gravedigger is talking to Hamlet... Shakespeare is always at it.

You don't enjoy Shakespeare as much because you weren't in my class! :Angel: ...bwahahaha. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's amazing how even the most disenchanted student becomes so malleable if the material is presented in a movie with visually attractive actors... I had absolutely no trouble getting my class into _The Crucible_ (not Shakespeare, Arthur Miller, Salem Witch Hunts) either because the boys were busy ogling WInona Ryder and the girls Daniel Day-Lewis... for some reason, too, many girls went wild over Leonardo de Caprio playing Romeo in that modern version... I could never see what they saw in that guy, I was always too busy looking for his air valve, he truly looks inflatable... and like he should be sold in some seedy shop for desperate people without imaginations... but I digress...



> ETA: That being said, my family explains I am the worst movie watcher alive. I want to know the end before watching. I can’t stand not knowing. I read the last chapter of books before the book.


I have those tendencies as well, and Brett finds that quite irritating, because he's the opposite. He doesn't want any spoilers, whereas I prefer to know the plot in advance, so I can enjoy all the other stuff, and look at technique etc. And I've been known to get to the point in a book where I just read the last chapter, so I can do other things meanwhile, and then return to reading the book somewhere earlier where I left off!  I'm far more interested in the characters than in the plot...




Rob55 said:


> @SueCSue your calm and thoughtful comments are so different than responses in the good old USA. I’ve often commented if we could discuss sex like we do oral hygiene; we could prevent unwanted pregnancy like we prevent tooth decay. Many developed countries prove this point. I strongly agree an event like abortion can be unbelievably traumatic for some and no big deal for others. Hoping we break the barriers to real communication regarding this issue over here.


The tooth decay analogy is excellent!  That's exactly how it is. At the end of the day, sex is a body function. I'm way too European culturally to understand the hysteria about it coming from the USA. I can't understand why with morality, people can be more concerned about what sexual acts consenting people engage in (when that's their private business) and with whom (gender, race, yawn), than with the mass exploitation and social injustice going on across the community, or with so-called "collateral damage" in war (disgusting to use such a euphemism for innocent people dying), or with the poisoning of rivers by industrial activity, etc etc. There seems to be no sense of proportion. It's straining at the gnat, but swallowing the camel. Same with abortion. People get seriously upset about the right for a full future life of a protohuman which at that point is more primitive and less sensate than an insect which they would have no compunction swatting (unless they're Buddhists and don't engage in this sort of species apartheid that makes humans deadly precious and everything else expendable), but they care far less for the welfare of babies that are already born, and of children growing up in squalor and / or emotionally unsupported and/or abused in various ways, or for an entire family that has nothing to do with any sort of war getting blown up by a bomb because they happen to live in Afghanistan etc., and they'll spit on the homeless or the unemployed.

If you're going to be "pro-life" you have to be more than pro-"Every Sperm Is Sacred" - you should really look up the definition of life in a dictionary first, and then look at what philosophers and biologists and sociologists have to say about it, instead of making it into a really narrow thing involving an early developmental stage of an unborn of one particular species. People rather forget that the way we're going with the anthropocentric world views that are destroying the biosphere, we are bringing destruction not only on other species, but ultimately on ourselves as well. I wish every modern human had the understanding of this that, for instance, many Native Americans had, before industrial humans arrived on their continent... and if not, then I wish that people would at least respect that human sexuality and reproduction are actually a private thing between the people involved, and nobody else's business. And if they did, then there would also be far less pregnancy terminations, as you've said in an earlier post, and as the statistics on various countries and their approaches bear out.




> Thank for remembering Joannah. She had, and gave me, a real scare. First words from her primary care physician were, “ You almost died.” Most of my time lately is helping her coordinate and travel to care. Her meds do not allow her to drive.
> 
> I feel for your friend Bill. Glad he was surrounded by competent care when he had his event. Good vibes are definitely being sent in his direction. I pray he has full recovery and independence.
> 
> I believe Joannah would not have made it had I not been home. The week prior to her event I was coordinating with an agency in British Columbia to visit a standardbred gelding retiring from the tracks with the intent of acquiring him. All that has changed. We are learning a new normal and hoping for Joannah’s full recovery and independence.


I'm so sorry you're travelling a rough road, but I'm glad you are travelling it together. Please accept the continued well-wishes of our household for yours. We're hoping that with Joannah, as with Bill, recovery is going to happen to the point where people can return to near-normal. Bill is out of hospital now and in the care of one of his daughters, and getting all sorts of assessments and rehabilitation done. He has had several stents and a pacemaker installed to reduce future risk. He has every intention of returning to Albany, but the question is whether he will need assisted living of some sort. They don't think he will drive again. If that's the case and he is well enough otherwise, we'll be collecting him for the Sunday lunches in future. Fingers crossed. Thank you for your well wishes for him,




> Love the pictures and YouTube clip. A guess you are about finished Autumn as we anticipate Summer. Enjoy the seasons.


Thank you, and you. You're about to have your longest day; we're having our shortest tomorrow! We're always happy with the winter solstice that the days are going to stop getting shorter, and we're actually going to get more daylight again! 


*SHORT FARM AND RIDING REPORT*

The day was cloudy and cold, and Brett and I spent much of it indoors with the fire on, avoiding breathing in cold air. We're still coughing, but otherwise improving. Brett has his appetite back, yay, and we had open steak sandwiches for lunch, with the works: Home-made bread, topped with smoked ham and grilled cheese, slathered in homemade tomato sauce, with beetroot and egg and salad greens on top, and then the steak, with mustard slapped on. More salad all around to cover the plate - we grow plenty.

We uploaded a backlog of farm photos on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/

In the afternoon it got sunny enough for me to go and plant 20 trees in the roadside rehabilitation area. After that, I fed the horses and hopped on Sunsmart for a 20-minute lap of the valley floor. I hope to get a longer ride in tomorrow, and had a ridge loop / valley loop ride on him two days ago. :cowboy:

In the evening, I made "hand grenades" for dessert. This is brioche dough made into peach-sized balls and baked in the oven, in milk. You serve the hand grenades hot with home-made vanilla sauce, and fruit, generally - tonight, our fruit was brandied cherries, from our Morello tree. Brett has his tastebuds back, and it was wonderful to see him enjoying his food again. He was waxing lyrical about the flavour combinations. They really did work!


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## egrogan

Continued good wishes to Bill, @SueC. I hope he is able to return to his home.

The "hand grenades" sound absolutely divine. Tell me more about baking them in milk though. It seems that would make the milk go through strange changes, curdling even? How does that work?

I'll leave you with the delicious summer treat we just got to enjoy: buttermilk biscuits made by lovely husband, the first fresh strawberries of the season from a local farm stand, and homemade whipped cream with just a little vanilla added. We're lucky to have many local dairies that sell buttermilk and cream so everything on the plate is from the neighborhood. Oh, and the pottery is also made close by :grin:


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## Spanish Rider

Does your TARDIS have a built-in popcorn maker? 

If the horses you mention were Spanish, it would not surprise me that they were not in snaffles. _Doma vaquera_ bits tend to have more oomph.


Which reminds me! @gottatrot , there was also a barn scene in John Wick.


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## SueC

Recipe for @egrogan - and anyone else who wants to make explosive desserts! 

*HAND GRENADES WITH VANILLA SAUCE AND BRANDIED CHERRIES*

For the hand grenades - make a brioche dough. I'm afraid we live in metric-land...

500g flour
50g sugar
50g butter (not, not, not margarine or axle grease or any other substitute!!!)
1 rounded tsp dry yeast, or equivalent fresh
250mL milk (full cream, not chalk water)
1 egg (this will make you happy! ;-) :chicken2::chicken::chicken1
finely grated zest of 1 lemon

As you know, I have a breadmaker and so, I stick the dry ingredients in the machine, and heat the milk up, together with the butter, in the microwave eek: another modern appliance and even bulkier - you can heat it in a saucepan instead if you prefer ;-)  ) - around 2 min on high, and then cool back to a temperature that won't kill the yeast - think baby bath / cat bath. After that, you can throw it in, add the egg, and start the machine. I let it rise in there but not bake.

Since you'll be doing the traditional thing, I'd recommend whisking (with a hand whisk, in this instance - now I'm not pulling your leg, I actually use those) the yeast and enough flour into the warmed milk and butter (in a glass bowl) to give you a thick pancake batter consistency, and then letting that rise to a sponge before adding in all the rest of the ingredients, and letting it rise again.

When it's good to go, divide it up into thirds, and thirds again, so you end up with nine roughly equal balls of dough. Roll them so they're round, and arrange them in a square glass dish. Pour about 2cm of milk into this dish (i.e. this is how far it goes up the side, with the dough already in), and set aside in a warm spot to rise another 20min. Meanwhile, get 500g of pitted cherries, heat them up in a little of their juice, and add a small amount of sugar (depends on taste, and cherry variety - we used 2 tbsp for our sour Morellos), a big splash of brandy, as well as enough cornflour to thicken the juice a tiny bit. Set aside.

When the hand grenades are ready to bake, put them in the oven at 180 deg C, middle shelf, fan forced - with alfoil tightly over the top of the dish, so they can steam nicely and the tops don't burn (if you have a covered dish, you can use that); about 20 minutes till done.

Make your vanilla sauce - I heat up about 50g of butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and whisk in enough cornflour to make a sort of roux, but don't burn it, immediately add milk in a slow stream and keep whisking so you don't get lumps. I used 600mL of milk with 2 tbsp sugar and a big dash of natural vanilla (use the beans if you have them). Because I love vanilla sauce, this won't cover the full quantity of hand grenades. I could make double quantities, but prefer to make it fresh...

Then, separate your now conjoined hand grenades and serve up hot with the accompaniments. Brett says they're called hand grenades because they are the right size and they have explosive flavour.

Variations: You can put the fruit inside the grenades before baking - I sometimes fill them with my concentrated plum sauce. You can use whatever fruits or berries you like with this, and vary your sauces too - maybe a nice caramel sauce if you're feeling cheeky.

By the way - your summer dessert looks totally divine! :loveshower:


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## DanteDressageNerd

Come on you guys are making me hungry and Im on a diet :lol: Oh it looks so good!!

I used to make GF chocolate whiskey cupcakes and vodka cupcakes that were really good...sounds alcoholic but they were really good!

There is this Danish pastry that is my favorite it's layers of cake with whipped cream base layer is dark chocolate and wrapped in marzipan. Only way to make it better would be to make a liquorice version but that might be too Nordic for most pallette but oh liquorice is so good. 

As for Jane Austin, I really like Persuasion and Emma. I think those ones are really good. Persuasion I think has a lot of depth and complexity that is quite nice. Also like Jane Eyre.


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## SueC

*REAL TOMATO SAUCE*

I've just finished writing a rant about supermarkets, because they offer ever-increasing varieties of the same rubbish - it is now impossible for me to find tomato sauce (for cheesies, sausages etc, not for pasta) that's made in Australia, from 100% Australian tomatoes, bottled in glass, no artificial colours or flavours, less than 15% sugar, and no added alternative sweeteners - even though the shelf space for tomato sauces has now expanded to 4m. Good thing that this was the first season I had my own cooking tomatoes - so I made my own, for the first time, this week. It turned out a treat – here is the recipe.

*Real Tomato Sauce, 100% Local Tomatoes, Organically Grown, Re-Used Glass Bottle, No Artificial Anything, Low Sugar, No Substitute Sweeteners, No Corporations, No Exploitation, No Industrial Farming, Negligible Food Miles, Tastes Amazing*

_Makes approx. 1 litre – cook larger quantities if you are happy with the result, and have more ripe (or frozen) tomatoes on hand. If you don't – start some tomato seedlings by late winter, and make this next summer. It's not quite 100% Australian ingredients because of some spices, but that's a minor compromise._

1.5 kg ripe tomatoes – cooking varieties like Roma or Amish Paste – some Cherry types in the mix work too – supermarket tomatoes won't have the flavour
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 tsp freshly ground peppercorns
2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cloves (can use whole, then fish out at end)
1 tsp ground or finely grated ginger
1 tsp allspice / pimento
¼ tsp cayenne pepper or ground chillies
1 clove garlic, crushed
300mL white vinegar, or cider vinegar
1/4 cup (or less) brown sugar – tomatoes already contain sugar
50g tomato paste (optional, to thicken, add at end)

Place all ingredients except tomato paste in a heavy-bottomed saucepan, bring to the boil, cook on medium for 40 minutes with the lid on, then lift the lid slightly by keeping your wooden spoon in the pan and continue cooking around 40 minutes more (stir frequently to prevent sticking) until thick and pulpy. Add tomato paste if using, zap with blender stick until it's as fine as you want it, fill into pre-warmed glass bottle with a funnel while hot. Let cool, and refrigerate. If you want to store this in the pantry for later, use sterile techniques for bottling. This is a “wholemeal” sauce - I don't bother straining out seeds or skin; I like fibre and extra flavour.

Enjoy – while making a better world, as well as your own sauce.

_Attached photos: The first bottle of home-made tomato sauce, and those steak sandwiches we used it on, that I talked about in an earlier post._


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## SueC

Spanish Rider said:


> SueC[/MENTION] , speaking of weddings and poor song choices, I once went to a wedding reception in Madrid where the restaurant brought out the roasted lamb with low lighting, laser lights and sparklers stuck in the meat, all to the theme of Star Wars. Good thing the music was loud enough to mask our laughter. Later on in the evening, the lights were lowered once again, the laser lights came back on, and the wedding cake was lowered from the ceiling to the tune of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I kid you not.


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

That's hilarious!

Brett says that the spaceship in _Close Encounters_ kind of looked like a wedding cake, so he can see how that would work! :blueunicorn:

Did you all have to attend in space costumes? Did the bride and groom have light sabres?

The funniest thing I've ever been to was the cross-dress wedding theme end-of-year party of the English department of a school in which I was teaching in 1998. All the names were spoonerised and everyone got a role. I was page boy; the head of department - think burly soccer type - was the bride, in his wife's dress with all his armpit hair spilling out over the lace. :shock: Another type like that was chief bridesmaid - more armpit hair, and now also chest hair in a low-cut silk taffeta... One of the female teachers played priest, and did a splendid reading. It was really well done and could have passed as a proper wedding. The food was amazing, and the atmosphere was superb... :happydance:




DanteDressageNerd said:


> I used to make GF chocolate whiskey cupcakes and vodka cupcakes that were really good...sounds alcoholic but they were really good!


I bet they are! Feel free to share the recipe if you can find it! 



> There is this Danish pastry that is my favorite it's layers of cake with whipped cream base layer is dark chocolate and wrapped in marzipan. Only way to make it better would be to make a liquorice version but that might be too Nordic for most pallette but oh liquorice is so good.


mg: I must have the recipe...




> As for Jane Austin, I really like Persuasion and Emma. I think those ones are really good. Persuasion I think has a lot of depth and complexity that is quite nice. Also like Jane Eyre.


I read _Emma_ so long ago that I need to re-read it! And haven't got around to _Persuasion_ yet, but really must one day. Have you read _Northanger Abbey_? I must give that a spin too... Brett just re-read it, and says it's a Gothic parody.

Brett loves _Jane Eyre_ - it's growing on me more the older I get. But my favourite Bronte book is Emily's _Wuthering Heights_... followed by Anne's _The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall_... I also like _Agnes Grey_.

I could _eat_ their dialogue, in any of these books. I used to wonder why people didn't talk like that in real life. I wondered the same again when I watched _Pride & Prejudice & Zombies_... Wow, if we were socialised to speak with such eloquence!


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## egrogan

Thanks for the recipe @SueC. We make brioche dough every now and then, and yes, a very heavy duty hand whisk is involved. I love the idea of stuffing the fruit inside; also thinking it could be tasty with raspberries.


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## Spanish Rider

> There is this Danish pastry that is my favorite it's layers of cake with whipped cream base layer is dark chocolate and wrapped in marzipan.


Well, if it has marzipan, it's not all Danish now, is it? Marzipan is originally from the Iberian Peninsula (_mazapán_ in Spanish, _maçapão_ in Portuguese), and there are similar sweets made throughout the Mediterranean. Toledo, where I live, is famous for its _mazapán_, and our countryside is covered by almond groves. Funny thing is, many Scandianavian countries have adopted it as their own, yet almond trees can't survive such wet weather. In fact, we had a Norwegian exchange student last year, who was studying in the International Baccalaureate program like my son, and as a gift he brought us chocolate-covered marzipan whales. Cute, but seriously?
@SueC , lots of interesting ingredients in that sauce that I never would have thought of adding, like cloves, ginger and allspice. Sounds very interesting, actually. When I make sauce, I sweeten it with puréed red peppers and carrot juice to avoid the sugar.



> Did you all have to attend in space costumes? Did the bride and groom have light sabres?


It wasn't a themed weeding at all, that's why it was so bad! It was about 25 years ago, and the restauranteur simply had seriously bad taste. We actually went to another wedding there some months later, and the bride SPECIFICIALLY asked for no lasers or sci-fi music, but they did it anyway!



> Brett loves Jane Eyre - it's growing on me more the older I get. But my favourite Bronte book is Emily's Wuthering Heights...


Perhaps Brett needs to join HF? Because I love Jane Eyre!!! Can't stand Wuthering Heights… sorry.


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## lostastirrup

Spanish Rider said:


> Well, if it has marzipan, it's not all Danish now, is it? Marzipan is originally from the Iberian Peninsula (_mazapán_ in Spanish, _maçapão_ in Portuguese), and there are similar sweets made throughout the Mediterranean. Toledo, where I live, is famous for its _mazapán_, and our countryside is covered by almond groves. Funny thing is, many Scandianavian countries have adopted it as their own, yet almond trees can't survive such wet weather. In fact, we had a Norwegian exchange student last year, who was studying in the International Baccalaureate program like my son, and as a gift he brought us chocolate-covered marzipan whales. Cute, but seriously?
> 
> @SueC , lots of interesting ingredients in that sauce that I never would have thought of adding, like cloves, ginger and allspice. Sounds very interesting, actually. When I make sauce, I sweeten it with puréed red peppers and carrot juice to avoid the sugar.
> 
> 
> It wasn't a themed weeding at all, that's why it was so bad! It was about 25 years ago, and the restauranteur simply had seriously bad taste. We actually went to another wedding there some months later, and the bride SPECIFICIALLY asked for no lasers or sci-fi music, but they did it anyway!
> 
> 
> Perhaps Brett needs to join HF? Because I love Jane Eyre!!! Can't stand Wuthering Heights… sorry.


I feel the same, I have a hard time enjoying Wuthering heights, probably for what we would call today "the psychological thriller aspect" Jane Eyre I love. I remember the first time I read it in middle school- I was eleven and it was the first classic i read and I spent the weekend when my parents were out of town curled up on the couch with it and the cat. 
It's funny- the same reasons I do not like Wuthering heights are the same reasons I like Thomas Hardy. It's idyllic sometimes but it's also really psychologically real and difficult. Jude the Obscure is pure heartbreak.


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## Knave

I liked Jane Eyre, but I don’t remember the others. I used to be like my little girl is now, and I went through books so quickly that rarely they made an impression that lasted longer than a week or two. Randomly one would really stick with me, and sometimes I wasn’t sure why.

I had an English teacher who was spectacular, and she asked me to read Bones. (Nothing to do with my “Bones”, he was named when I bought him.) That book stuck with me, and I still remember it. I don’t know if it was the tragedy of it all or if it was simply that she wanted me to read it. I never figured out quite why she asked me to.

Little girl is reading to me each morning now. She is reading me “Walk Two Moons,” because a teacher asked her to read it and she loves it. I can see why, and I am really enjoying listening to her read it to me. She is the type to get attached to books and read them over and over. I don’t think we own a book she hasn’t read, even my college books she read. I think maybe she never got into reading the old red books.

They are special! I believe you would love them Sue. They are old books, and sectioned out based on topic. Written probably in the thirties and prior, by many different authors, and bound together in these big red books. My brother inherited half and I the other. I believe he lost his, but I’m not sure. I don’t know who owned them originally, maybe my grandparents on my father’s side. The stories contain so much depth and beautiful language.

What surprises me the most about the language and depth used is that I believe they are intended for children. It always made me think children must have been smarter back in the day. Lol. I loved them though, and I read to my children from the stories. I don’t think they enjoyed them much then because of the difficulty, but I know that she would like them now if she pulled one out.


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## DanteDressageNerd

I never read Wuthering Heights, I started falling asleep reading it and gave up :lol: I cant remember all the classics I've read...I read a lot of naughty ones and ones from the middle ages and renaissance. The Monk is very dark but interesting. 

And yes Germans and the nordics LOVE Marzipan :lol: there is an obsession. Im no different but then am just obsessed with black liquorice. I LOVE it!! SO many varieties here!

Recipe for strawberry cakes with marzipan and vanilla cream. These things are SO good!

Time: 1 hour 
Rest time, dough: 30 minutes 
Baking time: 15-20 minutes 
Number: 6 pcs.


Ground cake for strawberry cake:

• 100 g of cold butter 
• 50 g of icing sugar 
• 100-150 g of wheat flour 
• 1 small egg 
• 6 tarts (8 cm in diameter) 
• 75 g of dark chocolate for brushing


Mazarin pulp for strawberry cake:

• 175 g marzipan 
• 150 g sugar 
• 100 g butter 
• 2 eggs 
• 50 g wheat flour


Custard cream for strawberry cake:

• 1 egg 
• 15 g corn starch 
• grain of ½ vanilla bar 
• 2½ dl sweet milk 
• 40 g cane sugar 
• 2½ dl whipping cream

For serving:
• 500 g strawberries 
• sifted icing sugar 
• mint leaves

Are you going to bake muffins? Try this recipe for cupcakes with Daim


How to make strawberry cake:

1. Cherry pie: Cut butter into cubes and crumble them with icing sugar and flour. Collect the dough with whipped 
ag. Let rest for 30 minutes.

2. Mazarin mass: Mix marzipan and sugar. Stir in butter a little at a time. Stir the eggs for 1 at a time. Sift the flour in and stir the mass together.

3. Roll out the dough thinly on a floured table and cut out 6 circles to fit the shapes. Put the dough in greased molds. Distribute the mazarin mass on the marmalade.

4. Bake the pies in a 200 degree hot oven for 15-20 minutes until the pulp is solid. Cool completely.

5. Melt the chocolate over the water bath and brush the cakes with the chocolate.

6. Vanilla cream: Beat egg and corn starch together in a pan. Add the vanilla grains, milk and sugar, bring to a boil and cook for ½-1 minute with stirring. Remove the cream from the heat when it has a firm consistency and cool. Beat the cream into the foam and turn it into the vanilla cream.

7. Spread the vanilla cream on the cakes and top with half berries. Decorate with icing sugar and mint.

This isnt the sponge cake with the cream and marzipan but I'll keep looking until I find it.


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## knightrider

Finally, I got a chance to catch up with this journal. It was moving so fast, with so many intriguing ideas. Loved it.

About the twin study, when we planned to adopt an older child with disabilities (we didn't, but that's a whole 'nother long story. We are the only couple who ever applied to this agency and ended up with newborns, brother and sister, 6 years apart), we were told repeatedly that the child we get will not be a blank slate. He/she will come with genetic interests and abilities and it will be our job to nurture the child we adopted, not make him/her into what we hoped or expected. People came to our class every couple of weeks with amazing stories of genetic similarities when birth parents were re-united with adopted children as adults. 

So . . . I am in awe of the beautiful photos you all take on the trail. I thought I might take some of the mysterious live oak trees along one of my favorite trails. But, alas, taking pictures on horseback eludes me completely. 75% of my pictures were complete and total blurs as Aci danced around anxiously wondering why we were not either riding out or heading home. He was happy to do either thing, but standing still looking at trees was ridiculous in his book. How in the world do you take a photo with one hand? When I let go of the reins, off we would go. I am no good with electronic gadgets. Anyway, here are some horrible pictures of what they call "granddaddy oaks". The photos don't even pretend to show the majesty of these 300 year old trees. Why is one of them upside down, anyway?

I wanted to get horse ears in the pictures like everybody does. Aci's head was all over the place. "Are we going this way? No? Then, I guess you want to go this way? What? No? Make up your mind! Let's go this way, then, since you don't seem to know."


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## egrogan

The live oaks are beautiful @knightrider! One of the things I miss living in the south. And, looks like we got to admire Aci’s ear in the first shot :wink:

For pictures, I often turn on the “photo” app on my phone when I start the ride and leave it like that in my pocket. Then I can reach in with one hand and keep one hand on the reins. Or, I set it on video instead, and press play while holding it in my right hand, reins in the left, and then I just capture a few still shots from the video. If Fizz is being sticky on the way out from home, I’ll definitely wait to snap a couple of pictures until we’re on the way home as I need two hands on the wheel to handle anticipated stall outs or spins for home! Fizz really doesn’t like me dropping the reins as I think she feels abandoned and interprets that as an instant need to make decisions for both of us.


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## gottatrot

I love Jane Eyre too. I think I've seen every version they've filmed of it. It always is funny because I'll be watching a new one and my husband will think it's a different movie and then it turns out it's just another Jane Eyre, LOL. Poor guy has had to see a few versions of the various Jane Austen movies too.
My favorite Jane Eyre versions are the ones with Timothy Dalton and the one with Mia Wasikowska.

The first time I read Wuthering Heights I didn't like it, but it has grown on me. The 2009 version from PBS with Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley is really good. They are all such terrible, tortured creatures.


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## SueC

We have that version, @gottatrot!  Great version.

Actually. what I love the best about Wuthering Heights, apart from its gothic windswept landscapes, is the ridiculous narrator and how he sees things so very differently to the way we see them! :rofl: Without that comedic counterpoint, Wuthering Heights would have been terribly dire. Also, Joseph is such an odious creation as to be seriously good! :rofl:
@DanteDressageNerd, it turns out we had all the Austens on the e-reader because they're all out of copyright, so I started reading Persuasion last night. Jane Austen really makes me laugh from the first page, the way she parodies the aristocracy. The woman has been dead more than a hundred years, and can still make me laugh, and think.  I love Anne already, she's the best of the whole lot. They've just arrived in Bath... this is going to be fun... Thanks so much for the recipe, I've got strawberries here and so this will be a project for this week!
@knightrider, great photos. Have you got any favourite medieval-themed or other historical films?
@Spanish Rider, Brett says he's not joining HF, he likes _both_ books, and he's still waiting for his red light sabre! :rofl: He'll talk via me here, he says. I sort of do that on sections of Reddit - I don't have an account and don't want another rabbit hole, but I sometimes speak through him, especially on the Cure subreddit! ;-)
@lostastirrup, curled up on the couch with a book and a cat is serious bliss!  ...Jude the Obscure mg: ... I read that over 20 years ago and the pig killing scene still has me horrified...
@Knave, is that Bones different from The Lovely Bones? We read that last one to each other driving across the Nullarbor in 2009.  that was nearly 10 years ago... What are the titles of your red books? European children's books aren't very dumbed down either, I was a bit surprised when I came to Australia and looked at much of the English-language stuff. The older, the less dumbed down, as you say. I love those sorts of books!  Your little girl sounds like such a sweetie. Some books are like friends that you want to spend time with over and over!


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## DanteDressageNerd

gottatrot- I love that version too! It was really well done, I always loved Jane's spirit and determination to stay true to herself, even when it caused her great pain and how much heart and soul she has. She's flawed and imperfect but intelligent and strong. I love Jane. 

Anne is an interesting character, I like her. I think she has the most depth and maturity. I think the novel is quite different front the other Austen stories. It has more depth.

Haha go Brett, I understand. When school starts up again, I wont have much time for here either. Brett is most wise, he needs to focus on life :lol: but do tell him I need a red light saber too but technology is short :-( 

Im told the Vikings is a good show and if it is available on non-Danish netflix I will suggest a show called Rita. It is in Danish but it is really good. She's an unsual character but it mocks Danish culture.


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## Knave

Yes, it’s a different book Sue. It’s actually a true story of a little girl abused by her step-father.

The red books are called “The Children’s Hour.” Now I know why I thought they were intended for kids. I had to walk back to look. I have 1, 5, 7, and 12-16. My brother told me that although we have them split, There is another original split where my great uncle (now past) received the original half. He said there were whole other books I never knew and some were better.

I always loved two of them that I have. One is Animal Stories, and one is Best Loved Poems. The copyright of the set is 1954, but most stories written earlier. I guess my grandfather and his brother bought the set together and split it.


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## waresbear

Hi Sue, I enjoy reading your journal! Yes hubby and I are doing fine. Thank you for asking. Carry on for my reading pleasure, lol.


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## SueC

:bowwdown: Why thank you, @waresbear! One person's hypergraphia is another person's reading material. ;-) Should you run out of material and would like to try weirder things, you could try my blog. :rofl: There's a little crossover, but you can skip what know. sue.coulstock.id.au inkunicorn:

Good to hear you are both well!


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## bsms

Wuthering Heights? Oh PLEASE! I'll confess to any crime, just don't make me read it again!

Need a smilie for someone making the sign of the cross while sprinkling themselves with holy water. That would be more Catholic than Baptist, but this baptist will take all the help he can get to avoid reading WH again! 

BTW - How do you make holy water? You boil the [Heck] out of it!


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## SueC

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Here's some more jokes like that for you:






If you think _Wuthering Heights_ is a trawl, maybe try _The Satanic Verses_ - you know, the one by Salman Rushdie that got him the fatwa and had him hiding out in the UK. I made myself read it, and boy was that a task and a half! The plot and ideas are actually really good, but the way he's written it is too self-consciously "I'm soooo funny, look at me" for my taste, sort of like Terry Pratchett, whose screen adaptations I love but his books just grate on me... By the way, I love Salman Rushdie's short stories and find those consistently good value. But the novel was like eating wallpaper glue for half a year....

And for the entire first chapter of _The Satanic Verses_, the main protagonists are falling out of an aeroplane... :rofl:


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## lostastirrup

SueC said:


> :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
> 
> Here's some more jokes like that for you:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYXenjpefNU
> 
> If you think _Wuthering Heights_ is a trawl, maybe try _The Satanic Verses_ - you know, the one by Salman Rushdie that got him the fatwa and had him hiding out in the UK. I made myself read it, and boy was that a task and a half! The plot and ideas are actually really good, but the way he's written it is too self-consciously "I'm soooo funny, look at me" for my taste, sort of like Terry Pratchett, whose screen adaptations I love but his books just grate on me... By the way, I love Salman Rushdie's short stories and find those consistently good value. But the novel was like eating wallpaper glue for half a year....
> 
> And for the entire first chapter of _The Satanic Verses_, the main protagonists are falling out of an aeroplane... :rofl:



Oh those are fighting words :charge: Terry Pratchett's screen adaptions I have always felt were awful (with exception to the most recent Good Omens adaption)- while his books were excellent. Some of the best dialogue. Some of the best narrative. And who doesn't love Samuel Vimes and Corporal Carrot? Not to mention the final series he did with the Tiffany Aching books. 

Please enjoy a sampling of his quotes, i think he's HILARIOUS. And the rules for life,may have had some impact on poor Nick's name, which sounded spendid over the loudspeaker this weekend.


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## SueC

lostastirrup said:


> Oh those are fighting words :charge: Terry Pratchett's screen adaptions I have always felt were awful (with exception to the most recent Good Omens adaption)- while his books were excellent. Some of the best dialogue. Some of the best narrative. And who doesn't love Samuel Vimes and Corporal Carrot? Not to mention the final series he did with the Tiffany Aching books.
> 
> Please enjoy a sampling of his quotes, i think he's HILARIOUS. And the rules for life,may have had some impact on poor Nick's name, which sounded spendid over the loudspeaker this weekend.


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: I must go catch the update on your journal! :rofl:

Dear @lostastirrup, I live with a Terry Pratchett fan and have seen most of these quotes! :rofl: They're great quotes, and that's how I like Terry Pratchett: In small doses, sort of like Pink Floyd, who are undeniably brilliant, but wrist-slitting if you sit through more than half an hour of their songs. :Angel: Not that Mr Pratchett is ever wrist-slitting, but page after page after page gets to me, and then I am sure I have a toilet to clean or some weeding to do! :charge:

It might be an age thing. Had I been addicted early, this effect may not have happened. I loooooved Douglas Adams' _Hitchhikers Guide_ series as a middle schooler, and remained duly reverent until sometime in my 20s. Then I found that prose too much as well (alternatively, I got over the hill and dull! :Angel.

Given that you enjoy this kind of thing, may I recommend to you _The Satanic Verses_ as some light and entertaining weekend reading! :Angel:

Brett has most of Terry Pratchett's books, including autographed copies, and has met the man and had a brief chat at a book signing. By all reports he was eminently personable, and we would totally have invited him for a cup of tea.  I've listened to many interviews with him, because I like his stories. I just don't like reading them, generally.

However: The UK screen adaptations of his stories we find most enjoyable in this household. We looooooove _Going Postal_, most of all - wonderful performances and visual storytelling. We also enjoyed _The Hogfather_ and _The Colour of Magic_, and a couple of others whose names escape me.

On the other hand, I prefer Douglas Adams' books to the dreary TV series they made of _Hitchhikers's Guide_...

It's all a matter of taste - and as we know, the very _definition_ of taste is the degree of overlap between someone else's preferences and our own! :Angel:

I also regret to inform you I have never heard of Corporal Carrot, but I am sure my horses would be very interested to make his acquaintance! :smile:

Ah, but _Good Omens_ - have you seen the UK screenplay? We've just started it this week and it's sooooo funny. For anyone else reading, it's about an angel and a devil who want to prevent the Apocalypse, because after hundreds of years on the earth doing their jobs (very similar to the devils in _The Screwtape Letters_), each prefer the "normal" life on earth to the extremes and the boredom (according to them) of heaven and hell.






David Tennant (ex _Dr Who_, _Broadchurch_ etc) is hilarious playing a devil (complete with snake-eye contact lenses) who is sick of the chess game between light and dark, and it's so droll that he and the angel keep going to tea together to have chats, and eventually to agree to interfere with the Apocalypse. The angel, for example, prefers cosy bookshops to celestial hymns...

Neil Gaiman co-wrote this with Terry Pratchett - have you seen the _old_ BBC production _Neverwhere_ yet? If not, it's worth digging up.


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## SueC

*LURGY, TREES, GASTRONOMIC ITEMS AND DUSK RIDE*

On the home front, I continue to do battle with the tail end of influenza, and its accompanying chest and pharyngeal infection. Ick. No cold air. However, yesterday at lunchtime, some warm air came in, and I managed to get out and plant another two dozen trees in our current roadside habitat rehabilitation project. I'm about to go plant the remaining 18 seedlings in the tray, and after that, this year's roadside project will be complete. Then, I'm going to see if I can get a tray of _Acacia saligna_ from somewhere (Albany Farm Tree nursery didn't grow any this year) - perhaps Ardess Nursery - because these valuable fodder trees live under a decade, and we first started putting them in the ground here in mid-2010, so some of them are getting long in the tooth, and that's why we try to plant this species at least every two years. And also, I've got some tagasaste seedlings who volunteered near the existing hedges that I've kept safe, which are ready to transplant as bare-rooted trees now that the soil profile is finally getting wet through.

After yesterday's tree planting, I spent a frantic session in the kitchen making chocolate nut horns, Mexican baked beans and eggs with feta (big casserole), and honey muesli, ducking out to feed and rug the horses (barring Sunsmart) in the gaps. Because the air wasn't cold, I hopped on Sunsmart when the last of my muesli was baked, and did a lap of our valley floor in the very last of the light. It's an interesting exercise every now and then - it really sharpens your senses. The horse isn't at all fazed doing the lap in minimal light - he's out and about 24/7 anyway, and clearly has more highly practiced night navigation skills than I do - as evidenced, for example, in his cheery and repeated volunteering to trot, which I let him. At night, your hearing gets so much more acute to compensate for the loss of vision, and you hear every cricket, every rustling in the bushes, the squeaky high-pitched pings of microbats out hunting, the twittering of roosting birds as you go by, the songs of various frog species in the swamps. It's an experience I really enjoy - as a teenager, I used to go walking in the bushland at night, without a torch, for exactly this reason...

The sun is out, and thunderstorms are forecast to roll in after lunch, so I'm off to plant those trees. Hope everyone has a great week!


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## MissLulu

Years ago we had two Acacia saligna trees and I loved them! Unfortunately, they died but I am thinking I may need to plant some in the near future because I really love them in the garden. 

I'm sorry you aren't feeling your best. At the end of May my husband, daughter, and I took a vacation and both husband and daughter got very ill just after we returned home and are still not at 100%. 

I think a few pages back you asked me about visiting London? My youngest daughter and I went last summer to visit my oldest daughter and we had a wonderful time. I wish I could have spent more time in the British Museum but we went on the weekend and it was so hot and they don't have air conditioning and I don't handle crowds well with no AC. It is funny how different areas of the world work. When I tell people (who have always lived in southern Nevada) that the museums in London don't have AC they look shocked and horrified and I have to explain that most of the year in London you have to worry about not being too cold!

But we did love the museums. We went to the natural history museum to see the dinosaurs (at my youngest daughter's request). There are too many wonderful things to see in London! I hope to take another trip in a year or so.


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## egrogan

I still haven't gone out for a dusk/night time ride. The first time I crewed an overnight ride ("Moonlight in VT" and the VT 100) I was simply in awe that people were out there riding super challenging territory in the pitch black. As phantomhorse told me, you really learn to trust your horse. It was a little scary one year, I was crewing with phantomhorse's husband, and we were in the middle of a field when a single rider came past us (most people at that point seem to be riding in little clusters) and was acting really confused. We tried to tell her which way to go, but she insisted we were wrong and turned nearly the opposite direction of where she was supposed to go. We shouted after her but she didn't respond. I can't quite remember what happened to her but I believe she did get back on course but eventually came off her horse and some runners stopped to help her (that particular endurance ride is also a 100 mile ultramarathon foot race). Anyway, there are definitely some beautiful moonlight nights (actually, the cold snowy moonlight nights are the most appealing) when I think about going out there to ride- maybe I'll ask my lovely husband to come babysit and give me confidence to do it. Your ride description was lovely.


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## SueC

I think you'd really enjoy it, @egrogan!  If you start off with a ride at or near full moon, you'll still see lots and you'll feel safer to start with, plus the silvery glow of the moonlit landscape is just as delightful, if not more so, than managing to magic your way through it in near dark conditions. And if your DH could be your ostler and maybe carry some grapes for you all, and a picnic blanket big enough to fit Fizz onto as well - that'd be more fun even than Halloween with all its pumpkins! 
@MissLulu, it's interesting to hear where some of our Australian plants have got to!  _Acacia saligna_ grows naturally especially in the coastal areas of WA. There aren't any naturally in Redmond, but there are many bird species overlapping between us and the natural habitat of that plant so that there is much wildlife value in _Acacia saligna_ being planted into the pastures, on top of being a super fodder tree. I wonder if these Acacias would potentially be invasive species in the US, like some of our Eucalypts have been around the world? - London is so filled with interesting things, we'd rather like a :tardis: so we could just pop in on a museum there for an afternoon whenever we felt like it...


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## SueC

All y'all know any of those people who indiscriminately like to face-suck horses, tongue-kiss their dogs, suffocate defenseless toddlers etc?  :hide: This photo seemed like a nice analogy:










And where this came up:

https://www.horseforum.com/horse-talk/how-convince-your-parents-not-buy-804725/page3/#post1970737199

This photo may be clearer:










...but I'm also thinking _Alien_... I wonder why now... :Angel:


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## CopperLove

Been a few days since I've been lurking around the forum, I've got a bad habit of browsing when things get slow at work but never being on when I'm home (but I did take up re-organizing and cleaning the kitchen for bread-learning endeavors and planted some more things, so I'm trying to be a bit more productive with my personal time :lol: ). Sorry to hear you're not feeling well  I had to say that your photo reference of people who like to "face-suck" horses cracks me up and I have this vision now of a human from a horse's perspective being a face-sucking alien monster :rofl: I'd be horrified too if something came at me like that.


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## SueC

Hello, @CopperLove! :wave: I hope you're having a good week. I feel better now and even slept through last night, although my husband said I snored. :hide: It's the throat infection, it feels like I've got things attached to the back of my throat that wobble up and down all the time and it's ghastly...like a small octopus crawling around... not sore in particular, just the feeling of being jammed up. Oh well, I've not had a flu in a decade. The actual flu part is pretty much over. Now it's just that octopus thing.

And the _other_ octopus... yeah, :rofl: - I'm sure we've all met people like that. I'm not at all saying we can't be affectionate with animals, but this thing isn't affection, this is some kind of disease... Have you ever been grabbed and slobbered on by a distant relative? Or even a near one, that didn't check with you if you enjoyed that sort of thing? I'm a hug person, being part Italian, but I always offer, I don't impose. And those slobbery people are usually wet, and loud, and have suction like a Hoover, and a suffocating grip that potentially cracks ribs... :hide:


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## Knave

Now you have me curious as to where this came from Sue. I am glad that you slept last night! This bug sure has been dragging. Ours were like that too a while back, but we did finally get through the other side. Maybe you will go a long time without being sick after this.


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## SueC

It came from the middle of a huge minefield, @Knave!  I'm glad you all got better, and am hoping @MissLulu's family will recover 100% soon too.
@CopperLove, productive is good! I'm doing a computer-free workday tomorrow, in the name of productivity. What sort of bread are you planning on making? You'll love it...


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## CopperLove

That's very good that you're on the tail end of it... You're very good at using the octopus to describe things :rofl: Despite my very customer-service oriented personality, I'm a bit of a touch-me-not in public. I've heard other women tell stories about even strangers touching their hair, etc. There's something about me that just breathes... don't touch me, you'll regret it... despite my happy face. So I think it's easier for me to accept that my horse doesn't want to be cuddled up the way my cats do, because I can understand the desire to NOT want to be handled. :lol:

I'm actually not sure yet about the kind of bread. I'm going to start with what you suggested, find a store-bought mix I can practice with. I just felt like I needed to get my kitchen in order first... I laid a blanket in the floor and pulled out every single thing in the kitchen, put some stuff in a box to donate and then re-organized everything so I could see if there was anything I needed (I think the only thing that really might do me some good in the kitchen at this point are a couple of additional measuring cups. I tend to use the same one for everything and just rinse it out as I go, but it could be very convenient and possibly necessary if I'm going to bake more to have a couple more measuring devices.) If I do love it as much as everyone says I will though, I'll very likely look for a basic bread maker, possibly used. Not having to knead dough for 20 minutes but still being able to reap the benefits sounds pretty good to me.


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## Knave

It does seem a minefield Sue! I read it when it started and the page you had me on, but my conflicting thoughts ask me to kindly butt out.

I am not used to being touched by strangers. Then I went to a club on a bachelorette weekend, and people constantly touched me! Like, not nicely touched me, and rubbed on me, and I was all “ewe.” It seemed the environment, and I am claustrophobic anyways, and I absolutely hated it.

I wasn’t that person that says “I don’t like this, so we can’t do it,” but I did become that person that said, “stop ef’ing touching me.” The second night there was a military party going on. Several of the guys wanted to hang around us, and not only were they fun to look at, but no one groped me while we were with them. Lol

I wouldn’t describe myself as someone who didn’t like being touched. I always thought of myself as rather touchy, but I am not sure that is true. Anymore I feel spooky when someone touches me that is not my girls or husband. I do like getting a hug, but I have to expect it. Last night my oldest daughter was sitting too close on the couch, and I was uncomfortable but thinking that I was just being a jerk, but then my husband spoke up for her to get out of my space and she laughed and so I know she did it just to bother me. I must be that readable.

It is weird. How is it okay if she wants to lay her head in my lap, but not okay if she is sitting like that (in my mind of course)? Maybe that is like a horse. For most it is okay for you to be on them. On their back, rubbing their neck, running your hand down their nose, and yet there is a line. That same feeling that is claustrophobic and irritated must come over them when someone holds their face. That would be why they push you away flinging their nose. 

It doesn’t matter that you aren’t physically hurting them. Something just makes skin crawl. My girl sitting next to me was forcing me to try and overcome my reactions. I was running through my mind trying to pinpoint why I was so bothered. Why did I want to move away? 

Since she did it on purpose to tease, she obviously knew I would be bothered. I’ve seen people hug a horse’s face with that mentality. It is like a teasing thing is going on. They expect the reaction and laugh. Then there are people who don’t know. Maybe like the dudes groping me in that bar, they think they are perfectly fine. ‘The horse likes it’ they think.


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## SueC

@CopperLove, I got my breadmaker from an octogenarian friend who has since died, when his kids bought him a newer model. He said the old model was the better one! He also gave me an adze - he was a retired farmer, and a good friend's husband - Alice is still around - and we've planted all the trees on our farm with it. So we think of Rob when we bake bread and when we plant trees, and watch their progress.

Anyway, this is the model he gave me, which he'd already used many years, and you can get this secondhand in Australia for around $75 Australian - it's an old war horse, no longer in production, but it's fixable - you can get spare parts for it, and I fixed a belt problem on it once, quite easily! 

https://www.ebay.com.au/urw/Panasonic-SD-206-Bread-Machine/product-reviews/57343575

The easiest way to start off would be to get, if you have them in the US, premix boxes that have separate cellophane bags for each loaf, to which you then add a measured quantity of water as instructed on the back of the packet, and your yeast, and this teaches you about the consistency your dough should be. You can then adapt that to non-prepackaged, and to experimenting with other flours.

I started off doing the traditional method, from a book, and my first pizza bases were like BluTack - do you have that stuff in the US? It's this stuff you can stick posters to the wall with. And pizza bases are easier than bread!  I went to a sponge stage technique after studying a Microbiology course at university, and that's my favourite traditional method - it's the most reliable and least messy, at least for me. But, like you, I have other things to do with my hands, and so I didn't turn down Robert's offer of his breadmaker, when he wanted to give it to me, and I've not regretted that, it's saved me so much time, without adversely affecting the quality of the baked goods...

Re affection, whether with other humans or animals, I think it's good etiquette to ask first and get an affirmative, before you hug or slobber or anything else, with the recipient clearly informed what's on the table.


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## SueC

@Knave, I sort of think that the intention - respectful or otherwise - is often conveyed in the body language and picked up subconsciously, by us and by animals. I think that's why you were uncomfortable on the sofa. I also think that's why I hit this stupid clown on the head with an umbrella when he pinched my backside when I was walking on Circular Quay in Sydney when I was working in that city. He was an actual clown street performer who thought he could use his costume to get away with it. The crowd was on my side, too. That kind of thing isn't on, and the men who think women in general enjoy that kind of thing seem to have little grey matter with which to engage in ordered thought and logical reasoning. I don't allow people to touch me without my permission, even though I'm actually relatively huggy and warm, and like I said, I don't hug without offering first, unless someone is already obviously coming in for a hug because something terrible happened...


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## SueC

I've just posted these photos as examples of body language that shows these animals are enjoying being touched, and I thought I'd re-post them here. Please post anything cute like that you have with your own animals!  It doesn't matter if you carpet the place in your animal photos, we all love photos, don't we?


_This is what it looks like when they're enjoying being touched. Then you can't go for a walk without ending up in this kind of formation:
_


_It's when they discover what you can do with their itchy spots, that you seem to be followed about by a cloud of them!









The insides of the ears are especially popular...
_


_And it even works with camels you've only just met in an animal park:_




That camel, by the way, was so funny. The introduction ritual is like with a horse - approach, leave a polite distance, and invite them to sniff your hand by putting it near them, but not into their individual bubbles. Then you can start "talking" - like, "Oh, wow, you're a camel without halitosis!" (All the giraffes I've met had terrible halitosis, but the sample size is too small to be conclusive on this point.) And you can worry about whether they think _you_ have halitosis. I mean, we must smell like monkeys to them...


This camel really liked having the back of its neck scratched - you can see it nose-wiggling here, like a horse...





The lady at the animal park said to me, "You know, that camel is normally really aloof and avoids visitors!" :rofl: It's all about the introduction ritual, and being a safe person... and those itchy spots...


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## Knave

I am sure I have a ton if I’d go back far enough, but I think these are cute.

Now, I include number three to show the “joke.” This horse is the roan horse I speak of sometimes in my journal. He is super talented, but rather a jerk. He doesn’t care for people at all, but on this day I was teasing my father.

He bought a new horse who is a pest of an animal. The kind of horse that full of personality is rubbing on you and in your face. I egg it on. So, he was riding the roan horse instead of the new horse that day, and I was trying to get him to rub on me. 

He enjoyed a couple of the scratches, but wouldn’t take the bait for more than a second. He was feeling gentler though in that moment, so I had my mother take a picture of me hanging on him to tease my father.


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## SueC

These are wonderful, @Knave!  Post more anytime! 

Horses definitely have a sense of humour, don't they - at least, some of them do! 

Oh, and in that middle picture, you would definitely have fitted into _Good Omens_!


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## CopperLove

@Knave Similarly to SueC I do think we, like the horses, subconsciously pick up on body language, intention and lack of respect. But one interesting... or horrifying... thing I've noticed is that some humans seem to lack this internal warning bell. I have noted two female friends particularly that seem not to be aware at all when a situation seems like it's about to turn sour or someone's physical intentions are less than desirable. There have been moments where I've had to say, "You need to get in the car now, we're going." When later discussing the situations, they had no clue what I was picking up on. I can't fathom how they DON'T see or feel what I see and feel.

Love the photo of you hanging off the horse lol. The expressions they can give are comical.
@SueC Snatching that link for later bread maker thoughts  Yes we do have the BluTack stuff :rofl: I think it goes by a different name but I know exactly what you're talking about.

I didn't know that the insides of ears were such a popular itchy spot, I'll have to remember that :lol:


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## egrogan

^^I have one who acts like I'm decapitating her if I try to scratch inside her ears, and two who will fall asleep drooling if I do. It's all about the individuals :wink:


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## DanteDressageNerd

I agree with knave. Touch is a very personal thing and some cultures and people do not respect space. In southern europe kissing both cheeks and hugging is a very common greeting. I almost lost it the first few times, not because I meant to be rude but because touch is a difficult thing for me from strangers.

I've shoved guys up against walls for touching me when I asked them not to. I'll lay hands on them if they lay hands on me. And if they dont back off when I tell them Im not interested. I've spilled beer down a guy's pants so it looked like he peed himself when he was being persistent and wouldn't back off at a bar. Some guys are pigs and are like "you know you want it" and dont get it until you lay hands on them or spill beer down their trousers. I remember telling the guy now you wont have luck with me or anyone else in this bar because now it looks like you've just p!ssed yourself. But Im really aggressive towards men if they're rude. I've had things happen to me, so often violence is the only thing they understand. Also REALLY makes me mad if I see a guy going after another woman and being rude, I'll help her out. But I'll lay hands on a woman for being rude and not backing off too. I just think it's horrible behavior and sometimes threatening. I dont care if it's just teasing or joking but when they cross the line. Just not okay.

Sorry for rant. I just get really mad when people are disrespectful of that sort of thing. Especially in bars, even if Im sheets in the wind, I'll snap out pretty fast if someone is rude or gets touchy without my approval. I usually dont have to deck someone to the ground but I can do that pretty easily or used to, bit out of practice...was a US Marine and I like being able to protect myself and others. Helplessness is not something I ever want to experience again in my life and I dont want anyone else to know that feeling.

But with body language and horse, I think like people they have to be taught what to be aware of and learn. I have aspergers, so I spent a good amount of my life having to learn human behavior on a logical, conscious level and having to learn to be AWARE and see subtle cues. It's been a long, hard process. I couldn't learn it naturally or innately like most. I had to be taught by trial and error, watching communication documentaries, reading books, practicing speech in a mirror for hours to tune my body language and get a flow of speech, rather than disjointed robotic speech. I think similar with many horses, I think some things are innate in what they are aware of but I also think it depends on how they were socialized, desensitized and what they're aware of. I think horses in general are VERY sensitive to emotional energy. I know when I work with a horse, people are always surprised when I get on or work on the ground because I teach the horse to move off of my energy. Wonder is an exception but I can hack almost any horse out and even the really shy, spooky, nervous ones I take them out and give them confidence and security and can get them through most thing. I think it comes down to my energy and trust I earn from them. It's hard to explain, would have to be shown but it's similar undersaddle. Wonder unfortunately isnt as responsive to it as I'd like, very responsive to "go" but likes to forget the "come back to me" and if he's concerned about something, he tends to tune out from the rider's "radio frequency" and into himself. But he's VERY independent minded. And I feel the dressage work and natural horsemanship is about teaching horse and rider to tune into each other's radio and hear each other. But it always starts with energy and a clear pictures of the expectation in the mind. 

Such lovely photos Sue!! I love the donkeys!! They're so cute and the photos show such happiness and love 

I have some. I wish I had better ones with Alma. That was in August or September after Wonder broke my wrist. Some older ones with my parents animals and yes I used to have multi colored hair of teal, blue and purple. I tried dying my hair brown once and was so terrible, I didnt feel like myself. So I sometimes get bored with being so blonde because there isnt much I can do with the hair. So the rainbow colors were very nice.


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## gottatrot

egrogan said:


> ^^I have one who acts like I'm decapitating her if I try to scratch inside her ears, and two who will fall asleep drooling if I do. It's all about the individuals :wink:


Same with horse udders. Amore is one that loves having you clean out the crud and scratch around there. Halla would try to kill you. Amore also likes inside the ears and Halla hated it. I'm still respecting Hero's space because he is still figuring out if grooming feels good or I am trying to invade his privacy.


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## SueC

CopperLove said:


> I didn't know that the insides of ears were such a popular itchy spot, I'll have to remember that :lol:


You'll need a good quality soap to get all the earwax off your fingers afterwards, and a nailbrush for removing the same from under your nails. :Angel:

 the photos, @Knave and DanteDressageNerd! Everyone is glowing - people and animals alike.  

@DanteDressageNerd, on one of those photos, you and the cat have basically the same facial expression! 










Great photo! And it's so amusing how even between humans and other animals, the mirror neurons get a workout when interacting.  

What you say about bars and human behaviour is the same here. I always avoided places like that like the plague - especially meat markets with alcohol - and it seems every place that overdoes the alcohol is also a meat market. Poor behavioural standards get worse with intoxication, not better, and I already know what some people are like on the street, when they are presumably sober. The catcalling etc at schoolgirls and young women from building sites, passing traffic and pedestrians - aren't we supposed to be civilised? But here's a bunch of people behaving like Neanderthals.

Do you think Aspergers gives you an advantage relating to and communicating with other mammalian social species? Like - her name escapes me, but she is rather famous in the US and has designed a lot of animal handling infrastructure because she finds it easy to put herself in the mindset of how various animals think. I've heard a lot of interviews with her, and she's really fascinating to listen to. She also attributes horse riding from an early age as having helped her overcome some of the coordination difficulties she had experienced as a child.

I completely relate to what you say about having had to learn about human behaviour intellectually. In my case, I'd say it's because I had a really socially isolated early childhood and my parents weren't modelling appropriate social behaviours to me, interpreting for me, mirroring back for me, teaching me social skills or even just interacting much with me face to face. For instance, I used to think I was just an uncoordinated kid until I realised my parents hadn't routinely played catch with me, done craft with me, built things with me, etc etc etc, as I see most other parents do with their children; and neither did I have child-child relationships early on where that could have been compensated for. There was a time I looked back and wondered if I was an undiagnosed Aspie, but what happened in my development is already able to be explained adequately by the circumstances of my childhood. Anyway, there's overlap between how I had to skill myself retrospectively and how people with Aspergers have to do that. Plus, as a person with an intellectual bent from the start, I spent a lot of my younger years being annoyed because much of human behaviour is so irrational! :twisted:

How did you work out you had Aspergers?

I'm now halfway through _Persuasion_ and loving it! Very perceptive, is Ms Austen. At this point, there are three eligible gentlemen for Anne - I think one of them is probably a rotten apple, and I think at this point that her older lady friend isn't quite the oracle she always thought her to be. I think Anne's grey matter and human principles are more advanced than her mentor friend's, and I'm waiting for that to dawn on her! Also, isn't it ironic that she's the only mensch in that family, but they all think her inconsequential...

Thanks for the recommendation, I think I'll be going on an Austen spree this winter.. I'll do _Northanger Abbey_ again next because I hardly remember that one...

I wonder if @Spanish Rider has tracked down _Pride & Prejudice & Zombies_ yet?


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> Same with horse udders. Amore is one that loves having you clean out the crud and scratch around there. Halla would try to kill you. Amore also likes inside the ears and Halla hated it. I'm still respecting Hero's space because he is still figuring out if grooming feels good or I am trying to invade his privacy.


Yes!

Fizz- udders +++++, ears ++++ :happydance:

Maggie- ears +++++, udders- I will decapitate _you _if you even think of it

Izzy- unless you are a 12 year old girl, please stand a respectful distance away and tell me how beautiful I am with no touching. If you try to touch my ears, I will show you how a 14.1 horse becomes 16.1 instantly. Udders, maybe...if it's been a particularly buggy day...you could do a couple of quick swipes as long as no one is looking

@SueC- I think you're referencing Temple Grandin: https://www.templegrandin.com/


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## CopperLove

@SueC No problems with that :rofl: Time before last I visited Dreama, as I was attempting to brush her tail, one of the ranch owners says "Oh here, we'll fix that." Fills a bucket with soapy water and promptly dips her tail in it. (She's a pretty clean horse to begin with... doesn't tend to roll in mud much, etc. But we'd been avoiding bathing her tail as she hates a bath like the devil and is very afraid of a hose, but only if it's aimed at her.) But she let her tail be dipped quietly enough, and when I picked back up to start brushing the soap through he looked at me doubtfully... asked if I wanted him to do it. Umm, no I don't want you to have to brush my horse's poopy tail. I wasn't dressed for the occasion, but I was like... if we're going do to this, I'm can do it. It's not your job. I cut my nails when I got home. And took a laundry bar to my pants that got rid of all the splatter.
@DanteDressageNerd All your photos are so lovely (and I personally love the blue hair) but I especially love the one that SueC pointed out. I love it when cats make that face. My black cat gives us that look often and I like to say she is judging us. Everyone thinks she's mean because of her expressions and how loud she is and the way she fusses when she's picked up, but she's actually very sweet. That may be why she'd been with the rescue longer than any of the other's they had; no one else could get past her empty threats :lol:


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## SueC

Yes, that's it exactly, @egrogan! 

That's a great rating system you are using. I'm not doing udders, personally! ;-) I'd need one of those car service pits to reach the donkey girls' udders, and I don't think they would thank me for it...

It's interesting that some of the horses here were ear-shy first, and needed a lot of working around the outside for a long time, and of course you had to get the inside-ear scratching right so it didn't freak them out. The donkeys, on the other hand, all five of them, have always said to me, "And now inside my ears, please!" ...maybe their long ears have more itchiness due to greater surface area... you know, sort of like a giraffe with a sort throat...


*RIDING REPORT* :cowboy:

We had torrential rain overnight, and then light rain until 2pm, and there's now mud and puddles around. We have lots of sandy areas, but definitely muddy ones too. The soil profile is now waterlogging in the low-lying areas, so mud and puddles will be the order of the day for the next two months.

I rewarded myself for a productive day's work finishing an article, doing outdoors chores and sticking the contents of the compost toilet cartridge in the hot compost bin (I had to start a new bin, which meant collecting a few wheelbarrows of horse manure, and finding some tall grass to mow) by sneaking a short lap around the valley floor with Smartie. We walked and trotted and had a jolly time. The dog was either racing around, or barking at us to go faster. Because the horse comes out of a rug for the ride and goes straight back in after during lousy weather like the last couple of days, I don't do too much with him so he doesn't get too damp, but it's still fun, and before too long, we will have a nice clear sunny day, and then maybe I can go somewhere exciting and take photos!


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## DanteDressageNerd

Sue- Thank you! That was Lyla, my parents cat...a friend found on the side of the road and I said I could foster her...and then I went to bootcamp early and well my parents took her in and that was 6yrs ago and they still have her :lol: so naturally they blame me because I picked up the cat to foster...

It really is domestic animals are able to interpret facial expressions, not all but cats, dogs and horses. And yes egrogan is right, that is Temple Grandin. She's really amazing!! I think it is different in that I perceive the world a little more like animals do, through my sense rather than the words. I think humans jump more to words and I tend to jump to feeling. I think I get along with really sensitive, neurotic horses because of it. I can reach them. Horses like Wonder are tough because he is very confident, bold and takes his own initiative. I think I reach animals on an emotional level and we have a certain understanding. I dont know that Im special but I notice animals that are usually cautious around most feel safe with me and Im also REALLY sensitive to the energy people put out. I sense it. I think with my ex it surprised me because Im usually pretty sensitive to people's energy and I misjudged entirely, he really had me fooled which was why I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He SEEMED so genuine. It's hard to explain, I think I can understand their thinking maybe a bit more because it's more instinct and feeling based, rather than conscious or intellectual which is more how I experience life. Im more emotionally based than logical which they find true with females autistics. They're deeply empathetic. Boys and girls have quite different symptoms.

I was diagnosed by a psychiatrist. But the article towards the bottom made me wonder. It explained a lot of my life and struggles I've had over the years. I still struggle with basic functions sometimes. I cant help it. When I was 3 I knew all the names of dinosaurs, their names, what they ate, what time period they lived in etc. I wanted to be a paleontologist. I was fascinated by everything animals and science and I just had to get ahold of whatever information I could get. Spent a lot of time in the library with my Dad growing up. Growing up people were always surprised by how "smart" I was for someone so young. I was more advanced that way but socially I think quite awkward, shy and odd. I was bullied a lot and considered the weird nerdy kid. I'd also say things and just not understand that they were inappropriate or hurtful to say. I still struggle, communication and robotic speech was a struggle and becoming self confident because I have to think so much about my mannerisms and how I speak when around people. I think doing hours Plus long presentations and being forced with pressure in the Marines really helped me "pass" as normal enough. Again it's really hard to explain.

My parents were very loving and I was socialized, I just didnt catch on. I could speak to adults just fine but not really kids. I was bullied a lot because there were a lot of "unwritten" rules I simply didnt understand and still dont really. And so I've developed a big go f*ck yourself attitude having to fight back against bullies...I have a very strong sense of fairness and justice...so I may have made people cry and felt no guilt because they were out of line and just being petty. 

I'm also very emotional. I think when I was younger I was just unaware of the emotion and trying to make sense of it? It's hard to explain, I felt things deeply but I didnt really understand emotion. Ive always had an uncanny ability to narrow down someone's deepest insecurity and dig it in, if people are VERY mean and out of line. I've only done that when I've seen people go after someone because they knew that person wouldnt' defend themselves and I felt it was a good lesson for them to learn. Bullies are often very weak, cowardly individual who break with very little effort. And again that sense of justice...I think that is the Scandinavian blood :lol: they're the same way.

But I could see how neglect in certain developmental aspects could mimic some of the autistic symptoms.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/autism-it-s-different-in-girls/?redirect=1

Yes Anne has much more depth and perspective than her friend who had ill advised her in her youth. I think it's a bit about how when you're young we look to others we respect and admire so much more than ourselves seeking advice, assuming they know best and then we come to realize they never did. I know I tended to respect my elders and assume they knew better than me and in the end I had to learn they really didnt know what was best for me and lacked the dimension and perspective to be clear. Anne is wise and has fantastic perspective. And I think with her family it just shows how typical people are, so up their own @ss they are blind to reality and the world around them.

CopperLove- certainly!! I Love cats, I think they have such big hearts and love truly. I think they just dont have patience for selfish, idiots so a lot of people do not get along with them. They love from love, rather than need. But aww it sounds like you have a super special cat


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## SueC

@DanteDressageNerd, that's all really interesting! I've also had a quick read through the article and will look more closely when my brain is more awake. Thank you for sharing that! 

I finished _Persuasion_ today. Your comments are spot on - and yes, didn't Anne have an annoying family? I actually really related to her - I was the odd one out, like she was. But, I realised when I grew up that I was actually the odd one out in a good way, and that I didn't want to be like them. Of course, the family narrative was the other way around, like Anne's family's.

I loved the navy families in this novel, who had far better minds, hearts, ethics and conversations than many of the aristocracy who thought they were so much better, based on ridiculous criteria all related to inherited wealth, artificially created "rank", status and hobnobbing with the "right" people. So shallow. I wondered how the materialism from Austen's time relates to the materialism we see in modern Western societies now. Australia and the USA both were English colonies and seem to have caught some of the same diseases, albeit mutated - English aristocrats worshipped inherited money; in "the colonies" that sort of mutated into worship of self-made money...

I read up a little on Jane Austen and was sad to find that she never ended up married to her own Mr Darcy. Apparently, the one Darcy in her life happened when both were 20 and he was then shuffled away quickly by his relatives because they wanted to prevent them pairing off, and he later became Chief Justice of Ireland... and she never married... and died at age 41, of what seems to have been stress-related illness. And, during her lifetime, all her books had to be published anonymously because it was "unseemly" for women to be writers. mg: And some people wonder why feminism happened...

I've never read up on Jane Austen before. I knew the Brontë sisters all died really young, but wasn't aware Jane Austen barely got into her 40s... sheesh. The Chief Justice she'd been in love with when he was a student made it to age 93, apparently...


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## SueC

On the ground in Redmond, the ghastly weather continues, so I was unable to snatch a ride this weekend, but I will as soon as the weather clears up a bit. It's just been howling wind and rain, and today, I was really having trouble with the octopus again... but we had a great Saturday, and I'm drinking lots of lemon tea...


*NATIVE VEGETATION PROJECT*

On a positive note, I have some photos of the replanting programme we've been beavering away at since 2010. Last week, I finished the roadside rehabilitation planting for this year - I added another 192 seedlings, in tree protector bubbles, to the western end of the road reserve - the part that was the most damaged when we bought the place. (And now, I'll be tending to doing a bit more in the internal shelter belts in the pasture.)

In Photo 1 you can see the difference we were able to make since 2010 – the roadside looked the same on both sides before we started our stewardship. The section of roadside on the right was just grassy weeds in 2010 all the way back to where you can see bushes in the distance on the left.

Photo 2 was taken in the eastern half of our roadside reserve, which still had good stands of remnant vegetation including paperbarks and tea-trees, but was in the early stages of invasion by adjacent pasture species. Large patches of kikuyu were spreading into it. We went in every autumn and sprayed out any kikuyu, and the native vegetation has been regenerating rapidly back into these previously weedy areas. When this happens, you are stewarding the remaining native plant genetics and surviving associated fauna of your local area, which is a holy grail of conservation biology. It is a core part of trying to halt Australia’s ongoing species extinction catastrophe on your own patch.

In areas heavily invaded by weeds, we planted fast-growing _Acacia saligna_, a WA species, along the fence as pioneer plants. They fix nitrogen, make great bird and insect habitat, increase the speed of rehabilitation by sheltering more delicate plants, and aid in suppressing grasses by quickly creating shade and a mulch layer, which you can see in Photo 3. In these areas, a mix of new acacias and remnant species germinate. You can manually remove the acacia seedlings if you want to favour the local lineages. _Acacia saligna_ is short-lived (<10 years), dying acacias make excellent firewood, and other plants will be taking their spots by this time.

In the westernmost quarter of the road reserve along our property, the kikuyu was waist-high when we first moved to Redmond, and had entirely choked the native vegetation many years before. In this area, we had to replant from scratch, using cell tray seedlings from the local nursery. We started in the autumn of 2015 by spraying out a 4m strip of kikuyu along the fence. By early winter, we were planting, initially in two rows. Our area is very windy and susceptible to winter frosts, so we use tree protectors for every seedling. After 1-2 years, the little plants outgrow the protectors, and we re-use them when we bring in new seedlings, which we do every year for about 4 years.

Each winter during this phase, we add in new plants to increase the overall density and diversity of planting. Photo 4 depicts the results by the middle of 2019, with a 9-year-old windbreak in the background. Photos 5-8 show the views east and south from the northwestern corner of our property when we started this journey, in winter 2010, and just recently, in winter 2019.

So, we may be getting wrinklier and needing glasses and having to battle to stay as fit as we once were, but there are some compensations - the landscape is transforming! inkunicorn::blueunicorn:


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## Knave

It is beautiful!!


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## bsms

Looks like a lot of work! And when you could be sitting on a couch, eating chips, watching TV for 8 hours a day, laughing when cued, outraged when cued, hearing only what your betters think is good for you to hear...


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## SueC

bsms said:


> Looks like a lot of work! And when you could be sitting on a couch, eating chips, watching TV for 8 hours a day, laughing when cued, outraged when cued, hearing only what your betters think is good for you to hear...


:rofl: Indeed! Not that I'm completely allergic to sofas or chips - these fine things certainly have their place - but 8 hours of commercial TV a day would be my idea of purgatory... 

Have you ever read Ray Bradbury's short story _The Pedestrian_? Similar themes...


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## SueC

******** PLANTATION RIDE 1 JULY 2019*

Today, Sunsmart and I did a longish trail through the ******* plantation to the west of our property. This is a place where we rode a lot at the beginning of having the horses in Redmond, from 2010 to around 2012 - at the time, there was basically nowhere else decent to go outside of our own property. This trail was open, and provided so much variety and possible extension that for a few years, we rarely went anywhere else for a ride "away". Sunsmart got very fit on those trails - they involve many hills and he's particularly keen to run on the nice wide tracks of the plantation. Possibly they remind him of the harness tracks he trained on as a young horse.

After 2012, the plantation gate was locked, and I could not access its trails for several years. This was followed by getting permission from our south neighbour to ride in his block, and to access opening to Sleeman Creek Reserve, and some experiments with going along the bitumen road to get to Creek Road and its lovely trails. The former two, along with the trails on our own farm, I have already documented for this thread this year. The plantation has been accessible again on and off, and today, I took the camera along - and it's good timing, because they are getting ready to harvest it, which means that by Christmas, all the trees will be gone and my horse will be very perplexed. ******** coppice and will eventually grow back, but it's nice to have photos of how we've known it since we moved here.

Ride map: Orange track is today's ride - the faint red lines are alternative tracks to ride - the stippled faint red lines are tracks on our own farm. Start point in the NE, clockwise around the loop to ******** Lake at the NW, then back to the loop and continuing clockwise home.

Photos 1-2: After turning right off our main central sand track, we rode up the hill to the western exit gate on our place - first through sand, then up on the rocky ridge.

Photo 3: Our western exit gate. The neighbour on that side kindly gave us permission many years ago to use the section of his track that leads to the plantation - it's a short stroll down the hill. The reason for the gate is that these two blocks were part of a larger farm that was split into its four original titles when it was sold in 2010. We bought the north-eastern block.

Photo 4: The plantation gate is the swing gate on the left. There is a "cocky gate" this side of it which leads to what used to be the south block of the large farm, which is now owned separately. If you look through the trees, you will see a pastured hillside in the distance that gives some idea of the gradients to be found on trails out this way.

Photo 5: A somewhat blurry (call it impressionistic ;-)) close-up of a track leading down to a stream, and the hillside in the distance.

Photo 6: We are turning south through the plantation gate - you can see that ~90 degree turn on the ride map. You are looking at the reason I bought hoof boots in 2010 - the exposed rocks on this ridge are sharp and irregular. The technical term for this geology is ferruginous duricrust - Australia has ancient, highly leached soil profiles. The duricrust formed in a sedimentary layer in the past; it is rich in iron, and in places, aluminium as well (bauxite ore). When this stuff breaks up at the surface, it's about as horse-friendly as limestone. Especially in the winter, when the horn is soft from the wet ground, horses bruise easily clambering across these rocks, even more so with riders on board. And even with boots on, you walk the worst sections because they are ankle-twisting even for humans. This is the reason a lot of endurance riders pre-boot era were putting plastic soles under the horseshoes of their steeds for competitions in these types of areas.

Photo 7: Continuing along the firebreak heading south.

Photo 8: A little bit of "bush bashing" - following a kangaroo trail through the teatree scrub, to get to a creek crossing. Smartie actually really enjoys this kind of experience - he's often trying to persuade me to go down random animal tracks that veer off the firebreaks and service tracks we use for trails.

Photo 9: At the creek crossing, we had a surprise - four Scottish Highland cattle were grazing there. These belong to our western neighbour, and appear to have done a dash to get to the feed on the other side of the fence. Between this and the fact that I'd brought a riding crop, my hydrophobic horse crossed the creekline in record time... two little _thwacks_ when he started thinking too much about whether he wanted to get his feet wet, and he crossed like a dream. After that, he was really pleased with himself, especially when I told him how clever he was for crossing!

Photo 10: And off they all went! Between the dark horse and the barking hound, the Highland Cattle decided to run for it - although they were all kicking up their heels as they went!  The line of trees in the background is the edge of the ******* plantation.


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## SueC

There was a problem with the photo upload - Photo 2 didn't display properly and I didn't have enough editing time to fix it. This is Photos 2 through to 10 - captions in the post above:


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## SueC

I'm having a good run of it tonight! :rofl: Here's the ride map - orange track is today's ride - the faint red lines are alternative tracks to ride - the stippled faint red lines are tracks on our own farm. Start point in the NE, clockwise around the loop to ******** Lake at the NW, then back to the loop and continuing clockwise home...


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## SueC

Hello, @knightrider! :wave: This is the kind of trail you would enjoy! :cowboy: ...and I did it _before_ I started all the serious work for the day, and still got all my work done!  Lots of time in the garden and trimming a horse included.

Continuing...

Photo 11: Now entering the loop on the ride map, heading south. This is a stand of approx. 10-year old Tasmanian ******** (_Eucalyptus globulus_) grown for pulp and ready to harvest. The red gravel service roads have only lately been put in to get ready for harvest and the needs of the associated heavy machinery. After cutting, the trees will coppice and can be cut again in another decade or so.

Photo 12: Plantation on the right, native woodland on the left. You're looking at one tree species monoculture on the right, and at a dozen tree species plus several hundred understorey species on the left. Forests ain't forests! The plantation used to be a dairy farm before the tree corporation bought it.

Photo 13: In the plantation itself.

Photo 14: This long straight trail is the southern part of our loop - with plantation to the right, and bushland reserve on our left.

Photo 15: The gravel pit they made to get the material to make the red service roads for the upcoming harvest. We'd not ridden here since all that happened.

Photo 16: Heading north through the plantation. ******* bark peels in long strips and sheds, making a lot of ground litter and giving the trunks lovely colours and textures.

Photo 17: We took a left turn at the end of the last trail to ride out to the long farm dam I christened "******* Lake" in the summer of 2010/11. Normally the dog likes to swim here, but she knew we were coming back and was waiting on the trail, having rather overdone it today - chasing kangaroos and all that, instead of just following us along... I don't know any farmer with a kelpie that doesn't go deaf when it wants to run with a kangaroo - it's like it's a race to these dogs, a test of their speed. They don't attack the animals, but try (unsuccessfully) to round them up. :rofl:

Photo 18: This is the start of the northern edge of our loop - we now have plantation to our right, and the Pirelli's cattle farm (Angus) on the left.

Photo 19: The Pirellis have large pasture areas surrounded by sheltering bushland - and this is the pattern for most of the beef farms in our local area. The clouds are typical for our winter - this is what a mostly fine winter day looks like. The weekend was unsuited to riding - it was bucketing down out of a completely overcast sky for two days straight. It was lovely to get the nice weather today.

Photo 20: Continuing west, on the northern stretch of our loop.


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## SueC

Photo 21: The Pirelli's homestead under some dramatic clouds. If you look really closely, you can see the Porongurup Range in the distance over the roofline of the shed, in the tree gap.

Photo 22: A reedy seasonal wetland, which you can see on the map - it's the "hole" in the plantation. It should be filling with water soon, as winter continues.

Photo 23: Still heading west...

Photo 24: Up the hill here - the horse ran for it after this photo. We stayed on the left-hand edge, as the main track is quite eroded by water.

Photo 25: Views of the Porongurup Range, where Brett and I like to hike - gorgeous walking trails there, in one of the most ancient mountain ranges in the world!

Photo 26: I missed a fair bit of varied scenery to photograph here, because from the time the trail got twisty-turny on that map, my horse wanted to run, and did some race-speed trotting and extended cantering until we got to this little dam, where the dog was swimming until about a second before I took the photo...

Photo 27: Back to the creek crossing, with the dog charging ahead.

Photo 28: Back on the neighbour's block, my horse decided he wanted a snack. I always walk the section between the plantation gate and our western gate. Usually we play "the stick game" and we did today (horse carries stick in his mouth and invites me to pull on it for a tug of war), until he decided to sample the vegetation.

Photo 29: In winter he's a grizzly bear! He gets quite sweaty on serious trails in his winter coat, so when we do long rides with lots of hills and faster speeds, we start before noon so the horse can have a bath and get dry before evening and going back in his paddock rug. Smartie doesn't need to be led when I get off him here, he just comes along like this.

Photo 30: When we got back to our pasture, the horse was yawning conspicuously, and I yawned back at him. In this way, we kept each other yawning and I got some photographs. This is the best one! Julian is in the background on the left, and Nelly the donkey a little above his noseband. The black cube above his nostrils is a (non-urea) mineral lick for the cattle, and whoever else fancies it. The equines sometimes give it a lick, but get mineral mix in their daily bucket feeds as well.

After the photo, I took all the tack off the horse and got two big buckets of hot water from the house, with which to make four big buckets of warm water for his bath. He really appreciates not being washed with cold water in the winter, and I am happy to do this for him. After squeegeeing and towelling dry, he got a bucket of food and some salt replacer - all part of the happy routine.

Next time I go out that way, I will try to photograph the trail sections I didn't do today. Meanwhile, we'll be back on our local tracks and in the south block, for the rest of the week.


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## SueC

...oh yeah... I was riding east, not west, in Photos 20-24. :ZZZ:

A more user-friendly, error-corrected version of this ride, with interspersed photos rather than in blocks, is now here:

https://www.horseforum.com/trail-riding/2019-rides-happy-trails-799655/page13/#post1970738803

...I don't know how to make the photos not be in blocks if I simply attach them on HF, so usually my journal cops the 10-photo blocks at the end when I do it that way...

Good night, everyone, from the Antipodes. I shall be sleeping while all of you toil away... :ZZZ:


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## Knave

I like when the trail goes through the tall trees! You must feel special riding through that. I think I would feel like an explorer, which is odd with the great road, but you know... I’m a little odd.


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## gottatrot

I love the yawning! Hilarious.


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## SueC

*MONKEY TRAILS IN DENMARK*

Now that we're finally over our bout of influenza, it's time to get our fitness back. We've returned to walking and cycling over the past fortnight, including a lovely 2-hour twilight walk around Middleton Beach and Emu Point in Albany on Tuesday night after Brett's work as a warm-up for returning to serious hiking. Next time we do that loop, I will take the camera as it's wonderfully scenic, like much of the South Coast.

It's Brett's birthday next week, and he wants to do a climb in the Stirlings for it. So, on his day off yesterday, we prepared for that by doing a serious walking day in coastal Denmark. I forgot to take a photo of the actual small town, so snaggled one off the Internet:










A nice overview here:

https://www.denmarkwesternaustralia.com/

If we go via the back roads (some of which are unsealed), we are as close to Denmark as we are to Albany, starting from Redmond. It's a half hour trip through lovely rural scenery. We'd slept in (Wimbledon!) but managed to be on the road shortly after 9am after a good breakfast, and with a thermos of hot citrus tea, a glass bottle of iced coffee, and fruit and nuts packed for the trip. When you go to Denmark, you don't take sandwiches - their bakery is legendary, and always part of the visit for us.

We were there before 10am, and began with a little warm-up walk.


*Mokare Heritage Trail*

This is a riverside trail which starts in Denmark Townsite. It's a gentle, scenic 3km walk amongst the Karri trees from the main bridge to a footbridge near the mouth of the Denmark River, and then back on the far side of the river.

Views from a riverside jetty:



...looking back at the main bridge:



The path on the western bank:









Views south off the footbridge, into the Wilson Inlet:



Views north, looking back at where we'd walked from:



Looking east:



Sunsmart has crossed that bridge. When I had him agisted in Albany in 2009, I went on a group trail ride with him on the Denmark Rail Trail. riding from the Hay River into Denmark township and back. I remember he was a bit bamboozled by the bridge, having never crossed one in his life as a harness horse. With horses in front and behind, he got swept up in the procession and had crossed before there was much time to think about it! 

The Denmark Rail Trail is straight ahead on this shot - but we turned left, back along the riverbank:





Having now acquired the necessary appetite, we made a visit to the famous, award-winning Denmark Bakery, where Brett was soon channelling Hamlet:



This is Brett contemplating his Beef and Mushroom Pie as if it were the skull of Yorick...


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## SueC

After amusing ourselves in town for a while, we headed out to our main walk trail for the day, driving along the Wilson Inlet road to get there. Along that route, we screeched to an unscheduled stop on a beautiful lookout point, where we sat down on the rocks with our thermos of hot citrus tea. These were our views:



The hill in the background is Mt Hallowell, which is another hike for another day.





Having sipped our tea, we went down a promising little side track with our cameras, and ended up in this little pirate cove:













Then it was time to head back up the hill to the car, to get to our main destination.


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## SueC

*Monkey Rock Car Park To Lights Beach - Bibbulmun Track*

I last did this track section in late 2007 and can't remember whether I did it with my colleague at the time Sharon, the mad keen walker who climbed Mt Kilimanjaro soon after, or with Brett, who has no memory of it. I certainly have no memory of Lights Beach itself, but I do of the track, so I think I must have done that with Sharon, as part of a circuit that is marked on my trail map with a date on it. I remember that the roads part of the circuit was rather dull, and so we decided to simply walk in and back out on the Bibbulmun track, whose dune traverses provide some lovely fitness work for us that's invigorating rather than exhausting at this stage of post-flu exercise.

The Bibbulmun Track is a famous walking track that stretches over 600km from Perth to Albany, the long way around, mostly through natural areas. We often walk local sections of the track. The Monkey Rock car park to Lights Beach section is around 8km return and begins with a stile, crossing into private farmland:



Pretty soon, you're in the bushland:



This bit of bush is private remnant vegetation, like we have on our place.









At this stage, we took a wrong turn and ended up walking some distance along the firebreak track of the property hosting this section of the Bibbulmun Track, and by the time we realised it, we'd made the total walking distance for this part of our outing closer to 10km than 8km. Soon, though, we were back on the proper track, and crossed another stile leaving the property to get into the primary dunes:



You can see why the things I am wearing are called camouflage pants - they actually do that... I buy these things because they have enough pockets, are comfortable for walking and working in, made of natural materials instead of synthetics, cost less than half of what walking pants cost, and are actually long enough for me with their unisex design. I've previously bought them in green, but when my last green ones wore out recently, I replaced them with patterned pants for a change.

The views towards William Bay National Park:



Our happy dog waiting to see if we are coming:



Brett on a track section overlooking the coast:



The sealed track is a new bicycle track that runs 14km return to the Denmark Wind Farm - we've bookmarked that for another day, with bicycles and dog...

Typical South Coast surf:



This is a little cove in Lights Beach - have you ever seen anything more perfect?





Lights Beach has its own car park, so in summer we aim to come back and just do the long beach walk along the coast here, when the weather is too hot inland for walking...


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## SueC

It's a really amazing place...



We live in such a beautiful part of the world and are making a renewed effort to go on a nice walk "away" and out of our usual repertoire once a week.





This was a lovely, warm, sheltered spot to have some fruit and iced coffee before exploring the beach:



Brett photographed some bluebottles:





The far end of the beach had a nice "seat":





Then it was time to head back. The dog is usually ahead of us on walks, asking, "Are you coming or what?"



A shot back towards the lovely little cove from the high dunes:



...and the views back towards Denmark on the return walk...



It was a fabulous day out - and it feels wonderful to be able to use our bodies properly again!


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## DanteDressageNerd

Wow!! The pictures and experience look absolutely amazing!! You guys go on some great adventures!!


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## Knave

Hope you didn’t break yourself on a hike!


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## SueC

It's a sunny day and I'm getting through my to-do list, but I did want to stop a moment today to remember Arjen Ryder.

Five years ago today, a passenger plane was shot down over the Ukraine, and Arjen was on board that plane. He and his wife were on their way back to Australia after holidaying in their native Holland. I learnt what had happened from our neighbour Noel on a fine sunny morning like this one, the day after. Noel and Robyn used to live in the Wellstead district, which is where Arjen was really well-known amongst the farming community because he was the person who was monitoring all the groundwater information (levels, salinity) at the many bores in the area, as part of a Department of Agriculture ongoing study. He'd been doing this for over 25 years, and I personally knew him because he was one of five colleagues with whom I shared a demountable office building out the back of Albany's Department of Agriculture in 1994/95, as part of the sustainable land management research team which also included a Persian hydrologist, Ruhi Ferdowsian, who together with Arjen was one of the nicest human beings I have ever worked with. Those two, and several others in that office, kind of gave me the wrong impression of what workplaces are normally like, on my first science job out of university - they set the standard so high that few other workplaces measured up to my first one, afterwards.

Coincidentally, Brett and I have not been on a passenger aircraft since this happened - I've been up in Noel's home-bake light aircraft, but we've not flown out of an airport since, because buying this farm in 2010 kept us really busy with setting up the property, planting trees and building a house and outbuildings, for quite a few years. Even now, it's hard to get spare time or cash to get away, but we're aiming to fly out to Tasmania next Easter for some hiking and camping, with a farm-sitter looking after the place, for our first holiday away since 2009. So, that's something we are looking forward to. But, flying in an airliner will be tinged with horror ever after for me.

When Arjen was shot down, many people here were devastated - he was well known and liked. I had waking nightmares of sitting on a plane, being hit by a shockwave and having everything disintegrate around me, and I was so upset that something that horrific had happened to so nice a person. I was hoping that the shockwave from the missile would have meant instant loss of consciousness, but am not sure, and it's the seconds of possible realisation that haunt me. People were literally falling from the sky...

The nearest experience (not close at all, but you have to relate it to something) that I had was when my car was rear-ended seven years ago by someone doing 140km/h who "didn't see me" (in my bright yellow car on a sunny afternoon) as I had slowed to turn off the highway. The impact was like a bomb going off; glass was flying everywhere and the car was airborne, and turned mid-air to land in the opposite lane, facing in the opposite direction. While in flight, I was going, "What? What?" out loud, so there was an awareness of something amiss - I'd not realised I was about to be hit because I had focused on a semi-trailer waiting at the intersection. The moment the car came to rest, I already knew I'd been in an accident - I was pretty dazed, but I knew that much, and my next thought was, "I have to get out of here, what if another car hits me?" This wasn't the most rational thought, but it was processing the situation I was in. So when people say that the passengers on that plane that was shot down wouldn't have known anything, I am kind of sceptical - unless the shockwave from the cruise missile was enough to cause instant loss of consciousness. Experts were talking about cabin depressurisation and loss of oxygen and using statistics on that to say that there wouldn't have been more than a couple of seconds of consciousness, but I don't know about that, lack of oxygen takes up to two minutes to result in oblivion... depressurisation is another kettle of fish, but even if it was five seconds, it was less time than that between my car being impacted and me realising I'd gotten hit as I was back on the ground in the other lane facing the other way, and I can tell you that those couple of seconds stretched a long way when that was going on.

I am really sad that someone who was such a lovely colleague and who should still be walking around on our South Coast today lost his life five years ago, in such awful circumstances. I remember his children coming into the office when they were pre-schoolers and primary school students, and racing around, including a girl in a flower-print dress, in a summer long ago. His kids had all grown up, but were hit hard by what happened. Ruhi Ferdowsian was most eloquent in eulogising Arjen for the press, able to give shape to how much he had meant to so many people, and why. Arjen's son rode his father's roadbike in the cycle leg of the next Blackwood Marathon on his behalf, despite not being a keen cyclist - just to honour him, and because he said his father had forever been trying to get him into something like this, and he thought it would make him smile looking down. I wasn't at the Department of Agriculture long enough to realise Arjen was a keen cyclist too (I was time trialling that year, he was doing group distance rides, so our wheels didn't cross, and we didn't talk much about sports), but now when I get on my road bike, I remember Arjen. I have some new handlebar tape sitting on the kitchen counter, in red, and will think of him when I put it on my bike. It's something we can do, to remember people fondly who deserve to be remembered, and we all loved Arjen, at the AgWA office. He was a decent, dedicated, caring person, and the world needs more people like him.










The last I'd heard from Arjen was a couple of months before his holiday, after catching up with him and Justin (who's also still there, and whose daughter played an impish role in a recent local production of _Midsummer Night's Dream_) on email. Arjen was happy I'd found a nice person to marry and was living on a farm, and we were all going to catch up in person over coffee sometime. This didn't happen; we ran out of time. You never think you're going to, but all of us will eventually; so if I could go back in time, I'd be arranging the coffee shop date...


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## DanteDressageNerd

That is really really sad :-( I'm sorry for Arjen and his family for losing him in such a nightmarish fashion. That's really sad :-( It's like a worst nightmare for that to happen, such a freak thing too. Im terribly sorry :-(


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## SueC

Thank you, @DanteDressageNerd. :hug: I hope you're having a nice stay in the US - have yet to catch up on people's journals!

I hope everyone is well. I've been a bit scarce on account of needing to catch up with a lot of things that fell by the wayside when we were impeded for three weeks with influenza, and some of these items are a bit hard to budge! It's the sort of thing that gives smallholders headaches: For example, it was back in late April/early May that I started a drainage project around our shed and completed Stage 1; and I was ready to do Stage 2 the following week, when I got a stress fracture in my foot and couldn't do any digging and wheelbarrowing until that had healed up. So in late June, I finally got back to that, and Brett and I dug the ditch for Stage 2 one afternoon. The pipes are sitting there ready to be slotted and go in the ditch, but it rained for a week and that's not a good time to work with pipes. So then on the next sunny day when you're doing something else on your to-do list that urgently needs doing, you're also looking at the pipes sitting there and hoping to get around to them sometime that day and then your other jobs stretch, and it's still undone at the end of the day, which gets frustrating. It's like The Curse of the Unfinished Drainage Pipes. And then there's fencing repairs also queueing, and even pruning in the garden. I need a TARDIS, not for international travel in this instance, but so I can fit five days' worth of work into one, and finally be caught up. But, I'm going to be scarce until all that stuff is done.

I did read in interesting article in _The Guardian_ that says endless to-do lists are demoralising, and that you should choose just three things for your to-do list, by priority, and work on those, and not add anything else to your list until these three tasks are done. Then you start with another three-task list, and so on. I've been trying that out, and it ties in well with the "three main tasks a day, everything else is a bonus" technique Brett introduced to me - three things are usually doable, and then you don't feel demoralised by things remaining on your list, plus if you get the three things out of the way, you feel ahead when you start jumping into "extra" tasks after that! So, slowly and surely, things are getting done - the tree planting this year has been excellent, for instance, and the food garden is OK, and all the horse and donkey feet are trimmed, and the house is in good order in general. 

Basically, there are many maintenance tasks that just get you back to square one, so things look the same as they did before - and 90% of my work time outdoors seems to be taken up with those. The "new work" category gets a back seat, but the tree planting has been fabulous, for instance, because it's something that's changing and you can watch grow after you've done it. Whereas a repaired fence is just a repaired fence! At least with permaculture techniques, tasks are rarely isolated, e.g. when I mow the lawn (when my eager four-legged helpers don't beat me to it), or prune things, it's not just something that makes the garden look tidy, but the clippings go back in the cycle via our compost bin, to produce organic fertiliser for our food garden. Also, the mower is battery-powered, and therefore runs off our solar panels, and not fossil fuels.

I have been following @knightrider's advice to ride when the time is best for riding, and not at the end of the day as a reward that I may then be too tired to take up. So, I've been riding every second day generally, excepting winter deluges, and always at the best time of day, when it's warm and sunny. While I've not been on a "big" ride since the plantation ride documented a couple of weeks ago, we potter around on the on-farm and neighbour's tracks and it keeps the horse, the dog and me entertained, and exercised to a baseline level.

There were some things I didn't respond to earlier, which I will now:



Knave said:


> I like when the trail goes through the tall trees! You must feel special riding through that. I think I would feel like an explorer, which is odd with the great road, but you know... I’m a little odd.


Well, I'm a bit odd too, because I do actually feel a bit like an explorer riding through places like that!  Next time I go out into the plantation, I shall take the loop that goes past the old defunct dairy, and take photos to share. That will feel a little like archaeology actually, because the building is roofless and collapsing...




gottatrot said:


> I love the yawning! Hilarious.


It works with my dog too. And sneezing! I've been mock-sneezing when she's been sneezing, and now if I mock-sneeze, it can set her off sneezing! 




DanteDressageNerd said:


> Wow!! The pictures and experience look absolutely amazing!! You guys go on some great adventures!!


Thank you. I always ooh and aah over your travel photos too!  There's some beautiful places in the world, and a lot of them are nearby, if we have eyes for it. We decided to make time again. I'll have some pictures of Middleton Beach and Emu Point soon, we went on a nice afternoon walk there yesterday after Brett's work, because it was his birthday, and today we are about to embark on a climb of Mt Magog in the Stirling Ranges, for the same reason! Photos will be taken. That part of the Stirlings is _Lord of The Rings_ country! 




Knave said:


> Hope you didn’t break yourself on a hike!


No, I tend to break myself _between_ hikes! :rofl:


Wishing everyone a wonderful evening / day!


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## Spanish Rider

I like the 3 daily goals idea. It would make things more manageable, wouldn't it? I should give it a whirl.

Actually, it reminds me of the theory for feeding older babies and toddlers: if you put a full plate of food in front of them, they get overwhelmed and sometimes refuse to eat, play with their food or knock it to the floor; but, if you put just a few pieces of food on their tray, they'll usually gobble it up and ask for more!

So does that just make us big babies?


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## Knave

I really like that idea too. I may give it a go for a couple weeks and see what I think.


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## SueC

This is the article I mentioned: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jul/05/how-to-tackle-your-to-do-lists-oliver-burkeman
@Spanish Rider, the difference between us and big babies is that we have to be our own parents! ;-) Make ourselves go to bed on time, exercise, eat our vegetables, have good manners, get our work done, get down time etc. 

I remember a song lyric on this from the 1990s - "I'm still a child, but now no-one tells me _no_." :rofl:

For you, @Knave and anyone else trying to improve their productivity and reduce their stress about the never-ending pile, here's two more useful ones on to-do lists and human behaviour:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...to-do-list-why-your-brain-loves-ordered-tasks

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/10/how-to-stop-to-do-lists-ruining-your-life

Three different angles, all of them interesting. Wishing everyone here lots of energy, and a good work-life balance!


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## SueC

*MIDDLETON BEACH / EMU POINT WALK PHOTOS*

Here are some nice photos of our town beach in Albany, which we like to walk on after Brett's work on my town days. This one was for his birthday, on the day, which was nice. The following day we climbed in the Stirlings and at one point I thought there was no way I was getting up that mountaintop because I was leaden and lacking in fitness with recent influenza and the stress fracture in May, but then the endorphins kicked in and things were OK. We've got great photos, but not yet on Flickr, so I'll do that next time. I'm now fitter, with a higher discomfort tolerance! ;-)

When we do the Middleton Beach / Emu Point loop, we get onto Middleton beach in the middle, where dogs are allowed but there aren't too many other people:



As you can see, Brett had the dog while I took the snap! The sand is very white because eroded from granite. This is the view northeast from the beach, at Mt Martin Botanical Reserve (on the peninsula), which has a nice 4-hour walk we're planning to do again soon:



Now two of the irrepressible Jess chasing waves:





The next photo is from Emu Point, where 25 years ago they constructed a groyne I was one of the people to protest against, because I knew what it was going to do the the beach which used to go all the way along the shore. The protests were ignored and the groyne was built, and the sand eroded away along the eastern part of the beach, and the sea started cutting into the shore further up as well, so they had to build rock walls at great expense, and they keep having to shift sand around - just like we knew would happen, from countless other examples around Australia. How we wish the decision-makers had paid attention in their high school Geography lessons; the community is paying for this kind of stupidity with increased rates (up 30% in a couple of years) while the earthmoving profits from the initial groyne and subsequent walls etc go to mates of the council, presumably with kickbacks. :evil: They should pay for their stupid decisions out of their own pockets, instead of the people who didn't want it having to pay...



I remember the beach that used to be there... and the money that was still in our pockets then...

This is the entrance to Oyster Harbour, with Mount Martin Botanical Reserve on the other side:



A cargo ship in King George Sound; behind it is Isthmus Hill, leading out to Limestone Head on the left, and Bald Head out of view - that is one of the most magnificent coastal walks in the world, a half-day hike starting from the right-hand side of the picture and going up and over the hill and along the ridge track of the peninsula, out of sight off the photo...and one we've done a lot before moving to the farm, that we are going to catch up with again this year.



A couple of photos from the Emu Point Café - we thought we'd be civilised and catch a drink on Brett's birthday...





That's a Ginger Zinger Brett is drinking. The owner of the place, Kate Marwick, was on the Year 9 Ecology excursion I organised in 2000, out to Fisheries Beach, is now in her 30s, and is taking lots of ecological initiatives in her business, like no plastic anything - compostable packaging, paper straws, all sorts of environmentally friendly ways of doing things. Go Kate!


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## SueC

A few shots of Oyster Harbour, its beach and marina:





I just love eucalyptus trees - look at the shapes and colours of those branches... Jess and me, on the beach...





Brett said to me that I've been his best birthday present every year for 12 years now! 

We went along a street through the little suburb on the point, to get back to the other side, and the ocean beach there, where we had started. This is the view south towards Albany townsite:



And this is a boat floating off Point Possession, on an isthmus that divides the King George Sound from the Princess Royal Harbour in the west (not on the photo):



Point Possession has - you guessed it - a wonderful walk too, which I've featured on this journal before. Behind that is Stony Hill, an amazing lookout point to the Southern Ocean on the other side of the Torndirrup Peninsula, which divides the Southern Ocean off King George Sound (and has Stony Hill, Isthmus Hill, Limestone Head etc on it).

So, that was a lovely walk, and I took the camera this time to take some snaps! 

I've also been riding; managed to get a 4km on-farm tracks ride in yesterday before the next cold front hit; no riding today as everything was wintry and wet!


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## bsms

I'll skip showing the pictures to my wife. She would want us to emigrate. Although Australian might not want us and if IIRC (from a visit to Darwin around 87), Australia has high taxes.

I grew up in Tucson and it is the closest city to us. Tucson's city council always has great ideas too, all of which are supposed to "revitalize" the downtown at great expense and which always seem to "revitalize" certain local businesses while the project never gets finished. Then the city council comes up with another project which sounds a lot like the one that just failed.

The downtown area had more vibrant businesses 50 years ago. It was cleaner then, too. With more parking. Hmmmmmm. Of course, we had about 1/4 as many people then. But don't worry because all of Arizona is committed to "*GROWTH!*" 

Because that will improve the tax base. Or it will once those of us living here have paid for the schools, the roads, big tax breaks for the companies....feeling cynical first thing in the morning. Sorry. More coffee and a ride may improve my humor. But probably not my cynicism.


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## Spanish Rider

Happy Birthday, Brett!










- With regards from the Light Saber Development Team


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## Knave

That is beautiful!! You guys always look so happy in your pictures. In turn it makes me happy!

Also, HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRETT! See that? I yelled it.


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## SueC

bsms said:


> I'll skip showing the pictures to my wife. She would want us to emigrate. Although Australian might not want us and if IIRC (from a visit to Darwin around 87), Australia has high taxes.


You can see why both of us fell in love with this part of Australia, which by the way, isn't a particularly trendy part! For trendy, the West Coast and particularly Margaret River is where people go to be seen, and thankfully, much of the population misses the South Coast. The tendency for it to rain on long weekends and on school holidays helps! :rofl: It actually does seem to do just that whenever the tourists get here, and then people say, "It always rains in Albany!" even though the annual rainfall is actually lower here than in the Perth hills...

Our taxes are possibly higher than yours, but so much lower than Germany's... and yet Germany and Scandinavia, for all their higher taxes, consistently show up as having better population happiness indices than Australia and the US. As does India, despite all the poverty... Population happiness isn't something economists study, but should - looking at population happiness is far more important than looking at GDP and material living standards (the indices for which are strange indeed)...

I'm not sure what it's like in the US, but in Australia, there is so much more of people chasing status symbols and keeping up with the Joneses than in Europe; and there's less satisfaction at just doing something well for the sake of it, or educating yourself. Traditional German businesses tend to genuinely pride themselves in making quality products that will last, and in having many employees for life. In Australia, it's more about turnover and how much stuff you can shift, and making things look better than they actually are.

How does Spain compare to the US in those sorts of things, @Spanish Rider? I've not lived in Spain... in Italy, there was more community spirit and general gregariousness than in Australia, for instance. People made time for each other more; you didn't not know your neighbours, whereas here, I've lived in so many places around the country where neighbourhoods are anonymous things and people don't get to know each other, and at most say "hello" when going past each other, not even knowing each other's names...




> I grew up in Tucson and it is the closest city to us. Tucson's city council always has great ideas too, all of which are supposed to "revitalize" the downtown at great expense and which always seem to "revitalize" certain local businesses while the project never gets finished. Then the city council comes up with another project which sounds a lot like the one that just failed.


This sounds a lot like what happens here...

Random question: Have you ever seen ZZ Top live? Aren't they from that neck of the woods?




> The downtown area had more vibrant businesses 50 years ago. It was cleaner then, too. With more parking. Hmmmmmm. Of course, we had about 1/4 as many people then. But don't worry because all of Arizona is committed to "*GROWTH!*"
> 
> Because that will improve the tax base. Or it will once those of us living here have paid for the schools, the roads, big tax breaks for the companies....feeling cynical first thing in the morning. Sorry. More coffee and a ride may improve my humor. But probably not my cynicism.


Ah yes, we've highly cultivated our cynicism in this household. If you cultivate it enough, you get a fair bit of gallows humour! :Angel: Welcome to the Titanic, where the main activity is the rearrangement of the deckchairs. inkunicorn:

I'm trying to work out how we stay sane, given the realistic lens with which we view the world. _If_ we're sane... perhaps we just have an enjoyable sort of insanity here. Humour helps. Good literature. Spending lots of time in natural landscapes where things aren't particularly broken, and follow actual logical laws. Nice companion animals and some good friends. Good food. Jumping up and down like kangaroos at times... :Angel:

The growth thing gets us too, because it's essentially cancer. They make is sound so good, but "growth" creates temporary increases in available money to some people, at the expense of destroying the resource base. What we really need is steady state economies, not growth economies. With a standard of living not determined solely by money, but by what makes life worth living, once you have basic shelter, clothing, transport, food (which you can grow a lot of even in your own backyard to increase your quality of nutrition and life in general - unless you live in a desert, I suppose - anyone grow food in their backyards where you live, @bsms?).

Anyway, ho hum. So, from one cynical household to another, have you read_ Northanger Abbey_ yet? It's Jane Austen in her 40s, just prior to her early demise, and at the very peak of wit and observation! I'm halfway through; Brett finished it; we both agree it's the funniest thing we've read in years... the observations on human nature... and... you can get all this for free these days for your laptop/e-reader/whatever, because it's out of copyright. We get our classics from here these days:

https://www.gutenberg.org/

Oh, and Brett recommends _Yes, Prime Minister_ - from one cynical male to another. It's not out of copyright yet, though!




Spanish Rider said:


> Happy Birthday, Brett!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> - With regards from the Light Saber Development Team


Brett says thank you very much and especially for remembering he wanted a _red_ light sabre! 




Knave said:


> That is beautiful!! You guys always look so happy in your pictures. In turn it makes me happy!
> 
> Also, HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRETT! See that? I yelled it.


mg:, @Knave, we had to use earplugs! :rofl:

Thank you so much, I hope you're having a lovely weekend! inkunicorn: inkunicorn: inkunicorn: :blueunicorn:


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## bsms

I'm too out of touch with average America to even know what it means. I'm not sure it exists. We tend to seek out like-minded people to be friends with, as everyone does. People who live in big cities, for example, are different than those living in rural areas. For example, in politics:



> "It is well known that Trump won the vast majority of U.S. counties—2,649 to Hillary Clinton’s 503...But the majority of his counties have small populations, even if they are geographically larger than average. By TIME’s calculations, Trump’s territory accounts for 75.6% of the nation’s land mass, not including water. And yet, he lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, since Clinton won most high-population, urban areas that take up less space but house many more people."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> https://time.com/4780991/donald-trump-election-map-white-house/


Crime is primarily an urban issue, and even within a given city, it is often involves 10-15% of a given large city. And even in my less populated area, many of those I associate with are my coreligionists (baptists), who hear frequent sermons on rejecting wealth and status as measures of a successful life. I also own horses, which almost require one to prefer values other than the acquisition of wealth! Horses have a way of siphoning off available cash...

I've never seen the most popular TV shows in America. I don't watch the Super Bowl and usually don't know who is playing. Or care. I'll see a list of utterly fascinating entertainers and realize I don't recognize a single name. I'm retired so I can give my own version of "The Middle Hoof Salute" to popular America!

I was born & raised in America. Spent two and a half decades in the military. Right now, like a lot of older folks I know, I feel like an expatriate living in a foreign country. Our neighborhood has a reasonable number of kids. Want to guess how many times I've seen one riding a bike? Other than our grandkids? Maybe twice a year! There are some neighborhood kids somewhere who have built some bike ramps in the desert, so initiative and the outdoors are not TOTALLY dead. But darn close to it. On any given evening, our streets look like a ghost town.

I know nothing about modern America. It is predominately an urban culture now, more interested in streaming than moving. Heck, teens don't even copulate at the rate they used to. Talk about addiction to the Internet!


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## Knave

Seriously @bsms you just made me laugh. The single benefit of raising kids in an online world.

I liked your post Sue. It gives me a lot to think about. I feel the culture shift bsms feels, even in my rural town. Others don’t notice it much, occasionally someone will admit to the change. It is some sort of pretentiousness. Everyone wanting to be better than everyone else... I liked it better when everyone was broke and the judgmental atmosphere didn’t seem to exist.

We are not yet part of the other shift that has taken over the country, which I am grateful for. I don’t know what I’d call that.


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## bsms

My Mom used to talk about going to school barefoot. Since everyone else did, no one felt poor. My Dad was one of the few Colonels in the Air Force, even back then, who hadn't been to college. They had formal parties they had to go to because of his work. Apart from that, parties were spaghetti and beer (with plenty of both) at home. Their major form of recreation was bowling - separate teams because of my Dad's competitiveness. I gather he was unbearable to play with on a team, but after the game they would both joke about it. A lot of Great Depression kids grew up wanting status symbols. I guess my folks grew up in families with different values and passed those values on to my sister and I.


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## DanteDressageNerd

I quite agree. I think a big factor in why I dont feel at home in the US anymore is people. Most of my friends are all over 40, so we get along but I cant relate hardly at all to most people in my age grou (around 30). If it makes anyone feel better in Denmark they make fun of the radical hollywood elite types a lot. But here is more rural and I think people are more down to earth and work together. It's a small country, so being practical and realistic, as well as grounded is good. Being entitled, thinking the world owes you something is not the Danish way. I think there is more emphasis on self responsibility and excuses arent tolerated in the same way. I feel like in the US people use a lot of excuses vs here people use explanations to understand and become better from. I think the education here requires more active thinking and innovation, rather than repeat and regurgitate. I feel a big issue in the US is people are trained to memorize but not trained to think. Accept the doctrine preached and dont ask questions. Vs in Denmark people are taught to ask the tough questions and be fair and just. STRONG sense of fairness and justice here. It's a different mind set and culture, I favor it strongly. I think lies, self promotion, expecting special treatment and talking out the @ss isnt catered to here like it is in the US, maybe Australia? I dont know, I havent been but I think Germany also had a strong sense of people are responsible for themselves and their actions. If someone is stupid, then they are stupid and they arent catered to for being stupid. If that makes sense? It's hard to explain.

I mean Im pretty outlandish, I swear a lot, say very inappropriate things, some of the older generation could call me rude. I also call out inconsistencies and dont just go with the system or believe something because Im told to. I always challenge and question but respectfully. But my Grandfather is kinda the same. He's Danish and doesnt drink or swear but he thinks for himself. He's honorable and good but not a traditionalist for traditions sake but what is right and makes sense. 

Also note in Scandinavia the tax dollars go where they are promised, the politicians dont stuff it into their pockets or friends businesses. That sort of corruption isnt tolerated. I think Scandinavians have a strong sense of justice and fairness, if the government was playing the people they would do something about it. The viking blood is alive and well here, even as nice and lovely as people seem. People also really dont like foreigners, unless they assimilate and are respectful or the culture. Denmark is a small country, so they allow few immigrants and do not want to go the way of Sweden.


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## bsms

DanteDressageNerd said:


> ...I think the education here requires more active thinking and innovation, rather than repeat and regurgitate. I feel a big issue in the US is people are trained to memorize but not trained to think. Accept the doctrine preached and dont ask questions...


My sister and BIL taught in rural schools in South Africa until SA refused to renew their visas. They have since spent 20 years teaching in public schools in the USA. They say schools in America teach NEITHER. No one memorizes anything any more, although facts are like the bricks in thinking. Without facts, logic gets you nowhere.

There ARE teachers to struggle to teach both. The administration, as best I can tell, prefers neither. As my BIL put it, "_The goal of education is to teach children to feel very good about themselves while they learn and achieve nothing. But at least they will FEEL good about knowing nothing!_"

BTW, my sister & BIL would go back to teaching in an unheated, uncooled South African rural school in a heartbeat if they could. They LOVED teaching there. Motivated kids and supportive parents. No money, almost no books, no Internet or TV and very little running water...but kids who wanted to learn and parents who wanted to help! They remember it as heaven.


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## DanteDressageNerd

bsms- that sounds really amazing! I can imagine why they enjoyed it, good people make good places. It isnt about what you have, it's who you're with. And when people really appreciated each other, work together and try it's pretty amazing.

I couldnt be a teacher in modern America, everyone thinks they're entitled and more important than everyone else. Or wants their ego fed while they spread gossip. I dont like that mentality. And I know it isnt everyone but there is a lot of it from what I've heard. I can understand where your sister and BIL are coming from.


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## Spanish Rider

> How does Spain compare to the US in those sorts of things, @Spanish Rider ?


Well, to put my opinion in perspective, you must realize that I live in one of the poorest, most rural areas of Spain (and the Mediterranean countries are the poorest in Europe) and we summer in the suburbs of Boston, which is ranked the 4th most expensive city in the US after NYC, Frisco and Honolulu. So, while we live quite well in Spain, we feel quite poor here. And, unfortunately, it seems that my youngest son has become acutely aware of the fact this summer. He doesn't want me to spend so much money on things, but we have to eat! He is turning into a nervous Nelly.

Obviously, with our low salaries in Spain and the high unemployment rates, there is very little 'keeping up wth the Joneses' in rural areas. We scrimp and save, and I supplement our income by giving some English classes at home, but we're fine. Much better off than others, so perhaps that is why I do not feel the pressure. But, go to Madrid and we see a difference. My kids see it in their cousins, who are constantly travelling around Europe and doing all sorts of expensive activities, going to private prep schools, etc. My kids see the difference but never complain because they have close friends in our village who are much worse off, have lost their homes or cannot have a warm bedroom. So, that puts things into perspective. I actually feel more pity for my 'well-off' nieces and nephew, as they do not have this same perspective, which is sad.

I do feel a bit of stress, though, with the summer house my sister and I share. When she sees a broken screen door, for example, she wants to replace it, whereas I prefer to take the time to patch the screen. Now a bar stool has broken and she wants to buy new barstools. Well, guess what? The barstool has broken because she and her husband are obese. My family and I are not. So, I would prefer they buy themselves their own barstools, while I will re-enforce the old barstools with the help of my kids and re-paint them. Necessity breeds more creativity and resourcefulness.

But the biggest difference I am seeing between the US and Europe right now is the European consciousness about the environment and plastics. In Europe, we all take our re-usable shopping bags to the market, or walk out of the store with the product in hand and without a plastic bag. Also, we are charged .10€ per bag at the stores, so that is an incentive not to use plastic bags. But here? Plastics are used everywhere and for everything. And the government is doing nothing about it, of course, and I see few people taking an initiative on their own. Makes me sad.


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## SueC

DanteDressageNerd said:


> ...in Denmark people are taught to ask the tough questions and be fair and just. STRONG sense of fairness and justice here. It's a different mind set and culture, I favor it strongly. I think lies, self promotion, expecting special treatment and talking out the @ss isnt catered to here like it is in the US, maybe Australia? I dont know, I havent been but I think Germany also had a strong sense of people are responsible for themselves and their actions. If someone is stupid, then they are stupid and they arent catered to for being stupid. If that makes sense? It's hard to explain.


It makes a lot of sense to me, because I've lived it. And yes, you can add Australia to the list of those things you are describing. It was a real culture shock for me even to encounter Australian TV after Germany and Italy... the commercial TV channels had ad breaks every 10 minutes (and still do); in Germany, at least back when I lived there, it wasn't allowed to have commercials interrupting an actual programme, you had to show the commercials _between_ programmes. And the shouting and the lying in the commercials! I couldn't believe the yelling at the audience, and the blatant untruths being told about products. Nobody had shouted on German commercials (at least up until 1982, when I emigrated), and you had to report fact only or were in trouble with the law - you couldn't just make bold claims, like that something was better than a competitor's, or "the best" etc etc, unless you could cite scientific studies, and you had to be specific about what the studies actually showed. There were lawyers watching TV to make sure people who broke the rules got prosecuted, and I really applaud that - while this might sound like some kind of authoritarian state to some, I really resent people being allowed to openly BS to others on public media, not to mention flout the law on other things, like traffic behaviour, or litter or spit chewing gum into the streets (in Singapore they even cane people's behinds if they do those things, which seems draconian to most people here, but not to me - I think it's disgusting that a culture tolerates and enables such blatant disrespect towards truth, other people and the environment).

And yeah, catering to stupid - it's like the lowest common denominator rules in Australia, and you can sue other people if you do something stupid. Just like in the US, from what I read. It's ridiculous. People really need to be responsible for themselves, and not have a blame mindset if they get hurt through their own actions / lack of thought.



> Also note in Scandinavia the tax dollars go where they are promised, the politicians dont stuff it into their pockets or friends businesses. That sort of corruption isnt tolerated. I think Scandinavians have a strong sense of justice and fairness, if the government was playing the people they would do something about it. The viking blood is alive and well here, even as nice and lovely as people seem. People also really dont like foreigners, unless they assimilate and are respectful or the culture. Denmark is a small country, so they allow few immigrants and do not want to go the way of Sweden.


Yeah, here in Australia, tax dollars go on things like politicians' dinners and booze, and even private helicopter flights and holiday house renovations and trips to politicians' mates' weddings. The salaries of the politicians are exorbitant, so that the moment they are elected, they cease to be able to represent ordinary people, since they are immediately rocketed into the financial elite. That's because their mates on the boards set their salaries. It's disgusting. Also, their "entitlements" and their gold-plated pensions after even serving one term of government are completely nauseating and undeserved. I don't think politicians should be making more money than nurses and teachers. That way you'd get less people in politics just for the money, which at the moment they excuse as "buying better quality politicians" (my @ss).




bsms said:


> My sister and BIL taught in rural schools in South Africa until SA refused to renew their visas. They have since spent 20 years teaching in public schools in the USA. They say schools in America teach NEITHER. No one memorizes anything any more, although facts are like the bricks in thinking. Without facts, logic gets you nowhere.
> 
> There ARE teachers to struggle to teach both. The administration, as best I can tell, prefers neither. As my BIL put it, "_The goal of education is to teach children to feel very good about themselves while they learn and achieve nothing. But at least they will FEEL good about knowing nothing!_"
> 
> BTW, my sister & BIL would go back to teaching in an unheated, uncooled South African rural school in a heartbeat if they could. They LOVED teaching there. Motivated kids and supportive parents. No money, almost no books, no Internet or TV and very little running water...but kids who wanted to learn and parents who wanted to help! They remember it as heaven.


I can completely believe that. Some of my best friends are South African. They are very European in their outlook on work ethic, responsibility and respectful behaviour, and living orderly lives and having tidy, clean houses. I don't have any cultural clash with them at all. When I was first dating Brett, a SA origin friend came by for afternoon tea to check him out. :rofl: She said to me afterwards, "I'm going to start knitting. Sue, he's such a gentleman, and that's so rare in my experience of Australians, who are often so rough and treat women with such disrespect. You have my blessing!" :rofl: 

And she was aghast about what was going on inside Australian public schools, when she started teaching in them, compared to South Africa. At that time, it really was getting pretty bad; I was mostly teaching at the local Catholic school by then, where kids were still expected to be respectful, and parents were supportive. I'd seen a local public school that was wonderful and had top academic results too when I taught there in 1999 go completely down the gurgler by 2004, after a change in management. I came back from the Eastern states then and took a term there because another teacher had left because the kids had thrown things at him. I took those classes on the understanding that my Science department was going to allow me to park rude students in their rooms and behaviour contract them before they were allowed back in, on the sly - since top management had gone all "lovey-dovey" (slackers really who'd never actually taught in a classroom) and made excuses for students instead of supporting staff, and had actually prohibited the ejection of rude / disruptive students from classrooms "because they have a right to an education"... apparently more so than the cooperating kids whose lessons they are disrupting... and more so than people have a right to be treated with basic respect... I'm sorry, but "rights" come with responsibilities!!!

So I taught there that term, and the offending classes were pulled up by their bootstraps, courtesy of my immediate colleagues' support of my strategy. The Year 9 class went from failing on average to developing a work ethic and passing their tests, and students even said to me, "I always thought I was stupid!" and I said, "I knew what the real problem was, and it's that you weren't actually used to doing any work, or paying full attention to your subject for the whole lesson!" 

And then one of the remaining antisocial idiots brought a firecracker into the classroom and let it off in his bag, so I sent him straight to the deputy principal with a note - I expected that his parents would be rung to collect him for that, it goes beyond what you park someone in another classroom for. The deputy principal came back with him five minutes later and wanted to put him back in the class. I had a chat to her at the door and she said, "He didn't have a firecracker in his bag and he said he hadn't done anything!" ...and I'm going, "1) Of course he would have turned out the evidence before arriving at your office, and 2) are you going to believe him and say I'm lying?" She said nothing. I went at that stage into the classroom - the kids were deathly quiet - and said, "The deputy principal would like to know if anyone here saw Jamie set off a firecracker! Please raise your hands if you saw or heard a firecracker!" and they all put their hands up. I went back to her at the door, and she whispered to me, "Of course they'd say that, they hate Jamie!" I said, "Oh, and me too? I tell you what. I'm going to give you a choice. You can take Jamie back to the office with you, and we can sort it later instead of disrupting the cooperating kids' education on their time - or you can choose to put him back in the classroom because you're deputy principal, but if you do that, you'd better stay and supervise the class, because I will walk out of the door the moment you re-admit him!"

I was furious. I couldn't believe I had to have that kind of interaction with management, and I really would have walked and ditched the rest of the term if necessary, because I wasn't going to stand being treated like that, or having the cooperating kids treated like that. I did make an enemy of the deputy, but I had to take a stand here and not just kow-tow to authority when they were in the wrong. When the deputy left, the class applauded. The same class who'd thrown stuff at their last teacher. I reminded them of this, and said they were being hypocritical really. They actually had a moral discussion with me after that, and admitted they'd done things wrong. I also reminded them they all thought I was a Nazi at the start of the term, and students were saying, "But we've learnt to work and that we can pass tests! And you're not so bad!" :rofl: None of this was necessary, it all came down to unsupportive management, and that's exactly why the previous teacher had walked.

Anyway, you can imagine that I was far more keen to work at schools where you didn't have to discipline students on the sly and in contradiction of management orders. That school has sadly never recovered academically or behaviourally. Once you f*** up a good culture, you don't get it back easily, and the same thing is true for countries, I think.




Spanish Rider said:


> But the biggest difference I am seeing between the US and Europe right now is the European consciousness about the environment and plastics. In Europe, we all take our re-usable shopping bags to the market, or walk out of the store with the product in hand and without a plastic bag. Also, we are charged .10€ per bag at the stores, so that is an incentive not to use plastic bags. But here? Plastics are used everywhere and for everything. And the government is doing nothing about it, of course, and I see few people taking an initiative on their own. Makes me sad.


Yeah, that's exactly my experience with central Europe vs Australia. In 2019 in Australia, there's still less recycling than there was in the late 1970s in Germany, and so little environmental awareness. Just take littering... I just find that so unbelievable, yet the majority of Aussies seem to think there's no problem with throwing their crap into the roadverge when they've finished their can of drink or fast food etc. Like the planet is their rubbish bin, and other people don't matter.

The (unquoted) things you've said, I have a distinct feeling that your children will be better human beings than average for having seen what they have seen. They have a concept of actual reality, rather than living in some sort of consumerist fantasyland...

Really interesting to hear everyone's perspectives!


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## SueC

*MAGICAL DAY IN THE STIRLING RANGES*

We've been all heads down, bottoms up here with work, including doing the income tax today on Brett's day off instead of going on another walking adventure. We got the tax all done and posted though, and will make up for the lack of leisure on the weekend, weather permitting. Meanwhile, I finally have a chance to post those walking photos from a week ago!

And there's a lot of them. We'd not been to the Stirlings for a year, because shortly after climbing Mt Talyuberlup last year for Brett's birthday (https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page16/#post1970571069), I broke my foot and there were months of rehab, and then it was summer and too hot for the mountains, and then Romeo died, and I got a stress fracture in May, and then we had the flu...

It was so lovely to be back in this wonderful National Park, although I have to admit, I felt quite unenthusiastic at the start because Brett had picked Mt Magog, which is quite a tough climb compared to Talyuberlup, and I was still so unfit post flu, and I'd had a migraine the previous day and never feel great the day after that. So I was packing a thermos and fruit and snacks, and grumbling into my sleeve, but I did want to go really, especially as it was Brett's birthday wish.

We got out just after 9am, and made our way via Mt Barker and Kendenup to the western approach to Stirling Range Drive. We only take this approach for Mt Magog and Mt Talyuberlup; the other four official peaks are approached from the eastern side of the mountains. Therefore, we were in for a treat, because although either end of this long gravel road through the wilderness is spectacular, the western approach is definitely the most spine-tingling....

So, here's some scenery immediately inside the National Park boundary, where we stopped the car to take some photos. The first is the "forbidden mountain" which used to have an official walk track (and we are _so_ tempted...for our bucket list...):



The wildflower season is starting - and the botanical province we are in is one of the most species-diverse in the world. Here's a "Pixie Mop" (_Petrophile_ sp):



Some general scenery, with Mt Magog in the background on the left:



Mt Magog through the telephoto lens:



Roadside scenery...



This is a Casuarina (Sheoak); note the segmented leaves and typical seed pods.



This is the person responsible for the wildflower close-ups (special macro lens on his camera), and some of the scenery shots - I do mostly scenery shots with my camera.



General heathland and mountain approach scenery...



The Royal Carriage:



People seem to think 4WDs are a requirement for driving around in Australia. We go everywhere in our i20, a type of supermini – including when we went across the Nullarbor. You don’t need 4WDs for highways or for well-maintained gravel roads and tracks – and these little cars handle extremely well, plus have incredible fuel economy. If you want to have a low fossil fuel footprint and can’t afford an electric car, just drive a small car like this.

The road goes uphill until you get to a pass, and coming down, you see this:



It's totally amazing...

Mt Magog is the one with the saddle in the middle; Mt Talyuberlup is to the right of it across the ridge, all knobbly-looking - the two tallest peaks in the photo (but not in the mountains!).


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## Spanish Rider

As for teaching in Spain, I had a really hard time of it. As a culture, Spaniards talk very boisterously when in a group, one speaking over another, and several conversations can go on at the same time at the dinner table. To an American it sounds like they are angry all the time, but they are just lively, especially when the _sangría_ or _tinto_ are being passed around.

However, translate that to a classroom with 35 high school students, and all he!! can break loose. Unlike American or northern European children, Spanish children are rarely taught to raise their hands, wait their turn and listen to others speak before you speak as it is just not done at home. Not bad kids, mind you, but they are not raised with that sort of discipline. I find American children much more respectful in that regard.

So, before being arrested for smacking a child upside the head for interrupting or not listening, I decided that teaching in Spanish schools was not for me. I much prefer giving private English classes to college students and adults at home, as they listen and are fully appreciative of having a native speaker to talk to. As you can imagine, conversation is IMPOSSIBLE in a classroom of 35, so by the time most Spanish teens graduate from public high school, they have had little-to-no conversational experience.


Sue, we just overlapped. I have to admit that I have a very large car, and I am very conscious of gas consumption, but it's hard when you have a big family to truck around. Right now, we have a Mitsubishi Outlander, which is the only car we could find that the boys could fit their legs into. However, it does consume less than our old Renault, so that's my excuse! I am looking forward to downsizing in the next few years, though, especially since cities like Madrid are prohibiting large gas-guzzlers, and I am sure that this trend will soon make its way to Toledo.


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## SueC

Some general information about the Stirling Ranges: The National Park is 65km across east to west, and this is the highest mountain range in the South-West of Australia (not very high by world standards, the taller ones are around 1000m ASL) but pretty spectacular rising up straight from a plain like that!). It's a part sedimentary, part metamorphic rock range of around 20 peaks and many lower hills that formed when the earth's crust in this place buckled around 500 million years ago.

The Stirling Ranges have over 1500 identified species of plants, including at least 82 that are found nowhere else except in these mountains.

A group of eucalyptus trees (probably wandoos) in the car park - the bark is incredible:



The climb now has a blurb:



This is probably a species of Grevillea:



The general path at the beginning of this walk trail is like this...



...and then, it opens out so you can see the mountains...



This walk is unique in the Stirling Ranges in that you spend about an hour traversing a plain sheltered by mountains all around, before you begin climbing a peak for real. Left to right in the photo: Mt Magog, Mt Talyuberlup (knobbly!), and Mt Gog. The plain at the feet of these peaks is also an unbelievable natural botanical garden, as you will see...

Oh yeah, and when we were young and crazier than we are now, we twice climbed Mt Magog from here, then went across the top ridge on animal tracks to Talyuberlup Peak (the first time, there was a hairy incident with a steep cliff, a rope and a prayer promising never to try that again if only I got out of that alive...), descended that on the official walk track, and then walked about two hours along the Stirling Range Drive to get back to the Mt Magog car park... I'd probably still do it again when back at peak fitness, it's such a gorgeous ridge walk, but we had to bush-bash for hours twice and had to walk from first thing in the morning till after dark (on the road) to do it...

More wildflowers:









Those were all taken by Brett. I snapped this group of Grass Trees though, from both sides:





The three tallest ones in that stand are over 200 years old - the stems grow really slowly.

More wildflowers:





Getting closer to the peaks: Mt Talyuberlup and Mt Gog in view here...


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## Knave

It is so pretty! The writing loads before the pictures, so my first thought was that I didn’t think I’d walk on the flat for so long. Then the pictures loaded and I understood. Everything was so pretty, but especially the flowers that are pink tendrils.


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## SueC

Next, we discovered the famous Stirling Range Hedgehog. Can you see it?





...it's actually just the remains of an old Grass Tree trunk disintegrating...

More wildflowers, which I am currently stumped to identify:



Just passing Mt Gog peak, and snapping a close-up of Mt Talyuberlup - the knobbly peak with the big walk-through cave on top:





You can see why I thought my life was in danger at one point 12 years ago when we were approaching this peak from the reverse side to the official walk track after traversing the ridge to it from Mt Magog....

The trail was now steadily turning into a ramp, but it wasn't very visually noticeable, and I was breathing heavily and feeling physically rotten after 10 minutes of this, and having serious doubts I was going to make it to the top. I was thinking, "If my legs feel like lead on this comparatively gentle bit, no way will I be able to do the really steep stuff today!" I've never to date not made it to a peak, except when we got snowed out of reaching Cradle Mountain Peak in Tasmania back in 2007. We had to stop at Marion's Lookout, a fair half-day walk itself, and there we met a mad Yorkshireman in _shorts_, who proceeded to take this photo of us:










We were seriously fit in that photo, after a fortnight of daily extended walking and climbing in Tasmania, and this was not the case for me last Thursday! The flu really had taken a toll those couple of weeks before. I mentioned my doubts to Brett, when he came up for air from photographing the flora. And he was so lovely, saying it didn't matter if we didn't make it all the way to the top, it was just lovely to be out in this gorgeous scenery together for a day, and I should just take it easy and go as far as I could, and that he wasn't feeling particularly feisty either, but that doing something very hard would often make the next walk ridiculously easy as well. So I just plodded along, welcoming Brett's wildflower stops:



We also saw some Spitfires (sawfly larvae):



The Dryandras were out and just amazing:





Because this plain is so uniquely sheltered by the surrounding mountains, it tends to get spring flowers by mid-winter. The Beaufortias that follow also grow in the swamps to the west of us in Redmond:





Something interesting happened. I was just walking till breathless, stopping, walking till breathless, stopping after we hit the proper ascent to Mt Magog, and then ten minutes later, my endorphins kicked in and I stopped feeling shocking. I wasn't breaking the world land speed record, but suddenly, it became conceivable that if I kept doing what I was doing, I would actually make it to the top of the peak after all. And, since I really wanted to get fitter, this was very good.

We saw a nice example of onion skin weathering:



...and you can see I was feeling OK now:


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## SueC

This is the steep part of the walking path up Mt Magog, but we're not in all-fours territory yet. You can spot me up the road a bit if you enlarge the photo. We took it to show the perspective.



Now I'm going to let the pictures do the talking:













At this point, we were looking for what we call Hanging Rock, where we normally stop to have a tea break on this mountain. We found it, but also noticed that it had changed, moving partially downhill since our last ascent of this peak. Back at home, we compared with previous photos just to make sure, and it was clearly the case (I may pull out the comparison photos later this week). We still had tea there, though it was a bit less elevated now!











The knobbly top of Mt Talyuberlup, which we climbed last year:



If you zoom up close, you can see the walk-through cave on the top right hand side of the peak, as a blue ***** of light amongst the rocks. This is the exit of the cave, from which you turn right (left in the photo) and scramble up a goat path to climb to the very top. But, from this very spot exiting the cave is where I took this photo years ago:










So from that photo, you can see how steep the climb is up the shoulder of Mt Magog, and you can see the connecting ridge between the two mountain peaks. This is real_ Lord Of The Rings_ country, completely breathtaking.


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## SueC

More ascent views:



The next one is of the one flat bit of land where people can pitch a tent on this mountain, say if staying overnight to cross the ridge, like a sane person might (although the sanity of lugging a tent, mattress, sleeping gear and overnight food around with you in a heavy backpack is debatable - I prefer to walk with a light backpack and start at dawn if necessary).



This is on the actual ridge between the mountains, and to climb Mt Magog peak, you must continue to the left. This final section is muddy, steep and all-fours climbing territory, so we have no photos of it and its acrobatics, just the ones from getting to the actual peak:







We were pretty glad to make it to the top! It had taken us 2.5 hours to get there from the car park. The descent back took just 90 minutes, on account of not having to stop for breath so much - and also, we'd finished our photography mostly. I did take this one of Brett towards the end of the slippery slope back to the flat bit by the ridge:



And this unfortunately blurry shot back at Talyuberlup... that will teach me to be so sure not to repeat the shot...



And finally, our feet on the way back to the car park:



This was the maiden voyage of two new pairs of leather walking boots bought early last week. Brett's Raichles that he had from before I met him gave up the ghost after 14 years, on our walk to Lights Beach in Denmark the previous week - one of the soles disintegrated beyond repair. These boots had been on every mountain we'd been on. My synthetic boots bought for the recovery of my foot fracture last year were worn so constantly day in, day out since then that the interior cushioning is too crushed to use them as serious hiking shoes - but they are still OK for farm wear. So, we headed down to Trailblazers last Monday to see what we could find, bought a matching pair, and are really happy with them - very comfortable even on their first assignment, and they look far more durable than the synthetic types that are in vogue these days, and actually more expensive than leather, would you believe - these boots were two thirds of the cost of Keens, and I think will last longer. Especially because I have taken it upon myself to clean and condition them after every hike.

We were glad to go home and eat seriously after that wonderful day out. But one more sudden amazing thing happened on the way home: We saw an echidna cross the road back at the western end of the park. I've seen lots of echidnas, mostly in the Eastern states - but never a single one in Western Australia, and this is only the second time Brett has seen one here (he saw his attending a bushfire in the Perth Hills over 20 years ago). We stopped the car and tried to get a snap, but by the time we were out, we could only see this:



Can you spot the critter? Look for the upright quills in the centre. This photo from Victoria a few years ago is a little clearer, but they immediately begin digging themselves into the ground, leaving only spiny projections, when approached by anyone.










Here's a better one of a young echidna I found online:










This wraps up our adventure, and I am now ready to :ZZZ:..

Wishing everyone a good Friday.


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## SueC

Something musical now - Brett mail ordered a Cure B-sides collection called _Join The Dots_ as a present for me, which I'm slowly trawling through. (4 CD boxed set, 70 songs, wonderfully presented booklet, under $30 - nice to have something like this reasonably priced!) I had no idea they had done a cover of _Purple Haze_... that was the first thing I played off it. It was done for a Jimi Hendrix tribute album, last milennium! :rofl: I was so curious how that would go - Jimi Hendrix is legendary, and so unique it's a tall order to cover this song. But I was pleasantly surprised by the result - these English guys are burning down the house! They've actually amped this up in energy from the original...






No comparison to some of the Cure radio hits, like _Friday I'm In Love_. Now _this_ is music - and best listened to so loud your ears nearly fall off, in my opinion. Re-rowr - yeah! 

Here's the original; the drummer looks like he's on something - they probably all are... I mean, Hendrix died at age 27 of intoxication-induced asphyxia, like quite a few musicians have done... in his case, a sad waste. Love his voice, and that guitar playing...






I don't have to scratch my head over how this (or Bowie, or Pink Floyd etc) is a classic influential musician, like I have to do with The Rolling Stones, although my loathing of their personalities probably biases me somewhat... 

Some more Hendrix I like:






Another musician I grew up really liking from young, Mike Scott, was also influenced by this musician, and here's a fun tribute he did for Hendrix one time when he came out of one of his folk phases and revved his electric guitar back up again:






:rofl: Mike Scott is so effusive!

While we're at it, here's some musician jokes that kept Brett and me up for three hours one night in stitches, reading and re-reading when we were supposed to be sleeping...

https://osbornmusic.com/jokes.html

Ah, music! 

PS: The Cure cover of Bowie's _Young Americans_ is the opposite - it really didn't do anything for us. It sounded flat to both of us and really ordinary. This is a song we think would be really hard to cover and not sound either flat, or just imitated... the combination of Bowie's characteristic voice with female backing singers, and crisp instrumentation and many counterpoints, and that brass solo... no, don't go there...

The original:


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## DanteDressageNerd

Wow!! You two go on some pretty amazing hikes and adventures! That looks so amazing and it's neat to see what Australia looks like. You both look happy, I admire that


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## SueC

...the look can be achieved by acting, as we're all aware - Instagram should probably have its own Oscar nominees ;-) - or by not knowing yet that your partner is doing the dirty on you! It's when it comes from inside and reflects how you feel that things feel good!  I'm happy to say that's the case for us. Half the reason for the many wide smiles in photos of me these days is the way Brett looks at me over the top of the camera just before he takes the picture. I never used to smile that much in photos - I can't actually do Colgate smiles. So as a teenager, for instance, there's lots of photos of me with serious expressions and very few smiling. It depends entirely on the company! 

Australia has some really amazing scenery and biota. When I went back to Europe to work for a bit in my 20s, I missed the wilderness terribly. There really isn't much of that in Europe, it's been interfered with by people for too long, and also isn't as ancient as Australia and hasn't had that long since the last ice age etc. Australia has so many species because the landscape is so terribly ancient and because the people who came here over 60,000 years ago lived nomadic lives more in harmony with nature. The last 200 years of European settlement have resulted in so much ecological destruction - but yet, the bits we have left here are so species diverse and amazing. So it's always an anticlimax for me coming from an Australian heathland with 1600+ plant species, to a European one with not even 400 plant species... and most of the European "forests" are actually more like woodlots, or plantations, so I don't have the same feeling of nature showing me its real face, it's often just what people have planted / allowed to remain, if that makes any sense...


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## knightrider

> and most of the European "forests" are actually more like woodlots, or plantations, so I don't have the same feeling of nature showing me its real face, it's often just what people have planted / allowed to remain, if that makes any sense...


When I hosted Russian people at our house in Maryland and took them horseback riding, they couldn't get over how lush and overgrown the forests were. They kept calling it "The Last of the Mohicans". They don't have anything like that in Russia, at least the parts where they were from that I visited. Like you said, more like woodlots than forests.


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## DanteDressageNerd

Sue- I think you are quite right! But I will say I admire what appears to be genuine happiness and fulfillment out of your journey and being together throughout! ;-) I think Brett adds to your smile!

I think the arctic circle and much of the Nordics isnt too much touched because of the cold! but I can see your point, US is similar compared to Europe. But the biodiversity of Australia sounds really amazing!! Imagine what we can learn from it and hopefully not destroy it like the amazon.

knightrider- how was Russia? I have never been.


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## Caledonian

:wave: Hi Sue. 

You're right about our impact on the landscapes of Europe. In Scotland, we often hear the large estate owners talking about protecting our landscape and wildlife when, in reality it's been changed, probably irreversibly, to suit sheep farming, grouse shooting, commercial pine forests and deer. There's nothing ancient about it's current state. Since humans first headed north, the land has been stripped of trees and animals. The Great Caledonian Pine forest, which once covered the centre, is now a few Granny Pines and newly planted saplings. We've lost wolves, lynx, auroc, horses and bears, although there's a push to reintroduce a few of the predators to deal with the deer.


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## Knave

I took a photo for you today. I thought you’d like seeing the juniper berries.

I included another picture I took last night because I thought you’d like it too.


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## SueC

Not dead, just crosseyed and with nothing interesting to post at the moment! Ho-hum routines. 

Hope everyone is having a good week! :wave:

Gorgeous photos, @Knave.  I use juniper berries in cooking (from a packet) - are these the culinary type? I wonder if I can grow any here. ...and it's going to be such fun to see you famous in Australia! ;-)

Very nice to hear from you, @Caledonian! Hope you're enjoying your summer! 

And I hope that new kitten is doing lots of snuggling-up and purring, @DanteDressageNerd! inkunicorn:


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## Knave

Hmm... I don’t know. I don’t know of any other type of juniper berry, but these are kind of nasty. They are hard to explain; dry mouth and bad face, and I heard chewing on one will cure the hiccups. There is a seed inside, and the berry itself is fairly hard. They are kind of fun to play with. 

I don’t know if they’d grow there. Our weather hits such extremes, and I wonder if that is necessary. If it isn’t I imagine they would flourish. I like seeing the years that they are covered in the berries, and it seems they would always have good years there. I don’t know how to get one growing though either. The berries have some rule that I cannot remember for sure, but it is like they require being soaked in some solution for a time period before they will consider sprouting. I will have to research it again. I tried getting one to grow in my yard (I don’t know why. I really do see enough of them in the mountains.) and was not successful.

I am excited about the article! I am going to update it tonight if we get home in time since we are completed!


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## SueC

*WINTER TRAVELS AND WALKS*

It's mid-winter here, and has been raining for nearly a week. It stops sometimes, but everything is sloshy. About 8 of our 12 hectares of pasture are waterlogged, mostly on the Common (the 8ha open pasture with access to bush tracks). We've been doing fence maintenance, replacing non-zappy polybraid (it lasts around 3-4 years before losing consistent conductivity) in our upper paddocks so that we could bring the cows into that area without losing sleep at night over what they would do to our tree lines. So now, all the animals are on the higher ground, away from the wet - good for their feet, and good for the ground - there's nothing worse for soil conservation and pasture productivity than letting your 500 - 800 kg herbivores rip wet ground apart with their sharp hooves. It's been so wet riding has been out of the question, but I've been planting out greenhouse seedlings with my raincoat on and the iPod for company. The weather is excellent for that - and for the frogs. We have quite a few frog species here, three of which are very noisy - you can hear their calls going to sleep at night and waking up in the morning: Motorbike Frogs, Banjo Frogs, and a froglet whose name escapes me which produces a squelching sound. Together, they make quite an orchestra!

Six weeks ago we sat down and talked about priorities, and one thing that we resolved to do is regular walking days in the lovely scenery around here. I have paper journalled all of this, and will therefore attach the relevant pages, before going to some more photos.














































Photos for all the above were already recently posted here. I'll append some for the other walks mentioned:



















Some old photos of Point Possession (no camera this time):









..and Cable Beach (again, past photos):


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## SueC

Some photos of Lake Seppings (but not ours!)




























The last one shows where the lake sits in the coastline.

We did take some nice photos of our excursion to Cosy Corner on Sunday, starting with Mountain Road and then down at the actual beach:


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## SueC

...and that ends my update. I hope everyone is well and enjoying their northern hemisphere summer!


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## lostastirrup

Very much enjoyed reading your paper journals- query: how do you start to journal and then continue to journal consistently. I've never been able to manage it. Yours are so very insightful and idyllic it sounds so lovely.


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## Knave

It is lovely, and I also very much enjoyed the pictures.


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## SueC

lostastirrup said:


> Very much enjoyed reading your paper journals- query: how do you start to journal and then continue to journal consistently. I've never been able to manage it. Yours are so very insightful and idyllic it sounds so lovely.


The simple explanation is that I have hypergraphia! ;-)

I think the reason for that is because I had no voice as a child or a teenager, in my own home. And then in middle school, our English teacher introduced us to journalling - we all got a big exercise book, spent some time decorating the cover to make it our own, and then we could write about anything and everything we wanted, and this thing counted something like 30% towards your assessment. Have you ever heard of a better project? :loveshower:

Anything and everything. The music awards that year were...shall I say I disagreed with them? :Angel: ...so I wrote my own, with lavish praise for various overlooked artists. I'd read a book, review it. Go on a walk, write down what I experienced. Chronicle interesting events. Look back at the good experiences other people brought to my childhood - remember those people. I was on an isolated farm, and couldn't even phone my friends. I couldn't talk to my family, not productively, so I just wrote. My journal was my friend - I could tell it anything. It helped me think out loud, and to become aware of my thinking. It helped me discover who I was. A lot of people coming out of super-dysfunctional families have identity issues. That never happened to me - I knew who I was, and why. I was able to work that out by writing about it.

After that year, I continued voluntarily - with a much bigger annual book! :rofl: And I've never really stopped. I took a break from paper journalling when I started my HF journal. I wanted to try out what journalling in a community is like, and it's so much nicer to interact over each other's entries than just write away and put stuff in your cupboard! 

I found I have to have a paper journal for some things that I don't want to inflict on the general public! :rofl: But there's overlap. I enjoy the ceremony of pen and paper, the discipline of trying to do your best handwriting (and this is definitely it - my shopping lists are scrawl even I sometimes can't decipher! :chicken. Also, on paper you have to write unedited, which is super good practice for organising your thoughts - on the computer, you can always go back and edit. I think the practice of having a "good copy" that has to be a good copy from the go-get - no drafts - since I was 14 years old has been really helpful in developing as a thinker / writer. You have to focus so much that way, but it's a good thing, and something you start slipping into easily!  

I think it's just a love of something that makes you do it even though there are so many competing tasks...

@Knave, you've got such a cool online journal, we should give you some sort of award. It's so "Cormac McCarthy and then some" beautiful in the prose, plus all those arty modified photos...


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## Knave

You are too kind @SueC. I really like your journal too. I enjoy doing it though. It kind of lets me see everything from a different lens too, and it’s a nice thing.

I love that you learned journaling so young and stuck with it! I also think your paper journals are interesting in that they are really artful even. My friend bought the girls journals for a random surprise a little while back. They are nice because they are laid out and intended for gratitude.


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## SueC

Oh yeah, @Knave, gratitude journalling is a really good thing to do! inkunicorn:

It's a total antidote to consumer society trying to tell you you can't be happy without buying their wares. And to the human characteristic of becoming preoccupied with problems and losing sight of the wonderful stuff that's still there. It makes you actively look for amazing things and for goodness.

And I love the "lens change" thing too. You can live more completely if you can sort of try to look at things from the outside, not just the inside. 

How does the saying go? _The unexamined life is not worth living. The overexamined life is not being lived._ Something like that! :rofl:


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## DanteDressageNerd

The pictures are absolutely stunning! I am quite envious! It looks amazing!!

I am not good at paper journaling either or art. But yours is lovely. Good handwriting too. I have sloppy hand writing that is legible. I also lack the attention span or focus. I go from obsession to obsession.


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## SueC

It's magazine time again - Downshifting article in _The Owner Builder_. Now _next_ issue will be particularly interesting, won't it, @Knave?


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## Knave

That was a beautiful article @SueC! I loved the picture you painted of the morning.

Yes, I am super excited!


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## SueC

Thank you, @Knave! I sat down and wrote that one in a single four hour session one morning and it just came out complete. I'd only stop to think and re-read but didn't have to go back to edit anything. The right words simply appeared.  Similar experience again this morning - four hours, complete 1500 word piece on the new donkeys etc for _Grass Roots_, and I wish I could share it because it's really funny, but can't until after it's actually out! onkey: onkey:

I am also terribly excited anticipating the next issue of _The Owner Builder_ with an international article in it! :loveshower:   

It rained cats and dogs again today, so what can one do but write and do indoors chores... although the weather is meant to be cool and sunny tomorrow, which would suit us for another long walk. Riding? In this weather, with everything a swamp? Nope. I did actually get in a loop around the valley floor a couple of evenings ago when it had been dry for a day, miracle of miracles, but right now everyone is in rugs and on higher ground, except me - I'm indoors a lot hiding...

The weather has been so bad I have actually been mending socks. :rofl: That's an indoors thing to do, while procrastinating the paperwork filing I've been meaning to do forever and I'm simply going to kick my own @ss on Friday and do it. Does anyone else here actually mend socks? I've been saving the cotton strings from the feed bags, they're great for mending bamboo socks! Especially the red strings make a quite fetching suture line!

I've got a very Gothic, very beautiful song I'm listening to on endless repeat, which is about the fear of losing someone you love. It's all watercolours and poetry, and I think I'll share it.






If you'd like something more about love and less about anticipated loss, here's another gorgeous layered watercolour of a song:






...very lovely. I'm reviewing the whole B-sides set at the moment, which could take a while as there's 4 CDs...


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## egrogan

Nice to see your updates @SueC, we've missed you :grin:


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## SueC

*MT HALLOWELL WALK*


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## SueC




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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Nice to see your updates @SueC, we've missed you :grin:


Thank you, @egrogan!  I've been three things: 1) Trying to catch up on a backlog of post-flu work, 2) Doing a lot of walking, as you can see, and 3) Away with the fairies too! inkunicorn:

...and we have another long walk planned tomorrow. The fitness goals this year are really working out for us, that's for sure, and it's so lovely to see the countryside like this, in complete immersion and at least once a week. 

We've always loved doing this, and it's what we did before we built this house. And now, we've managed to get back into it seriously, for the first time since building and moving onto this farm... 9 years later... :shock:

I've got a nice retrospective on our last "away" holiday in Tasmania here to compare it to, with lots of photos - we're hoping to go again next year:

Tasmania By Campervan, Spring 2009 ? Sue Coulstock

...we're not quite as lean and mean yet as we were at the tail end of that holiday, but we're working on it! 

I hope you've been well and enjoying your summer! 

And this weekend I'm finally going to be able to catch up with HF! :gallop:

Have a great day, everyone. We're going to do this: :ZZZ: :ZZZ:


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## Knave

I have never seen anything like that tree with the mushrooms. Wow! It belongs in a fairy tale. 

I am excited about the article; I just am afraid to jinx it. Lol. Like if I say that I wrote it, it won’t actually happen. Who knows why I am this way?


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## DanteDressageNerd

Wow!! I love all the photos! You both look great! Love that the dog gets to go too! That is amazing! Are you guys on holidays? Who look after the farm with all these trips!?


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## SueC

We're not on holidays, @DanteDressageNerd!  We made a resolution to do at least one day walk a week (possibly two, or one day walk plus a half day walk a week) ...and live in a spectacular area. This is why both of us moved to the South Coast in the first place - because we love hiking as a form of getting fit while seeing beautiful scenery! It's just that when we bought the farm in 2010, that took a bit of a back seat, what with having to set everything up, build the shed and the house and all that, and then intensive care for Romeo twice daily food-wise for the last few years... So now, 9 years later, we're getting it back how it used to be... the animals we have left are fine in the paddock unattended for the day.

You're just not seeing the photos of me mopping the floor, fencing paddocks, trimming horse feet, cooking, writing, doing paperwork etc etc! ;-)
@Knave, I feel like that too. I've got a new place I sent something to who want to publish what I sent, and right now I'm going, "Is this actually going to happen?" - even though they said yes ...until it becomes a pattern, that's what it feels like...


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## SueC

Hello, everyone! :wave: 

Hope all of you are having a great weekend. It's been a rainy weekend here so far - well, that's an understatement. Friday afternoon, a deluge arrived, and the rainwater tank started overflowing, so I just hooked it to the stock trough line for a day to lose the top few rings of water (as it's going to rain a few more months yet). Everything got even more soaked than before. Riding? Nope. All the horses were snug in rugs.

Before it started raining, I managed to get the washing done - everything dried very quickly in the gale-force winds of the approaching front! :hide: I had to put so many pegs on each item so things wouldn't get blown away! And I took the pole-saw to saw off a few dead tree branches from a stand behind the house - it's ready-dried wood when you need it, if you cut it when it's not raining. I then chopped the branches up with my little drop saw, and append a photo of the results of my labours, which kept me warm on Friday night - so warm I didn't even have to light the fire today, the house kept warm for nearly a day after heating, and in the afternoon, just enough sun came through the windows to top up the heating again. I haven't had to light a fire tonight. But this morning, the hail was drumming down, and didn't stop until lunchtime. Hopefully, tomorrow will be less wild.

I've been writing essays for fun much of today and some of yesterday. Brett is up in Perth for a family birthday, and will be home tomorrow night.  He sends me regular cute and naughty messages. 

One sad thing is that Jess is unwell, but she's looking better now. We're not exactly sure what is wrong with her - she started acting strangely on Wednesday night, but she does that sort of thing if she gets zapped by an electric fence, for instance - get all sooky and weird for quite a while. She was still acting weird on Thursday morning for no obvious reason, and we took her on a walking expedition with us so that if it was just her mind, she'd get distracted and back to normal. She was OK on the walk, but pretty subdued - swam and retrieved though, of her own volition, at the halfway point of the 3.5 hour walk (the photos of which I'll put up early next week - Mt Martin Botanical Walk). But when we got home and she tried to drink from a big bucket, she started yelping and cowering. I looked at her mouth, and she had blood blisters forming in the epithelium. :shock:

We could rule out rat poison, but not a spider bite or even a snake bite causing coagulation problems. Anyway, we zoomed straight to the vet hospital, who did a full blood profile. All blood clotting normal, so that's fine. No obvious signs of venomous bites (but they can be tricky). Just really high neutrophils indicating an infection somewhere, but not in the gut - not vomiting, no diarrhoea, normal appetite except something about her mouth is bothering her. Kidneys, liver normal, so that's all good. The mouth might be a misadventure injury from the night she acted funny - like a run-in with a donkey - or maybe that's the infection, near there somewhere. She's on soft foods and TLC, and antibiotics and anti-inflammatories. The worst thing is she was shaking uncontrollably and super hot yesterday, but she looks much better today, and was sunning herself on the lawn for a while. She's still resting, at the moment on a bunch of big pillows by my bedside (a special occasions treat; she has a sofa). I've never seen her like this before, or as sick as she was yesterday. We're still wondering if she got a minor redback bite to the mouth, because I evicted quite a few of these critters when cleaning our patio last week. Spider bites can get infected... maybe she swallowed it and got it in the back of the throat somewhere...

Big mystery. But it's very sad to have a sad, sighing, shaking dog around. :-( I'm so glad she's improving; she even had a dream earlier where she was wagging her tail so furiously that it was thumping into the underbed storage drawer! And I boiled her an egg for her dinner, to have with some peanut butter on wholemeal bread cubes - she can't do proper solids at the moment. She was mad about that egg, and about the antibiotics I hid in the ham ;-), and snuggling up to me more like her usual self after that!

Happy Sunday to all. inkunicorn:

The firewood photo... all those containers are Romeo's old feed bins that we had to keep replacing because his super-angled front teeth would wear a hole through the bottom of the container in a few months at the end... they're still OK for firewood, and it's nice to think of the old horse and the many feed bins he had, that were filled up with so much food for him twice a day for his last five years...


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## DanteDressageNerd

Poor Jess! What a rough way for the poor puppy! I hope she feels better soon, it's amazing what animals can get into and so quickly :-( 

Glad Brett is sharing cute and naughty messages, that's the way it should be. Also cheeky, just shows the love is still strong!!


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## Knave

I’m so sorry about Jesse! I hope that she is feeling much better today.


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## gottatrot

Poor doggie! Hope she feels better soon.


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## SueC

Thank you ladies for your well-wishes for the dog! I am happy to report that, after sleeping for most of yesterday and curling up to sunbathe on the lawn this morning, by 10am she was showing enthusiasm when I asked her if she wanted a "walkies" - so off we went, and she was her normal, energetic self again, running way ahead of me with a big doggy grin on her face, snapping at bees, and rounding up donkeys and ducks. 

I'll take it easy with her for another couple of days. Who knows, if we get a fine day we might get a little ride in. I expect our horses to start shedding any day; spring is in the air here.


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## egrogan

Glad to hear Jess is doing well!


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## knightrider

Hope Jesse continues to improve!


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## Knave

I’m happy to hear that!


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## SueC

Miraculously, I managed to go for a little 20-minute loop around the valley floor this evening - after two sunny days took the edge off the quagmire situation. :cowboy: I am hoping for more sun, gardening, and thinking that in the next couple of days I'll finally be able to take those garden photos I was talking about a month ago, @Knave! :shock: Where does the time go? August already, still lots of things on the backlog to-do list. Slowly getting through it...

*MT MARTIN BOTANICAL WALK*

These are the photos from last Thursday's long walk. Mt Martin is on the peninsula opposite Emu Point - I'll show you the view of it again from our Middleton Beach walk recently (the town beach):










The walk starts about 5km on the far side of that peninsula, and comes out across the channel from Emu Point.

We drove all the way out to Gull Rock National Park to do this walk, and started with a trip down to Ledge Beach from the car park. The sand on our South Coast beaches is icing-sugar white, and squeaks when you walk on it, like when you're eating Haloumi - so Brett often calls it "Haloumi Sand." 










This is the trailhead for the botanical walk to Mt Martin opposite Emu Point. It's called that because of the amazing, extra diverse flora in the reserve - the South Coast is a world biodiversity hotspot.



From the first lookout point 20 minutes in, you get views forever - I got a close-up of Michaelmas and Eclipse Islands offshore that was very "Norwegian Fjord" - you can show that one to Zeus, @Knave, and maybe it will mean something to him. ;-)


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## SueC

From there on, we kept walking, until we got to the Middleton Beach end of the trail - you can see the beach in the distance that I posted the reference photo to at the start of the post, from a walk on it:



Coastal heath, looking up at Mt Martin:



Looking across the Oyster Harbour entrance channel, at Emu Point:









We then didn't take any more photos until nearly back at the car park - here's one of the general countryside heading back on this loop walk:



About 3 hours of solid walking, which we need to do more of!

This Thursday we're staying at home to do some jobs, and will just go bicycle riding; on the weekend, we'll find another walking adventure.


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## SueC

*WILDERNESS BICYCLE TRAIL, DENMARK WESTERN AUSTRALIA*

A different type of steed for our last adventure, and not riding in a quagmire - for the paper journal write-up on it, see #8 below - also some daily entries for general life on the farm at present:




























If you're wondering after that dog-in-car description what it actually looks like:



Here's the photos from the bicycle trail:















Funny back story to the above photo: Why is Brett pushing his bicycle up the hill, instead of riding it? He's not 100 yet, is he? ...well, when I asked him that, he said the gearing wasn't low enough to allow him to pedal effectively - this was as low as it would go. I blinked, because he was actually on the biggest front cog here, as you can see if you go to Flickr and enlarge! So I said, "Try switching your left gear changer to 1 instead of 3, might be easier!" :Angel: _Oh!_ And behold, Brett found it much easier. inkunicorn::blueunicorn: In his defense, he wasn't wearing his glasses and doesn't normally do steep uphill-downhill stuff on his bicycle, nor have that kind of past experience. Now he's full bottle!

I still get caught on basic stuff like this as well, even though (because of? ) in my 40s.


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## SueC

Views from about the halfway point - east, north-east and north respectively:







You see those towers of granite like some massive Stonehenge on that hill, centre left? That's Monkey Rock, which we went to as part of our Mt Hallowell track walk a couple of weeks ago: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page54/#post1970756575

Views back to the west, over Back Beach:




Wind farm information:



We stopped here, on account of the dog having exhausted herself yapping at us to go faster and galloping backwards a lot. Silly sausage had worn herself out - and it turns out, damaged her pads in the process. Now I have to invent some Paw Boots for her for the next time we do this track! ...and for similar areas with sharp gravel that can't be avoided. We'd not encountered this problem before. The distance was not the issue; she does more distance (and speed) horse-riding. Anyone know any good Paw Boots? 

Here we are resting. Jess is a very "up close and personal" sort of dog:







The two turbines of this community wind farm Next time, with Paw Boots, we'll cycle to the end of the track! On this trip, we did 6km out, total 12km. Very good cardiovascular workout on account of the hills.



After the rest stop, Jess pricked up her ears when I mentioned we were going back to the "broom-broom" (onomatopoeia works for animals and small children especially!). Ready to go:



On account of her sore pads, we went back slowly. Here's a nice shot of the uphill-downhill, twisty-turny nature of this lovely bicycle trail:



We then went down to Back Beach for another break for the footsore dog, and so she could cool her feet in salt water:


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## SueC

Back Beach is one of those gorgeous hidden gems you can only access on foot, by bicycle or via (separate) 4WD trail... magnificent... we'd never been, and next time we're bringing a picnic!







Brett dog whispering:



Back up on the bicycle trail, a sign that showed me where one of my favourite honeys comes from:



We don't have this at home, but buy it occasionally - this year, because the bees had a bad summer due to drought.

_Hakea sessilis_:





Wildflower season is getting in the full swing at the moment - it's spectacular out there - the flora in this part of the world is astonishing...

A few more views on the way back:





The above shot is me walking Jess on the sandy Bibbulmun hiking trail, which runs parallel to the bicycle track - Brett was pushing our bicycles to make that possible:



Just look at everything bursting into flower in that heathland...

Two last photos, of getting back into Lights Beach and the waterfall that was forming in the rocks there:





As a wave came in, the water pushed into the rock formation would make a brief waterfall over two rock gaps!

Apart from the fact that the dog needs to either behave sensibly, or get Paw Boots for this track (probably the latter is easier ), it was a really magnificent day out, and I'm dying to do it again soon.

Jess is OK, and taking it easy on her feet at the moment. I think it will take about 3-7 days for the tissue to heal, just like when you get deep blisters on a human foot. As Hyeon Chung did in the 2018 Australian Open, unfortunately just before a match-up with Federer:










That story here:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01...-forced-to-retire-aus-open-semi-final/9366730


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## egrogan

Beautiful photos once again! 

For dog booties, we've used "Ruffwear" in the winter because the roads are treated with an anti-icing solution that can burn their feet, and snow balls can get stuck up in fluffy paws between toes. I'd be lying if I said our dogs liked having them on, but they do the job and stay on pretty well. This is the brand: https://ruffwear.com/ and it does look like they are available outside the US.


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## Knave

I was wondering as I read what upside down bikes looked like! It looks like you guys have been having some fun.


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## knightrider

Whew!!!! When I rolled down to that foot photo, I thought it was YOUR foot! I'm so glad you had such a lovely time, and that it was NOT YOUR FOOT!


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## SueC

:rofl:, @knightrider! Poor Hyeon Chung though, we would actually have volunteered to swap with him during that 1018 Australian Open - but for that injury, we think he'd have had a great chance of beating Federer in the semis. he was playing red-hot all week - and he couldn't even turn up for it, poor man - whereas we were just mostly sitting on the sofa for those two weeks anyway...

How's your herd going? And is your daughter feeling better yet? I'm sending you happy riding vibes. I'm hoping that my boggy ground riding hiatus will lift next week - I really want to get back into it. Spring flush is about to start and that horse needs exercise...

@Knave, yes - great fun!  I guess it's back at school in your part of the world?

@egrogan, thank you very much for that link!  I really do want to take the dog on that track again, but it's not going to happen without paw protection of some sort. I knew that in parts of Australia they put some sort of paw protection on their stock dogs in doublegee country, but this might be something DIY the stockmen make from suede leather. Doublegees:










And it's felafel night! Hooray! We've not eaten meat rissoles since making these, because they're so much nicer! 


*Dog Update*

Jess spent Monday on the sofa sleeping and saying, "Would you please bring me stuff?"

On Tuesday I carried her out into the garden with me, so she could lie on the lawn in the sun. She then discovered she could walk a little.

Yesterday, she went outdoors of her own accord and guarded stock all day. I took her walking on the sand track in the evening, and she was sound there.

This morning, we've been for another extended walk in sandy country and she did a lot of retrieving in the neighbour's dam. She was a little tender on one front paw - a bit of the pad has peeled, and the new skin underneath isn't as tough as normal yet. But, she's OK, and we're going to do a beach walk this weekend so she can rehabilitate on soft sand and put her paws in salt water.


*Horse Update*

With treatment since last spring, Sunsmart's coat isn't nearly as yak-like as it was at the end of last winter, when I first suspected he was developing Cushings. He's still Mr Hairy though, rivalling some of the donkeys with his fur coat. Chasseur doesn't make a fair comparison, since he completely lacks a winter coat gene (like some other TBs and STBs) - he'd actually die of exposure in the four-day deluges with screaming Antarctic winds, without a rug - like quite a few elderly and very young stock do at those times, in Southwestern Australia. They're always broadcasting "sheep weather alerts" here, to say lamb losses are expected unless farmers move them to sheltered areas. Julian has a normal winter coat - not long, but dense. I'm mostly restricting their grazing to the fenced paddocks at the moment because I don't want them gaining weight. As spring progresses, they will be locked in the back paddock, and possibly into the driveway to limit their oinking. Occasional excursions will be permitted. By Christmas, they can have the range of the place again - the annual grasses will dry up.


*Donkey Update*

Feet are coming up for trimming - three donkeys, plus two and a half horses. Better get busy this week.

:runpony: :runpony:

Hoping everyone in the northern hemisphere is enjoying their late summer! If you're in deciduous tree country, please take photos this autumn and share!


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## waresbear

Those beautiful beaches with the white sand, people can swim there right? Are there sharks there?🦈🦈


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## Knave

Yes, school is back to the forefront. The oldest got voted class president, and the girls are back into the same school this year. 

I think my parents tried boots on one of our cowdogs once. I can’t remember much about it, but I think he had damaged his paws pretty dramatically on a hot work day.


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## knightrider

Thanks for asking about my horses, @SueC. They are all doing great. We had a flap over Aci misbehaving for one of the teens who is a decent rider. I cannot figure out why he was so awful for her. He was so bad, I made her dismount and lead him. After a bit, I gave her Isabeau, whom I was riding, and I got on Aci. 

I wanted to ride home with another teen we had along to make sure he got some safely. Aci was fine on that ride, which included riding on a road with fast moving heavy vehicles right next to us. But on the way home, after dropping off the teen, Aci was as horrible with me as he had been with the girl. It was dangerous to spin him, rear and buck him down on that road, so I kept with him until we got to my driveway. Then I got off him and led him because I decided it was the saddle that was bothering him. He doesn't normally ride in that saddle. He's done fine with the child all summer, fine with everything. The only thing different was the saddle.

Later that week, I took him with the saddle and another saddle that I knew he liked, and had my friend, who knows so much more about horses and riding than I do, take a look at that saddle fit. She said it was fine, and then rode Aci in that saddle for 2 1/2 hours with no problems.

Then I had my neighbor ride Aci for 2 hours with no problems. And I was riding Aci the other days with no problems. And THEN, I put my timid rider teen on Aci, who had no problems. So, it remains a mystery.

When Isabeau acted like a total brat this winter, she told me that she had had a terrible dream about vehicles and deer attacking her and it made her wildly nervous for the next 2 rides. Aci doesn't talk to me, so I guess I'll never know why he was so awful for that young rider on 3 different rides.

Just goes to show how interesting equines can be. 

Good luck with trimming your animals. I am taking hoof trimming lessons myself to try to learn to do it. I think I am making good progress. I am very proud of my trims. My teacher, not so much. I feel very humbled after a lesson. My friend, who knows so much about horses (and does her 4 horses' feet) said I ought to give it up and go back to paying my farrier to do a lousy job. But I won't give up. I know I'm getting the hang of it. It just is something that needs a lot of practice. Why pay someone to do a lousy job when I can do a lousy job myself for free? Anyway, I think their hooves look nice. I do two hooves every couple of days so all 4 are getting trimmed about every two weeks.

My daughter might be doing a little better, though she says she is not. We got her a kitten from the animal shelter, and he is the best kitten who ever walked the earth. He adores her, follows her everywhere, sleeps with her, and, did I mention that he is the perfect kitten???

My husband arranged for us to stay at Cocoa Beach for a week because our daughter wished that she could get away from all the sad memories of her love and her cat. It is our misfortune that a hurricane is coming this way. But we surely have enjoyed the beach, and she has valiantly kept up with her homeschooling, bless her heart.


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## gottatrot

@knightrider: Don't give up on the hooves! You can do it! I was so terrible at using the tools when I started. My hoof walls would have big chunks all around the edges. The best thing is that when doing your own horses, you will learn how their hooves grow and soon know exactly what each one needs.


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## waresbear

I am still dreaming of Sue's beautiful beaches.....


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## knightrider

@gottatrot, part of my problem is the conflicting comments from the different people. My hoof instructor told me, "Don't touch the heels. The toes are currently too long, so trim the toes; leave the heels." When my friend, who also is quite proficient, examined my work, she said, "Of course, you need to trim the heels; you haven't taken anything off the heels.," I watch farrier videos and they also say conflicting things. I am getting the feeling that there are many ways to trim feet and most likely my "lousy" job, (which looks fairly neat and tidy to my mind) is someone else's decent job. Well, I am going to be optimistic and hope that.


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## egrogan

I agree with you @knightrider! I'm not picking on anyone, but I don't think I've _ever _seen a picture of a hoof posted on the forum that people looked at and said "that looks great!" Sure, there's probably room for improvement or different philosophies to approach the same problem, but while I know there are some questionable farriers out there, I can't believe that _every _farrier is terrible at their job. Maybe more than anything in horses, I think looking at feet is an area where there is virtually no agreement. Good for you for getting some lessons though. Someday, when I can create 20 hours of daylight, maybe I'll be able to do that too :wink:


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## Knave

@knightrider there do seem to be a lot of philosophies on feet, don’t there? My father takes the heels rather short, and our friend prefers a longer heel with a shorter toe. It is a frustrating thing, trying to decide what you think is right. Don’t worry though, you will get there!


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## SueC

waresbear said:


> Those beautiful beaches with the white sand, people can swim there right? Are there sharks there?🦈🦈


Oooh, where'd you get those emojis? 

Yes, people can swim (but it's cold, so we just wade), and yes, there are sharks, and sometimes people get bitten, but mostly sharks get eaten by humans as fish & chips here!

How's life treating you? 




Knave said:


> Yes, school is back to the forefront. The oldest got voted class president, and the girls are back into the same school this year.
> 
> I think my parents tried boots on one of our cowdogs once. I can’t remember much about it, but I think he had damaged his paws pretty dramatically on a hot work day.


Well done to older girl, and best wishes for the school year for both of them!  

Eeek, do you sometimes get really hot ground in summer as well? That amazed me about Australia, when I first got here - trying to walk barefoot on the tarmac in summer, like in Europe, and - just no!!! I couldn't believe how hot the roads got...ouch...


@knightrider, you seem to have pinpointed the Aci problem on that ride! It's not pleasant when things like this happen. And it's cool that you communicate so closely with your horses! :blueunicorn:inkunicorn: And yeah, don't give up on your trimming, practice makes perfect - or at least competent! You care about your horses far more than any farrier is going to, so if the standards of Australian farriers are anything to go by, you are going to do a better job than most farriers if you persist with it.  How's your daughter going, feeling any better? Maybe you could tell her the story about how I was all heartbroken when I broke up with my first boyfriend, but the man I eventually married many years later was a far nicer, more ethical, more together, more imaginative, more clever, more funny person than anyone else I ever dated - he's like a big care bear (but don't tell him that - he'd find it embarrassing - he's OK with being called my growly bear though! :Angel

@gottatrot, exactly! :gallop: Hope all is well in your world! inkunicorn:

@egrogan, it's so nice to see you doing long trails on Fizz, and setting yourself some goals for competing - both of those are great fun! :cowboy: ...if you find a way to create 20 hours of daylight, please let us know how to replicate it here!


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## SueC

I was discussing how to we decide whether or not we are going to adopt "new" music into our listening repertoire with someone, which led to me thinking about all sorts of choices, and writing this reflection, which the bookworms amongst you should be able to relate to! How do you make your decisions about music, or anything else?

*DECISIONS, DECISIONS*

I was 14 when I first stood inside a university library. I'd gone there for the day because our school had a staff development day, which meant the students had a day off. I was in the city for senior high school, had just started Year 11, and could take a bus to places like this. From the age of six I had spent much of my spare time in school libraries, browsing and then borrowing voraciously across fiction and non-fiction alike, books like treasure to take home. I could open them up and jump in, thresholds to other worlds, and to this world too – but like in Gulliver's travels, where you could see things both in finer detail and from further away than your everyday perspective.

So a building reputedly with several floors of books drew me like a pilgrim might be drawn to a cathedral. I'd never been to a place like this before. I walked through the sliding glass doors; two university students smiled at me. I was struck by that because generally, older age groups in school hadn't been that welcoming. These people were old enough to vote, were doing degrees, and they were friendly, acknowledged me. It gave me a good feeling, on top of being about to see more books in one place than I ever had in my life.

And it was extraordinary. The ground floor alone was ten times the size of our high school library, the shelves much taller, rows and rows and rows of books, and long, wide tables in the middle with people sitting at them, books piled around them, writing furiously into notebooks. Ground floor, sociology, philosophy, theology, history, art, literature. Basement, botany, zoology, physics, chemistry, geology, geography, a section of coffee table books filled with photographs of the world.

After a reconnaisance through the building, I settled into the sociology/philosophy section and browsed. I pulled titles that intrigued me off the shelves, opened them to the chapter index, flicked through randomly, and got shivers down my spine as entire new ways of looking and thinking opened up to me and tripped open trapdoors in my mind. Eventually, I chose a handful of books on the American civil rights movement, and on the philosophy of nonviolent action, and carried them to a distraction-free study desk tucked away by a window. And I read, and read, and read, electrified and barely breathing. When I looked up, the sun was setting, and my stomach was growling at me – I'd completely forgotten to have lunch. As I returned the books to their shelves, I was suddenly struck by a piercing realisation: Even if I lived to be one hundred, I could never read all the books in this library.

Two years later, I returned to spend four years doing a double-major science degree at this university – Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia – and even with all the required subject reading, and taking home recreational reading predominantly from the literature, art, and philosophy sections, I wouldn't have read 0.5% of the books in that library. And it makes you think, about how you might make your choices, both in books and in life.

Brett always says to me, “Life is too short to read books that don't interest you.” Like me, he's very aware that the amount of worthy reading material on offer vastly exceeds the amount of time we will have to read. And the same is true for movies, and art, and music as well – we have to find ways of choosing from the vast sea of these things, and that tends to make us very selective. Also, cultural forms of recreation and self-education need to share space in our lives with other priorities, like physical activity to keep our bodies in good shape, enough sleep, doing our part-time paid work, managing our farm, and growing and preparing food.

We often wish for 40 hours in the day, as a sort of bonus life, to fit more in, but when we look at it, we actually do fit in amazing amounts, and tend to use our time well. At midlife, you tend to review how things went in the first half, and make priorities for the second half. We're both happy with what we've achieved in our first 40 years on this planet – and then we tree-changed, of course, owner-built and downshifted, so we no longer work full-time outside our home, and we finally have enough time for each other and for the important things that were always on hold before we quit the rat race.

We're pretty happy with our decision-making protocols – I know I've become very much the kind of person I aimed to become, when I was a teenager, and I've contributed in ways that mattered, and continue to do so; and if that weren't enough, I also found a sort of personal Eden – the thing I didn't have as a child, and not until I met Brett a dozen years ago – namely generous lashings of love, support, connection, camaraderie in the household I live in; and a microcosm run according to our own shared values and preferences.

So in the context of that, making decisions over which music to listen to is just one small piece of the puzzle. But how do we decide? Well, here's what I want from music: I want it to be nourishing in some way – either emotionally, or by making me think. I prefer it to be beautiful, although I also have time for experimental music. If it is those things, it will find a place in me. I'm the kind of person who prefers to have deep engagements, rather than more superficial ones – I will re-read books I like many times, knowing it means there will be some books worth my while I will never read at all; but I really want that deep engagement with things that have especially moved me, instead of endlessly chasing all over the place for more things that might. Same with music, films, art. With that approach, I get a balance of continuing dialogue with “old friends” from whom I am still learning, and picking up new material from the as yet unfamiliar.

And I'm with Brett on this: In general, if it doesn't make you sparkle, don't waste your time – not when every yes to something is a no to something else. So for us: Don't eat Cadbury's chocolate when you could be eating one square of Lindt. Climb a real mountain if you can, walk a real shoreline, instead of just exercising in buildings which make exercise one-dimensional. Pick the things that are good for you off the smorgasbord, and be confident in your instincts. It's your life, be responsible for it, live it.

Of course we all have chores to do in life, which may not be so pleasant, but even there we can choose our attitudes, and our reward systems. When we do housework, we are both motivated by wanting our partner to have a nice environment to live in, good food to eat, etc; and often we will do a particular task so the other person won't have to do it when they're tired. Brett usually won't let me wash up; he turns into a growly bear at the sink and tells me washing up is man's work and I should go sit down and relax. Since I do most of the food preparation, which I really really enjoy, that's fair – although doing dishes is dull, Brett says not to worry, he has audio dramas on his iPod especially for this purpose. It's so much easier to do your chores when you're doing them out of love, as well.

That's chores... and as for listening to music or reading books, for us that should be a joy, or at least highly thought-provoking. So those are some of the values we live by, and each person must decide for themselves what their values are, and how to live by them.

Sending best wishes to everyone out there for living your own lives authentically.


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## knightrider

@SueC, thanks for asking. I will read your response to my daughter. She is still struggling, but starting school, enjoying her classes more than last year, liking her teachers more than last year . . . and the amazing kitten we got are all helping. 

Aci hasn't been the slightest bit naughty. I put the competent teen on Chorro or Isabeau. I don't know when I will let her ride him again. Thank goodness all the back problems I was struggling with have cleared up so I don't have to put the kids on Aci as often as I was having to.


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## egrogan

@SueC, I bet one strategy you _won't _use is the one I heard in an excruciating story on National Public Radio this morning:
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/03/7555...-celebrity-book-clubs-are-a-ticket-to-success

How discouraging that so many people apparently can't find a book without a random celebrity telling them they should read it?! :sad:


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## knightrider

One way that I used to find books I might not have chosen was to go to the Large Print section. Usually books are chosen to be made into Large Print if they are enjoyed by lots of people. 

The past two summers I have experimented with books I might not have read by participating in a library challenge where we had to read books like "One word title" or "published the year you were born" or "second in a series." It was fun and I tried a bunch of genres I might not have tried. (I also won, which was neat).


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## CopperLove

"If it doesn't make you sparkle, don't waste your time." Words to live by there.

With books I tend to be pretty escapist. If it's not a book I'm reading directly to study something I tend to prefer fantasy by authors who are adept world-builders with just enough connection to real-world problems to make them feel "real". As an adult I sometimes think I should move away from this... but in the end time is short and why shouldn't I read the things that make me happy? Ironically, my favorite book I've ever laid hands on so far in my life is Watership Down. Most people I tell this to who know the book always ask me why? They says it's so depressing. But I've never thought of it that way, I adore it. I read it against our high school librarian's advice, she implied it was "too far below my reading level." I always thought that was a horrible way of describing books to young potential readers :|

On a recent trip, I found a copy of Monty Roberts' autobiography in a used bookstore and picked it up. His story is remarkable but absolutely heart-breaking... I knew that a lot of ideas connected to modern horse-training were connected to him, but I didn't actually know who he was as a person. It is pretty difficult reading about his father's ideas and treatment of horses and people.

Music must tell a story for me (even if the music isn't directly telling a story in itself.) I tend to connect music directly to people, stories, events, even if that isn't what the music is actually about. For example there is a song I think of as "Dreama's Song." I'm sure lots of people do this. Lyrics mean a lot to me, which I thought was the case for all people but my partner is the exact opposite. He could listen to the same song for years and not be able to tell you any of the lyrics. The difference? I sing. He plays strings - guitar, bass, dabbles of other things. Even though I played music in highschool, I tend to be more consumed by the words and the overall "feel" of a song, while he is paying much more attention to the actual composition of a piece. I hadn't thought of it before, but I would imagine a dancer takes in the music differently as well.


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## SueC

@knightrider, Large Print sounds like an interesting way to choose books. Also it just occurred to me it's one way I could still read without reading glasses! :rofl: Love the library challenge ideas. Did you get a book as a prize?
@egrogan, that link - yeah, haha. I don't know what the world's coming to, etc. On the other hand, in these days of declining reading, I have to say that good role modelling by celebrities may help get people into reading - and whichever way they get into reading, it increases their chances of learning to think independently, and of learning new things. (Unless they're just reading formula.) ;-)


*DENTAL COMPARISON BETWEEN TWO HORSE SKULLS*

After burying our first equine fatality in 2014, we subsequently went with on-ground burial in 2017 and earlier this year - in Redmond and other broadacre farming areas, large animal carcasses are generally deposited into on-farm bushland away from human habitations and waterways. Typically, the noxious phase of the decomposition process is over within 6 weeks. We don't have large scavengers in Western Australia - no hyenas, coyotes, vultures - but we have smaller scavengers, like ravens and introduced foxes, and above all, we have blowflies that deal very effectively with carcass recycling, turning most of it into songbird food. I like to think about that when I hear the birds singing on this block, how some of their songs were powered by the mortal remains of our beloved horses.

Because of my biology training, I'm unsqueamish about stuff to do with dead bodies, the only caveat being that I don't like to see the decomposition process on animals (or people, but that's academic) with whom I had an emotional bond. I'm fine once the soft tissue is mostly off. So, I will return to look at skeletons, which to me are biological architecture. If I knew an animal, I might be interested in an injury it had, whether it had spinal problems I didn't know about, etc.

In Romeo's case, I was interested in seeing the state of his teeth - he was unable to have dentistry done on him since age 29 because his teeth had become too low and too loose at that point, and were starting to fall out. The last session of that he had distressed him, and the veterinarian advised to leave it from now on as it was doing more harm than good with his failing teeth.

The really amazing thing is that he didn't die until 34 years, 5 months old - but don't ask how much we spent on ingredients for his huge twice-daily senior porridge over that time. At that point, he'd lost so many teeth he could no longer process soft grass enough to make it much further without starting to suffer, so we put him down in March. We'd not seen properly inside his mouth for years, and were curious to see the final state of his dentition.

I've included photos of his lower jaw and skull, side-by-side of the skull of the mare we lost in 2017 - she was 27, and teeth weren't an issue for her yet. The only reason you can see cracks in the lower teeth is because the skull has been weathering for two years.

There were NO grinding teeth at all left in his lower jaw - and judging by the infilling of the bony sockets, he'd lost most of these more than a year ago.

He'd recently lost a top molar, and had previously lost another two molars - you can see how the recently lost tooth's socket is still quite complete, and for the previously lost teeth, the sockets had started to fill in. The reason some of his grinding teeth are brown and others white is because the brown ones were lying in the earth beside the skull at the time I collected it, and I didn't put them back in their places until just before taking the photo. The white ones are sun-bleached - and the mare's skull and teeth far more so than his, owing to 18 months more in the sun.

The aperture behind the molars is the airway opening, in which you can see the nasal septum down the middle. Romeo's atlas is still attached to the skull. While the mare was smaller than he and had a small head, the size difference has been exaggerated by the loss of most of the brain case in the mare's skull. When animals are shot, it fractures the skull at this point, and this makes it prone to crumbling away early in the decomposition process. You can see the exit hole of one of the bullets at the bottom of the gelding's brain case. It wasn't hollow-point ammunition, so it doesn't blow everything apart. Our veterinarian uses two round-nose bullets - the first does the job, the second is to make sure consciousness isn't regained while waiting for the heart to stop. This doesn't usually happen, but it's best to make absolutely sure.

If you're wondering about the tiny holes in the hard palate etc, a lot of these are entry/exit points for blood vessels, nerves etc.

The grinding teeth in horses are really amazing, considering the job they do for over two decades, typically grinding 16 hours a day.


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## knightrider

@CopperLove, are you familiar with the Warrior series books by Erin Hunter? They are everything you said you liked. They are amazing. They are about clans of wild cats and encompass every human situation, for example the heartbreak of infidelity and the egos of leaders.

I also adored Watership Down, and what a pleasure to read it to my daughter and discover that she loved it just as much. I am a huge rabbit fan anyway. My childhood nickname was "Bunny" because I was always pretending to be a rabbit. Ironically, it was horses that I was simply crazy about, but my parents forbid me to talk or pretend about horses, so I decided to play it safe and be crazy about bunnies.
@SueC, I did win two books, among some other cool prizes. The first book was a coloring book of furniture and furnishings that you can color, cut out, and arrange in rooms. I gave that one to my daughter as she has a real flair for decorating. I do not. The second one was a Downton Abbey cookbook. The library folks must have known how much my daughter and I adore that series, as we have checked it out several times. We have made two of the recipes in the book--very fun!


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## gottatrot

Extremely interesting to see the teeth. I find it quite amazing you were able to keep weight on Romeo after seeing how his mouth was. That was serious love and dedication.


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## SueC

CopperLove said:


> "If it doesn't make you sparkle, don't waste your time." Words to live by there.
> 
> With books I tend to be pretty escapist. If it's not a book I'm reading directly to study something I tend to prefer fantasy by authors who are adept world-builders with just enough connection to real-world problems to make them feel "real". As an adult I sometimes think I should move away from this... but in the end time is short and why shouldn't I read the things that make me happy? Ironically, my favorite book I've ever laid hands on so far in my life is Watership Down. Most people I tell this to who know the book always ask me why? They says it's so depressing. But I've never thought of it that way, I adore it. I read it against our high school librarian's advice, she implied it was "too far below my reading level." I always thought that was a horrible way of describing books to young potential readers :|


Yes, there are so many "children's books" that are really profound and well worth your adult time and attention!

I've never read _Watership Down_, but there is an excerpt of it in a book I got when we were quarantining the horses in England en route to Australia, after I did my introductory year of school English in central Europe. (_"The cat sat on the mat. The frog sat on the log. In, into, on, onto, under, over, beside. Hello, how are you, goodbye, which way to the train station? I like, I don't like. How much is that? Mind the gap."_) So, it turns out I bought my first ever proper English-language storybook at a little bookshop in Hastings. I have it in my hands now, a lovely hardback, with only the spine faded: _ Richard Adams's Favourite Animal Stories_. Inside the cover, my schoolkid running writing: _England, November 1982, £1.99._ The very first story I turned to in that book was by Rudyard Kipling. _ I am the cat who walks by himself, and all the places are alike to me. _ I loved that, the sense of it, the sound of it, the rhythm of it, the freedom of it, and I started saying that to myself in my own mind, when I was walking places. _The Cat That Walked By Himself_ is of course wonderful and poetic and intricate and naughty and metaphorical, and I smile 37 years later to think of the luck of having that be the first story I came across in the English language, when I had learnt the basics.

And now I'm going to have to go back and read the excerpt from _Watership Down_. I think Brett has the actual book in his collection too, for adding to my reading pile... 




> Music must tell a story for me (even if the music isn't directly telling a story in itself.) I tend to connect music directly to people, stories, events, even if that isn't what the music is actually about. For example there is a song I think of as "Dreama's Song." I'm sure lots of people do this. Lyrics mean a lot to me, which I thought was the case for all people but my partner is the exact opposite. He could listen to the same song for years and not be able to tell you any of the lyrics. The difference? I sing. He plays strings - guitar, bass, dabbles of other things. Even though I played music in highschool, I tend to be more consumed by the words and the overall "feel" of a song, while he is paying much more attention to the actual composition of a piece. I hadn't thought of it before, but I would imagine a dancer takes in the music differently as well.


I like that way you're thinking about the dancer versus the string player versus the singer, and the way that influences how they hear music, and what they look for in it. And then it becomes so interesting to listen to all these different perspectives on a particular track, and put it all together. Sort of like extra-dimension glasses! 

Storytelling is also important to me in music, and I tend to like the "storytellers" like Neil Young, Lou Reed, etc. Of course, you can also tell a story with instrumental music - this time, in a universal language...

I'm sure too that many people appropriate songs for their own personal situations, people and places they know, etc. Just like poetry and stories. 

I think it's not only the quality of the music itself, and the intended meaning of a song, that can draw us to it - it's also often the associations that pop up in your mind - it can be a soundtrack to a particular significant experience for you, or a link with good memories that were being made when you first heard it, for instance.

Some songs will forever recall for me particular scenery I was in at the time of first hearing them, or particular times in my life, for example. I've got U2's _Where The Streets Have No Name_ forever associated with a 6-hour solo walk I did along the Harvey River and Peel-Harvey Estuary, complete with swimming across the river, when I was 16; and with the smell of crushed mint when I was resting in the grass, and flocks of sea birds rising en masse off the estuary, and the way the light played on the water. I wasn't carrying a walkman, I was carrying the song in my head, from my first couple of listens of the album it was on, and it popped up because it fitted the scenery, and became forever married to that particular experience for me. More recently, that happened for me when we played a newly acquired Sharon Shannon album going around the peninsula from Huonville through Cygnet and Flowerpot and Kettering and Snug on a trip around Tasmania - now I always see that scenery when I listen to that album - in part because it was such a good fit for it!

David Bowie's _Changes_ was playing on the radio when I was 13 and coming to grips with leaving childhood. That fitted the situation as well, and various others on the journey since then. Mike Scott did a sung version of _Greensleeves_ which goes, "I'll build you a home in the meadow" - and I discovered that one just as we were starting the task of building our own home in the meadow, literally so, back in 2011. It became like a theme song for that long process, of Brett and me fronting up for years to put it all together until it was done, and here we are. And Jenny Thomas, an Australian violinist probably best known internationally for playing her fiddle on the _Lord Of The Rings_ soundtrack, has done a track called _Sweet Tooth_ which to me embodies so much about living where we do, and with each other. It's a lilting tune with little catches in it that make my heart flip over. You won't find it anywhere on the Internet; it's off her album_ Into The Ether_.

Isn't it amazing what having a cerebrum has done for us? Of course, it's also resulted in a lot of awful things - but when we're at our best, the things that come from our brains can be extraordinary...

You might enjoy this podcast about exactly that: https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/paul-gilbert-compassion/10922574




knightrider said:


> @CopperLove, are you familiar with the Warrior series books by Erin Hunter? They are everything you said you liked. They are amazing. They are about clans of wild cats and encompass every human situation, for example the heartbreak of infidelity and the egos of leaders.
> 
> I also adored Watership Down, and what a pleasure to read it to my daughter and discover that she loved it just as much. I am a huge rabbit fan anyway. My childhood nickname was "Bunny" because I was always pretending to be a rabbit. Ironically, it was horses that I was simply crazy about, but my parents forbid me to talk or pretend about horses, so I decided to play it safe and be crazy about bunnies.


And now, I'm even more motivated to read _Watership Down_!  

Almost every person I've ever spoken to who had a difficult family growing up says they relate more to animals than the average person seems to. Isn't that interesting. Having said that, I may only be talking to that subset - since I generally avoid mixing with bullies socially.




> @SueC, I did win two books, among some other cool prizes. The first book was a coloring book of furniture and furnishings that you can color, cut out, and arrange in rooms. I gave that one to my daughter as she has a real flair for decorating. I do not. The second one was a Downton Abbey cookbook. The library folks must have known how much my daughter and I adore that series, as we have checked it out several times. We have made two of the recipes in the book--very fun!


I once binge-watched two seasons of _Downton Abbey_ in the one weekend, where I barely moved from the sofa. This was mid-build, and a weekend away in my head from it! :rofl: Very effective. Have you ever done anything like that - aggressively vacationing on your sofa? :rofl:




gottatrot said:


> Extremely interesting to see the teeth. I find it quite amazing you were able to keep weight on Romeo after seeing how his mouth was. That was serious love and dedication.


When I had my first look at the skull, I knew we had made the right call, and I too was amazed he was in such comparatively good condition considering... The one thing that really kept the weight on him was the canola meal, which he had 2L of every day (in two doses), mixed in with buckets of other stuff including copra, soaked cubes, bran, vitamin / mineral mix at maximum recommended dose, and chaff... Definitely not how I would ordinarily feed a horse, but it really worked for him. :blueunicorn:

It was nice to be able to keep him around for those extra years.


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## gottatrot

SueC said:


> ...When I had my first look at the skull, I knew we had made the right call, and I too was amazed he was in such comparatively good condition considering... The one thing that really kept the weight on him was the canola meal, which he had 2L of every day (in two doses), mixed in with buckets of other stuff including copra, soaked cubes, bran, vitamin / mineral mix at maximum recommended dose, and chaff... Definitely not how I would ordinarily feed a horse, but it really worked for him. :blueunicorn:
> 
> It was nice to be able to keep him around for those extra years.


I've been taking notes, since Amore's teeth are getting lower each year and she's 28 1/2. The rest of her is healthy for her age, so I am planning ahead that we might end up with a mash type diet like Romeo had, eventually. She has a great appetite.
@knightrider, Watership Down is probably my favorite fiction book. It's hard to have a favorite book, but I have always loved it so much. I hope that someday they will make a modern movie of it. 

I've tried to understand what it is I like so much. I think a big part of it is that the animals have these complex, amazing lives that have almost nothing to do with humans. The humans affect the rabbits, of course, in big ways, but more like a force of nature would. If people could think of animals more like that, not revolving around their wishes, but as having their own, very important lives, I think animals would be treated better. 

The book also has other great things, with deep characters and it's so interesting how the rabbits have their own culture and religion, great battles, and etc.
Has anyone read Redwall? That is also interesting and a good read. But I like Watership Down better because the animals in Redwall are more humanlike.


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## knightrider

> I've tried to understand what it is I like so much. I think a big part of it is that the animals have these complex, amazing lives that have almost nothing to do with humans. The humans affect the rabbits, of course, in big ways, but more like a force of nature would. If people could think of animals more like that, not revolving around their wishes, but as having their own, very important lives, I think animals would be treated better.
> 
> The book also has other great things, with deep characters and it's so interesting how the rabbits have their own culture and religion, great battles, and etc.
> Has anyone read Redwall? That is also interesting and a good read. But I like Watership Down better because the animals in Redwall are more humanlike.


If you liked that about Watership Down, you will LOVE all the Warriors books. That is exactly why they are so engrossing. They have every human drama from a much respected beloved leader who becomes senile and makes terrible decisions, to star crossed lovers. And the world of the Warriors is everything you like.

I also liked Redwall, but did not enjoy it as much as Watership Down or Warriors. Warriors contains a few non-catlike behaviors, but not many. Humans have almost no involvement in the story at all. My daughter and I have incorporated some of the animal words from Watership Down and Warriors into our vocabulary. We still talk about silflay and roads are thunderpaths. Erin Hunter is actually two women who corroborate. Boy, can they write!

Here is an excerpt from one of the websites:
Welcome, Clanmates!
I hope you feel instantly at home in this exciting new space. We have had a tremendous amount of fun creating it, and it’s been a trip down memory lane for me in lots of ways. I’ve been asked to tell you the story of how Warriors began, and it goes something like this.
How it all began
Once upon a time, many years ago, a dog- and horse-loving children’s fiction editor was asked to come up with a single book about cats… That was me! (And I still much prefer dogs and horses to cats, sorry!) Because I was young and obedient and loved my job, I did create a storyline, but to make it interesting, I put in all the stuff I was interested in, like religion, death, war, emotional crises, social conflict, what it feels like to be an outsider. There was so much squeezed into that first storyline (it ended with Firestar becoming leader!) that the publishers, HarperCollins in the US, decided that it should be extended to six books. Which became 12, then 18, and so on.


I made up the four Clans, plus StarClan, and figured out how the cats would organise their tiny societies. I wanted romantic, lyrical names, hence the two-part formula, and I realised that I could change these names to reflect the particular stage of a cat’s life. I gave the cats human-like personalities so that they could feel love, jealousy, anger, disappointment just like us, but I also wanted them to behave in a way that was as close to their natural lives as possible. So no weapons or clothing, no communicating with other animals, just a constant battle to hunt and survive.



I gave the cats human-like personalities so that they could feel love, jealousy, anger, disappointment just like us, but I also wanted them to behave in a way that was as close to their natural lives as possible.
As I created the characters, locations (yes, I came up with the maps, although the versions in the books were drawn by a professional, you’ll be relieved to know) and background stories, I realised that I was having the most incredible amount of fun. And that I would never need to write my autobiography because everything that had happened to me, all the things I felt strongly about, all the ideas I wanted to explore, could be contained in this glorious, leafy, feline world. I am still heartbroken that I had to leave the Warriors team, and nothing I work on will ever mean as much to me, but I am proud of the stories that I have created, and I am thrilled that they live on without me. Working with Kate Cary, Cherith Baldry and Tui Sutherland is a gift for any editor, and I am pleased to say that we remain friends even though I no longer chivvy them through overly-complex storylines on very tight schedule.


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## CopperLove

@knightrider I do know the Warrior series! I started reading them in middle-school I think… they were a series I gave up on because I felt I had “outgrown” them. Our school was big on what was then called the “accelerated reader” program… we had to read a certain number of books and get points by taking short tests about comprehension on the books we had read and they all had to be within our “reading level” in order to get the points. I always loved to read through grade-school all the way up through high school and looking back on it, I often think about what a horrid system that was. I would think that encouraging children and teens to read, at whatever level, would be a great thing, rather than implying that certain kinds of reading isn’t worth their time. It may be time to circle back to that series :smile: I hadn’t thought about it in ages. No one to tell me what I shouldn’t read now! 

Have you heard of the Redwall series? In a similar vein, it tells the stories of animals but in a much more personified way. Living in abbeys, sailing on ships, etc. I still own a few of those, I started collecting them during grad school with the intention that I would one day read the series from start to finish since I never had in high school. College, for whatever reason, put a damper on the amount of reading I tend to do. It was like something about the added pressure of due-dates and other time management problems hindered my former ability to sit for hours with a book I loved. I am trying to get back into the habit of reading more now, trying to figure out that mental block.

@SueC I just looked up The Cat That Walked By Himself and read the first few paragraphs, I will definitely have to finish it later when I’m not being naughty reading between things at work. :wink: I definitely think Watership Down is something you’d like to read at least once. I’ve never really considered it a children’s story myself even though I know that’s what it originated as, from stories that Richard Adams used to tell his children. But there are things in it a child wouldn’t have an understanding of… or they would at least understand it differently than an adult. It was very different to me re-reading it after college than it was reading it even in high school.

It is really interesting that a song, even if it was not playing in a particular instance, becomes attached to certain events in our lives. Sometimes I also pair music with characters and fictional situations in my mind that have never met paper. Once upon a time I thought I’d like to write stories and books but my life led me in other creative directions.

I never imagined a horse could survive for so long without the use of all its lower teeth. It's amazing what someone can do for an animal when they try. He was lucky to have you.

EDIT as I hadn't seen @gottatrot before I wrote this. Yes, Redwall!


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## SueC

*THE QUAGMIRE IS NOW PASSABLE*

:cowboy:

The sun over the last week has dried out the quagmire sufficiently to get back to riding, and Sunsmart is officially back in work as of this evening, when we did the Fireground Loop - a lovely half hour at the end of a sunny spring day. He was jaunty and offered lots of trotting, which for the last quarter of the firm surfaces on that trail was hugely ground-covering - not quite his racing trot, but well beyond the extended trot you do in a dressage arena. It's a lovely, floaty feeling. He's shedding his coat at the moment, and I'm sure a hundred birds can line their nests with it this spring. 

It's important to get him back in work before the spring flush really kicks in - I don't want him blowing out, and it's time he got fit again. The cattle have been crash grazing the fenced paddocks, and we're restricting the equine grazing to there coming into spring. Sparkle and the two new donkeys, and Chasseur, don't overeat and are sitting on the lean side at the moment, so they can have a bit more leeway. Julian, Sunsmart and two of our donkeys are "good doers" - so they will be in the driveway if necessary, this spring flush.

Other things:

inkunicorn::blueunicorn:​

*FRENCHMAN'S BAY WALK*

Last Saturday, we did a coastal walk out at Frenchman's Bay, which I will share with you:










We didn't take a camera this time; we just wanted to walk unimpeded, but I have some lovely photos we took on past occasions so you can see what that walk looks like - attached!

1. Frenchman's Bay from the top of the peninsula - the first beach - there is another behind Waterbay Point, on the other side, which you can't see in this photo. I lived five minutes from the spot where this photo was taken back in 1999, and like to go back there regularly.

2. The staircase down to the first beach, with Jess and another dog we took walking for a neighbour.

3. Views of Michaelmas Island in King George Sound, from the stairs down.

4. Down at the first beach.

5. The colours of the water are stunning, even in winter, as here.

6. The second beach, a quarter of the way along, with its own staircase to come down from at the far end.

7. King George Sound from the rocks between beaches in Frenchmans Bay.


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## Knave

Beautiful!


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## bsms

My wife & I both loved Watership Down. While living in England, we went to see the actual setting. It is - or was - a real spot. Didn't walk there because it was private land and I'm sure no one wanted tourists walking around. I had always pictured it like the golden hillsides one finds in California. But it was England, of course, and green and windy and a bit damp.

"_Watership Down: 237m at its highest point, an escarpment on the North Wessex Downs. Partly a 10-hectare Site of Special Scientific Interest, its chalk downland habitat harbouring rare Adonis Blue and Silver-spotted Skipper butterflies. The hill has a partially completed Iron Age hill fort, and the surrounding area is rich in Iron Age tumuli, lychets and enclosures. Richard Adams, who lived at nearby Nuthanger Farm, developed the stories he told his children to write his rabbit epic of escape, peril, mysticism and survival in 1972._"



















https://www.outdoorlads.com/events/fellowship-upon-watership-down-190413​
A lot of great pictures of the real area here:








"_View over the steep north face of Watership Down, at the location of Hazel's warren.'Three hundred feet the down rose vertically in a stretch of no more than six hundred — a precipitous wall, from the thin belt of trees at the foot to the ridge where the steep flattened out.'_" 

https://jimsbrit.com/watership.htm

Before living in England, I pictured it more like this and in truth was a little disappointed it didn't match my dreams:


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## SueC

I'm loving this literature discussion!  And thanks for the photos, @bsms, because photos are always good, plus it cleared up a misconception for me: For some reason, I thought _Watership Down_ was a reference to a sinking boat... :rofl: ...I thought that since childhood! Didn't think it was a reference to British Hill Country... haha!

And here I was thinking this was about rabbits at sea....


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## Knave

Me too! Actually I didn’t even know it was about rabbits!


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## SueC

I only knew because of the rabbits on the front cover of that storybook!

In other news: We climbed a mountain yesterday, and today I'm constantly hungry. How do I say, "Look in the freezer please?", @bsms?

My strategy this afternoon will be to work in the food garden. Currently on offer there are radishes, snowpeas, salad greens, and raw kale (four varieties) - this shouldn't be a great problem. :Angel:

I'll have the mountain photos in a couple of days - we did take the camera...


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## Knave

I get hungry like that too! The kale recipe is simple. I put a little salt and pepper and garlic with olive oil on them, and then put them in my over at the lowest setting for about two hours on a cookie sheet, flipping around half way. Get them dry dry. They are a great snack!


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## CopperLove

@bsms That's very awesome! All this time, I never actual knew it was a real place. Never bothered to look it up... but it looks an awful lot like I always imaged it would. But I live in Kentucky so everything is pretty green here and I imagine that affected the way I thought of it too.


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## Caledonian

@*SueC* - I've been pulling out and cutting back plants as Autumn has arrived; it's chilly at night and the leaves are starting to turn and some are dropping.

@*Knave* - I've always lacked imagination when cooking kale. I usually steam it but your recipe sounds really tasty.


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## Knave

It actually is very good @Caledonian. Just don’t overdo the seasonings. It picks up the flavor easily.


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## SueC

I settled in to browse some threads last night when I couldn't sleep properly, found that mustang thread, and thought, "This will put me to sleep!" as it's the old ho-hum, most people don't understand that in (undisturbed) nature the amount of death on the range, mostly from predation, illness and accidents, sometimes from starvation (but more often from undernutrition-related illness / weakness = predation before that), roughly equals the amount of birth, and that when we've removed predators, or have introduced feral animals, it is our ecological responsibility to fulfil the role of the top predators. But, I ended up reading the _whole_ thing, in part because when @bsms gets researching, his posts are always interesting and the information very reliable, so I learnt a thing or two about the situation you have with feral horses in America. We have it in Australia too, and while management isn't perfect, far from it, it's a whole lot better than your situation. There's a lot of aerial shooting from helicopters with hollow-point ammunition aimed at the chest, roughly at where the girth goes. I had to explain to a friend that while there is stress with the helicopter pursuit, it's relatively brief, and that veterinary surveys immediately post-mortem showed >95% of horses had been shot correctly first time; death is very swift - compared to corralling them into yards and then trucking them to abattoirs designed for cattle, where even the chase into the corrals with helicopters is more prolonged than for aerial shooting. Yarding and transporting of wild horses for slaughter is ultra stressful to them, and from a welfare perspective I am totally opposed to it. Temple Grandin is spot on there, as usual when she talks about animal welfare; and informed groups here in Australia have backed aerial shooting as the kindest option for brumby management.

Of course, we also have extremist groups who have no idea about ecological (and practical) realities, who lobby like crazy to stop the shooting. They also want to relocate kangaroos every time they overbreed on someone's golf course, but don't understand that any given spot in nature is generally already fully occupied with herbivores, so introducing excess population just leads to undernutrition, starvation, ecological damage to flora, and extra predation if there's natural predators, which in our country, there aren't enough of post European settlement, for all the usual reasons.

I really enjoyed too the informative posts written by @Knave, @COWCHICK77, @mred, @boots and a few others with actual rangelands management experience and wanted to say that without getting involved in the actual thread! :thumbsup:

:gallop:​
Now to a horse who is far removed by many generations from his wild ancestors, but who looks positively feral at the moment shedding out his long winter coat: Sunsmart. After having a town day on Tuesday, I had another ride on him last night, around the valley floor in the evening. He was again very lively and volunteering a lot of trotting, plus at the end of the valley floor, instead of wanting to go straight home, he asked to go bush-bashing with me through the animal trails in the woodlands, which extends the ride by bringing us back into the pasture near the NE corner of our property, from whence we ride a big loop back. So, that was fun, and he's really crazy when I let him pick the route, usually choosing to go off main paths to little overgrown side tracks where we have to squeeze through understorey and both of us get covered in leaves, cobwebs and various displaced insects. But, I grew up in the bush, and he's developed a huge taste for it in the ten years I've been riding him since his track retirement and consequent introduction to the real world! 

We'd had a quagmire-induced month off riding, but now the ground is drying out, are both dying to have adventures and exercise (and one of us, carrots too). I'll be taking a camera with me soon for some more photos, when we venture back into the tree plantation, or the nature reserve north of us, or maybe even Creek Road if I get bloodyminded enough to go out on the sealed road for a stretch even though the drivers are generally too ignorant or uncaring to slow down from their top speeds (110 km/h) for a horse, unless you're walking your horse in the middle of the road and the alternative is they have to hit you, so perhaps I actually need to do that... the road has no shoulder, just ditches either side...

I hope everyone in the other hemisphere is enjoying their cooler weather!


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## SueC

The whole topic of mustangs and death and the acceptance of death is going to lead me to "re-print" a reflection I wrote for other purposes a while back, on coming to terms with death - of a horse I had since childhood a few years ago, of the eventual death of everyone you love, and on the role of death in an ecosystem. I started with the story of my Arabian mare,

*DEATH - A ROAD TO ACCEPTANCE*

When we arrived in Australia in late 1982, my parents bought a quite remote farm. They had brought two horses out to Australia, one of which was allegedly mine, but when we got here, they decided to take her off me for breeding. This was an animal I was deeply bonded to, an ex-broodmare who'd kind of adopted me and carried me all over the countryside in Europe, and she ended up bleeding to death and dying in my arms after giving birth (and later I found out that my parents had been advised by the previous owners that the reason she was being sold as a child's riding horse was that she'd had a difficult birth with her last foal and the veterinary advice was that further breeding would risk her life...and I have never been able to fathom why you'd do something like that...).

When this horse was taken off me ("because she wasn't really mine, because I hadn't actually paid for her") I wanted that kind of situation never to be able to happen again, and I scraped together all my pennies from selling items I had left behind in Europe, and from what my grandmother had given me for my birthday. I had $600, and went to see our neighbour, who bred working-line Arabian horses. It was a drought year, and horses were going half-price. There was a skinny little yearling in the paddock who looked like a cross between a bicycle frame and a moth-eaten blanket. She was for sale, and cost twice what I had, so I did an _International Velvet_ type thing and did odd jobs and chores nobody else wanted for another couple of years. But, this one couldn't be taken off me. It was years before I could ride her, and I did all her groundwork and training alone, closely following an excellent horse training manual by Australian horseman Tom Roberts. And after that, I rode her many hundreds of miles through the Australian bush, exploring the Reserves and State Forests near where we lived, and eventually competing in endurance rides. She was, during my high school years, the only independent means I had for getting off our farm besides my own two feet. She was my freedom in those years, and my best friend. And by the way, the Australian bush is amazing...

Here's a photo of us when she was two and I was 12:










The rest are from 2008, on the South Coast where I live with my husband, when she was 27... and yes, that is the same horse, she was a heterozygous grey, and those start a solid colour and grey out slowly:



















So when this mare died in April 2014 - and I had to make the decision to end her life, she had cancer and her quality of life was nosediving - it was actually a huge bereavement for me. Yes, she was old, yes, it was to be expected, but none of that makes it hurt any less when you lose a dog or a horse you've had for a long time - and I had this horse for 31 years. Also, when I have to make end-of-life decisions for horses, I opt that they be shot, because it is instant and so much better than sticking needles into their necks and poisoning them slowly - having seen both - and having also personally experienced that anaesthetic agents can have pretty disconcerting side-effects as you are going under (I had a backwards-of-the-cliff type experience, which was neither expected nor fun). Shooting is an instant out for the horse, but messy for the onlooker (...I think the onlooker is less important in that situation). After you've got a dead horse, you have to move it to its burial site (because I won't walk them into a pit); so the neighbour came with his tractor to help us, and we buried her at the back of our place, in the bushland. Anyway, it's so sad to see these larger-than-life animals dead. She was like a beautiful silver statue, lying motionless on the ground, with blood flowing scarlet out of her nostrils, and she looked so small. They always do compared to when they are alive.

I had been on autopilot the whole day she was put down, and busy with burial and cleanup and dealing with the other animals on our farm. I didn't get to stop until sunset. As the sun dropped below the horizon, I sat down on a grassy bank in our garden and watched the colours in the clouds until they faded away. And I was sad, and it wasn't until then that I cried. That's because I always have an autopilot that gets me through situations like this, and I don't let up until all the necessary tasks are done and everyone has been looked after.










Sitting on that bank in the twilight, I contemplated how strange it felt to be breathing when she was not. The universe felt different, as if the moon had been taken from the sky. I felt small, and space felt big. It was the day of the Australian election, and my husband was down the town hall helping out, and didn't know my mare was dead, because it had been a snap decision I made during the day, after I'd already voted. Doing the count takes time, and people get home late. Bereavement is different when your spouse has got their arms around you, and Brett is always supercalifragilistically wonderful at times like that. But in the gap before that happened, I sat with night falling around me, my dog leaning against me and the crickets chirping in the bushes, just breathing and contemplating mortality. 

:gallop:​
I'd only lost two relatives up to that point, both of them on another continent; the rest was all losing companion animals. But, none of those were like the loss of this particular one, which was so in my face, and a friend to me from childhood to midlife.

It is a very difficult thing that sometimes the only thing you can do to help someone you love is to kill them. What you wouldn't give for a magic wand... But, on the other hand, I trained as a biologist / environmental scientist, and I am acutely aware that the cycle of life works the way that it does for a reason. If you halt death, you have to halt birth (something the human race has been slow to understand, to their own peril and the entire planet's); otherwise the place gets out of balance. The process of evolution is facilitated by excessive offspring coupled with huge fatality rates - that really drives natural selection, and therefore adaptation to a changing environment. This is the very process that has resulted in the splendour and stratospheric diversity of species in the wilderness areas of this planet.














































People generally are out of touch with this; many live in cities, and rarely encounter death, and when they do, it's all hushed up and sanitised for them... I really recommend the Japanese film _Departures_:






Death is basically the price paid for life, and the two are inseparable. But just look at the life... the photos below are all taken in the on-farm remnant vegetation conservation area that we steward at our place:


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## SueC

And I'll just finish with a few of our orchids. This is a Flying Duck Orchid:










Next is the Hammer Orchid. The BBC came to film this species near the Stirling Ranges some years ago, and we discovered it in our own conservation remnant. The Hammer Orchid lures the male wasps which pollinate them by producing for them a dummy female complete with pheromones that they will try to pick up and mate with, as they ordinarily do with their own wingless females waiting for them on branches. Attempting to fly off with the dummy catapults the head of the male into the stigma at the other end of the joint in the plant, and by repeatedly being duped, the male will carry pollen from orchid to orchid...










This one may be called a Hare Orchid, but it looks like a ballerina to me:










We also have "normal" orchids:










I could string on literally hundreds more photographs, but will restrain myself. The heathlands around where we live are one of the planet's biodiversity hotspots, with over 2,000 identified plant species alone, so we never stop ooohing and aaahing, but unfortunately, most people simply don't know what is there...

...and if you ask me if death is a price worth paying for the very existence of all of this, then that makes death so much easier to accept. But of course, it still hurts when we lose someone. I spend more time in wild places when that happens; the more you grow to love the wilderness, the more you can see and accept that individuals die but life always continues, and just be deeply grateful to have a turn on this stage.

The flash of light between eternities of darkness. On the other hand, the darkness to follow is unlikely to be different to the darkness before, and I don't spend my life terribly bothered by my absence from history prior to 1971. You don't feel that darkness, because you're not there; that darkness and you will never actually meet, because you no longer have a self then - as the Stoic philosophers said a long time ago. It's the people who have loved you who feel that darkness. But they can carry your light, if you pass it on to them, and the best way to pass on your light is to love others, and the best way to honour beings you have loved and lost is to carry their light.

There's a terrible beauty in grappling with these things - as exemplified in this song about anticipated loss, where the person writing this song saw the foreshadowing of the death of his partner, watching her sleep. The song was written in 1987; two years later he married her and they've just celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary - just to put another angle on that, yet of course, the basic premise remains that we're all going to part sooner or later.






But there's also a gentle beauty, and a peace you can find. And above all, there are so many deeply precious moments, exactly because there is an end point.

Here's another philosophical perspective on all that, which is interesting to think about:
https://dailystoic.com/how-to-not-fear-death/

That ends the excerpts from that particular reflection. I also wrote _Flower Memorials_ earlier on this journal, which most of you already read and also dealt with death and nature: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page42/#post1970698951

One thing is pretty clear - no other species gives death as much thought and rumination as ours does...


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## SueC

*BUSY THURSDAY IN SPRING*

This is Brett's day off, and normally we like to go for a day walk in the mountains or on the coast, but we both had work to do and decided to stay home this time. I spent from mid-morning to lunchtime making two long, 1 foot deep, 1 foot wide trenches for the first rows of mountain corn. The soil was compacted because this was an area near the tank Romeo had walked over a lot, so this was hard work, not so much the trenching as the breaking up of the hard clods of soil and the removal of kikuyu (African runner grass) root systems from it. I half filled the trenches with horse manure Brett had collected for me earlier, then backfilled them with loosened soil - and three quarters of the way through that, the garden fork broke off at the handle.

Now will someone explain to me how it can be that this is the second garden fork I've bought in five years, after the first got a warped handle when I used it to rake a fire - must have had a synthetic handle, what's the world coming to, and I couldn't detach it so the fork got retired to the compost heap and I bought this new, solid, expensive digging fork less than three years ago, and this afternoon the handle just sheared off above the collar. I was only digging, not doing anything it wasn't designed to do - and the tools are kept in the shed between use! I was shocked to find that the handle was a composite board, you could see the layers in it - not a proper hardwood handle, for the price. I'm going to take it back to the shop and complain - I doubt it's under warranty, but this is disgusting. We have an old posthole shovel that came with our farm, which is over 30 years old and the blade is very worn, and the hardwood handle has cracks from being left outdoors in its previous life, but it's been working fine for us since 2010 and for at least 20 years before that for its previous owner. The adze we have is of a similar age, given to us by the late Robert Paisley-Kerr when we bought our farm - he used it for hardwood fencing for decades, we're using it to plant trees and break up soil, and it looks rock solid. But two new garden forks all develop major problems in the space of less than five years. I hate that aspect of modern life, that you try to buy something that's not junk, and it's still junk, and not designed to last. :angrily_smileys:

So, I finished my job with the pitchfork, which is less than ideal, and then had nice crumbly soil backfilled over the trenches. After lunch, I applied dolomite all over, since the soil is strongly acid around here, and corn favours a more neutral pH; followed by some blood and bone, and I soaked all these in with the hose, before planting ruby red mountain corn into those two trenches.

Mountain corn comes in various colours; this cob from last year was bright red. I have a mix of seed colours indoors in a seed container, but found this cob on the ground in the old corn-growing area last week, with some seeds already sprouting, so I thought I'd use that for my start. I also have a selection of seeds from Pam from our Grass Roots community, who sent me some popcorn seeds from her place in South Australia, as well as yellow heirloom sweetcorn, which I'm about to plant out in the next trenches I make - and I must remember to send her a bag of my mixed mountain corn colours on Monday.

With the planting job finished, I completed a few more garden chores, then packed the dog into the back of the car to visit our neighbours. Noel is a mechanics wizard - he built his own two-seater aeroplane from kit, and constructs all sorts of stuff - and I wanted to ask him if there was any way of undoing the blade fastenings on the rotor head of our garden chipper. We had tried and tried with the supplied tool that came with the chipper to undo the fixings to get the blades off so I could sharpen them, but they are stuck fast. I needed to know if there was any pneumatic tool Noel had that might shift them, or if I had to buy an entirely new head (_grrrrr_ :evil.

Noel wasn't in, but Robyn was, and we had a little chat while Jess and their kelpie Max ran fast growly laps around the immediate vicinity and egged each other on to play, They have a new grandchild, Robyn has a cold, so she's not gardening much at the moment, and we had a general discussion on the down sides of Australian culture too (they travel a lot, and don't have the she'll-be-rightness and xenophobia and other annoying characteristics like thinking the world is their personal trash can etc). Also Robyn had too much broccoli, and gave me a tub full. I left the rotor head with Robyn for Noel to pronounce fixable or not, and headed home to feed horses and trim some hooves.

Julian's rear feet got trimmed when he finished eating - I had done the fronts a couple of days back. He has great feet, but they grow very quickly - huge feet too; the smallest horse here at 14.3hh, but the biggest feet! I uncricked my back afterwards, and collected Sunsmart for a quick spin around the neighbourhood.

The weather was unsettled - warm, but ominous clouds in the sky. By the time we got into the neighbours' block (same neighbours, not their home block across the road and up a kilometre, but the one adjoining our property on the southern boundary), splotches of rain were coming down and wind started to blow. Ha! For variety, I decided to ride the little loop past his second dam the other way around to how we generally do it. Kangaroos were taking off as they saw us, and the neighbour's cattle looked at us with curiosity, but I think they're getting used to seeing us around - the horse no longer causes a sensation with this herd. ( @Knave , in this district farmers ride little 4-wheelers, not horses, to round up their animals! And, they use food as a cue to gather them too. I do something similar - when I want the cattle to come in from the big unfenced paddock, I climb on the farm dam wall and run the pole saw - it attracts them instantly; they gallop in mooing because they associate it with tree fodder. )

The rain splotching eased as we made our way around the dam and through the back bush, looping back to the neighbour's side of the boundary firebreak and then dismounting to handle the electric tape across the gateway, and close the steel gate, before the horse and I trotted home. I left him with his nose in a bucket and went indoors to follow suit, preparing Pasta Alfredo - putting the pot on the boil for the pasta and chopping the ham, mushrooms and parsley for the sauce, showering while the pasta cooked, and then efficiently returning just in time to drain the penne and make the sauce.

Because it has been a very physical day, I had half a bottle of cider with dinner - I could use it to relax the sore muscles, and the crisp apple taste went well with the creamy pasta. That's 0.67 standard drinks, according to the bottle, but I don't drink alcohol often, plus my body is so sensitive to pharmaceuticals etc that two panadol for a headache will send me to sleep. So, even though my blood alcohol level wouldn't even have reached 0.05, and I was mentally clear and not inclined to giggle, I had difficulty walking in a straight line after dinner, and went straight to bed, where I drank a huge mug of jasmine tea and read the first two thirds of _The Rabbit's Ghost Story_ by Richard Adams, which I believe is an excerpt from _Watership Down_. And then, I promptly fell asleep, at 8.30pm!

I've roused myself to have some warm malted milk and a slice of the walnut spice cake I made last night. Reading was impossible with being this sleepy, but doing a journal entry isn't. To all of you who've read and recommended _Watership Down_, I'm really getting into this story, and the little world Richard Adams has constructed, with the special rabbit words and the odd and charming names. I have to say, I'm preferring the Californian hillsides as my mental setting for the story, instead of the rather bleak actual Watership Down, as per photos @bsms posted. It's a lot more colourful in the imagination than the drab actuality of the real-world place. I'm looking forward to more, when I can keep my eyes open. And, @knightrider - I think you'd enjoy CS Lewis' _Out Of The Silent Planet_, if you don't know it already - the cultures of the various intelligent life forms on Malacandra are so beautifully described in it, and comparing our own allegedly intelligent species to those on Malacandra embarrasses us by comparison, as I think was the intention... I love the world of Malacandra, and the willingness of the local intelligent species to actually use their brains, and their consciences. @bsms lists that one as a favourite too, and maybe he'll tell us a little more about when he first read that novel and what his favourite aspects of it are.

And here's a little link especially for @DanteDressageNerd, but I think the rest of you might enjoy it too:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-05/mary-pipher-says-older-people-are-the-happiest/11461818

Hope everyone has a lovely day. :wave:


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## SueC

And I've just remembered - here's a song @CopperLove will enjoy - it's great storytelling. It's a re-telling of a spooky Raymond Carver short story... and asks what you can and can't live with. Always makes my hair stand on end!


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## CopperLove

@SueC Oh I DO love that. Some of the old death ballads I've heard are my favorites although they're eerie. I recently participated in a project with a local band called "The Woodsheep" focused around old Appalachian and Irish folk music. I'll have to see if I can find a way to link some here once the album is out. I recorded the lead vocals on a song called "Wind and Rain", there are so many renditions and verses of it but it's essentially about a jealous sister who pushes her sibling into a river to drown, and a fiddler makes fiddle from the bones of her body, which will then play only one tune... sort of a strange song to be attached to but I love it.

There is another, "Greenwood Sidey" that can be interpreted differently depending on what version you hear and what verses are included. I think perhaps originally it was meant to make a villain of the woman who is the protagonist of the story but... I tend to feel quite sorry for her.


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## SueC

I'd love a link, @CopperLove, if there is one - is the band making the album available to purchase via download? I really love good folk music. The plotline to the song you recorded is already giving me goosebumps - would love to hear it! I'm sure there's tons of versions out there, but I'm interested in your version. Around the South Coast, there's a strong folk scene as well, and I used to go hear gigs my fiddle teacher did with her band, many moons ago. They had this jazz trumpeter in their ensemble who used to practise while standing in the ocean at a local beach! Also there was this local folk band called _Well Strung_ :rofl: - the name! They were excellent, did weddings etc. Also there were lunchtime gigs by student musicians at the main school I taught at for years, and the standard of those gigs was fantastic. Out here, I'm having to play music back. That's not all bad, but I do miss the live stuff!

:cowboy:​
I forgot to ask last night - a general question for the ladies - have any of you ever accidentally ridden in the wrong bra?  I do that occasionally, and last night was one such example - I decided to jump on the horse without getting changed into riding gear - and was wearing one of those comfortable crop-top things that are really nice for activities like digging and gardening, but not suited to jogging and riding. By the time I realised it, it was too late to go back and get changed. Ah well, I thought, better stay at at walk and canter today... but then we trotted that last stretch... and that really reminded me of when I was around 12 and had no bra at all yet because allegedly I had nothing to put in it and how painful it was to go bareback...

My favourite riding bras are Anita sports bras, wireless and really comfortable wide strapping all around, and made for runners. No milkshake! :Angel:


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## SueC

A short film from our climb in the Stirling Ranges last weekend:






The three-spired mountain it finishes on is Mt Toolbrunup - the central spire of which was where Brett proposed to me, coming up to 12 years ago.


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## Knave

I don’t have enough curves for it to be of any import.


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## Caledonian

Milkshakes!:clap::lol: I've got the curves, just not enough to worry about specific bras for riding; I'm not in danger of a black eye at the moment. I bought a couple of sports bras a few years ago to get relief from wires and painful straps when i hurt my shoulder and back but I've never worn them in the saddle. I might dig them out of the drawer and give them another try. If I remember correctly they're ordinary M&S bras.


I love the view, emptiness and space in your video of the Stirling Range; what a wonderful place. Does it have an Aboriginal name?


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## lostastirrup

Briefly weighing in on the bras because I think it's hilarious- I have not been blessed by God with volumptuous hills in the chestal region. So bras have always been well.. optional. I don't think I owned one til highschool. And now I still buy mine in the kids section of Walmart. I have attended job interviews without wearing one. I go riding without with something of frequency. Recently a group on campus was doing some sort of women's demonstration for I think breast cancer. One of my classmates asked me to participate in it- everyone was not to wear a bra on a particular day. I just kinda looked at her and went- what makes you think I'm wearing one now? As far as I know I participated, I wasn't quite sure what day it was. I don't think anyone noticed. But I'm sure plenty of women felt very free and a great deal of men probably appreciated it.


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## Caledonian

I think I've gone without a couple of times since i was young and i can only liken it to riding without stirrups: a lack of support, the feeling that something's missing, the need to hold on and a lot of bouncing! :Angel:

It's funny how the brain gets used to something that isn't a natural part of your body.


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## knightrider

> I don’t have enough curves for it to be of any import.


That's me too. If people didn't look and notice, I wouldn't need one at all.


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## Knave

knightrider said:


> That's me too. If people didn't look and notice, I wouldn't need one at all.


Me either! I often wish people wouldn’t notice. Sometimes I don’t wear a bra, everything stays in the same happy place, and of course those are the times I get a random visitor. “Hi Grandpa! I’m so glad you stopped by! (I wonder how good his eyesight is...)” If I had the nerve of @lostastirrup I would go free a lot more often.


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## SueC

Well, I wonder what it is then - am I particularly badly wired or something? At 12 I wasn't even in a training bra and would have needed two mandarins to fill A-cups, because what I had wasn't even mandarin-sized yet, but it hurt! Just the jiggling...  Not at the walk or canter, but trotting bareback - ouch! mg: Sort of a toothache type pain that says, "Stop this _immediately_!!!"

Until my early 40s I was always below-average size in that department, especially for my height (and that suited me fine, I didn't feel the need to send away for enlargement potions or pneumatic underwear) - but that didn't help me any about the discomfort at the trot without a proper supportive bra. Since HRT I'm up slightly, like many women taking contraceptive pills, but still only average (grapefruit? shall we have an internationally understandable bra sizing convention?), not exactly prime dairy material or Dolly Parton - and OMG how do those people cope? (Carriage driving maybe?)

I now interrupt with a joke I heard a few years ago, about a lady going to the department store with a bra, "I'm afraid I bought this the wrong size, could I please exchange it for two pillowcases?"

I've personally not found any more pain with more "material" between age 12 and now (but I've not tried out above-average size breasts obviously, nor swapped bodies with a goddess sporting melons) - just more jiggling, which is also annoying; not to mention disconcerting - you think, "OMG, if I trot another 100m will they be hanging down to my knees?" So a good bra is my friend for two reasons - pain elimination, and an attempt not to end up with two bungee cords dangling past my waist...

I like that riding without stirrups analogy from @Caledonian!  It gets very tempting to ride with your arms crossed over your chest and the reins in your mouth, when not wearing the appropriate equipment...

In general it's fun being a woman. I think not having vulnerable external gonads is spiffing, for instance, and much prefer the inconvenience of having to wear "containers" for my mammary glands when running or horse-riding, to that kind of hazard. And I'm with those of you who say, "Let it all breathe when you have the opportunity!"

Speaking of this topic and horse-riding, I had a one-off "checkup" lesson with a dressage rider ten years ago, just to see if I'd picked up any terrible habits not having had any lessons since age 10 (I did have feedback at shows and I did look at photographs to see what I could do better, when I could get them). And she had the funniest expression about posture: "Headlights on high beam!" :rofl:

inkunicorn:​ @Caledonian, that's an excellent question about the indigenous names of these places. I often have to look them up because I don't know the language or frequently how to pronounce this stuff - there's over 150 Australian indigenous dialects, which is why Australia has had little luck compared to Ireland with introducing a national curriculum to preserve these native languages. At least everyone in Ireland can understand each other when speaking Irish Gaelic, and I imagine it's similar with Scots Gaelic speakers all comprehending each other?

The Stirling Ranges were originally referred to by indigenous people as Koi Kyeunu-ruff (phonetic spelling in European alphabet - but English isn't a very phonetic language of course, compared to German or Latin; so it can get confusing, e.g. through, though, rough, bough). Some of the peaks retain their Aboriginal names - Toolbrunup, for instance, which is the three-pronged peak in the film, and Talyuberlup, which featured here before. The suffix _-up_ usually means place of water, and many of our rural towns have retained Aboriginal place names - e.g. Kendenup, Dwellingup, Nannup, Porongurup, Waychinicup - although these have been a bit Anglicised in the process of adoption. Mt Hassell, I actually can't find an original name for, so perhaps it wasn't recorded. I'll have some more history for you later!


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## waresbear

I don't care what kind of bra it is, once you get some hay in it, it is a serious device of annoyance!


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## DanteDressageNerd

I have always been quite voluptuous :lol: I wear a 30H in US sizes sometimes 32FF Uk sizes and 65J in EU sizes... but my waist is tiny. I think it's 24 or 25in atm or 63cm. I have to have a really strong back and core or Im in pain. Big breasts tend to make a woman curl her shoulders for protection, so to keep good posture and reduce back pain core and back work is a MUST. 

The ONLY sports bra that I dont have to wear multiple bras with is the panache sports bra. That is the only one I trust. I tried the enell but it's compression and made it really hard for me to breathe. I HATE compression sports bras, it hurts and makes it hard to breathe. Bras are expensive and finding "cute" ones is tough. I ONLY buy from freya and panache because I like colorful, pretty bras. And with my sensory issues HATE granny bras, cups need to be molded and not be split in pieces or they drive me CRAZY and I itch and no lace or frils because that makes me itch and squirm. 

If I wore this I would itch out of my skin and probably start rocking and panic
https://www.zalando.dk/freya-starli...NB6CRLhBTh-lkAwzO4QaAjR5EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

Being a woman is complicated :dance-smiley05:


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## SueC

waresbear said:


> I don't care what kind of bra it is, once you get some hay in it, it is a serious device of annoyance!


Agreed totally. ...ever tried pole-sawing tree fodder? Everything falls down your cleavage - leaves, wood chips, insects - despite wearing a T-shirt, or jumper. I think you'd need a clerical collar, or a burka, to prevent that. The cleavage is like a dam'n funnel. And even just a hair in it is so incredibly annoying. And then you have to try to fish it out, which is fine until you lose your visual acuity. Then you need to use a magnifying glass, or superior tactile skills...




DanteDressageNerd said:


> If I wore this I would itch out of my skin and probably start rocking and panic https://www.zalando.dk/freya-starli...NB6CRLhBTh-lkAwzO4QaAjR5EALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds


mg: me too! That's a like a cross between a corset and a hair shirt, with a bit of Barbie doll thrown in... 

I love these bras - no underwires:

https://www.anita.com/shop/en/sports-bra-extreme-control-d4f276.html

I HATE underwires. They may be OK for prison breaking or improvising a citizen radio, but metal like that has absolutely no business being stuck under delicate tissue. :evil:




> Being a woman is complicated :dance-smiley05:


Try being a man: https://www.horseforum.com/horse-ri...n-ok-beat-your-husband-791895/#post1970563913


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## SueC

This is for @Caledonian; Aboriginal history of the Stirling Ranges, then European settlement. Themes are very similar to what happened in Scotland, but with the British dispossessing a hunter-gatherer population - that was the excuse here, although they weren't able to use the "terra nullius" idea in Scotland... dispossession is dispossession, no matter what excuses people make for it.

From the book _Mountains of Mystery_, published 1993. Click to enlarge.


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## SueC

*MT HASSELL WALK*










View of Mt Hassell from the car park - shrouded in morning mist:



The walkers before the walk:







Ascent:


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## SueC

This is at the summit of Mt Hassell - and I'm pointing at the central spire of the neighbouring mountain, Mt Toolbrunup, where Brett asked me to marry him on November 2, 2007. :happydance:



Toolbrunup is the most difficult of the six Stirling climb tracks, and was a great choice for a proposal! 

These are views into the surrounds:





The canola fields are blossoming in the North Stirlings agricultural district, as you can see if you enlarge the above photo!

Brett snuck this one of me:



Toolbrunup really is impressive:



Lots of peaks in the western end of the Stirling Ranges:



It's a wonderful, wild place... the weather forecast is for a massive cold front on Wednesday night, and this means we might be climbing Bluff Knoll on Thursday, because it's likely to get a smattering of snow if the forecast holds...


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## Knave

The road seems to glow. The color of the dirt is bright though, like you live in Oz.  It looks like a fun hike; I am glad you are feeling fit.


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## Caledonian

@*SueC* - Many thanks for the information. I love how descriptive their names are for the mountains - 'drizzle carrier' and 'flirtation'. They've a very interesting culture; how much of it has survived? Especially in areas such as marriage and courtship, which was an eye-opener to say the least. There's a huge difference in the way the Aboriginals and Europeans treated the land - sheep farming, sandalwood and beekeeping (running over the hives!). Do the tribes still have a connection with the area?

I'm not an expert, but i'd say that most Scots Gaelic speakers can understand each other, despite some differences between the Islands, mainland and Canada. We'd a lot of dialects but they’re dying out, some are long gone. They say it’s due to the use of a standardised version in classrooms, media and certain amount of anglicisation in the way it’s spoken.


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## CopperLove

@SueC Bit late with my answer, went missing for the weekend to visit my mother and her fat little pony, but I do think there will be a digital download available for purchase. I think that was one of the options when we were running the kickstarter initially to fund the printing of it. Their last couple of albums were made available for listening on Spotify, hopefully that will be the case for this one as well 

Lovely photos of the hike and mountains as usual! Very different from the rolling, tree-covered foothills here.


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## SueC

Caledonian said:


> @*SueC* - Many thanks for the information. I love how descriptive their names are for the mountains - 'drizzle carrier' and 'flirtation'. They've a very interesting culture; how much of it has survived? Especially in areas such as marriage and courtship, which was an eye-opener to say the least. There's a huge difference in the way the Aboriginals and Europeans treated the land - sheep farming, sandalwood and beekeeping (running over the hives!). Do the tribes still have a connection with the area?


Tha fàilte mhòr ort, @Caledonian! :smile:

It depends on the area, and how much the local populations were displaced. The loss of connection and traditions is worst in city and agricultural areas; it's really sad to see that there, a lot of young indigenous people are aping African-American rap culture. Schools are making an increasing effort to teach Aboriginal cultural awareness and to at least show a little of the languages and customs; and in schools with a significant indigenous population, this tends to be more expansive, which then benefits everyone attending.

We finally had the apology back in 2007 - the then-PM Kevin Rudd stood up an apologised on behalf of the Australian government for all the injustices that had historically been done to indigenous people, and that were still being perpetuated in more subtle ways. There were so many tears that day, from the indigenous people attending and from supporters of all types of cultural backgrounds. I cried watching the transmission on TV - this had been so long overdue. It's so necessary and so powerful for people to say, "What we did was wrong and we're so sorry for your pain and all the consequences for you." This pain and these consequences is multi-generation, as it also often is for survivors of more private types of violence and injustice.

In the region where we live, the indigenous population is a tiny minority, and tend to live in clusters in the suburbs. On the farm, we and some of our neighbours sometimes get approached by local indigenous people from the suburbs about whether we would let them hunt kangaroos on the land we "own" (my emphasis) and are currently stewarding, and we have always said yes, and tried to get to know them better. One of the "uncles" in their group is pretty connected to the land still, and sort of mentors them with their hunting, which these days they do with a gun, but we've seen them still do the on-foot flushing out of game which is traditional. There are no effective predators of the kangaroo left in this area, other than humans, and we do need to control the population excesses, and to my mind, who better to do this than the descendants of the traditional owners? Unlike a lot of white people, they hunt to eat. Kangaroo is very like venison, and it is such a shame to see most of it get used for pet food.

Away from the cities and intensive agriculture areas, there are still indigenous people with _huge_ connection to land and traditions. So, in the Northern Territory, for example. The other day I was digging around for music and found the YouTube clip for a song I really loved when I heard it on the radio in the 1990s, by Yothu Yindi, a band that was formed from the merging of a white rock/folk band, and a group of indigenous musicians and dancers. They were very much proponents of reconciliation, and acknowledging the good aspects of both cultures, and of wearing indigenous traditions with pride. Here's their hugely feel-good song _World Turning_:






They make such great clips too. 

Several remixes were done, and this was considered the "grooviest" by some people - it's also how I first heard it:











...I can't make up my mind which I like best - I love all of them! 

Sadly, the singer of this band died a while ago, only in his 50s, from kidney failure - as is the case for a lot of indigenous people; they are terribly susceptible to diabetes because they have ultra-efficient hunter-gatherer metabolisms that survived over 60,000 years of living off some very difficult and ancient country; European foods, alcohol and comparative inactivity just kill these people so quickly - diabetes is an overall epidemic in Australia, but nowhere worse than with indigenous people, who are like canaries in the coalmine for our Western bad habits. Alcohol addiction is also especially bad amongst these people; it didn't help the singer any with his health that he had a self-reported consumption of between 1 and 4 _cartons_ of beer daily for many years, until he went in for treatment. It's especially sad because he was really educated, was a school principal in his local area and did so much fantastic stuff for indigenous pride in culture, and reconciliation, so effectively and for so long, and had so much to live for and be proud of, and still succumbed to this awful alcohol addiction. :sad:

More on this wonderful band here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yothu_Yindi




> I'm not an expert, but i'd say that most Scots Gaelic speakers can understand each other, despite some differences between the Islands, mainland and Canada. We'd a lot of dialects but they’re dying out, some are long gone. They say it’s due to the use of a standardised version in classrooms, media and certain amount of anglicisation in the way it’s spoken.


Oh, so there's attrition / loss with Gaelic as well? That's a shame... it's such a beautiful language (both Scots and Irish), the sounds and inflections are so lovely that I was drawn to music in these languages early, and from then on of course wanted to know what the words meant!  I am glad that the language and traditions are being kept alive in very meaningful ways, and that many people are passionate about that!


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## Knave

That is interesting. The natives here also struggle with diabetes and alcohol. It is sad when you think of the canaries as a visual.


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## SueC

@Knave, it's very sad when people are blamed for the very things that their colonisers introduced them to, and that the white people themselves have plenty of trouble with here - binge drinking is also an all-Australian epidemic, including at school leaver levels, where getting legless seems to be a rite of passage to adulthood for many young people. I've never been a particularly peer-pressure-influenced type; if anything, I'd go the other way when I saw groups of people do things that looked stupid and dangerous from the outside. I do think it's easier not to fall into these things if you're an outsider, reflecting type.

The colour of those roads and car parks is from iron compounds in the local rocks (ferruginous bedrock) - these get crushed to make gravel for road bases. Granite "bluemetal" is used in the top mix when roads are sealed, but most of our local unsealed roads are bright orange - a few near the coast are done with crushed limestone, and are cream / white.

And congratulations again! :hug:

@CopperLove, looking forward to a link when it happens!  Hope you had a fun time away. I'll keep our hikes coming - got another batch to process from the weekend just now, of an estuarine walk. I also love seeing people's landscape photos on this forum - it's like windows into other parts of the world - and delivered in my favourite way, by on-the-ground people not involved in big media! 

@Caledonian, just in postscript, I was lucky to have a really excellent English teacher in Year 11/12 who was very aware both of what had gone on in this world internationally, and what was often going on on a more personal level, and he made sure we were exposed to some superb texts covering very important things. On the subject of Australian history, which at the time, in the mid-to-late 80s, was still being taught as, "Captain Cook discovered Australia" - it was great to have some real education not yet mainstream on the curriculum. With the name of Simon Fraser Macphail, you can guess his heritage. ;-) Anyway, we read a book called _The Fatal Impact_ as part of our non-fiction reading in Year 11, which was all about the "discovery" of the South Pacific, Oceania etc. It's concise and very readable and illustrated, and a bit antiquated now, but still really good: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/430094.The_Fatal_Impact

He never preached to us, just exposed us to different points of view, and encouraged us to think for ourselves. It's unfortunate that he disappeared off the radar when he moved to the Northern Territory in the late 80s; he's probably dead now and I would have loved to have told him as an adult looking back how much of a positive impact he had on my life, and how he was one of the teachers who inspired me to go work in education, and whose teaching methods very much influenced mine.


:cowboy: Last night I had another ride; I hesitate to say I rode a horse, because it felt like I was riding a giant furball. The Cushings treatment did curtail Sunsmart's winter coat compared to last year - he wasn't a yak - but just as he started to shed, paradoxically his existing hair also grew longer - normally hair enters a resting phase when it's at programmed length, before falling out. His hair growth is re-activated at the moment, and he's so fluffy, and has long long hair hanging all down his belly and legs - that's why I've not taken that backside photo of him yet, @Knave, because you can hardly see anything for the knickerbockers he appears to be wearing! :shock: There's nice, short, shiny, black summer coat coming through on his face at the moment, and I hope all this hairiness will be done a month from now... Anyway, the furball and I went sight-seeing and had a pleasant time in the evening. :blueunicorn:


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## SueC

*NULLAKI PENINSULA WALK: BIBBULMUN / EDEN ROAD INTERSECTION TO TRACK HUT NEAR PELICAN POINT*

I meant to post this the week we actually did it - part of a conscious foray into sections of the famous Bibbulmun track we've not actually walked before. There's four sections like this in particular we want to walk; this is the first one done and we're aiming at another on the weekend. We've also climbed Bluff Knoll meanwhile and I hope to get that one up really quickly so I'm caught up!










This is Brett near the Eden Road / Bibbulmun intersection at the start of our walk:



The Wilson Inlet from its southern shore, at _very_ high tide, so no cute little beaches:



Part of the track goes parallel to Eden Road...



From here, we could see our destination, Pelican Point, which is the second, far finger sticking out into the Inlet on this photo:



Cute little footbridges for stream crossings...



At Eden Gate, we made use of the picnic table and had lunch. You can see the (automatic) gate behind us - as you go through it, you enter a fenced conservation area in which fox and cat populations get kept low through baiting and exclusion. The near-absence of these non-native predators has helped endangered little native mammals to flourish on this peninsula. The last photo of this set of posts shows a map so you can see where the gated exclusion fence is and how together with the water on the other three sides, this helps limit migration of feral predators back into that area. It's a unique conservation area because it includes a lot of private property where landowners have agreed to participate in the project. All their dogs are safely fenced into gardens so they don't access the area unsupervised, and most don't have cats - and certainly, nobody has roaming cats - the baits alone make sure of that. Because of the baiting, we kept our dog on a leash for most of this section of the walk.



After lunch, we did extended shoreside walking. It was good to see that there was far less weed invasion on this stretch of track - compare with the footbridge photo - all that bright green stuff is kikuyu, an invasive African grass and a local pasture mainstay. Australian native vegetation tends to be grey-green or blue-green, not bright grass green, so you can usually do a quick preliminary assessment of the state of weed invasion in the local flora by colour.





A number of jetties exist along that shore, and make nice vantage points.





Brett decided he was a pirate:



There was a lovely gnarly tree by the shore...


----------



## SueC

Our dog enjoyed some retrieving...



This is the track shelter hut for this section and our destination point; you can see it on the map (last photo). The hut is near the erstwhile water taxi drop-off point to take walkers from Denmark across to the Nullaki Peninsula - sometimes walkers can cross the sand bar at the mouth of the Wilson Inlet, but it's seasonal, so this was an alternative crossing. I say was, because regulations have made it uneconomical for anyone to run the service, so now, this track section is mostly abandoned (except by local walkers), and the long-haul Perth to Albany walkers tend to get road taxis from Denmark to Eden Road to rejoin the track... another sad example of how regulations have killed what was once a really memorable part of the Bubbulmun experience - the water crossing by boat.



We went a little past the hut to see if we could spot the erstwhile boat landing place, but everything was overgrown. It was hot and humid, despite appearance in the photos, so we decided 8km was far enough to walk one way, and headed back - the 16km total took us around 4 hours, including lunch. Another time, we might park at Eden Gate picnic area and walk in from there, and go further around to the sand bar, maybe returning along one of the many other internal tracks.

On the way back, Brett got his macro camera out and took wildflower / botanical photos. If you want to know what they are, just click on them and it will take you back to Flickr, where you can see that information in the titles.


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## SueC

Lastly, the map - we walked from the T where the Bibbulmun track (yellow, black dots) crossed Eden Road, to the hut (black square west of Pelican Point) and back. Lots of other trails exist here for future walks, but we're going south from the T next time we drive out to the Nullaki. This weekend, we want to do a walk in Denmark instead, which you can also see on this map: Denmark townsite to Poddy Point and back - we've done the Bibbulmun sections further on before: Near Poddy Point is the parking for the Mt Hallowell section we did recently, and you can just see the track going up the contours.


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## Knave

Wow, those flower photos are brilliant! Of course, all the photos are lovely!


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## SueC

Hello all! :wave: I hope everyone is well and enjoying their Northern autumn. I am so busy with spring planting I barely have time to scratch myself, and am spending evenings writing for other projects, reading etc. So I've been scarce, and will be a bit scarce until everything's in the ground and summer gets going properly.

I read something the other day where I thought, "Oh, this might interest @bsms!" and so I scanned it in and here it is:




























Happy riding, reading, getting projects done to everyone!


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## Knave

It sounds like a good kind of busy at least! Springtime is so lovely to me.


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## Caledonian

Beautiful flowers! I love springtime and the bright, fresh colours. I'm less keen on autumn though; everything is dying back and the trees are changing and dropping their leaves. We had our first frost yesterday and today I could hear flocks of geese returning to the fields around the river for winter. At least i can have a second spring through your posts 😄.

This photo was taken a few days ago. The walnut trees aren't showing the same colour as those in the area but the rest of the garden is ready to be cut back. I hasten to add that it's not my garden, it's part of the grounds at work and i love sitting in it throughout the year. My own garden has been cleared for winter.


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## SueC

That's gorgeous, @Caledonian!  Is that a broken-off Iona cross in the middle?

It is a good busy, @Knave! And your article looks fabulous and reads beautifully! :hug: 

I'm doing some music reviewing at the moment, on a B-sides box set by The Cure. Every now and then a song comes along that just makes you go _wow_!!! This is one like that for me... this song just leapt out at me, first musically, then lyrically. I love the creation of atmosphere on this track, the spooky, dislocated feel. This fits the lyrics to a T - a very cleverly written Jekyll & Hyde number - dealing with the dark side of your personality...






_POSSESSION

The other one feeds on my hesitation
Grows inside of my trepidation
Buries his claws in my dislocation
I whisper your name to lose control

I take a step and over my shoulder
His roll-white eyes shine wilder and bolder
His snow-white thighs press closer and colder
Murmur in me to let him go

The other one thrives on my desperation
Fills me up with my intoxication
Sinks his teeth in my deviation
Suffering me to lose control

Hold my mouth, taste his breath
Hissing, breathing are the same
Snakes its sound inside my head
Sickening me to let him go

I take a step and over my shoulder
His pain-white eyes shine wilder and bolder
His stain-white thighs press closer and colder
Murdering me to let him go

I try to resist the gruesome kiss
I twist to deny the blood-hot bliss
But I always feel myself becoming him
And the last thing I remember
It isn't me, it isn't me, it isn't me

But then it never is..._

Now there's something to get your teeth into. :clap:

When I was listening to this track, I was reminded of another song, very different musically, which also deals with this general theme, but in a very different way. I love the twist at the end - the whole way through, when I first heard it, I thought he was talking about his father. 






The self, having a shadow, and how to manage all of that...

Brett also reminded me of the Billy Joel song _The Stranger_, on a similar theme: Billy Joel - The Stranger Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Anyone got any good "dealing with your shadow" songs?


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## Knave

Thank you!! I guess it is real now.


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## SueC

If a tree falls in the forest... ;-)


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## SueC

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:


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## Caledonian

@*SueC* - It's an obelisk sundial from the late 1600s. This type is unique to Scotland and i don't think many were made or survive. It should be at least double the height. The upper part is in storage. Both parts have similar shapes on the panels - bowls, circles with grooves, hearts, triangles, rectangles and raised lines. Apparently they're dials but I've no idea how to read them!


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## SueC

*BLUFF KNOLL CLIMB*


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## SueC

...further details on Flickr if you click on these photos...


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## SueC




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## gottatrot

Wow, that looks like a beautiful hike. Great pictures.


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## Knave

I love that. You know you are high when you are a part of the sky.


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## SueC

Hilarious! From our horses' perspectives - what happens when horses get together on the Internet?

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...omare-diva-queen-637890/page4/#post1970778241


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## SueC

Fun clip where we captured some of our dog's crazy antics on a hike today:


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## Caledonian

:rofl: I love to see dogs 'laugh'. She's really enjoying the game and tickling.


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## SueC

She's so funny, @Caledonian!  Often she will lie on her back and start wiggling and pointedly looking at me, at home, so I will come play "The Wiggle Game"... :rofl: We thought we'd catch one on film. She was very happy because it was a walking day: 18km through sand dunes on the Bibbulmun track, from the Wilson Inlet to the sea and then back again. Took us 4 hours, breaks included, which wasn't too shabby, but when we got home, after showering and eating spaghetti, we all just went to sleep for two hours, in the middle of the afternoon! Honestly... I suppose we have to make concessions to midlife. We don't get home and clean the house after something like that anymore - we go home and enter a minor coma instead. :rofl:

How's Scotland in the autumn? Have you been walking, riding, going to any gigs?


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## Caledonian

@*SueC* I need afternoon naps as well! :rofl: I used to get up early for the horses, race around work all day, then come home to cook clean, before heading to the horses again. Now, I'm up at 6am, shattered by 11am and asleep on the couch by 6pm!


It's a typical Autumn night here. It's 11pm, very dark, the rain is hammering down and it's really chilly. The weather's been changeable but not too extreme.Unfortunately no riding or walking. A member of my family is very ill, so I'm supporting them as much as possible.


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## AuG

We're from the same neck of the woods! Nice to see others enjoying the trails, and this thread has shown me a few new ones to try  
The wildflowers have been brilliant this year. Nature is my happy space. 

Your home is wonderful! I have wanted to live in a house made of hay since I was a child living in an old farm house held up by hay bales and plastic in the perth hills. It is still an aim once I find a good spot. For now I live in one of the small towns, and while my neighbours are fantastic, I find the shires social expectations of voluntary contributions very difficult to deal with. It is assumed because I am a single female with no children, that I have all the time in the world to serve as slave labour to the community. A community that has disappointed me time and time again with outdated attitudes, greed and racism (I really thought Australia was better than this...). When I get on my feet and find my home I think I might become a full time hermit with an online outlet  

Anyway, I have enjoyed your blog and look forward to more of it. I rarely take photos as others are always so much better than mine to share! Will you be checking out the beaches over summer? I quite like Gull Rock and Greens Pool however only visit on weekdays to avoid the crowds (hehe). My next hike will be somewhere along the Denmark coast, but probably not until next year with all of the community commitments! (I avoid the coast like the plague during school holidays, so sad to see how much rubbish is left behind).


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## SueC

Hello AuG! :wave:

I am now vastly curious, and much entertained by your post! :rofl:



AuG said:


> We're from the same neck of the woods! Nice to see others enjoying the trails, and this thread has shown me a few new ones to try
> The wildflowers have been brilliant this year. Nature is my happy space.


Ours too!  The wildflowers on yesterday's hike were mind-blowing! Brett found two rare spider orchids he's never photographed before!

We should tee up a walk sometime! 




> For now I live in one of the small towns, and while my neighbours are fantastic, I find the shires social expectations of voluntary contributions very difficult to deal with. It is assumed because I am a single female with no children, that I have all the time in the world to serve as slave labour to the community. A community that has disappointed me time and time again with outdated attitudes, greed and racism (I really thought Australia was] better than this...). When I get on my feet and find my home I think I might become a full time hermit with an online outlet


You are preaching to the choir. ;-) We feel like this too and are often hermits, although we do have some lovely neighbours. But the general community - bleh. The misogyny in Redmond is unbelievable (we're both in the fire brigade and OMG), and one of my other bug-bears is the amount of rubbish people throw into the roadside here - including people who live on this road,,, for which I would happily keel-haul the bugg'ers, treating nature like a rubbish bin and other people with contempt. :angrily_smileys:

With you re racism, outdated attitudes, greed also. I was hauled here as an 11-year-old and have never made friends with the culture. There are nice people in Australia, but the general culture is shocking... including on the roads. General lack of commonsense, respect, courtesy, compassion, manners - and a friend of mine in Sydney who was born in Australia feels exactly the same way. Brett and I have a therapeutic fantasy about putting a moat around our place and stocking it with hungry piranhas. :twisted:




> Anyway, I have enjoyed your blog and look forward to more of it. I rarely take photos as others are always so much better than mine to share! Will you be checking out the beaches over summer? I quite like Gull Rock and Greens Pool.


We generally go about once a fortnight all year, but preferably on a weekday unless to a remote place, and not on the school holidays! Greens Pool is great, but Elephant Cove around the corner is out of this world... 

I'm trying to guess which small town you are in... :smile:


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## egrogan

@SueC, speaking of your neighbors, how is your friend Bill doing? Did he get back home or still recovering with family?


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## SueC

@egrogan, Bill came home two months ago and is doing OK!  He's not allowed to drive anymore so now I try to pop by and pick him up when I'm in town to come out to the farm and have lunch. For instance, I'll be doing that tomorrow, and if the weather's nice, he will sit in the garden after lunch and enjoy the birds out here (he knows so much about birds!). Other times, if he can't come out, I just visit him, and Brett, who's in town more often than me, pops by a lot to say hi, and to drop off a little bag of stuff if I've been baking!  On my visits, he usually sits on his front porch in the sun when the weather is nice, and I've noticed people will stop by from walking past his place to catch up. One of them is a nurse (but a neighbour, not a nurse he's encountered medically), and she was always after him to elevate his feet when he first came home! 

Bill now has a wheeled walking frame, with bicycle brakes on it, because he had balance problems after the heart attack and was obviously weakened by that and the subsequent bed rest in hospital. He's actually loving the frame - it reminds him of his bicycle, and he can put things on it when he goes shopping, and he says he can really get his speed up with the aid of that! He's walked to the centre of town and back with it just to see how far he can go. He does laps around the house with it for exercise too, if the weather is bad.

Also, the Silver Chain nurses come out to his house to look after him regularly, and once a week they even take him for a scenic drive - he was telling me they went to see chainsaw sculptures last week! And another neighbour is always dropping off things on her baking day as well. He has quite a social life! We're happy that he's not alone - his family live hours away, but phone and visit a lot too!


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## SueC

If anyone hasn't come across this wonderful Australian cartoonist yet:










  










































































More here:

https://leunig.com.au/works/cartoons


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## SueC

Small update.

Very tired, but happy after spending much of yesterday working with bees. We took honey for the first time in nearly two years - last year the drought was so bad the eucalypts didn't flower, and the bees could barely collect enough nectar to get them through the winter, so needless to say we didn't take any (because we won't substitute them with sugar, it's not good for them). But this year, the blossom is great, and after nearly forgetting the taste of our own honey, we ooohed and aaahed afresh over how excellent it is (you can't buy honey this good commercially because commercial bees are hothoused and the honey is heated for processing - we cold extract from hives that don't get shifted or fed sugar, and the honey is multifloral from several dozen wildflowers including tea-tree and eucalyptus, with a little lavender from the garden hedges thrown in).

I uncap the frames in the kitchen before they go in a hand spinner.










We've been doing this since 2010 and usually have around four hives. I'm also happy because I caught another swarm yesterday, the size of a soccer ball and really worth catching. It was the easiest one I ever caught - sat on a low branch and I just knocked it straight into a box and the queen went in first go, so I just closed the lid. By evening they were flying already. 

And then, I actually went for a ride. :cowboy:

I've done little of that for the past two weeks, in large part because, despite trying to keep on top of it with brushing, Sunsmart got dreadlocks / huge knots when shedding (Cushings), and they were sitting on his girth area, and I would have needed to go over much of him with clippers to make him smooth, and I don't have any, so I just let nature take its course, which it did. Last night, his belly had shed and no more knots anywhere, so we went for a nice longish jaunt, at a relatively easy pace.

We rode the valley floor at our place and going into our south neighbour's, all the way through the bush until we hit the boundary of that block, at Verne Road. I've previously documented that trail with lovely photos of Christmas trees in bloom here: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page38/#post1970681183

It's a lovely place to ride, and horse and I really enjoyed the outing. Sunsmart loves to "pathfind" through the bush, and this valley floor gives him ample opportunity to choose amongst well-established animal tracks (some of which don't involve me getting dragged through the canopy, so I help him choose those :rofl.

When we got to Verne Road, Sunsmart automatically went "Yippeee!" and raced Jess up the hill. He had a good look around the open space of the open pasture - horses like a view too. To the left of us, behind a fence line, were a mob of around 30 Angus heifers with their first offspring, and they were in a jolly mood from all the spring grass. They came running up to the fence like a Melbourne Cup field, except with dangling udders and sans jockeys, half-grown calves capering at their heels. Sunsmart was mildly interested in their antics. One of the heifers was hellbent on getting him to "play" by repeatedly leaping about right next to him on the other side of the fence, and making eye contact, until he made a "snake-face" at her, ears back, teeth bared in her direction. :rofl: Apparently he has too much dignity to play along with others. He's always been his own horse. :blueunicorn:

We had a leisurely ride home. Sometimes, after a week without riding, you get on a horse and realise why you've done this all your life.  Sometimes I tend to forget that, with the rush of everything competing for my time and energy.


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## Caledonian

Commercially produced honey isn't the same. I bought heather honey for my mum and it had a rich smell and taste, and a thicker texture, which seems to be missing from the intensively farmed versions. My mum loves heather honey as her dad used to take his skeps up to the hills to produce his own and i think it reminds her of her childhood.


:lol: Sunsmart is funny! He wasn't amused by the heifer!


Life tends to take over and you can forget just how much you're at home in the saddle.


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## Knave

I was so hoping you’d explain what you meant by spinning.

I know exactly what you mean about getting back on after a little break. I think even just being sick has done that to me. Yesterday I felt so contented being back on Cash. Luckily for me he seems to want to take especially good care of me while I am sick. (Zeus was that way too.)

I think I couldn’t be happy without horses.


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## SueC

For honey enthusiasts:






We use a serrated kitchen knife to uncap, and spin with a two-frame extractor, but the principle is similar.


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## Knave

This morning I wrote you a long response and then it was eaten by the internet animals. I will shorten it to simply say thank you for including that for me! I should have looked it up instead of making you, but I appreciate it.


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## CopperLove

I'm wowed you catch wild bees :eek_color: I know a few people locally who keep a few beehives and harvest their own honey but I think I've heard them talk about ordering their bees from somewhere.

Beekeeping is on my "list of things I'd like to do someday" but I'm morbidly afraid of being stung (not allergic, just a big chicken) so I doubt that will ever make the cut of things I ACTUALLY do.


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## bsms

We have tons of wild bees here. Unhappily, they are Africanized bees and can be quite aggressive. They cause a loud hum in our mesquite trees when the trees bloom. We just cut half the branches off the large mesquite in our backyard - the pollen is just overwhelming and the bees a little too close for comfort. We may cut it out completely - which would be a shame but the pollen it puts out is insane and I don't like attracting thousands of aggressive bees to within a few feet of our backdoor!

We've had bees nest in our walls several times. The last time, the guy killed the hive, cut open the wall, removed as much as he could, filled it solid with foam, then remade the wall. Not cheap but it seems to be working better.

Two months ago, bees killed a guy about 50 miles east of here. Two others were hospitalized. The bees also attacked the people responding to help. The three men were trying to clean up a scrap pile and I guess the bees had built a hive in it. We have 1-2 people killed a year around here I think.


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## knightrider

@bsms, yuck, just awful.

My dad kept bees and spinning the honey was a family affair. Also, my brother and I often went with him to collect wild swarms. Beekeeping didn't "take" with me. It was a lot of work and I am not really much of a fan of honey. But I salute you, @SueC!


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## SueC

Well, thank you, @knightrider...:bowwdown: We figured we like honey and have a farm with 50ha of wildflowers plus tons of nectar-rich shelter belts planted, so it made sense to do it. With 12.5ha of pasture, we can't expand grass-fed grazing - we carry around 8 beef cattle at any given time as well as the horses and donkeys. But, if we got serious, we could expand the honey side. So far we haven't - we just supply friends and word of mouth contacts and in a good year make as much on the honey as on the cattle, plus we barter with it. I don't know what it is, every time it's between having time for ourselves and expanding money-making, the time for us wins. inkunicorn::blueunicorn: Maybe that's because we overdid work before we downshifted to this farm and never, ever want to work hours like that again. Also, there's so much competing for our attention on this farm, so many jobs to do all the time that the to-do list just never ends, so you end up not taking on extra farm work if you can help it...


@bsms, that's horrible. Though a far lower toll than driving on the road, or drinking alcohol, eating fast food, etc. (Sorry folks, just after my empathy kicks in, my brain starts on the comparative risk thing. Automatic.) We had a friend who was not allergic to bees who had a terrible month a few years ago. The first thing was that he and friends went on a road trip up north, where hardly anyone lives and it's all rangelands and mining towns. They were driving along on a highway one night when a semi-trailer approached them and they realised it was heading straight for them, in _their_ lane, just before "lights-out" - our friend, who was a passenger, said he had just enough time to think, "Well, that's it then!" as the truck headlights loomed, before the crash and darkness as everyone passed out. But miraculously, they all survived without horrific injuries - relatively minor stuff. So everyone must have slowed down considerably before impact.

Anyway, he was recovering from that in his own home, with a backyard barbecue with a friend, when he got stung by a bee. Previously never allergic to their stings, this time he was, and went into full cardiac arrest within minutes. Luckily his friend - they were both in their late 20s - remembered his first aid from _high school_! Rang the ambulance and did CPR until they arrived. Saved his life. He now presumes he's sensitised to bee venom, and carries an Epipen. (And again, anaphylaxis can happen with all sorts of things, including foods.)

Sounds like a mesquite tree would be just what the doctor ordered for beekeepers! The ability of the hive to rear young depends completely on the availability of pollen - a protein source. Honey has zilch protein and is just used as energy food, and important when temperatures drop in the hive, so the bees can stay warm and alive.

Good go hear that your bee problem is getting sorted. Can you tell me if European bees are feral to America, like they are to Australia? Here, the colonists imported them. There's native bees as well, mostly stingless, not great for commercial honey production. But they're very cute, as you can see here:

https://www.aussiebee.com.au/gallery.html


@CopperLove, the swarms I caught came from our own hives. We were unable to get replacement queens because the guy who does them didn't have enough to supply the huge demand last year, so we let them supersede, and when they swarm, we try to catch them - that way, we get new start-up colonies to replace weak hives, or losses (e.g. we lost a hive due to drought last year). They usually hang up in a bush near their mother hive when they first come out, and then sit there while scouts look for a suitable home, which I'm meanwhile making for them - just a base box with some spare empty honeycomb. I get in my suit and put the box under them with the lid off and use a broom to knock them down in the box. Don't do this when not wearing a bee suit.  

Having said that, swarming bees are much less aggressive than bees in a hive, because they're full of honey and sleepy - and it doesn't make much difference where the bees have swarmed from, a domestic hive or a hive gone bush, because they're pretty much the same, in our case anyway. Because we've been unable to re-queen with commercial, Golden Italian queens, our hives are now mostly Caucasian, which is what the colonising Europeans first imported and that's the DNA sitting in the hives gone bush, which produce drones with the box-hive queens mate, so pretty soon they're mostly back to Caucasian DNA. The Caucasian bee is darker than the Golden Italian and more aggressive. We started with Golden Italians and they are very light-golden-coloured and extremely quiet. They are easier to work with, but not as tough as the Caucasians. so we don't mind working with naturally superseded hives most of the time. We're used to bees hanging off our visors by now (Golden Italians don't do that unless you really rattle them).


@Knave, you could have looked up honey spinning, but there's many different types of spinner and process, so I showed you one that was closest to our own!  No worries at all. 

And while on the topic, I wrote up a funny bee story a while back which I'd now like to share. it was designed to make people laugh... ;-)

:cheers:​

*FUZZY LITTLE JETFIGHTERS*

We have _eebs_. What on earth? Well, Brett and I are slightly potty and enjoy language games, and early on in our homestead beekeeping careers, we decided that our hives had _eebs_ in them, and that _eebs_ go _sssssb_! Did you know that you can find _umblebeebs_ in Tasmania, and that spoonerising is also fun, especially when you end up with a politician called Farry O'Barrell? Try it sometime, as a brain exercise, and increase your endorphin levels in the process, with great benefits to your overall health and outlook!

Back to _eebs_. We got our first two hives back in 2010, and made the following rule for the inevitable: When someone got stung, the other person would buy them a drink, and toast their bravery. We wore long pants, long shirts over tucked-in T-shirts, burr blockers over leather boots, bee veils over wide-brimmed hats, and work gloves. I was the first person to get stung – in the wrist, because my sleeve rode up from my work glove as I lifted up a honey frame, opening a gap. It felt like a teaspoon of lava, made a little swelling, and earnt me an exotic hot chocolate at the local café.

*We Become Astronauts*

Even when we decided we were in for the long haul and invested in long-sleeved gauntlets and expensive bee-suits that made us look like astronauts, we still got stung occasionally. Brett turned to me once with panicked eyes, “Help, Sue, there's a bee in my beesuit!” It was actually crawling on the inside of his face screen! We walked away from the hives, I unzipped his hood, and managed to shoo the bee away and replace the hood without anything unfortunate happening to either husband or bee - this was a hive of very laid-back Golden Italians.

Another time, he was not so lucky, and earnt himself a cool glass of cider. We learnt to check carefully for little gaps in the hood zipper, and fabric folds making little channels into gauntlets or boots. This kept us secure enough to allow our bees to do their own queen replacements, meaning our hives are now infused with a lot of Caucasian bee genetics, from the local feral drones. Local commercial beekeepers generally re-queen yearly with Golden Italians, and these bees are a pleasure to handle, and highly recommended for beginners.

*Little Caucasian Jetfighters*

Caucasian bees have very dark bodies and are more aggressive than the brightly coloured Golden Italians, but we have also found them to be more resilient and better adapted to our conditions, which include cold winters and regular frosts. The original European honeybees introduced to our region by early settlers were mostly Caucasian bees, and Caucasian genetics prevail in the feral bee populations.

Sometimes we've had a particularly aggressive hive, and bees have surrounded our heads during a hive check, making highly disturbing noises reminiscent of a few dozen people having their teeth drilled simultaneously at the dentist's, with a proportion of the bees landing and hanging off the fronts of our visors. When bees get _really_ annoyed, they start bumping into you repeatedly in flight, literally screaming through the air like fuzzy little jetfighters, launching themselves at you kamikaze-like, bouncing off, and returning to do it all again. It's quite an experience, but you can learn to laugh it off if you are well-protected. And we love our bees – they are fabulous critters. Well, most of them!

*The Psychopathic Bee Incident*

There was one time I was attacked out of the blue by a psychopathic bee. This was a highly unusual event – bees don't generally attack you unless you are opening their hives, or are very close to their hives afterwards, on the same day (they're primed to your shape and smell then); or you bring a lawnmower or other vibrating noisy gadget very close to their hives, at any time (so we wear bee suits when mowing within ten metres of beehives). 

So for a bee to attack you at random at a distance from its hive is extremely rare, and it has only happened to me once in my life. Here I was, innocently directing the garden hose over the base of a pumpkin vine, enjoying the birdsong and sunshine and general pastoral bliss, when suddenly... _nnnnrrrrreeeeeeowwww_! Every beekeeper knows that sound and what it means, and standing in the garden in shorts and T-shirt, with limbs and face unprotected, my heart instantly dropped several storeys and started pumping frantically as the adrenaline flooded my bloodstream. This was in our early days of beekeeping, before I had learnt to suppress the instinctive panic reaction at the ultra-aggressive sound that conjures up Lilliputian attack chainsaws, so in the absence of PPE (personal protective equipment), I dropped my garden hose and ran.

This was, of course, a silly thing to do. Bees easily reach flight speeds of 32km/h, and I am not Usain Bolt, who peaks at 44km/h and actually has a reasonable chance of outrunning an angry bee. The sensible thing to do in a situation like that is to cover your face with your hands and find concealment in the form of foliage, bushes, etc, and to keep moving slowly away, weaving in and out amongst any available shrubbery. Alas, yours truly vainly legged it in the open, limbs flailing uselessly, making panicked noises, when _nnnnrrrrreeeeeeowwww_! the pursuing bee found my nostril, entered its cavity, and stung.

In your long-gone days of innocence, have any of you ever tried to pull out a nose hair? If yes, you will appreciate how exquisitely sensitive the inside of the human nose is, and you will almost certainly have never repeated the attempt. If no, give it a try sometime, and when your eyes have stopped watering, you will understand why this is a genuine technique by which actors make themselves cry. It's also a good way to stop yourself nodding off during ultra-boring work meetings, although if you wear glasses, a better method is to paint some realistic eyes on the lenses so you can safely snooze under cover.

If pulling out a nose hair is an 8 on the pain scale, getting stung inside your nose by a bee is a voluptuous and long-lasting 10. There's a reason the little bug'gers zoom in on this orifice: It's the most bang for their buck, remembering bees can only sting you once and lose their lives in the process. At this stage in the proceedings, I was still running flat out, which in my case is at about half the speed of the admirable Usain Bolt, heading for the farm dam where my beloved husband was priming an irrigation pump, in my desperate search for aid and succour.

Of course, any cynics who have seen what horses do when pursued by botflies – namely, they run up close to another horse and try to transfer their unwanted passenger to them – might say that I was instinctively just looking for an alternative target for my psychopathic insect. If this was unwittingly the case – for the human psyche has many unflattering aspects often hidden even from ourselves, and I do not claim to know myself perfectly – then it was unrewarded. The stinger went in when I was still some way from the farm dam, and now I was ululating as well as running.

Again, this was completely senseless behaviour, as I was only pursued by a single bee, which was unable to sting again. The thinking parts of my brain even reminded me of this fact at the time, but my body kept running, and the bee, after I blew it out of my nostril, was still pursuing me and making those disconcerting _nnnnrrrrreeeeeeowwww_! sounds. And so, this inexplicably wrathful, fuzzy, tiny little jetfighter which weighed less than one gram had me, a large mammal over 70,000 times that mass, completely terrified and on the run, like an elephant fleeing hysterically from a sparrow.

Effective little beasties, aren't they? It's another illustration of the saying that it's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog that matters – especially if that dog also has chemical weapons.

The aftermath of this episode saw me in the house putting an icepack on my poor nose, which was swelling up as if I'd had several unsuccessful rounds in a boxing ring. For over a week after, I couldn't show myself in public, and for another month, I was cowering whenever I heard any kind of buzzing insect – just normal, lovely, gently buzzing insects going about their everyday business, who did not sound like Lilliputian attack chainsaws – and I would look around wide-eyed if someone started an engine unexpectedly.
*
Some More Helpful Advice*

I've since returned to normal – well, _my_ normal anyway, whatever that is – and am in a position to offer some more helpful advice on this general topic, based on lived experience. The main way I get stung when not actually working with bees is when I get into the flight path of a hive and a bee unwittingly bumps into me and gets caught in my hair. This is not a common thing, since bees are pretty good navigators, but I have lots of woolly hair on my sconce, and in windy conditions especially, bees can get trapped in my mop. They then tend to panic, and once they panic, they try to sting.

If a bee is trapped in my hair at a fair distance from my scalp, I run for the nearest wide-toothed comb – human or horse, no matter – dangle my head towards the ground, and comb out the bee, before beating a hasty strategic retreat into the bushes, because the moment a bee is combed out and back in the air, it typically will be in attack mode from the panic and the handling, and will remain in that mode, looking for you or someone who looks like you, for a good five minutes to half an hour. Get back in the house, and have a cuppa. Wear a hat (with optional bee veil – a mozzie veil from the camping shop is a good substitute if you're not a beekeeper) when you come back out, and Bob's your uncle.

If the bee is trapped close to my scalp, I have learnt to fish it out with my bare hands if necessary, because it is better that a bee stings you in the hand than in your scalp. Having thrice been stung in my scalp, I do not recommend that experience, because each time and no matter how much ice I packed on afterwards and how soon I took antihistamines, I ended up with a grossly swollen face. It turns out that blood and lymph from the top and sides of the scalp drain via the face, marinating it in bee venom in the process. In the progression of the venom down this drainage path, my forehead will sport a swelling first, then the eye directly underneath, then the cheek, and the whole thing takes at least three days to return to normal. A sting in the hand is not such a big deal.

The donkeys have brayed disconsolately for the last hour because I have sat here typing this morning, instead of tending to their needs for back-scratching, general two-legged company, and having sweet nothings whispered in their giant bunny ears. I have brayed back multiple times through the open window to let them know I am still alive and on my way, and must now make good on this communication. Until next time, enjoy all your animal antics, great and small – and remember to cover your faces, dear readers, if you are the target of an unexpected bee attack.

Photos:

1 & 2. Sue in early beekeeping gear.
3. First bee-sting
4. Honey frame with partly capped honey (has to be mostly capped to be ready to take)
5. Brett and bees
6. Astronaut I
7. Astronaut II
8. Bee on sunflower


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## knightrider

@SueC. just loved the story. I really admire folks who can write funny stuff. It is much harder to write funny than drama.

I was thinking of nuns who work with bees without bee suits. They are so gentle and quiet, and the bees know them.

Our bees got really aggressive after a while, and my dad replaced the queens. I don't know if he did it wrong--after all, he was an electronic engineer, not a farmer--but for a week, our bees went psycho on us. The whole neighborhood complained. When we walked in or out of our house, we had to run, flinging our arms around because the bees were wild to sting us. After a while, the bees settled down, and then Dad had an easier time.


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## bsms

I had to go look to find out about the history of bees in America:

"_Honey production is not unique to honey bees. The Mayan bee god, Ah Muzen Cab, was revered for his gift of honey. If the North American honey bee went extinct and the European honey bee didn’t arrive until 1622 where did the Mayan’s get honey? Honey was harvested from social Melipona bees commonly called stingless bees. Represented by over 500 species this genus of bees is very diverse and live only within the equatorial regions around the earth. Species vary in size from smaller than fruit flies to those larger than the honey bee. Colony sizes also vary from a few hundred to thousands of bees. Melipona are uniquely adapted to the flowers of their local environment and don’t survive outside their native habitat....

...Due to the introduction of Africanized honey bees the tradition of stingless bee keeping is in peril....

...The honey bee is the only honey producing bee that is adapted to living outside of the tropics. Its arrival back to North America was simply a homecoming returning to the homeland of their ancestors. Ironically, the horse shares a similar evolutionary tale, evolving here, extinction and later a return via European ships. The next time someone says honey bees are not native to North America, remind them of Apis nearctica, Apis millifera’s ancient ancestor [14 million years ago] that once pollinated flowers in the Great Plains of America were wild dinohippus and pliohippus ran free!_"

Pictures at the web site:

https://nativebeeology.com/2018/01/26/native-honey-bees/

"_The first Africanized bees in the United States were discovered in 1985 at an oil field in California. Then, in 1990, the first permanent Africanized bee colonies arrived in Texas from Mexico. Today, Africanized honey bees are found in southern California, southern Nevada, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, western Louisiana, southern Arkansas, and central and southern Florida.

Africanized honey bees are dangerous stinging insects that have been known to chase people for more than a quarter of a mile once they get excited and aggressive. This is why they earned the nickname “killer bee.”...

...If under attack by an Africanized honeybee, run quickly away in a zig zag pattern and seek shelter indoors or in a car as soon as possible. Experts do not recommend jumping in a body of water to avoid the killer bees, as they will wait above the surface for their target to emerge._"

https://www.pestworld.org/pest-guide/stinging-insects/africanized-killer-bees/


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## knightrider

> central and southern Florida.


Oh no! I did not know that! Along with fire ants and sand spurs.:eek_color:


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## Knave

I have a problem with bees. This is unfair to the bee, because I am not allergic and have only been stung once or twice. However, show me a bee and I will unhelpfully panic. 

When Bones was three I was riding through what is called the “bee patch.” I don’t know why it is called that, but I have ran into bees there more than once, so I think there is a good reason. It is steep enough, and a fire once burned through and killed the trees going out of the canyon. 

So, I’m riding along, minding my own business, and this stupid bee starts chasing me. Fluttering in my face tormenting me... and I was busy waving my arms around yelling. Baby Bones was monitoring himself, and he went too close to a dead tree. A tree branch shoved through my stirrup.

Poor Bones takes off bucking, and the tree branch breaks off (luckily). It is chasing us from my stirrup, and I’m thinking we’re on our way to our graves, when the tree fell out of the stirrup. At first I kind of laughed that nervous “I didn’t die!” giggle, but adrenaline running I didn’t notice my hip.

I have bad hips. Shallow joints or something like that, my hip dislocated when the tree pulled my stirrup back before it broke. I didn’t notice until I stepped off the horse when it flopped back into place and stayed especially sore and loose for a couple weeks after. Lots of riding to do, it was a pain. 

Instead of holding this against myself for my overreaction and lack of attentiveness to my colt, I find it proof that bees are evil! I like bumble bees, but the rest are very scary and very mean.


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## SueC

That's really interesting information, thank you, @bsms!  I heard about America's plight with the arrival of Africanised bees when I was in high school and was glad they hadn't come to Australia. The don't jump in water thing! :shock: And other escape tricks, handy to know with all bees. Tell you what though - the other day I was careless and didn't put my beesuit on when knocking a swarm into a box. I was wearing a hat and mosquito veil because of the bush flies which have just started, and long pants and sleeves, and thought, "No problem, the other swarms were pretty cool and I didn't really need my astronaut suit." But, this was a swarm from a hive we'd taken honey off the previous day, and when I knocked them into the box from a distance of 2m (long-handled broom) about five guard bees who clearly recognised me from the day before went for me.

This doesn't normally happen when collecting a swarm, some people wear no protective gear at all when boxing up a swarm. So I had those chainsaw noises all around me and bees ramming into my flimsy mosquito veil and trying to sting through, and it was only a matter of time before they were going to succeed, or to crawl under the loose neckpiece. I ran to the back of the house and turned on the hose full blast, connected to a watering gun on shower setting, and aimed it all over my head and neck, and then the rest of my body. The veil was now bee-free, and I went around the corner and from there into the house to check in the mirror if I had any bees on me. I didn't. On the way to the hose, one had stung me in the lower back through my shirt, but only mildly as the material stopped the sting from being torn off the bee, so I didn't get a full load of venom, just a little. There was a squashed bee in the veil and nothing else. I went back out and repaired a fence, which took about an hour and dried my clothes out again. Anyway, that'll teach me! 
@knightrider, I am glad you were amused.  It's easier for me to write funny than drama because that's the way I think. Perverse, I know. Being married to Brett has only exaggerated this as he's the same and we're constantly going on like this to each other. I find the most obscure things funny - for instance, did you ever catch the classic series _The Prisoner_ from 50 years ago? We're at the tail end of watching this. The opening sequence always makes me laugh, especially the bit where he goes, "I am not a number, I am a free man!" :rofl:






And Brett, in this instance, actually can't see why I find that so hilarious. Maybe the music is part of it contributes... On the other hand, he wasn't amused either when, many years ago, I played an impromptu trick on him in the middle of the night. He was going to the loo in the dark and very comatose as he was staggering off, and I'm a light sleeper and had a sudden idea, which I immediately implemented. I've no idea where this came from, but I carefully rotated around so that my head was now at the bottom of the bed and my feet were on the pillow, and then I waited. Hee hee hee hee. And when he came back to bed and tried to snuggle up to me, he got very confused. Something was wrong...and I heard him mumbling in a confused manner and then could no longer control my laughter. :rofl: Besides, I really needed oxygen at this point. For some reason, Brett didn't laugh at this - although I can see how hard he works to keep his face straight whenever I remind him of this little incident. :Angel: This was just before we got engaged, so it clearly didn't put him off me, and also, he knew exactly what he was in for! inkunicorn: :blueunicorn:


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## SueC

I've been a bit erratic reading and posting and things are still really busy. Here's some hiking photos I meant to post weeks ago:


*BIBBULMUN WALK - DENMARK TOWN CENTRE TO JETTIES*










I only have a few photos from that day, we were a bit uninspired. The start of the track:



As this part is a rail trail where an old railway track used to run, there was paraphernalia around:





We went the wrong way for a bit, but it was still nice:



Then we got back on the right track, which partly included suburbs. However, we only took two more photos, near the halfway point - the waterside forest track, and the Wilson Inlet.






I have another walk write-up without photos as I took no camera:


*MT CLARENCE WALK*










Here's a photo of the view from the ANZAC memorial I found on the Internet:










And the sculptures:


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## SueC

:rofl: @Knave, the way you tell that story!  Not funny about the pain of course. On a related note, here's something I posted to the Krones & Kodgers thread recently:


_ Quote:
Originally Posted by *walkinthewalk* View Post 
Hopefully you will never grow up in that regard -- we all need to keep chuggin' along. Even if it's from this.







to this







:Angel::Angel:
_

And on a related topic... :Angel:

I know I can say this here and we can all get a laugh out of it. My husband and I are seriously thinking about writing a book called _The Joy Of Midlife Sex_.









Because this just _never_ happens in Hollywood movies.









You know, "Ouch, my knee." Followed by thirty seconds of minor pained yowling and careful limb readjustment. Or, "Oooh, my elbow, I need to change sides!" Or, "Excuse me a minute. _Cough, splutter, cough, minor attack of asphyxia, hawk, splutter_. Sorry, erm..." Or, "_Achooo_! Where are my antihistamines???" Or, "I think I need my Ventolin!" Or, "Excuse me a moment, I need to go to the bathroom!" _Creak, creak, limp_ on the way back from there, but at least no noxious fumes in the love nest. :Angel: I could go on and on. Anyone got anything to add? 

Like horse-riding and anything else though, still worth it!









Even if, ahem, minor adjustments need to be made to allow for advancing decrepitude.

Amazing though: I still made it up a mountain without dying recently.











:gallop:​

*Horse update:* I've been religiously keeping the horses restricted during spring flush, and nobody is getting too fat, not even Sunsmart!

Sunsmart has finally shed his weird "I'm shedding my coat" coat - the one he grew between his thick-end-of-normal winter coat, and his emerging summer coat. He looked dreadful for six weeks - sudden long long long yellow hair growing everywhere just as he was starting to shed, making knots and dreadlocks all over the place, but especially on his belly, where he is terribly ticklish. When his chest shed out it was bare like one of those Chinese hounds, with residual 8-inch yellow hairs hanging off at intervals. He wasn't worried himself, but I was relieved when his summer coat finally sprouted on his chest. He has now come into a lovely, shiny, chocolate-coloured summer coat and has only a few weird hairs left to shed out on his legs and hindquarters. I will start taking photos again soon. Including that hindquarter photo I promised you, @Knave!

I rode him the other night and he's jolly and very happy to move. Strides out well and interested in everything. Did the fireground loop at dusk and was amused by his antics whenever I was dismounting or re-mounting through the electric gates. He sort of sidles over and chats after a dismount, and says, "OK, get back in your wheelchair?" when I'm about to re-mount. :rofl:

I need to touch up his hooves with the rasp so I can get him back in his boots. He's been looking longingly at the ridges, but I've stayed in the valley floor with him because too lazy / sore after gardening to bend over and put his boots on etc...


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## Knave

That is funny! I agree with the mishaps, but husband and I were just talking the other day. It is so much better isn’t it!? You may have to interrupt something sexy, but no longer do you hide needing your inhaler or anything of the sort. Much better in my opinion.

On the hoof boots, I am on the same page! I finally brought Bones and Zeus back out. Zeus was a little jerk about seeing a horse in a blanket at my mother’s, but he’s only two and I forgive him his freshness. Anyways, I need to get Bones back into his boots! The big girl will ride him for work bringing the cows home, and there are a lot of rocks and a gravel road.

His old boots have lost traction. I realize this is why we took our spill this spring. They are dangerously slick. Lucky for me Bones is so athletic. I’m sure I would have killed my self and my horse using those boots on anyone else. We live and learn right? So, I have a bigger pair intended for a horse I used to own called General. They are one size bigger, and his were seeming rather tight (I bought them his third year and I think he’s grown). I need to try them on or hurry and purchase some!


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## gottatrot

Re: The Prisoner, my younger brother loves that show and got me watching it. We say to each other, "Be seeing you!"

Re: Bees, I am not allergic and my sister has only been stung once and is quite allergic. She has an epi pen, but several years ago was running without it and was a few miles away from anything, when a bee flew into her mouth. Thankfully, it flew back out without stinging her, because I can't imagine she could have survived if it had stung her near her throat, she swells so fast. 

Since I am not allergic, and have been stung a few times, I respond very little to bee stings or bees, and if I'm stung I usually just say "Oh shoot," or something like that. This is apparently because I compare them to a horse kick, which bee stings have burning pain alone, while horse kicks have pain plus force, and that seems a lot worse to me. 

Anyway, my point is that I was bitten by a couple of wasps, after having been stung by bees a few times. Being practical, I watched the wasp that was on me and was thinking it only has one stinger, so I just waited. But then I saw that it had its mouth on me and was biting, and it bit me three times in quick succession before I realized WTH this sucker isn't going to die, it's just going to keep biting me! So then I really ran.

Wasps hurt worse than bees, IMHO, and so do yellow jackets. In my experience, bee stings hurt really bad, and they sort of get more painful for a minute or two, and then the pain eases. Wasp and yellow jacket stings seem to hurt, and then they really start hurting more and more for ten minutes or so.


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## egrogan

A few years ago I had a wasp fly up the side of my skirt and get trapped in there. I don't think it wanted to be aggressive, but it was panicked and I did get stung along the outside of my leg. I hadn't been stung by anything since I was a little kid, so while it of course hurt, I didn't panic. But it quickly swelled up to the size of a softball. I kept icing all day and overnight, but the next day it was still that size and pulsing hot. I ended up going to urgent care and I think they gave me some sort of cream, can't quite remember. They did recommend visiting my GP, who wanted me to carry an EpiPen since the swelling had been so dramatic (though I didn't have any of the throat swelling people described). Her rationale was that having such a strong reaction once could mean it would be worse next time. I have to be honest though, I think the EpiPen has probably expired at this point and I haven't re-upped the prescription. That might "come back to bite me" (pun intended :wink at some point.


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## Knave

I don't like wasps either! When my girls and I were supposed to be holding the heifers on the mountain waiting for the rest of the guys to come with another herd a couple years ago, these wasps must have been bothered. They started chasing my oldest girl on her horse, and she came running over by me. I was not a good parent in that moment, "Nope!" I scooted Bones away from her and Beamer. "They are chasing me mom!" she scolded back at me. "I know, but I don't want them!" I yelled back. The little girl was smart enough to edge away from our exchange with her Pete. Finally I said, "Let's get the heifers and get out of here." We took off with those heifers like any good cowboy would not do. They were only yearlings, so they sure were willing to take off too. We took them a leg of the drive and sat up there waiting instead. The big girl only got stung one or two times under her shirt. Luckily she wasn't allergic. I guess I am a big sell out when it comes to bees and wasps. If she had been any younger I'd like to think I would have done whatever to save her.


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## CopperLove

I'm not sure this is the video I saw before, but I remember watching something about solitary bees and keeping them. I think because of my fear of bees leading to a massive lack of interest in personally harvesting honey, something like this might be interesting at some point, as they don't live in large hives and would still be beneficial to the environment.


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## Rob55

I have several wasp, hornet, yellow jacket, ground bee stories. Hiking, mowing meadow, fishing, hunting, painting old outbuildings, stinging insects abound. I grew up in the rual lowland of Southeastern Virginia. We had epic poisonous snakes. They never worried me as much as bees. The problem is forging ahead I usually escaped while my companions turned into the fleeing hoard. Now I’m old, slow. My time is running out. my luck is running dry. Yet I love wandering through the outdoors. Lord deliver me from the bees. 

I need to go light a candle.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## SueC

Hello everyone! :wave:

It's so nice to see you all.  And I am sooooo braindead at the moment. I was up till past 2am finishing an article and selecting photographs because there was no other way it was going to get done by print deadline, and we were up at 6am, and I've been mowing and mulching and watering and planting trees all morning. Now I need a nap :ZZZ: and I'm just checking out the journals while having several mugs of jasmine tea. Not capable of much input at the moment and having trouble with words greater than three syllables long. :Angel:

@Rob55, long time no see, how is your wife doing?

It's lovely to read all your bee / wasp / hornet stories, except the getting stung bits of course. :shock:

I'm just capable of one silly response today (those are the most natural to me :Angel:



gottatrot said:


> ...and if I'm stung I usually just say "Oh shoot," or something like that.


Dear @gottatrot and all reading, I just wanted to put in a good word for "Oh barnacle!" as a useful exclamation - it has served me well for many years after going through the dictionary to find a suitable word for the purpose. Try it sometime, it might grow on you. :dance-smiley05:

The other thing I can do here today is share a song... Brett sprung this one on me yesterday, telling me this was a band he used to go see live in Perth before we met... They're kind of bluesy and Wild West, and I was dead impressed by Brett's favourite song of theirs and this morning listened to that whole album on my iPod, but to _Boneyard Rider_ about 10 times in a row, it's so well constructed and spooky and evocative, and those broody apocalyptic lyrics - wow...

Because this band is from Western Australia, it's unlikely any of you have ever heard of them, and you may very well be in for a treat here...


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## SueC

*WILSON INLET TO SEA ON THE BIBBULMUN*

Another catch-up post...










The start through flat woodland by the inlet:









There's something about some Eucalyptus species...





Woodland giving way to dunes...



How incongruous is this, in the middle of nowhere?



A stand of Banksias:



The Nullaki Camping Hut, morning tea break:


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## SueC

The dog had been naughty and chased a kangaroo up a hill. She tries to herd everything, even chickens... Anyway, when she re-joined us, she had obviously done more cardio than it is possible to do just walking along with a pair of monkeys...



Leaving Nullaki campsite, headed for the sea:









Views over Lake Saide:



Banksia flower spikes are currently opening, and they form a bushman's compass because they open to the sunniest side first, so point north in our hemisphere...





A year after pollination, the flower spikes, which are about a foot tall, look like this:



Brett was delighted to photograph this spider orchid, as we've never encountered one before:



More wildflowers:



The sea:



Lunch by the Southern Ocean:


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## SueC

Turning back, the view of the Wilson Inlet and hinterland from the primary dune:



Back in the Nullaki Camping Hut for afternoon tea and dog antics:



[



Brett always shakes his head at her when she flips upside down, and says, "Your ancestors were wolves. What would they say about this?" :rofl:

That, by the way, was when we made this film I posted a while back:






Brett found another species of spider orchid:



...and that's the best photos from the day!


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## SueC

Something fun from Australia:











And this is where he puts it all together at a German blues festival:






Thank you Lynda for bringing this to my awareness this morning!


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## SueC

*MT TRIO IN PEAK WILDFLOWER SEASON*

...spectacular! :happydance:


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## SueC

*FARM UPDATE*

I've spent all of spring working on the F&V garden to set up summer crops, plus the garden around the house, to get things in shape. Things are looking better than ever, but the work is very time-consuming and just never done... These past couple of days I've been mowing tall grass under the shelter belts in preparation for bushfire season. I'm listening to music and podcasts doing it, so that I don't go entirely crazy. Also the nectarines, peach and plum trees are now wearing nets - it took me over 45 minutes to net and peg the tree I did earlier, a Mariposa Plum that's going to bear properly for the first time this year, and the amount of developing fruit on it is amazing... Our apple trees are going to be netted next, and one of the pears, which is actually bearing this year. Pears take around 7 years from planting to bear, so this is quite the event!

Because of the hayfever, I'm only doing chores and then crawling back in the house. I've got feet that will need trimming and will do it when I can fathom the energy. Sunsmart is very amenable to riding but I've not had the energy for that either, so right now he's doing running sessions with his friends instead. I'm glad he's free-range, I already feel guilty enough not to be riding him very much at the moment, which is counter-productive as riding with hayfever is like riding with a cold. When I was a kid, nothing could stop me, but then I didn't have to look after a house and grounds and paddocks and livestock before I did anything else, plus young people do, disgustingly, have much more energy than midlife adults... 

:music019:


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## SueC

*AN ACTUAL RIDE!* :cowboy:

My lovely horse has been so sociable when I've been working in the paddocks, often coming over to where I am mowing under the fenced shelter belts and shade clumps to say hello and be friendly. When I stop mowing, crawl across the fence and say hello to him, he does "air-bites" with his ears forward, which is a stallion play mannerism his father also had and an invitation to roughhouse a little, which I sometimes do - I'll "pretend bite" at his cannon bones with my hands, and he'll "pretend bite" in the air a couple of centimetres from me, with his eyes flashing in mischief - very like my dog, when I roughhouse with her. Soon that morphs into cuddles and scratchies and the horse will have his head on my shoulder and snuggle up. 

So after showering three times yesterday in-between various farm chores, to get rid of sweat and reduce my allergic reactions to the ubiquitous grass pollen - I managed to trim a horse and a donkey in the morning (and was then comatose for two hours :ZZZ and was mowing and attempting to drive in star pickets for an electric line but encountered bedrock less than a foot down :evil: - I actually tacked up my horse at sunset to go for a ride.

This wasn't a ride instigated by a desire for active recreation, it was to look for a dead body (almost certainly). Two weeks ago I noticed one of our yearling steers was scouring badly coming out of an internal paddock rotation. Sometimes this happens at times of year when there is only very lush grass around and little roughage. There's bush grasses in the open "common" where these animals were going, and I thought that would likely settle his digestion - usually they self-medicate with the coarse grasses if they have access to them.

On Wednesday morning, the steers came up to the house, and I was shocked by the look of that little guy. His eyes were so sunken I wondered at first if he had somehow gouged them out. The area around his eyes was very swollen. It's bushfly season, and sometimes the flies spread eye infections like pinkeye, but he wasn't blinking painfully. He had, however, lost a lot of weight since he'd last come up to the house, and was looking apathetic. He was still scouring too, though not as badly as before. The other cattle all looked fine and were playing their steer games. I was pretty certain the sick steer was dehydrated, whatever else was wrong with him. I brought the whole lot of them into our utility yards, and fed them a load of tagasaste. This allowed me to sneak up close enough to the ailing steer to give him a good dose of backline ivermectin, just in case parasites were part of his problem.

He wasn't eating much, but drinking a fair bit. He'd half-heartedly pick up some tagasaste if I threw it right at his feet, but before too long he wandered away from the others and stood in the donkey shelter, resting, for the rest of the afternoon. When the rest of the herd went back out, he and a little friend of his stayed behind for a bit, but then his friend fretted to go after the other cattle, and both of them went after their herd. The little steer was slow, but not staggering. I knew he would need more TLC or we would likely lose him in the next fortnight, by the look of him. I called our neighbour and bought a roundbale off him, which he delivered that evening. We deposited it in the back internal paddock (which has lush pasture grass only) so that I could lock the four yearling Simmentals up together with adequate roughage (the big 2yo Friesian steers could stay in the common), and treat the little guy with various things in bucket feeds. Salt, for one thing. The cattle do have a lick which they use, for salt and trace elements, but when an animal is dehydrated, extra electrolytes are helpful.

The neighbour told me that sometimes, the odd cow won't make use of the salt/trace element lick, and end up with cobalt deficiency, which causes scouring. Might he be one like that? Had I seen him use the lick? Very good point. Brett picked up some cobalt in town that we could dose everyone with in the drinking trough - it wouldn't harm the others either. The cattle came to the house again Thursday night, and we got ready to herd them into the back paddock - but then we noticed the sick yearling was missing. We went all around our farm tracks on foot that night, but couldn't find him. We think it's unlikely that he's still alive. Sometimes, an animal is so sick that de-worming medication can finish it off - if the liver was struggling, for instance, or if it did carry a heavy worm infestation and the de-worming causes a gut blockage.

But, we're still looking, because once we had a newly delivered weanling straight off his mother go off in the bush by himself instead of join the herd in the common, in the middle of summer too. We looked and looked for a whole week, but there's lots of hiding spots in 50ha of scrub and woodland for a cow who doesn't want to be found. We knew there was no water source in the bush in summer and that he had to come out to the farm dam in the pasture to drink, and wouldn't know where that was. After a four days of sweltering heat we gave him up as lost, although we kept searching - no young animal could survive that long without water in these conditions - and swore never to put a newly delivered animal into the common with the others again; it would go in the internal paddocks until settled.

And ten days after he went missing, and we thought him dead for sure, he was suddenly grazing with the herd on the pasture...

So I'm still looking for this yearling, just in case. Last night I recruited Sunsmart to help. I said to him, "I am feeling very feeble and it would be really great if you would carry me around to look for this thing!" He was delighted to be at the tie rail and showing me all his itchy spots when I brushed him. He's lost all his horrible in-between yak fur and is looking lovely - shiny chocolate summer coat, well muscled, ribs not visible but easily felt so not overweight - and he was full of beans on the outing. You see so much more from the elevated position on the horse - I could see a fair way into the valley floor scrub - and I thought of @Knave and her standard work on horseback. I don't often use my horse to deal with our cattle because if I want them to come in, I simply run my pole saw - they associate that with being fed tree fodder, and race in from a kilometre away when they hear it.  It's hilarious to watch a mob of cattle run in mooing and kicking up their heels at the sound of a chainsaw. :rofl:

But last night, I thought about how perfect a horse was for a situation like that. We circled the valley floor, then went off some beaten tracks through the bush - Sunsmart loves bush-bashing, as we call it, and is often suggesting to me, when we're going along a perfectly nice sandy track wide enough for a vehicle, that is would be _so_ much more interesting to dive down a little overgrown kangaroo track... :Angel: Sometimes I let him, if there's not too many overhead branches...

We didn't find anything, but I suppose we will keep looking. Not that you can easily find a cow that doesn't want to be found, when it's got so much vegetation to hide in...


----------



## Knave

I’m sorry. Things like that are hard; although of course unavoidable, that doesn’t make them easy. I hope you find him one way or another, and I’m glad Sunsmart was able to help you.


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## SueC

*BLUES GIG REVIEW*

Blues gig last night! Long-anticipated, a real Chicago Blues band, in our little town. 










The warm-up act was a local guy called Moondog who's been couch-surfing in the US for months every year, for the last ten years. He was very competent with his guitar, harmonica and stomp box. The themes were rather stereotypical - I lost my baby, I got a baby etc, various odes to sex and alcohol, and he had a song called _I Mixed Me A Drink_ which he wanted everyone to sing the chorus to but that felt too much like church to us! :lol: Blues has a funny way of making even trite things someone is complaining about sound ultra-significant. Sort of like opera. You could write a song about how bad your potatoes are and you'd have people crying in the audience.

The basic blues guitar sound is very pleasant, and the harmonica is rather atmospheric. It's fun to go to a gig like that once in a while, but I have a feeling I'd go mad if I listened to blues night after night, because it's a bit limited thematically, and a bit howling-at-the-moon. It'd be like eating nothing but Spaghetti Bolognese every evening.

A sort of master of ceremonies appeared and gave a long alcohol-soaked speech during which he lapsed into actual tears several times while mentioning various blues musicians. I recognised him from work way back; he'd been a chaplain at one of the local schools. Back then he had collected applause for God, now he was staggering around emoting and asking us to clap at the mere mention of various names of people not present who were apparently blues legends. He was at that stage of progression through a large number of beer bottles where people get maudlin and cry everywhere, and I was glad when he finally stopped talking and let the musicians do their thing. :icon_rolleyes:

The main act was The Original Chicago Blues All-Stars, and they were excellent. Their drummer got ill and couldn't make the trip, so they had a young Perth drummer they introduced as Tyler standing in for the tour, and he'd not rehearsed with them, but did a seamless job, looking incredibly focused. Other than that, they had one bass player and three guitarists. The bass player, Freddie Dixon, was a very cool cat, a total no-nonsense musician who just stood there and sang like he was born to do just that. He had a particularly lovely, large, curvy red bass with two sound holes shaped very much like the f-holes on a violin, and his playing sounded very like the style you often hear on double bass. He sang us a song about "not being superstitious, but a black cat just crossed my path" - much more thematic variation than the support act - as well as some blues standards written by his father, Willie Dixon.

After the bass guitarist had finished his couple of songs, he passed on to a lanky character who called himself Root Doc, and who sang a song that wasn't all that different from Led Zeppelin's Lemon Song in subject matter - and now I wonder which was first... Our eyebrows nearly climbed up over our heads when we looked sideways at each other during that one. There was a comedic element as he started describing the love interest's breasts and playing deliberately ridiculous, sustained high notes on his guitar as his voice climbed higher and higher until he was shrieking incoherently. :rofl: A bit after that he also sang us a song about a 500-year-old Jarrah tree, which is a West Australian tree, and he said he'd written it especially for the gig (they must have come through Pemberton way...). Later on he did an extremely funny number about meeting a girl on the Internet. He was deliberately hamming everything up, in contrast to the very grounded Freddie Dixon.

I had difficulty in the first half of the show working out who played what, with the three guitarists all playing at the same time. Two of them were doing lead type guitar, and their instruments had very distinctive voices, which combined with the finger patterns usually made things clear pretty quickly. But, the guy standing between them (name of Bob Lassandrello and the club owner back home) was doing a lot of rhythm guitar, and for a long time I really couldn't hear what he was doing at all - it was like he wasn't there, even though he clearly was playing - maybe my brain can only process a maximum of one bass and two guitars, in any given band. After the interval, I finally heard him, because he was doing lead guitar for a bit!

Their young guitarist, name of Michael Damani, early 20s, was fantastic - they all were, but the rest of them were over twice his age, and this young guy looked as if he was completely lost in the music and in a perpetual state of reverie, from which he occasionally emerged to make eye contact with the audience.

These guys played blues, explained a few things about the music, and after the interval, got quite funky, so much so that they ended up having people dancing in front of the stage for the last half hour of the three-hour gig. We were in the front row, and as more people arrived to dance, we ended up shifting backwards from all the wiggling! Brett uncharitably told me he wished for a large trapdoor to make them all disappear, so we could see the musicians doing their thing again. It was nearing 11pm, we'd been awake since 5.30am, and the music was starting to settle on us like a heavy quilt, so we snuck out during the dance encore, but it had been a really interesting night out.

This is a band well worth catching if they're ever touring in other people's local areas. 

Here's a clip I found on YouTube with Freddie Dixon singing, Root Doc on the left, and young Michael Damani on the right!


----------



## SueC

Knave said:


> I’m sorry. Things like that are hard; although of course unavoidable, that doesn’t make them easy. I hope you find him one way or another, and I’m glad Sunsmart was able to help you.


Thank you. I went for another ride into the scrub on Monday night and found the body. When I got near it, all I had to do was follow my nose. The animal had been dead three to four days by the look of it. He may have died on the Wednesday night after I had them all in - he wasn't with the herd by Thursday afternoon, when I wanted to get the youngsters into the back paddock with the newly delivered hay, which often settles digestive upsets in cattle, and offer them some supplements. I'm stymied he died so quickly - he wasn't staggering Wednesday night or lying down, or showing distressed breathing, just a bit off his food and very quiet and slow, and had lost condition quickly. And he was dehydrated, but drinking - water and lick blocks are freely available, and everyone else is fine... it's peak spring flush, and there's plenty of good feed in the paddocks, including roughage and bush grasses in the common where they spend most of their time...

Cobalt deficiency can happen this time of year with livestock who don't use lick blocks, but we've never had that happen before... and the animal didn't have a poor coat, nor was he standing with his back hunched... a bit of a mystery. Poisoning is unlikely as well. Johne's unlikely - that's very rare in WA, and we've not had that on our property. Of course, animals can already be infected as they come in... but it doesn't often kill animals under 2...

It's a mystery. Not PMing the body; just keeping a close eye on the other cattle. The whole lot of them came in today and I let them in the back paddock which I had set aside for the four yearlings, and let them at the roundbale I'd gotten in. The big 2yo Friesian steers were headbutting it all over the place - they know how to unroll hay and were at it like a rugby team... The older cattle look great, shiny, well muscled; the three remaining Simmental cross yearlings aren't quite in the condition I expect cattle to be in this time of year. I'm keeping my eye on them. The property was worm-free after a break from cattle and we always backline new stock and graze them rotationally. I'll backline the three young ones this week, just in case... the older ones are probably going to market before Christmas, so I'm not treating them with chemicals for which there is a long withholding period...

The one we lost was about cow number 45 here, we worked out. I suppose a 2% mortality is about average. We've never lost one before, but it was bound to happen sometime. Of course, I'm thinking, "What if this, what if that..." I just hope it's another ten years before we have another thing like this happen...

When I was a kid, my parents kept a small breeding herd of cattle. One cow disappeared one day and we looked for her far and wide. I even searched the river reserve, thinking she'd gotten out, as they sometimes did. And five days later I could smell the body on one of my searches - it was summer - and then I saw legs sticking up out of the drainage channel on the paddock boundary. The cow had rolled into it by accident and gotten cast on her back, but because the drain was nearly four feet deep, and overgrown with summer grass, nobody saw her, not until she had died and bloated and the legs were sticking straight up in the air. She had been home all along, but invisible from ground level. I felt so bad about the horrible death that cow would have had. It's stayed with me for 35 years. :-(


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## knightrider

So sorry about the loss of your cow. We used to lose one from time to time but never figured out why.


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## SueC

Thanks, @knightrider. :hug: They say if you have livestock, you're bound to have dead stock sometime. I wish I could have prevented this...

I hope you've had good rides this week! :cowboy:

In other news, I got back on my horse for a ride this evening, and we did the half-hour figure-8 through the valley floor. We can go back on the ridges on the weekend because I trimmed him Monday night, so the boots will fit well again...


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## Knave

That is terrible about the cast cow. I’m also sorry about your steer, but also glad you found him. Some things do just happen. I think cows and horses are almost better off for the fact that unless they are obviously sick they are continuing on. They cannot say “I feel off,” which might more often actually keep them healthy. Then there are the rare exceptions of course.


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## bsms

My friend with the sheep says if you own enough animals, you get used to them sometimes dying. With over 3,000 sheep and a couple hundred cattle...

He used to keep around 50 horses, which was way more than he needed for work. With a couple of exceptions, he's very unsentimental about horses. He appreciates "a good worker" and can discuss the different personalities of various horses at length - and can do so without ever having studied horsenalities under Parelli :rofl: - but he says sometimes you go to the pasture and find one dead. He checks to see if there is some hazard that needs to be dealt with and then buries the body. 

He sounded kind of sad, though, when I talked to him a few weeks ago. I mentioned Trooper and said I doubted he ever thought much about Trooper. "_Oh_," he said, "_I thought about Trooper just the other day. He was one of the last horses out of my stallion Joker. Most of the ranch horses used to be from Joker but Trooper is one of the last left alive. He had a couple half-brothers but the herders I've got now don't take good care of the horses like the ones I used to have here and it's been hard on the horses. I like hearing Trooper is living a relaxed life, mostly hanging around and being ridden once in a while. He was always a good horse and I'm glad he's living an easy life._"

He says the ranch horses rarely make it past 22 because they put so many miles on them - often 30/day -and because the herders don't always give them the care they ought. Trooper is 21. As I type, he's eating complete horse feed pellets and looking pretty chill...

The sons are now mostly running the ranch and they don't want to breed their own horses any longer. I think my friend misses seeing their Arabian/Appy mixes. There will be more Quarter Horses in the future, and I'll miss seeing these when I go visit:

















PS: My diet's weight loss has slowed, but I was 151 lbs this morning and my BP was 129/80 without having taken any blood pressure medicine for several weeks. I read a couple of blood pressure studies. Going below 120/80 helps with stroke, but several large studies in Korea and China indicate lowest total mortality is associated with 135/90...and is pretty flat in either direction for another 15-20 points systolic. Diastolic pressure was pretty flat across the board. I'll be a happy camper if I can keep my blood pressure where it is without medicine. I've taken BP medicine since 2006.

It seems with both blood pressure and cholesterol that there are trade-offs. If you study something just for stroke, or for a cancer, or for falls, then one value looks "good". But what is good for one disease might be bad for another. Same with age. Past 70 or 80, for example, high blood pressure seems to be protective in large part due to fewer falls. Good blood pressure at 25 may be bad blood pressure at 80. Whether it is "Intelligent Design" or "Evolution", the end result seems to be that our bodies tend toward a sweet spot in TOTAL mortality - unless we screw our bodies up with weird foods, or prolonged sitting around - and maybe with drugs meant to solve one problem without taking into account our total existence.

My philosophy of physical health is starting to sound like what I believe in riding horses - get out of the way, interfere as little as possible, and "ride light - but RIDE". The problem is modern society encourages us to eat horribly, ride little, and treat the distortions that result with a harsher bit or bigger whip...um, I mean expensive drugs to act as super band-aids. Too many people just a little older than me end up covered with so many band-aids that they look like The Mummy.

PSS: My wife is fonder of veggies and fruits (carbs) than I am. She's lost about 15 lbs, very gradually, but is feeling better and starting to be able to wear clothes she's kept (but couldn't wear) for 15 years. THAT gives her incentive to keep going...:cheers:


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## SueC

This is excellent news, @bsms, well done to both of you for finding ways to take care of your health and get results without the standard drug regimen, which I'm suspicious of as well. So often, messing with one thing via long-term drugs, even if it's positive on the surface for that thing, will mess up another thing or twenty backstage where nobody is looking. I can understand that we sometimes need short-term drug therapy, but the "on it for the rest of your life" stuff has always made me uncomfortable, especially if it's not just low-dose HRT or replacing something we fail to make anymore (like thyroid medication for some people). There has to be something more holistic we can do for lots of things that are now routinely drugged.

Hey, do you like carrots? Because here's a great salad both of us like: Simply cube carrots and cheddar cheese, about 3:1 ratio, squeeze over lots of lemon juice and a little ground chilli, mix well and enjoy. It's a great flavour combination, lovely and crunchy with protein etc from the cheese, Vitamin C and other useful stuff from the citrus, carotenes etc from the carrots, and ooomph from the chilli... and no quick-release carbohydrate or refined anything... Tell you what, I never eat more carrots in one go than when eating this salad, which is very more-ish.

That horse in the first photo I've always thought was stunning!  And the other one is a lovely working type too,

Bwahaha about the Parelli. I accidentally referred to him as Pirelli the other day; must have been a subconscious slip. :rofl: I had Pirelli tyres on my first little car - how's that, Pirelli tyres on a 3-cylinder supermini... :rofl: Great tyres, though; really stuck to the road and very safe.

The last lot of photos on your journal made me think of one of my favourite comedians, Bengt Washburn, to whom you have a little bit of a resemblance in those photos, with the glasses and hair and looking studious etc. As you've been to Germany, I thought you might enjoy this:






The roads he's describing for America, it's the same here, and quite a contrast to Europe. I find that the more road you give people, the more idiotically they drive...

His story about learning German is also funny...






:winetime:
@Knave, I think you're right... great photos on your journal too, hahaha that haybale jump!  Hope you're all super well! :hug:


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## gottatrot

bsms said:


> Going below 120/80 helps with stroke, but several large studies in Korea and China indicate lowest total mortality is associated with 135/90...and is pretty flat in either direction for another 15-20 points systolic. Diastolic pressure was pretty flat across the board. I'll be a happy camper if I can keep my blood pressure where it is without medicine. I've taken BP medicine since 2006...
> 
> It seems with both blood pressure and cholesterol that there are trade-offs. If you study something just for stroke, or for a cancer, or for falls, then one value looks "good". But what is good for one disease might be bad for another. Same with age. Past 70 or 80, for example, high blood pressure seems to be protective in large part due to fewer falls. Good blood pressure at 25 may be bad blood pressure at 80. Whether it is "Intelligent Design" or "Evolution", the end result seems to be that our bodies tend toward a sweet spot in TOTAL mortality - unless we screw our bodies up with weird foods, or prolonged sitting around - and maybe with drugs meant to solve one problem without taking into account our total existence.


Good stuff. I really like that idea that drugs meant to solve one problem may not take into account our total existence. Or quality of life! I think they need to teach more about practical medicine to doctors. For example, my grandpa was supposed to take eye drops for glaucoma but they lowered his blood pressure and made him get dizzy and fall. The doctor would be upset if he didn't take the medicine, but when you are in your 90s, seeing is less important and preventing fractures so you can walk to the bathroom is more important. I've seen the same thing with elderly taking blood pressure medications. High blood pressure has long term effects on the heart. If you've made it to your late 80s or early 90s, falling from a low heart rate or blood pressure is a big danger and you would probably rather die of a heart attack one day after being able to walk around the last couple years of your life than be stuck in bed with a healthier heart.


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## SueC

I think there's a really good argument to be made that the problem isn't science in itself, but the way people use it - many researchers aren't actually looking at multi-factor stuff properly, but oversimplify things that are naturally complex. Hence people on long-term drugs to treat one thing that cause other problems, people on cocktails of drugs likely causing greater adverse interactions together than separately, poor nutrition studies, poor ecological studies. Those three areas are all especially complex areas with lots of interacting factors, and are often wrought with poor science.

How's everybody? I hope well. My hayfever is slowly getting better after six weeks of misery, because the annual grasses are starting to dry up. I'm thinking about getting desensitisation done starting in the coming summer, because I live in a ryegrass district and don't want to have over 18 months of flu symptoms over the next decade. @gottatrot (and anyone else), do you know anyone who has had this treatment done, and how it went?

So anyway, I'm still not symptom-free, but at least am getting a little more energy, so I went riding again this evening, this time with boots on the horse so we could go on the ridges. The boots fit well after the trim I did Monday night, and when we hit the trail, Sunsmart was keen to go running! I've always noticed that the boots give him extra confidence for moving in terrain - he can't get bruised by landing funny on rocks, gum nuts, or weird tree roots. He actually has very good hooves, and I barefoot him through the valley floors, but the rocks on the ridges here are treacherous - very pointy bits that can even penetrate horn.  That's why I started with boots with him when we moved here, for going into that type of terrain. I'm glad to live in an age of such items being available - they weren't when I was a kid.

So today, we rode around the forest ridges on the perimeter of our farm, and then looped back through the valley floor. This meant we had two steep-ish hills to go up, and one like that to go down, plus a more gradual descent. Smartie charged up the hills looking sideways at the dog - it's always a race to them, and makes me laugh. I was thinking again about differences in riding position people have with different horses. On big horses, when I was a kid, I two-pointed at the canter going up hills. As a biggish, nearly 6ft adult riding medium-sized horses, the balance works better if I sit the canter and just lean forward very slightly - otherwise my weight shifts too far forward for the horse's comfort, and it lets me know this. It's possible to sit, and be light, and not get in the way of the horse's back. Anyway, I go by what the horse tells me about the position they prefer me to be in.

If horses could write equitation books... :Angel:


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## SueC

And I also agree that doctors need to be more cluey, @gottatrot. My post after yours was a bit of a non sequitur, because I was looking through itchy eyes and trying to respond to the whole medical / nutrition post series, but didn't give a proper intro!


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## gottatrot

SueC said:


> I'm thinking about getting desensitisation done starting in the coming summer, because I live in a ryegrass district and don't want to have over 18 months of flu symptoms over the next decade. @gottatrot (and anyone else), do you know anyone who has had this treatment done, and how it went?


The nurse I am working with tonight has been going through the process for a couple of years. She highly recommends it. Even though she has to go in periodically to continue the shots (it is a long process), she said the change in her response to the allergens came within several months. Before that she was taking massive doses of antihistamines and felt horrible, going through allergic reactions every month, and now she only has had hay fever rarely, and only when in full contact with her allergens (her face in cat fur, etc.). 

I quite liked your last post, and especially the last bit about horses needing to write equitation books. :smile:


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## SueC

Thanks for the info, it sounds promising!  I'd far rather get stuck with needles than have another hayfever season like the one just by...:|

I quite like your posts too! :Angel:

Have an excellent week! :racing:


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## Knave

Little girl tried something called GrassTek I believe. It was in a clinical trial type thing with her doctor. It is a dissolving tablet instead of the shots. She is extremely allergic to grasses, and taking the first dose they considered giving her an epi. We were stuck there as she broke out in hives all over and was crying with the itching mouth and eyes.

Eventually though we did a year of it. (It was spendy.) I think there was a difference in her, but I’m not sure it was relevant enough for the misery of taking it. We let her choose whether to continue, and she chose to drop it altogether.


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## bsms

When I tested for allergies after arriving in Arizona, they said I was too allergic to too many things to do desensitizing. Told me after a few years it would get a little better. They were right but allergies cause me a lot of problems. It feels like a low-grade flu with extra sinus pain. It's been close to 50 years since I've asked a doctor so maybe they have better stuff now.



> A perfect book on riding could be written only by a horse. Only he could easily answer all the questions endlessly argued by us riders. Only a horse could say positively how the rider should sit in order to abuse him less; how his rider should control him so that the aids are easily understood, and how the trainer should school him so that the training proceeds in a comprehensible manner. As long as little pertaining to horses, and hence to riding, can be stated with mathematical precision, riders are bound to disagree...
> 
> ...Only outstanding riders can forcibly put the horse into a certain attitude and better his performance by doing so. Ninety-nine per cent of amateur riders, for whom this book is written, cannot do it, and if they were to attempt to do it they would merely upset and stiffen the horse, thus ruining all chances of a good performance. The less one asks of the horse, the less resistance one encounters, and the gradual raising of requirements must parallel the progress of the rider....
> 
> ...Since I personally have witnessed lessons during which the instructor was talking about having the horse on the bit while still working on the position of his pupil, I know that my method will find opposition, at least among those who lack the logic of gradual progress....
> 
> Common Sense Horsemanship, VS LIttauer, 1963.





> On big horses, when I was a kid, I two-pointed at the canter going up hills. As a biggish, nearly 6ft adult riding medium-sized horses, the balance works better if I sit the canter and just lean forward very slightly - otherwise my weight shifts too far forward for the horse's comfort, and it lets me know this. It's possible to sit, and be light, and not get in the way of the horse's back. - @SueC


I upset people by my lack of enthusiasm for riding lessons. I assume SOME places have loads of great instructors. But much of what I was told while taking lessons, much of what I've read in books and much (most?) of what I see on YouTube conflicts with what my horses tell me. As much as I've learned from reading Littauer's books, my horses tell me the same thing they have SueC - getting OFF the back can be good, but so is stability and predictability. It is hard to get much off the back without some stability issues and Bandit at least doesn't seem to mind me being more ON his back provided my weight isn't settled like a sack of potatoes on his loins.

If my crotch is closer to the front of the saddle, and I "just lean forward very slightly", I'm more stable, more predictable while NOT pounding his back. I can feel my buttocks light in the saddle, feel the saddle sometimes coming up and brushing my rump, but just barely. In return, it is easy for me - someone who lately has been riding an hour a week - to be stable and predictable so my horse doesn't waste brain cells on me & can can just relax and move energetically but FLUIDLY.

Bandit feels good like this:










Not as good like this:










But he likes both of those better than when I try to sit back in a more traditional western/dressage position. That may be because of this:



phantomhorse13 said:


> If you have a very tight back, then you are probably always going to have issues doing no stirrups "right." Being able to sit the trot involves being able to absorb the shock with your pelvis and back, which may not be easy or even possible for you with your back injury if the muscles are always tight.
> 
> If you choose to try it again, I found it helps me to think not so much about sitting down/still as much as relaxing and finding the subtle hip rotation that matches the way the horse is moving....


I find that spot on. I watched Hondo again a few nights ago. Watched with one eye while reading a book about a naval battle off of the Philippines that involved some truly heroic actions by light destroyers. The first to attack broke off and raced alone against the largest battleship ever made plus a bunch of heavy cruisers trying to buy some time for the light aircraft carrier to escape. 



> For the first 20 minutes, Johnston could not return fire as the enemy cruisers and battleships' heavy guns outranged Johnston's 5-inch (127 mm) guns. Not waiting for orders, Commander Evans broke formation and went on the offensive by ordering Johnston to speed directly toward the enemy—first a line of seven destroyers, next one light and three heavy cruisers, then the four battleships. To the east appeared three other cruisers and several destroyers.
> 
> As soon as range closed to within ten miles, Johnston fired on the heavy cruiser Kumano...
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Johnston_(DD-557)
> 
> Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_off_Samar


Anyways, with one eye I watched some of the riding scenes. The riders backs were in constant motion, flexing and allowing the horse to move because their hips would open and close in rhythm with the horse. I'll never be able to do that. Not a chance. So by observing my horses, I guess I'm trying to learn how to ride well WITH A STIFF BACK. Which is very different from, say, how my DIL rides. But how many riding instructors would appreciate that difference? Some, I'm sure. Not many where I live, though.


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## SueC

Dear @bsms, the best riding instructor is the horse!  :blueunicorn: :gallop: :dance-smiley05: :charge: :falloff: :happydance:

(If the rider listens...)


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## knightrider

> @gottatrot (and anyone else), do you know anyone who has had this treatment done, and how it went?


I had the allergy shots done 30 years ago. I was highly allergic to a few grasses (luckily not hay or ragweed or goldenrod), highly allergic to horses (boo), and extremely highly allergic to corn smut.

Getting the shots took about a year and a half. I improved dramatically. I was so happy I had gone through the process. I was told that the immunity would wear off with time, and at some point, I would need to have it done again. So far, that has not happened. If anything, my allergies are less than they were 30 years ago.


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## SueC

*WILD WEATHER!*

It's late November, it's been dry for a fortnight, and today it's HAILING!!! It hailed fiercely for five minutes flat before I went out, and then it hailed again an hour later, so I went back in for a coffee break, waiting for it to pass. The horses all ran for the shelter shed, which they hardly ever use because of precipitation - mostly they use it to escape bot flies - and I ran for the house. Wow!!! Hail in November - and it's not a front. The radar shows lots of little tufts of scattered precipitation across the Great Southern; the weather chart a front lying way off the South Coast and a trough connecting down from the tropics - causing our unusual pattern. It does not normally hail here in November!

I won't have to water, and with all this moisture around, can put most of the rest of my greenhouse seedlings into the garden today. Also, there's less pollen in the air today! 

Thank you very much to everyone for posting your and others' experiences with allergy desensitisation.  Allergic to horses, @knightrider? Boo indeed!!! As a kid I tested highly allergic to cats and ryegrass, mould, dustmite and a few other things, and moderately allergic to dogs. I had a cat in the house as a university student, and no allergy problems as long as it had its weekly bath, which it got. No problems with the dog, other than when she's covered in grass pollen. I'm going to see my GP the moment I'm totally recovered from this hayfever season, and my immune system stops having conniptions!

Do antihistamines still work for your little girl, @Knave? They used to work OK for me, but gradually each type just stopped working, and last year, the last non-drowsy type available stopped working for me (excepting for insect bites, still works for those).

I read that they now have ragwort in Eastern Australia and it's causing misery for many hayfever sufferers there!


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## Knave

She had to change this year @SueC. She went from Claritin to Zyrtec. The Zyrtec is working for her, but whenever I try it, or when big girl did, we sleep. Any down time and I am sleeping. Also it seems a bit strong for me, but not for her.

She used to take all sorts of things from the asthma doctor, but we have dropped many because when it came down to it the antihistamine was what actually worked.


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## SueC

So at last magazine time, @Knave had a gorgeous article in the same magazine as me! :happydance: We were talking about it on @egrogan's journal yesterday, and it reminded me that I'd not yet posted mine. Here goes - one for the technical boffins, one for the art & craft enthusiasts!

*EMBODIED VERSUS OPERATIONAL ENERGY*


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## SueC

*COLOURED GLASS DESIGNS*

For the craft boffins...


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## SueC

@knightrider, I just read about your bicycle mishap and hope your hands are a bit better already! :hug: I've not been on the trail riding thread a while because I had a bit of a scare about Sunsmart's hoof angles in late winter and was afraid that his Cushings might be causing hoof problems, as they did with the extreme case of severe Cushings we had a couple of years back with his mother, who had to be put down because of this. I was mentally preparing for the possibility and laying off riding a bit in case loading his feet would create problems (and I didn't want to write about it on my journal because that wasn't going to change anything except worry everyone else too). He wasn't lame or anything like that at all, but neither was his mother when her hoof angles changed suddenly one early spring when she ran Cushings, and two months later she was dead because she went on to develop laminitis and a whole host of metabolic problems, hyperhidrosis, problems with temperature regulation and fluid balance etc caused by her pituitary adenoma. You just never know how those adenomas are going to progress.

Anyway, I was able to correct the suddenly-out-of-whack hoof angles gradually and the hooves are normal again, at which point I dared ride again, and he's been fine. I think in his case, there was no bone rotation behind it, just uneven hoof wall overgrowth, perhaps by a similar mechanism as his hair suddenly quadrupling in length just as he started shedding out his winter coat. So he's been fine, thank goodness, just I haven't been great - hayfever as you know, and this week Brett is sick with a cold and I have a bit of that myself, bleh. It's just been one of those years. I hope to hit trails again _with the camera_ soon.


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## Knave

I am so glad to hear that his hoof angles were corrected! I know that must be a huge weight lifted. 

I am sorry about your allergies. It was a bad year this summer on anyone around here with allergies too. I hope the shots or whatever you do helps.

Also, I love the frog!


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## SueC

Thank you, @Knave - I love frogs, and really wanted to depict one. This one is modelled on the Australian Tree Frog - lots of them have moved into our garden since we established that on what was bare pasture before! They must have travelled up from the swamp behind the house. We also built a pond for them in the F&V garden to the west of the house - which happens to be the side we put the frog window into (the sunburst faces the sunrise). We find these frogs (and other types as well) in the bushes, amongst the vegetables, around the water tank, in our watering cans (when your watering can suddenly clogs, it's usually a frog in the spout), in the little greenhouse, and sometimes even in our boots - thankfully they sort of yelp when you touch them, so we've not squashed one - when your boot yelps, you quickly reverse out your foot!

Here's one near our main tank:



The West Australian Tree Frogs are also called Motorbike Frogs because of their calls - they sound like accelerating motorbikes!

Have you got frogs around the place in Nevada? Lizards? What lives in your garden?

@egrogan, @bsms, @knightrider, anyone else - what's in your garden in your necks of the woods?


Speaking of allergies once more, one thing I am dead against for me is inhalers with corticosteroids, which doctors try to prescribe as standard. (I'll occasionally use Ventolin to open up the airways on a bad day - it's just a bronchiodilator.) Corticosteroids suppress your immunity across the board, and I don't think it's good to do that with your lungs (and I'm particularly worried about people in their 70s and 80s being prescribed them, as that age group is more susceptible to pneumonia anyway). While it might help with hayfever symptoms, asthma etc, I think it also makes you more susceptible to opportunistic lung infections. Corticosteroid nasal sprays are also commonly prescribed and I tried that in my 20s, but found it gave me yeast infections in my nose and throat - and have never gone back to corticosteroids. It's a fine line messing with your immune system. I think desensitisation sounds a lot more promising than continuing to take drugs to deal with the problem, especially now their effectiveness has worn off on me.

How interesting you sleep on Zyrtec! That was my mainstay for about ten years, before it stopped working a couple of years back and I went back to Telfast, which had stopped working a decade ago for me but was at least working better than the Zyrtec recently. I've never gotten drowsy on the non-drowsy antihistamines, but I often go to sleep after taking two standard paracetamol for headache or whatever. My main problem with antihistamines is muscle aches and fatigue, especially after taking them for weeks on end in hayfever season... it seems I have to take them at least a couple of days running to get those problems though.

More Australian Tree Frog photos, these ones from the Internet:


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> @*egrogan* , @*bsms* , @*knightrider* , anyone else - what's in your garden in your necks of the woods?


 @SueC, our most notable frog is the Spring Peeper, Pseudacris crucifer. We love listening to them sing all spring





There's a local organization called the Vermont Center for Ecostudies that runs a "citizen science" project monitoring amphibians in vernal pools around the state, so we've signed up to do that in our town this spring. They also host other projects, like annual bird counts, educating farmers and landowners about different types of threatened birds, and protecting butterfly habitat. Really neat organization. They also encourage members to link to another citizen science project through an app called "iNaturalist," which is used all over the world to record plants and animals observed by users (at least I'm fairly certain it's global; I know it's used across the US). After I signed up on iNaturalist, I started noticing an amazing diversity in the types of moths around the farm. We have a low wattage lightbulb next to the hydrant out near the horses' pasture, and throughout the spring and summer it seemed like every night I'd notice a different type- with the app, you take a photo, enter some brief info about your location (you can be a specific as your actual latitude/longitude [which is frankly a little creepy to me] or as vague as your state), and you get a very quick match to your photo pulling from all the user-entered data, which allows you to ID what you're seeing. Some of the more interesting moths I saw this summer were:


One-eyed sphinx moth (Smerinthus cerisyi)









Rosy maple moth (Dryocampa rubicunda) 









Garden tiger moth (Arctia caja)









Hickory Tussock Moth (Lophocampa caryae)









And by far my favorite, huge and dramatic- the luna moth (Actias luna)









I was having such a problem with these beauties getting themselves stuck floating in the horses' water buckets. There was a week or two where I was doing a rescue almost every morning. I started doing some research to see if I could provide them a water source in a different location, and I learned that once they become moths, they only live for about a week and they don't eat or drink at all during that time. I never could figure out why they were so drawn to the water buckets, but I felt bittersweet getting to see so much of them during their very short lives.


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## Knave

Oh I love those moths!

We have this super cool moth I have only seen a handful of times, and I did preserve one in high school that my girls now have. Sadly it’s feathers have broken, so I will show you an internet one. We also have hummingbird moths, which I love catching when I was little off of the current hedge. I would always turn them loose, but I had fun seeing them. Even their caterpillars are pretty cool.

The big moth is about the size of your hand, and the hummingbird moth a bit smaller than the bird for which it is named.

We don’t have frogs. We have toads by water areas. I think they used to live all through the pivots, but chemical use has seen them disappear.


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## egrogan

@Knave, that hummingbird moth is amazing! Never heard of anything like that. It's amazing how many varieties there are.


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## Knave

@egrogan they are pretty cool! Last year, it seemed there was this big migration of the caterpillars. I know that doesn’t make sense, but there was a herd of them I tell you!


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## knightrider

We have frogs and frogs and FROGS! There are adorable tiny ones that get into the house. It's not unusual to see one on your shower door or toilet . . . and always in the bath houses where we camp.

Piles and piles of cute sweet friendly lizards which also like to get in the house. Cats love to catch them. So do little boys.

What gets into our boots are scorpions! And do they ever hurt when you put your foot into your boot without shaking it out first.

We have a lot of poisonous snakes too--coral snakes (red and yellow, kill a fellow; red and black, all right Jack), rattlesnakes, and copperheads. I know that other people have had their horses spook upon meeting snakes, but I have never had that experience. I've met a lot of snakes, but my horses just look with interest.

A miserable pest we have here are nematodes. They are microscopic worms that burrow into the roots of your plants. I've been told the only way to get rid of nematodes is to cook your soil 350 degrees for some number of hours. People around here buy soil and put it in raised beds if they want to grow vegetables.

We also have ginormous cockroaches that we call palmetto bugs. They also love to crawl into your boots and just make you jump and scream. They don't hurt you or anything, but they are soooo uuggly!


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## Caledonian

Deer visit the garden and, while they are beautiful, they can be a nuisance as they strip everything and leave a mess. I think they are Roe rather than Red. 

Hedgehogs are a common sight at night. Often, you hear them snuffling around before you see the little dark body trundling across the ground. A couple of years ago we found a little one curled-up in a deep fence post hole. It was very lucky, as the post was hovering over head ready to be dropped when someone shouted to stop.

The squirrels are all Greys now, which is a shame. It has been years since i saw our native Red with their tufty ears. 

There are more bats that i can count and i love to watch them flying around the house and near-by lights. One managed to get into the house a few years back. I think it must have been caught out too long or ill and climbed in through an open window.

A Robin and Wren have their territories in the garden. Both will come to see what you are doing but the Robin is quite fearless and will sit on your hand or the ground around your feet. Doors need to be kept closed as he likes to investigate and has been trapped inside sheds and the house (wow did he create a mess). There is a pushy little Wood Pigeon who will follow you around like a dog and warn you when Buzzards and hawks are overhead. Other birds include: Dunnets, Sparrows (Speugs), Woodpeckers, at least two Owls, Crows, Jackdaws, Longtail-tits, Blue-tits, Coal-tits, Great-tits, Blue-tits, Blackbirds, Bullfinches, Goldfinches, Greenfinches and Chaffinches. 

No snakes, plenty of spiders though. On a sunny day, hundreds of spiders will move away from my foot in waves as i place it down on the gravel. 

I see a few Common Frogs each year but only if they are making a dash across open ground.

There were Comma, Painted Lady, Monarch, Peacock, Red Admiral, Whites, Tortoiseshell butterflies and a range of bees at my Buddleia bushes and flowers this summer.


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## knightrider

Oh, spiders! Do we have spiders! Great huge ones as large as your hand that people call banana spiders . . . and they build their webs across riding trails and sit in the middle of the web so the horse or rider gets a giant spider riding along. Really chilling.

We have lots of black widow spiders that like to nest in little places like under your saddle flap or inside your laundry pole. They are quite poisonous. Brown widows are also common, but I understand most people don't die from a brown widow bite. Brown recluse spiders are super dangerous. Floridians know never to stick their hands in any place that hasn't been disturbed for a good while. A brown recluse bite will cause your flesh to melt away.


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## Caledonian

knightrider said:


> Oh, spiders! Do we have spiders! Great huge ones as large as your hand that people call banana spiders . . . and they build their webs across riding trails and sit in the middle of the web so the horse or rider gets a giant spider riding along. Really chilling.
> 
> We have lots of black widow spiders that like to nest in little places like under your saddle flap or inside your laundry pole. They are quite poisonous. Brown widows are also common, but I understand most people don't die from a brown widow bite. Brown recluse spiders are super dangerous. Floridians know never to stick their hands in any place that hasn't been disturbed for a good while. A brown recluse bite will cause your flesh to melt away.



:eek_color::eek_color: Oh! 

I can't imagine what it would be like to live with that. It must become second nature to check tack, crevices and along the trail. We have Adders but they are very rare and protected, and not that venomous or aggressive. I have never had to worry about dangerous creepy-crawlies. I think i would get myself in trouble pretty quickly!


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## Knave

I love imagining your Robin @Caledonian!

We have some snakes including rattle snakes, a few different lizards with none of them poisonous (my favorite are horny toads!), and spiders including black widows and brown recluses. 

Lots of birds and wildlife call the area home, but only a few one would call pests. Ground squirrels, gophers, badgers, voles and mice are all pests, and most consider coyotes pests and maybe antelope too. We have some predators, like mountain lions, bobcats, and foxes. I don’t think they are numerous to be called pests.


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## SueC

Thank you very much everyone, for your beautiful stories, photos and clips! 

It's very lovely having windows into other places in the world, like this - told by people we actually know a little bit about, and care about. It's the best sort of journalism. 

I have been busy dealing with cattle and watering all day and will return on a day I'm not so tired and have more time, but because I just loooooved those moths, I dug out some photos of a lovely Australian moth called an Emperor Gum Moth, which sat on our front door a while back:





This is a Southern Old Lady Moth, with a close-up of the wing "eyes":





Several types of parrot hang out in our garden - this one is a Western Rosella:



We get Blue-Tongue Lizards in the bush here - we have 50 hectares of bush right behind the house, and these fellas visit a fair bit:



Especially when word gets around that you will share strawberries with them - they love strawberries. Here's one on the bedroom patio munching on one:



Yum!



Is there any more???



This is a nocturnal bird called a Tawny Frogmouth, who one day turned up sitting on the top of the open office window:



After the photo, it made eye contact with me and flew off into the conservation area. I think it might have been there to dine out on spiders sitting in the window frame.

Speaking of spiders, these pretty little fellas are all around the fencelines and bush at the moment - tiny little Christmas Spiders, also known as Jewel Spiders:



Also, just around the perimeter of the garden, we have emus hanging out on a daily basis this time of year. The dog thinks it's her solemn duty to guard us against them.



I realised that it's been a while since I've taken pictures of our horses and donkeys, and undertake to address this deficit within the next week!

Have a great day, everyone! :gallop:


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## Knave

Wow! I love your moth Sue!! Also I think it must be so much fun to have all that wildlife.


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## SueC

@Knave, I saw this and thought of you:










@Caledonian, could you shed a little light on this for me, historically? :rofl:










@knightrider, I think this is the closest Thelwell got to a Medieval theme...










@egrogan, I thought those frog calls were super cute!  And here's a cartoon for you and Fizz!










@gottatrot, because you have an OTTB:










@lostastirrup, is this how you got Nick?










@bsms, because horses often know what we mean...










@waresbear, because you jump:










@DanteDressageNerd, does Wonder have days like this?










@CopperLove, congratulations on your first fall:










I hope I've not missed anyone!

This is one for Smartie...


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## Caledonian

@*SueC* - A Deer-Pony and Pony Ghillie! :rofl:

Perhaps he's been less than accurate when hunting the deer!:smile: 

Thelwell was my manual when i was young. Every pony i rode looked like something from his books!


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## SueC

@Caledonian, I grew up on Thelwell as well.  The only other animal cartoonist I've seen get animals' expressions and intentions as spot-on as Thelwell is the Australian/NZ farm cartoonist Murray Ball's _Footrot Flats_. It does to Antipodean farm life what Thelwell did for the UK horse/pony people.




























Footrot Flats website home


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## Caledonian

:rofl::clap:especially the one with the Corgis. Thanks i needed a chuckle tonight.


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## Knave

It’s a day for thanksgiving in the US, and your post made me smile. I am thankful for you and our friends here.


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## gottatrot

Great post, thanks for the comics!!

I do feel like this a lot...my fat and snorty boy going nowhere fast while making a fuss about it.









I also like Fergus.


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## SueC

Do you think Hero is fat, @gottatrot? I thought he looked lovely in the photos. I think Thelwell just draws them like that.  Here's another that makes me think of you and Hero:










Just, you know, the engine in that horse, and the good cheer in the rider, the idea of which I always get when I hear you talking in your clips! 

Thanks for Fergus - a new one to me (although I think you've posted some in the past?). Which culture did that cartoonist come out of - Ireland? US? Canada? She's certainly got the horse thinking down pat. All the horses I ever rode had a barn compass like that, for instance. And the horses and carts - yes indeed, hahaha! :rofl:

Happy holidays to everyone from the States! And happy normal week to all the rest!


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## gottatrot

SueC said:


> Do you think Hero is fat, @gottatrot? I thought he looked lovely in the photos.


Thanks for the compliment for Hero. You're right, he is at a good weight. I call him fat with all affection, because he rides like a fat pony. 


SueC said:


> Thanks for Fergus - a new one to me (although I think you've posted some in the past?). Which culture did that cartoonist come out of - Ireland? US? Canada?


The author is Canadian. 
This one reminds me of Hero too:


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## SueC

:rofl: The cartoon!



gottatrot said:


> Thanks for the compliment for Hero. You're right, he is at a good weight. I call him fat with all affection, because he rides like a fat pony.


Mine always rides like a fat pony, whether or not he is carrying more than is good for him (which this spring flush he isn't) - because he has a thorax like one of those giant beer barrels at the Oktoberfest! 

Compare for yourself:


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## SueC

Returning to those beautiful moths - I followed some links @egrogan provided and we ooohed and aahed over the beautiful photographs we found. Here's two favourites:










That's another view of the Rosy Maple Moth. I don't think it's impressed that it's being restrained, but it's funny how the moment an insect has fur and therefore looks more like a mammal or a stuffed toy, we perceive it as cute. This is is very cute, and for some reason looks like a female conductor of an orchestra in an alternate universe!

And another view of the Luna Moth:










Beautiful photographs - it's worth going back to @egrogan's post and following those links (as always ).


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## egrogan

@*SueC* , first, loved the cartoons posted for each of our horse friends- very sweet.

Glad you enjoyed the moths! I like that maple moth as well; the picture you posted makes it look like some sort of little fuzzy sci-fi character! But, the luna moth is my sentimental favorite. I can't describe how impressive they are in person. I found some pictures I took of a luna moth hanging out by the horses this summer. This was at the tail-end of their season so the colors were a little less vibrant than they had been earlier.

















Also some more frogs. Here's another shot of a spring peeper I saw in the yard last summer- so tiny it's whole body actually fits on a clover leaf!









And some sort of a tree frog, not sure exactly which type.









And the ubiquitous monarch butterfly. They had a banner year here because the plants they need for laying eggs did really well. The only sort of sad thing is that they find our dirt road the perfect spot for sunning on a warm day, and sadly they are hit by cars frequently. If I saw one looking particularly vulnerable, I'd ask it to come with me for a quick ride to a safer location.


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## SueC

*MT TOOLBRUNUP ANNIVERSARY CLIMB*

I didn't get around to posting this earlier, but on the 2nd of November, Brett and I climbed Mt Toolbrunup, exactly 12 years after he proposed to me on its summit back in 2007. It's the toughest mountain hike in the Southwest, so the fitness programme we've done getting back to regular hiking this year was in part to get us mountain fit again so we could climb Mt Toolbrunup on the anniversary of our engagement, which we've not done before, but this year it happened to fall on a weekend.


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## SueC

After leaving the "little scree" we didn't take any more photos until we were actually on the summit. So, we don't have photos of the big scree or the vertiginous climb into the spire. I've borrowed some off the Internet of those sections.














































Maybe next time we're going to actually attend to taking pictures of all the stages! Back to our camera, on the summit:


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## SueC

*RIDING AGAIN AT LAST*

At the tail end of hayfever season, both of us caught a bad cold, which turned into bronchitis, so no riding for a fortnight. It seems to me that the bugs are getting worse - both coughs we had this year, in June with the flu and just now with bronchitis, did not respond to cough suppressants at night, so you basically couldn't sleep, you'd be coughing to the point of retching. So we've had a lot of nights we've had only a couple of hours of sleep. Some of that time we were on semi-bed rest, only getting up for essential chores. A couple of nights ago coughing woke me up at 2.30am and from then on there was no chance to get back to sleep. That was the night before the day I hoped I would be well enough to get back on my horse, but nothing doing - not until today. I've just come back from a nice long ride through the valley floor all the way to Verne Road, and it made the horse, the dog and me very happy to be out there.

We've been spring cleaning the house - Brett is on holidays, and we're both scrubbing and organising and tidying furiously. This morning, I trimmed Julian's rear feet and then cleaned the laundry room from top to bottom, taking everything out and even defrosting the freezer, and wiping down walls and cupboards, cleaning the window and fly screen, and actually scrubbing the floor with a brush. Brett has been wiping out the kitchen cupboards and drawers, and organising the bookshelves and CD racks better. Cleaning isn't super exciting, but it's not hideous either, and you feel really good about the results...

So at 5pm on this lovely afternoon, I wasn't coughing very much and had enough energy to go riding. It was one of those golden early summer afternoons, not too hot, not too cold. The dog, when she saw me move the bridle and grooming kit out to the tie rail, virtually did backflips with excitement and barked non-stop for several minutes. When I got the horse she was even more excited, racing around in circles and barking - it's been over two weeks. The horse enjoyed the brushing and carrots, and off we went into that lovely afternoon, riding past our farm dam to see if the Friesian steers are using the new lick block (they are), encountering these same steers in the middle meadow that feeds into the valley floor, and then we were on the bush trails, and the horse was trotting to the neighour's boundary. The usual gate routine involving a swing gate and a 10kV hot line I have to move by hand, and then we rode past two of the neighbour's dams and kept on riding down the centre of the woodland on various animal trails until we eventually hit Verne Road. The moment he saw it, the horse zoomed up the hill with extra enthusiasm and speed today; for a few moments at the start, I wondered if he was going to leap about with excitement and kick up his heels - he had that feel to him.

As we swung into the open pasture on the hilltop and had views for miles all around us, the horse was looking around him at the landscape gone golden since our last visit - it was still green two weeks ago - and at the western neighbour's cattle across the fence. Sunsmart was in great spirits, and when we encountered a group of young lambs chasing each other in circles in the next paddock adjacent to the fence, he took a lively interest, before deciding we could trot back through the woods to the boundary gate, where I got off again and both of us had a horse hug before I tended to the gate. From then on, straight along the sand track, behind the dog, who was carrying a find from next door - a kangaroo arm - occasionally kangaroos die in the bushland, and she seems to find little morsels that serve as take-away snacks when we are near a kangaroo carcass, and I won't even be aware that we are until the dog appears with a bit of it.

This is from one of our hikes with the dog:



At home, I untacked the horse and cleaned him up a bit, at which point two donkeys were hovering because they wanted brushing too, which I did - with the horse, who was now loose, also butting back in to say, "Can you do my neck again?" Then it was feedtime, for equines, dog and humans.

:apple:

It was Sunsmart's birthday yesterday, so that counted as a birthday ride. This was him 23 years ago:


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## CopperLove

Those are stinking adorable :rofl: I suspect I'll be falling for a long time yet, as she has decided that the dogs trouncing around in the leaves across the road from the round pen is the scariest thing she's ever seen in her life.

I love those lizards! We have blue-tailed lizards here, little black and yellow stripey things with brilliant blue tails... which they drop under threat of being caught and eaten so that the predator may chase their tail and let them go.


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## Knave

Happy anniversary!!! Also, happy birthday to Sunsmart who was a very cute colt.


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## egrogan

Happy birthday to Sunsmart!


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## CopperLove

Ohhh I missed a whole page of posts! Happy Anniversary to you and Happy Birthday to Sunsmart!


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## Caledonian

Happy Anniversary and Happy Birthday to Sunsmart!


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## SueC

More magazine stuff from _Grass Roots_ - this is about adopting our roadside reserve and making it back into wildlife habitat. Next time - and this is out in the summer GR already, so I'm posting it later this week - I have an adorable donkey story for everyone that's also going into the Canadian Donkey & Mule Association quarterly magazine for Christmas - because sometimes I just sit and write things that are simply designed to make people feel good.


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## Knave

Nice article!! Now I am just super excited to see the donkey one.


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## SueC

New donkey article... the first one was here: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...eys-other-people-479466/page9/#post1970510903


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## SueC

...and there's another version that's easier to read and with lots more cute photos here:

Nelly and Benjamin ? Sue Coulstock


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## lb27312

@SueC - Wonderful articles! Thanks for sharing.... but sorry to sound a little dumb but what is tree-changed?

The pics are great!


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## SueC

Hullo @lb27312! :wave: Tree-changing is an Australian expression for moving to the country. It's a play on sea-changing, which is moving away from the city to a small coastal community. So a tree-change is a move from the city to an area with more trees than buildings, but not right by the sea! 

There was an Australian drama series called _Seachange_ in the late 1990s which charted the sea-change of a neurotic corporate lawyer who never had time to connect with her children, when she realised work wasn't all that great, and her husband was jailed for embezzlement, and then she found out he had had a fling with her sister! So she upped and moved to a small coastal community, which produced some of the funniest television we've seen in this country. Here's some choice clips:











Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes for Sunsmart, and @egrogan for more lovely nature photos!


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## Knave

I have only assumed what tree-changed meant too @*lb27312* . I am excited to hear the answer. I knew I would enjoy the donkey article before I even read it!


Ooh, just saw the reply. I was so wrong in my assumptions! lol


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## SueC

Now I'm curious: What did you think it meant?


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## lb27312

@SueC - Thanks for the explanation.... I kinda thought it might have been a move to the country but wasn't sure and didn't want to assume... *ahem @Knave... lol what was your thought?


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## Knave

Sorry, I went and rode and then played basketball with the family.

I thought it was something completely different. I assumed that it related to growth; a developed depth, stability and a strength of character. Since my mind made this correlation, I then thought it was used to signify the time frame that the parental ties were altered and I would guess marriage would become stronger and personal stability...

See, my mind just made up this whole thing to justify my assumption of the meaning of the phrase. I should have asked like @lb27312! On a show we watched the other day a woman didn’t understand a word used by the host. She asked before answering the question... much smarter plan. Lol. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed to ask, I just figured it made sense!


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## SueC

I think it's great to exercise one's imagination, instead of always trying to get it correct first!  That's fabulous, @Knave. Now you need to make up a new word for this concept (as tree changing is already taken) so we can all start to use it.  Please inform us when you have arrived at a suitable new term.

And since when did anyone have to apologise for riding their horses or playing basketball with their family? :hug: Speaking of, I better shift my carcass and get on with chores...


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## Knave

Well, I think maybe I am too enamored with trees I guess! Lol

I will wait and see if a term comes to me.  Little girl and I are both guilty of doing this I have noticed, because rarely, but at times she makes some word or phrase mistake like I do and we then look in the dictionary to stop arguments... Other times we are in fact correct in our definitions, but our pronunciation is way off. Usually I try and avoid those words...


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## lb27312

@Knave - I think that's great to be about growth! It should be...


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## CopperLove

"recycled" harness racing horses cracks me up a little :lol:


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## SueC

Well, @CopperLove, it's Australia's original hippie magazine going right back to 1973 and Byron Bay and long beards and lentils and acoustic guitars and all that, so I need to speak in a language the audience can understand, relate to and be happy about! 

@lb27312, I agree, and @Knave, it sounds like great fun. We're always reading dictionaries, inventing words, and deliberately misappropriating words around here.

You're going to laugh, @Knave, about the topic I wrote for the current Owner Builder. _Owner Building Without The Divorce!_ :rofl: "End up with a house, _and_ a spouse!" It goes into dirty linen and washes it in public, but hey, we need to talk more about our imperfections and how we mend our ways in an age of sanitised Instagram fantasy worlds!  Brett will post it later when he gets on the desktop - I'm prepping guest rooms for our first guests Wednesday. We're now on AirBnB, hence the flurry to get everything ready.

https://www.airbnb.com.au/rooms/39657504?source_impression_id=p3_1575859551_+cRBcH9JxuIbFgql

You should read my house rules.  It will be nice to introduce the guests to the donkeys. Who knows, maybe some of them will want to spend hours brushing them, and save us a job. ;-)

@lb27312, will you tell us a little about yourself and your horses so we can get to know you better? And link us to anything like that you've already posted - say, if you have a journal? And welcome!

:welcome:


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## Knave

It sounds like it will be another I really like! I did read the rules.  I think you should remind people to not pee on the electric fence. Lol

Around here there are lots of jokes and T-shirts and the like about working cows with your spouse. It makes me laugh. I couldn’t find a good one, but here’s an idea. It’s very true.


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## SueC

:rofl: ...and it's more affordable than counselling! :cowboy:

Do you think a woman has ever peed on an electric fence (anatomically awkward?), or is that a male thing some of them can't help because of this primal urge to mark territory or something?

By the way, there was a guy in Munich when I was a kid who decided, when he was on the pedestrian bridge over the electric railway, to pee on the overhead electric lines which he was elevated above. I've no idea what would possess people to do that. He didn't pass on his DNA after that and, had the Darwin Awards been invented, would have been eligible for one.

If you click on this link, you will laugh for ages, if like me, you're unsympathetic to stupid actions done deliberately...

https://darwinawards.com/


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## SueC

The new _Owner Builder_ is out. This is the magazine that @Knave lately had a wonderful article in about traditional cedar post building, a method she and her daughter successfully used to construct a milking shed over the summer, when some of us (ahem) are idle sipping iced tea and watching tennis (that's me when the Australian Open is on for a fortnight in January - I avoid the outdoors and watch the tennis...). 

And it's a place that @egrogan might just give us a nice rundown of renovations in her historical house soon, and anyone who has owner built or renovated and is possessed by a writing and photography bug can submit stories to (details on the magazine website - just google). 

This is from the current issue.


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## Elsie

That is awesome . I love it and what a beautiful home! Great article, I love how you kept it real and didn't powder-puff all the hard work it takes to make your dream home. The photo's were lovely too.


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## SueC

Thank you, @Elsie. We're in our late 40s - started this project at around 40, and we doubt we'd have the energy to do it all again!  When you watch _Grand Designs_ it all looks so amazing, because it's time-lapsed - even though Kevin McCloud keeps making clucking noises about the budget and time running away. I don't think they show the complete disasters, they only seem to show the builds that actually finish, even if it's ten years later! So that's a somewhat distorted view...

Anyway, without robbing a bank, this was the only way we were going to live in a decent house on enough countryside to run a few horses and donkeys, while still contributing to food production via beef, honey and vegetables (on a small scale, but decent for the amount of land). onkey:


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## SueC

*MOONLIGHT RIDE*

I finally snatched a ride after a couple of days of just working to the point of exhaustion on our house spring cleaning. The moon was up and the moonlight was lovely, so we did a lap of our valley floor. It's really nice riding on quiet, still moonlit nights. The horse also enjoyed going around and even offered to trot. I had a migraine brewing and would have been content to walk all the way around tonight, but was carried along by his enthusiasm. When we turned into the swamp track, he slowed down again.

The sounds of the crickets and frogs and birds at night are very relaxing. I was thinking about how nice it was that this horse, who spent his first 11 years living in stables and small sand yards, on his own from the time he was two because a stallion, had landed in this completely different life, and how he has taken with such aplomb to herd life and room to roam and graze over a large area. It was sheer luck for us to find a place like that, that we could actually afford. It's just been a windfall, not just for us but also for Sunsmart, and various other horses over the years who retired here, including my late Arabian mare, past whose burial ground we ride every time we do our south boundary. The horses are happy here and have a life of their own, not dependent on humans for >90% of their food and adventures. What we actively provide to them is just the icing on the cake.


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## carshon

I loved your article! I admire anyone who is a go getter and innovative. Qualities I seem to lack.


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## Knave

This article was great! I can relate to much of it because husband and I work together. We haven’t built a house, but we do work together none the less.

Both of us grew up doing physical labor, so that part I can only imagine, but the rest of it is there. Husband is much like you, meticulous and even safety conscious. I am like Brett, jumping in and wanting to deal with the problems as they arise. I am a workhorse, but that does lead to smashed fingers and the like for those that get in the way... I do try and be better.

It seems that after all these years, husband and I work together very well. We have the occasional argument still, often with me starting it, “I am not a child! You cannot boss me around!” Mostly though we are an excellent team. Our whole family is good at reading each other and being where they need to be.

It is always surprising when I try and work with a different crew then. They do things with a style I am unused to, and I find myself unable to read their movements.


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## SueC

carshon said:


> I loved your article! I admire anyone who is a go getter and innovative. Qualities I seem to lack.


Hullo @carshon! Nice to hear from you, and thanks!  I think I'm a part-time go-getter / innovator. The other part I seem to be lying in bed going, "Oh, it's soooo comfortable here, do I _really_ have to get up?" ...or eating chocolate and reading a book and not wanting to move!

Oh look everyone, we've got a new angel on HF! :Angel:
@Knave, isn't that funny!  I sometimes wonder if we'd clash more with our spouses or less, if we were near-identical. I suspect we'd actually clash more, but have no proof. And anyway, falling in love with someone near-identical to yourself is probably a form of narcissism, but again I have no proof for that at all, it's just a gut feeling!  I think not too alike and not too different - a sort of Goldilocks zone - is likely to be best. Have a wonderful day! I need to go do this: :ZZZ:


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## CopperLove

Oh it cracks me up in a good way, I think recycled animals are often the best :wink:

It’s fantastic that you’re running the Airbnb. Some of your guests may get to experience something at your home and property that they never have before, and I bet you’ll find quite a few guests who really do want to cuddle the donkeys :lol:

I look longingly when reading the articles from Owner Builder, even though I’m pretty sure the partner and I have decided it’s not for us. I would still jump in with gusto if we had the finances lined out, because as it turns out the home agency we spoke to does have a kind of owner-builder program that makes the process a bit easier to navigate… But it still is obviously not something to jump into with someone who is hesitant and I can’t blame him for being that.

Our working styles are also different and I’m still working on exactly one of the things you discussed in your article: treating him more like I would a work colleague when we have work to do rather than losing my patience and snapping or pushing him away when he doesn’t understand something that I think should be simple.

I also am the kind of person who wants a backup plan for the backup plan, and one of the biggest things I’ve learned from the Into to Construction course I’ve taken this semester is to just go do something… probably shouldn’t be the biggest thing first, but just do something, even if you screw it up because you won’t learn and won’t progress otherwise. Messed up? Cuss a little, then take it apart and start over. It’s good to research and make a plan but not good to get so caught up in the what-ifs that you put off doing what you need to do for too long. 

BUT it is important to have a CLEAR plan because I’ve seen the men teaching me make a plan for something when I could clearly tell at least one of them didn’t really understand the plan, and then growl because something got put together wrong :rofl: I can only imagine the pressure of that would be so much worse when building the space you’re going to live in. But the class definitely helped put some things in perspective.


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## SueC

@CopperLove, yes, I thought it would crack you up in a good way!  It probably cracked some of our core hippies up as well, because that description isn't usually applied to animals. It's similar to something I read where relationship-shopping was compared to car-shopping: "Beware of retreads, they tend to break down under pressure." :rofl:

It's very interesting doing BnB! I'm sure we will eventually get people who are interested in the animals and farm and the building, but sometimes you actually just get people who just want a pad to crash at night between daytime adventuring around the district. I'd have thought people who want that would be more likely to stay in town than all the way out here on a farm half an hour from town, but it is Christmas break, so maybe town places are booked out at the moment, or more expensive. So yes, our very first lot of people had absolutely no interest in the animals or farm or that they were staying in a place made from strawbales, or that they had the option of eating with us. The only question they had about the animals was, "What's the use of the donkeys?" Hmmm. We keep them for fun! (Brett said to me later, when I told him about that, "You could have talked about making authentic salami!" :rofl

I can really relate to what you're saying about backup plans etc. Relationships are a juggle, including with one's own self. 


*FIRST HEATWAVE COMING UP*

I am sooo tired, and there's a heatwave brewing - we have 39 degrees C (102 F) forecast for tomorrow and the entire weekend - three days like that, and it's already hot today. It's paralysing to step outdoors in that heat - and I do that to shift sprinklers periodically (remote solar bore only works in the daytime so we use large-droplet sprinklers and trickle pipes to minimise waste). I doubt riding will even be possible during this time. I'm thinking of becoming nocturnal, but then I'd have to employ someone to shift the sprinklers around...


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## SueC

*SPRING CLEANING POETRY*

Spring cleaning spawned a number of consecutive days I didn't do daily paper journal entries, and my rule when that happens is that I have to write silly ditties into the spaces afterwards. So here's two masterpieces from our ten-day cleaning/organising stint:

*Cleaning Ode*

Here is my super-witty ode
On cleaning up our sweet abode
Vacuuming cobwebs, dust and dander
To make our walls and floors look grander
Mopping with lavender oil and hot water
To make things shine just like they oughta
Wiping down the window glass
To let the photons easily pass
At night collapsing into bed
And sleeping like the newly dead!


*Brett's Glorious Holiday*

What is it other people do
When their annual leave is due?
They sloth in bed till half past ten
And do not ask why, where or when
They cruise the oceans in a boat
And eat a _cassoulet au goat_
Cooked by someone else's hands
And to the standards one demands
They sloth, they laze, they gourmandise
And late to bed, and late to rise
But not my hero-husband dear
He rolled his sleeves up - VOLUNTEER
To help his wife to clean and shine
The house for start of FARMSTAY TIME! 


...everyday heroism is not about vanquishing hordes of foe...


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## Knave

I enjoyed your poems very much! 

I have been to town a few days in a row. Ick. There was a court hearing about water, which is uncomfortable enough because it pits friends against each other and just makes me plum uncomfortable. To top it off I am socially awkward anyways, so I was a sight to behold. Lol. I teased the cops frisking me, I made inappropriate comments... I guess I am at least entertaining in these sorts of situations. 

Then basketball and ffa top it all off, just creating more and more reasons that I am required out of my isolation. These are harmless endeavors which make my children happy and I of course enjoy watching them, but they are still social requirements which I find make me seriously uncomfortable and awkward.

So, this afternoon I have been cleaning away as well. It feels so nice to be back to regular work and cleaning.


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## SueC

What's with the water? Is this about irrigation water?

I used to be socially awkward before I started teaching - that cured me pretty quickly - it was be cured or die!  Sometimes I can still get the odd blip, like when I'm tired or a bit depressed or just in the wrong moment. I will tell you about a complete faux pas I made when welcoming my first farmstay guests. As I was showing them through the place, I over-commented on things because I was tired and a little nervous. We got to the bathroom and I suddenly found myself talking about the merits of the bathtub - it's the same one we have in our ensuite and we chose the type specifically because it allows two people to bathe in it at the same time, should they want to. It actually fits two people - unlike most "normal" Australian bathtubs. And for some reason I was explaining this to them, and later on, when I was moving a sprinkler, I went, "OMG!!! They might have thought I was implying they were a couple! And of course, two girls travelling can be just good buddies!"  My mind hadn't even gone there, it was just practical claptrap. But then I thought, "What if they think they're staying with the Addams Family?" :shock:

I had a chance to chat to them the next day and brought it up and everyone laughed about it, thank goodness, and they were going, "Don't worry, hahahaha!"  Anyway, isn't it embarrassing when we sometimes say the completely wrong thing. I think I will make a few "broken records" for house tours - and I'm never talking about the bathtub, ever again! :runpony:


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## Knave

Lol. Well, I insinuated that it was very exciting to be frisked. Sadly, more than once.  So I myself was being... hmm... bathtub friendly.

Yes, it is about water. We have overpumped the basin. There is a battle to take away the priority dates and old law and replace it with something like a bank. It comes from your neck of the woods, and a scientist from there presented it and our valley began the steps to implement it.

Because we have overpumped (more dramatically than they understand even, as Zeus and I fell at least three times on our trip home with the cows into the depths of land disappear into voids because of the lack of underground water which once filled them) they realize that a step needs to be taken. However, odds are against what that step should be, and some are fighting against changing the law (my family is one on this side). It is complicated and frustrating.


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## SueC

:rofl: Well, I once waved a plush toy wombat in a London custom officer's face declaring how beautiful the lights of London were descending in a plane at night - "It's like a Christmas tree!" - and how I was homesick already and that was why I had this wombat... :hide:

I'm terrible when I'm sleep deprived, and I can't sleep on planes unless they let me lie on the floor, which they usually don't... hahaha, @Knave, it would be so much fun if we went somewhere together and interacted with people, can you imagine it? I'm sure we would egg each other on incredibly... :Angel:

Yeah, water is becoming difficult... we're really drying up in our region with under two thirds of normal annual rainfall for the last two years... we have a low-capacity bore that just keeps things around the house alive over the summer, and reduces our bushfire risk...


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## Rob55

@SueC Hi Sue. Thanks for asking about Jo. It’s one of the reasons I don’t visit the forum as much. Lucky I retired. Jo is going to cardio rehabilitation three times a week. Between her meds and current strength she can’t drive. That and visits to the doctor, lab and pharmacy can fill one’s week. We have hope. Her appointments are after 1400 so if I get at it early I can spent a little time at the barn. Mostly riding in an inside arena now. God bless my horse. Certainly we both can use the practice. My hands, seat and sitting trot are actually improving. His transitions and response to my seat is improving. And we are both bored to tears after an hour of circles and serpentines. There is an outside arena set up with working Equitation obstacles that’s more fun, but right now we are having several days of rain and it is the consistency of pancake batter. Can’t wait to spend two or three hours in the forest again. We haven’t given up hope. 

I know you don’t get to excited about thanksgiving but we were able to make it to my oldest son’s home and the other children were there. It’s nice when family an get together. They are supposed to make it back for Christmas. 

Merry Christmas to you and all.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Knave

I am sorry you are stuck in circles @Rob55. I am very sure you are up to more important things though, and also hope you see the forest again.

Sue, yes, I bet we could be quite entertaining.


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## SueC

Hello, @Rob55! :wave: We may not have Thanksgiving here in Australia, but I can see how important it is for a lot of Americans culturally.  Anyway, it's good to give thanks, and appreciate the people who are good to us, and the blessings in our lives. One of the best things I ever learnt to do was to write down in a journal, at the end of each day, three good things about that day. When you get in the habit, it's hard to stop at three!  And after a while, you don't need to write it down anymore, because you're always looking and noticing. inkunicorn:

I'm glad you had a good Thanksgiving, and I will keep you and your wife in my thoughts, hoping for better health for her :loveshower: and forest riding :racing: soon, for you!

A very Merry Christmas and a good 2020 for you and Jo!


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## SueC

*THE SPIDERMAN IS HAVING YOU FOR DINNER TONIGHT*

So you're in Australia, on the first day of a heatwave with temperatures forecast to hit 39-40 degrees C for the next three days. You do all your important work early in the morning before it gets too hot. Guests have just left and in your innocence, you say, "I'm going to air the guest room for a bit, while it's still cool-ish." So you open the French doors.

Ten minutes later, you re-enter the room and find yourself in an impromptu scene from an Alfred Hitchcock movie. There are flies everywhere - all over the ceiling and walls and every available surface. Hundred of flies, possibly thousands - you've never seen anything like this before. There's several dozen large flesh-eating blowflies, oodles of those medium-sized annoying bushflies that crawl into people's eyes and up their noses, hordes of tiny little flies with lacy wings, and a plethora of midges, all over every surface you can see.

After the initial shock of seeing this mass gathering of the order Diptera all over the room, you grow freshly alarmed at the thought that they might do number twos all over your pristine white ceiling and plaster. So you brainstorm ways to remove them quickly. Fly spray is not an option - you don't like poisoning people, not even strangers, and it might actually make the cleanup messier to kill all these insects. You experiment with chasing them back out of the open French doors, but the buzzing dark clouds you raise from one surface just re-settle on another.

So you hit upon the idea of vacuuming them all up. That should work, but it's going to be extremely tedious. So you close the French doors, get your iPod, and work to music while you stand on a chair and run the sofa attachment in sweeps all over the ceiling, and then the walls. The midges all get sucked down the vortex first go; the little lacy-winged flies are nearly as easy. The bushflies require chasing and persistence. The blowflies are very tricky to catch - it's best to wait until they settle on the door glass, and then go after them.

The iPod starts to play _Lullaby_ when you're back to standing on your chair, extending the vacuum wand all over the place like some long-limbed insectivore having a rather extended dinner - and you think, "_Perfect! Yes!_ This is as excellent as when _Golden Brown_ came on by fortuitous coincidence when I emptied the compost toilet cartridge into the hot compost bin last year!"

And as you're suctioning up hundreds of flies, you sing along, with dark emphasis, to the bit that goes, _"The spiderman is having you for dinner tonight!"_ Bwahahahahaha! :rofl:

This wasn't work I really needed, on top of everything. I shall have to organise a flyscreen for those French doors. But, it was work made not only bearable, but _memorable_, by that musical coincidence!


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## gottatrot

^^^^^^Hilarious story!


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## Knave

Lol! That was a great writing. I have been there before myself, vacuuming the black flies off the ceiling and feeling rather sorry for myself. I end up feeling embarrassed and panicky when something like that happens. Hurry, a very important person may show up, or my parents may see. Lol

If doors are held open for too long a number of flies rush in. Children are scolded, “In or out. Don’t stand there holding the door and thinking. Decide before you open a door!” This year we have a new version of fly. It looks like any other, but it bites terrible! I guess they are called stable flies. I’ve heard a couple of people complain. Little girl and I would get to hollering and panicking while we built the barn. We had fly spray setting on the wall and reapplied every ten minutes or so. 

I cheated, and when she wasn’t looking I sprayed myself with the livestock spray whenever I sprayed Pepper. I didn’t want to subject her to the harm of those chemicals though. Some members of my family have developed severe reactions to those chemicals, and I haven’t yet. I have thick skin and think of myself like an old horse, but I figured I would save her from as much of that contact as possible...

In wintertime we have no bugs to notice except spiders. Now there is this awful kitten rushing through the door. “Hurry fast, don’t let that kitten in!” She is beautiful, but I don’t care for her much. Little girl and I saved her for little girl’s benefit. The geese killed the other five, and the mother seemed to care less and quit feeding them. My guess is that was the reason the geese could kill such aged kittens (four weeks or so). So, we brought her in and got her healthy, but she is terribly needy and as oddly obsessive as her mother. I want them both gone, but alas it seems no one has any interest in a cat this time of year.


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## SueC

OMG, @Knave, the food chains on your farm! :Angel:

grain ---> mouse ---> kitten ---> goose ---> human

That was a great recount from life at your place. I almost felt like I was there! 

Oddly, it makes me feel better that there are other people in the world who have vacuumed up hordes of live flies besides myself. :hide:


*BRIEF REPORT FROM INSIDE THE HEAT BUBBLE*

The first day of the three-day forecast heatwave did get above 39 degrees C (102F) and was a crazy day in which the previously related event with the order Diptera happened (as if I didn't have a better use for two hours ). Yesterday - Saturday - didn't start so badly, so I got in the shade next to the shelter belt, where the donkeys were congregating, and started trimming hooves. The Three Original Donkeys were all due. I thought I'd start with Mary Lou, and finished pretty quickly. Brett turned up to do some donkey-ostling for me; he held on to diminutive Sparkle, who has been known to give us a rodeo at trimming time, and I managed to do her front feet without incident before she got nervous, at which point we called it a day with her - we've learnt it's better to come back later when she starts to lose her composure.


_Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth..._

I still had fuel in the tank and it was still cool, with a lovely breeze coming through the trees. Donkeys aren't daft - no wonder they camp in that spot on hot mornings, while the horses go cook themselves in the tin shed unless I open the Common, at which point they sensibly decamp to go stand under the shade umbrellas of the Paperbark trees.



Anyway, Don Quixote was handy, and I haltered him and saw to his feet too. MIraculous! Ten donkeys hooves in the one morning. Only two to go, and touching up Sunsmart so his boots fit comfortably again - later this week. We let everyone in the Common after that, and disappeared into the cool house ourselves as things were heating up. There, I trimmed ten more toenails - this time my own, after a much-needed shower. Sadly, these days, I need to wear glasses to do this job properly. :shock:

Yesterday didn't ever get quite as hot as forecast, and by evening it was cool enough to go for a little jaunt on my horse. :cowboy: Nothing major, I just wanted to check some fence lines, so we did a little ride around the Common. Last month I installed a line of electric polybraid on outriggers to discourage the cattle from pushing their heads through our ageing boundary fence. The line is only live if the Common gate is shut, and yesterday we had left it open so the horses could come back in and drink from the troughs whenever they wanted - since none of these three stable-raised animals deigns to drink from the Scary Farm Dam, no matter what good example is set them by the cattle, the donkeys, and for many years, by Romeo and my Arabian mare, who were paddock-raised foals.


_Romeo in 2014, farm dam savvy_

This morning dawned like Friday had - with a burning sun and not a breeze. I planted two more rows of corn, tied up some long-neglected tomatoes, and shifted sprinklers around before calling it a morning and heading for the shelter of the house. By this point, the members of the order Diptera were covering all available surfaces under our patio and carport, and inside the farm shed. This is OK as long as they stay out of the house - and this practical demonstration of fly accumulation convinced my husband that I had not been exaggerating with my little Spiderman story on Friday. He had been at work and I'd not taken photos, but he could see now with his own eyes how the insects were behaving in extra-hot conditions, and was impressed.

I actually had to waive our usual no-pesticides policy and use surface spray all over the front door of the house, which was covered in Dipterans that would all invite themselves in if I opened the door. We usually reserve the surface spray for use on our fence energiser unit, which otherwise gets invaded by ants, who kill the electrics and have necessitated us five expensive repairs of ant damage to the unit since 2010. These days, I mark my diary to make sure the unit is sprayed every month. I also spray the vulnerable parts of our solar-electric system sitting in the shed, like the inverter and controller boxes, because the idea of ant damage in those is a nightmare, and you can bet your posterior that it's not covered by the farm insurance, even though it includes that system (theft and malicious _human_ damage only, I would think). Now that would be a long power outage and super-expensive repairs to a $30K system, and also, the company which set all that up for us no longer operates, since its owner got cancer. So we cross our fingers and hope that we don't get problems with those components.

It's nearing the end of lunchtime siesta, which is my summer pattern - work outdoors early in the day, come in for indoors work, have a lunchtime siesta with sleep, and get back to doing useful things again mid-afternoon. Yesterday I didn't wake up again until nearly 6pm, at which point Brett brought me a cup of tea and played with my feet until I was awake. He said, "It's clear you needed this sleep!" since we've had so much interrupted sleep recently with the bronchitis, which is slowly fading. There's still a tinge of it left, and it still can wake you up early - that part isn't so bad though, because I can work early - 5am is broad daylight - and then sleep after lunch.

This coming week we have no bookings (yet, it can change instantly) and I can do some more fixing-upping around the house. We want to finish our attic this summer, so I still have to do a lot of organising and rearranging of storage for that to happen. Christmas week we're booked out, including on Christmas Eve. We've blocked off Christmas Day to have that 24h to ourselves, and then it starts again. Should be interesting.


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## SueC

A bit of music... from a box set I've been getting into the last few months.





















That's just four examples of some really diverse music from this set of B-sides. :happydance:


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## lb27312

@SueC - Enjoyed the pics and the writing as usual! I think it's cool to be doing an Airbnb... have you only had the one guests? What did you think? Awkward? Were they super friendly or just wanted by themselves? That was a funny story about the bathtub, I tend to ramble and not breathe when I'm nervous.... Thanks for sharing your journal!


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## SueC

No worries, @lb27312! Writing is a strange sort of affliction with me. ;-)

The first guests were very much independent. One of them was easy to talk to and the other not. I hope they were happy. Something strange happened though. It's like the room got covered in some sort of air freshener and I can't get it out of the blankets, it's really cloying. I've been airing and airing and it just smells like a bunch of pink plastic flowers. I'm chemically sensitive and couldn't sleep in a room with artificial fragrances myself. I may have to add a clause to the house rules that says no aerosols please, other people want to breathe, and please apply bug spray outdoors if you're going to use it. It's just so hard to get those chemical factory smells out of your house, and it can cause allergies and sensitivities in other people. Who'd have imagined? Did you ever know anyone who sprayed their room with air freshener on the way out? I did hear a lot of spraying coming from the room and wondered at the time if they were really going to town on their anti-perspirant. And I mean really going to town. But now I think they were spraying artificial fragrance all over the room. :confused_color:


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## egrogan

@SueC, yes, my mother always travelled with a can of Lysol. Sigh.


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## Knave

I liked your day!

I would be so frustrated at that. I wonder if it becomes a habit with some people. You don’t smoke, so I cannot imagine they had something to cover up... unless they smoked and were hiding it...

I think I’d rather someone smoke than those terrible sprays! It makes me angry, but I think that’s my asthma talking. My girls, growing up, would often get into those types of sprays and shoot them everywhere and I would be so frustrated trying to air out the house. They liked the smell though and didn’t understand. Husband also likes those types of smells. So, really it is me being over sensitive (of course everyone hates them oversprayed except for toddler girls).

I’m not sure why we ever had them to begin with, maybe I thought they would be a good idea and then never used them because I didn’t like it... I don’t know, but finally I threw away the cans and resolved the problems. Lol. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed those smells except for the random hotel room. Some people have lovely smelling homes, but I am sure they don’t come from those stupid cans!


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## bsms

[LUCY] I think what you need most of all, Charlie Brown, is to come
right out and admit all of the things that are wrong with you.

[CHARLIE BROWN] All right, I'll try

I'm not very handsome or clever, or lucid,
I've always been stupid at spelling and numbers.
I've never been much playing football or baseball
Or stickball, or checkers, or marbles, or ping-pong

I'm usually awful at parties and dances,
I stand like a stick or I cough, or I laugh,
Or I don't bring a present, or I spill the ice cream
Or I get so depressed that I stand and I scream...
Oh, how could there possibly be
One small person as thoroughly, totally, uttlerly
Blah as me.

[LUCY] Well, that's ok for a starter.

[CHARLIE BROWN] A starter?

[LUCY] Certainly. *You don't think that mentioning these few superficial
failings is going to do you any good, do you? Why, Charlie Brown,
You really have to delve!*

You're stupid, self-centered and moody

[CHARLIE BROWN] I'm moody

[LUCY] You're terribly dull to be with

[CHARLIE BROWN] Yes I am.
And nobody likes me,
Not Frieda, or Shermy, or Linus, or Schroeder-

[LUCY] Or Lucy....

...[LUCY] For although you are no good at music,
Like Schroeder, or happy like Snoopy,
Or lovely like me,
You have the distinction to be
No one else but the singular, remarkable, unique
Charlie Brown.

[CHARLIE BROWN] I'm me!

------------------------------------​
I identified with this when we did it as a school play in the 6th grade. So much so that 50 years later, I can still quote from memory:

I'm usually awful at parties and dances,
I stand like a stick or I cough, or I laugh,
Or I don't bring a present, or I spill the ice cream
Or I get so depressed that I stand and I scream...​
But HORSES don't care if we are socially awkward. At least, I don't think so. 

Although...I do have to feed them, and Trooper still doesn't like me after 11 years of meals...:think:


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## Knave

I like that very much @bsms .


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## bsms

OK, on page two of a new book and it made me think of @SueC and this thread. Mrs Pollifax (much older than SueC) is talking with her doctor:



> He ignored that, saying very seriously, "It's terribly important for everyone, at any age, to live to his full potential. Otherwise a kind of dry rot sets in, a rust, a disintegration of personality."
> 
> "Yes," she said simply. "Yes, I agree with you wholeheartedly on that, but what is one to do? After my husband died I set out to make a very sensible life for myself - I always intended to, you see - so that I would never be a nuisance to my children. It's just that..."
> 
> "It's too sensible, perhaps?" Caught by something in her eyes that did not match the light mockery of her voice, he said, "But isn't there something you've always longed to do, something you've never had either the time or the freedom to do until now?"
> 
> Mrs. Pollifax looked at him. "When I was growing up - oh, for years - I planned to become a spy," she admitted.
> 
> The doctor threw his head back and laughed, *and Mrs. Pollifax wondered why, when she was being her most serious, people found her so amusing*...
> 
> - The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman


Another thing I identify with. So often, I'm serious and people think I'm joking, or I'm joking and people think I'm serious! But perhaps 30 or 40 years from now, SueC will decide to become an international spy...

Multiple languages? Check. Well-traveled? Check. Unconventional? Check! :winetime:

Come to think of it...I've got this mental picture of SueC & Brett riding donkeys across the Sahara after finding microfilm (does that exist any more) left behind from a BnB guest...:Angel:


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## SueC

An update on this...



SueC said:


> The first guests were very much independent. One of them was easy to talk to and the other not. I hope they were happy. Something strange happened though. It's like the room got covered in some sort of air freshener and I can't get it out of the blankets, it's really cloying. I've been airing and airing and it just smells like a bunch of pink plastic flowers. I'm chemically sensitive and couldn't sleep in a room with artificial fragrances myself. I may have to add a clause to the house rules that says no aerosols please, other people want to breathe, and please apply bug spray outdoors if you're going to use it. It's just so hard to get those chemical factory smells out of your house, and it can cause allergies and sensitivities in other people. Who'd have imagined? Did you ever know anyone who sprayed their room with air freshener on the way out? I did hear a lot of spraying coming from the room and wondered at the time if they were really going to town on their anti-perspirant. And I mean really going to town. But now I think they were spraying artificial fragrance all over the room. :confused_color:





egrogan said:


> @SueC, yes, my mother always travelled with a can of Lysol. Sigh.


Wow... :shock:




Knave said:


> I would be so frustrated at that. I wonder if it becomes a habit with some people. You don’t smoke, so I cannot imagine they had something to cover up... unless they smoked and were hiding it...


I don't think they smoked, I'd have been able to tell. And no, the room, before they used it, was ***** and span, and had nice clean air and no unpleasant smells or residues.






> I think I’d rather someone smoke than those terrible sprays! It makes me angry, but I think that’s my asthma talking


Well, I've always been sensitive to factory fragrances, perfumes etc and had to hold my breath from a young age when traversing the cleaning alleys of supermarkets, or the pesticide sections of hardware stores, or walking past the perfume counters of department stores - otherwise I'd end up with terrible headaches and nausea. I'm a sort of canary in the coalmine for stuff like this - but it's not good for anybody. _Slow Death By Rubber Duck_ was a good general-reading book on the topic - the authors experimented on themselves with exposure to things like that - as well as present a review of various studies on the topic.

I have to choose my laundry detergents with care - unscented products only, or scented with natural eucalyptus oil. Natural essential oils don't adversely affect me - it's the fake laboratory fragrances that do. I get low-irritant personal care products like hypoallergenic, unscented, pH balanced soap. I can't use scented toilet papers - on top of nausea and headache from bathroom use, it gives me instant blisters.  

It honestly never occurred to me that someone could come to a clearly advertised eco-house and spray artificial fragrances around. And that's exactly what this is: Three days of airing didn't reduce the smell an iota. As we speak, I have stripped back the (brand-new) quilt and am washing it - by hand, in the bathtub, because it is too big for my washing machine. Normally the quilts themselves just need airing on the line when the covers and sheets are washed - I wash our own quilts and comforters once or twice a year, and sheets / covers weekly. Guest quilts I'll wash more often. I wash quilts and pillows if the "sniff test" doesn't come up daisy-fresh after line airing.

When I stripped the quilt down before washing, and had a smell of it, I nearly passed out.  Instant nausea, first breath. And it's so unbelievably strong! They must have soaked the thing in the spray... and the phthalates in these formulations, apart from being harmful to people (chemically sensitive or not), also are very difficult to get out of fabrics. They are designed to stick around. I've consulted various references and am using a strong detergent solution to hopefully shift the oil-based rubbish into the wash water (poor frogs). I'm also using eucalyptus oil to hopefully dissolve some of that stuff. I'll follow with rinse after rinse in hot water, and then a cold rinse with a bit of white vinegar added...

I don't know why the guests sprayed that stuff - they didn't do it until they left, so maybe they thought it was a courtesy and they were helping out somehow. It's quite the opposite, of course. I've now added a "no aerosols / artificial fragrances" policy to our house rules. I wonder what other strange things people are going to do... I'm not sure I'm going to take guests without references again. I wouldn't want this hassle with every set of guests. Thankfully, most of the people coming have several excellent references each. That's the good thing about the system - hosts and guests both have reputations to protect. With ordinary hospitality, there's no comeback for a business unless people inflict criminal damages - no consequences for thoughtless guests. With AirBnB, guests have to agree they are happy to abide by the advertised house rules (not just the law of the land) when they book, and if they then don't do that, then that gets reported online, and other hosts are warned about the incident(s).

I like that system better, because with the "standard" system, it's the thoughtful people subsidising the thoughtless, down to the downright horrible. The fees of standard hospitality establishments reflect the amount of unnecessary work that's caused by people dragging street dirt onto carpets by not taking their street shoes off, breaking things with carelessness and rough use, frequent re-painting needed because of how some people don't care if they're knocking paintwork as long as it's not in their own house, etc. We've always, both as guests and paying guests, treated other people's places with the same care as we would our own. And a lot of people unfortunately don't do this; but people also exist who don't have very clean, tidy homes and who really don't take care anywhere they are.

This subsidising also happens when we pay insurance. We can be drivers with a clean record, and yet we are subsidising people who regularly speed, tailgate, road rage and are involved in accidents - although some insurance companies are starting to offer better rates to drivers with clean driving records. And, our home theft insurance is entirely necessitated by some people's dishonesty and lack of care about other people and their rights. Even that we have to lock our doors, cars etc is entirely down to that!

OK, time to hang the quilt on the line, four rinses later (in a drought, on a rainwater tank). Crossing my fingers that the stink is gone, or at least just subtle now...




> ...Some people have lovely smelling homes, but I am sure they don’t come from those stupid cans!


Yeah, the loveliest smells come from having a clean house (no artificial fragrances required, just like when you wash yourself properly, you don't need to cover up any stink with more, artificial, stink...), and from baking bread or some cookies!


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## SueC

@bsms, just thinking back on what was said on your journal, I think some of the main reasons a lot of human systems don't work come back down to the egocentric values of many individuals, greed for money and power, etc - as well as ignorance and apathy. These poison politics, education, you name it. Have you ever read George Orwell's _Animal Farm_? That's like what usually happens here with the Australian federal government - an opposition (and it doesn't matter which of the two major parties) will cry foul about the corrupt practices of the members of the currently governing party, ripping off taxpayers by elevating their own salaries via their mates' network of "independent" salary boards, and by having excessively large "entitlements" for on-the-job expenses, and fleecing even those beyond their own scant rules of use - e.g. Abbot, when he was PM, was claiming trips to the private weddings of his friends as "business expenses" - including luxury transport there and back, and luxury accommodation and fancy restaurant meals...when these people talk about austerity, why do they never apply it to themselves - why _should_ they feel entitled to travel first class on _our_ money etc - I think this would change pretty quick smart if they only got economy travel and had to personally pay for upgrades to more than that...but because the system stinks and this is entrenched, it's got a snowflake's chance in hell of happening...

One of the senators, instead of taking a train or a government car, took a private helicopter to attend a business meeting, and put in on _our_ tab - meaning us taxpayers, who employ these greedy parasites. And then their policies put people out of work, and they will call _these_ unfortunate people, who are just getting back some tax they paid for years when working, parasites. (The majority of people on unemployment in Australia are not welfare abusers, but our current government always tars everyone on it with that brush.) Point your finger, count how many point back at you!

Anyway, the oppositions always complain about this kind of abuse of public money, but when they get back into power, many of them do exactly that. It's true for a whole lot of unethical behaviour. _Animal Farm_ is a very accurate analogy that applies to a lot of human organisations. It's unbelievably refreshing to occasionally be working for an organisation whose principal / CEO and middle management is not currently corrupt in some way, and who actually care about the staff and general human decency. It makes a huge difference, but unfortunately isn't a state that tends to last very long.

I think we're mostly looking at a problem in ethics (and that money and power disproportionately attracts the wrong people, as well as being capable of corrupting some previously OK people) - and then, the usual philosophical problem that neither extreme opposing theories tend to be correct, because the world isn't black and white. It's so much better if there can be a broader discussion, and as with anything, people willing to modify their perspectives as additional information comes along, and willing to think about the good of the community (and love thy neighbour as thyself), not just their own advantage. ...and if the bullies don't end up running the classroom.

And just look at what's happened to Christianity... really good basic ideas (love the Sermon on the Mount) by the founder.  And in 2000 years, and starting pretty much immediately, it became the usual human circus and split into hundreds of separate organisations, many of whom claim to be the only ones who've got it "right" and look down their noses at all the others. Granted, much of it really has gone off the rails. I mean, did Jesus walk around on red carpet, or espouse hatred and hypocrisy, or grab at power and status and privilege, or cover up and enable paedophilia? (And it's not just in Catholicism, it's in many places.) And didn't he explicitly tell people to sweep their own doorsteps, thank you very much, instead of telling other people how they should live? But look how that's gone, too. The funniest thing I ever heard about religion, from the imam from the Three Interfaith Amigos (real people working for interfaith dialogue and cooperation), was something about a man who'd just "seen the light" - and then the devil said to him, "Let me organise that for you!" :rofl:


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## SueC

With all this funny business, I'm barely keeping up with journal developments. Thank you all for thoughtful and fun posts. 




bsms said:


> OK, on page two of a new book and it made me think of @SueC and this thread. Mrs Pollifax (much older than SueC) is talking with her doctor...
> 
> Another thing I identify with. So often, I'm serious and people think I'm joking, or I'm joking and people think I'm serious! But perhaps 30 or 40 years from now, SueC will decide to become an international spy...
> 
> Multiple languages? Check. Well-traveled? Check. Unconventional? Check! :winetime:


Well, thank you. :bowwdown: But I am _so_ unconventional that I don't want to be a spy... it seems like such a dirty business to me. And, I loathe James Bond... 

My favourite spy is this ex-spy who resigned - great series:






I think I've pretty much done all the secret things I've ever wanted to do, finances permitting - I mean, a lot of the things I wanted to do didn't involve spending much money. Travelling though is one thing both of us would ideally do more of; it's been nearly 10 years since we were even interstate... since we decided to go rural and all it entailed...

Maybe even donkey-trekking in the Sahara. Although that would have to be in winter, and our donkeys would rightly say, "Why go to a restaurant if you can eat better at home?" :Angel:

Anyway, one of these would be handy. :tardis:
Would solve all sorts of space / time / travel expense problems.



> Come to think of it...I've got this mental picture of SueC & Brett riding donkeys across the Sahara after finding microfilm (does that exist any more) left behind from a BnB guest...:Angel:


You're going to have to explain the microfilm reference to me, I'm afraid I'm not getting this one... sleep deprivation is not helping, I'm awfully dull today... last night we were both coughing again. Just call us The Plague House...

:music019:

PS: We both love Charlie Brown!  Lucy is such a meanie...


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## bsms

I'm showing my age with the microfilm reference. It was a staple of spy movies and novels from the mid-1900s. "_Aperture card mounted microfilm is roughly 3% of the size and space of conventional paper or vellum engineering drawings....Normally 98 document size pages fit on one fiche, reducing to about 0.25% original material. When compared to filing paper, microforms can reduce space storage requirements by up to 95%._"

The Wiki article says it was first used for the military in 1870, far earlier than I would have guessed. But in a spy novel from 1950, say, some innocent person would find himself in trouble, and it would would turn out a spy had stayed at their place and accidentally left a can of shaving cream that had microfilm inside. How ANY spy could survive if they were that stupid was never explained, but it would set up the predicament of the hero/heroine. Microdots were also popular.

I used it regularly in college in the 70s. If I wanted a copy of some journal from 1897, it would be on microfilm and I'd view it in the microfilm room.

Never liked the Bond series. Over the years I've seen a number. From Russia With Love was the only watchable one for me. Like many other movies, the CGI has turned them from boring into excruciating. Mrs Pollifax turned into several novels written in the 60s, so it may have microfilm or microdots in it. Haven't gotten past the first chapter yet, but my last class finished last night. Was hoping to ride Bandit today. Of course, as of now (sunrise) the wind is howling and I'm going to go feed them pelleted hay because real hay would blow away in 2 minutes.

Regarding human organizations...even Jesus pointed out there would be believers and non-believers mixed together in a church. That is true everywhere I think. People who genuinely believe in a cause or purpose, and warped people there only for their own gain of power. Our pastor makes $24K/year. He is utterly sincere, which puts him in the top 50% of pastors I've met. A sad statement. Many get involved in politics from good motives. And many do it for the power to rule others. My own politics increasingly agrees with the statement, "_Left wing. Right wing. One buzzard._" I recently read a book on political corruption and how to legally become filthy rich as a politician. Lots of examples from both parties.

I told the ethics teacher that I thought ethics were largely unteachable. One can teach those who want to behave ethically but one cannot teach the ones who do the most damage - the ones who view their fellow humans as prey. Whatever else our faults, my family on both of my parents sides were very open and honest. You always knew where you stood with any of them because they would tell you to your face. Growing up like that makes it hard for me to understand that other people around me are trying to take advantage or manipulate others.


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## Knave

I have looked through much microfilm believe it or not! Looking through the old records for relevant information for court cases and legal work, many of the counties in our area had everything microfilmed when that was a thing. Now there are companies who come in and create computer documents. This is all fine and dandy, but going through and redacting all of the necessary pieces for the public copy was a never ending pile of busy work...


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## SueC

I will be back later for more sensible discourse, but I had another gap to fill in my paper journal, and so....

:music019: :music019: :music019: :music019: :music019: :music019:


*A STRANGE FARMSTAY EXPERIENCE*

From Canada came two young women
One was dark and one was fair
To be our first two farmstay guests
The front guest room to be their lair

The atmosphere was strangely awkward
Yet they were quite polite and clean
Every morning they went off exploring
Not till nightfall to be seen

Our South Coast is spiffingly splendid
And the sand most snowy white
Waters of azure forever beckon
And their coolness doth invite

Many international swimmers
To frolic in the surf carefree
And on their last night in our house
The girls accepted a cup of tea

After never appearing at table
For breakfast, ice-cream or anything else
To their credit they were clean and tidy
But left us steeped in artificial smells!


:music019: :music019: :music019: :music019: :music019: :music019:


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## lb27312

Nice poem @SueC! Sorry to hear about the first experience!! I'm another that can't do the artificial smells.... I would like to know their reason for doing that... 

I love the Sermon on the Mount! When I went to Israel I went to The Mount of Beatitudes... sooo pretty and to stand where He SUPPOSEDLY(because really do we know?) gave the sermon and fed the masses was pretty spiritual... but I agree on the pompousness of it all. Still like to go to Midnight Mass...


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## Knave

What an amazing experience that must have been @lb27312 !! I too will admit that religion can get off track, and that this can confuse me, but I still love Jesus. I try and read my Bible and have faith, and I do go to church but not in a legalistic way I hope. Well, I do miss a lot of church too, but I try and not think of it in a legalistic way is what I mean.


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## bsms

Artificial smells don't bother me. My wife gets a rash. Finding a hotel room that DOESN'T give her a rash can be a challenge! Enjoyed the poem. My wife has thought about taking guests but I can't imagine it working well for us. I think I'd freak. Not a fan of strange people, even when the strange people are normal...


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## SueC

I think it's especially problematic when the strange people are also normal! :rofl:

I don't know what's gotten into me with these silly rhymes. Probably too much Hillaire Belloc's _Cautionary Verses For Children_:

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/rebecca/

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/george/

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/jim/

This man is the absolute master of silly rhyme. 

@bsms, I think you might particularly enjoy this one, not from the above collection:

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-microbe-2/

He was a very interesting individual:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/hilaire-belloc

...I see there is a lot of interesting conversation to be had here, with recent posts I really want to reply to!  But alas, I worked long today, then trimmed Sunsmart's hooves and took him for a ride (in which we ended up with a lot of racing cows in front of us at the neighbour's place - I was quite amazed at the speed one cow maintained for such a rotund critter - she was like a sphere on four legs, from behind! - they had all been startled, and happened to be between us and the gate we were heading back to - and this one cow, who had stopped and stared the longest, was cantering away industriously while my horse followed her with his floaty fast trot). By this time it was dark, and I baked some flatbreads to go with lamb and tabbouleh sourced mostly from the garden, and made an apple/berry/cinnamon cake for our breakfast for Brett's day off, and we are quite replete and ready to go: :ZZZ::ZZZ:

I hope everyone has a marvellous day.  

Australia, today, unfortunately broke its hottest day record, with an average maximum temperature of 40.9 degrees C (105.6 F) across the continent today. The heatwave we had a couple of days back is now moving across the rest of the country. We got to around 35 degrees C here in the afternoon. I expect some inland places went above 50 degrees C. The fact that a _coastal_ town in South Australia called Ceduna got to 46.5 degrees C (115,7 F) today is head-spinning; we've been there, it's a tiny town right on the ocean front... :dance-smiley05:

https://www.eldersweather.com.au/news/australias-hottest-day-on-record/530716


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## egrogan

Haha, @SueC, I try to stay in "traditional" B&Bs or AirBnBs as much as I can when I'm traveling as I hate supporting the big conglomerate hotel chains and their horrible treatment of workers, but even though "breakfast" is built into the concept, I rarely eat the host-provided meal. I'm not a big breakfast eater and would much rather find a local coffee roaster for a good coffee and some sort of pastry than sit down for a big morning meal. I also usually want to avoid the small talk with the host, as nice as they usually are :hide:


Sorry about your weather, heard that on our national news this morning. The world is a scary place right now. Reminds me again I'm glad not to have children.


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## SueC

*SOME ACTUAL HORSE AND DONKEY PHOTOS!*

...it's been a long time since I posted any photos of our four-legs, so I took the camera around at feedtime last night and clicked away. This is the zoo at feeding time. Well, some of it - cattle, monkeys and dog eat separately... :Angel:

Photo 1: Left to right: Julian, Chasseur (background), Don Quixote (with Benjamin concealed behind him), Sparkle (background), Nelly (with Mary Lou behind her).

Photo 2: Mary Lou, Nelly, Benjamin, Don Quixote, Julian.

Photo 3: Chasseur (28, and our oldest horse now)

Photo 4: Sparkle and Chasseur in foreground

Photo 5: Sunsmart's backside (especially for @Knave)

...and from that you can work out the others!


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## SueC

...two more...

Photo 11: Sparkle

Photo 12: Chasseur & Julian


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## Knave

I love the donkey pictures the most!


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## SueC

Haha, it's funny, that, isn't it?  The donkeys always draw the eye and get the _aaaaawwww_ sounds from the people looking... must be those long bunny ears... and just their general donkeyness...


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## egrogan

Grrrr my internet has been horrible as of late (so many tourists in town!) and I am missing out on donkey cuteness since I can’t get the pictures to load. I’ll just have to close my eyes and imagine their glorious ears!


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## knightrider

@SueC, which donkey is your favorite? Or do you have certain favorites for certain features?


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## SueC

I think Brett puts it best, @knightrider - when we had just three donkeys, he used to say, "Mary Lou, you're the Number 1 donkey; Don Quixote, you're my favourite donkey; and Sparkle, you're the best donkey in the whole world!" ...it is impossible to favour any of them, they are all adorable in different ways. It's like choosing between Profiteroles or Blackforest Cake or French Provencial Chocolate Cake or Raspberry/Rhubarb Tart, for me - they are all A+ excellent and it is impossible for me to prefer one above the other, I want all of them, preferably at the same time! 

@egrogan, we get that on school holidays here. You have our sympathy. I'm sure you can catch up after the holidays! inkunicorn: Hope you're not buried in ice and snow. I'll have to pop over and look, it's been unbelievable busy here with guests two weeks flat and for another week, but current guests are out and I get a breather at the moment! 

I will write an update from that missing fortnight in the journal later! :gallop:


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## SueC

*JUGGLING*

I've been trying to get a little gap for writing a journal update all day. This morning I was feeding home-made hazelnut-honey cluster muesli to guests before giving them a farm tour that lasted most of the morning. When they left to go sight-seeing on the coast, I started juggling.

I was a little late for the milk delivery after that little tour, so the three 3L bottles in the mailbox were lukewarm by the time I got to them. With no further ado I went into the house and made a batch of cheese using one of the bottles, and the remainder of the bottle we had in the fridge. The other two will last another five days or so and if any milk starts to go on the turn, you can always make it into cottage cheese if you catch that early - and I do catch it early, I can tell before most other people when milk is about to go on the turn.

I've been making cottage cheese since I was a teenager with a goat. You simply put the milk in a saucepan with a bit of lemon juice or white vinegar, and start heating it. The combination of heat and acid causes the proteins to come out of solution - in biochemistry language - in normal talk we say it causes curds to form and to separate from the whey.

While that was happening, I put on some bread - I often juggle several things in the kitchen - and heated up some vegetable soup for my lunch. I'm shifting sprinklers around ever 15-40 minutes during daytime, to keep the garden, vegetable garden, and small utility areas where the horses and donkeys have their hard feeds reasonable green and under vegetation cover so the soil doesn't erode. The dog's sofa cover was dirty and it's in the washing machine right now. I'm also supervising the three yearling steers I've let into the lower section of our garden so they can get some green grass (we're in drought) and I don't have to mow. Win-win. They're still quite small, under 250kg, about like our bigger donkeys. The 2yo Friesian steers are like bulldozers, easily 700kg each already, and you can't let them anywhere near a garden, or polybraid fencing when they get that big. They're supposed to go off to market, but because of the drought, the butchers are oversupplied and prices are therefore depressed, so we're holding them a little longer. We have maybe three weeks of pasture left for them unless it rains.

Then drought is really bad. We've had just over 400mm of rain this year so far with one day to go, and usually we should get 750-800mm here. The last decent rain fell in late September. The farmland looks like February. Usually this place is still green at Christmas. The honey harvest is just enough for us and a few friends, because the eucalypts can't flower properly with this little rain. Last year we had zero honey - that was also a drought year - the bees made just enough for themselves, to stay alive. Usually a hive will make 20kg of honey a week during peak eucalyptus blossom, which can go on for six weeks - and with four hives, that's a lot of honey. Our honey usually makes us more pocket money than our cattle do. We're not dependent on our farm to survive financially as both of us work part-time for an off-farm income as well - Brett does four days a week administration support for a local medical practice, I write for a couple of independent magazines at the moment and am also doing the farmstay trial we've just started this month.

The bushfires over East are heartbreaking. 5 million hectares of bushland burnt black with over 90% of the animals in it wiped out. The beekeeper's association told us they are trauma counselling young apiarists going into forests to check if any hives survived, because of the terrible sounds of burnt, dying animals in those forests - koalas, kangaroos, emus, wallabies, and lots of smaller things that can't make noises as they lie on the ground waiting for a slow death. It is so horrible I can't bear to think about it - millions and millions of animals in that situation. It's bad enough when they have to go around shooting burnt cattle, horses, sheep etc after a wildfire runs through agricultural areas - but with the wildlife, there's not enough resources to put them out of their misery, and the ones that didn't die immediately are dying slowly of their burns and wounds, and inability to eat anymore, even if there was food. I've never known anything sadder than this.

All we can do is try to protect our own patch. Brett has been in the volunteer bushfire brigade since age 13 and had a lot of involvement in mosaic-style preventative burning, and also in fighting emergency wildfires, up in the Perth Hills, where he grew up and lived close to until we got married in 2008 - after which he moved to the South Coast because he loved it here. Our local brigade doesn't believe in doing much preventative work - it's an odd one out; neighbouring brigades do a lot more. Our community firetruck sits in the fire shed for months on end during autumn and winter, when preventative work is best done and the bush recovers best and there aren't young animals in nests. They only seem to believe in taking it out when there is a wildfire. The rest of the time the >$100,000 truck just sits there. It's quite scandalous, and Bill, who's 84 and used to do a lot of fire management in our area when he was a young person, is disgusted, as are we. Aboriginal people firestick farmed this country for 30,000 years, and Europeans are just neglecting this since they've pushed the indigenous people off this land 200 years ago.

This morning I was showing our visitors our 50ha conservation reserve, showing them what various types of vegetation look like various numbers of years after cool burning, or hot burning (previously neglected areas). They could see how operating in a mosaic fashion allows a patchwork of vegetation of various ages to exist side-by-side: Green lush regrowth next to old-growth patches full of nesting holes for possums and cockatoos in the trees and dense scrub for little birds, protected by the low fuel load regrowth around it. Autumn burning in patches that are small enough so that most of the animals can escape into adjacent areas, and when the rain falls later in autumn, a flush of regrowth there that the wildlifes like to feed on. If you burn just as the first rain comes in for the autumn, the ash doesn't get blown away by the wind, but stays to fertilise the regrowth that can't occur without water. If you spring burn in our climate, you burn when young are in their nests and burn them in their nests, and the burnt land lies bare over the whole of summer, with the ash blown away and weed seeds blown in, and it's half a year before any regrowth can start. With autumn burning, it's immediate.

It's just what the indigenous people did. Our visitors were amazed that Brett and I work on foot to do this mosaic burning, and use hand rakes to control the fire - and obviously, firebreaks, and right timing - wind direction, moisture levels, dew at night etc. The indigenous people did this work barefoot...

We love our bushland with a passion. It's a leftover piece of Gondwana, never cleared, lineages millions of years old.



Sue and Jess on Fireground Patrol 2018 – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

The story of a burn we did and photos here:

Burning Days ? Sue Coulstock

More photos here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/albums/72157687658557055

And an article on what we do and why:


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## SueC

..and because of all the juggling, I missed the editing window and have to leave a couple of typos in there, harumph! :evil:


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## egrogan

Sue, something about your description of the wildlife suffering in the aftermath of the fires makes me so sick to my stomach with grief. Of course so does the human and farm loss, but I don’t know, it’s just something about how natural habitats are so deeply impacted by our disregard for climate change that is painful in a different way.


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## carshon

I am coming back later to read your article (at work now - and dealing with end of the year last ditch promotional efforts) but your description of the wildlife dying has me in tears. I cannot even fathom entering any place and hearing the sound of animals dying a tortured painful death. My heart breaks for all of Australia. Not to bring this to politics but I cannot fathom how anyone can say that global warming is not real. The weather has become so extreme and those that deny those changes are sentencing us all to a bleak future.


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## Knave

I look at global warming differently, but there is no need to call me crazy. 

I have seen the aftermath of fires before though. Our range burned one year, along with many others. We walked every canyon to take pictures of the dead cattle for insurance. The wildlife also died. 

I cannot imagine the suffering animals. I have no doubt that had we seen any alive we would have put them out of that misery.


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## Caledonian

It's shocking to see the devastation on the news and you know that the reality is far worse, as we're seeing the images acceptable for tv. I can't imagine how badly the wildlife is suffering and it'll take years for numbers to recover. That is, if they ever do, as these fires seem to be getting worse every year. They had a little burned wallaby on this morning. 

Equally, it must be terrible for the people to lose their homes and possessions but they have a better chance of escaping and rebuilding their lives.

I think the most frightening thing was Victoria Emergency saying that is too late to leave and to take shelter indoors! They had no idea whether the fire was going to destroy everything or pass by.

I see that the fires are creating weather and lightening which is adding to the danger.

It's such a shame that they don't listen to and learn from the Aboriginals.


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## bsms

The benefits of controlled burning have been known for decades. When I took range management classes in 1980, it was an accepted technique - but also dying out. The legal ramifications if a burn went out of control were making it risky. Controlled burns now are VERY controlled, and yet much of the west needs large burns.

Those burns have been and always will be devastating for wildlife. Without lots of small burns, you get fuel built up for a big burn. But even a successful small burn can be brutal on wildlife and the photos can then be used to stop future burns.

FWIW, I'm a skeptic on human-caused global warming. I don't think I'm stupid. We don't have quality data covering the world - like Siberia, the Yukon, the Amazon and much of the ocean surface - going back 100 years. And 100 years isn't squat to the earth. What I think is clear is that massive changes have taken places over vast time scales, with dramatic results:



> *In the middle of eastern Washington, in a desert that gets less than eight inches of rain a year, stands what was once the largest waterfall in the world. It is three miles wide and 400 feet high*—ten times the size of Niagara Falls—with plunge pools at its base suggesting the erosive power of an immense flow of water. Today there is not so much as a trickle running over the cataract’s lip. It is completely dry....
> 
> ...Their source? A giant ice-age lake—Glacial Lake Missoula—that formed when the Cordilleran ice sheet progressed south and blocked the Clark Fork river valley, *forming a dam of ice 2,000 feet high.*
> 
> Behind that dam, water from the Clark Fork gathered, forming a lake with as much water as Lake Erie and Lake Ontario combined, stretching for hundreds of miles in Montana’s mountainous river valleys. Then the dam broke, and a torrent of water with ten times the combined flow of all the world’s rivers barreled into eastern Washington, reaching speeds approaching 80 miles an hour, decimating the terrain and leaving giant current ripples and gravel bars in its wake....
> 
> ...Bretz’s arch-adversary, Richard Foster Flint, a Yale geologist who remained a premier authority in the field until the 1970s, spent years studying the scablands and resisted Bretz’s theory until he was virtually the only one left who did. He finally acknowledged the scablands flooding (grudgingly, with a single sentence in a textbook in 1971), *but as philosopher Thomas Kuhn observed, new scientific truths often win the day not so much because opponents change their minds, but because they die off.* By the time the Geological Society of America finally recognized Bretz’s work with the Penrose Medal, the field’s highest honor, it was 1979 and Bretz was 96 years old. He joked to his son, “All my enemies are dead, so I have no one to gloat over.”...
> 
> https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/03/channeled-scablands
> 
> Also: The Columbia River - Missoula Floods





> *The prehistoric sediments showed that there were two periods of elevated intense hurricane activity on Cape Cod – from 150 to 1150 and 1400 to 1675.* The earlier period of powerful hurricane activity matched previous studies that found evidence of high hurricane activity during the same period in more southerly areas of the western North Atlantic Ocean basin – from the Caribbean to the Gulf Coast. The new study suggests that many powerful storms spawned in the tropical Atlantic between 250 and 1150 also battered the US East Coast.
> 
> https://www.whoi.edu/press-room/news-release/prehistoric-hurricanes/





> *Hurricane activity was generally low along the Gulf coast between 5,000 and 3,800 years ago and during the most recent millennium.* During these two relatively quiet periods, each site was directly hit by catastrophic hurricanes only once every 1,000 years, equivalent to a landfall probability of 0.1 percent per year. However, in sediments laid down from 3,800 to 1,000 years ago, all the Gulf coast sites contain multiple sand layers, suggesting that this was a time of relatively high hurricane activity. During this hyperactive period, each site was visited by catastrophic hurricanes as often as once every 200 years, giving a landfall probability of 0.5 percent per year.
> 
> *The good news, in a way, is that we are living in an era of relative calm. But the bad news is that the climate system is capable of delivering a lot more catastrophic hurricanes than what the Gulf coast has witnessed during the past 150 years.*
> 
> https://www.americanscientist.org/article/uncovering-prehistoric-hurricane-activity


The Earth had dramatic changes going on when man was trivial. I expect future changes will happen, and those changes may be more extreme than any of us can imagine. We might be able to put our thumb on the scale and hasten or delay global change for a small amount of time, but I think the Earth will go on doing its thing - as it did before we were more than a pimple on Earth's butt. And maybe that is a good thing.


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## SueC

Well, personally I think the science on this is as crystal clear as the science that evolution is a real process - and I'm an environmental scientist / biologist and very critical thinker. We do definitely have the data on this. We have a lot of deniers in Australia (mostly on the political right and tied in with the status quo of coal and fossil fuel production), who like to say that Australia always had floods, heatwaves, wildfires etc. But, Australia didn't always have floods, heatwaves and wildfires _like this_ - we're breaking records every year now, and the current fire is historically unprecedented. There's lack of management in the mix as well, which I write about for various outlets, but the forests have also never been as dry as this, and things are burning that have never historically burnt before, like rainforest...

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas (fact), and we're raising its atmospheric concentration (fact), and this causes a warming trend - that's the bare basics of it. (And not the whole thing, just the bare basics.) And it's so unnecessary to do it, because the alternative technology is already there. It just doesn't suit the people getting rich off the old way of doing things. Even if you weren't _sure_ of the science, this isn't a risk that ought to be gambled on. But, I'm sure of the science here, as I am of the science re evolution, thermodynamics etc.

And the fact that there have been massive extinction events before doesn't mean it's OK for us to be causing one. This is our life support system, as well as that of every other species on earth with us. It's like saying I don't care if anyone kills anyone because we're all going to die one day anyway so what does it matter.


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## SueC

And now I am going to change the topic, because I don't want to use my horse journal to get into political debates (this really isn't about science, IMO). If anyone wishes to have a debate on that topic, you can continue it on your own journals and I may or may not chime in. In general, I think debates on this topic are fruitless, as they are on evolution vs young-earth creation, so I no longer get into these debates. What other people want to believe doesn't bother me and I have no interest in changing anyone's point of view. I have far better things to do with my time - which I wish to spend productively in general, and online, having friendly exchanges with other people. I care about you all as human beings, and that's why I continue to come here. We don't need to all believe the same things.


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## egrogan

Sorry I brought it up Sue... :sad:


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Sorry I brought it up Sue... :sad:


No, this wasn't specifically addressed at you, @egrogan. :hug: It's just that I've seen how this topic goes so many times that I have no wish to engage in that on my own journal. I'd prefer to talk about things we all have in common, and there's plenty there. :gallop::gallop::gallop:


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## lb27312

yay on the new guests! I hope these work out better! Nice on you giving them a tour of your farm.... I bet they thoroughly enjoyed it!

Did the last ones read a review? Just curious... I bet your farm will take off and become populare! And you will fill up soon!


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## lb27312

I meant to say LEAVE a review.... sorry


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## SueC

*THE FARMSTAY EXPERIMENT*

Well, I'm exhausted, because we've been booked flat for three weeks and I've not even been able to go to town grocery shopping; Brett brings it all home for me on the way back from work at the moment. The exhaustion is partly from still convalescing from the long period of illness, and not being entirely rid of the thing that caused us to have bronchitis.

Last night was a horror night; this still happens every now and then. You go to bed and the moment you get horizontal, you start gagging and your throat catches and you can't swallow properly, and you're coughing to clear your airway and then things get stuck and you struggle to breathe until you clear out this horrible gunk.  I don't have a temperature, it's not an acute infection anymore, it's a hangover sitting somewhere - no longer in my lungs. This goes on for hours and then you just don't sleep properly. Some nights are fine now, and some revert to this. In part it's that I've got nerve damage to one of the vocal cord nerves, which always makes me super susceptible to airway reactions.

Having said that - Brett has now met several people who had the same nasty symptoms we've had, and some of them have been to hospital emergency repeatedly and been put on oxygen for a while. Another has ended up progressing to pneumonia. We've come away more lightly from this than some other people, but it's still exhausting. I'm longing for 24h to myself, but it's peak season and we keep getting requests, and while I'm thinking about turning down unreviewed people, I'm not turning down people with 5-star reviews who write to tell me how much they look forward to seeing the farm and the animals...

After the original guests and the artificial fragrance incident, we had a string of unbelievably nice, sociable people stay with us whom it was a complete pleasure to host. I was thoroughly spoilt, because at the moment we have some people staying who aren't nearly as good at treating our home with respect, or communicating with us. It is ungood when people leave pee on a toilet seat, especially when they are sharing that toilet with other guests, or when they don't close the lid on the compost toilet, which has a clear label on the inside of the lid saying to close it, or if they leave their belongings in the common areas where they interfere with other people's activities and the general tidy appearance of our place, and it's awkward when you have to put these things back in their room when they are out, because I generally will respect the space of guests and treat the rooms as theirs for the time they've booked it, and don't like to go in. Brett had to, last night, because they left the windows wide open and it got very cold after sunset, and they were going to come back to a freezer to sleep in otherwise.

So it's time to revise the house rules list, and to think about having preliminary talks on house rules with people who aren't reviewed, and to be a bit stricter about our expectations, since we're a private home, not a hotel, and we don't charge the sorts of rates you would charge people you have to clean up after during their stay, or stay up late for. We depend on people to be courteous, clean, tidy, and respectful of the facilities and people here. I think more than anything, I'm going to have to PM back and forth with people a bit more before accepting a booking, to try to suss out their attitude better.

We are occasionally going to have difficult guests regardless of the filtering, and I need to be prepared for that. People can be lovely to talk to and still want to take a mile if you offer an inch of leeway, or be disrespectful of other people with their actions, probably without being aware of it. Much of it is cultural - Australian/UK cultures are far less clean and tidy on the whole than Japanese, German etc, and that's why I was never happy in a houseshare with Australian males (notorious for bucking housework and acting as if women exist to clean up after them or live with their mess, whether their mothers, girlfriends, housemates or co-workers).

On the whole though, we've had a really above-expectations experience with hosting people at our place. It's been a _delight_ dealing with most of them, and that was not how I expected it to be - I guess the Airbnb community has a big thing about reputation and reviews, for hosts and guests alike. This means reviewed people come with references as to how they treated places and people, and bad eggs shape up or drop out of the community.

@lb27312, we did have reviews - so far they're all 5-star, but sooner or later someone is going to be disgruntled, I'm sure, because we're a very unusual place and also we have really high standards for how people treat our home - but here they are:

https://www.airbnb.com.au/users/show/304780036

Also, someone just mailed in a lovely photo they took at our place and wrote me, "It was definitely my best Airbnb experience so far for this 8years!!" :happydance: Now that's lovely, but I bet you our current guests won't think that, because to have a great experience takes both sides doing their bit... I'll attach the photo below... great shot!

One of my guests so far came on their own, and when that happens, I try to be extra available and offer to include them in various activities like walks, movies, or any farm tasks they would like to see. So I ended up going on a magnificent 16km coastal walk with this fabulous guest last weekend, and watching a Japanese movie together, and I offered her a dink on my horse - something I wouldn't offer most people, guests or otherwise - I have pretty strict criteria on who gets to have a pony ride, because I wouldn't inflict some people on my horse, and because I have _personal_ legal responsibility if anyone gets hurt. When I meet a person who is suitable, I offer. This one I saw was fabulous with the dog and donkeys, loves wildlife, volunteers for a bird conservation group, had a very positive attitude and was fit and flexible enough to put on a horse without stressing about it. And she did amazingly on the horse, and had a fantastic experience - first horse ride! (She'd ridden a camel before. )

So what I generally do with complete beginners I let on my horse is to walk the horse around our farm's bushland tracks with them - I'm leading the horse, the rider has a saddle and reins but doesn't have to worry about the reins. Sunsmart is a total pro at giving rides like this, and in that walkaround situation I can talk to horse and rider, and show people how to put the horse at ease, and help out if there's a little leap sideways at something - and there's generally a tiny startle on each ride (not generally a sideways leap, just a "hello!" type bump, you know the ones) because once in a dozen times, my horse will react to something rustling in the bushes. Then after that, we can de-brief on how that felt, and why horses do that, and people usually feel really brave and pleased with themselves after that. 

I've got a couple of lovely photos to attach:

1) Miko's shot of "horse meet & greet" - with me in my sunhat bwahaha. :rofl: Julian is shy and wisely keeping in the background - he's our newest arrival (2 years) and I'm not riding him yet, so I expect he will be less nervous of human interactions when he gets into that one of these days... I have to watch Julian around people, because I think he'd be capable of kicking out to protect his herd (he's herd boss) if he got the wrong idea (and he's super sensitive). I always stay between him and other people, and send him to the back of the scenario if he starts interfering with the meet & greet.

2) Eileen's shot of Brett with Benjamin that she mailed in - so cute!

3) ...and one she took of the horses and me in the garden...

4) ...and a crazy shot of us doing the 16km Bald Head peninsula walk together, which she also mailed in!


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## Knave

As we’ve said before it is great that we can have opposing beliefs and yet still have respect and friendship. There are too many people who are unable to find that. I personally enjoy our differing perspectives. That is the interesting part of being alive.

That said, I also completely agree with not hashing them out.  I am an avoider of all political type debates. The thing is, often we have our opinions set on something. What I mean is, respectfully I would be able to argue for my religion vs another, but often anyone willing to argue over such things has their opinion well made and reasoned. It seems then to be a pointless practice even when done perfectly respectfully. Because, if we are totally honest, often we are not easy to budge. I guess some enjoy the debate, but I am too nervous a person for such things. 

(I hope this does not come off as sticking to the subject, as that isn’t my intention. It only is to give my appreciation to the group of people who visit Sue’s journal. Of course especially @SueC herself.)


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## Knave

The thing I find utterly surprising is that you charge less than a motel! I would have assumed you charged much more. I have never stayed at a bnb though. It just seemed an expensive proposition...

I will also say: I once was a maid at a motel. Not a fancy one. I spent much of my time pretending to not speak English after the first week. It wasn’t that I wouldn’t have loved to help with issues, but oddly guests often followed me around as I went about my day. They were also very odd, and many were extremely dirty. One woman used the closet for a toilet many times... it was more difficult that one would imagine just cleaning rooms used for a night!


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## SueC

It usually is an expensive proposition, @Knave - but this is Airbnb, and not official tourist accommodation, which to be registered, we couldn't afford to do with all its fees, inspections and demands for expensive facilties etc - I wouldn't be allowed to keep my timber kitchen, we'd have to build a disabled toilet/shower/accommodation block on top of our existing rooms, fence the farm dams so children don't drown in them (and how would our cattle drink??? - and as Brett says, the farm dams _are_ fenced - as they are in a fenced paddock people don't have access to on their own... but the regulators wouldn't like that etc). Just stuff like that, which would cost so much it would more than double the price if you jumped those hoops, so we're not running as official holiday accommodation, just as Airbnb, which is what a few of our friends do as well. It's an experiment at hosting within a specific community, rather than being open as a standard accommodation business. And I'll see how that goes. So far, I'd have 80% of the people we've had back no questions asked. We'll see how that percentage holds up.

If I had people like those you described, I'd totally have conniptions. They'd be reviewed accordingly and not recommended to the hosting community.

And I completely agree with the sentiments you expressed in your first post! :hug:


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## Knave

Oh, I didn’t know the difference!


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## SueC

Well, it's a contentious difference, like Uber taxis etc. A lot of authorities around the world try to shut down Airbnb, or make hosts stick to regulations intended for hotels with big turnovers which small people really can't do...and that, we suspect, is the prime reason some local governments want to impose the same rules for facilities offered on big and small operators alike - so the people on the town councils who own the hotels and motels don't have to suffer competition and get to keep their expensive monopoly - but it's funny how nobody insists every hotel offer donkey experiences for their guests, yet they insist on all sorts of esoteric other things that everyone is supposed to offer. With Airbnb, it takes things back to a more sensible platform, where respect and reputation matter on _both_ sides, and where people who book are aware of what you do and do not offer, because they have to read that before booking - and are also aware of what your expectations are re the behaviour of your guests, which is where it's very much different from running a standard accommodation business. If you can filter to get mostly clean, respectful people, you don't have all the hassle that standard accomodation providers have (and they have to pass the costs of irresponsible guests on to everyone across the board, which is really unfair to both hosts and responsible guests).

I decided to do a trial period with Airbnb because I think what they are trying to create is more fair and honourable that the standard way our society operates, which is to stoop to the lowest common denominators, and make everyone else pay for it - amongst other things... It's a people power, alternative community type thing, that you can become part of, and it's far more how things used to be, before we were ruled by big business and regulations which don't allow free market participation by small players...


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## Knave

I am glad there is still the option. I am so sick of over regulation. It seems that no one even realizes anymore that they are regulated... it is an expectation of rules and even an emotional need for them. I personally very much dislike being told what to do. Maybe it is because I rarely object, and so I find such limitations in them. I see people fight tooth and nail to keep them too! It’s crazy. Then they feel rules need to continue to be made to such an extreme way to make sure no variation is possible, and people no longer have responsibility...


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## bsms

In the US, you can rent out rooms for 14 days without becoming a business. Once folks stay more than that, the IRS will assume you are a business and you have to file a business tax return. The nice thing is you don't even have to report the income if you keep it at 14 days or less. Hit 15 days, though, and you'd better track all expenses involved or the IRS will assume it is 100% profit.

I was recently reading a book on real estate taxes...yeah, weird. But it pointed out that many of the rules came about because people were gaming the system to avoid paying taxes on income or even to launder criminal money. In defense of the government, it cannot assume people are making a good faith effort to be honest or reasonable because a significant minority are not.

OTOH, reading a book about the beef industry in the US...yeah, weird...many of the regulations seemed focused on preventing small players from competing with big money. Like many political or semi-political issues, I don't know the answer.


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## egrogan

Sue, I'm loving reading about your foray into Airbnb. When we bought this house, I definitely thought it could allow us to incorporate Airbnb into our lifestyle. Around here, there are actually several horse-friendly places offered on Airbnb that cater to the competitive folks who come to our local horsepark every weekend from June through roughly October. I think in those months, it might be lucrative enough to cover a significant chunk of the mortgage for us. The way the house is set up, our current bedroom is actually an addition on the house that was created for the elderly couple who previously lived here- it was nicely done, with a nice big bathroom (which actually is disability-friendly because of the needs of the couple) and a cozy woodstove. Our thought was that once we move our bedroom into the renovated upstairs, we'd add a small kitchnette to the addition. I have dreams of leaving a carton of eggs from the girls in the kitchen for all the guests :chicken: We'd physically close it off from the main house (would be easy to do, just one narrow hallway/door to reconfigure)- then it would essentially be a private apartment that could easily fit a couple of people. It even has its own separate outdoor entrance so could be really private. So...that's part of the plan. Probably at least a year, if not more realistically, two years, away from being able to do that with all the other projects that are ahead of it in line. But it's fun to hear about your experience and that fact that you do have more control over filtering your guests than I expected. That makes it even more appealing.


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## SueC

bsms said:


> In the US, you can rent out rooms for 14 days without becoming a business. Once folks stay more than that, the IRS will assume you are a business and you have to file a business tax return. The nice thing is you don't even have to report the income if you keep it at 14 days or less. Hit 15 days, though, and you'd better track all expenses involved or the IRS will assume it is 100% profit.


That's interesting - here you can rent out rooms to locals without that becoming a business, for however long you want to, although you do have to declare it as income on your Personal Income Tax Return.

Renting out to non-locals is considered by many local governments to be operating an accommodation business, and they want to regulate it the same as hotels, which I disagree with, because my interpretation of a free market is that you should be able to offer alternatives instead of everyone having to copy the big-business hotel formula... and that's what Airbnb tries to do, as a community. Guests are informed of exactly what you offer so make an informed choice, but the local governments want to foist regulations for expensive facilities on us that hotels have, and private homes do not (IMO in order primarily to be able to uphold the big-business monopoly, because small players can't afford those facilities, and if you take out a loan to do it, it doubles the rates you have to charge guests who actually, in the case of our guests, don't want or need the "compulsory" facilities and come because of the unique facilities we do offer, like an eco-house, donkeys, permaculture, wildlife etc etc).

We're a registered primary production business and have a non-primary production income stream option for that business under our business structure, so we run the income under that option. Our Tax Department doesn't care that the local governments are trying to close down Airbnb; they don't get involved with that side of things and only care that you declare your income, which we do.

One thing I'm going to have to work out is how to separate the farmstay income from the general farm income to make that my income, under the Personal Income Tax Return. We're a 50/50 partnership so we've been splitting losses and incomes down the middle for declaration on the Personal Income Tax Returns (this is how it works here), but unlike the cattle, honey and vegetables, the farmstay side is my baby and my job and is therefore, ethically, my income. I've been talking to the ATO to figure out how to do that - because there has to be a way to do that... instead of them assuming half of it is my husband's income as well, which wouldn't be fair (and he'd get taxed extra on it compared to me, because I'm the stay-at-home person and he's working off-farm 4 days a week).

So that's what I'm going to be busy arranging this New Year, when I get hold of the specialist section of the ATO - they don't have that information on their website, and we don't use an accountant, since I had to resubmit the first three sets of tax returns done by an accountant a couple of years ago when I discovered he had made huge mistakes in them. I learnt a lot about tax law, and am now doing our own accounting and business tax, although I hate it. But why pay someone else to do it if they're going to get it wrong. I'm not going to get it nearly as wrong as the accountant did :evil: and the buck stops with me anyway, legally, not with any accountant I hire, so I may as well not hire one... I always used to do my own tax anyway, before we started the business. This was just so much more complicated, and I don't wish it on anyone, but it was something that simply had to be done, like cleaning the toilet... :ZZZ::ZZZ::ZZZ:




> OTOH, reading a book about the beef industry in the US...yeah, weird...many of the regulations seemed focused on preventing small players from competing with big money. Like many political or semi-political issues, I don't know the answer.


Yeah, that's how a lot of it is now...


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## bsms

I used to do taxes professionally. I may do it again. It is one of the few jobs a person in their 60s can get (apart from jobs they have worked their entire life). "_Retired military...and eligible for Social Security...and you want WORK?_" I get the impression entry level jobs are reserved for those people employers feel they can screw. Which makes me feel pretty awkward, being a free market capitalist who hates admitting a lot of businesses treat their employees horribly.

I've seen major mistakes done by CPAs (Certified Public Accountants). I'm certain I've made a number myself. I tried hard but the law gets very complex at times AND a lot of customers won't willingly tell you the whole story. I worked in a good office where we all tried to help each other but...sometimes 4 of us could debate an issue and have 4 different answers - while reading the IRS publication! 

One argument to NOT do it again is how stressed I'd get trying to do everything right and knowing that no matter how hard I studied, I might be missing something. A coworker I much admired told me she handled it by reminding herself that at least she TRIED her best, which honestly is more than a lot of professionals do.


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## SueC

Yeah, our tax regulations are so complicated it gives me migraines to read through them for more than half an hour.  It took me two years, in dribs and drabs, and with the help of the ATO's officers on Skype, to work through the three sets of obviously wrong tax returns our accountant had done (was looking through them one day and realising they were inconsistent and that he'd not done the losses against income at all the first year, and made another major mistake that was obvious even to a non-accountant...). That was like purgatory, I tell you - so stressful. We got $4,000 back in taxes we shouldn't have paid for the effort, and also I learnt more than I ever wanted to know about tax regulations, but they are still fuzzy to me (they are not logical, they're quite arbitrary and internally inconsistent).

I still don't think I get it 100% right all the time with my best efforts, and if you think about it, all you need at university to get an A is around 80-90%, and it's rare to score even in your high 90s (highest exam score I ever got was 98% for my English Literature examination for university entry - I'm good at essays - but usually more like high 80s) - and yet technically, if you don't get it 100% right with accounting, you're breaking the law; so I assume that the vast majority of the population is unwittingly breaking the law. The big cheats don't break any laws at all because they wrote the rules; they use accounting loopholes to ferry off cash offshore and avoid paying tax etc etc, don't get me started... :evil:

I was just majorly miffed that we had PAID someone to do our returns once it got complicated when we started the business, but that he'd made mistakes that even a non-accountant could spot. I was even more miffed that he got to keep the money we paid him while I had to go fix the mistakes he made, and entirely re-submit everything. Might as well have done them myself in the first place... I don't think he was very thorough at all...

Happy New Year, @bsms - you must be nearly there by now... :cheers:

You Americans, always living in the past! :razz:


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Sue, I'm loving reading about your foray into Airbnb. When we bought this house, I definitely thought it could allow us to incorporate Airbnb into our lifestyle. Around here, there are actually several horse-friendly places offered on Airbnb that cater to the competitive folks who come to our local horsepark every weekend from June through roughly October. I think in those months, it might be lucrative enough to cover a significant chunk of the mortgage for us. The way the house is set up, our current bedroom is actually an addition on the house that was created for the elderly couple who previously lived here- it was nicely done, with a nice big bathroom (which actually is disability-friendly because of the needs of the couple) and a cozy woodstove. Our thought was that once we move our bedroom into the renovated upstairs, we'd add a small kitchnette to the addition. I have dreams of leaving a carton of eggs from the girls in the kitchen for all the guests :chicken: We'd physically close it off from the main house (would be easy to do, just one narrow hallway/door to reconfigure)- then it would essentially be a private apartment that could easily fit a couple of people. It even has its own separate outdoor entrance so could be really private. So...that's part of the plan. Probably at least a year, if not more realistically, two years, away from being able to do that with all the other projects that are ahead of it in line. But it's fun to hear about your experience and that fact that you do have more control over filtering your guests than I expected. That makes it even more appealing.


That sounds very good, @egrogan.  There are many advantages to sealing your guest accommodation off from the rest of your house. In our case, I'm interested in talking to the guests and we're a sort of educational facility for owner building, sustainable farming, off-grid living, permaculture, bushland management, flora, wildlife, and farm critters as well - once a teacher etc. ;-) Brett is just saying, "Please tell @egrogan that I'm exactly the opposite and in no way even remotely interested in talking to the guests!" :rofl: Of course, he's very civil and nobody would notice, when we have dinner guests.


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## SueC

Some amusing breakfast viewing today:


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## Knave

Very interesting!


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Brett is just saying, "Please tell @*egrogan* that I'm exactly the opposite and in no way even remotely interested in talking to the guests!" :rofl: Of course, he's very civil and nobody would notice, when we have dinner guests.


Please tell Brett that if you both ever come to America, he has a standing invitation to stay in my non-interactive, solitary b-and-b space and he can admire the scenery from the windows as he pleases


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## SueC

Just in case anyone thinks bats aren't cute... because they really are... some orphaned Australian fruit bats being cared for in a wildlife centre:


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## SueC

*RAIN - HOORAY!!!*

After months of bone dry weather that dried us up months before Christmas (when it's normally still green around here), and after only getting around 400mm in 2019, of the 800mm that's normal annual rainfall for our local area, we were so happy to get a proper drenching rain yesterday, and again this morning. This will help the fading perennial grasses make a little more summer pasture.

The bushland had a wonderful alive smell when we went for an evening walk along our tracks yesterday. :happydance:

And more rain this morning meant the ground got well and truly soaked, and just maybe the eucalypts are going to flower...

Because the rain has come in intermittent squalls and will clear soon, and it's not that cold or windy, I've not bothered rugging anyone. It was funny to see the horses and two of the donkeys cram into the donkey shelter though... with the rain pouring down. They hardly ever use this shelter - and the three other donkeys were sheltering in the bushland.


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## SueC

*STABILISING HIGH-TRAFFIC AREAS*

The day the above photos were taken was an ideal day to set in motion the fixing of a problem that had been developing for three years: The erosion of the main traffic areas of the small utility paddocks near the shed, through which the horses have to pass to get to the shelter, and to get from their 2-hectare "night" paddocks to the "common" where they have access to 12 hectares of pasture and the tracks through 50 hectares of bushland. Also, they are fed in those small paddocks and mill around in them before foodtime.

The soil in these upper areas near the conservation reserve is very sandy, and therefore prone to erosion. High-traffic areas with large hoofed animals walking through it day in, day out get the grass worn off them, and the animals tend to then dig to make sand holes to roll in. Combined with two years of drought blowing sand through the eroded gateways on summer gales, the northern edges of our small utility paddocks were looking very bad.

Really we should have done something about it two years ago - it would have been easier to dump woodchips on top of destabilised areas then, than with two extra years of erosion carving everything out. At one stage two years ago we were trying to get mouldy hay rolls to put over these areas in mid-winter, so that they would buffer the loose soil below and also act as a seed reserve that would grow grass over these areas that winter. That was a great idea, but it fell through when we couldn't get the hay.

Anyway, the problem just kept growing, and because of the soaking rain, I had an ideal window to do the overdue stablisation work. The extra money in the account from our Airbnb hosting also helped - we don't normally have spare cash at that time of year - it's when our insurance bills and rates are due, and each of those are well over $1,000...

So I was able to order 10 cubic metres of ******* woodchips to come in on a large truck Friday lunchtime, for $450. I spent the morning shifting blown sand down into the holes and walkways, levelling off as well as I could, and when the truck arrived, my afternoon's work was cut out: To spread out the two piles the driver made for me in the most useful spots. And, I actually managed to do it in the one afternoon, but got blisters despite wearing nice new leather gloves. It was a huge workout for me, but I was very happy with the result, and when Brett came home, he was amazed to find everything already done and no need for him to use either wheelbarrow or rake! 

After all that, I even managed to go riding, albeit just twilight riding for one lap! :cowboy:

This should arrest the problem in those areas, together with the summer irrigation we do in those two small paddocks. We may get another small truckload of woodchips to go inside the shelter shed, which has been carved out over the years, and into that remaining bare area near the gateway of the shelter paddock... or we may get another large truck, and do the large hole on the other side of the main gate into the first 2-hectare paddock as well, and be done with it.

We've already used woodchips to stablisise the crossover over our driveway and the gateway where the animals go into the common - grass eventually grows back over the woodchips. This was a smaller problem that didn't get more than 2 cubic metres of woodchips on it, but it was successfully solved like this.

The donkeys approved - before-and-after photos below...


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## gottatrot

Great job!!


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## SueC

Thank you!  It was good for my arm muscles, core and also my legs. When we went on a bushwalk the next day I hardly felt the hills at all!


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## Knave

It looks beautiful!


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## egrogan

My back and shoulders hurt just thinking about moving all that material! But, I'm sure it's very satisfying having it done.


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## carshon

@SueC may I butt into your journal and ask a question non-related to your homestead? I sparked a bit of an argument with my daughters boyfriend (a young man of 22 that thinks himself very worldly) We were watching the news and a story about the Australian wildfires appeared and he said that the fires being not undercontrol was because the government was declining help from Australian citizens and other countries. I immediately jumped up and said what government would let their country burn and its wildlife be decimated on purpose? His example was a post on some construction blog he subscribers to from a (supposed) Australian construction company that offered use of their large equipment for fire breaks and was turned down because the correct paperwork and training was not filled out, then the blogger posted that they had completed the 4 hour training and filled out the paperwork only to have it broiled down in red tape and not be approved. Have you seen/heard of these type of stories as related to the wild fires? I am just curious? Governments in general love paperwork and red tape so I would not say this is out of the realm of possibility but as I am not Australian I wondered.


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## SueC

@carshon, once the fires got this big, there really was no way of bringing them back under control and the best people can do is damp things down a little and try to influence which direction they go it (speaking as bushfire brigade, and most of Australia's emergency bushfire fighting efforts are through volunteer brigades like us). The fires are expected to burn for months yet. Still, the on-the-ground efforts are important in trying to contain the fires, and in buying a little time. Fires won't be able to be properly contained until there is significant rainfall in the affected areas, and this isn't due for months. The whole of the forests are unprecedentedly tinder dry due to changing climate patterns. They always were dry in droughts, but now they're even drier, and even rainforests are burning - and this started over a year ago in Tasmania, where forests that had never burnt and aren't fire adapted burnt to the ground, and are never expected to fully recover. We're losing the Great Barrier Reef (to coral bleaching due to higher ocean temperatures), and rainforests, at the moment, both of which had been present for many millennia.

Re the large equipment for fire breaks, the people pushing that don't seem to understand fire behaviour. With extreme fires, containment through fire breaks becomes impossible, although you still have to put them in to slow fires down, but with fires like this, multiple fires are lit ahead of a main fire front by the embers that are being blown on the wind, ahead of the fire front. These spark many secondary fires that themselves turn into massive unstoppable blazes, and these secondary fires can be sparked kilometres away from the existing fire. Each new fire lit by embers will itself create embers and repeat the scenario.

The current Australian government is culpable with this fire emergency in part because of their pro-pollution, pro-coal policies, and because they cut all the firefighting budgets across the board over the last few years despite of increasing problems with bushfire, and also because the country's fire chiefs have been seeing this coming before this happened (because of the state of the forests over the winter, they'd never been this dry before in recorded history) and had been calling for an urgent meeting with the PM months before these fires started, but the PM refused to meet them. The fire chiefs also emailed the PM to beg for the army to be trained to help with the emergency they saw coming, but were told, I quote, that this was a "stupid idea" in a government reply email, and ignored. And now, of course, belatedly they are calling in the army to help, but it would have been so much more effective had the army been trained in fire management pre-fire, and deployed early in the fires when on-the-ground action is always at its most effective. But now, it's so big it's unstoppable, and these fires won't be out until winter rains set in around April / May (for a lot of areas), _if_ the winter rains set in sufficiently.

Our current government doesn't live in the real world, but in a bubble. Some of the voters live in a bubble with them, but most of us have to live in the real world. I hope this helps to answer your questions.


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## CopperLove

I'm glad to see you got some rain at least in your immediate area... I was thinking about this the other day, wondering how things were going. It sounds like perhaps the current Australian government is living in a similar bubble to the current U.S. government. :frown_color:


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## SueC

...first of all, my apologies for my relative scarcity at present, I'm very tired from some very busy weeks on the farm! I intend to catch up with all the usual journals, and to continue various interesting conversations that have been on the shelf for a bit, when I'm back to normal instead of, "I really want to lie down on the sofa and read a crime thriller / watch the tennis right now!"

It's Australian tennis season and OMG Team Australia nearly killed me yesterday in their epic quarter-final contest against Great Britain in the ATP Cup (a new thing a bit like the Davis Cup) - nail-biting stuff - a doubles decider and both teams had multiple match points against each other, and after resigning myself multiple times that our boys were going to lose, I nearly fainted when they managed to win the match after all! :dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05:






I'm not usually a sports enthusiast but I just love the Australian men's tennis team - they're so lovely to watch, both in terms of gutsy play and in terms of camaraderie and mutual support.  Huge job by team captain Lleyton Hewitt, singles players Alex de Minaur, Nick Kyrgios and John Millman, and doubles specialists John Peers and Chris Guccione. :happydance:

They are probably going to play Spain in the semis and I'll be glued to the screen, if anyone wonders where I am...


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## SueC

Well, Spain completely obliterated Australia, although our young Alex de Minaur managed to take the first set off Nadal! That was riveting:






Alex de Minaur is still not fully grown yet. He has the determination of a bulldog and fights to the very last breath. Incredible to watch and a great kid. Actually outhitting Nadal for a set - excellent. Give it another couple of years, and he'll be outhitting Nadal for three sets! 

Spain got beaten by Serbia in the final, and right now, the Australian Open has begun - later than usual, with the new team-event ATP Cup being played in Australia, for the first time this year. I am not quite as glued to it as usual - will probably only watch the matches with my favourite players.


*THINGS EQUINE & AIRBNB*

On Sunday night I went riding - and am going again later today. It was a twilight ride; and on the loop back along the Swamp Track, who was coming in our direction? Don Quixote, gone walkabout! onkey:

It was so funny to see his comical big chocolate-brown face with the long ears and the white muzzle coming in our direction. I called out to him and he stopped as we stopped, to exchange pleasantries. Mary Lou and Sparkle were a little behind him, nibbling branches off the side of the track as they walked along. It's lovely to see the other animals using the walk tracks. The donkeys do it regularly; the horses use some of them, but not the long ones to the back of the property, unless I am riding; then they sometimes tag along.

It reminds me - I need to buy a new halter and recommence his saddle training, sadly interrupted by my foot fracture nearly 18 months ago and the wild goose chase trying to catch up with property maintenance ever since.

Airbnb has kept me busy this past six weeks too. It's going well and we have more nice reviews:

https://www.airbnb.com.au/users/show/304780036

Super dinner last night with a lovely French lady and a nice-as-pie Korean couple who helped me feed the yearling steers last night, and oohed and aahed over all the donkeys etc. I had some seafood soup with pumpkin, mountain corn, tomatoes and celery from the garden; also a nice tomato-basil-mozzarella salad with lots of nice ripe salad tomatoes from the garden, and a lentil-beetroot-feta-walnut salad, with freshly picked beetroot and spring onions in it. Home-made rye mix / sunflower bread to go with it, with local olive oil to drizzle on it. For dessert, coconut rice cream, which I had to make a huge vat of because I forgot it was Monday and milk delivery day, and didn't remember to collect the milk from the gate until 4pm - it had been sitting there all day, and on a warm day too, so I immediately used 3L to make rice cream. The other 3L is holding up at the moment, but sooner or later it's going to turn and then I'm going to make cottage cheese, and go get another bottle of milk that will go straight in the fridge like it should...

Last week, we had a really nice young couple stay with us - he was from France, she from the UK - and I saw from their general fitness and flexibility, combined with their excellent attitude to the animals, that they were suitable horse riding candidates, so I offered. Paul had never formally ridden, just had a tourist group ride in India; Imogen had ridden ponies as a child "but never anything this big!" ...Sunsmart is 15.2hh, so about average size for an Australian horse. But, he's built like a barrel!  

I walked with them and the horse for an extended trek across the local countryside, through the neighbour's place as well. Paul was first - I showed him how to get on and off properly (I do the click-your-heels-behind-you vault-off dismount as taught in Europe), and he immediately mounted smoothly and correctly first time.  I showed him how to hold the reins and then talked about sitting upright but relaxed like in Pilates, heels down and under you, and that you go gently with the horse's movement when riding, and he immediately did exactly that and remained exactly like that for his whole ride. I asked him if he'd had an A at sport in school, and his partner laughed and said yes, and that he always picks things like this up immediately. You really couldn't tell, walking along on the horse, that he's never had lessons. He was riding actively and correctly and not interfering with the horse. Also, he was going, "Oh, I like this! And noone ever showed me how to sit properly before and hold the reins correctly." Also, it turns out, my horse is a lot smoother than the average mount for hire. Well, I explained that he's ex-racing, athletic, takes super-long strides and has very good suspension - nice shoulder angles etc and he's relaxed and swings his back instead of being stiff, because he's used to having a rider who doesn't make him uncomfortable.

Paul did the completely correct thing without needing it explained to him when we went downhill and leaned back in proportion to the gradient. :thumbsup: Pilates can teach people a thing or two!

After we'd walked around the neighbour's two farm dams and seen kangaroos in the distance, we headed back to our connecting gate, and then it was Imogen's turn to ride, the long way back, up the hill and along the ridge with the views of the Stirling Ranges (including the mountain on which my husband proposed to me 12 years ago ). She too sat and rode beautifully, so when we got back to the meadow at our north boundary, I asked her if she wanted to trot - having trotted on ponies as a kid - and she replied affirmatively. She was finding out what trotting on a big horse was like - and on a trotting horse at that! So, I ran as fast as I could while Sunsmart casually stretched out his long legs at a floating trot. His medium trot is the standard horse's extended, and as fast as I can personally move without jetpacks to assist me. Imogen remembered how to post, and was super-happy when we pulled up when I could run no further. We then shortened her stirrups a couple of holes (we have the same length legs but I ride long, basically in dressage position, everywhere I go, so we thought we'd give her a bit more perch), and off we went again. :charge:

A wonderful time was had by all of us - over an hour of traipsing across the countryside, with a total of five pairs of legs (although only four pairs of legs were in conventional use most of the time, and half of those belonged to the horse!). The smiles all around were resplendent, even the horse was smiling, and lip-flapping too when he saw the carrots on offer afterwards - and the guests told me that this experience had been the highlight of their trip to Australia!

:apple:

The terrain we rode through was photographed here - although that took in a longer ride than we did with two people on foot: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page38/#post1970681183

...and that's where I'm heading again today, when I've got my washing on the line! :cowboy:


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## SueC

Erratum - as I went past the edit window: "He" whose saddle training needs picking up again is, of course, Julian... (and not the donkey!)


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## egrogan

I would be so excited if I showed up at an AirBnB and got offered a beautiful ride! Sounds like great fun. And....this is the time of year when your description of your delicious fresh garden veggies starts to make me _really _jealous  I am buying so many potatoes and canned tomatoes these days. Only 46 days until we put the clocks ahead and start thinking about things growing again!


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## lb27312

@SueC - wow you've been very busy! Love men's tennis as well! You have some wonderful reviews, that's awesome! And the ride was very generous of you. Love the pics.


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## SueC

Last night I did indeed go riding, and the donkeys made it eventful. First of all, as I was riding around our house to get to the track behind it, I noticed our three original donkeys were playing games near the farm dam. Sparkle, the blind donkey, was dashing between Mary Lou and Don Quixote, playfully rolling her eyes and gnashing her teeth at them, and also backing up to them pretend-kicking. Donkeys do this not from a distance, but with actual body contact. She was barging her backside into them and doing little dances, and cantering around them in circles with the most droll facial expressions and body language, and the others were responding in kind, until the whole lot of them were cantering circles around each other and playing tag and general silly-bug'gers. Then they all decided it would be a good idea to follow the horse and me down the track.

This is what it looks like when you have donkeys tagging along. Same donkeys, different day as I didn't have a camera on me.










This time though, I was trotting the horse and they were cantering along behind me with their little rocking-horse canters, full of fun and making little sideways leaps. It was exceptionally funny. We had to leave them behind on the boundary gate, because I don't fancy trying to collect up a bunch of adventuring donkeys from the neighbour's property...


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> I would be so excited if I showed up at an AirBnB and got offered a beautiful ride! Sounds like great fun. And....this is the time of year when your description of your delicious fresh garden veggies starts to make me _really _jealous  I am buying so many potatoes and canned tomatoes these days. Only 46 days until we put the clocks ahead and start thinking about things growing again!


I can imagine that it must feel like a drought. We usually have something from the garden year round. However, in our locality, cucurbits haven't done well these past two years. Yes, we only had 400mm of rain in 2019 and about 500mm in 2018 when we should have had 800mm, but it's more than that - since we do irrigate the vegetable garden. The temperatures have been too extreme - it's too cold at night, and too hot and windy during the day, for much to do well at the moment. Can you believe that for the past two years, and after being completely inundated by them year after year before that, I have been unable to get even a single zucchini plant to grow - and this year I tried starting them in the greenhouse, and the moment they were out, they were sulking and / or dying. One plant that's been out there for over six weeks hasn't gone beyond the six-leaf stage in all that time. It's really disconcerting.

The cucumbers were similarly difficult, and the pumpkins (apart from one volunteer pumpkin, God bless it, which has turned into a triffid and is carrying around 40 pumpkins, which we've started eating - crosses between Potimarron and Turk's Turban) - huge germination failure, including in the greenhouse; sickly plants once out, very few making it past being small plants. I finally got our first cucumber for the year off one of the two surviving cucumber plants, out of 30+ attempted. The plants are still quite small; normally they should be over-running the place.

The tomatoes have leaf and fruit diseases this year; around half of them are affected, and that's despite of the fact I grow them all from seed and didn't plant them in the same spots as last year - and we didn't have disease last year. I think this summer has been too cold for growing healthy cucurbits and tomatoes so far. Also the beans almost all died, this year, and that's after a winter where nearly all of our peas died as well.

The fruit is all a month late and the new nectarine tree has lost all its leaves and looks like it's dying. The established peach doesn't look happy either. The apricot was going to yield this year, but then all its tiny developing fruits froze in an ultra-late frost - it's an early variety.

Huge trouble germinating anything in the greenhouse in general, compared to "normal" conditions, so although the garden looks full, it's got lots of spent plants with nothing to take their place. Mind you, the celery is going really well this year, and the onions, and there are _some_ things to harvest, just not nearly as much variety or yield as normal.

I hope this pattern breaks and that things go back to normal... but they may not. Anyway, I wish you lots of success in your own upcoming growing season!




lb27312 said:


> @SueC - wow you've been very busy! Love men's tennis as well! You have some wonderful reviews, that's awesome! And the ride was very generous of you. Love the pics.


Who do you think might win the Australian Open this year, @lb27312? I'm finding it hard to predict. I mean, possibly Djokovic again, but there's also a lot of young talent coming up. I kind of don't think Nadal or Federer will get it this year, just looking at their preliminary matches during the ATP Cup...

Re the ride - I really only do that with people where I think it's going to be a near-dead certainty of a good experience all-round, which is not too many, so it's fun for me too.  I feel really lucky to have such a horse and access to such lovely areas, and like to share it around a little. Especially because I know that it's going to be much better than the standard tourist horse ride experiences!  And if you're in a position to offer that, it would be sad not to do that from time to time. :runninghorse2:


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## SueC

...something else. On this journal, we've had a lot of discussion of difficult families and mental / emotional health. In the middle of last year, I sat down to write what I'd learnt from my own experience, and from discussions with others, from scratch. I wanted to show that people who struggle in these areas don't deserve to be stigmatised on top of everything else - and that with many of us, you'd generally not know unless you were a close friend, or part of a discussion group or support group on the topic. I wanted people to be able to walk a mile in my shoes, after being diagnosed with complex PTSD five years ago, and the aftermath of dealing with that. Also, I wanted to give people who are in the thick of that kind of experience right now some hope that things can really get better, and that they usually do if you hang in there and keep addressing it - as well as having time where you're not focusing so much on that. And, I wanted to do my part in increasing the amount of talk in the community about these things, so that people who are affected, and the people who love them, don't feel as alone or isolated.

Because music was such a positive and central part of my experience all along, I posted this on a music forum. It needed to be a forum, because that means it's unedited and in an author's exact words, and you can post clips of music, and you can't do that in mainstream media, print etc. I posted it in a forum specific to one of my favourite bands (and only a relatively recent discovery for me, five years ago, courtesy of Brett's extensive music collection), which also meant I could stop earbashing everyone here with a plethora of their music!  Because this particular band tends to draw people who are different, and because they break the mould by being emotionally expressive about quite personal things, I felt that that kind of audience was the right audience for what I wanted to say. It turned into quite a journey to write it, and for some reason exactly the right words came along.

So I've finally decided to post a link, because the discussions and support about all this stuff with the journal group here was a huge factor in coming to the point that I was able to write about it from several paces back, for a general audience. So here's the link:

Music For Emotional Health

This forum isn't hugely interactive (although I'm working on it ;-)), but this thread does always have visitors, and because I was helped so much through the years by what other people who've gone through things like this have written, I like to think that someone out there is having an easier time because I've talked about it in the open and extensively like this.

On a side note, and for anyone dealing with addiction, personally or with loved ones, I wrote two posts that were a mix of fun, science and personal experience (because you can get unhelpfully addicted to your own brain chemistry) on another thread, which is sort of journal-like and I just write whatever comes up, responding a huge array of B-sides. Here's the link to those particular posts:

Exploring "Join The Dots" - Page 3

It's not going to be everybody's cup of tea, but I'm sure it will be somebody's. inkunicorn:

Thanks again to everyone here who has been there when I've talked about these kinds of things on this journal.


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## Knave

It is odd that you say you had a bad zucchini and tomato year. Having a bad tomato year is par for the course in my neck of the woods, but zucchini is bound to overflow. In fact, some people refuse to eat it anymore because it is so prolific...

Anyways, my year was the same! My zucchini did not prosper, and off the several plants I only brought into the house two of the things!! It was not a zucchini year! It seems to have travelled. I believe it just stayed cold for a bit long here, but I’m not sure that was the problem.


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## SueC

For comparison, @Knave, people near the coast here, who didn't have the same chilly night temperatures, have been growing zucchini with reasonable success this year - although not as prolific as usual either. A donkey society friend who lives close to our place is experiencing similar trouble with all cucurbits, tomatoes and beans this year - it just isn't warm enough. Nights are cold; days are either cool and overcast, or we have heatwaves with high winds. Really extreme.

You know for sure the world is ending if you can't get zucchini to grow. ;-) Most of the time, you can't get zucchini _not_ to grow. :rofl:


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> You know for sure the world is ending if you can't get zucchini to grow.



So true!! :rofl:


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## Knave

That made me laugh too! Over here preparing for the apocalypse...


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## lb27312

Yeah that made me laugh too as zucchinis grow crazy in my garden. This past year the tomatoes didn't do as well but the peppers did.
@SueC - I'm thinking Djokovic will probably win, but I like Nadal so kinda hoping he does. But really time for some new blood...


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## bsms

SueC said:


> ...something else. On this journal, we've had a lot of discussion of difficult families and mental / emotional health...Thanks again to everyone here who has been there when I've talked about these kinds of things on this journal.


My oldest daughter hadn't talked to us for 2.5 years after I had an argument with her husband. We met her and started talking again in November - AFTER she had signed an out of court divorce settlement that gave her ex full custody of their two kids. During the weeks that followed, we've talked a bunch. After a couple of them, I came home and googled "emotional abuse divorce". Every site was like a checklist of the life she described to us.

I've deleted most of the response I've written because it isn't appropriate to discuss it now. It took 6 weeks to convince her it was safe to visit a lawyer. Not physical abuse. *"Just emotional"* - and I'm only now realizing that emotional abuse can be very bit as controlling and every bit as destructive as physical abuse.

*So if I've been dismissive of anyone in the past, I apologize.* I honestly just didn't have a clue such behavior existed. I guess I didn't see it because I grew up in a fundamentally good home and couldn't imagine it. It is hard to see something you can't even imagine existing. 

My wife and I just passed 33 years of marriage. We're both strong-willed. Opinionated. But never abusive. HUGE difference. I'm so sorry for anyone who has gone through it!


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## SueC

I'm very sorry to hear that, @bsms. In my own experience with my family of origin, physical abuse was actually far easier to cope with than the emotional abuse. You had the bruises, so you knew it was happening, and nobody could tell you it wasn't happening, so they just told you that you deserved it. :evil: Whereas with the emotional abuse, especially through gaslighting and character assassination and other types of crazy-making, you often end up wondering if _you_ are the person who is crazy, and imagining things, or perhaps taking things the wrong way, which is what they're always telling you. :twisted: Especially if you're isolated (which is what emotional abusers try to make you), and you've got no witnesses nor anyone to talk to about it. And this is why we need to talk about this, as a community, openly and frequently.

I am so sorry to hear that the children ended up in the hands of an emotional abuser. Poor kids. :-( How old are they? Is there any way your daughter can go through therapy and then challenge the custody on the grounds of the emotional abuse patterns - which presumably made her sign over custody?

Once again - if anyone reading this would like to check out what emotional abuse and emotional neglect look like, this is an excellent site:

https://theinvisiblescar.wordpress.com/

This next site is excellent at explaining narcissistic behaviour, which is part of the package:

https://theinvisiblescar.wordpress.com/

The full list of articles explaining narcissism here:

https://littleredsurvivor.com/?s=NARCISSISM

None of this is rare, despite of what we tend to think, and its poison gets passed from generation to generation unless the cycle is broken - and also sets up the survivor for subsequent dysfunctional relationships. If anyone reading has been in such a situation and is still hurting, or is currently in such a situation, you have my best wishes. Understanding what is going on is so helpful - and getting some support. :hug:


----------



## bsms

We are paying for a challenge to the out of court agreement. I gather it is considered a difficult challenge in Arizona courts, but I honestly think this example is grossly unfair to the children. 

"_through gaslighting and character assassination and other types of crazy-making, you often end up wondering if you are the person who is crazy_" - @SueC

Don't want to go into details, but that is exactly what happened! He had her believing she was wrong, and the best way to help the children adjust to the divorce was for her to "accept" all the blame. Had her believing she HAD "stolen" money from the family. So I asked about the bank statements. Where do the BANK RECORDS say the money was spent? Well, the house mortgage. Car insurance. Kids dental bills. Groceries. 

The good thing is that, win or lose in the court, she is starting to come out of her shell and realizing the REAL WORLD is not the one that exists in her ex-husband's mind! I guess that was part of his stopping her from talking to us - to isolate her from people who would challenge his version of reality.

After that first 2 hour talk we had, I thought of you, SueC. After the second, I thought some more of what you've written about, and then searched for emotional abuse on the Internet. She is in counseling now. The first session was a group session, and she said she kept saying, "_You too? That's was MY marriage!_"

So I also need to thank those on this forum who HAVE written about bad relations. I've been thinking long and hard about what y'all have written. I still do not understand it. I truly don't. It is too foreign to me. But it really has helped me glimpse and acknowledge what my oldest daughter is saying to us. I realize it is not "horses", but it has certainly helped this rider glimpse what his non-rider daughter has gone through. I'm grateful to those who have had the courage to discuss their pain. It can help someone on the other side of the world....:Angel:


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## SueC

"Stolen" money from the family, OMG. My mother also was always given an "allowance" from which to do the household expenditure, usually in cash. Later on she did get a credit card, but you should have heard the constant arguments about its use. :evil: To be fair, I think they were both playing at it, just as they were both responsible for doing awful things to me - I think she enjoyed spending money on really useless junk just to get back at him, because in his eyes it was always "his" money and noone else's, and he saw himself as the most alpha, most clever and most deserving of anyone in the household - "None of you could exist without me!" I well remember him and another misogynistic friend of his saying that "a dollar is only worth 50 cents after you marry" and discussing how much sex they could have got through prostitutes if they'd not gotten married and spent the money on those instead... :twisted: And at the same time, paradoxically, my parents are always parading around proudly the fact that they've been married over 50 years - because when it's something that is cause for public acclaim, they both want it, no matter that they've never been loving, respectful partners (or parents), at least not since I've been observing.

Want to know what financial control looks like when you're a kid? You get an allowance, but have to account for every cent of how you spent it, as well as cop regular criticisms on your spending choices. It's so bad that when you're 13, you can't buy yourself sanitary items to cope with puberty, because to raise it with your parents is simply unthinkable, so you use rags and barrier creams to cope with menstrual periods until you inform them in an argument about your supposed arrested sexual development, because you're angry, that you've been menstruating for half a year and using old T-shirts because you feel that they're not the kind of people you can talk to about such stuff. :angrily_smileys: And of course, you've been so isolated from anyone else that you don't really have other people to go to about the matter, which is a delicate matter for any teenager. We didn't have a school nurse either, in my middle school...

I wish you all the very best with your challenge for custody. :cheers: The problem with people like this is that they can make themselves look so good to the outside world, and that they're so good at scapegoating others, that most of the world believes them, and not the survivor of their abuse.

And I'm glad if I was able to help in any way.


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## SueC

On a brighter note, here's a supercalifragilistically lovely song. 






Even if you don't normally like this band, give it a shot - they are full of surprises.  It's been covered by a few people, but this is who wrote it, and I still think they do far and away the best version - and they still play it just as beautifully over 15 years after the above concert (which I posted to show how the musicians are playing it). This is the same song from their 40th anniversary set in Hyde Park 18 months ago... a film to which we treated ourselves for Christmas.






The lyrics also make great standalone poetry. It's one of those songs which fits a number of contexts. Sleep is obviously one, and I'm sure insomniacs could relate, but I personally see this primarily as the kind of thing you'd write on an enforced separation from your spouse, assuming you have a decent relationship.


_*IF ONLY TONIGHT WE COULD SLEEP*

If only tonight we could sleep
In a bed made of flowers
If only tonight we could fall
In a deathless spell
If only tonight we could slide
Into deep black water
And breathe
And breathe

Then an angel would come
With burning eyes like stars
And bury us deep
In his velvet arms

And the rain would cry
As our faces slipped away
And the rain would cry
Don't let it end
Don't let it end
_


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## SueC

*BALD HEAD WALK, TORNDIRRUP PENINSULA*

This is the walk I did last month with Eileen - a spectacular 16km coastal walk along the end of the Torndirrup Peninsula, which I've done again and again since my first taste of it in 1994.



This is looking back at Salmon Holes from Isthmus Hill, which is the first climb at the start of the walk trail. If you turn to the right, you get the view over Frenchmans Bay and Kind George Sound:



And this is what you see looking forwards as you continue along the walk track over Isthmus Hill - as you come around the bend - Limestone Head, the walk trail along the back of it, and the islands in King George Sound.



The next photo shows Limestone Head (ahead), Bald Head (at the end, towards the right), King George Sound (left) and the Southern Ocean (right). It's still over 7km to the end point at Bald Head.



Once on the back of Limestone Head, this was the view looking back:



A ship exiting King George Sound:





Michaelmas Island and Breaksea Island in the Sound:



Views over King George Sound looking back from Limestone Head:



Scenery at the far end of Limestone Head, where we're once again entering granite territory:



The sand dunes where the track turns from Limestone Head towards Bald Head:



Eileen coming down the sand dune:



Granite landscape below sand dunes:


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## SueC

Looking towards Eclipse Island in the Southern Ocean:



Peak Head in the far distance:



Granite and sea:



A seascape looking west:



Eroded granite shapes:





Approaching Bald Head:



Coastline at Bald Head:



The shot Eileen took of us when we got to the end point:










On our way back, Breaksea Island and the far coastline:



An outgoing Ocean Liner leaving King George Sound:



Michaelmas Island and Breaksea Island in the Sound:



Walking back along Limestone Head at sunset:





Really fabulous walk!


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## SueC

...the very last photo, I turned around and zoomed in on Bald Head in the sunset:


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## bsms

Wonderful pictures. I enjoy seeing where others live and hike. There is so much beauty in this world! Pity we humans too often mess it up...


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## CopperLove

The eroded granite shapes remind me of lizards basking in the sun... they look like they could be whispering to each other.


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## SueC

It's hot and the nectarines and plums need to come off the trees. I've got four buckets of fruit in today and there's at least another eight buckets of plums out there that are going to be ripe within a week. Because of stone fruit harvest (plus stewing, sauce-making etc), Brett put an Audreys CD of his I'd not yet listened to on my iPod yesterday - this South Australian folk/roots outfit is just the thing for that sort of work. I think most of you are going to enjoy this sort of music, and this here is a really beautiful track off this album... and the words are fabulous:






The album is called _When The Flood Comes_, and if you like this song, you can check out more of their tracks on YouTube.


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## SueC

*12TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY 3/2/2020*

Our 12th wedding anniversary! :happydance:

So I thought I'd get my favourite snaps from our wedding day out. 

Photo 1: My present to Brett - home-made marzipan (more almonds, way less sugar) shaped into a heart and covered in dark chocolate.

Photo 2: At Alice & Rob's prior to going down to the wedding celebrant's place with them as witnesses for the paperwork - with the jasmine tiara Alice had made for me as a surprise from the vines in her garden.

Photo 3: With Rob and Alice, who had been happily married for over 50 years at that point and apart from being some of my favourite people ever, were just ideally suited to be wedding witnesses!

Photos 3-8: After a wedding lunch with Rob and Alice, at Sharpe Point with our camera, tripod and time delay, taking some fun shots in one of our favourite places. The white roses were Brett's present to me.

Photos 9-10: We were traipsing around the Torndirrup Peninsula in newly wedded bliss, just stopping off wherever we wanted to. This is at Goode Beach.


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## SueC

Photos 11-13: Still at Goode Beach. The freak overcast day in summer was completely fabulous for photography.

Photos 14-15: At Barbara and Bill's place on our way back to town. Bookworm friends who took some nice photos!

Photo 16: A couple of days before our wedding, we'd gone to the farmers' market and bought, amongst other things, a bag of potatoes. This was in the bag - we've never seen one like that before or since, and took it as a good omen! 


We had a very simple, very fun hippie wedding: Paperwork at the celebrant's with our witnesses, followed by lunch with them; then the afternoon out in the Torndirrup National Park to enjoy being a newly married couple in peace and quiet with ample room for it to sink in; back to town to drop in on a few friends, and later on a simple reception at our place where we asked everyone to just bring a plate of nice food to share instead of vases or other wedding gifts. As a result, we had a fabulous banquet - we're foodies and so are our friends - I've never eaten better at anyone else's wedding, no matter how expensive, and everything was relaxed and we had a fabulous time. Our guests were saying to us, "This is great! More people should do it like this! And the food..."

Australians on average spend more on their weddings than our small car cost us new, and yet it's rarely particularly enjoyable, and it's wrought with so much stress for couple and guests, and so much preparation for what is really just a party. We kept it simple and low-stress for everyone and we'd not change a thing about it looking back.

We're very happily married 12 years on and think getting married to each other was the best thing that ever happened to us.


----------



## Knave

Happy Anniversary!


----------



## SueC

Thank you!  ...we ate that potato as part of our banquet. We couldn't not! :rofl:


----------



## gottatrot

You look beautiful!! Happy Anniversary!


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## egrogan

Happy anniversary Sue and Brett! Loved all the pictures (including the potato!)


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## CopperLove

A belated Happy Anniversary to you! Your photos are lovely. That was a great idea to ask guests to bring food to a reception instead of "traditional" gifts.


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## Caledonian

Happy Anniversary to you both!


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## SueC

Thanks for your anniversary cheers, all of you! inkunicorn::blueunicorn: Please let us all know when your significant days are this year so we can all cheer for you too! :winetime:




lb27312 said:


> @SueC - I'm thinking Djokovic will probably win, but I like Nadal so kinda hoping he does. But really time for some new blood...


Well, unfortunately we were right. And I was so going for the young fella in the final, and he nearly had Djokovic. Had it been a best of 3 he would have won it. I was actually talking to the television!  Yelling, "Go, Dominic! You can do it!" but alas, one of the big cheeses won another one. I am so looking forward to the day someone other than the Three Big Cheeses wins a Grand Slam... :cheers:


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## SueC

A friend from Europe recently asked me why my family went to live in Australia. Here's my reply. I decided I should stick it on my journal as an antidote to the sanitised version I used to tell when I first joined this forum.


_...wrought topic. I'll attempt to sketch it.

It started with my parents taking an extended overseas holiday together in 1981 (something they'd never done before). They did it during school term so we stayed home and our grandmother came to look after us (I was in Year 5, my brother in his final year, Abitur, different school to me oddly). And their destination was - Australia. In part I think it's because they had been introduced to some travelling Australians by a work colleague and they got an invitation to "come to our mango farm in the Northern Territory if you ever come to Australia."

They took up the offer, visiting the mango farm, as part of a round trip of the continent. I can't remember how long they were gone but I think it was four weeks. They couldn't have got around the country in less than that. You can't even get around Tasmania in less than a week (they didn't do Tasmania - offshore island state).

When they returned, my father was obsessed with the idea of emigrating to Australia. I think he was having a midlife crisis. He was the only person in the family interested in doing so, and he basically said, "I'm going, the rest of you can come if you want or stay behind." My brother had been noncommittal - and he was the first to say he was emigrating too - I think he saw it as an adventure. My mother and I didn't want to leave - friends, animals, places we loved. We had a dog and two horses and friends in two countries. My father applied to emigrate and I think in those days the income earner could do it on behalf of their family, without interviews that would have revealed that half of us didn't want to go. He earnt very well, which means he got granted his wish by the Australian government (and that's still the case, people can buy their way into this country even today).

He then started telling me that if I didn't go, I wouldn't keep my horse anyway because my mother would be unable to afford to keep the two horses we had at the time, and that we would be poor if we stayed behind. (Nice, no?) But regardless, there were too many other things to lose so I still said no. He then changed tactics and said if I consented to go he would fly both horses out to Australia. I didn't want to lose my horse - she was more of a parent to me than either of my parents, it's a long story, she basically adopted me and you could have made a cheesy TV series out of it like Lassie - so I agreed to go to Australia. I wasn't told I'd lose my dog until arrangements were already made, and cried all the way to the airport - my grandmother ended up taking him. I never saw him again, or any of my friends and extended family - other than my grandmother, who came to Australia for a visit when I was 15, so I saw her one more time.

Once we got here, my mother cried all the time and sank into depression and I saw my father slapping her face when she was catatonic in bed. I didn't want my face slapped, and anyway young people sort of look at the environment around them and explore, and I made a friend across the road - we lived in Perth for the first year, because the farm my father had bought had no house on it yet. It was an apartment my brother then stayed in during the week after we moved, as he was starting university.

My mother stopped being catatonic and went back much to her usual self with me - we'd never had a warm relationship (I only had something like that with my grandmother and my animals). She spent the rest of her life loudly declaring she wished she'd never come to this country - which is true. She had the means to go back to Europe for extended visits over half a dozen times - I did not. By the time I'd scraped the money together, when I was 26, my grandmother had just died. She'd not been able to visit beyond that one time due to heart and circulation problems, which meant she wasn't supposed to go on long-haul flights.

The horse that had been the bargaining chip in getting me to Australia was taken off me within two months of her release from quarantine. My father used her to start breeding racehorses - so that was the end of my riding her. She had been bought specifically for me as a child's riding horse back in Germany - a French Trotter mare who'd raced and had six foals, and had been so well ridden during her time as a broodmare that she was an ideal kid horse. The reason she was sold specifically as a child's riding horse is that she'd had a difficult birth with her last foal and the veterinarian said it would risk her life to breed her again.

But my father bred her again, and she died shortly after giving birth, of internal bleeding, as predicted by the veterinarian back in Germany. I had just come home from a school camp, in time to sit with her head in my arms as she was dying. I had just turned 13.

It sounds like a horrific soap opera, and really it was. We had farm cats and my father threw bricks at them. He kicked the dogs, and everyone else in the family, but my mother and brother were also that way inclined and doing plenty of it themselves to anyone smaller than them, so it would be a misrepresentation to suggest we were a family cowering under the control and abuse of the father (as does commonly happen here as well; domestic violence is at epidemic proportions in this country along with depression and suicide). It would be more accurate to suggest that it was a family with three sociopaths warring with each other. It's just that one of the sociopaths had all the money, and therefore all the financial control.

I was for much of my childhood too small to hit anyone, and I was not the type to go find smaller things to hit - I was not a bully, not to smaller children or to animals, which would have been the obvious targets. When I was 14 I started defending myself by attempting to restrain my mother etc when she was hitting me, and by going to the police because my brother kept abusing me (and going to the police got me huge repercussions at home, as you can imagine, because they failed to send in a social worker, which is what would have happened nowadays). When I was 16 I left home with the help of a university guidance counsellor, who felt the circumstances I was living in were totally unacceptable and did the paperwork for my legal emancipation from them.

If you are wondering why I ever went back to see them at all, it was because they still had my Arabian mare, whom I was unable to afford to keep because I didn't have the means, as a university student. After I had left home, the hitting stopped - that never happened again when I went to visit them, although they still hit each other. I think it was clear to them that I'd sell my horse if anything like that happened again, rather than come back. So I started visiting my family - and horse - with this uneasy truce. Eventually I removed my horse from there.

The really interesting thing is that my parents got here in their early 40s and neither of them ever worked in Australia, as employees. My father went back to Europe for face-to-face time on computer contracts for his old contacts - he'd been self-employed at that in Germany. He did most of that work on the farm in Australia and then would just go over to Europe for the implementation phase. And he found his new obsession - racehorses - which by the way never made him any money, if you take into account the time and money that went into keeping a stable full of racehorses (which is significantly cheaper in Australia than it would have been in Europe, but still). He lived off contracts for his old stomping ground in Germany, and investments.

It is impossible to say what exactly the motivations were for moving the family to Australia (some arguments cited to me at the time were the nuclear threat in Europe and that young people had a better future in Australia). The side-effect was definitely that it became easier for my father to isolate and control my mother and me. Had we stayed in Germany any longer, I would have started talking to my grandmother about some of the things that were going on in our family - I already sort of made a start, when she was looking after us the four weeks my parents were in Australia, because that was the only time I'd ever lived under that roof without insults, threats and hitting - my brother wasn't allowed to hit me or be mean to me when my grandmother was around, either. I don't think she realised that my parents did the same. Anyway, it was lovely and relaxing to live with her for that month, and you can bet I would have eventually asked to live with her. (I couldn't do that once I got to Australia, because of the distance and that I lost German citizenship.)

And she would have said yes. I'd bet on it. We were very close and I was her only granddaughter.

So that's our Australia story - with a side story that you don't normally get asking a question like that. But, one of the problems is that when you sanitise stories like this (as I did for years), it gives a false impression of reality, and also it drives what is actually quite a common thing - family dysfunction, abuse etc - underground, and helps hush it up. I think talking about it honestly is necessary for the social conversation and for general mental health, and for other people in abusive situations to feel they can get out, and for people who aren't in those situations to get some insight and empathy for those who
are. I made the decision to be completely open about all this once I'd worked through my PTSD diagnosis five years ago, and I've had so much feedback from people since I've done that, to say, "Thanks for talking about it, this really helped me come to terms with what happened to me / my daughter who married a sociopath / we took custody of our grandchildren because our daughter abused them and reading your story just tells us it was the right thing" etc etc.

It's not a mission, just one part of who I am and what I talk about these days. The part I didn't talk about for such a long time!

Silence is deadly.

Anyway, that's how we ended up in Australia, and despite the difficulties, I had great experiences and very fulfilling employment here and love the Australian landscape, flora and fauna - I couldn't live anywhere else now, and of course now we're right in the wilderness!  Also I am now in a decent household. We're neither of us perfect, but it's very good 99% of the time, and we're working on making that 99.5%. We've been improving the percentage for years, after having a rough time around two to three years into marriage. Relationships are never easy, you always have to work on it, but most of the time, it's work you enjoy doing. 

And now, it's time to cut up more plums..._

:gallop:​
Indeed! I've made six cauldrons of plum sauce already, that's over 30 kg of plums processed, and both plum trees have at least as much on them still as I've already harvested... I'm also making slab plum cakes which are our standard breakfast, afternoon tea and anytime snack this time of year - a wholemeal yeast pastry with a little butter which you roll out on a tray and arrange plum quarters on, sprinkle with cinnamon, bake, and then eat by itself or with custards and/or cream. Yummy...


----------



## SueC

*RECENT TRIP TO BORNHOLM BEACH*

I'm sitting here with a glass of home-made soft drink: Juice of one lime and one orange, two teaspoons of sugar, stir well, top with ice-cold soda water. Why is it that on hot days when you've been outdoors all morning, you can drink glass after glass of water or diluted juice and still have your tongue hanging out, but then you follow that with one glass of cold home-made lemonade or home-made dry ginger ale, and then you feel OK? :cheers:

I'll put a green tea on now for good measure, as the sort of dessert course for all the liquids I've already had, and then hope to get up to date on my journal. My clothes were so soaked in sweat they're all in the washing machine as we speak.

I'm going to start with some nice photos we took at the beach in Bornholm the other day. If it's too hot and / or we're too tired and / or busy to go hiking on a weekend, we at least take a sanity outing of a couple of hours to a beach. Cosy Corner is our nearest beach, 20 minutes away on part sealed, part unsealed roads; Bornholm is a little further on, but very pretty. We don't swim (we can, we just don't like to, the Southern Ocean is freezing), but we do wade, and we definitely walk a fair way and investigate little coves etc. 

These are the steps down to Bornholm Beach from the car park:



Jess and yours truly making our way down:



It's mostly a granite landscape, but Bornholm has limestone cliffs on one side:





There's a little stream that comes down to the beach. The iron in the water (because the hinterland is full of ironstone) makes a really striking colour:



The white granitic sand makes a nice counterpoint to the orange-brown water:



Jess was ecstatic - the day we went to Bornholm, we did that at the tail end of a 4-hour walk through the coastal dunes parallel to the shore - which I will post details of later. So she was really happy to cool her feet in the water:





She also loves to roll (and looks like a Lamington if she does that in white sand):



Brett was extremely relaxed after walking for four hours:



The dog decided upside down was the way to be:



On the beach:



When we were sitting on the rocks, the dog decided to do more upside-down antics near us, trying (successfully) to get her belly scratched.



Very nice outing!


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## tinyliny

what's a "lamington"?


Is that beach also hot? it's often hard to tell from photos. If I showed you photos of our beaches, in summer, you might think it's warm . . . but it's not.


I admire your stamina; walking 4 hours in sand dunes. That's amazingly challenging. I couldn't walk 4 hours on a treadmill!


Very pretty photos. It's great how you make thoughtful and purposeful self care a regular part of living.


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## SueC

Hello, @tinyliny! :wave:

The beaches are usually much cooler than the hinterland, and because of the direct evaporative cooling, also a fair bit cooler than the backs of the sand dunes, though we chose a more temperate day (mid-20s, degrees C) with a little cloud cover to go on that hike. There wasn't any loose sand to contend with on that 4h walk, so it wasn't so bad. In fact, it was like walking in a botanical garden - one of the prettiest sections of the Bibbulmun Track we have done so far! The trail is quite firm because it gets foot traffic only, as you will see when I post the photos later. It was the uphill-downhill that kept our heart rate up, but even that wasn't that drastic, just pleasant, and so you knew you were working! 

You've got gorgeous beaches too, I remember!  Do you go much? Is it far from where you live?


*Terrible Music Merchandise*

I was going to post something silly we are doing at the moment, and I may as well do it in this post, since you are an arty person yourself (and much more talented and practiced at painting than either of us!). Brett trained as a graphic designer, and he's currently doing some Photoshop stuff on the topic of "terrible music merchandise" which we're inventing for a post-punk band both of us like. :rofl: We're doing this on a music fan forum, but I wanted to show everyone Brett's post-punk toothbrush. Please remember, the object of the exercise is to make something truly terrible that a sane person wouldn't want to buy!

*Cure Eco-Toothbrushes*

Toothbrushes to rock your bathroom!










Environmentally friendly bamboo that you can whittle, _Burn_ or compost after your toothbrush wears out. Charcoal-infused bristles, now in distinctive styling - because it never was just about hair, it was about an aesthetic.


*Dental Health Awareness Poster*










----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And the goal was achieved - it's a truly hideous product. mg: I'd never brush my teeth with something like that, just like I'd never brush my teeth with a live fish. It just feels totally wrong. The face on it - well, you just don't put something like that in your mouth. Whereas what I saw in my mind when we brainstormed it, people might conceivably have used because it was kind of cute. But Brett said, "No, it has to be something so terrible you'd not want to use it!"

The first image is very cleanly done. He just composits stuff from different sources, like doing a collage but the programme allows you to shift, magnify, reduce, change, erase, add all sorts of things. Swapping out the background on the packaging to a piece of album cover was really fast, for example.

The poster is what he calls "rough work" - you can see where he's cut stuff out, there's mistakes on it, hair grows out of space, the date is wrong (for the picture), etc. He says it's because it's just a gag and not meant to be perfect, and that he hopes having some rough work like this would encourage others looking at this to say to themselves, "Well, I can do that too!" and submit something! 

By the way, I came in halfway through the poster design and Brett had used "nudie" toothbrushes in his image, which come in his and hers, with cartoon wedding tackle and cartoon breasts respectively (google it!). At that point the breasts were still on the toothbrush, and the toothbrush head was still normal, and I couldn't stop laughing. Brett said to me, "Well, the breasts are going, because that's just wrong!" It was extra funny because at that point the guitar body was still visible underneath the toothbrush, and it was like a toothbrush - guitar chimera, with _cartoon breasts_. :rofl:


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## SueC

tinyliny said:


> what's a "lamington"?


It's an Australian cake that looks like this:










And that's what a black dog looks like after rolling in white sand. Also a dark horse! Both Jess and Sunsmart looks like Lamingtons on a regular basis.


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## SueC

* LATE SUMMER IN REDMOND*

I spend most of my outdoors time melting, because we have a lot of heat and humidity these last couple of weeks. The UV in unbelievable (even in the morning and later afternoon - I avoid 10am - 3pm by going indoors) and the tip of my nose looks like Rudolph where the brim of my hat didn't reach - so I have to get a hat with a wider brim. I actually have and use a sombrero as well, but when it's windy, it nearly lifts me off the ground by the chin strap, or flies off backwards and then the string chokes me.

The cherries and nectarines are harvested, and I'm more than halfway through harvesting our two Japanese blood plums. I have made eight cauldrons of plum sauce. It's just plums concentrated down in their own juice with 10% added sugar to draw the juice out at the start. I can fit 7L of plum quarters into each cauldron - over 6kg of fruit, each time. 



When it's properly concentrated, you're left with around 3L of stuff to bottle. This plum sauce is superb on pancakes and waffles, or on toast with ricotta, or on rice cream. We eat lots of it in winter. I've simmered down nearly 50kg of plums so far, and will do more yet. I'm also making slab plum cakes - roll out wholemeal brioche-type yeast pastry on a tray, and cover with plum quarters. Dust with cinnamon and bake in a moderate oven for half an hour. Eat with cream or custard, for breakfast, morning tea, afternoon tea or anytime you need a snack.

These are the Satsuma plums, of which I harvested around 8 buckets:



On top of one of the buckets are also some Youngberries and Cox' Orange Pippin apples, which are the first apple variety to ripen in our orchard, in mid-summer. Jonathans are just starting now as well, and the Granny Smiths and Sundowners will start soon.

The Mariposa plums are in full swing now.

We lost our new yellow nectarine tree, and it looks like our 7-year-old peach is also dying. Their fruit was therefore bitter (they dropped all their leaves at early fruiting stage) and I'm taking their nets off and letting the birds eat that stuff. Their spots near the tank are too wet for them. I'll have to plant new trees further up the slope in winter. It's probably too late to shift the trees.

The Morello cherries looked like this:



I made Cherry Clafoutis several times, and froze many bags of cherries so I can make more Clafoutis, and also Blackforest Trifle, later on.

The white nectarines were lovely - we had a lot of them fresh, and I also stewed some for later.



There's lots of salad tomatoes like this:



So lots of tzatziki, and tomato/basil/mozzarella salad etc. Here's what a typical meal looks like:



We bought the fish, but the potato wedges and tzatziki are all from our own ingredients. Also the dill on the mayonnaise.

These are Mariposa plums, and also some of our first pears ever:



Pears take a long time to fruit (7 years +) and this years we got our first crop! So last night I made this, for the first time, with our own pears!



The pears get poached in spiced wine, hence the colour.

Tomatoes are ripening indoors where the birds don't peck at them:



They get soaked and frozen for winter. I find that easier than doing bottled tomatoes at this stage. The freezer is rapidly filling...



This pumpkin is making tonight's pie topping - Kangaroo Bourguignon Pie with pumpkin topping.

A bag of stuff I came in with today:



Five-colour silverbeet, to go into spinach & feta gozleme tomorrow:



More pumpkins:



...so that's keeping things very busy (and tasty...)


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## egrogan

I know jelaousy is frowned upon, but wow, that produce








The white nectarines especially- those are in my top 5 of favorite fruits (a list mostly dominated by berries). They are very hard to get locally because we don't have great conditions for growing them, so they often come from at least a few states away. Our favorite farm stand brings them from Pennsylvania (a couple of states away) for a few weeks in the summer, and they're so delicate you almost have to eat them in the car on the way home because they are so prone to bruising. 

Everything looks so delicious! Hope you get some relief from the heat though.


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## carshon

That dinner looks amazing. We are in the last throes of winter here and I truly miss my garden produce. My freezer is now bare of all that I froze and my canned apples are also gone. Thank you for the beautiful pictures. I do not have near the same amount of fruit trees or the drive to can as you do but I love the pictures.


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## BarbandBadgerandPedro

Mmmm... red plum jelly. home canned tomato juice. PICKLED everything! nice to dream about when the snow is falling here.


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## SueC

*HORSE UPDATE*

Greg Coffey came out last Thursday (i.e. 9 days ago) to do the midsummer trim on the horses for me - my one annual holiday from trimming, when the hooves are like marble. He said, "I'm sure you have more donkeys than you used to!" and he was right - last summer he came very early because my back was out, and I managed to trim through the rest of summer because we had a few good soaking thunderstorms at the right time. So, he'd not seen Nelly and Ben before, and both of them sidled up to him for a chat because he turned up early, and it took me a few minutes to put on my stable clothes before I went out.

The forecast was for 39 degrees C, so that's why he was early. I found a shady spot in the garden and took the horses there for their trims. Greg trims them seemingly effortlessly, while holding a conversation. He takes around 15 minutes per horse and does a magnificent job (of course). He always gets the angles spot on and everything _exactly_ level, and he gets the toes shorter than I do, without making the horses tender on their feet afterwards. (In fact I rode Sunsmart barefoot the following morning and he wasn't the least bit bothered by branches and detritus either.) When Greg was done, I asked him, "How come you're not sweaty and hyperventilating? That's what I am after two hooves, let alone if I had to do twelve hooves." He laughed and said that I wasn't used to it. :rofl:

Greg is in his 60s and allegedly semi-retired, but we don't have any other decent farriers in the district and he comes out once a year as a favour because he used to trim my Arabian mare in 2008 when I had her agisted in Albany, and then trim and shoe Sunsmart in 2009 when I'd brought him down. Plus, all of us are avid backyard F&V growers and often I've slipped Greg strange and wonderful seeds, like Painted Mountain Corn and Turk's Turban Pumpkin. Also he's one of our honey customers.

He came in for coffee and cake and a chinwag with us as usual, and extended an invitation for us to come spend a couple of days at his bush getaway at the Pallinup River as soon as the water levels in the river are high enough to go canoeing! Brett has annual leave coming up for the first half of March and we're looking forward to taking up the offer. We even have a farmsitter lined up.


:gallop:​
With the weather so disgusting late that week and into the start of the next, I went for early morning rides (like @knightrider does, and I thought of her ) twice last week. On Sunday night I started by excavating Sunsmart from his current bunch of Cushings shedding, with a rubber curry, while his lips twitched and his nose wrinkled with pleasure. He had a nice short summer coat for a couple of months, but then started growing excessive hair again - not particularly long, just too much of it, and that surplus hair then starts shedding within weeks. So we covered the ground in hair while the horse wiggled himself to and fro whenever I got an itchy area, which was most of him. Then I got rid of dust and dandruff with the dandy brush.

So, the following morning I didn't have to do all of this and could get on the horse nice and early. I put his boots on (fitted easily post-trim) so that we could ride the ridge tracks around our farm, up in the forest. So we went and did that, with a delighted dog, and did the loop around the valley floor on the way home - sort of like a medium loop inside a big loop. You can see it on this map:










The horse was jaunty and after warming up (snort, snort, snort) did lots of trotting, including fast trotting, and a nice long stretch of cantering. When we got back I decided to give him a bath with the hose and a plastic curry comb to really scratch his skin surface nicely, which he enjoyed. This also got rid of more loose hair, and he was comfortable and cool afterwards, tucking into his extra feed (plus salt and dolomite, which contains calcium and magnesium).

Wednesday morning I took the horse off the property on a barefoot ride through the valley floor of our south neighbour's to Verne Road, and back along the pasture in that block, with views all around. He enjoyed that too - he especially likes following narrow animal tracks, which is how you get through the valley floor on that property. These days, if we're walking, I talk to him a lot, reminiscing about our 11 years riding together and how we were both much more young and zippy in 2009. :music019:

Also I often compare the life he has now with the life he would have had, if I'd not adopted him. He'd still be solitary in a sand yard, "retired"... I think fondly of how he grazes for >95% of his calories now, and roams across 12 hectares of fields with meaningful exploration opportunities including access to bush tracks leading off the pasture, and how he socialises freely with other horses and a bunch of donkeys, and how on top of that he goes "hiking" with me. No boredom there, and plenty of choice. :blueunicorn:

Off to ride again this morning. :cowboy:


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## knightrider

So glad you are enjoying early morning rides. I find them addictive, and if I don't go, for some reason, I feel deprived. I love watching the sun come over the horizon and the world waking up.


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## Knave

Something is going wrong with your journal for me lately. It doesn’t show me your posts until someone else does, and when I click first unread it skips a lot. Don’t think I’m intending to if I miss reading something!


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## SueC

I had that problem with all the longer threads the other day, @Knave. Back to normal now though.  I hope I don't have to shelve my journal and start a Part 2, but longer threads do exist and still function, so hopefully I can avoid that. It seems to mostly be a problem when many people view at the same time, with the longer threads, because we've had to chop up 40+ several times for that reason.

Hullo, @knightrider! :wave: Yes, I could get a taste for this. Just there's avid competition if my husband is still in bed. I find it so much harder to get up early because of it. More snuggles and cups of tea are always so attractive. But he does have to leave before 7am once a week and that's a great riding day! :charge:
@egrogan, @carshon and @BarbandBadgerandPedro, I hope you get spring soon and can all plant your gardens, and that you have a great produce year this year! 

This next clip is for anyone who has ever had to do their own business accounting and tax. :rofl: 






This is _exactly_ what it was like for me when I started this stuff. Especially the bit from 0:10 to 0:17. :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: Totally been there.


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## SueC

*BIBBULMUN TRACK SECTION, WEST OF BORNHOLM BEACH*

As promised in this post about Bornholm Beach: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page62/#post1970832619

...here are the photos from the 16km coastal walk that preceded that. It was fabulous - like walking through a botanical garden; the track was mostly in a swale with its own microclimate, and the shelter and moisture in that place just made it a little Eden, with lush growth and lots of Banksias.

The start was just reasonably normal low coastal heathland:













Gradually things got more lush. The biodiversity in this part of the world is stunning... it's a botanical hotspot.







I love the geology of the South Coast:



A general view of the landscape looking back / east:





And now, things were starting to get really interesting:


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## SueC

We had a snack stop in a glade of trees.





And then we came into Banksia wonderland:











Views back over the hinterland:



Views ahead:





Young Banksia from above:



A really fabulous walk, and one we'll do again soon!


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## Knave

Beautiful!


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## SueC

*SPECIAL RIDE*

One of my current farmstay guests is a proper horse rider doing trails and lessons in Perth after learning as a youngster in her native Ireland, so I offered her a ride on Sunsmart, and since this one wasn't a beginner, I didn't have to have the horse on the lead rope! I walked along with them on the valley floor loop for company and things were so much fun I decided to bush-bash with her through the neighbour's property, where the Christmas trees are in full bloom at the moment. I've documented this ride before, it's one of my favourites and here's some snaps from past occasions:




























We met Noel and Robyn and one of their grandchildren at one of the farm dams on that block. Last time I rode past it, there was nearly no water in it at all due to the drought. The excavator was next to it and I noticed it had been deepened, and now there was a reasonable amount of water in the bottom. It was great to meet our favourite neighbours spontaneously like this because they've been so busy with parents in nursing homes and babysitting various grandchildren that they have been too run off their feet to come around to dinner. Sarah, on request, enunciated the correct pronunciation of the word "Ireland" with the r properly in place.

Eventually we set off again when Sunsmart decided he would no longer stand still and do nothing. It was great fun for Sarah, me, the horse and Jess. Sunsmart loved to bush-bash, Sarah had an impromptu unexpected ride dropped in her lap by the universe, Jess always loves outings, and I really needed the exercise - because on Thursday, instead of going on a long hike, we slothed all morning, then went to the Denmark bakery for lunch, did a sedate hour's walk around the riverside there, went home and slothed some more.

So now, I was encouraging Sarah to trot, and to canter up the big hill, and was running a lot, and behind the horse a fair bit of the time because I can't keep up with his big trot or his canter! :rofl: So I got properly sweaty. But it was actually fabulous to see the horse under a rider - I've not had a rider on Sunsmart off-lead before! It was wonderful to see him ridden at various paces, as a spectator. He's a nice horse, looks great ridden too, and really doesn't give the impression of being 23 and having Cushings.

I said to her, "Now I'm going to have to continue Julian's saddle training, so that if you come back, I can ride with you!" :charge: :charge:

Meanwhile, her partner was doing some drone footage of our place, which looks amazing - I'll post some of that sometime. Very interesting perspective!


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## Rob55

Hi All

Still riding occasionally. I went two months out of the saddle and had to be reminded which way to face when getting on. 

Joannah is getting better. We have a Pt appointment next week. Her cardiologist seems to think she will definitely continue to get stronger. 

My lease is really benefiting from the extra attention the farrier is giving. He is more forward and more collected. Praise the Lord for my wonderful trainer. She is so patient and observant. 

I know those of you down under are preparing for winter, but so happy we are looking forward to Spring. 

Blessings to all.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## CopperLove

The first time I scrolled through this looking at your new hikes, my computer did not want to load all the photos at once and I got to the part that said: "We had a snack stop" and the first photo that loaded beneath was the close-up of the Banksia trees and I had this moment where I thought... That does NOT look edible. Before I realized I'd misunderstood the wording and was also looking at the wrong photo :rofl:

Camping and hiking more are part of my "goals" for 2020... I don't set resolutions but I set goals this year focused around stuff I keep saying I want to do but that I never make time for.


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## SueC

Long time no write - so I thought I'd fix this...
@Rob55, it's good to hear from you, and especially to have such a good prognosis for Joannah.  Also that you're still riding! ...you can look forward to spring without feeling sorry for us here - summer is horrific when you've got drought and heatwaves and shocking UV - we've been much looking forward to autumn, which is our loveliest time of year here. Yesterday morning started with mist across the landscape - that's what I like to see!  Good luck and best wishes to both of you. 
@CopperLove, this is funny, hee hee! :dance-smiley05: But you know, everything is edible - there was some French guy who actually ate an aeroplane, you can look this up. Although, some things are only edible once... :Angel: ...it was good to read that you're gradually getting your confidence back after those recent incidents with the horse. I remember when I used to be paralysed with fear every time I heard a tractor when I was 10 and about the same stage of the game you are now, because a young horse had bolted badly with me spooking at one (and it took a while to get over it, and to stop infecting horses with the nervousness I had because of it!). It's part and parcel of learning to ride, for those who want to go on trails (and IMO it's worth it; who wants to do arena circles all their lives - horses certainly don't...)


A couple of pics of the garden recently - the food garden, and the garden behind the house:



Those are apple trees with the nets on, and we're munching the early ripeners already! :cheers:

The back garden has citrus trees and a couple of jostaberries, and a sort of bonsai avocado that got eaten by donkeys whenever it wasn't half-killed by frost...



Some recent adventures to follow...


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## SueC

*MT TALYUBERLUP CLIMB*

In July 2018, Brett and I climbed Mt Talyuberlup for his birthday, and I wrote about this here: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page16/#post1970571069

Less than two weeks afterwards, I broke my foot - remember all that? :rofl: And there's been over 150 pages of writing in this journal since...

Anyway, we climbed all the other Stirlings peaks again last year, except this one. But then, we had a cool, initially cloudy summer's day for a change, and a visitor keen to see this mountain when we told her about it, so we went! The photos are a combination of Brett's and Qing Ying's (the name means Full Moon, how cool is that! ), who was celebrating her 30th this way! I had my hands full being the dog handler - and attempting to survive the uphill after a hot summer where I was disinclined to do cardiovascular training three times a week... :music019:

This was the shot of the Western Peaks driving into the Stirling Range National Park from its northern end:



If you look at the three peaks in the centre of the picture, the leftmost which is slightly lighter in colour and sitting in the background is Mt Toolbrunup, on which Brett proposed to me in 2007 and which we climbed on the engagement anniversary date late last year (photos back here: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page59/#post1970798363).

The middle peak that looks like a pair of boobs is Mt Magog, which will be a few pages back from the above link; and the jaggedy-looking triangular thing down the slope from that, to the right, is Mt Talyuberlup - and you're about to see why it looks so jaggedy even from a distance!

Looking across to the trailhead, from the car park:



Near the start of the track - typical mallee (sparse-looking eucalypts) woodland:



Starting to climb - and for some reason I look like a hobbit here - in part it's the funny angle, I'm still coming up to the same level as Brett:



Brett at the foot of the spires over half an hour later, near the cave entrance:



Qing Ying ascending to cave level:





Here we are in the cave:





...and you can see that I need more cardio training if you look at that tongue hanging out! :razz: Brett is coming up into view in the cave if you look closely.

On the other side of the cave there's lots of jaggedy rocks:



Qing Ying took this _gorgeous_ panorama, which it really pays to enlarge:


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## SueC

If you look at the cliffs to the right of me, in the last two photos, we're about to climb into that crack in the cliff face, to the right of the rock that looks like an eagle. Here goes:









And here's our visitor taking a snap of Brett:



...who is still back near the cave entrance at this point, having taken those photos of us going up the cliff!



And this is Brett, having caught up with us, zooming into the summit at the top of that cliff climb:



Mt Magog from the summit of Talyuberlup:




The dog, and a lichen-encrusted bush:



Lunch was documented by our guest; lentil/beetroot/feta/walnut salad and tsatziki; apple strudel; plum cake and fresh fruit from our little orchard (which also gave us the apples and plums for the baking!).



Apple strudel at altitude - unfortunately without ice-cream! ;-)



Two photos from the descent - going back down the crack in the cliffs:



...and going down the steep section coming out of the cave:



I fell asleep in the car on the way back home, and continued my nap when we'd had afternoon tea at home - while Qing Ying went for a bushwalk around our place! :rofl: She also went horse-riding for the first time while visiting us, and I'll tell you about that in the next post.


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## Knave

What a wonderful hike!


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## CopperLove

@SueC That saying about everything is edible but some things only once is popular around here. Hunting for wild morel mushrooms is very popular in the area, but you have to know what you're doing because there are obviously some mushrooms you wouldn't want to eat. :lol: I don't know if we have any of the "you can only eat them once" kind of mushrooms around, but some that probably would make you a bit sick.

The funny thing with Dreama is... some of the neighbors really aren't very nice. So they've done dangerous mean things on purpose like shoot guns off just barely into their own properties, near the round pen. A neighbor has also driven by as fast as he possibly could on a tractor with a bucket on the front as we were riding back down the road. While the gunshot makes her a little nervous she doesn't lose her mind over it as long as she has a calm rider. The tractor wasn't even note-worthy to her. With other horses around her, pulled off to the side standing in lush grass to eat, none of the horses even cared. I'm not even sure she'd have spooked at the dogs that 2nd time I fell if we hadn't already both had our nerves tore up from the incident with the fence in the woods. But now it's there in my head: this is what happens when a horse spooks. But we'll get there eventually. She's fine, I just need to get my head on straight.

Your latest visitor was very adventurous! She's the kind of person I imagined would end up turning up at your place eventually. :lol:

I hadn't thought to ask you yet specifically, you may even have mention of it somewhere farther back in your journal since I know we've talked about clothing before briefly (or maybe I read it somewhere in your journal also), what kind of backpack do you prefer carrying with you for your hikes?

Originally I thought I might get a sling pack or waist pack just to carry a bottle of water, phone, keys and some first aid things. But the more I think about it, a slightly larger bag might be helpful because I would be able to carry more water, a spare jacket or sweater if it's cool out, and maybe some lunch.

A slightly bigger backpack with a more open compartment could also be used for other kinds of travel as well, packing light to visit friends or family, etc.

But I'm a little torn because, while some of the name-brand nags are pretty expensive, some of the cheaper options don't look like the padding and support from straps/hip belts would be as good. That's the reason I don't like using my work backpack for any kind of walk or hike, because even with just a couple of water bottles and a spare jacket in it, the straps dig into my shoulders and make me feel constricted. I'm also not sure yet whether I should get a separate bag to pack for camping and a different smaller one for short hikes/day hikes, or just get a bag for day hikes and cobble together totes and other bags when I do pack for camping.

It seems like a petty thing to be so indecisive about, but if I'm going to invest in a piece of equipment for an activity I want to pursue, I don't want to choose something that won't suit my needs, and may hurt my back as well. You do some serious hiking so I thought you might have some good input :smile:


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## SueC

@Knave, it's a wonderful place...  So lucky to live here. A European friend who's into castles, when he saw that, said I didn't need to be too sad about the absence of castles from Australia, with scenery like that!


Hello, @CopperLove! :wave: Re a good hiking pack, we bought ours 13 years ago (and don't ever expect to have to buy replacements as they're very well made) so I had a look at what that manufacturer is offering nowadays. This is the closest equivalent to what we use, but they've taken out a feature we consider important, which I'll tell you about in a minute.

https://www.mountaindesigns.com/equipment/packs-bags/day-packs/escape-multi-30l-day-pack/BP90141018

We don't use full hiking packs because we don't carry tents etc, we just do day walks. Depending on manufacturer, you will therefore either be looking at a small hiking pack, or a good day pack with hiking pack features. The most important of these is to have a comfortable, padded strap-up harness around your hips, so you can carry most of the load there and not on your shoulders. That made the most enormous difference to my hiking, once I bought this pack - it was so much more comfortable. (This topic is like saddle fitting for humans! :rofl You can adjust where the load hangs, the proportion that's on the hips versus shoulders, by lengthening the quick-release straps on the shoulders if you want to carry even less across the shoulders and even more on your hips. The shoulder straps on mine too are wide and padded (like with a good bra ;-)) so very comfortable, and there is a strap connecting them across your front, so you can adjust tension there too and determine exactly where you want the straps to sit on you.

With packs like this, your centre of gravity is lowered and your shoulders are freed up, which means you can move without much hindrance from your load when you're walking, climbing, balancing across rocks etc. We usually carry lots of water, ample food, our cameras, first aid supplies, a raincoat and extra warm clothing even in summer, in case of a sudden change of weather or an accident that would force us to perhaps spend a night out on a mountain - hypothermia catches many people then unless you're prepared, and will easily kill people who are in shock because of a broken limb etc.

What the pack in the link doesn't have is a mesh divider between your back and the backpack that makes a gap between your back and the backpack so that air can circulate freely and you can cool better. I hate having a sweaty back and I overheat really quickly, so the extra evaporative body surface this feature allows has made me so comfortable, and not just in summer - even in winter, if you sweat on your back and the backpack is sitting in contact, it's really uncomfortable, and when you take it off it's icy in a winter gale. So I really recommend this divider. Let's see if I can find a picture showing that on our packs:










You see the gap between the pack and my back? I have a mesh divider in a bendy frame sitting directly on my back, which is rigged up so that there is a gap between it and the pack. I found a drawing of exactly that online, but it seems that most hiking packs I've looked at online today don't have this feature, yet I think it's really worth having and should be standard:










...image from here, more discussion: https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/24632/breathable-backpack

Just like with a saddle, it's the fit that's more important than the look.  It makes such a huge difference...


OMG, your neighbours, that's terrible!!!  I can't understand why some people are so unfriendly, and downright malicious. I had to laugh about your mushrooms though...

And you're right about that traveller, and we've had a few like that now!  Overall, we've been getting really, really nice people, in part because the mutual review system of Airbnb means you can decide not to take guests that don't have excellent reviews from previous hosts. A lot of our guests are young and adventurous, and if they come on their own instead of in a couple, I make a point of going hiking with them of they want to, as I enjoy hiking anyway and I feel better when someone isn't doing a more remote track on their own!


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## SueC

*ANOTHER FIRST RIDE*

I've offered beginner rides to a couple of suitable Airbnb guests so far. The first one I wrote about in the middle of this post: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page61/#post1970811201

...and then there's more here: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page61/#post1970822339

...and then there was the special trek with the more accomplished rider, who'd ridden ponies in Ireland as a child: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page63/#post1970836657

This has all been entirely voluntary from me to people who I feel it's safe to put on a horse (for them and for the horse), as a sort of bonus extra. I enjoy it, so why not, and I've done that all my life with friends and acquaintances, even before Airbnb. It's nice being able to create good experiences between people and horses, and it's a ripples-in-the-pond type experience which has ramifications in many other ways for a person, so I love to do that! 

So when our avid mountaineer from the previous post arrived and the animals all decided she was a good sort they wanted to hang out with, and she was besotted with them, I dropped the question on her, "Have you ever ridden a horse?" and no, she hadn't, so I asked, "Would you like to?" and got a resounding yes. It's so much fun to work with people like this! Like our previous complete beginner rider she was fit, had a background in stuff like Yoga / Pilates / Gymnastics, and had fantastic balance. You tack up, demonstrate how to get on and off a horse, and then it's their turn. Qing Ying was yet another person who did that seamlessly the first time, as if she'd done this a hundred times before - and that's despite the fact that she's really petite, and I had to make extra holes in the stirrup leathers to make them short enough for her! Little starting tips on posture, moving with the horse and how to hold reins, and off we went on a loop around the farm tracks, with the horse on a lead rope and the rider safe and supported.

One of the first things she said was, "Oh, I'm so high up!"  I told her that's also the first impression I had when I started as a 9-year-old on a huge Warmblood school horse called Viola. The stirrups were chin level to me standing on the ground next to the horse! The other thing I remember was the never-before sensation of riding something warm and big and furry. It felt scary and safe at the same time. It's an honour to be carried around voluntarily by a big critter like that. I always liked the Hippogriff scenes in the Harry Potter books, because they showed exactly that. When we're so used to something, like people riding horses, sometimes you have to create an imaginary scenario with a fantasy creature that has parallels with the one we're used to, to open our eyes properly instead of take stuff for granted.

The other thing Qing Ying said after a while was that the whole thing felt like a form of meditation, very relaxing and grounding and very in the present. Which I know a few of us on the forum feel too, and have discussed before! 

It's always nice when a new rider is smiling and the horse is smiling and at the end of a session, when the rider comes back to earth and you ask, "Is that something you'd like to do again?" they answer emphatically in the affirmative! 

:charge: :charge: :charge:


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## CopperLove

It does seem a lot like saddle fitting for humans :rofl: I am glad you have validated my concern for picking the right bag.

The thing I immediately notice about the new version of the bag you use is that the hip and shoulder padding support looks much better than the other name brands I’ve been reading and watching reviews on. Your description of looking for “a small hiking pack, or a good day pack with hiking pack features” is accurate and I think some of the bags I’ve been looking at have been designed more for other kinds travel, not so much for hiking.

A really popular brand in the US for travel backpacks right now is Osprey. While I’ve heard great things about them, quality, warranty, etc. the padding still looks better on the Mountain Design and Deuter bags from bicycling bag discussion you linked.

Osprey does make hiking bags as well but I think their rise in popularity has been partially due to “minimal travel” being such a trendy marketing thing right now. Which if I’m honest is probably why I’ve heard so much about them (because I’ve wasted a lot of time watching youtube videos and sighing and daydreaming about places I’d like to travel with just a backpack :lol: )

Browsing through the Dueter website, it seems they no longer make a bag with the mesh and curved frame divider system either. I haven’t looked through every single one yet, but it’s not what I’ve looked at so far and not in any other brand I’ve looked at either. Makes you wonder why companies stopped providing this feature since it seems like multiple brands produced it in the past? :confused_color:

A description on one of the Dueter packs I read includes this: “Padded back panel is made of open-cell, hollow-chamber foam for cooling breathability.” Maybe brands have tried to decrease the bulkiness of that particular feature by just providing the breathable padded back panel. I’ve seen several with similar claims, but it definitely seems like the older design you’ve describe would work better.

I’m going to browse the Mountain Designs site more. It seems they offer a free club membership with access to a discount and some good incentives for a first purchase, and are clearly pretty good quality if you’ve been using one for 13 years!

There are also things I see about this 30L style of Dueter backpack that could potentially be helpful: https://www.rei.com/product/147416/deuter-trail-pro-30-sl-pack-womens
It’s supposedly designed specifically for women; I don’t know how much that actually matters, but as with saddle fitting I guess it could make a difference since there are some average variations between male and female bodies. The Dueter bag also has an internal frame, which it seems like the new version of the Escape Multi 30L Day Pack is lacking after that mesh panel and curved frame were removed. But as I look at bags on the Mountain Designs site I’m guessing I may find a similar one that does have an internal frame.

None of my hikes this year are going to be anywhere near as long as yours, but from trying to use my work bag on short hikes and walks I know that certainly isn’t going to work and that the way a bag fits is more important than the size itself. Thank you for pointing out these bags that are clearly much better designed for my purposes than the stuff I’ve been looked at :smile:

Note about the neighbors: Most of that has stopped now because they’ve had charges pressed on them for other things. I’ve not talked about any of that in my journal because I don’t want to be getting advice saying I should move Dreama, because I can’t imagine being anywhere else with the help they’ve given me, and I’ve also never felt there was an overt threat to her safety being pastured there. But things are getting better on that front.

It is so lovely of you hiking with visitors and presenting some of them with their very first horseback ride!  I still get that “Oh, I’m so high up!” feeling, but some of that has gone away after lengthening my stirrups a bit… when it’s not so much effort getting on, it feels less like you’re so far up. :lol:


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## CopperLove

Don't mean to double post on your journal, but I had to because I wanted to pop back in and say how foolish I feel after all that talk of browsing the Mountain Designs site more and their membership benefits after realizing this evening that they are an Australia only brand :rofl: They've still pointed me in a better direction though!


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## SueC

Can't you buy their packs on eBay? I'm surprised! But I liked the look of that pack in your hyperlink anyway. In the absence of mesh divider backpacks, it looks like a good one! 

I'm glad that was helpful for you.  Can't have you wearing the wrong pack saddle when hiking, now, can we? ;-)

Speaking of, we've just come back from another hike - Monkey Rock to Lights Beach and back, which I already documented last year, with nice photos here:

https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page53/#post1970742907

It was time to do that one again!  Now I'm waiting for Brett to come out of the shower so I can give him a much-needed haircut, and then I'm off to ride Sunsmart - we also had a nice ride yesterday. :cowboy:


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## CopperLove

Nope, none on ebay that I've found so far. Interestingly enough, the shipping restrictions on the REI website state that the Deuter bags can only be shipped within the US. So maybe it's a sign. I think I've almost decided on that bag even though it's a bit more than I planned on spending. I've watched some videos on it now since the website doesn't give good photos of the interior, and I'm kind of in love. It won't affect my buying decision, because in the end it really doesn't matter, but I am a little upset that they don't offer a wider variety of colors. I loved the bright Red Dahlia color available in the Mountain Designs bag and the deeper red available in some of the Osprey bags. A lot of the women's body specific designs don't come in red... don't they realize women want red too? (The REI website also offers a good return policy as far as I can tell, so much like a good saddle fitting, if I load it up and try it and it just doesn't fit my back, I can return it :rofl: )

I'm quite jealous of the Australian beaches, I'm sure you hear that a lot on HF. :lol: I'd never been to a beach and seen the ocean until just last year. I literally gasped when I saw your photo of what you call a Bluebottle. I've always read them referred to as a "Man O' War", and about how dangerous they can be in the water because of how long their tentacles/stingers are. I never realized they were so beautiful up close in an other-worldly kind of way.


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## gottatrot

Just curious about your opinion because of things you have posted in the past.
I didn't want to get too controversial on the Covid threads. However, have there been any discussions out there about how many of us are concerned with the world's overpopulation, and that pandemics and other natural disasters may be necessary in order to keep the numbers more sustainable? Of course people are concerned about their loved ones, but taking more of a larger/non personal view. Could things like pandemics actually be a positive thing for the natural world?
What do you think?


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## SueC

Well, in the absence of people using their brains to limit their overbreeding (and overconsumption), I think that's right, @gottatrot - just as every time there is a war etc. But I like none of these things, and I wish we could just be sensible, and not require wars (usually over resource conflicts) and epidemics to limit what we should be limiting ourselves, and have the means to limit ourselves. Unfortunately, in that respect, most humans behave exactly like bacteria. :-(

I actually just logged on to ask you something!  You've got a horse with Cushings and have done a lot of reading on it. Does, or did, your mare ever have weepy eyes because of it? Sunsmart has little trails of fluid a couple of inches down his face these past couple of months. It's also windy and some of the cattle have the same, and one of the donkeys, but he's never had that before and I wondered if it could be related to his Cushings, or whether it's a separate thing. Apparently one of the possible reasons for this in livestock is cobalt deficiency, but he should have plenty of cobalt through his daily mineral mix, unless the Cushings is somehow affecting his trace nutrient balance, or unless it's something unrelated to either of these things.

Also, did your mare's coat ever become near-normal again after you started treating with Pergolide?

And to what extent if any did she lose her topline?

Sunsmart has, for the first time in his life, become ribby over summer, and is losing topline. He still has plenty of hindquarter and shoulder muscles etc and rides really well most of the time, but he was always a good doer and it's the first time I've actually increased his feed other than to compensate for fitness training, long rides etc. His teeth are due to be done (appointment already arranged) and he actually has some gum issues too for the first time in his life, which I also wonder about in terms of possible relationship to Cushings. Romeo lost teeth in his old age, but never had gum problems!

I will be quizzing my vet at the dental appointment, but would also really value any thoughts you have on this, and I'm sure you've read reams of stuff on equine Cushings... 

@CopperLove, what a shame you can't get that pack in your preferred colour! But, you're very creative, so why not stencil some cherry red design onto it with a suitable fabric paint that will bond to the material and not wash off in the wet? Or alternatively, apply cherry red stickers, maybe of cherries? ;-) Or glue bits of red fabric designs on? (I think stitching them on would ruin the waterproofing.) Then you'd have a truly unique, personalised hiking pack! 

You live on such a big continent that it's quite possible to be nowhere near the ocean! It was like that for me in Europe. I saw mountains and lakes, but didn't see the ocean until my family went for a car trip along the French Mediterranean when I was about 10. That was nice, but the beaches on the South Coast of Western Australia are far and away stunning compared to what I saw then! I love the seascapes down here.


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## gottatrot

As always, I like to hear your opinions, thanks! Probably I take a too dim view of the world but due to the rats in a maze experiments I feel that with excess population, if there is not disease it will be violence, and as a health care worker I lean toward choosing death by disease. 

That's interesting, my mare does get weepy eyes in the summer. I have never attributed it to her Cushing's. One thing I noticed though was that she had sweet itch that was gradually getting better each year (I think her immune system was depressed by the high cortisol levels from Cushing's), but when I started her on the Prascend the sweet itch was worse again. So I've thought the clear fluid draining from her eyes in the summer was probably from an allergy. But also it gets windy here, she lives up on a hill, and her eyes protrude more than other horse eyes.

Amore looked like she was beginning to lose muscling along her topline at the beginning before I started her on the Prascend. That reversed as soon as I started the medication, and although she has a slight pot belly it is not really worse than it has been her whole life. 
Her coat has not really improved on the medication, but it basically has stayed the same and not worsened. She gets only slightly more than a horse with a heavy winter coat would get, not quite as much as an Icelandic horse. She sheds late but she does shed out completely each year. About 4-6 weeks after all the other horses. 

We have been fighting a small amount of white line disease this year, which I attribute to her Cushing's, but Nala had a bad case of it too and the sand they are always on is really bad for getting the organisms inside even the tiniest hoof crack.
She has not had gum problems, and keeps her weight but her teeth are short due to being 29. The only issue I've had is needing to soak her vitamin pellets or they ball up in her esophogus and get stuck. 

I made a video yesterday that I will post online in a couple days, it shows Amore's coat and condition pretty well. She's in full winter coat right now. She feels great, and when I called her yesterday she galloped the whole length of the field rather than canter sedately in like an old lady.


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## SueC

Thank you very much for that information, @gottatrot!  It's good to have a "comparison horse" for this.

Re topline, I am wondering whether my horse is going to need an increase in Prascend from half a tablet to a full tablet daily - or possibly, it's a dental issue at the moment (he may be running an abscess somewhere). I will keep you posted and let you know what the vet thinks, but unfortunately they can't come until the 30th for the dental visit. Sunsmart will get his teeth done, as well as Sparkle and Nelly, who I decided would benefit most from dentals. The rest can be done later, as there aren't any obvious problems and they're all in good condition. Costs of dentals have more than doubled because they're now insisting on sedating every animal, even though they're restrained in a mobile crush - and there's nobody left who will do the old manual dental file and gag thing either, and that was much more affordable. The sedation alone costs what a complete dental used to cost with the old technique - $80 per animal for drugs alone. :|

By the way, what are the policies at your workplace about staff illness at this point in time? In the practice Brett works at, everyone on staff, doctors included, has been told to stay home if they have even just a sore throat, so Brett is home today; should be fine by Friday (Thursday is his off day anyway). We've both got a bit of a sore throat and are therefore mostly resting up today, eating well, hydrating etc.

I am interested in any opinions on the whole situation that you may not have aired in the general space! What precautions are you taking, for example? And how's the Oregon toilet paper situation - has that insanity come to your part of the world too?


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## SueC

*FARM UPDATE: CATTLE DROVING*

Last week we sold some cattle. This meant droving three over-600kg steers along the road for the 2km trip to the neighbours' cattle yard, and it's a bitumen road with things like milk trucks coming by occasionally.

We actually had four steers in that lot. The fourth one couldn't go because he hurt his foot / shoulder (unclear which; nothing broken, no infection, no swelling) and therefore can't be transported. He's been limping six weeks without getting worse or better, so he's staying with the three little steers and we'll give him another month to see if he's going to come good. If not, we're going to have to eat him ourselves, because he can't go on a truck like this. Occasionally cattle here will injure themselves playing or running down a dam wall; it's only the second time in ten years we've had a lame cow. The first one eventually recovered, but it's not like you can catch them and give them a sports massage or an icepack or anything!

Getting cattle to the neighbours' place is always a bit of a rodeo / fitness run. We actually do this with our bicycles, because cows run faster than us and we need to be able to keep up with them so we don't lose them somewhere (and we can't take horses or the dog safely on the public road for this, the speed limit on that road is 110 km/h and people drive like lunatics). The cattle aren't always quiet; sometimes they run like mad and we're flat out on our bikes keeping up with them. At other times they try to hop over fences or go down roads they aren't supposed to, and that part is a bit stressful, and involves a bit of drama and pushing them back the other way if necessary.


_The dog with some of our past dairy steers_

The last time we sold cattle, two years ago (before the drought), one of the heifers jumped clean over the fence back into our farm when they were halfway up the road, and hid in the middle of the forest for the rest of the afternoon, so we put the other six heifers back in with her, cancelled our transport to the saleyards, and tried again the following week, when we finally got all seven of them to the neighbours' yards.

Those were beef breed and a bit wild; the three we sold last week were dairy steers, brought up by humans, so they were much easier to handle. They were very leisurely most of the way. Crossing the road into the neighbours' big scary orange driveway was the big boo-hoo, it always is with groups of cattle - they've walked on bitumen for the first part of the trip, then go up to a sand track parallel to the road, and then they are supposed to cross the road later on, and you'd think they thought the orange driveway was a river full of piranhas... 

Eventually they crossed over, but not until several cars had come while they were starting to go into the road and then we had to start again after collecting them from 100m further up the sand track again a couple of times... you really need three people for that - one right, one left, one behind - and we are only two, but the neighbour turned up after ten minutes of toing and froing on the road... (The neighbour has paddocks both sides of the road, and told us that years ago they had one cow that point blank refused to cross the bitumen, so this particular cow had to be _trucked_ over the road crossing every year!)

Got good money for them - $2.58 per kg liveweight = over $1,700 per steer, when they were paying only around $1,000 for them when the market was low back in December...

We thought we'd be able to fix up our driveway from part of the proceeds, but with COVID-19 and the expected loss of our Airbnb income for a while, we may now hold off and see if the other steer comes good and can be sold along with the three yearlings. We don't normally sell yearling beef, but for the next month a high demand will exist, and it would be more economical for us to sell them early and re-stock with weanlings because of this. If we can do that, the driveway will definitely get fixed...if not, then we may have to park the car 20m from the house again on the wettest days of winter. Ah well, there are worse things in the universe.


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## SueC

*MONKEY ROCK - LIGHTS BEACH OUTING*

Here's some photos from our outing to Denmark on Saturday. We did this hike much faster than last year - just 45 minutes to get from Monkey Rock car park to Lights Beach, and then the same time back! It seemed like a pretty short, easy walk this time, which is great, because it means we're fitter than last year (having really worked on it) - the walk is very uphill-downhill, but nothing like the uphill of Talyuberlup! :rofl:

From the start of the section we did:







About halfway to Lights Beach, you can see Monkey Rock (near where we parked) in the background - those big lumps of rock partway up the big hill:



The bitumen section is actually a bicycle path - we did that one last year, on the bikes, with the dog: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page54/#post1970761371



Lights Beach:





Having lunch:





Some more beach photos, especially for landlocked persons:







More photos we took of the same trail last year - when we documented more thoroughly: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page53/#post1970742907

We were supposed to do Peak Head on Brett's day off tomorrow, but that is a really intense cardiovascular workout which we are going to avoid because of our sore throats - we'd rather let our bodies fight the infection. Hopefully we can do it on the weekend instead. Tomorrow, I'm hoping to be able to do the outdoors tasks I had originally planned for today - but it was raining, and we needed to take it easy... I should at least be able to go riding tomorrow. :charge:


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## gottatrot

Great pictures!!


SueC said:


> By the way, what are the policies at your workplace about staff illness at this point in time? In the practice Brett works at, everyone on staff, doctors included, has been told to stay home if they have even just a sore throat, so Brett is home today; should be fine by Friday (Thursday is his off day anyway). We've both got a bit of a sore throat and are therefore mostly resting up today, eating well, hydrating etc.
> 
> I am interested in any opinions on the whole situation that you may not have aired in the general space! What precautions are you taking, for example? And how's the Oregon toilet paper situation - has that insanity come to your part of the world too?


People at my work are told to stay home if they have a cough. If that clears up, they can come back to work. We've had several so far that have been off and come back already. 

We already had about a week's worth of toilet paper when all of this started, thankfully, because sometimes we wait until we're nearly out. Yesterday we were driving down the coast so stopped in several places and only found TP at one place. We were allowed to take three small packages, and DH was inclined to only take one but I talked him into taking our limit since we will be out in a week and there was none in stock in our area. I've seen photos of empty shelves all around the country and in Japan also. I believe this toilet paper hoarding is global.

I understand people think they might be in quarantine. However, buying enough toilet paper for a year is ridiculous.
We have a lot of paper towels so could always use those. 

Personally I think the virus is serious, but not as deadly as many diseases. We still haven't been able to test those who are not seriously sick here in the U.S., but of those who are we are getting around a 1.5% mortality rate. I think everyone being hygienic for once will help the flu and other respiratory viruses spread less, which is good. 

It bothers me to see photos of patients in other countries isolated on cots without IVs or oxygen nearby and nothing sitting near them to drink. Either the people are not sick enough to need hospital care, in which case you are only going to create a problem by putting them in this scenario, or else if they really do need fluids and oxygen, they are going to get much more sick and are likely to die. I am not sure how they are organizing things but I am certain here we would have less trained people going around making sure everyone had their head raised up on pillows so they could breathe, kleenex and water next to the patient, curtains and commodes, the basics. 
It makes me wonder if fear of contagious illnesses can make things much worse for people who contract them.

They say health care workers are taking this less seriously, but that's mainly because we understand how many diseases spread and it's not magical or anything, just science. Like you're not going to get the virus from eating take out food, and handling your food with gloves is silly. 

The virus isn't going to spread from a person carrying it into their surroundings unless they wipe their nose or cough into their hand and touch surfaces. So the "silent carrier" is only a factor if the person has a habit of open mouth coughing when not sick or else wiping their body fluids on things around them. Children behave that way.

It's not oozing out of their pores or anything. It is also somewhat difficult to catch droplet viruses from surfaces, which is why normally for things like the flu we only wear masks around patients but not gowns and gloves. My main precaution is to never touch my mucous membranes unless I am in the safety of my own home and have already washed my hands, and I always maintain distance from people who are coughing or sneezing. 

Hopefully old people are not too afraid to go out and becoming ill from not eating or not having basic care supplies.


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## bsms

My son installed a bidet for us several years ago. Glad we have it now. We had cable news available to us when we were in Monterey...24/7 news outlets spread fear and panic. I feel sooo much better when I don't have Fox News or CNN telling me breathlessly about how we are all doomed! I'll admit I'm glad to be back on my two acres with desert land nearby. My left hip is still causing some issues but it feels better when I move - so walking 2-3 miles a day out in the desert helps my body AND my soul! I understand my daughter asking that her first phrase she learned in Hebrew be "_I hear the desert calling me!_"

Doesn't need to be "desert" per se. We went for a short hike in the California coastal range while there...lots of people out on the trails, beautiful scenery, lots of trees. I'd LOVE to be able to go hiking where Brett & SueC have been hiking. Maybe need to save our money and take a trip to Australia in a year or two. My wife's sister lives in Melbourne. And I enjoyed a TDY to Darwin back in the 80s (although we were working 6 days a week).

But yeah, in the end, I hear the desert calling me.:cheers:

PS: The folks I know from 60-85 are the LEAST worried about the virus that I know. It isn't like most of us inhabit crowded bars or nightclubs anyways. For me, age has brought a measure of fatalism anyways. Not a Calvinistic fatalism, just an understanding that I won't live forever regardless of what I do. I was in my 20s when my 75 year old aunt was diagnosed with severe cancer and given weeks to live. I was shocked that she wasn't the least bit afraid. The older I get, the more I understand.


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## knightrider

> The folks I know from 60-85 are the LEAST worried about the virus that I know. It isn't like most of us inhabit crowded bars or nightclubs anyways. For me, age has brought a measure of fatalism anyways. Not a Calvinistic fatalism, just an understanding that I won't live forever regardless of what I do. I was in my 20s when my 75 year old aunt was diagnosed with severe cancer and given weeks to live. I was shocked that she wasn't the least bit afraid. The older I get, the more I understand.


This is me and I agree. I really appreciate your thoughts on things. Thank you for being you.


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## SueC

gottatrot said:


> People at my work are told to stay home if they have a cough. If that clears up, they can come back to work. We've had several so far that have been off and come back already.


This sounds like a sensible policy to me. I read somewhere that if everyone stayed home when they have coughs and sniffles, until they stopped having those, that this would actually vastly reduce the amount of sick leave taken overall, because it would stop many other people from getting ill. It would also mean that people on sick leave would be home with relatively minor symptoms, and be able to nip their illnesses in the bud, and be able to get some things around the house done, as opposed to the current situation where people only take sick leave once they become truly debilitated - and have meanwhile infected a dozen other people because they didn't stay home.




> ...I believe this toilet paper hoarding is global.


Monkey see, monkey do?




> I understand people think they might be in quarantine. However, buying enough toilet paper for a year is ridiculous.


Yeah, there's a difference between having a month's worth of supplies in case you have to quarantine, and a year's worth! And yeah, resources need to be shared fairly, and not be bought up by a bunch of opportunists / speculators / profiteers / "me-first" people who don't care one bit about others in their community...

I saw a great piece somewhere about how "love thy neighbour" is a far better response to COVID-19 than hoarding toilet paper.

And a very funny comment from someone on my music forum, "Why do they need all this toilet paper, when their pants are full already!" :rofl:




> Personally I think the virus is serious, but not as deadly as many diseases. We still haven't been able to test those who are not seriously sick here in the U.S., but of those who are we are getting around a 1.5% mortality rate. I think everyone being hygienic for once will help the flu and other respiratory viruses spread less, which is good.


Yeah, I'm hoping some of the skills being learnt by the public in this pandemic won't be forgotten about for "ordinary" cold and flu. It's funny how people are reckless with the devil they know, versus the devil they don't. But the devil you know is more likely to kill you than the devil you don't, in part because of that attitude.




> It bothers me to see photos of patients in other countries isolated on cots without IVs or oxygen nearby and nothing sitting near them to drink. Either the people are not sick enough to need hospital care, in which case you are only going to create a problem by putting them in this scenario, or else if they really do need fluids and oxygen, they are going to get much more sick and are likely to die. I am not sure how they are organizing things but I am certain here we would have less trained people going around making sure everyone had their head raised up on pillows so they could breathe, kleenex and water next to the patient, curtains and commodes, the basics.
> It makes me wonder if fear of contagious illnesses can make things much worse for people who contract them.


Yes, the idea of volunteers caring for the less acutely ill makes a lot of sense, as long as they can be sufficiently protected from contracting the virus themselves. 




> They say health care workers are taking this less seriously, but that's mainly because we understand how many diseases spread and it's not magical or anything, just science. Like you're not going to get the virus from eating take out food, and handling your food with gloves is silly.


Yeah, agreed. I was thinking the other day, "Well, I'm almost certainly going to get COVID-19 eventually, just as I got H1N1 eventually (and that wasn't a severe illness for me, although it killed others), and if I am going to get it, I'd prefer to get it either early, so I can be over it early, and hopefully have at least medium-term immunity to it - or to get it late, but not to get it in the thick of it when many people are ill with it."

But I'm not exposing myself on purpose, that's for sure.




> The virus isn't going to spread from a person carrying it into their surroundings unless they wipe their nose or cough into their hand and touch surfaces. So the "silent carrier" is only a factor if the person has a habit of open mouth coughing when not sick or else wiping their body fluids on things around them. Children behave that way.
> 
> It's not oozing out of their pores or anything. It is also somewhat difficult to catch droplet viruses from surfaces, which is why normally for things like the flu we only wear masks around patients but not gowns and gloves. My main precaution is to never touch my mucous membranes unless I am in the safety of my own home and have already washed my hands, and I always maintain distance from people who are coughing or sneezing.


I pretty much do what you describe. Something else I've always done is, say I'm in a shopping centre and someone coughs or sneezes near me. I immediately start breathing out slowly through my nose while rapidly walking away from the vicinity of the cough / sneeze (=aerosol).

The last time I had cold, and flu, I caught them off Brett, who is occupationally exposed (usually gets one bug a year), because I continued to sleep in the same room. I did that because prior to the pretty severe illness we had last year (bedridden with debilitating "ordinary" flu for a fortnight; caught a follow-on cold later which turned into bronchitis), cold and flu were generally minor illnesses for me, and I kind of felt like it's actually not a good idea to always avoid getting them, because the immune system needs to continue to be challenged by these things in order to avoid going down hard (is my thinking, what do you think?).

Anyway, since that experience last year, I'm very keen to avoid a repeat, and especially with this new virus. So, I won't be sleeping in the same bed anymore when the next bug comes home.

But you know what has me flummoxed? ...how the heck did I get this sore throat (which is improving), given that I have only been out in a public place with people in it once in the past fortnight? I had it just before Brett had it, so presumably I caught it first, or we both caught it off the same source... which was a grocery shopping together in Albany just over a week ago. Unless this stuff was hanging in the air as an aerosol, without me hearing a sneeze or cough in the vicinity, it probably came off a surface... but I've been vigilant about not touching my face etc while out in public places, until I've washed my hands back home. Do we have to start wiping down door handles and car keys etc? I wouldn't normally bother for mild illnesses like this, but I see this as "one that got through" while I'm rehearsing for avoiding COVID-19...

By the way, I'm not at this stage using hand disinfectants while in public places. I'm just washing properly when I get home...




> Hopefully old people are not too afraid to go out and becoming ill from not eating or not having basic care supplies.


Yeah, it's a difficult one, because healthy eating and exercise are so important for immunity, and also for general health - and it would be ironic to come down with another illness _as a result_ of trying to avoid COVID-19...

Thanks for your thoughts on all this, in advance as well - always valued!


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## bsms

A lady I talked to in church last Sunday had H1N1. She described it as "the flu on steroids" for her. In the USA, 61 million cases, 274,304 hospitalizations, and 12,469 deaths. I understand this virus is more dangerous, in part perhaps because it really seems to hammer older folks who already have multiple health issues (as does the flu, generally).

I suppose I can understand a 2 week pause, but my oldest daughter may be laid off soon (fixes airline electrical systems) and a lot of people whose jobs don't allow them to build up much savings (waitresses, store clerks, etc) are out of work. Since this virus heavily targets the old, why not put stronger restrictions on us old folks and be careful about destroying the economy? I'm certainly no expert on the spread of infectious diseases but it seems to me it is going to spread anyways.

Maybe the government IS handling things well. I've no qualifications to say otherwise. But if the cities want food, someone has to bring it to them. Someone has to sell it. Cars are still needed for most of us and they cannot be fixed via telephone. Heck, my horses need hay brought in or they will die! I just have a feeling the brilliant doctors of the US CDC may not be as smart as they think they are...smart in their fields, but maybe not so smart about life in general.

And I'm so glad I'm back to life without cable news - ANY OF THEM! 24/7 fanning the flame in search of ratings. I understand cutting back on purely social interactions, using good hygiene, etc. But I feel like too many people have watched too many horror flicks. Maybe I hang around the wrong crowd, but most of the folks I talk to are getting more ****ed at the panic than afraid of the virus.

"_if I am going to get it, I'd prefer to get it either early, so I can be over it early, and hopefully have at least medium-term immunity to it...But I'm not exposing myself on purpose, that's for sure._"

Yep. 100% agree with you.


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## gottatrot

bsms said:


> A lady I talked to in church last Sunday had H1N1. She described it as "the flu on steroids" for her. In the USA, 61 million cases, 274,304 hospitalizations, and 12,469 deaths. I understand this virus is more dangerous, in part perhaps because it really seems to hammer older folks who already have multiple health issues (as does the flu, generally).
> 
> I suppose I can understand a 2 week pause, but my oldest daughter may be laid off soon (fixes airline electrical systems) and a lot of people whose jobs don't allow them to build up much savings (waitresses, store clerks, etc) are out of work. Since this virus heavily targets the old, why not put stronger restrictions on us old folks and be careful about destroying the economy? I'm certainly no expert on the spread of infectious diseases but it seems to me it is going to spread anyways.
> 
> Maybe the government IS handling things well. I've no qualifications to say otherwise. But if the cities want food, someone has to bring it to them. Someone has to sell it. Cars are still needed for most of us and they cannot be fixed via telephone. Heck, my horses need hay brought in or they will die! I just have a feeling the brilliant doctors of the US CDC may not be as smart as they think they are...smart in their fields, but maybe not so smart about life in general.
> 
> And I'm so glad I'm back to life without cable news - ANY OF THEM! 24/7 fanning the flame in search of ratings. I understand cutting back on purely social interactions, using good hygiene, etc. But I feel like too many people have watched too many horror flicks. Maybe I hang around the wrong crowd, but most of the folks I talk to are getting more ****ed at the panic than afraid of the virus.
> 
> "_if I am going to get it, I'd prefer to get it either early, so I can be over it early, and hopefully have at least medium-term immunity to it...But I'm not exposing myself on purpose, that's for sure._"
> 
> Yep. 100% agree with you.


I agree also.

I hope people who are living paycheck to paycheck have not been putting a year's supply of toilet paper on their credit cards at 22% interest.


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## gottatrot

Accidentally deleted the first part of my post. 
Was going to say that a sore throat in isolation might also be from a post nasal drop from allergies, even sometimes one you don't notice as much but drains down your throat when you are sleeping at night.
Or acid reflux, which I have often had a sore throat and wondered if I was getting sick, but when it cleared up I realized it was associated with eating extra tomato sauce and spicy food. Acid reflux can even cause a cough or asthma flare up, if the acid refluxes into the lung tissue and irritates it.


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## SueC

On this topic, we've been having a bit of fun at the music forum, designing terrible merchandise. Remember the Cure toothbrush? Well, now we're putting together a humorous COVID-19 kit. Brett does the graphics wizardry and I the text, post-brainstorm. If there's any snaggles in it protocol-wise that you can see, @gottatrot, please let me know because I have a perpetual edit window there and can fix it up / improve it!

Anyway, laughter is good for our immune systems... so here goes.


*Beating Ignorance Is The Cure COVID-19 Kit*

*Item 1 of 5*

Be a caring member of your community. Don't be a selfish swine taking more than your fair share of basic resources. Other people have needs too.










Remember, your IQ is 150 minus the number of rolls of toilet paper at your house.


*Item 2 of 5*

Wash your hands, people! Soap and water are just as effective as fancy handwashes and sanitisers if you do it properly.










Don't touch your face unless your hands are properly clean. Especially, don't touch your eyes or lips or pick your nose or stick fingers in your mouth or bite your fingernails, unless you have washed your hands thoroughly beforehand (and not re-contaminated yourself from a dirty tap etc). This is hard to do unless we practice lots and are mindful, because we involuntarily do this loads of times otherwise. This is why some people who aren't coughing or sneezing wear surgical masks anyway - not because ordinary surgical masks protect you properly from aerosolised pathogens (they are better at protecting bystanders from bugs you might sneeze out or cough up), but because it helps people stop absent-mindedly touching their mouths and noses.

Tutorials on effective hand-washing are available on YouTube. 20 seconds minimum is generally recommended (not _17 Seconds_, I'm sorry to say) - and wash them as if you've just chopped jalapenos and are planning on putting in some contact lenses next.

Find a little song to sing, time where you get to in 20 seconds, and sing that part every time you wash your hands if necessary. For example, the first four lines of _Summertime_ should be sufficient.

_Summertime, and the living is easy
Fish are jumping, and the cotton is high
Oh, your daddy's rich, and your mama's good-looking
So, hush, little baby, don't you cry_


*Item 3 of 5*

Watch this space! We know what's coming, but it takes time to do the graphics!

_PS: We know this is naughty, but we also did this with affection. _


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## SueC

gottatrot said:


> Accidentally deleted the first part of my post.
> Was going to say that a sore throat in isolation might also be from a post nasal drop from allergies, even sometimes one you don't notice as much but drains down your throat when you are sleeping at night.


Yeah, we had that a lot during hayfever season.

This is different. Not hayfever season and the typical "buzzy" / unwell feeling that goes with infections so presumably a mild cold (because we had it before there was any COVID-19 officially anywhere near us, nor community transmission - but that officially started in Western Australia today, and cases are now spiking fast).

The main problem I have with allergic post nasal drip (and also infectious post nasal drip) is that it stops me from sleeping, because it feels like an eel is making its way down my throat.  This hasn't happened with this.

Sore throat and buzzy, usually feeling OK in the mornings and worse in the afternoons. Body says, "I would like to lie down now." Along with that a bit of muscle ache and headache and at one point joint pain, but no sneezing, no coughing. Very on-off, so I'm assuming the body is fighting it. I felt OK yesterday afternoon and thought that was it, but it came back this afternoon. Temperature check says 37.5 which is slightly elevated.

Brett is feeling fine. It's just me now.




> Or acid reflux, which I have often had a sore throat and wondered if I was getting sick, but when it cleared up I realized it was associated with eating extra tomato sauce and spicy food. Acid reflux can even cause a cough or asthma flare up, if the acid refluxes into the lung tissue and irritates it.


Yes, I think we've experienced reactions to eating too late or too spicy (and especially both) before too! I get most of my reaction to that at the top of my stomach, rather than in my throat - so maybe mine stays down a bit further and doesn't quite get to the throat.

Thanks for your thoughts! 

Gonna eat some chicken soup.


----------



## Spanish Rider

Sending a big hug to my friend, Sue! :hug:

We are thousands of miles apart (which is a good thing right now), but I hold you in my heart. :loveshower:


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## SueC

Awwwww, @Spanish Rider! 

Have a hygienic hug! :hug:

I wish I could send you some of our fresh produce. We have way more apples than we can eat and are drowning in kale at present. Cucurbits and beans were minimal this year, but we do have lots of apples and kale just now! :rofl:

All the best to you and your family in these crazy times...


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## SueC

gottatrot said:


> I hope people who are living paycheck to paycheck have not been putting a year's supply of toilet paper on their credit cards at 22% interest.


:rofl:

Brett says that maybe their investment will appreciate.

And if not, that at least they will appreciate their investment. :Angel:


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## knightrider

Hi @SueC, people have been sending me cute and funny things to cheer us up. Since you like music, and this is an Australian group, maybe you are familiar with this group. Sorry about the bad language.






Hope it gives you and others a smile.


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## SueC

Thank you very much, @knightrider, it's brilliant, and I've passed it on so it will cause even more laughter! 

I hope you're well and enjoying your riding! :cowboy:

Got a break in it just now. Sunsmart wasn't great last time I rode him (Friday) and had some blood work done on him; waiting for test results. Just uncharacteristically sluggish that day and then got so winded going up a little hill he normally breezes up (and did so just days before) that I had to get off and lead him home. It might be that the Cushings medication needs adjusting, or it might be that the Cushings is taking its toll (these tumours can grow), or it might be something unrelated. Whatever it is, it's likely that he will at least be fixable enough to have some kind of retirement. Currently he's my part-time garden horse - that started when he began dropping weight for the first time this summer. He's in OK spirits but right now doesn't feel like running, even in the paddock. When it's a horse over 20 with an existing condition, I do become guarded in my outlook for the situation - particularly if they suddenly start to drop off like that. But, it could just be a blip, have had blips like that myself many times. Fingers crossed.

Hope everyone is taking good care. :hug: ...cyberhugs are allowed - they're totally hygienic!  I'll post a lovely hike we did for my birthday last week, soon!


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## carshon

I hope Sun Smart just needs a tweak in his medications and is back to himself soon.


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## SueC

Thank you very much, @carshon - and it turns out that's exactly what the vet thinks. General blood panel came back fine, Cushings panel came back with sky-high ACTH; but blood sugar and insulin normal so no metabolic syndrome or insulin resistance (as per last test). So essentially, the pituitary tumour will have grown and the current level of medication, which was half a Prascend daily, no longer controls the ACTH hypersecretion, so he's going to be on 1.5 per day for 60 days, re-tested, and probably taken back to 1 tablet a day depending on the test.

While no individual case can be guaranteed, Miles thinks he should be feeling much better sometime between a week and a month from now and that his coat as well as general condition should improve again. The levels of ACTH were much higher than on the initial test when we picked him up with mild Cushings 18 months ago - then they were around 250 when they should be 80; this time they were over 1200 and that explains why his coat suddenly grew shocking a month ago and he started drinking more than normal and losing topline for the first time, and getting little opportunistic infections in the gums etc. Funny thing was he was riding fine until a week ago, or I'd have had him re-tested earlier.

Miles also says to exercise him when he feels up to it, because it's good for him. I'll see how he looks in a week; right now he's looking very out of sorts, poor fella. But he does have garden privileges and is enjoying those.


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## gottatrot

I hope Sunsmart feels better soon.
Amore has been on one pill for several years now, so I hope that will be a good dose for your boy also.


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## SueC

How's everyone holding up? The world is changing so fast. It was my birthday two weeks ago (49 years young, it doesn't feel nearly as bad as I thought it would, in fact it feels fabulous ) and we went on a special 3-hour hike that weekend on one of my favourite tracks, grateful to be in a sparsely populated area where such things are still allowed at this point. This is Mt Hallowell / Monkey Rock, in Denmark - a granite monadnock by the sea, covered in Karri forest, with lots of twisty-turny, uphill-downhill trail, climbing across rocks etc, and it even has a cave. Here's some pictures. And a nice instrumental to listen to that goes with the photos.






*MT HALLOWELL BIRTHDAY HIKE*

Going up...





The section with the big rocks and cave less than an hour in:















Brett doing a Gandalf impersonation with a fern:



He's gonna be a cute Gandalf when he's 70! 

In case anyone needs proof I hug trees:



Brett's Rodin impression:


----------



## SueC

Final uphill to get on top of Mt Hallowell:



Steps cut into huge fallen log:



...and then there's some nice views as you crest the top:





The whole thing ends with a 40-minute walk on a road, to get back to the car park you start from. Here's two very nice houses from along that road.

A colonial-style stone house:



...and a Cape Dutch style house:





Then we did some socially distanced grocery shopping before returning to our secluded farm. At home things feel normal, but out there not so much.

Best wishes to everyone in these crazy times. :hug:


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## Knave

Happy birthday Sue!!!! You look amazing.


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## SueC

Thank you, so do you.  And you'll still look amazing when you near 50 - you've got an active, healthy lifestyle!  :charge:


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## Caledonian

Happy Birthday Sue! 

I hope Sunsmart improves on the new drugs. 

It feels normal here as well, then I head into town and I'm shocked by how abandoned it feels. Shutters are down, perhaps one or two cars and the occasional person. 

Our supermarkets have strict rules regarding queuing and distancing, which makes shopping very different but in our smaller shops, we have to do a strange new dance 'the corona twist' as we try to avoid coming within 2 metres of each other.


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## egrogan

A very happy birthday to you from half a world away, @SueC!









I did a double take at your use of the word "monadnock" in your hike description (beautiful pictures by the way). I didn't realize that was a proper geological term until I went to look it up. The reason it surprised me is that it's the name of a beautiful mountain- Mount Monadnock- in the town we used to live in, with some of the best hiking in our area. You can see all the way to Boston from the top of it, with 100 mile views to other major regional mountains.









A thru-the-ears view from a ride with Izzy in May 2015- you have to sort of squint at the shadowy outline in the upper left corner








And Fizz a couple of years ago...waaaayyyyy off in the distance behind those scrubby trees









And the year lovely husband and I got the bright idea to hike it on July 4th, Independence Day, which is a national "get outside" sort of holiday, leaving the mountain overrun with tourists swarming to the top like ants. Not the best day for a quiet, peaceful hike, but still great views!

















So again, a happy birthday from our monadnock to yours!


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## SueC

Hullo, @Caledonian! :wave: Thankyou for the birthday wishes.  And happy birthday to you for the last time around / upcoming time while I'm at it!  Are you managing to get outdoors into nature much? I hear the UK doesn't have the same sympathetic exercise policy that most Australian states have adopted - which is that exercise is fine as long as you stay in your household groups or with a maximum of one other person at social distance; and observe social distance with everyone else - hiking, walking, jogging, cycling, swimming, surfing all encouraged at this point because they rightly say that you need it to stay physically and mentally resilient, plus risk of contagion outdoors and moving at a sufficient distance from others is low-risk. Does Scotland have the right to determine its own rules about that, like each Australian state?

Awwww, @egrogan, thank you so much for that cute card and the wonderful mountain photos!  You're both so cute, and those plaits really suit you and the occasion! I don't know why it is that nice people tend to be cute as well; maybe Roald Dahl had it right:










I hope you're well; what's happening in your country is so awful (and was so predictable grrrrr I want to kick bottoms :angrily_smileys. Best wishes to you and all your critters. :hug:

PS: I tried a new recipe - chickpea and chard soup but _brilliant_ and worth repeating - see here:

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/oct/20/yotam-ottolenghi-student-recipes-three-course-meal

Obviously I don't use tinned chickpeas, but boil up my own in a cauldron...


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## SueC

Well, I'm sitting here typing while putting our sheets through the wash - all I do with sheets is wash them in plain water with a generous sprinkling of (real) lavender oil, and then it's such luxury to sleep in them - no detergent residue, dried in the sun, crisp and clean and smelling of flowers. I only put sheets through laundry detergent occasionally; pillow slips more often - if there's no grease, there's no point, and this is so much more skin-friendly. ...after the sheets are through, I'll add some detergent for the rest of the wash - I wash with a twin-tub machine, so I can do eco-friendly sequential washing in the same water (sheets, whites, colours, farm clothes, dog blankets - then drain and put the rinse water in - very clean clothes compared to other machines, much less water, detergent and electricity used). Here's a picture of wash day a few years ago when the laundry was newly constructed:



Anyway, I often sneak in a little writing while waiting for each stage of washing to finish before my intervention is once more required, and in the middle of that, half an hour ago, there was a knock on the door. I'd forgotten to put the milk bottles out in the letterbox (a capacious old beehive box, very rural) so my friendly neighbour with the milking cow came up with the milk, to tell me she needed my bottles! Hahaha, they were in the back seat of the car this morning when I rode to the front gate with Brett, but we got kissing goodbye at the road verge as is our tradition, and apparently today, that erased pretty much everything else from my mind, because the bottles went to town with Brett. :rofl:

We do have some spares, so I got those, and then this lovely neighbour and I sat down at the required social distance on two separate benches and had a good chinwag. We're both alternative types and both in the volunteer bushfire brigade and we often have a good laugh at the many crazy aspects of the world together. :rofl: :rofl:

I passed on a spare copy (writer's copies) of a magazine I write for to her, as I usually do, because she's a perfect person to pass them onto - not just a dreamer and a thinker outside the box, but also an ideas collector and implementer. Ideas simply stay in her head and eventually get put to good use in many ways.  Then we had a little tour of the vegetable garden. We often compare notes on what we're growing, and exchange ideas and seeds. I have tons of rhubarb at the moment and just made a lovely berry-rhubarb tart; she hasn't got any yet so she left with a bunch of rhubarb, a Mountain Corn cob to try (the seeds she grew didn't make it this year and she's not eaten this variety before), some fine-leaf basil, a head of fennel for seed, and a pocketful of Giant Russian sunflower seeds straight from the flower head. She also tried some of my unusual salad greens - mizuna, red mustard, and wasabi greens (which taste just as the name suggests) - to see if she might like to grow some, because I always have spare seeds.

So, we both got a lovely social interlude this morning, just because I forgot to put the milk bottles in the letterbox and she therefore had a valid excuse to come and see me during this time of pandemic.  I walked her back to the gate and we had another good laugh, about toilet paper panic buying and surviving without celebrities. :rofl:

And on top of that, the sun is shining for the first time in three days - it's been bleakly overcast here for days. So, all is shaping up for a lovely, productive day.

:runninghorse2:​
Last night, Sunsmart actually _trotted_ in enthusiastically at bucket o'clock, for the first time since he fell in a hole with Cushings recently. We've tripled the dopamine agonist he's on after re-testing his blood for ACTH (it was skyhigh), and he's expected to feel better sometime between a week and a month from starting the new regime. Miles says exercise him lightly if he's up to it, but mostly he was really dragging his feet and hanging his head like a very old horse, for the last ten days, so he's had time off. The blood tests were done a week ago, and his medication was increased the moment results came through, so this is Day 4 on the new regime for him.

Because he trotted in like that last night, and it was such a nice sunny morning, I thought I'd take him for a walk on the lead rope, along with the dog around a loop of farm tracks this morning. I gave him a good grooming - his coat looks dreadful and manky, like an animal with severe copper or cobalt deficiency - I thought he was growing his winter coat early when this new coat came in at an unusual time about six weeks ago, and because he was still riding normally up until 10 days ago, didn't see what I now clearly see in hindsight, and castigate myself over - that the medication was no longer controlling the ACTH levels at the current dose. Oh, hindsight. :music019:

Anyway, so we set off on the track behind the house, after Sunsmart had a gnaw on the salt block and then a big drink from the water trough. When he got to the start of the sand track, he decided he had to pee, and stood dramatically in elongated posture dropping his equipment and closing his eyes. And nothing happened. Every time I tried to move him on he would elongate his posture more, "Can't you see I'm trying to pee?" After ten minutes of this, with his head in my arms and him nearly falling asleep getting his ears rubbed, I decided to turn around and walk him the couple of hundred metres into the common, where all his friends had settled down to graze. He clearly wasn't feeling like a walk this morning.

I turned him loose and sat under a tree, and he came up to me and stood with his head snuggled in my lap, half being cuddly and half wanting to play games like "pull on the sleeve" and going "blup-blup" with his bottom lip. Awwwww. After a while he told me his tail was itchy; would I scratch it for him? Of course.  I just had to get on my feet to do it because I didn't want him sitting in my lap. :rofl:

The donkeys always amaze me, whenever there is a sick animal, or anything else unusual going on. Several donkeys were watching Sunsmart's behaviour around me closely and then, as he went back to grazing and I left, went deliberately up to him to keep him company. They always know when something is wrong. When Romeo was really sick back in 2012, the three donkeys we had by then stood around him in a circle and wouldn't leave him even to eat, not until he was better. 

onkey:


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## SueC

Just because this song is so superb:






...fabulous critique of consumerism. 

Full lyrics here, as well as a bit of discussion from me. (This is my current side project.)

Exploring the Back Catalogue - Page 2

You might really enjoy that thread if you're a fan of the arts and of philosophising about life and the universe. Cure fandom not a pre-requisite. ;-)


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## gottatrot

You saw this one, right?


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## Spanish Rider

Happy Birthday, Sue!!!

Only 49? That's so _young_. I'm a whole 6 months older than you. I admit to being a tree-hugger, too, and "Take time to smell the roses" is my personal mantra.


Monadnock! @egrogan , I went camping there as a kid with my girl scout troop, and we had family in Keene. I know NOTHING about geology and did not realize it was a proper term either. However, as a philologist, I had to do more digging…

As @egrogan and I know, many mountains, rivers, etc. in New England still retain their original Native American names - in this case Abenaki. But, could the original Abenaki name have been accepted as an actual geological term? YUP!!

"Monadnock, isolated hill of bedrock standing conspicuously above the general level of the surrounding area. Monadnocks are left as erosional remnants because of their more resistant rock composition; commonly they consist of quartzite or less jointed massive volcanic rocks. In contrast to inselbergs (island mountains), a similar tropical landform, monadnocks are formed in humid, temperate regions. They take their name from Mt. Monadnock, a solitary mass of rock (3,165 feet [965 metres]) in Monadnock State Park, southeast of Keene, in Cheshire County, southwestern New Hampshire, U.S" - Encyclopedia Britannica

I find it so cool that there you are in Australia, using a Native American Abenaki word.


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## egrogan

@*SueC* , I love Roald Dahl books. When I was teaching grade 3, after lunch and recess I'd always bring the kids in and do a read aloud to bring the energy level back from the playground fever pitch. I would get through reading almost all the Dahl books during the school year, though the kids thought they were sort of weird. 

And thank you for that soup recipe, we will definitely be giving it a try. Just last night we were talking about doing a chickpea dish this week (probably chana masala) but I have plenty in the pantry and the weather is still cool enough that a soup will be welcome at the end of the week. 



@*Spanish Rider* , love that trivia about the word monadnock. Yes, we are surrounded by Abenaki names in this area. We lived in Keene for a few years. It was our first stop after grad school; my lovely husband got a job there as a professor and that's how we ended up in New England. It's still a really neat little town- strange for NH since it has more of a VT, hippie dippy sort of feel to it than the rest of the state.


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## SueC

Hoi, @Spanish Rider! :Angel: If I ever get to name another horse, guess what I'm going to call it? ... Nag Hammadi! 
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

That's so cool that monadnock is a Native American word!  

Thanks for the birthday wishes!  Happy very belated birthday to you! ;-)

@egrogan, have you ever read the short stories Roald Dahl wrote for adults? Very dark. One of my favourites is about a perfect murder: A jilted wife bludgeons her unfaithful, about-to-do-a-runner no-goodnik husband to death with a frozen leg of lamb, then cooks it and serves it up to investigating police, hahahahaha! :rofl: Link here: Lamb to the Slaughter--Roald Dahl (1916-1990)

@gottatrot, indeed! Hee hee hee! :happydance: And I know you've seen these before, but I'm going to bring them out again because they are so funny: Brett's photoshop images of terrible Cure merchandise we invented...





































More here: Design a terrible piece of Cure merchandise


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## Caledonian

@*sue* - Hi!:wave: Thank you for the upcoming birthday wishes. I'm a couple of months younger than you!:smile:


Gardening is the limit of my interaction with nature at the moment. I cut the grass, weeded and sat in the sun for a good hour today; it was wonderful! 

Our exercise policy is similar. The Scottish Government feel the same way about the benefits of fresh air and exercise. They allow one form a day for around an hour. Groups are limited to two, or more if they're from the same family, and they must observe social distancing with everyone else - over 2 metres. Otherwise, we can leave the house for groceries, medicine or work if you're front line staff. 

These measures were put in place around two weeks ago and there's signs that they're beginning to fail as the weather improves and people tire of the same four walls. It didn't help that our Chief Medical Officer got caught travelling to her holiday home, while telling the rest of us to stay inside and avoid remote areas!:icon_rolleyes: 

Initially, the English/UK government policy was much stricter, but I'm not sure if that was due to the media misinterpreting what their Health Sectary had said, or the resulting uproar that persuaded them to adopted the same policy as the rest of the UK. However, they've suggested that, as people in the south are failing to follow the rules, they may introduce even tougher restrictions. I don't think Scotland is at that stage yet.

Yes, we can determine our own rules, as our National Health Service is devolved from the UK Government. We closed our schools, introduced limits on mass gatherings and brought in surveillance testing before the UK. Having said that, we're a small island with open borders so we're working together as much as possible. 



That's really sweet of the donkeys. It's amazing how they know when a member of the herd needs support. I wouldn't punish yourself about Sunsmart as they're great at hiding weaknesses plus, it's very hard to notice changes if they happen over time.


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## SueC

Caledonian said:


> @*sue* - Hi!:wave: Thank you for the upcoming birthday wishes. I'm a couple of months younger than you!:smile:


You whippersnapper! :Angel: :happy-birthday8:




> Gardening is the limit of my interaction with nature at the moment. I cut the grass, weeded and sat in the sun for a good hour today; it was wonderful!


That sounds great though. It's something.




> Our exercise policy is similar. The Scottish Government feel the same way about the benefits of fresh air and exercise. They allow one form a day for around an hour. Groups are limited to two, or more if they're from the same family, and they must observe social distancing with everyone else - over 2 metres. Otherwise, we can leave the house for groceries, medicine or work if you're front line staff.


Our policies here are nearly identical except at this point there are no limitations on how often or how long you can be outdoors exercising, so long as you keep moving and observe social distancing. This might change in cities if there's not enough space for everyone who wants to exercise, but I don't think they're going to change that in small places - or at least, to enforce it in small places with low population density, where that's not a problem because there is so much more landscape than people who want to be out there.

Personally I'd go crazy if I was only allowed out for an hour a day, and if I did it responsibly and low-risk, then I'd actually do civil disobedience on that one, because I'm not responsible for some other people not observing social distancing when they're outdoors, only for my own behaviour being safe. I'm like a sheepdog, I need to move and I need the outdoors, plus I have compromised lungs from nearly dying of pneumonia at age three, and hiking actually decreases my risk of catching respiratory infections by keeping my lungs in good shape (uphills). Thank goodness we have 62 hectares of private land around us if things get silly. But they just can't lock everyone away until the vaccine, which is a minimum of 6 months away, more likely 12 months plus. They can teach people to be responsible, however, and not imprison the majority because of the irresponsible minority (not observing distancing, deliberately sneezing or spitting on people etc), whom they by all means should chuck on an island or some other place where they can't endanger others...

Unfortunately, some police are beginning to abuse their new powers here - a man got fined for eating a kebab on a park bench. He was observing social distancing and supporting a local business. We've done the same when we went hiking the day we took those photos - we went and bought pies at the superb local bakery, whose alfresco area was closed, and because there weren't many people around, we just sat on a roadside bench to eat them. It was in full compliance with social distancing and endangered nobody.

And a woman got fined because she drove around the blocks of her suburb teaching her daughter how to drive in the rain. Again, that endangered nobody in terms of COVID-19, and there was an outcry about it, so they've dropped the fine.




> It didn't help that our Chief Medical Officer got caught travelling to her holiday home, while telling the rest of us to stay inside and avoid remote areas!:icon_rolleyes:


Yeah, I read about that. Do as I say, not as I do etc. Here there's bans from travelling between particular regions in the state now, which is to stop people mixing with others outside their region. Within a region, you can travel, as long as you're either going to work, or getting essential supplies, or going to exercise. There's so many remote tracks where you never meet another person and there's no danger of spreading anything when you don't meet anyone. The few times we have, we've just gone sideways a couple of metres into the bushes and let the other people pass. No worries, and incredibly low transmission risk.

I fear though that a lot of the bureaucrats don't understand the transmission modes and their likelihoods very well. And on top of those needless crackdowns on a mother teaching her daughter to drive, and a man sitting on a bench by himself, a friend of mine works in a hospital and her supervisor has said she's not allowed to wear a mask unless she's working with confirmed COVID-19 cases. She thinks that's crazy (as do I) - she's from Singapore and worked in the specialist infectious disease hospital there, and she's just seething about her supervisor locking himself away in his office refusing to come out on the floor and work with them, but telling them they can't wear masks. Bloody power-tripping ignoramuses. Every health care worker isn't just entitled to protect themselves, they're ethically obliged to, so they don't in turn spread it to patients...




> Initially, the English/UK government policy was much stricter, but I'm not sure if that was due to the media misinterpreting what their Health Sectary had said, or the resulting uproar that persuaded them to adopted the same policy as the rest of the UK. However, they've suggested that, as people in the south are failing to follow the rules, they may introduce even tougher restrictions. I don't think Scotland is at that stage yet.


Here's a really interesting comparison article on leadership styles during these restrictions:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04...a-ardern-leadership/12124300?section=analysis

I know I've said it before, but I wish we were annexed by New Zealand.

By the way, I think it was extraordinarily stupid of Boris Johnson to continue to work fulltime with COVID-19, and it set a bad example. When you've got anything like that, you should be on bed rest eating chicken soup and not stressing, instead of trying to impress everyone with how tough you are. Once someone is sick, their primary responsibility is to get well ASAP, whether citizen or prime minister or the Emperor of China. :evil:




> That's really sweet of the donkeys. It's amazing how they know when a member of the herd needs support. I wouldn't punish yourself about Sunsmart as they're great at hiding weaknesses plus, it's very hard to notice changes if they happen over time.


Thank you for your kind words... I'm actually looking forward to medicating him every day (carrot with tablets built in, every afternoon), because I'm thinking it's yet another chemical push at bringing those shocking ACTH levels down... it's a cumulative effect, and I can't wait to see him get loads better, and want to go for walks...


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## bsms

So far Arizona has been pretty practical. Extremely popular tourist sights/trails are shut down. I know some of the ones at Sedona look like mass parties or something with a few thousand people cramming on them in good weather - NEVER to MY taste anyways. But I think most trails are still open without services - don't expect toilets or a gift shop, but you can park at a trail head and go off hiking.

Besides, there aren't enough cops to police the state / federal land near me. And I never feel safer from the virus than out in the desert. No restrictions on DRIVING. My wife and I drove about 60 miles a few days back just to get away from our home for a bit. The two of us were in a car! Darn hard to exchange viruses with anyone else on the road! As best I can tell, no one is Arizona cared.

Lots of frustration is growing, though. We aren't New York and we aren't Great Britain either. And of course, Scotland isn't England either! Although we don't have as much open area as Australia, which makes me jealous.








I get cabin fever fast. Happily, I can go walk or jog or ride (if my back ever heals enough). Lots of sunshine and fresh air. Civil disobedience WILL kick in if they ever tell me I can't go outside - but I don't see states like Arizona or Texas ever doing that. Our federal system of government allows the states to manage a great deal of power. As the US Constitution puts it, "_The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people._" I make sense as an Arizonan. I'd be a freak if stuck in New York.


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## egrogan

@SueC- I just read the Roald Dahl story over lunch. Sitting next to my lovely husband  What a tale!


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## SueC

It's the middle of the night. Sunsmart is my new "garden horse" since he got ill with spiking ACTH which we're now trying to rein in by a tripling of his Cushings medication. It's Day 7 of his new regime. While he's not been racing around, he's been far less apathetic than before.

By "garden horse" I mean he gets relatively free access to our garden whenever he wants it. (Romeo had that for 7 years before we had to put him down - special garden privileges.) I started by feeding him in the garden at bucket o'clock to get him used to it, and gradually he has stayed longer and longer to graze on the lush grass before wanting to go join the herd again. Before this summer, I'd never have contemplated having him as an access-at-will garden horse because he was always a good doer and I had to be careful about him stacking on fat, but he lost weight and now I'm trying to get some back on him, to help build his topline back up.

Anyway, last night he didn't want to go out when we went to bed, and I woke up thirsty in the middle of the night and went out to check on him. I heard exuberant munching before I found the horse, and wondered if he had discovered my sweetcorn! But where I actually found him is with his feet nearly in the frog pond, weeding the centre of it from kikuyu (African runner grass) for me. Kikuyu is a pasture mainstay here, and also very invasive if you're trying to garden. Our lawns are kikuyu, but I have to glyphosate the edges regularly so it doesn't invade the planting beds, tree root zones etc. When I broke my foot 18 months ago I couldn't keep up with the kikuyu control, and it invaded all sorts of places I've since cleared up again. One place still on the to-do list is the frog pond, surrounded by reeds and waist-deep in kikuyu just now, because no matter how much of it we pull out, we can't get rid of it, and we are unable to poison it because it would also kill the reeds. Well, apparently Sunsmart is happy to help us with this problem. :rofl: He was looking at me like, "This is excellent!" and said no, he didn't need to leave the garden at the moment, thank you. Looks like his first overnighter in the garden.  I wonder how long it's going to be before he's drinking out of the bird baths like Romeo used to, no matter how many buckets I had standing around the place for him!


_The permaculture garden, to which Sunsmart now has access._


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## egrogan

Love that image @SueC! It's always so nice when you have good helpers around.



Maggie and Isabel get their bi-annual ACTH/insulin test tomorrow. Last fall, both were in the high end of "normal" range (which I know is subjective). Izzy is looking even better, coat and condition-wise, than she did last spring but she always keeps that pot-bellied look. Maggie is still carrying too much weight and there isn't even any grass to look at yet, so that remains concerning. We'll see what the tests show.


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## SueC

Happy Easter, everyone. It's a strange one this year, but we've all got our little enclaves of two-legs and four-legs to look out for. Sometimes it's a good thing to be stripped down to bare basics - but l'm not happy about people losing their financial stability (if they have it in the first place). Just hoping that times of adversity will bring positive change in the future that we wouldn't otherwise have had.

:apple:


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## Spanish Rider

A 'garden horse' to help with the weeding? Hmmmm, that's something I might be able to pitch to DH. :Angel:


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## CopperLove

Happy very belated birthday SueC and a Happy Easter to everyone! I checked in to read what was happening a while back but forgot to post birthday wishes... working from home and having the partner home full time makes me for some reason spend less time on the forum. The days run together. Glad to hear that Sunsmart is enjoying the garden and feeling a bit better :lol:


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## SueC

Here's a reprint of a commentary I did for my music forum on a song posted in this journal recently.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I didn't realise just how good _The Hungry Ghost_ is until I saw a live version:






In the studio version, I like the instrumentation, but find the vocal a bit screechy. Live, it's not screechy at all (hooray!) - and consistently so (I've looked at a few). He's actually singing it lower down on the scale. (I always felt that most of the violin student pieces I had to learn sounded so much better if I took them down at least half an octave - much more resonance when you do that, and less ear-shatteringness.)

And so we come to a pattern: How is it that so many of The Cure's songs come across extra well live? Why is it that even songs that I don't particularly like on a CD, I will usually really enjoy live? To make it a fair comparison, it's true for just audio, I don't have to be watching a concert (although that adds another couple of dozen dimensions).

So that's one aspect where The Cure to me are quite different from a lot of bands. So often it's the other way around, and you get disappointed when people play live and it doesn't come off as well as it did on CD, with all the benefits of doing takes, editing etc. It's also a major reason I've become such a fan of this band - because I've just never been disappointed sitting down watching a concert film of theirs, whether the official DVDs or music festival footage etc.

Brett also prefers a lot of The Cure's songs live - citing _Apart_ as an example of a song that grows a mile in concert. I usually even prefer Robert Smith's vocals live - in part because he's actually become a better singer as he's gotten older, so there's a richer tone and then the studio stuff can sound watery or nasal in comparison, especially the stuff from way back.

Brett said to me, "Well, when you practice for a few decades, you just learn to do things better." Maybe that explains why _The Forest_ never jumped out at me from the Best-Of I pulled out of Brett's collection after falling in love with the _Bloodflowers_ album on his iPod over five years ago now. Yet when I caught it on the Hyde Park film and also on the Lodz footage, I enjoyed that number tremendously.

Back to _The Hungry Ghost_ - let's look at the lyrics:


_THE HUNGRY GHOST

All the things we never know we need
Looks like we get them in the end
Measure time in leisure time and greed
And by the time we get to spend

A floating bed
A head of stone
A home plugged into every phone
Kimono coral floral print
Exclusive tint and cut reclusive

No it doesn't come for free
But it's the price
We pay for happiness

No don't talk about more to life than this
Dream a world maybe no one owns
No don't think about all the life we miss
Swallow doubt as the hunger grows

Make believe it's like no one knows
Even if we turn more to most
We'll never satisfy the hungry ghost

All the stuff we know we never want
Seems like we get it anyway
Safe to say it isn't really wrong
Not when we know we only
Throw it all away

Yeah all of this we never know we want
Its like we get it anyway
Safe to say it isn't ever wrong
Better to get than to delay

A 3d screen
A cleaner fit
A bit pulled out of every hit
Addicted latest greatest piece
Design caprice and make the headline

No it doesn't come for free
But it's the price
We pay for happiness

No don't talk about more to life than this
Dream a world maybe no one owns
No don't think about all the life we miss
Swallow doubt as the hunger grows

Make believe its like no one knows
Even if we turn more to most
We'll never satisfy the hungry ghost

And all of this
We know we never need
Well it's the price
We pay for happiness_

Every song is a sort of Rorschach test, and I think this one is a critique of consumerism.

The first thing I thought of when I contemplated these lyrics was a story about Socrates in the marketplace. Legend has it he spent the whole morning silently walking around the market looking at things, with his acolytes following him around, waiting for him to break his silence. When he finally spoke many hours later, he said, "So many things I don't need!"

Imagine if Socrates was around today, and someone took him to a supermarket, or to K-Mart. How many more things he doesn't need! Seriously - if we shop at the local Woolworths, over 95% of what they sell, we'd never even contemplate buying. Apart from the fruit and vegetable section, meat and dairy, and the deli counter, the vast majority of the stuff on all the shelves in-between isn't even food, although the packets pretend it is. It's stuff that's making people and the planet sick; and both are sicker than ever, the former with "lifestyle diseases" and the latter with the pollution and rubbish directly resulting from our Western consumer lifestyles.

Go to K-Mart, and it's filled with largely plastic junk with a deliberately low life span, so you have to throw it away in a year and buy another one (if you buy into this mindset). There's clothes made by what amounts to slave labour in developing countries, again designed to wear out quickly, but it's cheap so many people just buy them all over again, adding another tide of rubbish to a planet we're using as a garbage dump, while perpetuating the low social justice standards of the corporations producing this rubbish.

I wasn't a kid that long ago, from a historical perspective. Washing machines and refrigerators were once designed to last a lifetime, with perhaps a few repairs, and to be eminently repairable. Not anymore; the salesman, when we bought our refrigerator back in 2013, told us not to expect it to last longer than five years - and he didn't have anything designed to last longer. (It's still working, but the problem is the lack of choice in the matter when everything in the market is like that; and that's why we need regulation instead of "market forces"... so that we'll have one refrigerator for a human life span, not 16, with 15 sitting in landfill at the time of your death, and now multiply that by many millions...)

20 years ago, if I bought a cotton T-shirt, it lasted upwards of 5 years without going out of shape. Now, cotton T-shirts last one year maximum before they start to look ratty. I'd rather buy a decent one that was going to last at 5 times the price, than 5 shirts in 5 years; but I can't find anything like that where I live. I'd have to take up sewing, and I'm already running a homestead (which we built ourselves because everything on offer on the market in our price range was crap, and guess what, our house isn't crap, even though it wasn't built by professional builders... frightening! - but we weren't going to do with our house what's been forced upon us with cotton T-shirts...), managing pasture and tree fodder, trimming eight sets of horse and donkey hooves every 4-6 weeks, looking after a small herd of beef cattle and our own beehives, growing our own fruit and vegetables, cooking all our food from scratch, stopping the garden from turning into a jungle, revegetating roadsides, continuing to plant in-pasture shelter belts, doing fence and other infrastructure maintenance around 62 hectares of land, and together with my husband, mosaic burning 50 hectares of Australian sclerophyll to maintain its stunning biodiversity, and relative fire safety. Nominally we're volunteer bushfire brigade too, but our particular brigade sits on its hands; and then there's my sideline of writing articles. If a house cow didn't make it into my Eden because I was already over-committed, then I'm not going to start sewing my own clothes anytime soon either. You simply can't do everything.

I'm sure Socrates would be impressed by some of our technological whizz-bang compared to back in his day, but also appalled by our priorities, and by what we've done to this planet, and each other.

I'm going to come back to the song and do some annotating.

_All the things we never know we need
Looks like we get them in the end
_
This seems to me to comment on the inevitability almost, of ending up with unnecessary stuff if you're living in the West. It's just the way the whole society is set up. I'm a member of the counter-cultural Grass Roots movement in Australia, which is loosely based around a sustainability / self-sufficiency / alternative magazine I write for. We try very hard to get away from the consumerist mentality, but it took Brett and me half our statistical lifespans before we were off-grid and on renewable energy, stopped flushing 30,000 litres of drinking water a year down the toilet, stopped wasting all the nutrients that went through us by having a (very civilised and totally odourless) compost toilet and recycling those nutrients back into our organic food production system as nature intends, instead of polluting waterways and oceans with it; before our savings and superannuation were with people who hopefully don't finance military weapons and social and environmental exploitation; before all our banking business was with a community bank instead of a for-corporate-profit model, before half our groceries were grower-direct without corporate middlemen, before we could afford to get a block of rural land and demonstrate more environmentally friendly agriculture which actually increases rather than reduces biodiversity and doesn't rely on synthetic fertilisers and fossil-fuel driven machinery for its operation, stuff like that.

It's just such an uphill to get away from things like this. You have to swim against the tide almost every step of the way, and be so careful with your resources to get out of the suburban cycle of working (typically) for the big end of town while also paying most of your income to the big end of town via rent / mortgage, electricity and other utilities, supermarket and big retailer shopping. It's something you actively have to extract yourself from, and to do that in any major way that makes you largely independent of the big end of town is not easy.

_Measure time in leisure time and greed_

Nice line here - with internal rhyming as well.  Makes me think about how value is ascribed to things in Western society. It's funny, you know, the veterinarian came by the other day to attend to some animals of ours, first time since the pandemic, and he was saying to me, "Well, I hope this is going to teach people that life is about more than toys and status symbols - that it's really about relationships and reading books and cooking your own food and getting outdoors for a walk, things like that!" Indeed.

_And by the time we get to spend

A floating bed
A head of stone
A home plugged into every phone
Kimono coral floral print
Exclusive tint and cut reclusive
_
I like the lampoony examples used here. I particularly like the "A home plugged into every phone" line and how it reverses the way it's normally used, it's very astute. We've gone from times when homes had phones, to times when phones have homes, potentially, if you buy into all that in my view excessive technology (we like to keep things simple, troglodytes that we are). Technology goes from servant to master; the home is now just an accessory rather than a human centrepoint. Except you still have a choice you can exercise, you don't have to be a lemming and you can actually choose to live differently, instead of accepting an externally invented blueprint.

_No it doesn't come for free
But it's the price
We pay for happiness
_
Material stuff doesn't come for free indeed - not only is there a personal cost in time and energy either to make something, or to earn the money to be able to buy something - but there's the social and environmental cost to consider; and that's the part a lot of people consider the least in the whole equation, if at all. That's really unfortunate, because it's killing our communities and the planet to chiefly consider what happens to our own bank balance. It's shooting ourselves, and everyone else, in the foot.

Partly it's the brainwash - it's just so "normal" to live a consumerist lifestyle, to buy what amounts to slave labour manufactured clothing and other stuff from big corporations and their subsidiaries, to have your house built by the typical building company who gives you surface glitz and disposable trendiness instead of a passive-solar, eco-friendly, low-running-energy, comfortable, built-to-last home without unnecessary frills, to bank at the big banks who finance the arms companies and environmental destruction, to buy your electricity from big coal instead of going off-grid on solar and other renewables for yourself, to purchase mostly from big players and franchises, to aspire to the things you're told to aspire to by Screwtape's little league of advertising executives. Monkey-see, monkey-do.

Now that so many people are off their hamster wheels and confined to their homes with time to think about stuff, let's hope that society will be more awake after this pandemic has passed.

_No don't talk about more to life than this
Dream a world maybe no one owns
No don't think about all the life we miss
Swallow doubt as the hunger grows
_
That's like the official brainwash in a nutshell, isn't it. That last line is very clever. The Hungry Ghost, that's a similar entity to what religious people call the God-Shaped Hole, because there's lots of different takes on what the primary problem is that makes us do all these substitute behaviours, and seek comfort in things that can't truly comfort us. In the West, we're encouraged to believe that buying stuff will make us feel better, especially expensive stuff which can be used to kid yourself you're somehow superior to others, if you're into that. It doesn't actually work for very long, so people work towards the next hit, in a sort of gadget addiction.

Religious people in the West tend to say, "No, it's not stuff you need, it's God and purpose." Well, they got the purpose part right, that's part of it, but in many ways they're creating another addiction, another brainwash. I'm not trying to discredit all religion. Personally I view a lot of organised religion with distaste, but really, secular organisations, in my experience, have very similar problems with being toxic and hypocritical. In many ways, soccer hooligans aren't much different from religious fundamentalists.

I think we all have different takes on it, but my take is that much of that vacuum inside of us is to do with a lack of authenticity, and a lack of meaningful connectedness to others. Therefore, it can be addressed directly, and dealt with directly. If we can learn to be authentic selves (not collages of other display models), and to connect to others from that basis, then a lot of that vacuum just disappears, in my view.

_Make believe it's like no one knows
Even if we turn more to most
We'll never satisfy the hungry ghost
_
...that's right, it's a bottomless pit. In some ways, it's like eating junk food: You can eat a dozen commercial Australian donuts (ring-shaped greasy things with cinnamon on), and I once did exactly that, in one sitting, when I was 23 and the wolf was at the door. It didn't matter how many donuts I ate, it didn't stop me being hungry; I only stopped because I started to feel sick. But if you eat something with actual nutritional value, instead of empty calories, you stop feeling hungry. So, the way to make someone buy more and more, and consume more and more, is to sell them empty things that won't deal with their actual needs, just with "I-want."

_All the stuff we know we never want
Seems like we get it anyway
Safe to say it isn't really wrong
Not when we know we only
Throw it all away
_
And I think this verse is just dripping with undertone. Look at how Mr Smith delivers that verse in the live clip above.

_Yeah all of this we never know we want
Its like we get it anyway
Safe to say it isn't ever wrong
Better to get than to delay
_
Yep, those last two lines are typical of the bilge that's fed to us in the name of consumerism. It's the brainwash we all grew up with. It's nice to see Robert Smith discovering his inner hippie, and making a song and dance about this. It is eroding human relationships and killing the biosphere, after all. No small thing.

_A 3d screen
A cleaner fit
A bit pulled out of every hit
Addicted latest greatest piece
Design caprice and make the headline
_
Isn't that absurd? Yet that's what underpins the sacred cow of capitalism and its mantra of economic growth.

The rest of the lyrics are repeating blocks we've heard before in the song, so I will leave it at this. Full marks for this one - the music, the lyrics, and speaking out about something that really needs to be addressed. ♥


----------



## SueC

A copy of something I just posted to the K&K thread:

Haven't checked in for a while. My horse is ill so no riding. He's suddenly fallen in a hole with his previously controlled, previously mild Cushings; a blood re-rest showed skyhigh ACTH again and we tripled his medication trying to bring it back down. There's something else going on as well - he's got tongue ulcers - and that's despite of the fact that his teeth were done when his bloodwork was done a couple of weeks back. There's sharp edges near the ulcers and I'm pretty annoyed because I forked out $1,000 for having three horses' teeth done and the Cushings and general bloodwork. I'll have a chat to the vet or else try to take the edges off the incisors with a nailfile myself but it can't go on like this and I don't want to spend another $200 on having his teeth looked at again... it's gotten so expensive since vets stopped doing manual filing around here and come with a crush and power tools; sedation is now compulsory and $80... and yet he has sharp edges on his teeth... on both lower canines and a couple of incisors - which were done and which in my view produced a sharp edge from being ground down...

He's dropping feed, he's turning his head from side to side when eating but not the way horses do it when they have poor teeth. It's sway, sway, sway side to side from the base of his neck and never keeping his head over the feed bucket and trying to eat off the ground beside it instead. It's almost neurological looking, unless it's a pain response from his ulcerated tongue. When he's grazing he doesn't do it. I'm flummoxed. The edges of his tongue are white and indurated. I'm wondering if a Vitamin B12 deficiency is going on or something else of that nature. He's on forage and always has supplementation in his bucket feed so shouldn't be deficient from malnutrition, but stress and illness can cause extra demand on various things. His coat is depigmented but the vet said that was just Cushings. I'm not so sure because he's never depigmented like this before when he grew a Cushings coat - the horse is normally chocolate and now he's yellow where the long coat is (and chocolate elsewhere). If any of you have any clues, talk to me. The horse is 23 and along with everything he now has periodontosis and receding gums, all since the summer, so starting just the last six weeks. He was riding normally until three weeks ago, up hills, fast and everything. He started looking ugly with his coat _before_ his performance dropped off suddenly three weeks ago.

Sorry about Banjo, @george the mule. :-( It's amazing though how old this horse was and how well he was doing right until the end, and then it was a quick end, although I've seen too many horses die of colic (because my parents keep their horses in sand yards) and it always wrenched me, so I'm not saying that was a good thing. :-( I don't know if there's any good way to go except in their sleep, but I've only ever known one old horse to go like that. She was just lying on the ground with her head resting on her front legs like she normally did when resting, and at first glance you didn't realise she was dead. Every other death I've been at was either gruesome, or shot because of cancer / lack of teeth / etc (those at least are quick),,,

Sorry, nothing happy to post at the moment horse-wise, except the other two are looking great. One of them is 26 and the other 19 and he's halfway with his saddle re-training, which I stopped 18 months ago when I broke my foot and then was playing catch-up on the farm so I've only restarted working with him recently. He wants to work and is by the same stallion as Sunsmart. The vet thinks I'll be riding Sunsmart again but my gut says I won't be, he's looking dreadful. I know that it can take up to 2 months for the horse to show a decent response to his change in medication, and in the 2 weeks he's been on it he does seem vaguely better and now trots in when he sees his feed bucket, but he's still in bad shape and there's just something about this which looks like doom to me...

It's good to hear you're all still OK. The situation with the virus in America is just so alarming-looking from here, I'm so sorry about that. I think the only reason it didn't happen like that in Australia is because our PM, who's of similar ilk to your head honcho, already had egg on his face from his failure to listen to the bushfire experts for the last couple of years, and then we had that disastrous summer and everyone was peed off with him; so when the virus happened he listened to the medical advisers quick smart, although I also hear that the other politicians rolled him into it and he had little choice (we don't have a president and our PMs can't throw their weight around quite as much). So we're now, in our country, quite amazingly within cooee of being possibly able to eliminate the virus from the continent, as NZ seems on the road to doing. It's easier when you're an island, of course. The one thing that gives me pause for thought though is that cats seem to be able to carry the bug - several have tested positive here. Anyway, be that as it may, even suppression would be great for now, so at least the ICUs can cope with the cases. The Australian guy who won the Nobel prize for inventing the HPV vaccine (prevention of cervical cancer) thinks a vaccine for this is unlikely as there have never yet been effective vaccines for coronavirus. It's an interesting interview: https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2020-04-17/coronavirus-vaccine-ian-frazer/12146616

All the best to everyone... I think we're so lucky not to live in cities. I can't imagine living under those sorts of restrictions, because of the high population density, but then I hated cities at the best of times for that reason...


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## bsms

Hard to "like" the above post. Maybe a "sympathize" button? 

Started to ride Bandit in our little arena today, but my wife came out and wanted to clean up Trooper. So she brought him over to eat grass and I rode Bandit around him for about 10 minutes and then felt guilty. Bandit doing all the work while Trooper was eating and getting groomed! So I stopped and over the next hour we got all three the cleanest they've been in months.

This afternoon winds were 20 gust to 40 mph. I rode Bandit for 15 minutes with the wind blasting us both. He wasn't happy but bless his pea-pickin' heart, he never said no. 10% humidity and after 15 minutes I felt like I had been roasted in a convection oven. So Bandit is hanging out with the others. 

My two oldest are in their early 20s. Neither is being ridden more than 6 times a year tops. They don't seem to mind except Trooper acted like HE would be happy to hit the trails. He kept looking to the street and wandering in that direction. When he'd get close to the street my wife would turn him around. Neither one is showing signs of physical distress. Trooper has a crack up the center of one hoof that a year plus of effort has failed to heal but he'll gallop around in the corral and engages in mock fights with Bandit, so....doesn't seem to be bothering him. Every time the hoof is ALMOST grown out, he manages to crack it again. In the corral.

Still, I'll trade that for the problems some of the older senior citizens have on HF. Trooper's 22 and hasn't worked hard since leaving the ranch 12-13 years ago.

The coronavirus restrictions in Arizona have been only marginally obeyed. I've seen no signs of enforcement other than against small business. It seems the big ones all get to call themselves essential. I'm guessing a lot of restaurants won't re-open. I doubt they'll have the same amount of customers as before even when they do. Looking at zip codes, it looks like the Native Americans have been hardest hit. The Navajo started cracking down on social distancing.

"_As of Monday, the Navajo Nation, which sprawls across three states, had 1,197 positive coronavirus cases. *It has a per capita infection rate 10 times higher than that of neighboring Arizona and the third-highest infection rate in the country behind those of New York and New Jersey. Forty-four people have died, more than in 14 other states....*

"You're telling people, 'Wash your hands for 20 seconds multiple times a day,' and they don't have running water. Or you're saying, 'Go buy groceries for two or three weeks and shelter in place and don't come out,' but people can't afford groceries for two or three weeks. So it's just a setup for frustration and concern by the population here."

When combined with the comorbidities, or pre-existing conditions, that already plague the Navajo Nation — like heart disease, diabetes and obesity — public health experts worry that difficulty accessing basic needs like food and water is going to compound the crisis...._"

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/heal...s-navajo-nation-it-s-about-get-worse-n1187501

Another article: https://durangoherald.com/articles/321374

Wide open country but lots of long term health issues. 187 deaths in Arizona (population 7.3 million) and 44 of those deaths are among the Navajo (350,000). I haven't talked to Bandit's former owner for several years. We swapped horses but that doesn't give me the right to just call up. Hope he and his family are doing OK.


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## SueC

I'd just call up anyway, @bsms, and just say, "I wanted to know if you're OK." Nobody would have a problem with that... and then take the conversation from there. I've a friend with terminal cancer who says that she wishes she just heard from people and they just talked to her as normal and it's OK to ask her how she is and it doesn't have to be awkward.



> The coronavirus restrictions in Arizona have been only marginally obeyed. I've seen no signs of enforcement other than against small business. It seems the big ones all get to call themselves essential.


...yes, that was my fear, that this whole thing presents another opportunity for the big fish to eat all the small ones and bloat even further, and then the suits will say, "Well, the market decided - big companies are more viable!" (Well, yes they are when they get to write all the rules and undercut everyone else then put their prices up again, and when they own most of the media and many politicians.) I really really hate neoliberalism and what it does to communities and the world. It's like feudalism all over, except with Prolefeed for an anaesthetic and being allowed to elect your overlords (with choices between the devil and the deep blue sea, as your country and mine and the UK saw at the last elections).

At least in Australia, they've kept a lot of small businesses open - including small grocers - anyone who sells food - many small restaurants are open for pickup as take-away (or delivery). Newsagencies, etc - and people are for the most part behaving well and giving each other space when in the shops. Our second-hand bookshop has been open throughout, and a small board games place in Denmark (next town along where we also go), etc. It's already going to be tough for these guys to survive, even without what you tell me is happening in Arizona... that is so bad. But I have to tell you, not unexpected when viewed from this side of the ocean, to see that happening in your country, and especially in the more big-boys-controlled places. They know exactly what they're doing - exploiting a situation like this to their advantage and hiding behind a smokescreen of public health legislation, as is modus operandi for people like that (and you and I have talked before on how that aspect happens in Australia as well and cripples small business).

Over here, the Indigenous people are also highly susceptible, so one of the first things that was done in WA is to lock off the mostly Indigenous communities up north - no travellers from other regions (and family is allowed back with quarantine). Our Indigenous record here is woeful as well but at least we managed to do that.

On the music side, would you believe I only just found out that the lead singer of Ladysmith Black Mambazo died recently, on April 11. His son now leads the group and here is their performance at his funeral:

https://youtu.be/24UFsQqtKro?t=201

Gorgeous singing. Sad loss.


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## SueC

Correction: Died on February 11 this year.


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## SueC

While we're on the subject of music: Anyone else here do outdoors stuff with an iPod? (Brett tells me most people are now using their phones instead but I refuse to be tied to a phone, it stays in the house, thank you very much, and I haven't upgraded my phone in ten years, and have no desire to be doing any Internet stuff on a tiny screen either - laptops are much nicer.) 

Anyway, I recently started playing songs in alphabetical order, which gives me a nice mix of the artists in the collection - a combination of my stuff and Brett's stuff. When I started out with the iPod I was just borrowing Brett's, and putting it on random play gave me what I called "Brett-FM" - now I have my own (second-hand, refurbished because I dislike causing things to be manufactured if I can buy recycled things instead) - and a mix of my own music and "Brett-FM" so I still get a lot of surprises. 

Today I was up to "H" and here's some of my favourite stuff from today's "programme": 





 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 This next one I really have to recommend to anyone who's not heard it. It's an extremely naughty song from an Australian band (with an American singer by the name of Tex Perkins). We've got a lot of their stuff and think half the time Perkins is hamming it and tongue in cheek. :lol: 



 



 This next one was a surprise "new thing" for me - I thought it was excellent. 



 




The next one is such a fantastic song... and a case where I so much prefer the cover to the original, which was done by Nine Inch Nails, who are just too cold and harsh for my taste. But a dying Johnny Cash just sang this so amazingly... 





 



 



 This last one is really beautiful... I heard both versions, but the acoustic has such gorgeous singing... 



 ...that was about a third of the playlist, but it's a nice mix of genres in case anyone is sick of listening to the radio and wants to hear all sorts of stuff. Aaaannnnd... @CopperLove, which of you two is singing on _Hushabye_? ...that track sits so nicely between Johnny Cash and Karen O...


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## CopperLove

I don’t have an ipod so I inevitably use my phone if I want to listen to music. Right now the only place I really have to hike is at the ranch though, and I have absolutely no cell phone service there so even if I were to go out and walk with music the “phone” part couldn’t bother me. :lol:

I sing lead on Hushabye and Andrew sings harmony. :smile: We’re both honored to be on your music list, Andrew said he didn’t think he’d had anyone from Australia purchase an album before.

I enjoyed some of the things on your list especially Harbor Song. I’ll trade you a song that’s been on repeat on my playlist the past couple of days:






I haven’t looked much into the artist yet, I don’t know anything about her or where she’s from but it is a style of music that’s fairly popular around my area, if not that particular artist. But it’s the lyrics (as per usual) that draw me to it.

And another I find quite uplifting right now:








I've been quite bad about keeping up with everyone online... I'm working from home now and I thought I'd be spending a lot more of my time online since it's now my link to the outside world, but with my partner laid off work and home 24/7 also and not having the best time with it, I find that I actually spend much less time online vs. being at work behind my desk and catching up between projects.

So, as a result, I just caught up on your last update on Sunsmart and I am very sorry to hear that he doesn't seem to be doing any better. :frown_color:


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## egrogan

@SueC, also very sorry to hear that Sunsmart is still not quite right. I wish I had anecdotes or guidance to share. Just a virtual hug since it's hard to see our 4-legged friends struggling and not be able to find the right solution.


PS- Music isn't something I pay much attention to (sacrilege, I know :wink, but the Johnny Cash remake is a great song. That whole album really is. Our much beloved dog, Delia, who we lost almost exactly a year ago was named after a Johnny Cash song. Though if we're being honest, it's not exactly a feminist ballad when you listen to the lyrics  Still, we loved the name of the title character.


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## Knave

My “like” was also a “sympathy” button. That really is awful and I am so sorry. 

As far as the iPod goes I also don’t own one. Therefor I am stuck with my phone. I hate it, and yet I am addicted to having it. Husband lost his branding at the neighbors. He hasn’t had one for a couple days and I love it! I wish we could all get rid of the stupid things. Yet, there I am, listening to music or audible on it very often.


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## gottatrot

Sorry about Sunsmart. It sounds like a bad dental job. How could there still be sharp edges? My vet runs her hand inside to make sure everything is smooth. She has had me do it too, just to show me the difference afterward. 
It seems strange the coat color would change too.


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## SueC

Thanks, all of you. :hug: And you have such a lovely voice, @CopperLove, we were saying before I asked you about it, when we were listening to that playlist, that this voice sits so nicely with both Johnny Cash and Karen O, who dedicated their lives to music - _so_ well done! 

A little update, again just a reprint from K&K because I need to get off this chair and do some chores this fine morning...




walkinthewalk said:


> @SueC. I am so sorry your Cushings hors has taken this wrong turn:frown_color:
> 
> My not-so-cheery thought is the pituitary gland has decided to malfunction in a big way. When my friend’s Cushings/IR horse (he was on Prascend) ACTH numbers suddenly skyrocketed, his thing was never-ending abscesses, and pneumonia set in both lungs.
> 
> I pray for a positive outcome for you


Thank you very much, @walkinthewalk. :hug: Yes, my brain says what your brain says - a sudden change like that is likely to be related to a boatload of pituitary function being knocked out. Even though it's allegedly not genetic, his mother had Cushings and hers was severe pretty much immediately - it skyrocketed like that when she developed it and she was suddenly so miserable that, at age 28, we didn't even attempt to do Pergolide - she was much worse than Sunsmart is now, suddenly drinking a whole barrel of water overnight as her new normal and not able to regulate her body temperature, plus immediate laminitis (on a horse that had never had issues with her feet before). We decided that it was kindest to put her down, given her age and the suddenness and how severe it immediately was. Even at ten percent of her symptoms, it wouldn't have been reasonable quality of life.

Sunsmart doesn't have any laminitis, and is marginally improving on the tripled medication at the moment - he's trotting in for his food bucket, he's showing a bit more interest in his surroundings, he looks slightly perkier, but he's still a long way from normal. He's not running away from bot flies or running when his herd is running, he just potters around, like our ancient horse used to do once he reached his 30s. Because he lost weight he's now allowed in the garden like Romeo used to be, to eat the grass. He's lost most of his topline and all his excess body fat, but is still well muscled around the hindquarters and shoulders. I'm cleaning his incisors with a sponge and then wiping his gums with the chlorhexidine the vet gave me, to try to treat his periodontosis, and it's improving slightly. His face isn't wet from streaming eyes anymore, that's down to a slow trickle. His coat looks awful - the long bits of it - but that's mostly a cosmetic thing. The vet says the good thing is he still has no signs of IR or EMS on the blood test and that's why he's optimistic about him. My gut feeling though is that he is unlikely to recover enough for it to be fair to ride him again - even though of course exercise would, at some point, be good for him. I think if we're lucky, his condition and quality of life will be good enough for him to be our next spoilt retiree for a couple of years, and if we're not, he won't get past the coming spring. And as he's only 23, that's sad. I suppose I am used to all my horses reaching their late 20s in good health... and one day, you just get unlucky. (I'm prepared to eat my hat if the vet is right about him being able to be ridden again; I would be so happy to be wrong here, but I've never seen a horse that's gone down like this come back to normal myself. To pottering level yes, to normal no...)




knightrider said:


> @SueC, I am so very sorry about Sunsmart. I know how much you love him and what careful care you take of him. My heart is aching for you. My neighbor two places down from me had to put her horse down yesterday. I've been crying off and on over her loss and her sorrow. She's had such a lot of lousy hard luck. I can't even go to her place and give her a hug.
> 
> When my Maryland neighbor had to put her horse down years ago, I waited with her for the backhoe operator and then the vet, and held her and cried with her as her horse died. I feel so helpless now that we can't hug each other in bad times.
> 
> As you said, way out in the country like we are, we don't have many cases of the virus . . . but we want to keep it that way too. I was shocked when one of my teacher friends from Maryland said that she now knows 10 friends who have had the virus and recovered. I "know of" two people who had it--not even friends--just people I know of. One has died and one recovered.
> 
> So sorry you are having to go through this misery with Sunsmart. My heart is with you and here are virtual hugs (((((((((hugs))))))))))


Thank you so much, @knightrider, and big hugs back. :hug: Brett said to me that even if we had to put him down as the end result of his downturn, I should think about what a lovely life he's had because I adopted him, because he's had 12 years where he was no longer standing around in solitary confinement in a feedlot sand paddock feeling bored and alone, but got whisked away and put on pasture where he was free to graze and explore, and got re-socialised so he could run with friends in a herd, and had thousands of miles of trail adventures getting to know the world, which he loved. As you know, I hate horse racing, and the vast quantity of wrecked and discarded young horses produced by it - he was one of the lucky ones.

Julian (adopted 2.5 years back) very much looks like he would like to take on a riding horse role - he loves all the hand walking and exploring and cannonballs around the paddock full of beans every day. This is him with the white socks on the right, and Sunsmart on the left a year ago - and you can see they're by the same stallion:



I've done all his preliminaries and it would probably only take another fortnight to be taking basic rides on him, but I am so unmotivated at the moment. Yesterday we went hiking and I really enjoy that, and half of me wants to hang up riding altogether and just hike even more. I don't mind if anyone wants to talk me out of it and get on my case to do the final work with Julian and get back on a horse. I suppose if I'd not broken my foot in 2018 he'd be a riding horse already and I wouldn't be feeling like I was being disrespectful to an old friend, which I know is irrational, but heck, I'm actually not always rational...


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## walkinthewalk

@SueC, here’s hoping for the best outcome for him

Something you might research is human citrulline. I’ve been feeding ~500mg daily to Joker for the last three years for his insulin.

We are in Spring in the U.S. I double Joker’s citrulline to 500 mg TWICE daily for his insulin and it seems to have also affected his Cushings coat to the better.

I have been keeping Joker trimmed, albeit not clipped, because we are still cold. Even DH has noticed that Joker hasn’t looked like a Curly Baskir when he is rain soaked. It occurred to me the only thing I’ve done different is add another 500 mg of citrulline to his diet.

Maybe the coat improvement is coincidence. I have nothing to back up what I say but obersavtion of Joker and DH’s unsolicited comment

I buy the 500 mg capsule form and break the capsule open, just feeding the powder in the feed pan. I’m afraid the way my luck runs with Joker the capsule material would stick in his digestive tract, lollol

Anyway, google “citrulline for human diabetes” and you will get some credible hits. I got onto this feeding the horses watermelon & the rind in the summer and fall until I couldn’t get it anymore. I noticed Joker was not having laminitis events in the fall so I googled watermelon and discovered it and the rind are full of citrulline

It’s not something that will harm Sunsmart, if it doesn’t help him, and what do we have to lose but money if something like this doesn’t help. And non-horse people have the gall to think we are all rich, lollollol


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## SueC

*FIRST MAJOR COLD FRONT OF THE YEAR*

I'm happy right now because it's raining! And I mean, really really raining! We've had drought here for two years now, getting just over half the normal average annual rainfall for 2018 and 2019. We had an early break of season (March, not April), but a very marginal one, and the new seedlings in the pasture were barely hanging on. The first major cold front of the year is coming through, and it's a savage one!

Also all of our house water is rainwater, collected from the shed and house roofs. You can see it, and the very short, very marginal state of the runner grass in the utility areas where we feed the animals their mineral supplemented bucket feeds, in this photo from earlier this year. The tank is still half full, which at this time of year is super (the garden areas run off a bore, and we have waterless compost toilets that save over 30,000L of drinking water a year and feed nicely back into our production cycle - you should see the apples and pumpkins)...










Last night we had very heavy rain coming down on the roof, from thunderstorms that started with massive light shows; just ahead of the cold front crossing, which is expected to bring severe weather and damaging wind gusts up to 125km/h. I went around in the afternoon putting anything loose outdoors into the house and shed so things don't get blown away; my greenhouse plants are indoors during this storm, the horses are in rugs, the donkeys are intelligent enough to use the shelter shed, the cattle are sheltering in the bushland, and the dog is on her sofa...










The big deluge looks like this from the satellite - that cloud band over Australia's Southwest - we're on the underside, right under the "J" of cloud...


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## SueC

Thank you for your advice, @walkinthewalk, I will have to look out for it.  Guess what I just discovered when opening the new vitamin/mineral mix bag? A complementary little bag of Vitamin B, magnesium and tryptophan, aimed at stressed horses. Well, guess who's going to eat that, because that's not going to do any harm either.

The update on Sunsmart is that I'm going to take to off his sharp edges myself with a nail file, because the vet was going to drop by next time he was in the area, but he said that two weeks ago and my horse still has ulcers on both sides of his tongue where the canines were ground down (and made a sharp edge on the inside of the new surface), as well as some of the inner surfaces of the incisors. Before all this new-fandangled doing horse teeth with crushes and power tools, when people just used a hand-operated dental file, only the back teeth were done - never the incisors or canines, and it didn't seem to trouble the horses. I'm wondering how wise it is to grind down incisors and canines if it leaves sharp edges on the insides of the new surfaces. I personally think I prefer the old system of just knocking the sharp edges off the premolars and molars. What do you guys think?

Anyway, because he has sore tongue edges, he can't clean his teeth (horses clean their teeth with their tongues, like we unconsciously do as well), so I've been cleaning his front teeth and all around his gums with a sponge and lots of water to remove all the built-up crud there. His front teeth have really deteriorated this summer, and he's got gaps opening in places which need flossing - I'm getting him used to that. I used forceps to pull out seeds from an ulcer that was forming in his gums below his lower teeth, and the stuff that came out stank, but I've been trying to get it out for a while and am glad to have got it. (Sunsmart was not ecstatic with the idea of having those ouchy spots handled, but now we've come to an arrangement, where I hold on to his top lip with one hand and work with the other, and he's starting to chill because what I'm doing isn't so terrible.) Of course, I have to watch that it doesn't fill up again. Once I had that horrible stuff out, I squirted chlorhexidine into it from a syringe. I also squirted some between his teeth. It's what the vet had left me to do his front teeth with, to cut down on infections in the area.

Overall, Sunsmart is improving in his general mood and demeanour, and doesn't look like he's drugged with a muscle relaxant anymore (he was pretty groggy a couple of weeks ago, and was hanging out his tackle all the time too just like male horses do when you sedate them). He's much more alert and eating with relish, but still having some difficulty with his tongue when eating his grain mix. He's keeping up with his herd better and shows more interest in them, but still isn't running when they're running for fun. He's no longer losing weight, but still not at a stage where I would consider riding him.

Whatever happens, it does look like he will at least be able to enjoy a retirement, although I'm still not sure that it's going to be a long one of years and years unless he picks up significantly. I'd cautiously say he's likely to make it to spring, and then we'll see - he's not insulin resistant etc, but I still think spring is a high-risk time for a horse in delicate shape, and will have to manage his grazing carefully.

But it's nice that he's at least looking at me brightly again on a consistent basis, instead of looking dull-eyed and half-asleep.


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## egrogan

Hi @*SueC* ! :wave: Glad Sunsmart is showing some improvement. I admit the thought of that level of intensive dental cleaning- and filing!!- is intimidating to contemplate. My Isabel is having some increasingly complicated dental issues and it's sad to think that will probably be her downfall. She's not in bad health overall for 26 years old, but our vet said her teeth are pretty bad even for her age. I hope Sunsmart has more happy retirement years. It's hard to see our friends getting older.

Speaking of older friends, I can't remember if I read it previously in your journal or posted elsewhere, but I did see your note about your friend Bill moving into a nursing facility :sad: That was very sad to read. I am quite certain that even if it means ending my life earlier than might be medically possible to continue, I do not want to end up in one of those facilities, and both lovely husband and I have made notes in our legal documents to that effect. I felt that way even before the pandemic, but some of the horror stories about how sick and dying elderly people have been treated in those facilities has pretty much sealed the deal for me.

On a lighter note, I wanted to ask you about your rain barrel system. We are (finally!) fencing in a new pasture for the horses, and because it's across the street from our house we can't run a water line out there without major headaches for permitting under the road, etc. So that's not an option. I wondered if you had any advice on a simple rain barrel system that would water the horses while turned out in that pasture. I guess my concerns are the cleanliness of the water and keeping mosquitos down. If you have any resources you recommend, I'm all ears. Thanks!


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## Knave

Ugh! I very much dislike when you type a big thing and it disappears...


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## Knave

Ok, here is my shortened down version. We don’t do teeth excepting in the case of a problem. My family believes most equine dentistry is unnecessary and creates further issues. They have a fear of too much grinding of the teeth.

So, I took Pete in when he started to look older (turned out unnecessary lol), and I took Bones in once. If a horse has an issue with their mouth, or their health looks to be dropping, then we take something in.


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## gottatrot

SueC said:


> Before all this new-fandangled doing horse teeth with crushes and power tools, when people just used a hand-operated dental file, only the back teeth were done - never the incisors or canines, and it didn't seem to trouble the horses. I'm wondering how wise it is to grind down incisors and canines if it leaves sharp edges on the insides of the new surfaces. I personally think I prefer the old system of just knocking the sharp edges off the premolars and molars. What do you guys think?


Glad to hear Sunsmart is doing better.

My bias is from having high headed horses that don't care to have a metal file inside the mouth. The one year Amore had a hand float done, with the vet feeling around for sharp edges. The next year when she again had a power float under sedation, the vet found more issues than usual. 

My belief is that it is extremely important to have a good vet doing your dentals. There seems to be some good training in our area because I've had at least five vets that did a great job. Here is my description of a good float: The vet sedates the horse and then raises the head on a sling, then opens the mouth with a speculum. The vet has a light that shines in and has the mouth at a good angle so everything inside can be visualized. The vet rinses debris out of the mouth with a syringe. The horse owner or an assistant holds the tongue out of the way. 








Then the vet works on the molars systematically, first the top and then the bottom or vice versa. The grinding only involves removing sharp outer points that are ulcerating the cheeks, and removing any areas that have not worn down with the rest of the teeth, which most horses have unless they somehow were born with a perfect bite. The vets do not try to correct serious imbalances such as a wave mouth, but just manage the effects of sharp places that form due to what is there. 
The canines are not touched. After the molars are smooth, the vet takes off the speculum and checks to see that the incisors meet and move smoothly from side to side. The incisors are not filed. There should be no blood.

Amore has had this kind of float every year for the past 17 years. She is 29 and still has chewing surfaces left, even though they are getting short. So I believe what my vet has told me, which is that a responsible provider will not remove good tooth, but only what is "extra," meaning if the horse's teeth moved perfectly that part would be worn down. The reason it is causing problems is because it is a part that has not been ground away, so it makes a high spot or sharp point that will bother the horse. A person who was very good at hand floating could do this on a gentle horse. On my Arabs that would be pointing their noses toward the sky, fidgeting and moving with eyeballs rolling around there is no way to take care of the issues well enough. They could have a good hand float under sedation and with a speculum. However, my vet says she uses a power tool because it helps her do a better job without getting fatigued.


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## AuG

SueC said:


> I personally think I prefer the old system of just knocking the sharp edges off the premolars and molars. What do you guys think?


I agree. I have cared for dozens of elderly horses and more than I would like have had major complications following power tool dentistry (done by the qualified dental vet). Previously to using this sort of dentistry there were far fewer issues for our oldies, most able to retire rather than needing to be euthanized. Options for qualified people not using power tools are dwindling. I think in the future we will find too much fussing in the mouth is detrimental (for humans as well). Less is best, without ignoring the few that do need more intensive work. 

I am glad to read Sunsmart has a bit of his sparkle back. I hope this cold weather hasn't taken it out of him too much and the grass that follows helps put back on what he has lost.


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## Knave

@AuG I agree completely. I am having hard feelings for dentistry right now. I took my oldest in to the orthodontist for a check up right after a dental visit. She’d never had a cavity, and suddenly he said she had 7! Well, okay, I made an appointment.

So, the ortho does all the xrays and says, “7 cavities! I was just thinking she had great teeth. I guess maybe she could have some really small things the xrays do not show and I did not see?” (The last part said awkwardly.) 

Now, I am not one to confront someone at their occupation (or really anywhere), so I assume the issues are very minor. When he started drilling (the dentist, the ortho does only braces) at the next appointment he actually said, “wow, these cavities are much worst than I expected. I’m glad we got to them. They are very deep.” He also charged 2k for the fillings.

He had done all of our teeth, and I had heard rumors, but of course I didn’t believe them before this. How much unnecessary drilling was done to us? I was spending around 2-3k each time with him. He was only making pocket money. I think from now on we will go to a new dentist and only when an issue comes along.


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## SueC

Thank you everyone for your thoughts! Much appreciated. 



AuG said:


> I agree. I have cared for dozens of elderly horses and more than I would like have had major complications following power tool dentistry (done by the qualified dental vet). Previously to using this sort of dentistry there were far fewer issues for our oldies, most able to retire rather than needing to be euthanized. Options for qualified people not using power tools are dwindling. I think in the future we will find too much fussing in the mouth is detrimental (for humans as well). Less is best, without ignoring the few that do need more intensive work.


I generally go by the "carrot test" - if the horse can eat a whole good-sized carrot easily, the teeth are good, and if it starts to lean its head or lose bits etc, it's time to have a good look because there will be sharp edges that need knocking off (and perhaps other issues too). ...this is based on 35 years of horses being checked out in either condition, and the checking out showing it was so. Not that it's a peer-reviewed study, it's just a rule of thumb that seemed to mostly work.

Yeah, options are dwindling, do you know of any? Did you ever have Thomas, from Denmark (the country, not our Denmark)? Was a locum for the big horse practice (completely unimpressed with its main proprietor, but his colleagues say he wasn't always like that) and probably the best vet we ever had on the place. First met him over a decade ago when I needed a second opinion on a horse that would have died without the second opinion, even though the first vet had been back and told me not to worry... and ironically, he charged me far less for saving that horse's life than the first vet had charged me to botch a procedure (it was a botched stomach-tubing from a choke, with the obstruction pushed far down instead of cleared, and my horse couldn't swallow for days and was dehydrating from not being able to drink, and the first vet kept insisting it was just swelling from the procedure... by the time Thomas cleared the obstruction, we were treating her for aspiration pneumonia and she only just made it - and MiraMar insisted that I pay the full $800 for the botched procedure, so that's the last business I ever gave them).

I think Miles is a good vet, he's certainly been excellent with the horses who needed euthanasia (I don't do chemical euthanasias with horses, having seen both), and it helps that he's a horseman. Plus, he actually talks sense, unlike some veterinarians. I've not yet had cause to question a diagnosis, and his reasoning is very sound. I'm just not a fan of the power tool dentistry - it doesn't seem to be getting better results than the prior method, from where I'm standing, and it can produce issues I've not seen in the traditional method of doing teeth. And it costs more than twice as much, to boot... which makes it prohibitive, I mean, to do our five donkeys just once would leave us $1,000 out of pocket, and we just don't have that kind of money to splash around, so thank goodness none of them are having trouble with carrots. And thank goodness I know how to trim hooves (and that Greg Coffey is happy to do the horses' summer trim for me when the hooves are rock-hard! ).




> I am glad to read Sunsmart has a bit of his sparkle back. I hope this cold weather hasn't taken it out of him too much and the grass that follows helps put back on what he has lost.


Thank you! :blueunicorn: Our horses, all being ex-racers and not young whippersnappers, get rugged when a front is coming in, so all winter they're either snug in their rugs, or sunning their backs in the daytime on the sunny days. (We're in Redmond, and in a part of the valley that gets a lot of frosts, on top of being a wind tunnel when there's fronts. Whereabouts are you - you're not in Elleker, are you?)

The pasture is pretty low after two years of drought - we're not running as many cattle now, and I've been feeding out tree lucerne again at intervals. It's quite hilarious when all the herbivores on the place come running when they hear chainsaw noises, or start following me around when they see me carrying the power pole saw I use to cut tree fodder for them.:rofl:

But everyone except Sunsmart looks in good shape, and he's improving slightly, and opts to spend about every third night grazing in our garden at the moment, where there's lots to eat.

Happy riding. :charge: I am wondering if, by offering a reciprocal service, I could persuade you to lead Julian for me the first time I back him? My husband isn't a horse person. I think Julian would drag him off if anything went wrong. Not that I expect anything to go wrong, I'm just being overly conservative, but then I've been a bit once-bitten since falling off a horse at a _walk_ (unexpected sideways-backwards leap) and breaking three bones in my foot in 2018... :chicken2:


----------



## SueC

gottatrot said:


> Here is my description of a good float: The vet sedates the horse and then raises the head on a sling, then opens the mouth with a speculum. The vet has a light that shines in and has the mouth at a good angle so everything inside can be visualized. The vet rinses debris out of the mouth with a syringe. The horse owner or an assistant holds the tongue out of the way.
> [
> Then the vet works on the molars systematically, first the top and then the bottom or vice versa. The grinding only involves removing sharp outer points that are ulcerating the cheeks, and removing any areas that have not worn down with the rest of the teeth, which most horses have unless they somehow were born with a perfect bite. The vets do not try to correct serious imbalances such as a wave mouth, but just manage the effects of sharp places that form due to what is there.
> 
> The canines are not touched. After the molars are smooth, the vet takes off the speculum and checks to see that the incisors meet and move smoothly from side to side. The incisors are not filed. There should be no blood.


Yep, that's what it looks like, and that's how Miles explains it to me - apart from the front teeth also getting done, which surprised me. 

The other horses are fine, but Sunsmart isn't. Two years ago, after his first power float also involving front teeth attention, he didn't have issues with cutting his tongue on sharp edges on the front teeth afterwards - and the two other horses don't. His front teeth are very shocking with periodontosis which the vet thinks is linked to his Cushings "hole" - they never looked like this before - and one of them at the side looks like he's going to lose it in the next 12 months (but isn't loose yet - it's a combination of shifting in the jaw, and receding gums). The periodontosis is improving slightly with the mouth washing / chlorhexidine treatment. He's less sore, but when his gumlines receded, he started getting ledges in his teeth under what would previously have been the gumline, just as humans can get from incorrect brushing. The mechanical action of grazing is somehow eroding his enamel there, and that's not going to come back. My own couple of ledges have been filled, but I'm a human... and once you have ledges, unless you fill them, they become self-perpetuating because they become guides for the toothbrush bristles, and presumably for the grass stalks... and all in just one summer...




> Amore has had this kind of float every year for the past 17 years. She is 29 and still has chewing surfaces left, even though they are getting short. So I believe what my vet has told me, which is that a responsible provider will not remove good tooth, but only what is "extra," meaning if the horse's teeth moved perfectly that part would be worn down. The reason it is causing problems is because it is a part that has not been ground away, so it makes a high spot or sharp point that will bother the horse. A person who was very good at hand floating could do this on a gentle horse. On my Arabs that would be pointing their noses toward the sky, fidgeting and moving with eyeballs rolling around there is no way to take care of the issues well enough. They could have a good hand float under sedation and with a speculum. However, my vet says she uses a power tool because it helps her do a better job without getting fatigued.


Yeah, if you're careful then you can avoid taking too much off with a power tool. But just from my own experience with power versus hand tools and building, if you "slip" with a power tool, you can do a lot of damage, and if you're, say, hand sanding versus using an orbital sander, you don't end up with, "Ooops, that was a bit much!" ever... and I do mostly use the orbital sander because it's so much easier, but it's also a lot easier to accidentally take more than you wanted... even with years of use...

The speculum is always a good idea - as is sedating a flighty horse. I'm thinking though, to sedate a really calm horse that's got no issues with having dentistry done is to my mind more about perceived operator safety than the horse. Romeo never needed, and never got, sedation. Chasseur doesn't need sedation, but gets it anyway - with power tools, I can see why, with the traditional files I can't - and he was never sedated with hand filing. Sure thing, we all want to avoid accidents, but here I am, preferring the "good old days" when it cost $80 (in current money) to get a horse's teeth floated with an implement that made it pretty much impossible to take off too much - and now it costs $80 just to sedate the horse... and I don't have a golden goose laying golden eggs for me...

The power tool dentistry costs more than twice as much, but isn't twice as good I think, and reduces the amount of animals you can treat for a given amount of money - or lengthens the intervals before you can afford to treat again - for most people. I think that's a poor outcome for horses and horse owners, and is going to result in less care overall, rather than better care across the board...


----------



## SueC

Knave said:


> Ok, here is my shortened down version. We don’t do teeth excepting in the case of a problem. My family believes most equine dentistry is unnecessary and creates further issues. They have a fear of too much grinding of the teeth.
> 
> So, I took Pete in when he started to look older (turned out unnecessary lol), and I took Bones in once. If a horse has an issue with their mouth, or their health looks to be dropping, then we take something in.


That sounds very much like, "If it's not broken, don't fix it." Of course, proponents of regular treatments (horse or human) would say, "But you may miss a problem, and make it worse."

Maybe I've been lucky, but I've never gone to the dentist every six months myself - I go in every year to two years for a checkup and clean, unless there is an issue. And the dentist is happy with my teeth, but of course recommending 6-monthly checkups. Not had any new fillings since the ones imposed on me in childhood (which have been replaced once), other than a couple of ledge fillings. The only issue I've had is with one lower front incisor which has always been crowded. It was a bit achy and then we found out its nerve has died and the root canal needed filing out and closing off to make sure I'd not lose this tooth. A small amount of bone loss had occurred underneath it because of inflammation, but after cleaning everything up, the inflammation went and the bone remodelled, so all good now.




Knave said:


> @AuG I agree completely. I am having hard feelings for dentistry right now. I took my oldest in to the orthodontist for a check up right after a dental visit. She’d never had a cavity, and suddenly he said she had 7! Well, okay, I made an appointment.
> 
> So, the ortho does all the xrays and says, “7 cavities! I was just thinking she had great teeth. I guess maybe she could have some really small things the xrays do not show and I did not see?” (The last part said awkwardly.)
> 
> Now, I am not one to confront someone at their occupation (or really anywhere), so I assume the issues are very minor. When he started drilling (the dentist, the ortho does only braces) at the next appointment he actually said, “wow, these cavities are much worst than I expected. I’m glad we got to them. They are very deep.” He also charged 2k for the fillings.
> 
> He had done all of our teeth, and I had heard rumors, but of course I didn’t believe them before this. How much unnecessary drilling was done to us? I was spending around 2-3k each time with him. He was only making pocket money. I think from now on we will go to a new dentist and only when an issue comes along.


Yeah, that sounds really fishy... and I've wondered about my own fillings, done when I was a child, and discussed them with my dentists. Because, why is it that I had five fillings done before I was 11, and then saw no other dentist until I was 15, and have never, ever, and now I'm 49, had any cavities as an adult, or needed any other fillings, saving for that tooth whose nerve had died from overcrowding? One of my dentists told me it was either that the dentist wanted to go on a holiday / had some bills to pay, or that because I have deeply fissured molars, they mistook tea staining for decay. (I went in panicking in my 20s because the back lower molars had looked brownish in their creases, and the dentist said, "Ah, but this is just tannins, I can clean those off for you, you get those from black tea or red wine etc.")

Ouch, spending money like that really hurts... it's not as if you guys or us have got wads of cash to spare... sorry that happened to you. :hug:


----------



## SueC

Hullo @egrogan! :wave:



egrogan said:


> Hi @*SueC* ! :wave: Glad Sunsmart is showing some improvement. I admit the thought of that level of intensive dental cleaning- and filing!!- is intimidating to contemplate. My Isabel is having some increasingly complicated dental issues and it's sad to think that will probably be her downfall. She's not in bad health overall for 26 years old, but our vet said her teeth are pretty bad even for her age. I hope Sunsmart has more happy retirement years. It's hard to see our friends getting older.


It sure is. Thank you. :hug: Glad Izzy is doing OK, not so nice about dental issues - that was like Romeo - but he lived well a long time with few remaining teeth...till 34, I'd never have believed he'd get that old when he was 28... so you might get lucky... (and get a big feed bill like we did for his specialised bucket feed... :Angel




> Speaking of older friends, I can't remember if I read it previously in your journal or posted elsewhere, but I did see your note about your friend Bill moving into a nursing facility :sad: That was very sad to read. I am quite certain that even if it means ending my life earlier than might be medically possible to continue, I do not want to end up in one of those facilities, and both lovely husband and I have made notes in our legal documents to that effect. I felt that way even before the pandemic, but some of the horror stories about how sick and dying elderly people have been treated in those facilities has pretty much sealed the deal for me.


You saw that on @gottatrot's journal!  Yeah, it's really sad; and we feel like you do, and it's about time we made our wills in case both of us shuffle off the mortal coil at the same time... 

I really miss having Bill over. We had him here just a handful of times after he couldn't drive anymore. I'd swing by his place on my shopping day, and abduct him for lunch and an afternoon in the garden, before dropping him back and picking up Brett. And then the summer got so busy with Airbnb I didn't have time to scratch myself, and each time I was in town and had time to just pop by to say hello, he was out. And then he was in hospital, where I visited him and couldn't see why he was there, and he told me they'd taken his house keys off him, and nobody had told him why he was actually in hospital, and he'd only just gotten his house keys back. I could never reach him on the phone after that, and now his mobile phone has been disconnected, but we do know which nursing home he is in. I've just had a flu shot and apparently people with flu shots are now allowed small visits, so we'll see. This town day was too busy because three tasks to do and then it was time to go home before dark to feed horses; maybe next Thursday... I've also got some overdue tax work because the ATO has turned off the prior business portal interface and now wants people to use iPhones I don't have nor want, but Brett says there's a way of quasi-installing the phone software in a virtual box on his desktop computer (thank God for being married to a tech wizard who is also cute and snuggly and does dishes completely without being asked)... and there's always such a long list of stuff to do around here... and I'm not even riding at the moment...mmmh, must plan my time better...




> On a lighter note, I wanted to ask you about your rain barrel system. We are (finally!) fencing in a new pasture for the horses, and because it's across the street from our house we can't run a water line out there without major headaches for permitting under the road, etc. So that's not an option. I wondered if you had any advice on a simple rain barrel system that would water the horses while turned out in that pasture. I guess my concerns are the cleanliness of the water and keeping mosquitos down. If you have any resources you recommend, I'm all ears. Thanks!


I'm going to rack my brains, and get back to you - I promise! 



And hullo @rambo99!  I know I said something really uncomfortable to you in the past, and I for one am still uncomfortable about having said something uncomfortable, and I don't want to be unfair to people etc and if I was, then once again, I'm sorry. And I'd like you to know you're welcome to jump in here and chat anytime. :welcome: We talk about all sorts of stuff, sometimes including horses! :rofl: :falloff: :rofl:


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## bsms

I'll read more later, but....a couple of weeks ago, a lady came out to do our horses' teeth. It had been 5 years because she started requiring clients to trailer their horses to her place and my trailer holds hay. But with the virus thing going on, I think she needed work and I got an email from her asking if I wanted anything done.

The good news is she doesn't use power tools and minimally sedates the horses. Trooper, oddly enough, took two doses to calm enough for her to work. Bandit needed one. And reliable little Cowboy just yawned and told her to get to work! :Angel:

Trooper also needed the most work, but none of them had any issues with eating yet and none of them required more than about 5 minutes of actual filing. She felt around in their mouths with her fingers and decided which teeth needed something, and said Trooper had a couple of sharp edges that were just starting it irritate his cheek. The others had minor sharp points.

I think it was worth doing if only to give me peace of mind. Besides, she may not agree to come out to my place again before old age takes the two older horses! But all three horses were standing as she worked on them. She explored their mouths thoroughly, both with a flashlight looking in and feeling all over with her fingers. She rinsed their mouths out and used a file by hand. I was happy.

She also checked them for beans since they were partially sedated. No beans on any of the three (including unsedated Cowboy) so she just gave them a rinse. It had been 5 years since any one had looked. I seem to have easy keepers! Though it probably helps that the three of them sometimes let it all hang out as if they are competing, and leave them hanging out in the wind for a while.


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## SueC

OMG, @bsms, I've never heard of those sorts of beans before, now I'm going to double take for a while every time we eat beans! :hide:

That dental session sounds like it went well! :apple:

I just had another little dental session myself with Sunsmart. His teeth are looking slightly better, not inflamed anymore...but with receding gums, it's a hell of a trick to try to get them back... anyway, everything now smells nice again, whereas before I started doing this a couple of weeks ago, his breath was really smelly...

This morning, again - and it's almost easy to do this now he's gotten used to it and isn't fighting me anymore - I started with a sponge and bucket of water, "brushing" his front teeth with the wet sponge, which rinses at the same time - and just dipping the sponge again and again and repeating till all the exterior stuff is clean. Then I grab the forceps and deal with anything stuck in the gaps he's developed, and floss afterwards with cotton feedbag string - he's gotten used to that too - I just hold his top lip with one hand, mostly gently, but if he does want to take his head away I can hold on - sort of like with a twitch - except it's easier this way, and gentler on the horse. (Sunsmart is a headbanger if anyone looks into his mouth - or at least has that tendency when he's dealing with strangers, or if he thinks I'm going to hurt him, but I think he's cottoned on to the fact that what I'm doing is helping him, and not that unpleasant...)

Then I water-rinse again with the sponge, and following that, I draw up chlorhexidine in a syringe (no needle obviously) and squirt it around his gumline and between the teeth. I re-checked the ulcer he developed in summer, in the gums below his bottom incisors - it had formed because of barley grass seeds, which I pulled out at intervals, but the cavity tended to collect matter again when he returned to grazing. A while back I managed to pull out a whole lot from deep down - it stank badly - and it's getting better, and smaller. This morning I probed deep again with the forceps and found some more stuff, and once more, as I've been doing, squirted chlorhexidine down it under pressure afterwards, and then applied a little trick I've forgotten to mention here before - there's this stuff you can get over the counter at the pharmacy here for mouth ulcers, called Kenalog, which is a potent anti-inflammatory in a dental cement base, which we ourselves use for mouth ulcers. It actually forms a film over the ulcer. So when I was thinking about how I could help reduce the amount of "refill" in the ulcer pocket every time the horse goes back to grazing, which horses do 16 hours a day, I experimented with this stuff - smearing a blob deep into the ulcer pocket. It is looking much better, much smaller, and less inflamed, and eventually I hope it will close.

Anyway, it seems to me that doing this at least every 48 hours in the long term is going to be necessary to help him with these issues.

Oh, and I smoothed off the sharp stuff on his canines and some of the front incisors with my diamond-grit, short nail file - keeping my thumb over the pointy end so I wouldn't poke his tongue with it. I felt that it was time I did something other than wait for a veterinarian, and it improved things. Then I chlorhexidined his tongue ulcers, and after that came the icing on the cake - when we were in town this week, I bought a tube of mouth ulcer gel as used for infants and people with dentures - the stuff with the choline salicylate - and massaged blobs of that stuff gently into his tongue ulcers and around his gumlines. He's actually giving me his tongue, amazingly. This is Mr "Don't Touch My Head, Especially If You've Got Weird Things On You"... 

The carrots at the end of it all are appreciated by him. He does look happier now, and he's trotting short stretches again without food bucket motivation. He's stopped dropping condition (and the drop in condition had freaked me out, since this horse had never dropped condition in his life, in fact I was always trying to keep it off him, he seems to run on the smell of an oaty rag...) Might take him for a hand walk sometime soon.

inkunicorn::blueunicorn:​
OK, a few things from COVID-19 lockdown. I posted this first thing on @Knave's journal already, but think it should be here too, so that anyone thinking of talking to me here knows exactly what they're in for. :Angel:

Actual conversation that took place along a rural road in Western Australia during our lockdown. We'd done a 40-minute loop of the nature reserve tracks (with a torch, because the moon wasn't up yet) in the drizzle following the earlier downpour, enjoying the moisture in the atmosphere and the aroma of earth and wet leaves etc. Arriving at our northeast gate, we decided to take the road back to our driveway. So, neighbour's pasture to our right, our pasture to our left.

*Brett*: (to neighbour's cows) Moo!

*Me*: (swinging torch beam over resting cows on our side of the road) Why are you talking to the neighbour's moos, when you could be talking to your own moos?

*Brett*: ...you are my moo-se!

*Me*: ...that is so amoosing!

*Brett*: When you get a good pun, you've got to milk it!

*Me*: Bwahahahaha!


This is how we stay sane. :happydance:

And here's something nice that Australians did in lockdown - a virtual choir... 






Story here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-18/i-am-australian-by-the-everyday-choir/12158718


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## bsms

Cowboy is my only horse who likes a WaterPik. I think he's working on his Hollywood smile!


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## SueC

Very cute! 

I've just read something and gone, "Yeah, if only!" - as small farmers, we've said this forever, but like many other small farmers, we're subsidising our farming with off-farm income... and farming because it's right to look after the land, rather than because it's particularly profitable - the main problem is the power wielded by big players that make it difficult for us to be more profitable, e.g. because they closed down the local abattoirs that would have allowed us to market our own meat, and forced us to sell to the mass market instead, so that our clean-and-green, high animal welfare practices can't be attached to our beef for consumers to know about, and we can't get paid extra compared to people with low environmental and welfare standards, because it just goes in the one outlet with everyone else's animals. Also because of regulations that get attached to big and small players alike, that make no sense for small players, e.g. attempting to force family farms to construct shower blocks for employees they don't actually have, or forcing pensioners making jam from home to have stainless steel commercial kitchens like the big players if they want to sell their jam, rather than just donate it to charity (and that they can still donate their jam tells you it's not about health and safety at all - as does thinking about how jam is actually made...)

I could give 100 other examples, but will stop here. I have to say, we're actually happy that a pandemic is bringing this juggernaut of ridiculousness that's our economy to a halt, because it means that there is at least a faint possibility that economies will become more fair and sensible, and more environmentally, socially and animal-friendly, now that we've all got time to think about it, and now that the inevitable outcomes of ridiculous policies make themselves acutely felt. This is not to dismiss the deaths and sufferings of many in this pandemic, but to point to the deaths and sufferings of many in business-as-usual, who usually get forgotten as the juggernaut sweeps on. If we do the right things now, then the deaths and sufferings of people due to the pandemic will at least result in less deaths and suffering down the track than there would have been had we not had a pandemic.




> While there’s no single, magic-bullet solution, there are clear and urgently needed policy fixes that would make our food and farming system far more balanced, sustainable, and resilient to crises – whether it be the Covid-19 pandemic or intensifying climate havoc.
> 
> For starters, policies must support smaller farmers and diversified sustainable production. This includes what’s known as “parity” – a fair price for farmers’ crops, guaranteed by the government, to prevent overproduction and market chaos.
> 
> Subsidies that currently propel farming consolidation and mass production of commodities for livestock feed and fuel must be reformed to promote organic, smaller-scale, regionally and local foods. This will help farmers survive and provide communities with resilient and diverse food supplies rather than depending on vast and fragile corporate food supply chains.
> 
> If there were ever a time to bust up the food and farming monopolies, which are reminiscent of the Beef Trust of the early 1900s, now is it. Centralized corporate power is creating agricultural and economic mono-cropping at a time when we most need a food system that’s diverse, equitable and sustainable.
> 
> The Covid-19 crisis and worsening climate chaos require far more public-sector direction and coordination of something as central to human survival as food.
> 
> Amid the current supply-chain breakdown, as news spread of gargantuan food waste, some farmers and caravans of volunteers have helped deliver food directly from the farms to people in need – a truly heroic gift.
> 
> But this vital act, feeding people in need and averting massive food waste, can’t be left to random acts of kindness. Why aren’t federal, state, and local governments setting up food distribution networks, employing laid-off truckers, warehouse workers, and others? Why not create a Green New Deal for food that creates jobs and boosts communities’ ability to feed themselves in these increasingly volatile times?
> 
> The food supply breakdowns spurred by the coronavirus pandemic are a horrific wake-up call to revamp today’s anarchic corporate food system and start replacing it with a publicly coordinated system that supports small and mid-sized farmers producing diverse organic crops for local and regional markets. Not only can we afford to create such a system, we cannot afford not to make this urgent shift.


from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/07/farmers-food-covid-19


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## SueC

*DONKEY PAS DE DEUX WITH STICK*

This afternoon, we went to our northeast corner to check a fireground - we did a small burn to tidy up and de-fuse the edge there on Thursday afternoon, and after the fire is out, you still have to go back for up to a week to check that it stays out (smouldering logs can turn into ember throwers if the wind picks up; possible smouldering in the soil organic layer at the burn edges can re-ignite a fire and send it off again, etc).

We had rain overnight, so even though the subsoil is still so desperately dry that the organic layer is like dry peat and burns like dry peat, this has helped to settle the smouldering down considerably. 

As we were walking back across the Common, Brett suddenly laughed and said to me, "Look over there, Ben and Don Quixote are playing!"

It's a pity we didn't have any kind of camera on us, because we've never seen anything like it before. Imagine two donkeys, one dun, one chocolate coloured, pretty much perfectly matched in size and shape, performing a _pas de deux_ at the trot, side by side, mirror-image strides, and so close they were touching from face to hindquarters! Their faces were cheek by cheek, and when they circled closer to us, we could see why: They had a stick in their mouths with which they were essentially playing a sort of tug of war, just sideways! :rofl:

We sat up on the farm dam wall and watched this pair with delight for five whole minutes, with Brett saying, "OK, who's going to win this one?" ...and just then they came trotting up to the dam wall and Don Quixote was steering them both up the side, which caused Ben to lose his grip - and with that they both stopped, now separated, while we fell about laughing. Donkeys are just such cool critters. 

In other news, Sunsmart is looking happier and I might try this week whether he feels like going for a walk on the lead with me. He looked very alert today, he's interested in things again, he's quick off the mark when I call him in for food, and has lost most of his previous apathy and dopeyness. He actually looks like he's enjoying his life again. He's got less tears running down his face, and his teeth and tongue are better with the regular attention they're getting. He's not drinking such huge amounts anymore and not spending ages at the salt lick. His coat still looks awful - it's OK at the top of his back where he's shedding it and is chocolate underneath, but the sides of him are covered in long yellow fuzz that makes him look like he's impersonating our Irish Long-Hair donkey Mary Lou. (Ben in the background below.)



Of course, that's the least of your worries with Cushings. He's stopped losing topline; whether I can get any back is the question... as it's not fair to ride him right now, I'm trying to give his back muscles some massage with brushing, with a lovely comfortable dandy brush, and it seems that just maybe his backbones aren't sticking up quite as much anymore. This is in a horse though whose backbone you could never see because he was so extremely well muscled across his back, just like Julian still is (both are by the same sire, and you can see their wide, flat backs on the photo below from two years ago, with the more conventionally shaped Chasseur the chestnut in the middle). 



It does at least look like this horse is going to be well enough to get a retirement, for which I am grateful... If it wasn't for the Pergolide, this horse would have had to be put down by now, he was so terribly woeful a month ago...


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## SueC

Oh yeah, and... @Knave, you know how you introduced me to Ruth B's music a while back? I love this track too... gorgeous singing and story...


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## Knave

I actually knew that song Sue! It is my favorite of hers. It speaks to me. 

I am glad Sunsmart is at least doing a bit better. The donkey story made me laugh. I am jealous I didn’t see it!


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## SueC

Knave said:


> I actually knew that song Sue! It is my favorite of hers. It speaks to me.


Yeah, I remember you telling me about a few others too so we downloaded them from iTunes along with _Golden_ back then. I couldn't remember which was your favourite, this one or _Superficial Love_. They're both very good, but _Lost Boy_ also really speaks to me - and I think would to anyone who's ever been on the "outside"... I really admire this young woman's music, she's such a wonderful contrast to the superficial pop princesses. Every time she comes up on a random play list for me I just double take because her songs really hit home. I'm gonna need to buy an album or two!  Thanks so much for the intro. 

I hope everyone is properly well again at your place. :hug:


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## Knave

I think we are all well. I did get bit by an ant yesterday and had to go to the clinic. I seem mostly better today. Dang ants! We were in the middle of a branding and I was wrestling a calf and suddenly I had that pain in my hand. I never saw the ant, but I saw them all around. I tried to deny it for a bit, then I took Pepcid and Benadryl, and then I realized I didn’t have a choice but to go in. 

Everyone seems healthy besides though. HeiHei had to be reopened today, so he isn’t in great health. Hopefully he will be back to himself tomorrow or the next day.


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## SueC

I'm so very sorry HeiHei didn't make it, @Knave. :-( I just came in from doing a few bonfires to clean up the fodder tree branches in one of the paddocks this morning and was going to tell you that you have such bad luck with insects, when I read something much worse. :hug:

Something from The Audreys I thought you might like (I'm not sure if I've brought this in before; my mind doesn't remember everything accurately but if I have, it's a nice song anyway):





 @egrogan, I've thought about your question and here's a thought: The simplest way to get water across the road might be to run a hose across in the night to fill up a little tank you keep in the paddock to service your trough. This would be cheaper and less hassle than making a building whose roof you can harvest water off, to put into a tank to service your trough. Now that's assuming that you have a tap near enough to the place across the road not to make that prohibitive. Although, we routinely run water in inexpensive polypipes for long distances, including several hundred metres from our water outlets near the house, overland to the troughs in the fenced paddocks. The polypipes just stay on the ground (although you can bury them if you have the right tractor attachment, or a friend or contractor who has). It might be possible to run a polypipe to the road edge, keep a connector there, and attach a hose to run across the road surface (because hoses take more kindly to the occasional vehicle traffic than polypipe does). If you go out last thing at night and connect the hose to the polypipe and run it across to the tank, you could let the tank fill overnight if there is only a small amount of overnight traffic. If you use a float in your tank, you could rig it so the water turns off automatically when the tank is full. Or, just work out the flow rate you need to dispense the right amount into your tank over an 8-hour period, and set your tap to that flow rate.


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## SueC

This morning we were reading some "wisdom literature" while having breakfast in bed - I've taken Kahlil Gibran's _The Prophet_ off the bookshelf for another read. Here's a particularly nice excerpt, about work:

_Then a ploughman said, "Speak to us of Work."
And he answered, saying:
You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life's procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.

When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?

Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inmost secret.

But if you in your pain call birth an affliction and the support of the flesh a curse written upon your brow, then I answer that naught but the sweat of your brow shall wash away that which is written.

You have been told also life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.
And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,
And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,
And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,
And all work is empty save when there is love;
And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.

And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.

Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, "He who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is nobler than he who ploughs the soil.
And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet."
But I say, not in sleep but in the over-wakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;
And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.

Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night._


I think we're going to get out the various wisdom literature type things we have around the place again, and sample from them over breakfast this winter. It was such a nice way to start our day.


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## Knave

Thank you @SueC. The song was beautiful and very fitting.


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## egrogan

So sorry again @Knave. It's so sad to lose one of our buddies :sad:

@SueC, thanks for taking the time to give your advice on the water system. I do think running a hose across the street from the house is going to be the best option. We do have a spigot on the front of the house. I don't know how much time the horses will spend there in the cold months, as ice is an ongoing problem, but I'm really excited to give them more space in the warmer months. The field they're currently on has been in continuous use for the two years we've been here (I can't believe time has flown this quickly!) and it simply needs a break. It's really not in good shape. All the materials arrived on Friday so now we just need to coordinate with our post-hole-digging friend.


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## SueC

Triple happy today:

1) A good friend is staying with us for 5 days - the first stayover we've had since the pandemic. Restrictions were eased on Monday. My friend was supposed to be going to NZ and had booked the annual leave way ahead and then the pandemic happened. But she's come down to hike with us instead and we've had a great day doing three coastal walks in splendid autumn weather. We'll be walking more on the weekend, and spend tomorrow doing things in the garden and I'll be trimming a set of horse hooves. 

2) I like being Mrs Growly Bear (married to a very cute Growly Bear) :happydance:

3) Today I went to see my GP to get the results for the bone density scan I had last week - my first, a sort of midlife requirement so they can get a reference value for your "downhill run" into old age. I'm 49 and theoretically at risk of osteoporosis because I had premature ovarian failure (runs in the family) at around 40. Having said that, if you've got POF you can go on pretty good HRT these days and I feel in all respects like I felt in my 30s (except I have to put in two extra cardio sessions a week to maintain my fitness at the same level these days, but it can still be done).

...anyway, so I got into my GP's office and she said, "Sue! This is amazing! You actually have better bone density than the average 18-25-year old!" And I said, "Well, that's not necessarily saying that much because most 18-25-year-olds these days are couch potatoes!" (Australia has the "honour" of having the most overweight population on the planet these days, having won this "honour" off the USA a couple of years ago - and has a very inactive population physically). And she went, "No, this is really good!" - and showed me a normal distribution curve like this:










Three reference values were taken: Lumbar spine, hip, femoral head. The first two were sitting on the right-hand side of the green area of the curve, the lumbar spine on the border (1.0 standard deviations across) and the hip close to it (0.8 standard deviations across), so they're better than 74% and ~70% of 18-25-year-olds respectively - at twice the age of these young whippersnappers. The bone density in the femoral head was sitting just above average for 18-25-year-olds, at 0.1 standard deviation across - so I was saying, "Well, I'll have to work on that one, won't I!" - and load it a bit more, and my GP was laughing at me and saying that osteoporosis is in the red zone on the left side of the curve, and osteopenia (thin bones) in the yellow zone, several standard deviations across from where I was currently sitting, and I should just keep doing what I'm doing and wouldn't need another scan for at least ten years. She said, "Well, you're a great example of what regular exercise, decent nutrition and a positive and proactive approach can do for your health!" ...and it's kind of nice when your GP says that (and they're always saying it...) 

Very nice day.


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## egrogan

@SueC, I don't think I realized until I read your post just how much I'm missing the ability to have friends come over to visit. Glad you had a fun adventure!


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## bsms

My sister has a note taped to the front of her fridge:

*"Now I know why dogs race out the front door!"*

:thumbsup:​


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## SueC

A couple of photos Eileen took on our Pt Possession walk yesterday. We really had fairytale weather and it brought out all the colours of the landscape so well...


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## SueC

I forgot to say that after trimming his hooves this morning, I put a saddle on Julian the first time. He got to sniff it first etc and didn't blink. I took it off before anything could get scary and put it back on again and then it was old hat. Next time I'll do up the girth. This shouldn't be a problem as a harness horse is used to having a girth anyway. The saddle even fits reasonably well.

And Brett told me a joke today.
In the tradition of the classic sadist-masochist joke comes the optimist-pessimist joke.

In case you don't know the classic joke:
The masochist says to the sadist, "Beat me!"
The sadist replies, "No!"


The pessimist says, "The world can't possibly get any worse!"
The optimist replies, "Yes, it can!"


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## gottatrot

Ahhh the colors of the ocean! I would like to see those again someday. WA and south/tropical Japan have had the prettiest colors I've seen in the ocean.


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## SueC

We've had some really great hiking this week with a friend, and she just sent us all the photos. So here's a few:

*POINT POSSESSION WALK, ALBANY*


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## SueC

*SIDE TRIP TO FISHERIES BEACH*

At the trail car park, you can go down the steps to the beach below the start of the trail. It's called Fisheries Beach and is a lovely spot, with wonderful colours in the rocks at the far end... so we took a walk down after finishing out hike.














*SHORT WALK: GRANITE TRAIL, MT CLARENCE, ALBANY*

We followed our morning hike by some more afternoon walking... Mt Clarence is one of two monadnocks in the centre of town and offers great views of the surrounding countryside...








*SHORT WALK: WIND FARM WALK, SAND PATCH, ALBANY*

Jackets had to go down as the warm day got nippy at sunset....





...and that was just the first day of hiking. :happydance:


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## carshon

Those photos are stunning! I am so glad that Sun Smart seems to be doing better and that you finally had some friend time.


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## SueC

Thank you, @carshon! It was so good to have a friend staying with us at last, and we made the most of it. Eileen is actually the ideal friend to have as your first house guest during the pandemic - she's a nurse who trained in Taiwan and has all the SARS protocols etc. Because of that, she also has a range of really cute masks, including with teddy bears printed on, which are fully washable and re-usable; she didn't need that hiking for the prevention of infection, but actually whipped it out a couple of times to prevent sunburn to the nose and lips! 

I had really missed having friends over, so when we finally had the chance, we made it into a mini-holiday.

How are you doing with all this pandemonium?

PS: Sunsmart is actually "smiling" again and looking very happy. His back muscles are improving. I did his tooth cleaning again today and his tongue ulcers are now healing up. :apple:


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## SueC

So this is exactly why everyone wearing masks in confined environments like public transport is so essential, and why wearing masks in public places with other people not of your household is a good idea:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...-with-covid-19-have-no-idea-they-are-infected

...and this is why the moment there is community transmission you basically have to treat yourself as potentially infectious, although asymptomatic - to safeguard against spreading the disease. For the same reason wearing a seatbelt is a good idea: Not for the 999 times you don't need it, but the one time you do.

...as two friends who've been through a SARS epidemic have said to me from the start, while there was still general ummhing and aaahing about it in the West. (SARS, like COVID-19, is a coronavirus, and a better model of comparison than flu).

One way asymptomatic people can spread virus without even realising it:

- because they too cough to clear throats and sneeze from general irritation, which will spread infected droplets unless a mask is on (to someone physically close to them, and to surfaces)


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## SueC

Here's a photo Eileen took of the horses grazing last week. You can see Sunsmart is currently "peeling" out of a horrible shaggy coat - and what's below looks reasonably standard. His shape is a bit better and he is actually re-gaining some of the back muscles that he dramatically lost over March/April. So I've actually dared to photograph him now.

I'll get better photos of him soon - later today I will take one of him in his new fancy winter rug we bought him on Saturday. As he has gone lean over his ribs and back, I wanted him to have more than a lightweight waterproof rug - also because I think this winter is going to be brutal (hail, wind, rain, wind chill, based on the couple of storms we've had over the past fortnight). Previous years, he was always a "hot" horse, had excess condition and would sweat in anything thicker, so the lightweight was right for him (and still will be for in-between weather). Now he's got quilted winter rug like Romeo had and Chasseur has. Julian is still in a lightweight because he is a "hot" horse - but we can add a layer to him in particularly bad weather, as we did for Sunsmart before buying the new quilted rug.

The pasture is still sparse after two years of drought and a bad start to the growing season. I'm going to sell all the cattle but one - we're going to try to arrange a home kill for the big Friesian steer, so that he doesn't have to go on transport (he has a wonky leg) and because it would give us two years' worth of not having to buy meat while eating very lean (dairy steer, not on spring flush) home-grown product. Currently we have enough tree fodder to bridge any gaps, but we think it would be good to take pressure off the pasture this winter. We can always feed some new little calves when we think the time is right.


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## SueC

OK, I have some better photos.

The first is a reference photo of Sunsmart from 20 months ago, when he had a couple of odd tufts hanging off his side which you can just see in the photo - the tufts are a different colour to his normal chocolate coat (and he's wet in this photo after getting washed post-riding). I had him tested for Cushings that same week and he came back with mildly elevated ACTH - no IR, no equine metabolic syndrome. His Cushings was caught very early and we treated him right away. One tablet of Pergolide a day was too much for him (he got apathetic) and he was on half a tablet right up until this summer without showing any problems.

You can read back to when the current problems started here: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page64/#post1970851489

...and https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page64/#post1970852297

That was in late March. 

There was a bit of comedy when he became a "garden horse"... https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page64/#post1970854819

Three weeks after we adjusted his medication I got very worried: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page64/#post1970860473

Five weeks in, things were starting to look a bit better: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page64/#post1970865319

We're now eight weeks in. When you look at the photos I took today, remember that he was so bad I didn't take any before. He was actually looking worse that he does right now - the muscles around his back had atrophied terribly and you could see his backbones a couple of weeks ago. That's getting better. Although his eyes were mucky and weeping today, that's been unusual for him the past two weeks or so - he's been clearing up, but I had to wash his face several times a week up until recently because his eyes were always teary and plastering his cheeks with goo. The thing that looks worst right now besides the muscle loss (back and shoulders - hindquarters weren't as affected) is that horrible coat, which he is actually beginning to shed. That's mostly a cosmetic thing, but does show how far out of whack his homeostasis got with his Cushings going out of control before his medication was tripled. He is stabilising - he's not drinking all the time anymore either, nor at the salt lick constantly, and he's pretty bright again. He's keeping up with the herd again when they're trotting - though still not galloping with them. The coat coming back under his shedding Cushings coat is a normal-looking winter coat, but at this point of course we don't know to what extent he's going to shed that coat.


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## SueC

On a brighter note, here's some photos of the horses in their winter rugs - Julian in a (purple) lightweight and the other two in their quilted rugs. Chasseur inherited Romeo's deluxe rug as his was getting ratty, and Sunsmart has a new one we bought on Saturday. Also a photo of Ben and Nelly with some canvas blankets on today. Little Sparkle is always rugged in cold winter weather - she's blind and I feel she needs the extra warmth as she's not got spare fat; these two I think will benefit when it's raining and the wind is blowing. Like the other donkeys, they tend to use the shelter during storms, but the rain can go on for hours and these two don't need to lose weight.


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## Knave

Those are adorable!


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## carshon

They look so dashing in their rugs! Sun Smart's new coat does look much healthier.


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## egrogan

"Snug as a bug in a rug" is what my grandma used to say about us when we were all bundled up in our winter gear to go out and play :grin: That's how your crew looks to me.


Hope Sunsmart continues to respond well to his treatment!


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## gottatrot

I also hope Sunsmart will continue to improve.

Everyone looks cute in their blankets!


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## SueC

OK, more happy stuff: A few more "postcards" Eileen took last week; these are from the day we spent in Denmark (the town, not the country! )

The first one is not a postcard, but a photo of our crew fuelling up for walking at the famous _dozens_-of-bakery-awards-at-State-and-National-competitions-winning Denmark Bakery. We're in standard household-group pandemic seating here and a bit more "together" for the moment the photo was taken, but we weren't breathing on Eileen or she on us, and with Brett and me it's a moot point since we're exchanging body fluids on a daily basis.  



Note our pandemic haircuts. Eileen decided to go blonde for this, I've been cutting my own fringe for months, and I had to cut Brett's hair recently because his work colleagues said he was starting to look like a shagpile. :shock: (They've obviously not spent much time looking at The Cure playing live. :rofl Personally I prefer my man with a bit of hair, but he grows it back rapidly (especially when fed lots of French Provencial Chocolate Cake, which seems to act as fertiliser). Plus, unlike most hairdressers no matter what you tell them, I left enough length through his top sections so that I can still get my fingers into it while I'm waiting for it to grow back. 

The pies are: Shepherd's, Lamb & Rosemary, and Seafood (off-camera). Drool. :cheers: Generally speaking, I think most commercial pies are a culinary aberration made with the very worst ingredients, but the Denmark Bakery, located in a hippie town, actually uses quality ingredients - imagine that! I'd rather pay twice as much for a decent pie and only have one every now and then, than constantly eat rubbish...

Anyway, thusly fuelled up, we took Eileen on the Monkey Rock car park to Lights Beach and back walk, which is a section of the famous Bibbulmun walk track (Perth to Albany, the long way around). Here's some of the postcards from that she sent us!



That was the dog at the beginning of the walk, which tracks through a farm. We were then too busy walking 6km through farmland and dunes till we got to the beach:













Eileen and I went off to the adjacent beach...



...and then we went home again. Eileen got this lovely shot back over Lights Beach on the walk out - just look at that glassy wave curling over:



Happiness is wonderful basics: Your friends and chosen family, nice food, exercise in sun and air, meaningful stuff to do, amazing landscapes. :happydance:


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## SueC

*GIRLS' DAY OUT ON MT TALYUBERLUP*

Denmark (last post) was Saturday. On the Sunday we went on a girls' day out to let Brett have the house to himself for a day - something he gets rarely, and I get all the time. And after all, we'd already done Mt Talyuberlup together a few months ago, but Eileen really wanted to see it and I love that spot so it's not hard to twist my arm to go up there! 

@CopperLove thought she had an embarrassing photo in a recent post on her journal (looked fine to me, but it's pretty normal to go "eek" at your own photographs :shock - and I promised I'd be posting an embarrassing photo of my own. :rofl:

Eileen's phone camera is made for landscapes and has a tendency to distort people's aspect ratio / magnify parts of their anatomy if in the centre of the photo. We've culled out a lot of people photos from the trips for those reasons - it was like a bunch of Oompa-Loompas running around in the landscape. 

The only reason I kept this next one is because it was the only photo we had that showed the early stages of the ascent. But in it, I look like I'm wearing an inflatable bra on a "prevent drowning in the high seas" setting. :dance-smiley05:



Brett was laughing at this photo. "Nice melons," said my lawful wedded husband. I actually _don't_ look like Pamela Anderson. :winetime:

Cameras are funny things sometimes. If I want to look my horses look like balloons, all I have to do is use a zoom lens from a distance...

In other news, please note the hiking pole that Brett thought would be good for me to take, to save my knees, who are now in their 50th year on this planet (yikes!), on the somewhat steep descent - which these things are extremely good for... We bought one each, just like we bought reading glasses at the start of last year. I wonder when we're going to need hearing aids. I suppose that depends on how much loud music I listen to. :cheers:

More hiking shots: Eileen was giggling at my short pants in the freezing weather, but I overheat easily on ascents, so I just layer up my top half for that, and change into thermal pants near the mountaintop on cold days.











..and this is the top:


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## SueC

It was freezing up there and we were thankful for the circle of rocks we could huddle in while having lunch. We'd gone through a cave to get to the top and you'll get that on the descent shots. We had to make tracks because there was a severe weather warning for later in the afternoon; huge fronts connected to tropical lows coming in, a "once-in-a-decade storm" they said, and indeed it was (I'll post more later), but we got home well before it.

This is on the descent; we've just come from the clifftop, but not straight down it :rofl: - there's this goat track you can see right next to the cliff where I am standing with needless drama (we just did silly shots because it's fun); it goes down into this dip and then back up again along the base of that cliff, and the cave entrance is on the far end of the photo where the little trees are...



This is the cave, just coming out of it on the other side of the mountaintop:



...and this is Eileen doing a 180 from taking that shot, to show the view towards the descent, and the road on which the car park is:



Really amazing place, and I never regret visiting it. It's extra special when you can bring someone who's never seen it before; it's not on the tourist map - it's one of those hidden gems the locals know about...

Descending:







This is a little overhang we'd sheltered under to eat a snack on the way up, when a little forerunner front to the storm came through for half an hour and rained icy rain down on the mountainside. Several people can sit in it comfortably and it sort of feels like sitting inside a giant clamshell.



...and that's the end of the photos! ...we had a whale of a time. :happydance:

With the huge storm coming in, I'd had the foresight to rug the horses in the morning, before we left, just in case we didn't make it back before the storm broke, and because it was cold anyway. We did get back before the huge wind gusts started, and Brett had made us a nice hot chicken soup! 

Soon after I fed the horses, the storm came in. It howled all night and then rained incessantly the whole next day, so Eileen and I spent it all indoors in front of a nice fire, while Brett was slaving away in the office (and telling us on his way out to enjoy ourselves  :hug.

Here's a news report from the tail end of the storm:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05...s-ex-tropical-cyclone-mangga-strikes/12281886


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## Knave

I like the haircuts! 

I am glad you have this friend. It seems like you are having so much fun together!


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## SueC

It's so funny, @Knave!  You know what Eileen did when our regions were locked down in the pandemic? Bought herself an inflatable kayak! There's a big estuary where she lives, and she loves to bird-watch, so was floating amongst the pelicans for recreation. I had no idea there were inflatable kayaks! It's because like us, she has no tow bar, and this is a practical way to do a little floating around the estuary without giving herself injuries trying to load a non-inflatable kayak onto a roof rack!

The other day she emailed me (title was "Hello from a sinking kayak!" :lol to say she mustn't have done up the valve properly last time she took the thing on the water, because suddenly the kayak was a funny shape and water was coming over but she and a friend started pumping it up mid-estuary instead of abandoning ship. She described that to me as "super hilarious"... :rofl:

Here's a shot she took on a previous trip:


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## SueC

*INVITATION TO SHARE THOUGHTS AND DISCUSS*

I'm sure we've all been doing a lot of thinking during this pandemic, about the world and how our societies and communities are and how we wish they were. It's really highlighted a lot of the problems and injustices in the existing structures and systems, and indeed in human nature itself. 

Normally I tend to media fast because business as usual is so incredibly depressing. Since the pandemic I've been following unfolding events and heartened by the fact that a lot of people are thinking deeply at the moment about how they want the world to be post-pandemic. Because of lockdown, there has been time for reflection at the same time that problems inherent in our systems have have been magnified.

George Floyd's killing was one of a long string of similar hideous happenings not just in America, but in many other places, including Australia, where we've had over 400 Indigenous deaths in custody since the 1991 Royal Commission set up to deal with exactly that - and not a single person was charged with anything related to any of these deaths, including deaths that happened as a result of police assaulting people, and/or sitting on them, famously in one case killing a young detainee because he wouldn't stop eating a packet of biscuits in his cell. This kind of stuff unfortunately is happening all over the world.

I have been really shocked by a plethora of recorded police violence in the current demonstrations in the US; including footage of peacefully demonstrating civilians being teargassed, shot at with rubber bullets, and knocked over - one 75-year-old man so forcefully his head hit the pavement so hard that he was bleeding from his ears - and a kid crossing the road in Las Vegas minding his own business being grabbed by the arm and thrown to the ground by what appeared to be a sociopathic policeman looking for someone to assault, and then telling bystanders, "You'll be next!" 

We have some pretty sociopathic people in our police force here too; the main difference seems to be that they generally don't do their horrible stuff out in the open, on camera, but behind closed doors or in other situations when they think nobody is looking or recording - but ALL of that needs to stop... I've both heard of and personally met such police here in Australia, just as I have heard of and met some lovely, helpful, non-sociopathic members of that profession in our country. 

Before I write more, I just wanted to share a clip of some of the better moments of the demonstrations worldwide:






When I watched the video yesterday, I cried buckets, both because of the terrible sadness, and because of the good side of people, and how good it is to see people speaking out, and standing up for justice and fairness and love. ♥

Here's another good moment:





 @knightrider, you were in the thick of it in the 60s - I would love to know what you're thinking and feeling about what's going on right now. All of my adult life I've watched apathy win the day and change for the better being outweighed by change for the worse, and the big end of town gaining in power and disproportionate resource ownership while more and more of us are marginalised and disenfranchised, and I've watched the planet being trashed for profit and more and more species and ecosystems disappearing, and I've felt like the 60s (which I missed, being born in '71) were the last time our societies had a real chance to change things in a big way. And it seems to me that right now, at this time in history, we're actually in with a chance again.
@bsms, I remember a while back we had a journal discussion on the concept of toxic masculinity (which right now is on abundant display again when I look at the world), and we agreed that it's not just masculinity that can be toxic. Toxic behaviour seems to lurk amongst all societies and I've certainly seen it in women as well. It might be that males have more biological proclivity to violence for biological reasons, for similar reasons people geld stallions to reduce aggression etc - testosterone does seem to correlate with fight (and women have testosterone too, just not at the same levels, but they can certainly also be violent, I've seen that both when I was a schoolkid when physical violence came from female bullies as well as males and obviously in the family I grew up in, and I've seen it in society since). Testosterone of course isn't the only factor and almost certainly not the main one either - in humans, there's role modelling, there's environment, nurture, all that stuff, and also things like narcissistic traits and sociopathy to consider, and I'd guess they weigh far more heavily than hormonal factors.

Anyway, abuse of power is something found pretty ubiquitously amongst all societies and also in every institution I've ever worked for, whether secular or Catholic or non-denominational, whether government or private. A lot of it I think is correlated with sociopathy, at least in my experience - particularly the more malignant types of abuse of power. Some of it is ignorance or poor modelling or not having learnt better yet, in some people who really don't want to be like that. We're all works in progress.

In my own experience, abuse of power is more likely the further up the ladder a person is, and is more prevalent in organisations where the top is filled with corrupt and/or ignorant people - if it's present at the top, then the top tends to promote it both by putting other people like that into middle management, and by tolerating and rewarding it across the board. My best workplaces were run by lovely people at the top, and didn't tolerate that kind of behaviour, and were really egalitarian, but this is comparatively rare. (Brett is lucky because his current workplace is like that, and that's why it has a really low staff turnover.)

Brett and I were talking about this kind of stuff and we both think that sociopaths are attracted to power more than power itself corrupts non-sociopaths. And once you create a culture where abusive behaviour is considered acceptable, abuse starts to run rampant.

It's there on so many levels, macro and micro. It's in a lot of families (Australia has a domestic violence epidemic), and most institutions and organisations, and in wider society. And whatever we need to address, we need to address across the board, wherever we find it.

Anyway, thoughts and ideas are welcome from anyone who frequents these journals.

I've been listening to many podcasts for the past ten years since we bought this place, in my outdoors work. It might surprise some of you that I listen to really outlandish stuff , and one of my favourite thought-provoking podcasts I've listened to for over a decade is called Mormon Stories. It's produced by a guy who's a year older than me, John Dehlin, who grew up in a fundamentalist religion (Mormonism, in his case) and ended up, as he learnt more and more about the world, questioning a lot of the ideas that had been presented to him from the cradle as unshakeable truths. He ended up with what's called a faith crisis - many people have those, from all sorts of spiritual backgrounds, and I had one too - I was a Christian mystic for most of my life, from age 14 to my late 30s - I was never a fundamentalist and never encultured into a church, I was one of those "independent" people trying to make sense of their own spiritual experiences and if that interests you, I've written about that here, in the space of two long posts that start off about the brain and addiction, and then gradually lead to the kind of experiences I had, the contexts for them, how I interpreted that at 14 and later on and how I interpret that now... Exploring "Join The Dots" - Page 3 ...look for the Turner paintings if you want to go straight to that stuff, but I would recommend the preliminaries as well because this stuff is so complicated.

Anyway, John Dehlin has for many years run an excellent podcast grappling with faith crisis and differentiation and coming out of a particular encultured mindset. In his case it was out of Mormonism, but it really it's like coming out of any encultured belief system, whether religious or political or whatever. And it's also like coming out of a dysfunctional family - that's very similar as well - when you have to differentiate yourself from the belief systems you were raised with, and it's difficult, and often heartbreaking, if you came from an abusive kind of family, and you can end up realising that you grew up in an upside-down world that was presented to you as normal. And in a way, to some extent, that's relevant to all of us, grappling with dysfunctional societies.

I've spent the whole week doing a massive and necessary pruning job to the north of our house, because our bushes and trees there were getting too tall to properly admit winter sunlight to our passive solar house, and because we need to keep that particular line near the house below 2 metres tall for fire safety as well. I listened to a long, long, long interview John Dehlin did with yet another person documenting their own faith crisis and where he's at now, 40 months later. It's been a couple of years since I was a regular listener to these podcasts, so it struck me how far these guys have come, making a supportive environment for non-literal nuanced Mormons and post-Mormons. They've got a hugely professional support community and are very good at organising themselves now, and I really enjoy a lot of their talks as they're relevant to a lot of people who have questioned any aspects of their upbringings and culture.

This is the particular interview I listened to:

https://www.mormonstories.org/podcast/anthony-miller/

...and its follow-up:

https://www.mormonstories.org/podcast/anthony-miller-growing-beyond-grief/

The second link is probably the best "nutshell" podcast on how this person dealt with reconstructing himself and his life. John, the host, has a PhD in Psychology, which he undertook after actually earning really well in IT - he went back to university to study psychology to help him work out his own stuff and get his head around things, as a mature age student.

It's not a riveting clip to look at; I prefer to do these type of things as podcasts when I'm doing outdoors work, so I can multi-task. I've listened to so many of these stories that I'm pretty familiar with the context, I'm not sure how you'd go if you went in cold, but Anthony presents some pretty useful observations about going through a process like that.

And really, I think that all of us have to examine ourselves and the world with the same kind of intensity that a faith crisis coming out of fundamentalism produces, if we seriously want to make a better world, and want to be a better person, and want to learn how to respect people with different views to our own, and to engage productively with them, and if we want to change systems that oppress people.

Anyway, food for thought, and I'm inviting thoughts and sharing from all of you reading, because you're the sort of bunch with whom discussions like this are both possible and fruitful, and I thank you all for that! 

This was a really perplexing post to try to make. I just jumped in, and ad-libbed as best as I could, otherwise I'd not have written it!  So go for it, too. Anything that occurs to you, anything you've thought about.


----------



## bsms

> "_Brett and I were talking about this kind of stuff and we both think that sociopaths are attracted to power more than power itself corrupts non-sociopaths. And once you create a culture where abusive behaviour is considered acceptable, abuse starts to run rampant.
> 
> It's there on so many levels, macro and micro. It's in a lot of families (Australia has a domestic violence epidemic), and most institutions and organisations, and in wider society. And whatever we need to address, we need to address across the board, wherever we find it._" - @SueC


I think this is true. A retired cop told me once that if a city was totally dominated by one party - it didn't matter WHICH party! - then things got corrupt and the corruption could affect the cops too. Not in terms of bribes, but in terms of feeling like they were invincible and un-opposable. 

In the USA, cops have also become much more militarized. If you wear as much equipment as I wore in Afghanistan, then maybe it contributes to the idea you are in a war zone? To give two examples in Arizona:








> "_...no evidence of illegal activity or any illegal items were found at the residence, his wife and 4-year-old child were present and hiding from the unknown (to them) intruders at the time the warrant was served and were inside when police opened fire, 71 shots were fired by police, while Jose's weapon was found with its safety still engaged, his prior military service, lack of any criminal convictions, and the change in statements of events given by police as to what transpired at the scene.
> 
> In September 2013, the four police agencies involved agreed to pay Guerena's wife and children $3.4 million as a settlement, without admitting wrongdoing in their killing of Guerena._" Note: The cops put bullets into FIVE HOUSES because they shot so wildly!
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Guerena_shooting


The ex-military in me says the supposedly highly trained SWAT team above behaved like total amateurs.








> "_On January 18, 2016, Daniel Leetin Shaver of Granbury, Texas was shot dead by police officer Philip Brailsford in the hallway of a La Quinta Inn & Suites hotel in Mesa, Arizona. Police were responding to a report that a rifle had been brandished at the window of Shaver's hotel room.
> 
> After the shooting, the rifle, which remained in the room, was determined to be a pellet gun. Following an investigation, Brailsford was charged with second-degree murder and a lesser manslaughter charge and found not guilty by a jury....
> 
> ...The department agreed to reimburse Brailsford for medical expenses related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). *Brailsford's lawyer has said that Brailsford suffered PTSD due to his shooting of Shaver* and the resultant criminal trial. The reinstatement allowed Brailsford to apply for "accidental disability" suffered during the course of work. *As a result, Brailsford was unanimously approved to be retired on medical grounds. Brailsford was also given a pension of $2,500 per month*. The fact that Brailsford was ultimately medically retired instead of remaining fired was only revealed to the public in July 2019._"
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver


An article I liked enough to save for future reference:


> "At that moment, the family dog, Bruce, approaches the officers. There is no indication that he is threatening, and no officer tries to control him by peaceful means. Instead, one officer — a man by the name of Michael Vickers — opens fire. He aims a single shot at Bruce and misses. Bruce retreats briefly and then comes back.
> 
> The officer fires again, and misses Bruce again. But he hits Corbett’s ten-year-old son in the knee. Bullet fragments remain in the knee “for an extended period of time after the shooting,” and the young boy suffers “severe pain and trauma.”
> 
> Here’s perhaps the most astounding fact: The officer fired when the boy was only 18 inches away....So the boy’s family sued. They lost. The reason? An unjust doctrine called “qualified immunity.”"
> 
> https://www.nationalreview.com/2019...highlights-the-need-to-change-a-terrible-law/


There are many more examples. A guy was carrying concealed in a Costco in Nevada. An employee found out and called the cops. They had the store evacuated, no reason given, and the employee identified the guy carrying (legally) to the cops. In the audio, only 7 seconds passed between the first word said by the cops to when they opened fire, and having listened to it, I'd have had no idea what to do if I was the guy killed. You are walking out of a store, cops start yelling, and 7 seconds later they shoot you multiple times!

The cop in charge was found not guilty, as he had been found not guilty before - IIRC, it wasn't the first time he killed someone on duty.








The style of policing has become one which I think attracts abusive, controlling sociopaths - and while they may be 1% of the cops, 1% is more than enough to destroy the reputation of a police force. And with it, it destroys cooperation with the police.

I'm not sure how to change things. I strongly believe "qualified immunity" needs to be changed. I don't understand why someone who carries concealed is held to a vastly HIGHER standard than a SWAT team!

I honestly think riding attracts some of the same sorts. You can beat up, whip, spur, and bloody a 1000 lb largely compliant animal AND GET AWAY WITH IT. In fact, you are ENCOURAGED to use force to dominate an animal who mostly wants to comply, who loves teamwork, who is happy to work with someone - the "Power of We" - and that brutal treatment is TAUGHT to many new riders. Including me. "Get a bigger whip!"

I don't know the answer. It isn't riots. But it also isn't accepting that a cop can kill you and have a 99% chance of going unpunished. BTW, @SueC, you may have heard of this one, also in Minneapolis Minnesota:


> On the night of the shooting, Damond called 911 at 11:27 p.m., and again eight minutes later, 11:35 p.m. She reported that she thought she heard a woman either having sex or being raped. Dispatchers categorized the call as "unknown trouble: female screaming"—a relatively low priority. Officers responded to the area, the low-crime neighborhood of Fulton in southwestern Minneapolis, and found no suspects or signs of the suspected rape that had prompted Damond's telephone calls to 911.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ​Officers Noor and Harrity, after driving through an alley with the lights on their police Ford Explorer off, heard no signs of criminal activity. As the two partners prepared to leave, Noor "entered 'Code Four' into the cruiser's computer, meaning the scene was safe." Harrity would indicate "that he was startled by a loud sound near the squad," and immediately, then, Damond approached the police car's driver-side window. Harrity drew his weapon, but, pointed it downward, did not fire. Noor, however, fired once through the open window, fatally striking Damond in the chest. Damond was unarmed and barefoot. The officers attempted CPR to no avail; Damond died 20 minutes later.
> 
> Harrity later told a supervisor, "We both got spooked....
> 
> ...On April 30, 2019, Noor was convicted of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter....On June 7, 2019, Noor was sentenced to 12.5 years in prison.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Justine_Damond


It sickens me that a cop can brutalize or kill someone, under circumstances that would result in me being convicted of murder, and walk free. Even get a PENSION! And don't get me started on why FOUR cops, with a suspect on the ground handcuffed, felt a need to kneel on top of him even after he was dead!


----------



## SueC

> "...no evidence of illegal activity or any illegal items were found at the residence, his wife and 4-year-old child were present and hiding from the unknown (to them) intruders at the time the warrant was served and were inside when police opened fire, 71 shots were fired by police, while Jose's weapon was found with its safety still engaged, his prior military service, lack of any criminal convictions, and the change in statements of events given by police as to what transpired at the scene.
> 
> In September 2013*, the four police agencies involved agreed to pay Guerena's wife and children $3.4 million as a settlement*, without admitting wrongdoing in their killing of Guerena." Note: The cops put bullets into FIVE HOUSES because they shot so wildly!
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Guerena_shooting


Totally disgusting. ...and that $3.4 million, I bet you not a cent came out of the pockets of the people who were responsible for this, and ultimately it was we the citizens who paid for this settlement (even if some of it was insurance, because the insurance fees are paid for by taxpayers and go up too with those kinds of claims). So what's wrong here, apart from that all these "officers" and those who enabled this to happen should have been in jail (and no Nuremberg defence should apply), is that it's once again you and me picking up the financial tab for the misconduct of our institutions.

Personal responsibility has been removed, and should never be removed because someone is on the job.




bsms said:


> The ex-military in me says the supposedly highly trained SWAT team above behaved like total amateurs.


Also in the subsequent cases - like, shooting at a family pet, missing that pet twice from close range, shooting a bystander instead. The only thing you should arm people like that with are water pistols.




bsms said:


> In the USA, cops have also become much more militarized. If you wear as much equipment as I wore in Afghanistan, then maybe it contributes to the idea you are in a war zone?


Yeah, I've seen that point raised in Guardian and Crikey discussions I've read about this problem. You know those boy soldiers in Africa, the 6-year-olds they give guns? It's a bit like this - immature people, armed to their back teeth, thinking that their costume and props make them into a role.




> "On January 18, 2016, Daniel Leetin Shaver of Granbury, Texas was shot dead by police officer Philip Brailsford in the hallway of a La Quinta Inn & Suites hotel in Mesa, Arizona. Police were responding to a report that a rifle had been brandished at the window of Shaver's hotel room.
> 
> After the shooting, the rifle, which remained in the room, was determined to be a pellet gun. Following an investigation, Brailsford was charged with second-degree murder and a lesser manslaughter charge and found not guilty by a jury....
> 
> ...The department agreed to reimburse Brailsford for medical expenses related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Brailsford's lawyer has said that Brailsford suffered PTSD due to his shooting of Shaver and the resultant criminal trial. The reinstatement allowed Brailsford to apply for "accidental disability" suffered during the course of work. As a result, Brailsford was unanimously approved to be retired on medical grounds. Brailsford was also given a pension of $2,500 per month. The fact that Brailsford was ultimately medically retired instead of remaining fired was only revealed to the public in July 2019."


So the problems here are:

1) That someone can kill another person, in surrender position too, on film even, no doubt about it, and a jury find them not guilty. In my view this is related to a lot of legal loopholing designed to let "people in authority" off, and/or to let people with expensive lawyers you or I can't afford off. And I do think it's designed that way, and not an accident, and I don't see anyone changing the way these laws and regulations are designed when they fail to convict a person who has committed demonstrable harm to another person.

2) That the system goes further and financially rewards the culprit. This has happened many times before too. I remember a legal case from the 1980s where a man came home to find his wife being raped by a violent intruder, pulled this intruder off his wife, and bashed his face (understandably under the circumstances), and was then forced by the "justice system" to pay for plastic surgery for the rapist, plus other compensation for the rapist's "pain and suffering" - while the rapist got off scot free for the violent home invasion and rape, and was not forced to pay damages to the woman he brutalised, nor therapy for her subsequent PTSD. Just as in the case you've cited, the culprit wasn't forced to compensate (personally and not through the taxpayer) the family of the man he shot for their pain and suffering and loss of faith in the system. And this is wrong wrong wrong, and back to front, and people need to re-write the rule books so that this cannot happen.




bsms said:


> I'm not sure how to change things. I strongly believe "qualified immunity" needs to be changed.


Yeah, across the board, with anyone who's protected by an institution - I think police, priests, politicians etc etc need to be as accountable for their actions as private citizens, and that the same rules and penalties should apply.

Apart from the Indigenous Deaths in Custody situation here in Australia which I referred to in a previous post (containing equivalent situations to your US police killings/brutalisations), two really big issues sticking out for our citizens at the moment are:

1) That Cardinal George Pell, who oversaw the cover-up of paedophilia in the Catholic Church in Australia for decades (as found by the Royal Commission into it) - who turned a blind eye, who enabled the abuse, who refused to listen to the many victims and their families when he had duty of care, and who almost certainly committed at least two sexual abuses himself, and was convicted of this by jury, and who should be in jail for many many reasons, is now not, because a judge overturned the jury's decision on appeal and let Pell walk free. :shock: Taxpayers spent many millions of dollars on the Royal Commission, enriching the legal fraternity, administrators and buddies of our politicians, and we got no tangible results in terms of convicting those responsible for the pain and suffering of many children abused by priests of the Catholic Church in Australia. In fact, Pell and his ilk are bringing legal charges against journalists who had reported on this matter with the aim of getting those journalists put in jail, as we speak.

2) Our current federal government is responsible for trying to scam money off the poorest people in our society - disability pensioners living on a pittance, and anyone who had to apply for income support due to unemployment in the last ten years (and this included us when my husband was retrenched from his professional job of 14 years back in 2013 when we were mid-house build, and it took us six months to get back to the same level of work hours at a time we could have lost our house and everything else because of it - we happily pay into this as taxpayers because we know shiitake happens, and that particular time we needed that backup ourselves). In the "Robodebt" scheme, they wrote a defective algorithm that supposedly checked the books, and then sent debt notices to over 500,000 Australians, myself included, alleging we had cheated on social security, and saying if we couldn't prove we didn't owe, we had to pay.

This meant that you had to have kept your payslips going back to pre-2010 for some people, when you've never been obliged to keep that sort of paperwork for more than 7 years even by our tax department, and many people didn't have this level of documentation going that far back. I did, and wrote them an angry retort saying I wasn't going to spend days doing sums for them that I had already done and done accurately without cheating at the time we had needed the support, and that I would see them in court if they wanted to pursue the matter. I never heard from them again, but it caused us a lot of stress to be accused of fraud, and to wait for a summons that never came in the end, that was going to waste a lot more of our precious time and require us to take time off work when we really don't have a lot of financial cushion to do stuff like that.

And a lot of people got severely distressed by the same fraudulent fraud claims sent to them by the government, and it's been estimated that hundreds of suicides were linked to this (over 500,000 people accused, and now officially falsely accused). It was stressful enough for us when we were back in work for years; imagine how that felt to people who had nothing, no job (and there aren't enough jobs to go around in Australia and it's not the fault of the people, and yet everyone without a job gets tarred with the same brush as someone who willfully wants to live off social security, which is a tiny minority), and not much education or idea how to defend themselves either. :evil:

Anyway, threatened with a class action lawsuit and after years of legal advice that told the government it was committing fraud, they are now cancelling over 500,000 fraudulent debt notices they had issued to citizens who had needed support. They are refunding over 300,000 people who paid these "debts"...










...and no interest (even though when we owe them, we get charged interest), and no compensation for time wasted dealing with this rubbish, and distress etc, and no apology, and the people who died because of this aren't coming back.

They knew what they were doing, and none of them are going to be personally accountable for their fraud. If you or I devised an illegal scheme to defraud others, we would rightly go to jail. But not the politicians, oh no, and they keep their jobs, their pensions, everything, and almost never have legal repercussions for this kind of stuff. Like you say, that immunity needs to stop. The law needs to apply equally to everyone - and unjust laws and legislation needs to be changed.

Except that we are now ruled by people who make the rules to suit themselves, and who apply them to us, but not to themselves - just as you would recently have seen with a top UK government adviser flagrantly and repeatedly breaching the government's own lockdown regulations, and coming up with all sorts of ridiculous "excuses" and not being instantly sacked... :twisted:





bsms said:


> I honestly think riding attracts some of the same sorts. You can beat up, whip, spur, and bloody a 1000 lb largely compliant animal AND GET AWAY WITH IT. In fact, you are ENCOURAGED to use force to dominate an animal who mostly wants to comply, who loves teamwork, who is happy to work with someone - the "Power of We" - and that brutal treatment is TAUGHT to many new riders. Including me. "Get a bigger whip!"


Yeah, it's everywhere, and needs addressing everywhere. And I well remember the witch-hunts on this forum when some of us were suggesting this was the case - so you can see how that goes.




bsms said:


> I don't know the answer. It isn't riots. But it also isn't accepting that a cop can kill you and have a 99% chance of going unpunished. BTW, @SueC, you may have heard of this one, also in Minneapolis Minnesota...


Yes, I remember that well. :-(

Riots aren't the answer, but peaceful protestors shouldn't be persecuted as if they were rioters either, I don't believe there is any excuse for that, even after a "curfew" - imagine for a moment what would happen to ordinary citizens if they assaulted someone with tear gas and rubber bullets because they were in a shop after closing time etc.




bsms said:


> It sickens me that a cop can brutalize or kill someone, under circumstances that would result in me being convicted of murder, and walk free. Even get a PENSION! And don't get me started on why FOUR cops, with a suspect on the ground handcuffed, felt a need to kneel on top of him even after he was dead!


Exactly...


----------



## Knave

These stories just make me angry. I know that some cops are good, just as I know some are bad. In my town they are good cops. When a bad one comes he gets shipped out very quickly. We are so small that this is possible. So, I trust the cops here and respect them.

Anywhere else though I am leery of them until I actually know them. They seem to be so power driven and... I don’t know. I agree that certain personalities are attracted to the idea of being a cop. Some of these are good and some rather negative. Big girl dreams of being a cop, and she’s pretty good.


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## knightrider

@SueC, I participated in numerous demonstrations in the 60's. Two days ago, I took my daughter to a Black Lives Matter demonstration. She wanted to go and made herself a tee shirt before we went.

Before we went, my friend from the Washington DC area wrote to me, telling me that the tone of the demonstrations now is vastly different than from what I experienced as a teen and young adult. Back in the 60's, we were considered "the enemy", misguided, foolish, and wrong. I started demonstrating with the Southern Christian Leadership conference in 1968. I got to spend some time talking with Rosa Parks (who was very nice), Jesse Jackson (not so nice, but trying to be) and Coretta Scott King (who, at that time, hadn't really seem to make up her mind where she wanted to go with everything--but that's just my impression, from just a brief time with her).

When my colleagues and acquaintances began returning from the Viet Nam war, and telling us how the government was lying to us, and the Civil Rights Act passed, I began demonstrating against the Viet Nam war. Things were incredibly ugly in the US at that time. I don't think people remember how polarized our country was. It was a scary time indeed. People supported the National Guard killing innocent students at Kent State in Ohio. They actually thought that was OK.

To be fair, I was never bothered or injured in any of the protests in which I participated. The most violent one was Nixon's inauguration. When Nixon drove by in his motorcade, we held up signs against the war in Viet Nam. After Nixon passed, the police began swinging their batons at us protestors, trying to force us away from the sidewalk. There were metal chains on the other side of the sidewalk to keep people from walking on the grass. When the police began swinging at us, we backed up, forgetting about the chains behind us. It caused many of us to fall backwards, being tripped up by the chains. People behind us stepped on us or fell on us as they too got pushed backwards. I got a couple of bruises which was negligible, compared to the many falls I experienced from my wonderful amazing Apache horse, who liked to toss me regularly to remind me that he called the shots. "You don't tell me what to do; you ask nicely and I will do gladly" he would remind me. (Like bsms, I was told in 4-H to demand and not take "no" for an answer. Seemed wrong to me back then at age 14, and now I know it was wrong).

On Friday, at the Black Lives Matter demonstration that my daughter and I attended, the people driving by were 90% supportive. We got a lot, A LOT of positive comments, and only 2 negative comments on the 2 mile walk. Everybody wore masks, and we made sure we stayed 6 feet away from everyone. I had forgotten how cohesive attending a demonstration can feel. It felt a bit like coming home. Also, the bystanders and observers were much much friendlier than the people in the 60's. The folks at the demonstration were warm and accepting, but I always found that to be true, whether in 1968 or 1985, when we were demonstrating for fair pay for teachers.


----------



## bsms

Just saw this:

Female police officer suffered a collapsed lung, broken collarbone and shattered ribs after being thrown from her horse when Black Lives Matter protesters pelted them with missiles - including a BIKE



































"_The police officer injured after falling off her horse at yesterday's Black Lives Matter protest suffered a broken collar bone, broken ribs and a collapsed lung, MailOnline can reveal. 

The mounted officer is still receiving treatment in hospital but is likely to be off duty for four months while she recovers, the Metropolitan Police Federation revealed.

She was flung violently into traffic lights outside Downing Street in central London after a protester hurled a bike and other missiles at her horse, causing the animal to bolt riderless back down Whitehall._"

On this one, my sympathy is with the police. I don't believe for a moment that those cops WANTED violence. A friend is in Washington DC. His job includes law enforcement and he's spent a lot of nights recently in tense situations. Hasn't pushed, hit or beat anyone, but said things have come very close a few times.


----------



## egrogan

I can't remember which opinion piece I was reading, but someone was countering the whole "it's bad apples" in the police force argument, saying that when your job is to serve and protect a community, you better **** well have near perfect screening exercises and hiring process to make sure no bad apple ever gets through. And you should have a staggered training process with gradual release into "real" policing to make sure the bad apples get filtered out before they hit the streets with a gun on their hip. I found that all perfectly reasonable. When it's life and death, "a few bad apples" is a few too many.


----------



## gottatrot

I see an issue with both the police and protesters which is a problem with society in general. People are not being encouraged to think independently, which is something we have talked about on the forum regarding horses also.

Without that independent thought, more rules are made to prevent problems, because you can't trust people to make good decisions. So you get a bunch of rule followers and that leads to big problems. 

You have people who can't think ahead about consequences to their actions, and people get hurt. Those in charge who could say "this person is an idiot," instead decide that rules say the person can keep working with the public.

In my job, blind rule following causes managers to allow nurses to work in critical areas without the problem solving skills needed, because the person followed the steps and rules to get there so can't be denied. Then even with poor performance, they can't be removed unless certain very harmful and egregious acts occur. Often their coworkers will prevent these things out of concern for patients. So the unsafe person continues.

I could see how this could also happen with police. 
In courts also the big picture has been lost and people get big punishments for small crimes and small punishments for big ones, based on rules.

Meanwhile, those non-rule followers are seeing the bigger picture. Some judges will make a decision based on fairness rather than rules.

Again in my job, there are a couple nurses who are skilled at putting an IV in the jugular vein in your neck. The rules make it difficult to keep certified to do this. Yet when a patient comes to me after a miraculous resuscitation with an IV in the jugular, I do not look my gift horse in the mouth. I know the nurses are not certified, and yet are very skilled.
Once the patient is more stable and other veins appear, I will quietly put in another IV and not mention the one I take out of the neck.

Or I could point out that rules are not being followed and get the excellent nurse in trouble while the sub par rule followers keep working. They will watch you die as the rules are followed and shrug. 
They will watch someone sit on your neck as you suffocate, because the main thing is that staff follow rules and stay safe.

A little independent thinking goes a long way, along with the golden rule.


----------



## SueC

Knave said:


> These stories just make me angry. I know that some cops are good, just as I know some are bad. In my town they are good cops. When a bad one comes he gets shipped out very quickly. We are so small that this is possible. So, I trust the cops here and respect them.


Yeah, it's great if you can do that - keep your local place reasonable. That was possible for a long time too in the school I was associated with the longest as a teacher - St Joseph's College in Albany. It was small-ish and pretty independent, and didn't have too much dictation from a central office, unlike the secular schools I taught at. For instance, the school could hire its own staff, and the government schools couldn't; they had staff allocated from central office. So while we had a great principal, the school ran well. And when she left, unfortunately a really unpleasant sociopath type replaced her, and started promoting people who chose to be his sycophants - some of them with sociopathic tendencies too (just ask the students - and one of the people he promoted wasn't just not that skilled, she was thought to be involved years later in the burning down of a pub in our town for insurance fraud, but it was her husband who got solely done for it) - and passing over people who had done a great job and got great results for a long, long time at that school (one of whom was the best science teacher I've ever worked with and who'd been there over 15 years) - and good people then started to leave, and the school really lost its character, which had been really good for around ten years.

I do think that small places have a better chance of staying decent - like the medical practice Brett works for. The bosses there are decent and they're very careful to employ decent people, and the staff turnover is very low - just as used to be the case at St Joseph's.

Quite a few times I've seen previously excellent schools fall apart when the wrong people got into the power positions - and once you have those as principals, or even in middle management, it is very very hard to get rid of them, and even if Thor strikes them with his metaphorical hammer, it takes the right people and a lot of time and effort to get a decent culture back. In part it's once again because the people in the power positions make the rules, and do the promoting - and this also resulted, in the West Australian state school system, in a situation where you can't get rid of anyone in management except for the grossest acts of abuse or incompetence (which you have to be able to prove) - but the classroom teachers were largely on one-year contract positions, and quickly disposable that way by middle management, and less likely to be able to stand up to them.

@gottatrot has talked about that kind of thing for nursing, and it's very much like that for teaching too.

Centralisation as a whole strikes me as a negative thing - not just with bureaucracies. It concentrates power and resources into the hands of a few - whether with schools or hospitals or churches or restaurants or banks or abattoirs or anything else - and the people in management in these huge places suck up incredible amounts of money they actually don't deserve (because they don't work harder than you or I, indeed often they work less hard) into their own pockets compared to the people running smaller, more independent places, and the general population is left with less choice and a huge monolith of a homogenised system which it is hard to change and which starts to actively lobby rule-makers in government to covertly, or even overtly, destroy the smaller places, and people trying to run small businesses.

We've looked in previous posts at how "health and safety regulations" like not having pool fences around your stock dams or not having shower blocks for non-existent employees etc have been used to make it too expensive for small places to start up, or to try to close them down, even when those places provide a far better product or service than the "big players" who can make the public sick legally - e.g. supermarkets and fast food chains legally selling junk food which we know is causing a _huge_ public health problem, but granny can't sell you her home-made jam because she doesn't have a stainless steel kitchen and can't afford twice-yearly expensive inspections and she didn't study cooking at a technical institute and doesn't have a food handling certificate - but you know her jam is great, and she can legally donate that jam for sale for charity fundraisers, so you know it's not about health... it's about removing competition for the big end of town (granny's jam tastes much nicer, has better ingredients, is more reasonably priced than the supermarket stuff, recycles pre-used containers, but we can't have that!) - and it removes choice for the consumer, and is anything but the "free market" it pretends to be.

Communism has failed spectacularly when it's been large-scale in countries - it's been a tyranny there as much as so-called "free market" neoliberalism has been becoming in the West these past 30 years - but forms of it can work very well in a kibbutz setting, or a reclaimed factory in South America, or a hippie intentional community (and can also fail spectacularly, it depends on the people). Orwell's _Animal Farm_ appears to apply to lots of human organisations. The bigger such an organisation, the more damage it seems to do and the harder it is to get rid of it. And it seems it's organisation and making that work that's the fundamental problem, for lots of different belief and political systems.

If you don't believe our current "free-market" neoliberalism is destructive, have a look at Naomi Klein's _This Changes Everything_ - the _Silent Spring_ for this generation, and a whole lot more besides - it's meticulously researched stuff that opened my eyes to how the world is operating politically these days, and why it's so hard to change things for the better - it's not a polemic, it's very measured and backed up with case studies and links the same way @bsms has been backing up and linking his cases of unacceptable police violence (and unacceptable violence against police!). Anyway, unless we reclaim our communities and institutions and make sure that regulations and laws are just and apply to all people, no exemptions or loopholes for people in power, we're going to be more and more like the serfs were in feudal society - because our so-called freedom is actually more and more becoming just a veneer, and because some people seem to think freedom means they can do what they like and everyone else can go jump in the lake.

And yeah, blind rule following, and the creation of masses of rules, aren't helpful either, as @gottatrot says. Finland seems to do pretty well when it comes to giving its people the freedom to use their own initiative in their workplaces, and that's one of the cited reasons why it has one of the top education systems in the world.

I don't like hierarchies, I think they're inherently prone to corruption - I prefer collectives and co-operatives, and truly community decision making, for running a community or group.

I don't have "the answers" - but as citizens, and as friends, I think discussions like this can be really helpful for all of us, as we bounce ideas off each other and check each other's thinking. (And unfortunately, the sorts of people who both seek power, and get into power, tend to think they have the answers, and obviously they do not. Dunning-Kruger effect, etc. Plus, they're far more likely to be sociopaths than people not drawn to power.)

Maybe part of it is that our democracies actually aren't very democratic anymore - when I vote, it feels like I'm voting in the next 3-year elected dictatorship, and I haven't felt represented by the majority of Australian prime ministers in my lifetime, nor felt that the choices we get politically are real choices, sort of like looking at the packet food items in the supermarket and thinking that it's mostly junk food, and a wide choice of junk food is not a wide choice at all - you have to have healthy food, or it's not a meaningful choice, it's just lots of devils and lots of deep blue seas.

And maybe it's that in order to have a functioning true democracy, the majority of people have to be very informed and self-educating and fundamentally decent and care about other people and not just their own self-interest, on top of actually having real choices. And none of that has been the case, not in our country anyway - here in Australia, most people vote based on what they perceive will put the most money in their personal wallets, and also based on fear and misinformation and prejudice - and the major political parties are both unelectable, when you really look at them...

I'll stop rambling. What do you all think?




Knave said:


> Anywhere else though I am leery of them until I actually know them. They seem to be so power driven and... I don’t know. I agree that certain personalities are attracted to the idea of being a cop. Some of these are good and some rather negative. Big girl dreams of being a cop, and she’s pretty good.


Well, it's always great to get decent people in those sorts of positions! 

I'll do more replies later - thank you everyone for what you've posted.  Just I have a guest coming tonight and work to do...


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## SueC

...and just for fun:


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## SueC

knightrider said:


> @SueC, I participated in numerous demonstrations in the 60's. Two days ago, I took my daughter to a Black Lives Matter demonstration. She wanted to go and made herself a tee shirt before we went.
> 
> Before we went, my friend from the Washington DC area wrote to me, telling me that the tone of the demonstrations now is vastly different than from what I experienced as a teen and young adult. Back in the 60's, we were considered "the enemy", misguided, foolish, and wrong. I started demonstrating with the Southern Christian Leadership conference in 1968. I got to spend some time talking with Rosa Parks (who was very nice), Jesse Jackson (not so nice, but trying to be) and Coretta Scott King (who, at that time, hadn't really seem to make up her mind where she wanted to go with everything--but that's just my impression, from just a brief time with her).
> 
> When my colleagues and acquaintances began returning from the Viet Nam war, and telling us how the government was lying to us, and the Civil Rights Act passed, I began demonstrating against the Viet Nam war. Things were incredibly ugly in the US at that time. I don't think people remember how polarized our country was. It was a scary time indeed. People supported the National Guard killing innocent students at Kent State in Ohio. They actually thought that was OK.
> 
> To be fair, I was never bothered or injured in any of the protests in which I participated. The most violent one was Nixon's inauguration. When Nixon drove by in his motorcade, we held up signs against the war in Viet Nam. After Nixon passed, the police began swinging their batons at us protestors, trying to force us away from the sidewalk. There were metal chains on the other side of the sidewalk to keep people from walking on the grass. When the police began swinging at us, we backed up, forgetting about the chains behind us. It caused many of us to fall backwards, being tripped up by the chains. People behind us stepped on us or fell on us as they too got pushed backwards. I got a couple of bruises which was negligible, compared to the many falls I experienced from my wonderful amazing Apache horse, who liked to toss me regularly to remind me that he called the shots. "You don't tell me what to do; you ask nicely and I will do gladly" he would remind me. (Like bsms, I was told in 4-H to demand and not take "no" for an answer. Seemed wrong to me back then at age 14, and now I know it was wrong).
> 
> On Friday, at the Black Lives Matter demonstration that my daughter and I attended, the people driving by were 90% supportive. We got a lot, A LOT of positive comments, and only 2 negative comments on the 2 mile walk. Everybody wore masks, and we made sure we stayed 6 feet away from everyone. I had forgotten how cohesive attending a demonstration can feel. It felt a bit like coming home. Also, the bystanders and observers were much much friendlier than the people in the 60's. The folks at the demonstration were warm and accepting, but I always found that to be true, whether in 1968 or 1985, when we were demonstrating for fair pay for teachers.


Thank you so much for posting this, @knightrider.  I would walk with you if I could. I walked in Sydney back in 2003, and I'm walking with you and with all the peaceful protestors against violence and corruption in my heart. If anything walkable like this comes to our small town, I'll be in it (but we only had the anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists out there with placards last time I looked).

It's so wonderful to be talking to someone who was there at the civil rights protests in the 60s. When I was 14, I went to a university library for the first time, for a whole day. I marvelled at the shelves, browsed in wonder, and ended up holed up in one of the study cubicles with Martin Luther King's _Strength to Love_ until the sun set, and then I asked about library membership and took this book home with me. It was probably the most influential philosophical type book for me as a teenager, and I still think it's a fabulous book. I always wished I could travel back in time and walk with these people.

And you're sharing that with us now, thank you so much. :loveshower:

The closest I got to meeting Rosa Parks was when a recent episode of Dr Who travelled back in time to meet her.


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## bsms

"I'll stop rambling. What do you all think?"

I'm close enough to Tucson (1,000,000) that it dominates our politics. I think I want to move someplace MUCH smaller, because I find the same thing. There is a madness in crowds. Enough people in small enough space just seems to create the dominance of the stupid and arrogant.

Unhappily, the family situation right now may require us to stay put for a few more years to help support the grandkids. But the wife surprised me when we drove through Gila Bend the other day. She said a town that size (2,000) is starting to look good to her. We're both increasingly thinking the world around us seems insane and someplace with fewer people and more outdoors would be more...connected to reality? Not sure what to call it. Living 20 miles from a place with a million people is just too much!

"_Maybe part of it is that our democracies actually aren't very democratic anymore - *when I vote, it feels like I'm voting in the next 3-year elected dictatorship*, and I haven't felt represented by the majority of Australian prime ministers in my lifetime, *nor felt that the choices we get politically are real choices*.._."

Amen and hallelujah! Left wing. Right wing. One Buzzard!


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## SueC

bsms said:


> Left wing. Right wing. One Buzzard!


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

I'd not heard that one before! Another one for the mental collection... :lol:


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## CopperLove

Way late on this here, but I wanted to say that I didn't think your "embarrassing photo" was quite so bad. :lol: If one didn't already know what you looked like, I don't think it would be as noticeable in the photograph either. I felt like my photo just emphasized how out of shape I feel/really am, and made it appear that I was seated much closer to my horse's rear than I actually was. :rofl:


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## SueC

I'm actually much later than you are! :rofl:

Nothing much going on here that I wanted to write about. We watched the freakiest horror film ever last night - _The Color Out Of Space_ - based on a short story by HP Lovecraft - and I am trying to work out what was so freaky in it compared to other films like that we've sometimes watched with a friend who's into that genre. Because this thing made Stephen King look like Playschool. I liked _It_ actually, and was always aware it was just acted - and I like movies like _Triangle_, or the classic Dr Who episode _Blink_, which is also really spooky, but not viscerally disturbing. I don't like gory films, and I suppose _Color_ is actually quite gory, but in an unusual way. 

(Actually, I do have a good idea of why it freaked me out, but that would be giving away the movie...)

Other than that, just gardening, preparing for storms, cleaning up after storms, doing general maintenance. Horses are much the same and I suppose one day I might feel inspired to work with Julian, who is definitely looking for something extra to do and full of beans.

I've got to clean up the shed and re-finish some doors... and we're doing our first home kill next Friday, so lots of organising to do around that - packaging, colour code stickers, transport boxes to get the packaged meat back to our place - we're processing it at the neighbours' place, who are doing their own home kill at the same time, so we're using the same travelling butcher. It's a steer I didn't want to put on a truck because he has problems with one of his legs. It's another dry year so far, third year in a row, and I'm thinking of selling the three younger steers and just letting the grass grow this year.

I'm hoping everyone is well and happy!


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## SueC

Two songs written for Martin Luther King.

One is well-known, the other not. I can't believe this is from 36 years ago...


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## Spanish Rider

The Unforgettable Fire Tour concert in 1984 was my first concert ever - I was fourteen.

I am a HUGE U2 fan, but mostly of their early albums. Boy, October, War, TUF, but after Joshua Tree they got a little too main-stream and commercial (at least in the US) for my taste. Still some good songs on the later albums, but not the same vibe.


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## Spanish Rider

I am just seeing for the first time the mounted police posted by @bsms. 

Does anyone know how those horses are trained in the US, or what type of 'action' they see on a regular basis? I know that the Spanish National Police horses are trained for unruly crowd control, including explosives, flares, etc., but the most important bit is that they get regular exposure at European Cup soccer games played in Madrid. The English, German and certain Eastern European fans always come looking for a fight.


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## CopperLove

_Color Out of Space_ is so... something. We watched it some time ago, it was one of few movies I've agreed to watch with my partner without him pre-screening it first. He is an avid fan of horror but also particular about his favorites and some of them I cannot tolerate at all. Not because I don't want to share in his hobby but... sometimes trauma happening to a character on screen affects me very badly, more than I imagine is normal, even though I have been very lucky to experience no real trauma in my own life. I tend to dwell on the misery of the characters for a long time without really knowing why.

(Side note: We studied something once in a class while I was in grad school about how art affects the brain. A study showed that the same parts of your brain that are active when you are performing an action are the same parts of your brain that are active watching someone else perform the same action. Therefore, the part of your brain that's active while watching something happen to someone else may be the same part of your brain that's active if you are actually experiencing it, and that is how we empathize with art.)

One of the loopholes to me being able to tolerate horror on screen is if I can busy my mind with trying to assess a creature or entity. So even though it was very freaky, I was able to sort of use that loophole with _Color Out of Space_ even though it's not exactly a creature film at all. It didn't make me feel _great_ but I didn't dwell on it for too long either.


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## Knave

That is funny @CopperLove. I can watch most horror films, but I find myself very anxious during movies that make me feel for the characters. I fidget and go clean, and I drive my family crazy. I can’t handle it well at all! It is more the movies with weak characters, or characters with depth, that I just cringe. I can’t explain what I mean well, but I guess it’s the emotional hurts more than the physical damage of a horror movie that makes me upset.


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## SueC

Spanish Rider said:


> The Unforgettable Fire Tour concert in 1984 was my first concert ever - I was fourteen.


You lucky thing!  I didn't get to see them until 1989, when they toured _Rattle & Hum_, and I didn't particularly enjoy that concert - which was a huge disappointment, because I'd enjoyed all the live recordings I'd ever heard of them until then! But something had changed, or it might just have been a below-average gig...



> I am a HUGE U2 fan, but mostly of their early albums. Boy, October, War, TUF, but after Joshua Tree they got a little too main-stream and commercial (at least in the US) for my taste. Still some good songs on the later albums, but not the same vibe.


And that is exactly how I feel as well - when they started learning how other people played music, something that had been deeply original just went away and never quite came back again. I think _The Joshua Tree_ was the last of those distinctively amazing albums. They did other really good albums after that, every now and then - I loved _Songs of Innocence_, for example - but yeah, something was lost, and things got too shiny I think.

I also feel that way about their live performances these days - something that was so incredible about them until about 1987 just went away.

On the other hand, The Cure have never stopped being amazing live, and have even ramped it up as they've gotten older - I think they're actually doing their best performances ever, at around 60 years old. We've been watching a lot of their recent concert films - the Hyde Park 40th anniversary gig, their Cureation shows in London, the live stream from the Sydney Opera House last year when they did the 30th anniversary of _Disintegration_, a "slicing up eyeballs" gig from audience-recorded footage in Lodz, Poland - and they just never stop being excellent.

Here's the first song off their Hyde Park gig, which we have on DVD:






...it's most unfortunate you got grounded when you were supposed to be catching them for their _Head On The Door_ tour, but they're even better these days. By the way, I had my first listen to _The Head On The Door_ yesterday! ;-)

If I had a TARDIS I'd travel back to catch U2 live _before_ 1987. Like the Red Rocks concert, for example...


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## SueC

...and hullo everyone! :wave: The sandman has been, and my eyes are falling shut - I spent today scrubbing the house and getting all my laundry done and line dried before the cold front came in. Aaaand I did the roughly annual deep clean of the oven, so I can actually see through the glass again! :shock: We're a bit low on electricity because it's been cloudy today, and I have to watch the reserve levels in the batteries... so I'm going to log off and do some sleeping, and come back and join in the fascinating topics you're all bringing up tomorrow! 

I hope everyone is having a good start to the week!


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## SueC

Hello again! :wave: Yesterday didn't go according to plan... on my way out to another task, I checked the old fence energiser unit that had been acting up - corrosion between the crocodile clips and the mains converter leads; I'd been just scraping it off periodically but had had enough - the energiser had stopped working again and I knew I could fix that. I disconnected the unit, took it indoors, cut off the clips and lead ends, stripped back the wires, twined them together, put electrical tape around, tested the unit in the kitchen, bingo. ...and then, as I was taking the unit back outside, the guts of it fell out through the defective casing and shattered on the concrete floor. I'd had a hard week and lost some of our usually free days to essential work so this just brought tears of frustration to my eyes - fix a problem, get a bigger problem less than five minutes later. Cattle seem to receive a special alert the moment the fence unit is broken and you don't have a backup. 

So I looked online, and called around the local shops. One of the latter had a unit that was fully sealed, unlike the Gallagher unit which had been invaded by ants umpteen times and needed spraying with insecticide on a regular basis or the ants would break something and it would need to go in for (expensive) service - plus the guts don't fall out of fully sealed units. The price difference compared to online was small enough to be made worthwhile by having it the same night, when Brett brought it home, swinging by the shop after work. And so now I have a unit that won't get invaded by ants and that has a proper mains connection instead of an adapter with crocodile clips that are really designed to go around batteries and don't make a good lasting connection to a converter.

After that energiser curveball, I finally got back to the chores I'd meant to do - an unpleasant one was a partial cleaning out of the shed for the new freezer. I can't clean the shed out properly until we finally use the stored materials to build the balcony on the house and do the last plaster coats on the attic interior, which we've happily postponed for a couple of years. So I was reduced to sweeping, instead of hosing, and the dust smelt strongly of mice, which is really unpleasant... luckily I was listening to _The Infinite Monkey Cage_ (Brian Cox podcast), which is fun and interesting, and by one of those coincidences they were actually talking about mice and their smell, which is largely because they use their urine as mating signals... 

That evening we had great guests again and a lovely dinner and discussion about books and life.  I made a minestrone with fennel, celery, kale and (frozen) tomatoes from our own garden, plus various other vegies; and herbed cheese toasties to go with that. Also an egg-potato salad with some wasabi greens on the side just for interest; and apple-rhubarb crumble for dessert (filling from our own garden, but prepared and frozen during apple harvest). That made a pretty good meal on a vegetarian theme (one of the guests). They brought a _flagon_ of red wine which we all tried; it actually tasted nice - a lot of red wines taste like paint stripper, you know - your tongue just kind of peels with some wines.  So it was nice to have a wine that didn't attack like this.
@Spanish Rider, that's an interesting photo!  How's things in Spain? Getting any more sane?




CopperLove said:


> _Color Out of Space_ is so... something. We watched it some time ago, it was one of few movies I've agreed to watch with my partner without him pre-screening it first. He is an avid fan of horror but also particular about his favorites and some of them I cannot tolerate at all. Not because I don't want to share in his hobby but... sometimes trauma happening to a character on screen affects me very badly, more than I imagine is normal, even though I have been very lucky to experience no real trauma in my own life. I tend to dwell on the misery of the characters for a long time without really knowing why.


Sounds like you have a lot of empathy!  Probably in large part because of the PTSD, I've always had strong negative visceral reactions to violence on-screen (and off-screen) and never been able to see it as "entertainment" - which objectively is how I think it should be, anyway... as a teenager, I used to feel really sick when in historical dramas they showed people being guillotined or having their throats cut or being tortured in the many horrible ways our lovely species devised to cause torment to one another... :evil: I think _The Color Out Of Space_ hit a nerve for me especially with its skin cutting scenes and with the way the "zapped" alpacas, and female protagonist & son, conjured up acid burns, flaying and mutations at the same time - very revolting...




> (Side note: We studied something once in a class while I was in grad school about how art affects the brain. A study showed that the same parts of your brain that are active when you are performing an action are the same parts of your brain that are active watching someone else perform the same action. Therefore, the part of your brain that's active while watching something happen to someone else may be the same part of your brain that's active if you are actually experiencing it, and that is how we empathize with art.)


That's really interesting, and it's also probably related back to the concept of mirror neurons as well - there's this book called _Smart Swarm_ (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/303642/the-smart-swarm-by-peter-miller/9781583334287/) we read a while back which goes into some fascinating related stuff...




> One of the loopholes to me being able to tolerate horror on screen is if I can busy my mind with trying to assess a creature or entity. So even though it was very freaky, I was able to sort of use that loophole with _Color Out of Space_ even though it's not exactly a creature film at all. It didn't make me feel _great_ but I didn't dwell on it for too long either.


I usually try to focus on the acting or to deconstruct the special effects etc to keep my head in the reality. :rofl: Doesn't always work though...

Have you guys watched _Blink_ yet? It's my favourite Gothic horror piece ever and it's not the slightest bit gory.









Knave said:


> That is funny @CopperLove. I can watch most horror films, but I find myself very anxious during movies that make me feel for the characters. I fidget and go clean, and I drive my family crazy. I can’t handle it well at all! It is more the movies with weak characters, or characters with depth, that I just cringe. I can’t explain what I mean well, but I guess it’s the emotional hurts more than the physical damage of a horror movie that makes me upset.


And I guess that's because emotional pain is actually, at least in my own experience, harder to tolerate than physical pain...

What a great by-product for being freaked out by a film though - a clean house!


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## Spanish Rider

> How's things in Spain? Getting any more sane?


Spain is awesome!!! Everyone quarantined, EVERYONE is wearing masks (no political spin on masks here), and we have totally crushed the curve down to a trickle of 0-10 new cases per day _nationally_. 

Our economy is based on agriculture and tourism, so this week we've opened up to the first European tourists - mainly German, English and French. The French and Germans are usually well behaved, but there is a certain percentage of younger Brits that only come for the cheap beer, and they can get decidedly rowdy ('balcony diving' is very fashionable among that crowd). Luckily, they tend to go to Brit-owned bars with Brit-only patrons, so hopefully they'll just pass the virus off between themselves. But, there is a reason why Spanish beaches have "No sex on the beach" signs written in English only.:wink:



> I've always had strong negative visceral reactions to violence on-screen (and off-screen) and never been able to see it as "entertainment"


I absolutely _cannot_ watch films in which children suffer (anything more than a whimper, and I'm done), or films that recount a true story in which people have died in real life. I also have not watched the George Floyd video, nor will I.



> a lot of red wines taste like paint stripper


:rofl:We live in red wine (_vino tinto_) country, and you definitely have to know what you're buying. Quality often does not correlate with price.


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## SueC

*MT LINDESAY WALK TRAIL*

It's a very busy time for us at the moment, but we did manage to get away for a day to Mt Lindesay last Sunday. This is a big hill about 20 minutes' drive north of Denmark, which we actually hadn't been to in around 10 years. It's a 10km (= 6 mile) return walk with a gradient that slows you down on the way up and accelerates you enormously on the way down (i.e. most of the downhill is not so steep that you have to clamber; and you can stride out gravity-assisted). We did the track in 3 hours 15 minutes, which included somewhere between 45 minutes to 1 hour of rest and photography stops, so just over 2 hours of actual solid walking. The weather was perfect for it: Sunny and cool and crisp. Here's some photos.

The start of the trail involves a downhill to a stream crossing, then a long and gradual climb through beautiful woodlands.



After around 50 minutes of steady walking, you get to the granite section which involves about 15 minutes of steep climbing. This was the first "lookout area" where we stopped for a while to enjoy the scenery:







Behind me to the right you can see the summit of Mt Lindesay - and there's a saddle walk to get to the second, and tallest, monadnock, where we had lunch and did some photography.



It's worth enlarging the next two to see the Kingias (type of long-stemmed grass tree) and the interesting boulders on the skyline:





Brett exuding bonhomie:



Lunch, by the way, was home-made felafels (hello, @egrogan!) with Greek yoghurt and sweet chilli sauce, hazelnut scrolls, and fruit.

My official "top of the mountain" photo:



Walking back down; the saddle section:



A Kingia:







...and back in the woodland section:



We had a really nice outing and hope to do the track again within the next year.

As things are a bit busy, we did our fortnightly grocery shopping on the way home, at the local Denmark independent, small supermarket which is open all week and has better choices ethically than the large supermarket in Albany - more locally produced food, more free-range meat / eggs, less highly packaged rubbish. We're supporting them more often now we walk in Denmark at least once a month - we stop in and get things we need, and if possible, do our "big shop" there.

One little treat we get ourselves if we do this is ice-creams for the road home. You can buy those at a petrol station for $5 each, or you can get the very same ones in a 4-pack from the supermarket for the same price. So we have one each plus two to spare for the freezer at home, except when I'm being a piggy and eating both of mine on the way home, as I did on that trip. I mean, really good-quality actual vanilla ice-cream (not pretend ice-cream), with salted caramel through it and a dark chocolate-macadamia nut covering... at afternoon tea-time... 

We're struggling to get away at the moment and will probably only do a small trip to a local beach this weekend, but hopefully we'll get proper hike in again on Thursday and from then on, hopefully back to two major hikes every week...


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## SueC

*HOME-GROWN BEEF*










On Friday morning, we did our first "home kill" at our place - a logical thing for reasons including the following:

1) We both eat red meat about 3 times a week.

2) We live on a (mostly) organic farm and run a small amount of beef cattle.

3) The steer in question had a shoulder injury which prevented him going on the truck to the general sales with the rest of his cohort 3 months ago.

4) We run cattle as a grazing operation, not as a lot-feeding operation. While we have a fair bit of tree fodder (tree lucerne, acacia) for lean periods, we don't as a rule buy in hay or lock up paddocks for hay, and our main management strategy for reduced pasture availability is to de-stock, and then re-stock with young animals when the grazing supports it again. This is a low-input and eco-friendly form of agriculture which is basically just ecosystem management for a grassland - you're mimicking basic patterns that happen in natural grasslands in the presence of predators, and you have to do the same job the predators would do in natural ecosystems for dealing with herbivore population excesses before the vegetation base becomes damaged. We're coming up to the mid-winter lull in growth and needed to reduce the population again - as would have happened if this steer had gone with his cohort 3 months ago.

5) We could probably have sold him into open market now as his shoulder had improved (but not healed entirely), but he would have had to go on his own, and that would have been much more stressful than if he'd gone with his cohort. To home kill him was the more humane option.

6) If you're going to eat meat, it's much more eco-friendly to do a home kill than to buy in meat through the standard supply chain - and it also gives you a better quality product, at a lower cost, and with all the associated employment staying in your local community - via your travelling butcher, and your neighbour with the tractor in our case.

The main reason we'd not done this yet is because we actually don't eat much meat, and cows are huge things. But, we bought a 500L freezer recently, and even got it for under $900, with a good warranty, from a locally owned business. This freezer will fill up from this kill and will mean we will not have to buy any beef for at least two years. So we lined up a home kill with a neighbour doing the same, so we can share the butcher's mobile cool room and it's more time-efficient for this guy and we can help each other too.

Anyway, this is what I wrote to a friend at afternoon teabreak on Friday.

_It's just after 4pm and I've just sat down after being awake since 4am because I'm always nervous when we kill an animal. We had to put down three horses over the last five years due to age-related illness - one was 32, one 28, one 34. It's the humane thing to do because the alternative is a slow painful death, but it's never easy, just like with a dog.

This is the first time we've killed one of our own beef cattle (on this property, as an adult) and my mind just imagines everything that can go wrong. The animal getting nervous, or even jumping over a fence and running away while the butcher is incensed with your incompetence or poor facilities. Well, none of that was all that likely, and none of that actually happened. Everything went like clockwork. It's quite a juggling act when you've got four animals in a herd and you're trying to kill one without it getting upset about being separated, so I just fed everyone a lot of tree fodder in our small, subdivided utility area - they came running when they heard the lopping saw, they always do - and then it was pretty easy to juggle the three young ones to one side of the dividing fence (just two lines of white electrobraid) while the older one stayed in the original paddock with a huge bucket of feed we got him. I then distracted the younger ones by giving them feed buckets a little way away on the other side. The butcher was just standing near the fence a few metres away from the older steer until he got used to having a stranger around, then I topped up his food bucket again, he returned to eating, and that's when the butcher fired his shot and got a clean hit; the animal had no stress at all and was just minding his own business when it happened.

Just like when we put down horses. I am always grateful to have an excellent marksman - our veterinarian is, and so is this butcher (highly recommended by both the neighbouring families we're friendly with). They just don't shoot until the animal is completely unconcerned and they can get a guaranteed clean shot, and then it's instant lights out. It is so, so important to me that animals don't get stressed out or suffer in any way when this happens, and a huge weight off my shoulders when it goes like this. When I was a kid in Germany, I once was on a pig farm when they were killing a pig, and they didn't get a clean shot, and I will always remember this bleeding pig screaming and galloping around the yard with a hole in the bottom of its face while they chased it down for another shot. It was so horrible, and I never ever want to be responsible for anything like that.

I thanked the butcher for his professionalism and gave him a pail of our honey as a special "tip" for that. Noel (neighbour) had brought his tractor, without which we couldn't have handled this huge animal. All these guys are great, by the way - they all really care that the animals don't suffer and that they have a clean, stress-free death. You'd not believe that a butcher could feel that way but the good ones all do, it's their ethic, and they care about doing it right.

Anyway, so we had a really busy morning. The animal was "dressed out" (skinned and gutted) at our place and then the carcase was transported hanging off the tractor to the neighbour's place, which apparently caused some raised eyebrows with one of the council road maintenance workers who happened to be on a job. There the carcase was quartered and hung into the mobile cool room, and then we had morning tea, and repeated the whole thing with one of Noel's cattle (a younger, smaller one). That also went smoothly. We did a lot of cleanup afterwards of the equipment etc and the beef is now hanging until Monday 10 days from now, which will be cutting-up day.

We've got 326.5kg of dressed-weight quarters hanging in the coolroom from our animal, which as you can see will feed us for over two years - and on top of that enormous amount I also kept the liver, heart, kidneys, tongue, oxtail, various other offcuts and the lungs - I don't think I'm going to eat the lungs but the dog will, I'll cook them up for her. It's important not to waste things. I draw the line at the tripe, I don't keep that.

When I got home I had cleanup to do here: Legs, head, and digestive tract. I folded the skin up and froze it because a friend of mine is going to show me how to make it into a floor rug. I have to defrost and clean the skin on a day I have lots of time; it takes all day to scrape the back of the skin with an animal that size, and then you have to salt it for a few days, and then comes the tanning process. 

Anyway, I rolled all the other stuff on two big tarps but they are too heavy to shift by myself so we'll do that when Brett gets home. I decided I'm going to put the guts into large planting holes for two fruit trees (which we still have to dig). The dog claimed the head and has it for now, but we'll put that in one of the holes tomorrow. She's sleeping on the sofa with a full belly after impersonating a hyena earlier during cleanup (I didn't let her near the guts but she was welcome to the head and lower legs). And we'd better get those holes dug and filled again before 4pm tomorrow because then we've got a couple checking into the Airbnb for four days and they probably don't want to see stuff like that, or smell it, farmstay or not.

And just when I'd got everything done that I could for now, it started pouring with rain and I ran and rugged the horses and was so soaking wet after that I went and had a shower and am now relaxing on the sofa typing this with a cup of tea at my elbow.

I'm pretty exhausted, and I think we're going to have a relaxing evening._

More in the next post!


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## SueC

*AN OMNIVOROUS DISCUSSION*

How can a person generally like animals, yet eat them? Vegans find that impossible to answer; I don't. I'm biologically an omnivore - humans and some closely related primates have been hunter-gathering for a long, long time. If a human wants to entirely swear off animal products in their diet, they have to supplement with Vitamin B12 (with pills or injections or from microbial, fungal or seaweed sources) - and women also have to look very closely at getting sufficient iron, which is so much easier for our bodies to assimilate in haem form (via animal products) than in inorganic form. This can be done, and it's fine if that's what people want to do, and it helps take some of the pressure off animal production in a world in which humans are so numerous and such rampant resource consumers that we're in the middle of a mass extinction event and ecosystems are collapsing. Both our numbers and our per capita consumption in the West especially need to come down, and I can see why veganism appeals to some people.

Not overconsuming animal proteins, or anything else, is a good thing - along with family planning so that you're not breeding above replacement rate. However: It shouldn't be imagined that avoiding animal products is always the more ethical choice, either. Soy monocultures aren't environmentally friendly - they're high input, high footprint agriculture that leaves little room for wildlife in the same space - unlike the grazing we do on our farm, which is comparatively low input and low footprint, and the space for which is shared by emus, kangaroos, possums and other native mammals, countless bird and insect species, some reptiles and amphibians.



Let me be 100% clear that I'm against industrial-scale animal production - I think our food animals deserve a decent quality of life in which their needs for companionship, space and exploration are met, and not just their needs for food and shelter. So from that perspective alone, to get rid of factory farming, the current Western overconsumption of meat has to reduce significantly, and human population growth needs to stop, and our numbers ultimately have to decrease again (good luck with that, with the current systems of economics based on eternal growth in what is actually a finite environment with finite resources).

Soy monocultures aren't great - no monoculture is - industrial agriculture isn't great, full stop. It works against nature, and displaces it, instead of working with nature. Militant vegans often turn their noses up at buying soap made from animal fats, imagining they have therefore not impacted on animal life - but palm oil plantations are driving orang-utans to extinction, while bulldozing entire ecosystems off the face of the earth, killing billions of plants, animals, etc. There is no free lunch - everything we consume has an environmental impact - some things more than others, and we need to weigh up carefully. When I buy soap, I'd actually prefer if it was made from the byproducts of the meat industry than to have a vegetable oil based soap - because beef tallow, mutton fat etc are inevitably produced, and should be put to some good use, instead of tossing it out and then clearing land to grow oil crops for making soap from.

It's the same deal with leather - both leather and animal fats are byproducts from meat processing, and it's actually more environmentally friendly to have leather shoes, which are from a biological source and also biodegradable, than to have synthetic shoes, which are made from fossil fuels, non-recyclable, non-biodegradable, and will hang around in landfill for hundreds of years after you die.

I'm interested in working with nature, not against it, and that's why I have ended up living on a largely organic farm trying to grow as much of our own food as possible, while at the same time supplying food for other people off our farm in the form of beef, honey and vegetables. These things are what our land produces well, with comparatively few inputs. This is not cropping land - the soil types and other factors aren't suitable, even if we had a tractor. Before we bought it, the patch of land we are on produced beef. Now it produces honey and vegetables as well.











More here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/albums/72157629244059607

As a bonus, this piece of land has 50 hectares of wonderfully biodiverse Australian sclerophyll which my husband and I are managing for conservation - as the prior owner did. While we are here, we will steward this land. The intact wild ecosystems on it will not be bulldozed for agriculture, nor will we engage in legal "passive clearing" by running large amounts of sheep or goats on this block.









More of the biodiversity sanctuary here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/albums/72157632759314682

So, I'm stewarding an ecosystem, and not just individual animals/plants/etc. I am part of that ecosystem, and becoming more so the more self-sufficient we are in being able to feed ourselves off this land, while reducing our "imports." And ecosystems operate in certain ways, one of which is the predator-prey relationship. When we introduce animals to an area that have no natural predators there (horses, donkeys, cattle etc), it's our responsibility as humans to make sure the population of these animals stays sustainable. Because animals are a necessary part of a healthy ecosystem, it's important to have farm animals in an organic farming system (I'm not talking about our nature reserve here, but our pasture areas). It's also necessary to cull them if you're breeding them, or if you're not, to cull and replace bought-in animals periodically. Their numbers need to be adjusted to the fluctuating carrying capacity of the land, and the agricultural land has to remain productive in terms of feeding people off-farm, or market forces will produce even more pressure to clear as yet uncleared land, further accelerating our global crisis of mass extinctions and ecosystem collapse.

I was the little girl who cried when I watched wildlife documentaries showing lions eating cute little zebra foals, or gazelles, or wildebeest. I covered my face when the carnivores were hanging off the herbivores' necks and choking the life out of them. But I knew that the lions too had to eat, that they had no choice, and if they didn't then they would starve, and eventually so would the herbivores as their populations boomed and destroyed the very plants they depended on past the ability of those plants to regenerate. So I understood that the beauty of nature also comes hand-in-hand with death, and that death is the main driver of the magnificent diversity in nature.

I read a lot, and was very drawn from little to Native American philosophies about animals and nature. It was from the writings of these people that I learnt you could respect an animal you were going to eat - indeed, that you had to. You're not eating it because it's fair, or because you're somehow "higher up" or more important. You're eating it because you have to eat something. You're not killing it because it's "fun" (although perversely, I know people who think killing animals is fun), but because you are a creature who has to eat.

Kahlil Gibran, once again, wrote some really good thoughts on this.


_*On Eating and Drinking*
Kahlil Gibran - 1883-1931

Then an old man, a keeper of an inn, said, Speak to us of Eating and Drinking.
And he said:
Would that you could live on the fragrance of the earth, and like an air plant be sustained by the light.
But since you must kill to eat, and rob the newly born of its mother’s milk to quench your thirst, let it then be an act of worship.
And let your board stand an altar on which the pure and the innocent of forest and plain are sacrificed for that which is purer and still more innocent in man.

When you kill a beast say to him in your heart,
“By the same power that slays you, I too am slain; and I too shall be consumed.
For the law that delivered you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand.
Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven.”
And when you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart,
“Your seeds shall live in my body,
And the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart,
And your fragrance shall be my breath,
And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons.”

And in the autumn, when you gather the grapes of your vineyards for the winepress, say in your heart,
“I too am a vineyard, and my fruit shall be gathered for the winepress,
And like new wine I shall be kept in eternal vessels.”
And in winter, when you draw the wine, let there be in your heart a song for each cup;
And let there be in the song a remembrance for the autumn days, and for the vineyard, and for the winepress._


I think the idea that anything in us is more pure and innocent than it is in anything else is far-fetched, but this poem does have some very good ideas in it, about understanding that you only live by sustaining yourself on the bodies of other organisms - plants, animals, fungi, etc - and that this isn't cause for thinking yourself high and mighty and entitled, but cause for humility and respect, and for giving back to the life which has given to you.


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## SueC

*MT HASSELL - BIRTHDAY CLIMB*

Today we did our annual mountain climb in honour of Brett's birthday, which is actually tomorrow, but today was his day off. Considering how tired we've been, it was a minor miracle we managed to drag ourselves out of bed this morning to do this, but we had a fabulous day, and have recovered well.

We headed for Mt Hassell, in the Stirling Ranges - it's always the birthday person's choice. Good choice. The Stirling Ranges had a horrific wildfire in the summer gone by - a very hot fire that ripped through much of the National Park. It's nice to see the flora beginning to recover - Australian sclerophyll is very fire-adapted - but with such an extensive and hot burn, the fauna will be having a hard time with recovery, and a few more extinctions are quite likely as a result unfortunately. This is mostly because for the past 200 years, Aboriginal people have been off the land post-dispossession, and they previously managed the sclerophyll actively by doing small-patchwork, mostly cool burning (Brett and I do exactly this in the on-farm nature reserve we steward), which reduced the fire hazard through reduction of fuel loads as well as the heterogeneity in the landscape creating buffer zones instead of a large area with equally high fuel loads. It also suited the native fauna very well - Tim Flannery (Australian ecologist) reckons one of the main reasons for the horrific rate of mammal extinctions in Australia is the removal of the Aboriginal fire management patterns - and obviously, large-scale clearing of native vegetation for agriculture and "development" - but I digress.

We hope you enjoy the following photos of the climb - and if you want to see the full set, just click on any photo to take you to the Flickr photopage.

The earth was tilting strangely when we got there:



This is _Kingia australis_, and it's producing seed heads like mad because it's trying to get the next generation into the ground after the fire - now that there's space and light, and nutrients available from the ash:



I'm still smiling because the walk hasn't actually killed me:



Kingias in front of Mt Hassell spire:



Brett with Kingias, on the ridge. These were totally burnt black and what you see is half a year's regrowth of their leaves, plus new seed heads. If you look closely, you can see how the prior leaves were burnt off just below the new leaves - the black "beard" is their remains, burnt short and blackened. Kingia stems grow around 1.5cm a year, so you can work out how old these plants are if I tell you Brett is 173cm tall! 



Final ascent:



Brett and Jess back on the ridge on the descent, with Mt Trio to the left in the background (a really nice one to climb in spring because it's bursting with Darwinias and other amazing wildflowers only found in this area).



And for comparison, three photos from the same mountain trail, a few years ago, also mid-winter, before the wildfire:


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## carshon

Happy Birthday to Brett! Your pictures (as usual) are amazing!


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## bsms

FWIW, the Bighorn Fire in the Catalina's eventually hit 120,000 acres, burning much of the mountain to some degree:








This is perfectly normal. It was caused by a lightning strike and they basically protected homes and...not much else. It will probably look bad for a few years but it is part of the natural cycle. Did come across this picture of the firefighting efforts, which impresses this former fighter jock. That's a BIG plane to take into a place like that!








I'm glad the "Fight the fire at any cost" days are past us. It often wasn't effective, and when it was effective, it mostly set us up for more harm in the future. And Happy Birthday to Brett from Arizona!


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## SueC

I do have to point out, @bsms, that the Stirling Range National Park fire, and the East Coast fires in Australia last year, and the ones in Tasmania the year before, were anything BUT normal - they were historically unprecedented. We've never had fires this bad here before - they broke all the record books - and even before colonial records began, because you can tell by studying fossil layers etc etc. Much is known now about the fire history of Australia for the past 30,000+ years, and it was stewarded by the indigenous people here for the duration of that time period, in traditional burning patterns that we replicate on our own nature reserve, and that people are starting to implement again in parts of Australia, especially in areas where Aboriginal people have had their land title returned to them. It is heartbreaking to me to stand in the middle of a razed countryside and think of all the animals that burnt to their deaths there by the millions because the fire was hot, big, fast and covered huge areas, so there was no escape. It's even worse to think of the ones that survived and died slowly of injuries and starvation - and to hear the awful silence in the countryside afterwards. Eventually, a landscape will recover from disaster, but after something like this it will never be the same, and it will wipe out fauna (and flora) species already made vulnerable by ecosystem fragmentation.

The most effective method to prevent this kind of disaster in Australia isn't to send out large airplanes with water and toxic flame retardants in response to emergency fires that are already happening, but to do what the native people did for over 30,000 years, which is to routinely do small cool burns in patchwork patterns, at the right time of the year and not requiring the use of special technology or PPE. We do our burns with rakes, just the two of us, and that mostly works fine, although when you're dealing with long-overdue vegetation, it can get away and then it's best to have water truck backup, and that's been the whole reason the volunteer bushfire brigade formed in Australia after white settlement. The Australian sclerophyll landscapes became far more dangerous when the regular traditional burning ceased after colonisation, and also biodiversity plummeted because of the homogenisation of the landscape, and the more rampant wildfires that resulted. This much we know, and it's well covered in meticulously researched natural history classics like Tim Flannery's _The Future Eaters_, and can be seen in early paintings and photographs of Australian locations, compared with contemporary photos of the same locations (as well as early accounts of indigenous fire practices as recorded by white settlers).

The main reason it's not being widely done in Australia is because it involves a lot of work by actual human beings on the ground, which can't be replicated with the current agencies' low-personnel approach of setting fires to large tracts of landscape via aeroplane and letting it rip. But on private land, with goodwill and skills, it's very possible, and we are lucky to be now stewarding a private nature reserve whose burning pattern was always modelled, post-white settlement, on Aboriginal people's practices, and it's splendidly biodiverse, and we aim to keep it that way while we are still alive. A lot of people mistakenly think indigenous people did "nothing" with the land. Here in Australia, they were intimately involved in its management to reduce fire risk, and to create good conditions for the game they hunted - something called "firestick farming" by some. And because the sclerophyll and the indigenous people co-evolved for over 30,000 years, they became finely attuned to one another.

The terrible fires here in the past couple of years in particular have started to resurrect more widespread interest in indigenous fire management methods, and considering how we're drying up here in our region and on much of the Eastern seaboard, the interest can't possibly come too soon, because the situation is becoming increasingly dangerous. And now, because of the pandemic, preventative burns by local and interstate bushfire brigades have been down, all while we're having yet another record dry winter and we're dreading the coming summer and the now inevitable infernos. mg:

Brett and I have both lived for decades in the countryside and seen firsthand the ecological deterioration all around us in places that we're intimately familiar with, and it's a huge tragedy. Yes, the earth can come back if civilisation wipes itself out, just as after the demise of the dinosaurs life went on. It's just so utterly unnecessary to keep going down this road of what will ultimately be self-destruction, and one for the Gaia hypothesis.


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## LoriF

Happy Birthday Brett!!!


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## bsms

For a big chunk of the 1900s, the US tried to stop all fires. The result was a huge fuel load, and then fires that could not be stopped and that burned overwhelmingly.

I think now the goal is to protect buildings and let at least some fires burn. It depends in part on how the fire started - a fire started by man at an unusual time of the year might burn much hotter than a typical wildfire. In 1979 I did some work for the US Forest Service where the dead limbs were up to 10 feet deep on the forest floor - the result of decades of fire suppression. I think we've moved away from that.

I also offer Mount St. Helen as an example of how quickly a devastated area can recover.



















https://eos.org/features/lessons-from-a-post-eruption-landscape​


> "The spots that were left virtually barren had to overcome a certain amount of "biological inertia," Crisafulli said, with little regrowth in the first few years after the eruption.
> 
> "Conditions were just harsh," Crisafulli said.
> 
> But gradually, plants and insects colonized these areas, providing food for small animals, which came next and in turn were a food source for larger animals. Ecosystems gradually gained momentum as more and more species were added and ecological spots were filled in.
> 
> "Now it's really progressing at year 30," Crisafulli said. "It's a very productive system."
> 
> https://www.livescience.com/6450-mount-st-helens-recovering-30-years.html


I'm not minimizing the damage done by the Australian fires, just pointing out that life has a way of coming back, often faster than we expect. Maybe different life, or with adjustments, but I have hope Australia's damaged lands will recover better than expected. Assuming, of course, humans don't continue to make the situation worse....:evil:

I'm a pessimist where humans are concerned, but an optimist where humans are not.


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## SueC

Well, humans are making it worse, unfortunately, in many ways, and honestly, my heart aches looking at the volcanic recolonisation pictures above, because I have more biodiversity in my vegetable garden and that's such a sorry point from which to begin again. If there can be recolonisation of animals from surrounding less damaged areas, that's nice, but humans have already fragmented the remaining natural ecosystems and that makes the whole process of recovery so difficult now. An area that may look green and OK to a casual observer or a non-field-biologist can hold less than 10% of the prior diversity of an area, and many people wouldn't see the problem. A depleted ecosystem is still an ecosystem, and depleted ecosystems can still perform some basic functions, and have basic food chains etc, but it's a pale comparison to what went before, or what you can find in our nature reserve on the farm here, for example.

Volcanic eruptions we can't prevent, but these also tend to wipe out relatively young ecosystems in young geology, which is hugely different from the large-scale incineration of some of the most ancient and biodiverse ecosystems in the world down here in Australia. I grew up in the Australian sclerophyll from age 11 and saw for myself how incredible and species rich it was compared to nature in the geologically-younger Europe I had come from. Living down here is like living in a cathedral, to a person interested in biodiversity - but a cathedral that's increasingly being vandalised and beaten down, as the years go by, just by the way our society here operates. There's so many people trying to help reverse this decline, buying up remnant bushland to preserve, preserving remnant bushland on their own properties, rehabilitating wildlife, adopting Indigenous-style bushland management etc etc etc, but it's like putting your finger in a leaking **** - it's a drop in the ocean compared to the ongoing human-made extinction crisis which we have not been able to halt, and which our horror summer just gone by has accelerated.

It's so easy and quick to wipe out species, and so incredibly slow for them to evolve and differentiate. I happen to like the biodiversity still to be found in this part of the world, and to want to defend as much as I can from demise - because even though evolution can start all over again, it shouldn't have to just because we can't get our act together. I love what is here now, and I loved many things we have lost forever even in my lifetime, and I think these things actually have a right to be.

When we have guests coming in from Europe to look at the reserve out the back of the house or when they go to National Parks here, they oooh and aaah over the scale of the biodiversity compared to back home. But here, a lot of people take it for granted or just see it as unattractive prickly bushland when they would prefer to live in a humanly engineered park/botanic garden.

Anyway, if any of you ever visit Australia and are interested in this stuff, I'm happy to show you what's there and why it is special and should be protected from extinction. Of course, some people I know don't care about stuff like this - not meaning you, @bsms, or any other regulars here, because I know you enjoy and appreciate nature. It's not a fun topic, anyway - and talking about it is less helpful than doing something about it.


*GENERAL RAMBLINGS*

Which right now, I'm not doing - after yesterday's wonderful day, I ended up waking up just one hour after going to sleep with nausea and indigestion that amped up to a proper colic like in a horse.  I suspect there's a food intolerance behind that which I have yet to pinpoint - though I have a few suspects. Anyway, I distracted myself from the pain by reading till past 2am, and making some off-topic comments on the palatability of different forms of alcohol (which many of you here have heard from me before) on the music forum where I'm doing a lot of writing since Sunsmart's Cushings got aggravated. He's better, and sometimes I get the impression (because he's getting naughty, which is a good sign) that he might be up to doing some light retirement riding, and that it might actually benefit him, and I've been threatening him with it when he's become playful-on-the-naughty-side. :rofl: But while I'm not riding, there's less to journal about on a horse forum - even though of course I still do general entries on other things here reasonably regularly.

Last night was disrupted, so I feel flat, and the weather is truly miserable today. I've done some paperwork that needed doing (as useless as this activity actually feels) and the drizzle accelerated into a long downpour, so I couldn't get outside to fix up that bit of plumbing I've got all the parts for. Ah well, thought I, and went back to bed to stay warm, and do a little writing here. The dog saw me head back to bed and left her beloved sofa to lie companionably on the hard floor next to the bed, so I got her some floor pillows and a towel to keep her warm, and to thank her for her company. She only does this when I'm unwell, actually - and so she spent much of the time I had a broken foot two nearly years back curled up by the bedside whenever I was in bed, like some kind of self-appointed nurse. And when I feel better, she'll be the first to encourage me to take some exercise, get in the outdoors etc. 




*MUCH-NEEDED HOLIDAY*

Brett will be on holidays for two weeks (including three weekends) as of tonight, and we have so looked forward to it. Both of us feel as if we've been run over with a steamroller, and have decided to go near no to-do lists whatsoever and just have time off together to do whatever we feel like; and this will probably be a lot of resting, reading, watching movies, making nice food and going hiking when energy permits it (as happened yesterday, for example). It's been over 18 months since we had a proper break; since last year, half Brett's annual leave was taken up with both of us being bedridden with flu, and the other half later in the year we were doing fine-tooth cleaning and work around the grounds so we could open our farmstay that summer, which we did, and which has now bounced back with local travellers since restrictions have eased here: No community transmission detected in WA, the only confirmed COVID-19 is from returned travellers in quarantine, and our hard border closures that helped to achieve it have just been extended in view of the current outbreaks in Melbourne and Sydney - at the moment, this means we're living a semblance of normal life in this state, obviously with social distancing and other precautions that are necessary to prevent a case that accidentally gets in from spreading exponentially...and obviously with no overseas tourism, but people who normally like going overseas are currently really interested in getting to know their own state, so we've seen surprisingly many people at our farmstay.

I've got to say, and I've not said this for many years, that our state government here has done a really fantastic job lately. They have countered the pandemic with rock-solid restrictions and despite the naysaying of the states with community transmission that wanted us to open our borders to them, and this has resulted in a far more normal life for West Australians than what we're seeing in many places in the world, or what is now unfolding in Sydney and Melbourne... the state government in Melbourne was trying very hard to get this right too, but the main weak point over there turned out to be outsourcing the supervision of hotel quarantines for returned travellers to private security firms which broke all sorts of infection control protocols - and also the housing of normal travellers in the same hotels... and that kind of thing can unfortunately conceivably happen anywhere, although it's determined a lot of people not to let the same mistakes happen in their quarantine arrangements.

At the end of the day though, it will be carelessness that will be people's undoing, so I expect eventually we'll get a second wave here too - since it doesn't take much to start one.


*POST-HOLIDAY HOPES*

We're hoping that the upcoming holiday-at-home will recharge our batteries significantly, so that we don't have to drag ourselves to do stuff so much of the time, and so that I'll be able to get back into cardio sessions on the mountainbike again three times a week, plus Pilates. That's been getting quite good at one stage, but then I got so tired again that I just couldn't face that kind of exertion on top of everything else. It's funny how easy it is to want to go running or bike-riding or rollerblading when you've come home from a day of officework, and how hard it is to do that when you're mostly doing physical work, and much of it outdoors. Then, honestly, I just want to come in and vegetate on the sofa, but I've got to find a way to do regular cardio and Pilates at least 80% of the time (20% lapses allowed) so that it's consistent enough to work properly. One way, of course, would be to do it in the mornings, before work, and I had a bit of success with that. Part of being energetic long-term is actually to prioritise fitness activities. If any of you have got some tricks that have made that easier for you, let me know! 

@egrogan, you moved to a farm too - have you found that your energy has become very much absorbed in running that, and tending to your home renovation, compared to pre-farm? Has anything fallen off the calendar for you as a result, and how have you got some of those back, and made the decision to perhaps let others go?

@Knave, how do you do your juggling?

We've had this place ten years now and not been interstate since, and we were regular travellers to Tasmania for bushwalking getaways before that - it's a great place to live, but there's no question that it would probably benefit our enthusiasm for working here, if we could have "spells" completely away from the place once a year. We've tried to compromise by having dedicated recreation days that we don't push ourselves on, and relax at home and/or go hiking on those days, and that's already been very helpful. We're also working on cutting back some of our farm work - by running even less cattle, by buying in hay sometimes instead of cutting tree fodder (which can be really tiring) - of course, there's no round bales to be had in our district at the moment, as we're going into another bad year on the back of three years of drought in this agricultural area. It's a good thing we killed that big steer for our own freezer, because we couldn't have gotten him through the winter lull in pasture growth comfortably, without buying hay in, which in his case wouldn't have been economical anyway.

I'm also not going to be doing much native vegetation planting this year, just to ease off on something and get some time to breathe. The existing planted areas need pruning and maintenance, so we have to re-prioritise what we can do with our time, and be happy with.

On the good news side, the farmstay is a real success and a far better income source than running cattle for us. We're going to only run a handful of steers for the next few years, unless the weather improves dramatically and pasture growth gets back to what used to be normal. We'd rather be understocked and have a bit of slack, than find ourselves overstocked for deteriorating conditions and having to sell to feedlotters, or slave away daily with tree fodder.

I think as a bit of a pep talk to myself, I'm going to sit down and write about the main things we have managed to do, these past ten years - there's been many good things. But, I also want to take action to decrease our workload, so that we don't get exhausted by it - and just have a general good think about what we want to be doing.

Having a proper break from work for two weeks plus three weekends will surely be a good start...


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## egrogan

@*SueC* , it has definitely been a huge commitment to take on a farm property that, because of years of neglect, needs so much work- while also keeping 50 hour-a-week desk jockey jobs to be able to afford said needy farm property. To be honest, at times I worry my lovely husband is becoming a bit resentful. It's so hard because there are days when he tells me he loves the stillness and beauty of where we live, loves to see the transformation of reclaiming a field from the brambles, enjoys the work with his hands while refinishing the house, feels like we're doing something worthwhile by keeping a large parcel of land intact and managing the forest well. And then other days he is hugely put out by all of that and wishes we had never done it. This is usually after his more stressful days at work, so I am empathetic. His job is highly political, with people who think very highly of themselves (because of their Congressional or White House jobs) trying to convince him to go in a certain direction with his agency, and he's just too nice to be in this kind of role forever. 

I think I'm a little more temperamentally oriented to see this whole project as a marathon, not a sprint, and to be ok with the fact that it's never going to be perfect, and maybe never going to be "finished." I get a lot of my energy from the animals, so that makes it a little easier to overlook some of the more frustrating aspects. But, in the moments when I'm also frustrated, it's because it feels like the house is never going to be cozy and comfortable. It almost feels like we've just spent the last two years living around and on top of the house, not really settled into it. Not sure if that makes sense. It's almost a feeling of being a stranger in your own house. We still don't have much of anything on the walls. We have one working bathroom. There are no cozy spaces to curl up and read a book (something there never seems to be time for anyway...). We have hired out some of the biggest, more time consuming jobs, which has helped, but then it's always a bit panic-induced to know you're not adding money to a savings account but rather putting it into the house. Particularly in these unsettled times, when it feels like at any moment the global economy might actually collapse, and then what?! 

Some of the things we don't seem to do much since we acquired so many animals:
-Definitely has changed the way we travel. For the last ten years, we've both traveled fairly regularly for work (pre-pandemic of course), and usually if one person had the opportunity to go someplace interesting, the other would tag along. Not a bad deal since the work-portion of the travel was covered by the employer. But that's gotten much harder, particularly in the winter/spring months when animal chores are difficult and tough to leave with a farm sitter.
-I still don't have a proper vegetable garden since we've moved in. There are currently 4 nasty stumps sitting in the way of the plot where I want the garden to grow. We removed some ridiculously overgrown evergreen shrubs from the front of the house but we don't have a stump grinder to remove them and can't find someone to do a job that's too small for a professional but too big for us to be able to dig them out in a reasonable way.
-When I was young and single, my favorite weekend pastime was going on a day trip to a town or city I had never been, finding an antique shop to wander around in and then a coffee shop or bar to have a drink in afterwards before heading home. I miss just picking a place on a map and spending a lazy day exploring.
-I'm sure lovely husband would say he doesn't spend nearly as much time as he would like reading, writing, or going to concerts.
-We definitely don't have much of any social life since we moved out here to the middle of nowhere. There aren't a lot of people around, and definitely not a lot of people our age without kids. Not having kids in your 40s seems to complicate everything...so maybe that's more about life stage than living on the farm. Though because the house is in such shambles, I don't particularly want to invite people over until it's in better shape. And no one is really interested in socializing at other people's houses until post-pandemic anyway...

I think it's actually pretty good that we are (stuck?) here during the pandemic, because it's not like we're missing out on travel, even local roadtrips. We _are _making slow progress on the renovations during this forced time at home. If neither of us had professional jobs I'm confident we could take 6 months and make this house a showpiece. But if neither of us had professional jobs, we couldn't afford to take six months and make this house a showpiece. :wink: A real conundrum...


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## egrogan

PS- reading backwards now and wanted to say happy birthday to Brett, and enjoy the holiday time!


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## SueC

Dear @egrogan, thank you for your thoughts and perspective! 



egrogan said:


> @*SueC* , it has definitely been a huge commitment to take on a farm property that, because of years of neglect, needs so much work- while also keeping 50 hour-a-week desk jockey jobs to be able to afford said needy farm property. To be honest, at times I worry my lovely husband is becoming a bit resentful. It's so hard because there are days when he tells me he loves the stillness and beauty of where we live, loves to see the transformation of reclaiming a field from the brambles, enjoys the work with his hands while refinishing the house, feels like we're doing something worthwhile by keeping a large parcel of land intact and managing the forest well. And then other days he is hugely put out by all of that and wishes we had never done it. This is usually after his more stressful days at work, so I am empathetic. His job is highly political, with people who think very highly of themselves (because of their Congressional or White House jobs) trying to convince him to go in a certain direction with his agency, and he's just too nice to be in this kind of role forever.


Please send our best regards and well-wishes to your husband. When I started out, the first job I had was to collate and provide scientific advice on saltland management in South-Western Australia, and the catchment that was my focus catchment was the one just to the north and west of where we now live. So I spent 12 months doing on-the-ground research, as well as reviewing all the literature on the region and the various problems here, and on Australian dryland salinity in general, and interviewing key scientists working in hydrological modelling, sustainability practices, legume development, cropping, pasture management, remnant vegetation management, forestry, eucalyptus oil extraction and other alternative uses, etc etc. Between us, we came up with recommendations for land rehabilitation that were enthusiastically embraced by the vast majority of farmers in the focus catchment, and everybody was ready and raring to go - but the government wouldn't support the recommendations we made. They were happy to just check all of us providing expert advice off as, "We've spent $X on the environment here by asking your opinions, and that's it for now." It's such a waste of tax money to commission research and reports that you then roundly ignore because they don't fit into your personal world view, or because you only commissioned them in the first place so that you could be seen to be spending money on "the environment" and thereby greenwash your business-as-usual.

The things we were recommending included 10-20% replanting of the agricultural areas with shelter belts of deep-rooted perennial vegetation, in order to largely solve (as it would have) further land salinisation, and reduce waterlogging, inundation, soil erosion, wildlife decline, pest outbreaks, stock exposure and other productivity and ethical issues, while providing new economic opportunities for farmers. But the farmers needed funding support for fencing off revegetation areas, and other logistical problems - for which there was some money in the then-Landcare funding, and for which more money could have been found if the people in charge of administering the public money had for once directed it to projects of direct grass-roots public interest - instead of funding corporates from the public purse, as they perpetually do. And in the end, that's precisely what they did - instead of following the scientific advice and helping farmers put in shelter belts across the whole of the (in Australia largely denuded) agricultural landscape, they gave the money to their corporate mates to subsidise their buying up of family farming properties that were going to the wall, to be planted fence to fence with ******* monocultures whose purpose in life was to be turned into paper pulp to make newsprint, most of which, within a couple of weeks of printing, ends up rotting in landfills (because remarkably little paper is actually recycled, even though all of it could be - but if we recycled all our paper, the forestry industry wouldn't be as profitable...). 

It caused an uproar amongst the farming community - it ended up further impoverishing rural communities, and didn't solve the land salinisation problems (as the hydrological modellers had told them - systematic belt planting on the contour is interceptive across a landscape, random block planting isn't - and we've now lost around 30% of the prior food-producing areas around here to the production of paper pulp instead of food). To add further insult to injury, these forestry corporates were able to claim subsidies for alleged carbon dioxide reduction, which we on our farm, and other farmers doing voluntary conservation work, are unable to claim for genuine long-term shelter belts which won't ever be cut down and end up in landfill - because they wrote the rules to specifically only subsidise large block plantings (i.e. their corporate mates), and not shelter belts - when a tree in a shelter belt is forever, and also does much more hydrological work than the same tree in a block plantation.

Don't get me started... :evil: Working with the sorts of people your husband works with is intensely stressful - they can rarely be reasoned with and all they ever really want you to do is to tell them what they wanted to hear in the first place, so they can be seen to have the backing of experts for their own generally low-quality ideas.

And then what your husband is running into on top of that kind of soul-destroying stuff, is now having a second and seemingly endless job managing and maintaining a rural landscape, and rural infrastructure, not to mention the house renovation, all over and above what an average suburban couple does (where with lots of couples there's already all this friction about fair shares and standards of housework, which I am extremely grateful is not the case with us, and I would imagine is not the case with you as well - your husband seems to be a cheerful chipper-inner type too). And of course, when you first move onto a farm, you're all ecstatic about your dream come true and to some extent you have a slightly romanticised idea of living in all this pastoral bliss, like you've just found your private Garden of Eden.

And then you spend quite a while trying to work out how to live in your Eden without falling over and becoming fertiliser! :rofl: The first phase is always the worst, when you're not walking into a ready-made setup because you had an inheritance or robbed a bank or whatever - when you're building or renovating your house, and putting in the necessary farm infrastructure, while also working off-farm to finance everything, and trying to retain some extraneous hobbies, and your personal fitness, while hitherto unimagined curveballs come flying at you - like your new stables flooding and needing to be relocated, and your pipes freezing, and your water troughs suddenly getting electrified; or, in our case, your house construction getting burgled mid-way so that all your expensive French doors are removed as well as a whole bunch of construction tools, and your expensive driveway gradually washing away because of inherent design flaws you outsourced to an expert to avoid, and every new batch of cattle, just like the last, ruining any horse polybraid they are ever let near at the slightest opportunity (temporary fence fault in a section - they immediately know, before you do...)...

I suspect what you guys and us over here are doing is actually quite heroic, from an objective perspective, while many humans like us will probably have a tendency to start mostly seeing the unfinished work or the endless to-do lists, and to be beating themselves with a stick rather than awarding themselves accolades. 

But yeah, working out where to set the limits so that you don't become mentally stressed and/or physically burnt out is as essential as it can be difficult to implement. There is only so much energy we each have, and if we end up using _all_ of that energy just on our various to-do lists, then life becomes pretty grim. For me, it's been a challenge to allow myself to spend energy on my own hobbies even as much remains on the to-do list, but I'm getting better at it - at juggling that stuff. Still nowhere near perfect, which is one reason I'm talking to you about it!  Our boats are very similar, so to speak. ;-)




> I think I'm a little more temperamentally oriented to see this whole project as a marathon, not a sprint, and to be ok with the fact that it's never going to be perfect, and maybe never going to be "finished."


And that's where I think you're temperamentally ahead of me too; I am having to learn this. I'm making progress, but it's sort of the opposite to how I was moulded in childhood, by perfectionistic parents who never seemed to see anything I did as good enough, or complete. You could come home with an 88% test score, and it'd be like, "Where's the other 12%?" or become top academic graduate in your school (which I did in middle school, senior school and university - and by the way, never expected, not even the third time) and it'd be, "Oh, the other kids are stupid, it's not like you have much competition, but don't expect to be able to top your class at university, because clever people go there." :icon_rolleyes:

As a classmate's mother said to me once, "How would your parents go with an average kid?"

Brett is very good like that naturally, and has been a good influence on me. I think at the basis of being able to do marathon stuff like we're trying to do without going insane is your couple relationship - that's certainly how it is for us, and what we keep coming back to. Spoiling each other senseless is always a good first step when the energy gets low (and hopefully before!).

And also to keep noticing all the mountains of work you have in fact already done, and all the things that are already working well, and that you're still alive. :rofl:




> I get a lot of my energy from the animals, so that makes it a little easier to overlook some of the more frustrating aspects.


Yeah, I find animals energising, including the right kind of _**** sapiens_!  Brett finds donkeys very energising, and black comedy type programmes, like Black Books:






:rofl: :rofl: I can't tell you how therapeutic that episode was when I was learning to do business tax!

One of our main situations to grapple with is that Brett is an introvert who finds interacting with other people really draining, even though he's actually very good at it - and he's no longer working from home on a computer, as he did until 2013, but in an in-your-face environment with other people. It's a generally very good workplace with mostly great staff, and thankfully it's also pandemic-proof, but it does take a lot of his energy to do it. So we have to spend a lot of time compensating and recharging his batteries. Also, the pandemic has increased my interest in world affairs, but it's really better if I don't leak snippets of related information out to Brett in conversation, because he finds that stuff so intensely depressing - so I am now consciously taking that talk to other people instead, and choosing one of the plethora of subjects I can talk to my husband about without depressing him instead, when we're at home together.




> But, in the moments when I'm also frustrated, it's because it feels like the house is never going to be cozy and comfortable. It almost feels like we've just spent the last two years living around and on top of the house, not really settled into it. Not sure if that makes sense. It's almost a feeling of being a stranger in your own house. We still don't have much of anything on the walls. We have one working bathroom.


Yeah, it took us five years to finish our house (and we still haven't done the attic up properly, but that can wait) - so I empathise here. There was living in the caravan with no bathroom and only tank water, and then there was sleeping in the unfinished now-office with sticky tape around the plasterboard wall-ceiling interfaces so that mouse droppings wouldn't land on our faces, and it took us half a year out here before we had functioning toilets, so we had a little chemical loo for boats for number ones, and used to go walking off into the bushland for number twos, and when the compost toilets were finally installed there weren't stairs up to them yet and we used a box to step up to the platform for another six months, which caused me to have sore knees for about a year afterwards (it gradually healed again). And for a long time we had no kitchen, and were cooking in the caravan instead. Etc, etc, etc. At the time we pretended we were pioneers in a story (and why not, one of my favourite authors, Jeannette Winterson, says we should feel free to see ourselves as a fiction we are writing), and most of the time we felt like we were in an adventure, but it did get wearying sometimes, and we did hit the wall energy-wise a number of times.

But it was really, really worth it - even if Brett often jokes that he has traumatic amnesia and remembers nothing about building our house! :lol:

You'll get there too, with your house. Living in what is essentially a building site is not the same as living in a home, but the time will come where you too will be truly living in your own home. :hug:




> There are no cozy spaces to curl up and read a book (something there never seems to be time for anyway...). We have hired out some of the biggest, more time consuming jobs, which has helped, but then it's always a bit panic-induced to know you're not adding money to a savings account but rather putting it into the house. Particularly in these unsettled times, when it feels like at any moment the global economy might actually collapse, and then what?!


Yeah, those are the kinds of thoughts that will creep in. When that happens, and when it's situations outside of our control like that, then I think that if something really bad happened in a year - having to leave our place, one of us dying - then I would still want to enjoy the year ahead as much as possible, since it wouldn't change the outcome, and the present is really all we ever have. But I actually think that to try to live each day positively does in fact change the outcomes, in many other ways. It makes it more likely we're going to find a way through the problems, and it means we can find happiness in the interim, and really appreciate what we do have right here, right now.

But I think Diogenes did have point, living in his barrel!










When I have a rough day, I like to amuse myself by proclaiming that my retirement plan is to go live in a barrel! 




> Some of the things we don't seem to do much since we acquired so many animals:
> -Definitely has changed the way we travel. For the last ten years, we've both traveled fairly regularly for work (pre-pandemic of course), and usually if one person had the opportunity to go someplace interesting, the other would tag along. Not a bad deal since the work-portion of the travel was covered by the employer. But that's gotten much harder, particularly in the winter/spring months when animal chores are difficult and tough to leave with a farm sitter.


Yeah, still working on that one too!




> -I still don't have a proper vegetable garden since we've moved in. There are currently 4 nasty stumps sitting in the way of the plot where I want the garden to grow. We removed some ridiculously overgrown evergreen shrubs from the front of the house but we don't have a stump grinder to remove them and can't find someone to do a job that's too small for a professional but too big for us to be able to dig them out in a reasonable way.


Is this a possibility?

https://www.hgtv.com/outdoors/gardens/planting-and-maintenance/diy-stump-removal

I had to give up my early food garden and let it mostly go back to pasture for a couple of years while we were in the thick of building the house. And often, I can't find any space in a week to go work in the food garden, and that's really frustrating. Most recently because we decided to home process our own beef. Something like that will come up, or some new curveball, and then the weeds will have grown ridiculously tall by the time I get back to it, and be much more work to remove, grumble grumble grumble. I'm working on having fixed hours here and there where I work on my priority tasks, but even that will often be affected by the weather... mostly, I keep coming back to, "Do three different productive things a day" - that seems to work the best for us. And sometimes we even do more... (or fall down a hole and do less...)




> -When I was young and single, my favorite weekend pastime was going on a day trip to a town or city I had never been, finding an antique shop to wander around in and then a coffee shop or bar to have a drink in afterwards before heading home. I miss just picking a place on a map and spending a lazy day exploring.


Is it realistic to plan to do something like this for your birthday every year?




> -I'm sure lovely husband would say he doesn't spend nearly as much time as he would like reading, writing, or going to concerts.


Can you realistically do a concert for his birthday every year?

If you can manage something like that even once a year, your inner 20-something won't feel quite as cheated by life.




> -We definitely don't have much of any social life since we moved out here to the middle of nowhere. There aren't a lot of people around, and definitely not a lot of people our age without kids. Not having kids in your 40s seems to complicate everything...so maybe that's more about life stage than living on the farm. Though because the house is in such shambles, I don't particularly want to invite people over until it's in better shape. And no one is really interested in socializing at other people's houses until post-pandemic anyway...


Yeah, social life is definitely inversely proportional to wildlife exposure! :lol:

I got fed up with the misogyny, xenophobia etc in a significant part of our surrounding community, and seriously have much more pleasure from talking to cool people online, than I had from the years of trying to get on with people who thought everything was a conspiracy theory, and that women should walk five feet behind a man on the road... plus, the Airbnb crowd is mostly young, very educated, and much more progressive than the local crowd...




> I think it's actually pretty good that we are (stuck?) here during the pandemic, because it's not like we're missing out on travel, even local roadtrips. We _are _making slow progress on the renovations during this forced time at home. If neither of us had professional jobs I'm confident we could take 6 months and make this house a showpiece. But if neither of us had professional jobs, we couldn't afford to take six months and make this house a showpiece. :wink: A real conundrum...


Yeah well, it's like they say: You're either going to be short of time, or money. I've decided I prefer to be short of money! ;-)

Nice brainstorming with you!

Sending our very best wishes from our little farm to yours! :hug:


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## bsms

One of my biology professors had a job in the 60s doing biological surveys for a large project in Central America. There were 50 options for where to do the project. He spent 5 years working on it. Another person worked on the political implications. In the end, the place chosen was #1 politically and something like #48 biologically. Imagine how he felt after working 5 years only to find the decision-makers NEVER had any intention of listening! 

Travel is one of those things that get squeezed by having large animals. My wife would really like to travel more. Me? I spent much of my life going all over the world, mostly to places no one would WANT to go, but sometimes very nice places. I could happily live the rest of my life without leaving Arizona & Utah, but marriage involves compromise. Our biggest expense when we travel is the cost of paying someone to come watch the horses. 

One compromise might be to look at doing more overnight trips and just having someone swing by once to make sure the horses still have water. Another, if we move, might be to look at buying 5 acres of land with water available and then sometimes putting out enough hay to keep them happy for 4-5 days. They would need to learn to use one of those on-demand type of watering systems, though...not sure Trooper is smart enough.


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## knightrider

> If any of you have got some tricks that have made that easier for you, let me know!


Of course, what makes being able to work out daily easiest is being retired. But I did work out when I was teaching full time and had kids . . . it was just a bit harder.

I do my workouts in the early morning. I get up at 5:15. I am naturally a morning person and always have been. I alternate lots of different kinds of workouts, depending on my mood. The trick you have asked about is "Books on Tape" or now days, they are Books on CD's. I try not to listen except when working out . . . or on a long car drive. I look forward to listening  to the story and finding out what happens next, and it helps the workout time pass happily.

After a 30 minute workout . . . and about 3 or 4 times a week, instead of listening to my story, I do yoga or fitness band or fitness ball workouts on YouTube--whatever I feel like doing, I ride every morning.

After the ride, I try to force myself to do 30 minutes of yardwork--really something I don't look forward to doing, but I"m glad to get it done. It's especially hard when it is 90 degrees F after the ride, and I am hot and tired . . . but I really do try and succeed more often than not.


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## Spanish Rider

@egrogan , I think the social slowdown of the pandemic (I say 'social' because my work is busier than ever) has many of us taking stock in our daily lives. And, of course, reaching 40 also tends to make people take stock in their future lives. In Spain, they have a saying: "La vida son 2 días", or "Life is 2 days (long)", meaning that life is short. When I turned 40, I remember a college friend of my DH adding to that by saying, "La vida son dos días, y ya ha pasado uno." "Life is just 2 days, and one has already gone by." That sure put things into perspective.

But, I also find that the pandemic has got my kids down in the dumps, too. Imagine being a college kid who can't get a summer job because so many things are closed, locked in a small apartment and STUDYING the summer away because he has nothing else to do (he's teaching himself Python). And Nico is still undiagnosed, has lost 26+ lbs and is trying to write college essays. UGH, no fun in that, either. No birthday parties, pool parties, movies, elite basketball clinic, vacation in Maine, etc. Even the Wii has broken, so all he does is cross-stitch with his feet up and sit in an inflatatable pool with his mother. And Spain doesn't even have decent ice-cream.

I guess what I am trying to say is that we humans are never content with everything we have or with everything we've achieved. You and your husband have a massive farm project, with all the maintenance and animal husbandry to boot. I have our house (not finished), my garden (high-maintenance), my son (who will make me cry if I write anything else), and a stupid f-in vegetable garden that has been sucking up waaaaaaay too much time & water for the 12 beans, 3 cukes and 20 cherry tomatoes I've harvested (it needs to be watered every day). Oh, and I haven't even SEEN a horse since early March. Plus, because our economy has not recovered since 2008, nor have we had a raise since then, and now we are facing an even greater hit to the economy, I honestly doubt we will be able to retire. Ever.


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## egrogan

@SueC, apologies for just now getting to respond to your thoughtful message! A few things that stood out to me:



SueC said:


> Don't get me started... :evil: Working with the sorts of people your husband works with is intensely stressful - they can rarely be reasoned with and all they ever really want you to do is to tell them what they wanted to hear in the first place, so they can be seen to have the backing of experts for their own generally low-quality ideas.


Absolutely. On top of that, so many of them have absolutely no business being in the jobs they've been given, he has to deal with their complete lack of skill or knowledge for the issues they are supposed to be "leaders" in...



> (where with lots of couples there's already all this friction about fair shares and standards of housework, which I am extremely grateful is not the case with us, and I would imagine is not the case with you as well - your husband seems to be a cheerful chipper-inner type too).


We're definitely an exception to gender norms as well. Lovely husband does laundry and basic cleaning because those things drive him nuts when put off, and I think I probably could put them off indefinitely, unless I ran out of underwear! :hide: But in all seriousness, I think we have a good balance of getting routine things done that mostly allows each of us to prioritize the things we care more about without driving the other one nuts.



> And then you spend quite a while trying to work out how to live in your Eden without falling over and becoming fertiliser! :rofl:


:rofl: :rofl:



> The first phase is always the worst,


Our last two houses were also big renovations, just without the farm attached to it, and this was definitely true. I just keep reminding myself the beautiful little house we left in 2018 was a bit of a wreck when we got there too!



> ...by perfectionistic parents who never seemed to see anything I did as good enough, or complete. You could come home with an 88% test score, and it'd be like, "Where's the other 12%?" or become top academic graduate in your school (which I did in middle school, senior school and university - and by the way, never expected, not even the third time)


You know what's weird is that as a kid, my parents were pretty indifferent to the fact that I did so well with school, and that continued on through college and graduate school (they still couldn't tell you what I have a PhD in...). For whatever reason it all just came pretty easily to me so in spite of the rather low expectations around me, I succeeded on a lot of the metrics our culture values. It definitely opened up opportunities I couldn't have imagined, but I always sort of have this feeling that the good things I've experienced were just a very lucky roll of the dice, rather than anything I particularly made happen. Maybe that helps keep things in perspective? Sometimes though it makes me worried that I don't really work hard enough - what could have happened if I had been pushed and challenged early on, would I be better at things now? :think:

Lovely husband, on the other hand, grew up more like you describe, where nothing was ever good enough. His mom was the president of the local school board and had his ideal future mapped out for him from a young age. He was strong enough to follow his own path (lucky for me!) but I think that's why he puts so much pressure on himself.



> You'll get there too, with your house. Living in what is essentially a building site is not the same as living in a home, but the time will come where you too will be truly living in your own home. :hug:


I can't wait for that to happen!!



> Is this a possibility?
> https://www.hgtv.com/outdoors/gardens/planting-and-maintenance/diy-stump-removal


Looking into this, thanks!



> Is it realistic to plan to do something like this for your birthday every year?


Post-covid, yes, I do think so! And this year, there is an attainable endurance ride happening locally my birthday weekend so that's something to look forward to :grin:



> Can you realistically do a concert for his birthday every year?


To be honest, I am such a dummy about music I think he actually prefers to go see shows with people besides me  He has a good group of guy friends from college that are scattered around the country but typically get together a couple of times a year to see bands they like, so he usually gets his music fix that way. They were supposed to meet up in August for a Wilco show, but sadly that's postponed until 2021 because of the pandemic. Do you know them at all? They are a band that I actually like a good bit (if I had to listen to music) and I have been to quite a few of their shows with him- that was actually our first date. Which shows you how interested in him I was that I agreed to a concert as a first date!! :rofl:




 


> Sending our very best wishes from our little farm to yours! :hug:


 Back your way! 



Spanish Rider said:


> ...and a stupid f-in vegetable garden that has been sucking up waaaaaaay too much time & water for the 12 beans, 3 cukes and 20 cherry tomatoes I've harvested (it needs to be watered every day).


At the risk of minimizing all the other things you wrote @Spanish Rider, I just have to thank you for the deep belly laugh I got from this line. Indeed, the grass is always greener!!


----------



## carshon

Not to but in on @SueC journal but @egrogan I would stress to you to find a local 4-H club or FFA chapter to find that perfect farm sitter. My daughter and son racked up quite the client list when people were needing farm sitters or general labor done. Daughter is working full time in a factory this summer and doing farm sitting on the side. Her college savings is looking very good. AND she gets to count those farm sitting hours toward her job shadowing and experiences on her vet school applications.

And I will just say - I can commiserate on the pitfalls of land ownership. We do not own a large tract of land but have an extremely old house and have raised 4 kids - and our youngest had quite a few health issues when she was born until about 5. Our medical bills were astronomical - and unfortunately we are still paying back some of those credit cards that those bills were put on. Vacations are a non-event here. Our youngest is going to be a Sr in college this year and we hope to see a light at the end of the tunnel as far as being able to afford a new car next year and maybe a trip away. My husband will be 60 in October and any plans for retirement were dashed a few years ago when I lost my job and had to take another job at 50% of my past pay. I am still in that job and our finances have not improved. But I can say we have 2 kids that have gone to undergrad with no student debt and I have a truck and a horse trailer to take me riding on the weekends to find my sanity.


----------



## SueC

Hello everyone, and thanks for the thoughtful posts! :wave: I'll get to all this properly later, just a quick post for now.

Firstly, @carshon, and anybody else, you can "butt in" anytime you like!  Extra brains make a better discussion, and it's nice to hear people's views and experiences.



SueC said:


> I'm making progress, but it's sort of the opposite to how I was moulded in childhood, by perfectionistic parents who never seemed to see anything I did as good enough, or complete. You could come home with an 88% test score, and it'd be like, "Where's the other 12%?" or become top academic graduate in your school (which I did in middle school, senior school and university - and by the way, never expected, not even the third time) and it'd be, "Oh, the other kids are stupid, it's not like you have much competition, but don't expect to be able to top your class at university, because clever people go there." :icon_rolleyes:
> 
> As a classmate's mother said to me once, "How would your parents go with an average kid?"
> 
> 
> 
> egrogan said:
> 
> 
> 
> You know what's weird is that as a kid, my parents were pretty indifferent to the fact that I did so well with school, and that continued on through college and graduate school (they still couldn't tell you what I have a PhD in...). For whatever reason it all just came pretty easily to me so in spite of the rather low expectations around me, I succeeded on a lot of the metrics our culture values. It definitely opened up opportunities I couldn't have imagined, but I always sort of have this feeling that the good things I've experienced were just a very lucky roll of the dice, rather than anything I particularly made happen. Maybe that helps keep things in perspective? Sometimes though it makes me worried that I don't really work hard enough - what could have happened if I had been pushed and challenged early on, would I be better at things now? :think:
> 
> Lovely husband, on the other hand, grew up more like you describe, where nothing was ever good enough. His mom was the president of the local school board and had his ideal future mapped out for him from a young age. He was strong enough to follow his own path (lucky for me!) but I think that's why he puts so much pressure on himself.
Click to expand...

You know, I think I actually had a mix of the experiences you're describing. My parents overwhelmingly showed _disinterest_ in my school achievements - except if they could use them to play "blemish" - if you know what I mean. Any perceived flaws were focused on, while actual achievement largely went ignored. It's funny you should say that your parents still couldn't tell what your PhD is in - my parents have very little idea what I'm actually qualified in, beyond kind of cartoonised and simplified ideas of what biologists and environmental scientists do, and once I started teaching high school later on, I was a "mere teacher" anyway and had "wasted my degree"...

My parents did not map out a future for me (which of course is also a way for dysfunctional parents to totally disrespect their children's humanity and personhood and I feel for your husband and here's a song for him...)






- they gave the impression they couldn't care less, in many ways - were completely self-absorbed and never really got to know me as a person or human being. If I wrote essays at school that won prizes in state competitions, they weren't interested in reading them; I remember one time I was mad because my friends' parents were actually more interested in stuff I'd written for school than my own parents - I was getting the kind of response from my classmates' parents that one would expect one's _own_ parents to have. I remember being so mad about this at one stage (especially in the face of their always belittling me and fault-finding with me while lauding any of my brother's achievements to the sky) that I actually had a rant at them when I was 15 and said, "This won third prize in the John Forrest, just darn well read it, would you, just for once pretend you actually care!" - and my father grudgingly did, with a sour face, and my mother wouldn't, and was saying, "Well it only came third." (Not that it should have mattered, but I was competing against 17-year-olds, so that was actually quite special.)

Soon after that I gave up on trying to get water out of a stone and just kept my work mostly to myself. My mother continued to snipe about how unnatural it was that a _girl_ should be good at maths and science, and to say that when she went to school, she always gave her maths homework to the boys to do in return for helping them with languages. :shock: For those who think misogyny is something purveyed only by toxic males, let me tell you different - from what I've seen, in my family of origin, in workplaces, in the media, in politics etc, toxic females are just as keen to do it, and don't tell me they're really just victims of oppression by men who've internalised the oppressor's viewpoint - that might apply to some cases, but definitely not to all cases - there's vindictiveness and choice involved in a great many such cases, no matter what the gender of the bully.

When I went to my first job as a research scientist, with the role described in the earlier post, my mother characterised my role to her friends, both in my hearing and from secondary reports, as, "She went to university and got a science degree, and now she's just making holes in the ground, and they didn't even get a man to do that for her." - because one of the things I did was to make a soil survey of an area, which involved core sampling and hand augering to do it, which by the way isn't particularly physically demanding and even if it was, I don't see why I should have a man do that on my behalf. This took perhaps a quarter of my allocated time, and that bunch of field time was multi-tasked with interviewing the farmers on various issues, whose land I was doing the survey on. And then there was the other 75% of the time, where I was working with expert scientists of various specialisations, and putting together a report on everything. But yeah, let's just sum all of that up as, "She got a job making holes in the ground." :evil:

That was a 12-month contract, and I was offered another contract doing something different for the same organisation, but went back to Perth to be involved in teaching undergraduates in botany and zoology instead, and my mother went around saying. "My daughter got sacked! They didn't want her anymore." (- and would do that every time any contract of mine came to an end, and of course in Australia post-1990s, most science and education jobs were increasingly just contract, and indeed, became increasingly casualised - permanency doesn't exist in many places anymore, except for management, and I never wanted to be management, I wanted to do things that I considered positive and worthwhile).

Writing it down like that, it's totally insane... and that was "normal" in my family. You couldn't do a better job at character assassination and belittling, than my own mother did to me. In many ways, that was far more hurtful than the physical violence and brutality I bore the brunt of as a child, and of course, that aspect continued once they ceased with the physical violence towards me (aided by my going to the police about it at age 14, and leaving home at 16).

The hurt about that largely stopped when I ceased caring about what they thought, and minimised my contact with them around six years ago. One of my bugbears in life is how incredibly long it took me to cease caring about my parents' opinion of me - and the faux relationship I had with them for several decades, which basically just revolved around their concerns, and their convenience - helping them with their own pursuits, cheerleading for my father's horse-racing (which surely is a form of addiction), strapping at tracks in my free time, planting roses for my mother that she then complained about having to water, looking after their horses while they went on holidays, etc etc, and avoiding talking about my own interests and life as much as possible (because we all know where that would lead). I went through a time of despising myself for doing this - but it's really just Stockholm Syndrome, and wanting to get on with your own family. Until you realise that the price of admission isn't worth it. Very belatedly, apparently.

This is the kind of thing a lot of people from badly dysfunctional families struggle with. It's natural for children to want to love their parents, and to want to get on with them. But that kind of "love" can end up just as dysfunctional as the hollow husk _they_ offer _you_, which has "love" auspiciously written on it.

I don't think my parents are evil people who planned all of this when they took their babies home from the hospital - I think they are psychologically immature people who, for whatever reasons, wouldn't sort out their own issues - they weren't _responsible_ people, despite of the fact that they paraded a veneer of responsibility and social respectability in public, quite successfully too. They were definitely more concerned with appearances than actualities - the typical "whitewashed grave" so vividly described in the gospels. Thanks to my father's high-flying job up to his retirement to horse racing, it was quite a successful fiction.

This was supposed to be _short_. Phew. :|

And just a reminder, I'm in a good place now. But, please help those around you who are not... sometimes just a genuine smile at a stranger can do so much. It did for me. You never know what's really going on for someone, it may look so lovely from the outside, but actually be hell.


----------



## bsms

SueC said:


> ....You couldn't do a better job at character assassination and belittling, than my own mother did to me. In many ways, that was far more hurtful than the physical violence and brutality I bore the brunt of as a child...
> 
> The hurt about that largely stopped when I ceased caring about what they thought, and minimised my contact with them around six years ago. One of my bugbears in life is how incredibly long it took me to cease caring about my parents' opinion of me...


As hard and as painful as that must have been, your discussing it has helped me understand some of what my oldest daughter went thru in her marriage. She is continuing her counseling but is genuinely recovering. She was here this evening with her kids (kids visiting, then in a few months she will have joint custody). Her divorce was just finalized but she said she still finds herself worrying about how her now-ex will react - and then realize she no longer needs to worry!

She is now living with a guy. Neither one is sure if they want it for a year or for life. But she mentioned how something went wrong, and she was waiting for him to explode...and he was like, "_Oh well. Let's start dealing with the mess!_" She said it was a shock to realize she wasn't going to spend the next 12 hours hearing about how she was a failure, and then a shock to realize what she had gone through for years. No explosion. No recriminations. Just, "_How do we make things right?_" The contrast between her life now and what she was going thru a year ago shocks her.

As hard as it has been for you, your sharing (along with others) has helped me to understand. My parents had their faults but they were both very well-intentioned parents who wanted the best for us kids. I don't think I appreciated how lucky I was growing up! She didn't just hide the abnormality of her life from us. I think she hid it from herself. Now she waits for explosions that just don't come....kind of like me riding Bandit now, and sometimes still bracing for a violent spin that...just doesn't come any more.

Just wanted to thank you, @SueC. I've led a pretty sheltered life in many ways.


----------



## SueC

This is a song your daughter might enjoy, @bsms - it's a good song for anybody who's ever had to leave anyone because they weren't respected.






Good luck to her and to your family.
@egrogan, I didn't know Wilco but I'm enjoying that - including the lyrics - thank you. 

I'll get back to all this soon-ish. Thanks again, everyone, for your input.


----------



## Spanish Rider

@SueC , I did not know that XTC song. I have their later _Oranges & Lemons_ album (Mayor of Simpleton).


----------



## SueC

Spanish Rider said:


> @SueC , I did not know that XTC song. I have their later _Oranges & Lemons_ album (Mayor of Simpleton).


Man, Spanish, you have taste!  We need to have a shindig together. :dance-smiley05:

Hope things are OK in your world and especially best wishes for Nico. ♥


----------



## Knave

I think it will be forever before I catch up, but I did want to answer your question. I’m not sure I have a good answer though. I’m pretty scheduled; the milk cow definitely helps to maintain that. Certain days of the week I do certain things, and then I make an effort to exercise when a break comes in my day.

That said, when I am going to work on the ranch or even helping on the farm I get way behind. I don’t work out those days. I have to remind myself not to panic and just to catch up when I have a day again.


----------



## SueC

Sounds like a good strategy, @Knave - I'm trying that, and what @knightrider suggested. 

We had a very strange weather system this week which dumped a lot of rain on WA and generally felt like end times; it was forecast so we went off to the library in preparation and came home with lots of interesting stuff. I'm reading _Fatal White_, the fourth in the Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellacott detective series by JK Rowling writing under a pseudonym - I'm sure I've mentioned the others before. It's kind of addictive, like Val McDermid's Tony Hill/Carol Jordan books, with the difference that it makes you laugh on almost every page, like classic Raymond Chandler novels - it's so astutely observed, and the lead characters are totally endearing.

In this book, Robin marries the odious Matthew while we readers send expletives and black cartoon bubbles up into the ether. He's her childhood love, but has hatched out into something of a hyena coming out of adolescence - while Robin is still loyal to the boy she loved at school and her only one ever, and can't see the metamorphosis as clearly as the readers - although there's lots of red flags that are waving in her face. Matthew, however, is a master manipulator (and a prime example of a controlling, emotionally manipulative narcissist) - until she wises up to him, _finally_ - sigh. The scene where she finally walks out on him is gold - and a nice example of how to do this, for anybody finding themselves in such an unfortunate predicament. I'm sure many readers were cheering - if you've not experienced that sort of stuff yourself, you surely know someone who has.

And yeah, the actual case is also fascinating, but I'm still reading... Interesting accounts of how various types of "society" in England operate, and not far off, I'll bet. Also, a distinctly horrid lot of militant lefties - and I say that as a leftie, but OMG, I don't support what those characters stand for.  Rowling does a fabulous "show don't tell" with all of this - details like a far-left rally at a community hall, where none of the participants help the hall worker stack the chairs at the end of the meeting - the author shows throughout this novel that entitled behaviour, hypocrisy, and personal and systemic corruption can be found in every shade of politics. How did @bsms put it recently? "Left wing, right wing, same vulture." :lol:

Highly recommended. Glued to the thing.

Hope everyone is enjoying their northern summer! :charge: :charge:


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## knightrider

I have enjoyed every book you have recommended. I ordered the first one in the series from the library. It is on hold currently. I have to wait until a few other people have read it, and then it will be my turn. I can get it on my tablet from the library. Thank you for all your book recommendations!


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## SueC

You're so welcome, @knightrider, and I'm glad you're enjoying this stuff. There's few pleasures to compare with a good book, and it's a very lockdown-friendly pleasure too. In case you want to try something completely different, have you ever read anything by Haruki Murakami? Brett put me onto him, when we first met. I've just put _Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage_ back in my reading pile; first read that a couple of years ago and found it particularly beautiful. 

By the way, here's a joke you might enjoy: Insane Entertainment Especially For Cure Fans - Page 3 ;-)

Sunsmart has actually been running around flat-out kicking up his heels with the others this week - sort of like a playful fluffy yak. And, he's constantly trying to nip at my sleeve or any other loose fabric, with a glint in his eye. So I'm thinking of taking him out for a sedate little ride for the first time in half a year, either today if the rain stops for long enough, or tomorrow (sunny forecast). I think we'd both enjoy it. Just to complicate matters, his bridle broke last time I rode him (because I half took it off and let him drink from a tub, and then he got startled and ran backwards, ripping the bridle which was on the ground) - so I have to patch in a new (very old) cheekstrap. Also, I don't know how I'm going to get a saddle on that big shagpile of hair - I'm seriously thinking about getting some clippers if he doesn't start shedding soon...

And, I'm back into a semi-regular exercise regime. Thanks for your ideas and support - also @Knave! :hug:

Got some nice photos for everyone...


----------



## SueC

*A WALK IN GALE-FORCE WEATHER*

This was last weekend's weather forecast: Saturday, fine and sunny; Sunday, Armageddon. So, sensibly, we planned to do our hiking outing on Saturday. We'd both just had the first working week back from the holidays, and I'd been super productive on the farm. Saturday morning dawned - and I went splat. I just couldn't move, couldn't get out of bed. Sometimes, after a day with particularly long hours coming at the tail end of more solid days, my whole system just goes splat - I think that's its way of enforcing rest on me. I had zero energy, could barely keep my eyes open, and spent most of the day reading or snoozing or having horizontal conversations with my husband. I really, really hate not having any energy, but I suppose this is a form of recharge, and Brett is forever telling me that if I didn't do quite so much in a single good day, I'd probably not go splat like this. (I go splat at least once a month; sometimes once a week.)

Anyway, Sunday dawned and I felt much better - positively energetic. The wind was howling in the darkness outside, rain was being thrown violently against the window, and I bounced out of bed and made breakfast and plans. After all, there's no such thing as bad weather, just inadequate clothing. While the comatose form of my husband just began to stir vaguely in the presence of tea at his bedside (it has magical effects on him even when he is largely unconscious - sort of like putting a cracker with peanut butter on it just in front of the nose of a sleeping dog :lol, I was putting together a thermos of tea with sugar and a generous dash of brandy (an adaptation of the central European thing of taking a thermos of tea with sugar and rum with you on winter outings - we just both prefer it with brandy), and a bag with nuts and fruit. The radar online showed that there were reasonably gaps between the incoming cloud bands, and I was ready for adventure.

Brett knows me well and is an incredibly affectionate, supportive husband. He did NOT say, "I'm not going out in this, you lunatic!" He just smiled and got the backpacks from the attic, and said, "I know it's an important sanity thing to you to get a leisure day away from the farm once a week, let's go!"  :happydance:

Holidaying in Tasmania in our pre-farm days, we used to go out in all weathers to cram as much hiking as possible into our stays, so we do have the equipment, and can still dig for that rain, hail or shine attitude in ourselves. We headed to Denmark, where we could choose from a number of suitable shorter walks that would fit into the gaps between the cold front's cloud bands, and where the bakery loomed, with all its delights, and where there was plenty of indoors stuff on offer in case we had to sit out downpours.

As it was still raining when we got to this small coastal town, and we were ready for an early lunch anyway, and because it's better to have yummy bakery items inside you as fuel for a hike rather than as ballast after, we headed straight to those award-winning premises. I chose a seafood pie - those things are pure poetry - and a strawberry tart I will tell you about later; Brett got a potato-top beef pie, and a princess slice. I'd never heard of such a thing - and if you haven't either, it looked a bit like a slice of Swiss roll, but with an almost fluorescent emerald green exterior, which my husband explained was marzipan with food colouring in it.  We sat on a low brick wall outside, in the sunbeams just starting to laser through the gaps in the stormclouds, and began to eat.

The seafood pie, as I said, was pure poetry. As my teeth bit into its perfectly crunchy spelt crust, the air rising off the hot filling wafted up, and I inhaled an intoxicating aroma of leeks, scallops, potatoes and sour cream for a blissful instant before the creamy, delicious mixture hit my tongue. God, they make magnificent pies - no wonder they win so many major awards for them. My stomach was purring with happiness, and the sunlight made a golden glow even through my closed eyelids. I put the strawberry tart in my backpack as a hiking snack - that way I could properly enjoy the lingering afterglow of the seafood pie, and we could head over to Monkey Rock to make the most of the rain gap and commence the walk to Lights Beach - a firm favourite we've done several times this year already.

We set out through the uphill-downhill woodland sections, and were at the second stile soon after - the Bibbulmun track crosses private property in that section, so you clamber into the host farm on the first stile, and back out of it a while later on the second stile, and then you're in the proper bushland, the incredibly biodiverse coastal heath on the primary and secondary dunes fringing the coastline. The incipient southern spring is already apparent in the first wave of wildflowers, which will become a tsunami within a month. I love the biodiversity treasure-trove we are so lucky to live in. 

I sat on the second stile to eat my strawberry tart, just as I had envisaged myself doing, earlier. I've mentioned this before, but the Denmark Bakery really does deserve a Nobel prize for the ingenious way it has solved the soggy-pastry problem commonly seen with custard-fruit tarts: With a thin layer of dark chocolate over the inside of the crust. The chocolate is impervious to water, problem solved completely and deliciously - the crust stays crunchy, and the chocolate adds even greater heights to the pastry-custard-fruit symphony, like a naughtily added xylophone playing counterpoint.

Also, I must put in a word of admiration for the apparent determination of the Denmark bakery to maximise the amounts of custard and fruit that can fit into a smallish (and completely perfect) tart shell. To this end, they have made a creamy and very coherent vanilla custard that hangs together well enough to make a towering hemisphere, on the surface of which they have stacked luscious, perfectly ripe strawberry halves, held together by a layer of glaze. Heavenly... 

We didn't take any photos until we got to the beach, having already documented this walk at least twice this year - but  check out the wild seas down at Lights Beach last Sunday! The ocean was pushing the water one way, and the wind was pushing it the other, with very spectacular results.


----------



## SueC

There's more...











...and some from the general landscape, including the magnificent coastal heath, on the walk back to Monkey Rock...















We both had a supercalifragilistic Sunday.  Here's a song we listened to driving in the rain, which was perfect for the atmosphere...






...and as some of you know, I do a lot of online music journalling these days at an alternative music forum. I discussed the composition of this piece in a recent post to a thread where a number of us are reminiscing about the 80s: 'The 80s and other reminiscences' - Page 3

That's for anyone interested in music, culture, subcultures and general history - and also, on the first page of this thread we're sharing outlandish "dress-up" photos - @knightrider, there's a few shots of me from 20 years ago wielding a sword at a school formal in the name of Catholic school social distancing... :rofl:

If anyone wants to post in response to those "off-site" posts in this journal, you're most welcome. I know that some of you will have great material as well! 

Lots of love to _all y'all_ - now I gotta get out in the garden again... the weeds got taller than me in the holidays...


----------



## bsms

CS Lewis once wrote something about how you cannot know an area or appreciate it properly if you only walk in nice weather. He said it was important to sometimes go out when it was storming. That some of his best walks had come during downpours.

Me? When riding a horse, I seek excellent weather. Jogging? I've done it below zero. Done it is 40 mph winds. Done it in rain - on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound Washington and at Upper Heyford England, a dozen miles north of Oxford. Here in the desert, I have gone out when it was 100 degrees. And my youngest likes to hike as it is getting dark, returning to the car as it is getting very hard to see.

One doesn't understand nature if one hides when she is scowling. And her scowls often aren't scowls at all. Just seeing if we mean it.

Couldn't find the quote I'm thinking about, but found this:



> "Don't you like a rather foggy day in a wood in autumn? You'll find we shall be perfectly warm sitting in the car."
> 
> Jane said she'd never heard of anyone liking fogs before but she didn't mind trying. All three got in.
> 
> "That's why Camilla and I got married, " said Denniston as they drove off. "We both like Weather. Not this or that kind of weather, but just Weather. It's a useful taste if one lives in England. :cheers:"
> 
> "How ever did you learn to do that, Mr. Denniston?" said Jane. "I don't think I should ever learn to like rain and snow."
> 
> "It's the other way around," said Denniston. "Everyone begins as a child by liking Weather.Strength You learn the art of disliking it is you grown up. Noticed it on a snowy day? The grown-ups are all going about with long faces, but look at the children - and the dogs? They know what snow's made for."
> 
> "I'm sure I hated wet days as a child," said Jane.
> 
> "That's because the grown-ups kept you in," said Camilla. "Any child loves rain if allowed to go out and paddle about in it." - That Hideous Strength


----------



## knightrider

> By the way, here's a joke you might enjoy: Insane Entertainment Especially For Cure Fans - Page 3


I super super appreciate the joke. Living in Trump country, as I do, I have to deal with a lot of possums (by the way, that creature surely does not look like a possum. Maybe a hamster?) who think that billionaires are fine, deserve to keep their money, and have no intention of sharing their few possum dollars with any possums who might have even fewer.

Someone that I would (and used to, and still do, in some respects, but this possum thing . . . I don't understand) normally respect gave the example of a teacher who gives a test, then averages all the grades and gives everyone a C.

I had the thought of quoting the Bible the story of the good Samaritan and suggesting that not helping those less fortunate is rather like the priest and the Levite who crossed the road on the other side and did not help the naked wounded man . . . just let him lie there to die.

But I am not good about confronting people, especially friends that I think the world of, and especially when those friends are battling cancer. So, I said, "Hmm, OK." I berate myself for not having a good rebuttal, but I also have to forgive myself because I am just not a rebuttling type person. It's just not in my nature to argue . . . and it never changes anyone's mind anyway. She certainly didn't change MY mind with her stupid comparison.

Cookoo's Calling became available and I have started reading it.

Interestingly enough, I read The Casual Vacancy and was quite disappointed with it. It was grim and sad, and I disliked the characters. Other people seem to love it. I wonder why I didn't.

Sometimes books hit me certain ways because of the mood I am in when I read them. When I was an adolescent living in Ecuador, we endured a revolution. I read Treasure Island by candlelit with guns and tanks and tear gas hovering around me. I thought it was such a great book--but I have the feeling it was more the aura of danger as much as the book (which is really quite good).


----------



## SueC

bsms said:


> CS Lewis once wrote something about how you cannot know an area or appreciate it properly if you only walk in nice weather. He said it was important to sometimes go out when it was storming. That some of his best walks had come during downpours.


Yeah, that's spot on, isn't it? I think it's the same with us, looking back at our walks. We were always going in all weathers pre-farm; I don't know what changed it - maybe it's working outdoors in all weathers, maybe we were going soft - but we loved that Sunday walk and I'm glad I went splat on Saturday; and we've decided not to take the weather into account when walking anymore. This was the best walk we had in ages. It was so invigorating, and the scenery was so wildly beautiful.

CS Lewis was a keen walker too, and can't you just tell reading his prose? 




> Me? When riding a horse, I seek excellent weather. Jogging? I've done it below zero. Done it is 40 mph winds. Done it in rain - on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound Washington and at Upper Heyford England, a dozen miles north of Oxford. Here in the desert, I have gone out when it was 100 degrees. And my youngest likes to hike as it is getting dark, returning to the car as it is getting very hard to see.
> 
> One doesn't understand nature if one hides when she is scowling. And her scowls often aren't scowls at all. Just seeing if we mean it.


I agree about the horse riding versus on your own feet distinction, for weather. But yeah, the most memorable walks we had were things like failing to get to the top of Cradle Mountain because we got snowed in halfway - it would have been dangerous to continue, as there was already half a metre of snow up there and you couldn't see the track markers anymore. And this picture of that day was taken by a Yorkshireman who was up there in _shorts_!










The second time we did Cradle Mountain together was in fog, and we got to the top, but had zero views. On the third attempt, we could see for probably 100km all around.

I remember one time about ten years ago, when Brett woke me up in the morning and said, "Let's go, there's snow forecast on Bluff Knoll!" We had a very soggy climb through the rain until we got up on the mountain plateau; it was covered in fine snow - which is about as good as it gets in Western Australia.

And then there was the time we tried to do Shadow Lake circuit near Lake St Clair on a Tasmanian summer evening; a two-hour walk... and we missed a track marker, and ended up going on a five-hour trek to a different location instead, and the last hour of that walk was in darkness, no moon, just the occasional dim light from our (old) mobile phones whose batteries were rapidly diminishing... and we ended up splashing through puddles because we had to conserve the batteries. Got back to the (terribly unhygienic) Derwent Bridge hotel (the average backpacker lodge is ten times as clean and luxurious, but this was the only accommodation on offer) very late and we made a bean-and-avocado salad from the contents of our cardboard box pantry right there on the bed, because there was no other furniture in the manky room, and that was the only reasonably clean surface...

There's loads of walks we did like this, and now we're determined to have more stormy, rainy walks.

When I was a teenager, I had no torch nor a proper rain jacket, but used to bushwalk in all weathers on tracks that could be reached from my parents' farm - and at night, moon or no moon, sometimes in the pitch black and just from memory. When there were thunderstorms, I used to go down to the floodplain and enjoy the show, and get thoroughly soaked in the process. I'd shower when I got in, and get reprimands for getting my clothes wet, but I just hung them out to dry on the undercover line.

I also remember a time in high school, in the autumn, when after the long, long summer drought there was the first proper downpour - we were on morning recess, I was 15, and I walked straight out into the middle of the quadrangle to feel the rain on my skin, while other students who didn't know me well thought I was a lunatic. (It was warm, and my light clothing dried off pretty quickly afterwards.)

So yeah, we mustn't go soft in middle age! :lol:


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## SueC

knightrider said:


> I super super appreciate the joke. Living in Trump country, as I do, I have to deal with a lot of possums (by the way, that creature surely does not look like a possum. Maybe a hamster?) who think that billionaires are fine, deserve to keep their money, and have no intention of sharing their few possum dollars with any possums who might have even fewer.


Glad you got a giggle out of that. :smile: My grandmother had to put up with Hitler, even though she never voted for him; and she saw neighbours loaded onto cattle trucks with armed soldiers ready to shoot anyone who wanted to help them. Similarly, I have to put up with the entitled, ignorant, decidedly horrible people who've been in the "top job" in Australia for the last 6 years or so, and who run concentration camps on Nauru, and who tilt the odds against us little people more every day - and I have to put up with the current US President destabilising the whole world, and with the disgusting stuff he says about women and minority groups and just in general, and through no fault of my own either. Hitler famously said that the bigger the lie you told in government, the more likely it was to be believed, and you can see that pretty clearly in the world today.

The problem for us "ordinary" folk is that the people pulling the strings and hogging most of the resources in this world are making most of the rules, and this results in anything but a level playing field. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't see it - even a lot of possums don't; as Orwell showed in _1984_ you can always subject them to prolefeed and propaganda, and keep them running on their hamster wheels so they have little energy for anything else, including rational and critical thinking (for which a good education is an excellent antidote, but fewer and fewer people are getting one when governments water down public education for possums).

Speaking of, the most common possum in Australia is the Brushtail Possum, and it looks like this:










Very different from your American opossums - it's rather pudgy and cute - more photos here: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=brushtail+possum&t=canonical&iax=images&ia=images

Here's another thing I find so paradoxical - that many people who think hereditary privilege in the form of monarchy is wrong wrong wrong seem to find oligarchy OK, and seem to think it's completely fair and reasonable that the children of wealthy people get a better education and employment prospects than everyone else's children. The Australian education system is becoming increasingly two-tier in the last 30 years, with the private sector expanding and public system being increasingly de-funded in real terms, and hamstrung in other ways, through poor policy and management. A vastly disproportionate amount of high-salary jobs and power positions in this country go to people who went to exclusive private schools (and they like to keep things that way, "jobs for the boys"), and get there not because of merit, but because of connection - not so different from the old English aristocracy, who also generally liked to think of themselves as "a better class of people" - and to think that they are entitled to their position - that they deserve it, and got it by working hard, and that nobody else works as hard as them - but they don't know the half of it, having never been possums themselves.

This week, in our part of the world, a buffoon (in the true sense of the word) of a mining magnate, who is himself up on corruption charges (but good luck convicting him), has announced his intention to sue the WA government for $30 _billion_ for loss of profit, because of "interference" with his apparently God-given right to set up iron ore mines wherever he pleases and to whatever environmental and social standards he sees fit. That's $12,000 for each man, woman and child in Western Australia. And apparently, because of how the rules are now written, he has a good chance of succeeding in the High Court. The complete irony is that the ore in the ground doesn't actually belong to him, it belongs to the public; and the government is supposed to be able to administrate mining permits and conditions in the public interest - but with all the shonky rules increasingly imposed by the rule-makers (including trade agreements), this is becoming ever more a thing of the past. The majority of the profits from mining in our country end up with a minority of people, and _not_ shared equitably as a common good.

This is the same guy who is taking the WA government to court for imposing hard borders in the face of SARS-CoV-2 (the hearing has been postponed to October) - hard borders that at present have resulted in zero documented community transmission in WA, and that are supported by over 90% of the WA public (it's allowing us to at least run an internal economy largely unhampered), but apparently one wealthy person with access to expensive lawyers and probably mates in the judiciary as well, who's not been held to account for his own crimes, can hold us West Australian citizens to ransom, and decide that we don't deserve to have our wishes respected, and can cite some constitutional rule in favour of the wealthy elite, to run roughshod over the ethical rights to such decisions, of the millions of people living in our state.

mg:




> Someone that I would (and used to, and still do, in some respects, but this possum thing . . . I don't understand) normally respect gave the example of a teacher who gives a test, then averages all the grades and gives everyone a C.


And this is a very poor analogy, and a pat answer, and you're right, you can't argue with people like this, it's a complete waste of time. You could go through why and how the analogy is poor, and 99% of them still wouldn't change their minds - it's a rusted-on point of view, and those are almost impossible to challenge rationally.




> I had the thought of quoting the Bible the story of the good Samaritan and suggesting that not helping those less fortunate is rather like the priest and the Levite who crossed the road on the other side and did not help the naked wounded man . . . just let him lie there to die.


And that's exactly what springs to mind for me, as well. I don't know how it is that a lot of religious people can read the gospels (or maybe they don't, really? - properly read them, on their own, front to back, before getting other people's official interpretation/distortion etc?), and then hold the views they do on homelessness, and social justice in general. Maybe to them, the person lying in the gutter in Jesus' Samaritan parable was "one of them" - you know, a "good sort, from a good home" and not a "no-good scoundrel who deserves what's coming to them"... I think a lot of contemporary Christians are really more into the Old Testament, than they are into the gospels, in which Jesus explicitly criticises, again and again, some of the unjust ideas of the religious establishment of the time - and therefore, I think that a lot of contemporary religious folk are actually modern-day Pharisees. :evil:

I think it would be a good start if everyone who likes to think of themselves as Christian read Martin Luther King's book of sermons called _Strength to Love_, if they haven't already done so. MLK was't perfect, he had his own flaws and biased like everyone, but he was a critical and independent thinker, and an excellent writer, and very good at applying Jesus' ideas to contemporary situations.




> But I am not good about confronting people, especially friends that I think the world of, and especially when those friends are battling cancer. So, I said, "Hmm, OK." I berate myself for not having a good rebuttal, but I also have to forgive myself because I am just not a rebuttling type person. It's just not in my nature to argue . . . and it never changes anyone's mind anyway. She certainly didn't change MY mind with her stupid comparison.


I also don't think it's worth debating this stuff except in situations where you're not just wasting your breath, energy etc. No need to berate yourself. Anyway, leading by example is infinitely superior to all the well-intentioned talk in the universe. inkunicorn:













> Cookoo's Calling became available and I have started reading it.
> 
> Interestingly enough, I read The Casual Vacancy and was quite disappointed with it. It was grim and sad, and I disliked the characters. Other people seem to love it. I wonder why I didn't.
> 
> Sometimes books hit me certain ways because of the mood I am in when I read them. When I was an adolescent living in Ecuador, we endured a revolution. I read Treasure Island by candlelit with guns and tanks and tear gas hovering around me. I thought it was such a great book--but I have the feeling it was more the aura of danger as much as the book (which is really quite good).


Brett was smiling; he likes _Treasure Island_ too, although he didn't read it in heightened circumstances (I've never read it myself). Of course, I did read _Strength to Love_ in the heightened circumstances of domestic violence in my family home, and being a target of ethnic discrimination in the society we had migrated to (also with frequent violence and verbal and emotional abuse, in my middle school years - although the discrimination lasted well into my adulthood, and I _still_ get comments about how un-Australian I am, from certain ********...). So, under circumstances like that, what MLK wrote was of much more than academic interest - it was of huge practical interest - as was reading the Gospels - and I drew a lot of hope and encouragement from both, and had my thinking permanently changed by both, and in a good way.  And becoming agnostic didn't lower my affection for these texts in any way.

I've not read _The Casual Vacancy_, but Brett has. He gave me a run-down of it this morning, and said that he didn't love it either and can see why you feel that way - but that he saw it mostly as a book that said, "Don't typecast me!" - because of Harry Potter. It was showing she had other boxes of tricks, other ways of writing. He says it was well-written and made very good points, but yes, there really weren't any very likeable characters in it... but both of us fell in love with Robin Ellacott, and with Cormoran Strike! 

Everytime I hear about Florida in the news, I think of you - and it's horrific, from our perspective here. We think what's going on in Melbourne right now is bad, and keep our fingers crossed for our eastern cousins, but it's playschool compared to what you're facing. :hug: Melbourne actually has a _chance_ of containing it - but that possibility ran away a long time ago, where you live, unfortunately. You have my love and best wishes. I'm going riding later today and I will think of you riding in Florida. Stay safe. :hug:


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## SueC

Some music by World Party, the brainchild of Karl Wallinger, who was in the early Waterboys line-up and that band, of course, hailed from Scotland (hello @Caledonian, how are you doing? :wave, even though Wallinger himself is actually Welsh. This music is around 30 years old now, but as relevant as it ever was.


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## SueC

*EXPERIMENTAL RIDE*

As mentioned a couple of posts ago, Sunsmart was seen galloping with the others and kicking up his heels this week, on several occasions, and also he's been pulling at my sleeves and other loose bits of fabric with a glint in his eye. He's been tossing his head again as he always used to do, and was generally making an energetic impression for the first time since late summer, when his Cushings blew out.

So today, the weather forecast was nice and sunny - which doesn't change the fact that half the low-lying areas are waterlogged due to recent over-enthusiastic downpours and there's mud everywhere and I need Wellington boots to walk down our driveway at the moment (but alas, that's getting fixed; a person of good reputation with these things is installing the drainage our place needs, and will also upgrade our existing driveway for us so that it reaches all the way to the house - the last bit of infrastructure our place really needed, but we did start on a shoestring so it took a while...). I slaved away avidly all day from early morning, with the task of doing the accumulated laundry (first fine day this week) and cleaning the whole house - including a post-vacuum mopping of every square centimetre of our floors with hot water containing lavender oil, plus doing roadside weed control (because you also need a fine day for that). In the late afternoon I took a break and haltered Sunsmart, who was conveniently nearby already. He got a good scrub, and then I had to put an ancient bridle on him that is over 40 years old now, and looks it; because last time I rode the horse, back in March, his bridle broke (because I half took it off and let him drink from a tub, and then he got startled and ran backwards, ripping the bridle which was on the ground).

I'm toying with the idea of buying a new bridle - I'd need one for riding Julian too - but the thing is, I really don't need new reins, I've got so many of those, and you can't seem to get a bridle without reins... not to mention one with a long enough browband for comfort; the modern craze seems to be to jam the headpiece right up against the sensitive backs of horses' ears. I've looked at separate browbands but even those don't seem to come in plus-sizes.

Anyway, Sunsmart looks like a yak at the moment, so the ancient bridle kind of goes with him right now. Amazingly, I was able to get the saddle over all his excess hair, and though he lost some muscle, the fit wasn't too bad. The dog was barking her head off with excitement and I was turning the air blue trying to get her to shut her gob, for goodness' sake, and stop racing around the horse in circles. In fact, she got excited the moment she saw me coming out of the house in riding pants this afternoon, sniffing the pants, bouncing up and down, and immediately looking for the horse - not any old horse, but Sunsmart. Kelpies are super clever... and she's really missed the riding.

Thankfully, the horse is used to the dog's crazy behaviour, and as I was mounting, he stomped his front feet at her, and she finally gave him some space. We got through the quagmire out the front of our house, and around the back, to the higher ground of our bushland. Sunsmart was moving out with long strides and clearly interested in the outing. He felt very like the athletic Sunsmart of yore, not like the old old man he was on our last ride in March - but he looks like a walking shagpile and you can hardly see his ears because they are so buried in fluff. I hope he starts shedding soon, or I'm going to have to buy clippers (and then convince him to hold still, bwahaha). I could use clippers for Mary Lou anyway. Anyone got any recommendations for clippers?

We rode past Julian on the way out and I asked him if he was coming, and he indeed came along. When we got to the back of the house, Chasseur was following too, and the two of them decided to gallop off together onto the forest track west, while Sunsmart and I continued walking along the sand track heading south.

A little while along the sand track, I clicked my tongue suggestively to see what he wanted to do, and what he did was to immediately and enthusiastically start a nice long-striding trot. I let the horse pick his own pace today, and he would trot for a bit, then walk a little, then trot, then walk, etc - which is about the right pace for a normal racing-bred horse resuming from a spell - these guys aren't plodders. Considering Sunsmart is 24 in December and had a huge Cushings crisis earlier this year, I thought that was pretty impressive. He's not the type to ever overdo things, and if he started doing more than what I thought he was capable of, I'd slow him down myself, but he's never ever over-exerted himself voluntarily.

So we did the fireground loop along our sand track, and out the back gate into the neighbour's place and around his two farm dams, and back again - a nice half hour jaunt. The two dams were excavated further this year because of the dropping groundwater table (we've been in drought nearly three years), and Sunsmart hadn't seen the changes yet. He was looking at everything like a tourist, and he tried out the new sand mound next to the first dam - the extra sand from the excavation has made the mound three times as tall as before, and we had quite a view of the surrounding area from the top of it.
The horse enjoys doing stuff like that - climbing a vantage point, following animal trails through the bush and not just vehicle tracks and firebreaks.

One thing he particularly enjoyed, once we emerged from the bushland after passing the second dam, was eating some of the clover in the pasture. That hill always has mature clover before we get it in the valley, and it's long been Sunsmart's hobby to harvest some on the stretch through the meadow on the way home. So I just threw away the reins (the little rope arrangement I have keeps them from falling down too far if I let them go) and let him eat and pick his own speed and route, until we got back onto the firebreak near our boundary gate.

There's serradella at the gate, so while I was busy with the electric line and the actual swing gate, I just let him go graze. Apparently the serradella wasn't as tasty as the clover, because by the time I had dealt with the gates, he had decided to start walking back by himself, so I had to lengthen my own stride a fair bit to catch up with him. I didn't run - that's never a good idea, because horses are herd animals and if you do a gait transition, they may also do one, and I can't catch a horse that's trotting flat-out, because I'm not Usain Bolt. I caught up with him after a minute or so, and didn't grab his reins, but just walked at his side - we often walk like that when I get off him on long rides; there's no need to keep hold of his reins. We actually just enjoy each other's company. He starts to try to catch my sleeve after a while, etc. When we've been on long outings, he always wants to play "the stick game" when I take breaks to walk next to him, to stretch out my own muscles once in a while or because we're between two gates and it's not worth getting back on. That game involves me finding a stick and him grabbing it and carrying it along in his mouth with a smug expression on his face. He carries it like a dog carries a bone, centred across the middle. After a while, he invites me to pull on it for a tug-of-war. :lol:

Anyway, it was nice to be out with him, and to see him moving so well, and taking such pleasure in his surroundings. I'm thinking I might put him back into light work if he doesn't show any signs of resentment, because if he can handle it, then it will be good for him to have some regular exercise, to build his muscles back up, and to give him some adventures, and also because spring flush is coming up. He's not overweight at the moment, in fact he's quite ribby which is unlike him, but at the same time has a bloated belly like a whale, from the Cushings and the cessation of training and the huge drop in self-exercise because he was so unwell for months.

We've got rain and storms back on the radar as of tomorrow night, but on the next sunny day I'll see how he's feeling, and we might go on another little ride. Anyway, we both had a lovely time today, which is wonderful. If that last ride in March had been our last ride ever, that would not have been a good ending - that was not a good experience, with the horse getting unwell and coming home in a state...


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## Caledonian

Hello @*SueC* - I am okay, thank you for asking. I have been a bit 'splat' myself the last two days. My body and mind finally said that enough is enough and shut down. I must have slept for more hours than I have been awake. I have been dealing with my parent's estate after the death of my mum about four weeks ago. Her health deteriorated after my dad died in November. :sad: She fought for a couple of months but was too tired, ill and, I think, brokenhearted to go on.:sad: Sixty years together.

Our Armagedon happened on Tuesday/Wednesday night. The heat triggered horrific thunder and lighting, which lasted from 10 at night through to the next morning. Despite the storm, it was very still and dry when i went to sleep but, when i woke the next morning, we had had a months worth of rain. The flooding caused a lot of damage and unfortunately a train derailment. I live near the top of a hill so the water runs off and it does give me a great view of the lightening.

It is wonderful to read how well Sumsmart is doing and the photos are beautiful: as always!


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## SueC

Dear @Caledonian, I'm so sorry about your mother. :-( :hug:

This is for her.


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## knightrider

@Caledonian, I am so sorry for the loss of both your parents. That is so hard.
@SueC, I really appreciate your thoughtful comments. It's wonderful to hear some intelligent viewpoints. I love the way you think.

I am super super super enjoying Cuckoo's Calling. THAT'S the JK Rowling I am used to: interesting, multidimensional, likeable characters. As usual, thank you for your excellent recommendation.


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## SueC

You're very welcome, @knightrider. I just knew you'd love Robin and Cormoran!  It's also really interesting that the most real and gripping characters we love also have flaws, but their hearts are enormous... 

Some more music, from an extraordinarily creative album we acquired recently, which I love more with every listen. The only reason this escaped me for 30+ years is because at the time, I loathed the radio songs off it. But what treasures lay buried with the meal tickets... :happydance:

A song about true love, and one of the slim minority of love songs I can actually relate to.  :rofl:






A live version of the album opener from the _Trilogy_ encore - because this band always adds even more verve live, while getting the technicalities picture-perfect. The glorious sound and fury actually signifies something, and shows their punk affinities - as do the outrageous lyrics. :rofl: Even Robert Smith is laughing at the end. This would be such enormous fun to put together live...






When we first heard this, Brett cracked me up by saying, "And all Mary (his wife of 30+ years) asked him to do was to take the rubbish out!" :rofl:

Change of pace - now we're in the forest with the pixies playing pipes by the stream...






Another favourite. This is even better live, but no decent videos of it exist online at the moment, unfortunately.






...and probably our overall favourite off this album, it's such incredibly beautiful music, this time with an equally beautiful poem at the centre...






Ah, music...


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## knightrider

@SueC, thank you for putting up that photo of a brushtail possum. It certainly does look like the creature in the cartoon. Our possums have long snouts and naked pink tails. I once saw a mommy possum walking along the trail with the babies hanging on. So cute. Our possums hang upside-down holding on with their tails, which is also cute. And, I have read that our possums are voracious tick eaters . . . but on the bad side, their poop carries EPM.


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## SueC

OMG, @knightrider, that is sooooooooo cute all my neural connections are jamming! :dance-smiley05:  :happydance:

It's time to get out the baby hedgehogs.














































:cheers:​

In other news, look what popped up in _The Guardian_ this morning. Apparently we are now old enough to pass on our accumulated wisdom to other people! :lol: Two weeks ago we were interviewed by lovely Alex, and this is the result: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...hat-you-might-lose-sometimes-gets-you-through

She really took the time to understand where we were coming from, was great fun to talk to (we spent almost as much time laughing as conversing), and wrote her piece superbly without distorting anything. We think it's important to be open about mental/emotional health and relationship backstages, in an era where so much stuff is stage managed to look picture perfect, so we put our hands up to be part of this series which attempts to look honestly at how people overcome the inevitable challenges of making long-term relationships work. I think it's really important for big-picture mental/emotional health not to conceal the things that are difficult for us, and not to invent a fairytale that doesn't represent your lived reality. The more we can talk about the hard things as a community, the better.

If you've got a story that might add something useful to the community conversation, contact Alex - she's great.


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## knightrider

Wow! We have a celebrity on our Horse Forum! Great article, and good job, you two! Hope it stays keeping on like that forever!


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## SueC

Bwahaha, @knightrider - no, not a celebrity, just one of the crowd, who decided to put their hand up to be in this series - and Alex wants to hear from anyone who has an interesting story, and especially from people who've been together for decades and still love and respect each other! (And _that_ aspect isn't us, not yet; we _aspire_ to that.)

Thanks for your well-wishes though - because no relationship is invulnerable, and nothing can be taken for granted.


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## Knave

She’s always been a celebrity!  I am happy for you about Sunsmart looking so much better.
@Caledonian I am so sorry about how life has treated you lately.


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## gottatrot

So sorry, @Caledonian.

Yay for Sunsmart!

I love the thought that we only dislike weather because we're grumpy adults. 

Something I notice about kids as patients is that most don't fret ahead of time about discomfort. After surgery they move normally. If it hurts, they say ow. Adults sit and think about how it will hurt before they move.

Maybe it is the same with the weather. Adults think, "Will I be wet? How long will I be cold?" Building things up in your mind often makes them seem worse.


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## SueC

*ANOTHER BONUS ADVENTURE*

The weather was nice, we pulled the whole driveway fence up in far less time than we thought it would take us in preparation for the driveway renewal happening Monday/Tuesday, Sunsmart was in the vicinity and looked cheerful, so we saddled up and rode through the valley floor, over in the neighbour's place as well, right down to Verne Road, where he cantered up the hill actually kicking up his heels in fun, and then back over the big green hillside where the clover is shooting out of the ground and the horse had a delighted half hour eating, walking a little, eating, walking a little, etc. This is the ride map:










Once we got back on a firebreak, Sunsmart became a homing pigeon (evening feedtime was due). After I shut the neighbour's gate behind us, we did some more trotting, as we'd done on the way out. Halfway down the sand track I jumped off him and just walked beside him talking to him, because I'm so happy we're even doing this, he was looking so awful four months ago I thought he was going to die. The fragile old man is gone, and a reasonable semblance of who he was before is back - taking it a little easier, but really enjoying himself again.

We have visitors at the moment, and the daughter was sitting on the dam wall as we came back around the house, so I offered her a dink on the horse, threw her my helmet, shortened the stirrups and walked back to the utility area with them, and then did a lap around the flat paddock in the afternoon sun to give this visitor a little moment to remember. It was a case of right time, right place. Eileen is coming next week and the forecast is good, so I think I'll take her on the ride I went on today, with me walking and her in the saddle - the horse will have fun, we will have fun, and we can take a long time coming back over the clover meadow and give the horse a real treat.

At this stage, I see all of this as bonus adventures I hadn't expected we were going to have. It's so nice to have some little outings like this that the horse can enjoy and that can spice up his life a bit in what's basically his retirement now.


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## SueC

*MONDAY*

Monday was a great day - the house got really clean thanks to my finding a burst of energy, and meanwhile the machinery wizards were doing a fabulous job draining the "swamp" that's been between the house and what remained of the old driveway, after we were washed out in a storm a month ago (we've been having to park down from the house and get across the bog with gumboots, and it's getting old!). They enlarged our hand-dug drainage pond (which I can now plant out with reeds all around to make more frog habitat) and installed an overflow pipe hooked up directly to the main drain they made alongside where they're going to make the built-up driveway next day. The drain looks the part, unlike the previous one put in ten years ago, and doesn't just funnel the water into the crossover to make a lake there which you have to slosh through opening the front gate... and they've brought in limestone as a foundation for the previously sandy crossover, and for the missing section where ten years ago the previous contractors ran out of material.

Because they've scraped away the topsoil layer where they're going to build up the roadway, and therefore had piles and piles of this stuff they needed to get rid of, they are not only solving our driveway issue, but our paddock gateway erosion problems that got bad over the last three years of drought...horses and cattle congregate near gateways, which destroys the turf there, exposing the sandy soil below, which then gets blown away by the ferocious winds here, leaving deep holes that expose fenceposts and fill with water in the winter. Well, guess where they put all the excess and very muddy topsoil? In the hollows that had been blown out near the gateways. Because it's not just pure sand, it won't blow away as easily - and we're topping it with gravel and / or woodchips.

It would have taken me 20 years to do that with a wheelbarrow. 

In a lovely little twist, the contractor's son, whom I didn't meet until the first workday today, turned out to be someone who was in my English class 15 years ago.  I didn't recognise him - boys change so much - but he recognised me. I had to double take when he told me who he was, because at 15 he was blonde and shaggy and impish and shorter than me and a little tubby, and now he's long and lean and towering, with a shaved head and a ZZ Top beard featuring a dark main beard and a blonde moustache! :lol: My brain started doing excavations and I remembered some of the books he'd read and reviewed for class, and also his music presentation, on Metallica! He's got a couple of littlies now and plays them guitar and they dance. :happydance:

And my friend Eileen arrived late in the afternoon in the middle of my trying to make a bonfire that ultimately failed. Conditions aren't right and I would have needed serious amounts of accelerant to make this one go. Now all we've got to show for it is a semi-burnt giant crow's nest, which we'll have to shove over and compact and try to burn closer to summer. But - there's a hollow beneath it and it would have been nice if it had burnt, and we could have heaped excess topsoil into the hollow next day... so I was wearing full fire regalia with yellow protective jacket and helmet and goggles and gloves when my friend got here, because I'm really nervous working with liquid accelerants - I've seen too many burns from accidents. And then the bonfire _flopped_, bwahahahaha. :lol:


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## egrogan

It's so satisfying to complete a big project like you've described, particularly when you get help from people with the right equipment. And THIS:


> It would have taken me 20 years to do that with a wheelbarrow.


YES! That's exactly how we felt last year when we had someone with proper equipment come out to raise the run-in sheds about a foot higher than they were and properly level/slope the ground around them to prevent ice and snow from being able to melt into the sheds and flood them. We need to do a little touching-up in the next few weeks before snow becomes a threat, but we can go to the quarry and get a couple of pickup-loads of pea gravel to take care of it on our own since the foundation is still solid. Just need to fill in a bit in the front of the sheds where the horses like to stand around, compacting the footing there.


I loved the story about meeting your student! :grin: I've always said one of the hard things about teaching in elementary school (in my case, grade 3, so 8 years old) is that it's nearly impossible to know how life turned out for them as they grew up, particularly if you've moved away from the area where you taught. My first class is nearly 30 years old now, and I haven't been able to find much about any of them, unfortunately.


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## SueC

*EILEEN'S RIDE AND PHOTOS*

Today we had to be home because of the driveway construction, so it was an ideal time to do a hiking adventure with two girls, a horse and a dog. Eileen had her very first horse ride on Sunsmart before Christmas last year; but then of course he got very sick a couple of months later. After three months of treatment on his tripled dose of Cushings medication, we were reasonably confident he'd have a bit of a retirement - he'd been so terrible, like an old and frail man, with mouth ulcers and tooth issues and losing weight rapidly and walking at a snail's pace and no interest in life, when he first got ill. But a while back, he began to perk up again and pick up in physical condition, and two weeks ago, he started racing around with the others again, looking like a galloping yak but clearly having fun, and keeping up.

I've not posted any photos all this time because the horse looked completely shocking. Warning: He still looks bad, mostly because of his horrendously long, lumpy, discoloured coat - and he's not in the shape he was. While he's been building up muscle again these past couple of months, and hasn't got huge hollows in his back and shoulders anymore, he's still pot-bellied and ribby and needing to build more muscle. But, he's got sparkle again and is adventurous, which is much more noticeable in real life than in still photographs.

We've had two little trail rides just recently, which I wrote about separately, and while he's enjoying them, I'll keep the little adventures coming, because they're good for him mentally as well as physically. Also, spring is coming up and that's a critical time for a Cushings horse, so he'll be far more stable in light work than completely retired.

So today, Eileen had her second ever horse ride. I'd like you to remember that when you look at the photos - she never had anything to do with large animals like this before, and yet look at her body language with the horse on the ground and in the saddle, and also her super balance and posture. Her heels aren't consistently down yet but that's something you can develop gradually rather than force; far more important is that a new rider learns to move with a horse, and she's doing that very well. She's got a background in yoga etc which is standing her in good stead, and is highly outdoorsy and completely besotted with animals. Eileen has been volunteering at a cockatoo sanctuary for years, recently started working with raptor rehabilitation (owls, wedge-tailed eagles), and is about to do a stint with the Monkey Mia dolphins, in a volunteer programme there. She's got this enormous camera and spends hours photographing birds with it when she visits. She took her phone on today's adventure, and though it can distort things, she got some lovely shots, which we're going to share here.

Photos 1-6: Hobnobbing pre-ride
Photos 7-8: And up!
Photos 9-10: Rider view - complete with crazy dog


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## SueC

So, you can see the usual thing I do with new riders, which is to leadline them, and give them a rope off a halter for themselves - no bit until the rider learns to balance consistently and to steer and halt with the rope first. It's not crucial that the rope is held "correctly" like reins, and also you can't jar the horse easily with a rope (unless you're deliberately brutal, or extremely unbalanced). Sunsmart loves trails, and people love riding in a natural environment, so that's what I do to start people off, these days - I started people in roundyards and/or on the lunge during my teens and 20s, but that was because I didn't have this ultra-reliable horse you could put a new person on, who would stay relaxed. My Arabian mare was a firecracker. Sunsmart had all her athleticism, but without the desire to run all the time - he was always just as happy to walk as he was to go flat out (so long as you didn't walk forever and ever).

Photo 11: The farm dam has finally filled nicely for the first time in three years, and the dog is having a quick dip as we go by.
Photo 12: Entering our bushland via the sand track - we're going out through the valley floor, like the last time I rode Smartie.
Photo 13-14: Sand track - the calendar may say late winter, but for the past week, the bushland has been saying "spring"
Photo 15: We're in the neighbour's place, near his first dam near the fenceline - you can see where we are on the ride map posted for the last ride I did with Smartie. This dam got dug out this winter because it ran dry with three years of drought, and we're climbing the large sand plateau that resulted from the deeper excavation, to get a bit of a view, and and uphill-downhill experience.
Photo 16: Going downhill. Eileen went, "Wheeeeeee!" :lol:
Photo 17: Of course, it rained buckets after the dam was deepened, so it is now full...
Photo 18: Sunsmart was always interested in looking at views, climbing up lookouts, taking wild animal tracks instead of vehicle tracks, etc... and he has all of that back now. 
Photo 19: This is the start of the valley floor tracks through to Verne Road. I've taken photos of this ride before (when the Christmas trees were in bloom, summer before last) and this is our last shot before Verne Road, because we were bushbashing on animal tracks for 20 minutes and Eileen was kept too busy to be able to get her camera out. More on that in the next post.
Photo 20: After hitting the end of this block, and you turn right, parallel to Verne Road, you come out on this huge meadow, which Eileen captured off horseback here.


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## SueC

Going through the animal tracks in the neighbour's valley floor was great fun, because it's a beautiful, wild setting, and because the horse has rather odd ideas on how to proceed. You see, when I ride him, this is where he gets to choose his own way through the myriad of tracks in this section - he loves to explore. And when I'm leadlining someone else, he doesn't quite understand that it's hard for me to crash through the undergrowth while he is picking new tracks. :rofl:

I tried walking ahead of him, and that was OK for a couple of minutes, but then he said, "It's boring walking behind you and not seeing the view or choosing the tracks!" So I let him off the lead to choose his own tracks, while walking behind him. Eileen is learning to turn and stop with the rope, and doesn't need to be on the line all the time anymore. Sunsmart likes to walk this section and hasn't ever shown a sudden burning desire to gallop flat-out through this maze of undergrowth, so this was a good place to let him off. I walked along behind the horse for a couple of minutes; when he showed signs of wanting to trot, I put him back on the lead. This meant I was crashing through the undergrowth and having to jump over bushes while the horse picked paths for himself which are of course all too narrow to share. :runpony:

We laughed and laughed and I got terribly out of breath, so I didn't notice on time that Sunsmart was heading for a path that had low tree branches across it. I yelled, "Duck, Eileen!" and though she ducked, and flattened herself to the top of the horse, the branches were too low for her to pass, and she got caught just as I was turning the horse sideways back out of this tree trap. To her great credit, she held balance and stayed on and they found daylight again. She must have got some scrapes in the process, but she just laughed and said, "Good thing I was wearing a helmet!" 

By the time we turned out of the valley floor, onto the firebreak near Verne Road, I was hyperventilating and Sunsmart was wanting to gallop up the hill, which I knew would probably be the case, so I forestalled it; but the extra animation made Eileen go "Wheee!" again. :rofl:

By the time we were on the ridgetop, and in the huge meadow which is one of the first places to grow clover in the spring, the horse was interested in sampling the clumps of this highly prized food, so I was able to gradually recover my breath. :lol:

Photos 21-27: In the meadow
Photo 28: We got back through the gate into our property, and then turned right to go the long way home, through the swamp track in the centre of our own valley floor - not marked in the most recent ride map, but you can see it, starting opposite the neighbour's dam, which Eileen took a photo of passing from our side of the fence on the way back.
Photos 29-30: Heading back on the swamp track.


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## SueC

After the swamp track comes the middle meadow, and then Scary Brook, none of which we photographed. Sunsmart doesn't like wet feet and jumps Scary Brook, so I prepped Eileen on what to do for her first jump. We had a dry run posture practice and then - wheeee!  She was in a good position and moved with the horse, so excellent first jump - and she was going, "Oh wow, oh wow, amazing!" afterwards. She asked, "Did you jump too?" and I replied, "Yes, I don't like wet feet either!" :rofl:

The dog went for another swim in our farm dam on the way back to the tiedown. The machines were working on the driveway we had to cross, and the big truck was coming our way, but the horse wasn't fazed and we walked ahead of the truck, to the utility area, where Eileen did a lovely dismount (she's on and off a horse like she's been riding all her life) and we took the saddle off. I then walked Sunsmart around a bit so he could watch the truck about to dump a load of dirt in the gateway 10m from us, rather than be surprised by sudden noises. Once the truck was done, we moved around each other and I returned the horse to his herd. He'd been fed before the ride - carrots and a big scoop of oats - and we girls were ready for a big cup of tea.

Photo 31: Happy rider
Photo 32-33: Whoosh into the dam goes Jess
Photos 34-37 : After the ride :hug:


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## Knave

He does look surprisingly different, but he’s real now is all that happened.  It looks like a lovely walk!


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## bsms

Spent the morning whacking weeds and am wheezy and tired. So I skipped reading the text. *But the pictures!* They put a big smile on my red, sweaty face! They just make things look fantastic! Thank you for sharing.


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## SueC

Knave said:


> He does look surprisingly different, *but he’s real now is all that happened.*  It looks like a lovely walk!


You know, that's exactly what I was thinking, and I nearly put it in the text too! 

...for those who don't know what we're talking about, go read _The Velveteen Rabbit_...


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## SueC

bsms said:


> Spent the morning whacking weeds and am wheezy and tired. So I skipped reading the text. *But the pictures!* They put a big smile on my red, sweaty face! They just make things look fantastic! Thank you for sharing.


You're welcome and thank you. 

When you're less of a beetroot I think you'll quite enjoy the text too! :cheers:


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## Knave

When I was little we had a tape that was The Velveteen Rabbit. The pictures were beautiful, they didn’t move; it was different than any thing I’d seen before. I had a stuffed rabbit that came with the video too. 

I watched that so many times, and every time I watched it it broke my heart (both good and bad as you know from the story).


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## SueC

*MORNING AT OUR PLACE*

Eileen is very good at documenting with a camera, and made three little videos early one morning this week, between when I was calling the horses to let them out into the big "Common" for the day, and when we went off hiking. I was unaware the camera was rolling so this is all completely natural. The horses are still a bit looky and snorty because of the changes in landscaping around the gates, and the new driveway, which you can't miss because it's bright orange (lots of iron compounds in the local rocks).






We laughed about the next one - at the end I'm going, "What? WHAT???" because I can't hear what Brett is saying to me (and probably need a hearing aid). :rofl:






The donkeys are more interested in exploring new things do they disappeared up the driveway, and I had to herd them out! (The other three donkeys had stayed out overnight to graze with the cattle by their own choice.)






Thanks Eileen, for great camera work!


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## knightrider

That was beautiful. Lifted my spirits.


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## SueC

*SOMETHING FROM THE MUSIC FORUM*

Verbatim, but I'm "reprinting" it here because some of you may enjoy the music, and the sentiments. 

Four months ago I ordered the Big Country debut album _The Crossing_ and it finally got here last week, along with Mike Scott's _An Appointment With Mr Yeats_, after having to go by sea from the UK due to current lack of air cargo space to Australia. Both are albums I've wanted to add to my collection a long time.

Here's a song many people would be familiar with because it was their most famous - but this is the album version, with a big drum intro that never made it onto the single version, which was sawed down for radio.






Finally listening to _The Crossing_ is taking me on an inevitable deep dive into Gaelic folk music again. If the only Gaelic folk music you ever hear is the twee stuff piped out of Irish bars on St Patrick's Day, try some _real_ folk music instead:






...and then have a listen to Big Country - who take that spirit and that sound, and amp it up, and play on guitars what's usually played on fiddles and bagpipes in traditional folk.






I love love love the rhythm section on this, as I always do with my very favourite music. I think it's fabulous how this song strips back to just drums and vocal at intervals. Lots of Scottish folk music is for singing while walking, or indeed while _waulking_ (working cloth by beating it against a table) as well, and has that innate rhythm and energy - here's a traditional vocals-only piece:






...and here's what one of my favourite bands ever, Capercaillie, do with this kind of thing:






...and OMG, Karen Matheson's voice just completely arrests me - go to 2:17 on this and see if you can remember to breathe...

Here's another piece like it, with extraordinarily mesmeric percussion and lovely singing, this time by Cape Breton musician Mary Jane Lamond:






If you backtrack to the Big Country songs at the start of this piece, there's that breathtaking big-drum sound this band does so well - and I just wanted to slip in another Steve Lillywhite production from the same year (1983) which I also love love love because of the sound and the energy and the never-say-die attitude:






U2 were so fabulous before they started sounding like everyone else in the late 1980s. I'm going to put in a live track from around that time, from a concert I would travel back to if I had a TARDIS - because I never got to see U2 in the raw like this; by 1988, when I saw them, it was already too late.






Equally raw and fabulous around this time were The Waterboys:






The 80s were insipid with music like 2-minute noodles - empty non-food, just add hot water - but the alternative music of the time was full of gems like this, which kept me very happy as a young person and if anything, like anything good given more time, I love even more now. The thing about the Irish and the Scots and their traditional music was that these were people under attack a long, long time and always fighting to survive, and I love the spirit this summoned in them - that you might defeat their bodies, but you could never defeat their souls, and they'd always rise up again. Big Country, U2 and The Waterboys were steeped in this and it just beamed out of them, and psychologically was a perfect fit for having to grow up with extraordinarily dysfunctional, physically and emotionally violent adults - which, interestingly (as I found out much later), the lead singers of these three bands all seemed to have a fair bit of personal experience in from their childhoods, too - and maybe that's one of the reasons they were drawn to this kind of music, as well. It's a sane reaction in the face of insanity.

Here's another track from Big Country; this time live:






The audio is a bit compromised and it's worth looking up the studio track if you like this song, but this also was a fabulous live band.

It kills me that Stuart Adamson died in his early 40s; I want to cry and scream and rage over the premature removal of this inspirational musician from the universe. Also, he was someone who gave a dam'n. There's so many horrible people who live well past middle age - if there was a God, for example, the Resident Rump would have been struck by a meteor a long time ago - but, as the Germans say, "Unkraut vergeht nicht" (roughly, "Weeds don't die" but translated, it doesn't have the same ring to it).

We were talking about this last night; the terrible sadness that a person who was well versed in drawing hope even when looking terrible circumstances in the face ended up suiciding. Brett was kind of, "Well, doesn't work then does it?" but I don't think that's true, I think it does, but there's so many other variables in equations like this, and sadly, alcoholism - also such a common thing in these cultures - played a part - and how I wish people could adopt, I don't know, chocolate and running (together), or profiteroles and bungee jumping (together), as a coping strategy instead of alcohol because it's far more helpful. Suicide is something that happens when people hit terrible lows, and reflects the extreme bottom, not the overall life experience - not the best times, not the many many wonderful things, but a crash into the valley of the shadow, and sadly when people end up in this place they're so reluctant to reach out. I lost a friend to suicide when she was just in her mid-30s, and none of us knew she ever bottomed out because she hid it so well and just refused to come out of her house when she got like this (which we found out later happened regularly, from her brother who came to Australia for the funeral - concealed bipolar).

I want to go out with a track from The Cure which I love for similar reasons as a lot of these songs. The Cure don't do "you can crush my body but you will never, ever crush my soul" but they certainly know how to create a soundscape - here's a track with gorgeous drums and percussion and melodies played with such intent and focus that it makes me soar into the stratosphere and want to weep at the same time. This is painting with sound.


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## knightrider

Remember our friend with no hands who wanted to get into horses and then got pregnant? I often think of her, and how she did.

My brother sent me this inspiring video of handicapped people, and I thought of her. I know that you were closer to her than anyone. Wish we could hear from her. Meantime, enjoy the video. I loved it.

https://webmail.windstream.net/service/home/~/?auth=co&loc=en_US&id=79007&part=2


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## Knave

I do remember! I think @SueC was talking to her privately.


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## SueC

That was kind of odd, @knightrider and @Knave... there was the initial "hello" thread of course, and then we did a lot of PMs because we kind of clicked and made each other laugh and learn cultural things about each other's countries. She seemed a really nice sort! But after she had her baby, I stopped hearing from her. Maybe she got too busy - it's understandable that having your first baby would be a rather all-encompassing, overwhelming experience, and for a lot of people it comes with a lot of sleep deprivation. I pinged her every now and then but never heard back. I therefore worried that something might have been up with the baby, or even just that there might be post-natal depression.

On the flip side, one does have to consider the possibility that one has been caught in an example of online experimentation. Some people invent personas online and play them out in an online community. The reasons aren't always malicious. The reason I know you two, and most of our regular group here, are for real is because of pictures, films, consistency over years and years, things like personal email addresses and people sending things to each other in the mail. None of this happened with this particular person. That can be an alarm bell for a fake identity, or it could just be that a person is terribly private or worried about people etc etc etc. But then you don't know that the person is for real. This also happened in my music forum community - one person we were interacting with quite a bit there because they seemed in need of a bit of friendship, and were actually good fun in many ways, and had interesting things to say, also really avoided any of those things I mentioned above that are evidence a person is real, and not a partly or wholly constructed persona used experimentally in an online community.

Whatever the case may be, real people were behind both those screen identities, and I don't have the feeling either of them were trying to take people for a ride, whether or not they were scrupulous with the truth or relating their own lived experiences. Oscar Wilde famously said, "Give a man a mask, and he'll show you who he really is." I enjoyed interacting with them anyway, and I hope they're both well and got something positive out of the experience. 

I'll see if I can do some hiking photos next...

PS: @knightrider, I can't get the video to play, it keeps telling me I must authenticate. @Knave, does it work for you? It could be our Internet configuration.


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## SueC

*GIRL HIKING WEEK*

You all saw the photos of the first day of our ladies' "pentathlon" in a previous post - Day One, when Eileen rode Sunsmart and Jess and I went cross-country with them on our own feet! 

We're slowly uploading the best photos of the subsequent days' hiking - 12km a day for three days, then a climb in the Stirling Ranges on the last.


*Wednesday, August 26*

*Peak Head, Torndirrup Peninsula*

Brett and I do this one a lot because it's a great short walk that has some serious gradients for a decent cardio workout. Last time we did that, the week before I came back with Eileen, we hot-footed it in 1h 12 minutes there and back - our all-time record. When Eileen and I went, we took our time to look at wildflowers and do photography, and took 2.5 hours for the hike.

This was the dog first thing in the morning:



Sunrise at our place:



Horses and donkeys out early so we could leave at 7am:



Middleton Beach just around the corner from where Brett works - we dropped him off and then swung by there around 7.30am:





Princess Royal Harbour, en route to the peninsula:



Start of track:

See here for slide show of the hiking photos on Peak Head - use the LEFT arrow to go forwards - it's just too much work to transfer them all one by one into this browser! Also the photos come up very small here, and this will save you time as well because you won't have to click on them. All the explanations are already on the photos.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/50304102381/in/dateposted-public/

One example from the series:


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## Knave

That is something I wonder about as well sometimes Sue. Certain times a person in the main area will say a thing that makes zero sense to me, and then I begin to wonder a bit about them.

I also couldn’t get it to play, and today I can’t see your photos either.


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## knightrider

OK. Try again. See if this one works. 






I love the part where the lady with no arms picks up her baby. That's what brought it to mind.


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## SueC

My apologies, @Knave and everyone else, I messed up something on Flickr yesterday, so here's a "reprint" of the photo post that will actually work... with a few extras too...

And thanks @knightrider for the working video - wonderful! 


*GIRL HIKING WEEK*

You all saw the photos of the first day of our ladies' "pentathlon" in a previous post - Day One, when Eileen rode Sunsmart and Jess and I went cross-country with them on our own feet!









We're slowly uploading the best photos of the subsequent days' hiking - 12km a day for three days, then a climb in the Stirling Ranges on the last.


*Wednesday, August 26*

*Peak Head, Torndirrup Peninsula*

Brett and I do this one a lot because it's a great short walk that has some serious gradients for a decent cardio workout. Last time we did that, the week before I came back with Eileen, we hot-footed it in 1h 12 minutes there and back - our all-time record. When Eileen and I went, we took our time to look at wildflowers and do photography, and took 2.5 hours for the hike.

This was the dog first thing in the morning:



Sunrise at our place:



Horses and donkeys out early so we could leave at 7am:



Middleton Beach just around the corner from where Brett works - we dropped him off and then swung by there around 7.30am:





Princess Royal Harbour, en route to the peninsula:



If anyone would like to see more, just click on the first photo and use the left arrow in Flickr for a slide show (or go to Photostream for a quick overview) - there's dozens of gorgeous photos and I really can't post them all here...

The wildflowers are really starting to come out! This is a Dryandra:




*Frenchman Bay, Torndirrup Peninsula*





There's some old ship remains; also our dog loves chasing waves:



...and we found some sea anemones!



More next time.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!


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## Knave

Beautiful!


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## tinyliny

this is a very cool photo:


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## Caledonian

Gorgeous photos Sue, especially those showing the sunrise and harbour.


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## gottatrot

I really love the pics too!

Interesting comments about the online personalities. I really do feel that I can trust that many on this forum are real and feel like I know them a bit. In fact, when I am telling stories to other horse people I meet, I will say "My friend has a mustang named Cash she uses to work cattle." Or "My friend in Australia has standardbreds." 

It's not an ego thing about having friends in different places. Just feels more natural and not false since I believe we could all meet in person and chat and the only reason we are not friends in person is related to distance.


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## Knave

I say that too @gottatrot! My friend had this happen and things like that. Someone will ask me odd, “and how would you know that person?” Lol. I really do think we are friends.


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## egrogan

I love this discussion on online personas. I realize how naive I am that it didn’t really ever occur to me that people would “play out” different personalities online. Sure, I think sometimes we get young teens here who aren’t quite what they make themselves out to be, and the occasional “troll” who for some reason enjoys getting people upset, but I take most of the long term posters here at face value.

I too tell people about “my friend who does x with their horse y” and I do feel like I’ve gotten to know so many interesting people here. I’ve never engaged in another online site the way I have this one, and at first my lovely husband was really weirded out by me keeping a regular journal and describing people I met as friends. But over time I have met a few people from HF in real life, and exchanged mail with others, and that made it all feel more real. I do agree with @gottatrot that there are so many people I’ve gotten to know here who would be awesome to spend an afternoon or weekend hanging out with!


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## Knave

Definitely @egrogan! Maybe, one day when one of us becomes filthy rich, we can all meet up and ride. @SueC will just have to ride a Zeus.


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## egrogan

Haha, I would love that @Knave!


On the topic of online personalities, I just remembered this weird story I read earlier in the summer: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/style/college-coronavirus-hoax.html
The gist of it is that a scientist created an anonymous Twitter account claiming to be a professor at a major university; the Twitter account professor posted aggressively about being discriminated against by colleagues and then getting Covid by being forced to teach in person classes. The dramatic ending was that the anonymous Twitter account professor apparently died of Covid, and this was announced by the scientist. Long story short, this scientist had been denied tenure by her own university and basically vented all her rage through this made-up Twitter account, and it all just spun out of control when people who followed the Twitter account believed it to be a real person and felt they had formed a real professional relationship with anonymous professor through the account. Weird stuff.


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## Caledonian

I've described HF people as friends in a conversations as well. After many posts and and/or pm, i find it hard to describe them in any other way. I often surprise myself when I realise that I haven't actually met them and probably never will. That's when the people I've been talking to give me funny looks.

Online personalities have a shelf life. The longer you're on a site, the harder it is to hide, as your character, experience and culture tends to show through in your posts. 



@*egrogan* that's awful, those people must be feeling very deceived and manipulated.


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## SueC

I'm up at this ungodly hour watching the US Open tennis.  When I was a little kid, I had several penpals, and when we met "for real" we always became real-life friends too. The penpal column was based around hobbies and interests, so you picked someone whose hobbies and interests you could relate to and/or found intriguing in the first place. One thing that struck me from the start is that when you write with other people, the discussions tend to be more in-depth and comprehensive than many face-to-face interactions are, and that people will give you quite a bit of their history as part of the "getting-to-know" - something that doesn't necessarily happen as much face-to-face. In part that may be the nature of the interaction - pure communication because the companionship / activities are absent - and in part it may be that people who enjoy writing are more extensive communicators and storytellers than average.

I think friendship is about interaction, caring and intention, and by that definition I consider myself friends with a number of people on HF, and also a number of my present-day penpals I've not actually met, and may not meet unless I win Lotto. I don't think it's true that you have to be face-to-face to be friends; and conversely, that the face-to-face people you hang out with are necessarily your friends - did anyone see that study that showed that a large-ish proportion of people who survey participants nominated as their friends, did not nominate them as their friends when asked independently?

On the other hand, I think it's a choice to be someone's friend and comport yourself in the manner of a friend and with the spirit of a friend accordingly, and this is genuine even if the other person doesn't reciprocate that. And isn't it funny how males will often have friends they just go to the football with or do various activities with, and never really talk about anything personal? Most women wouldn't consider that friendship, I think - when you're not sharing who you are with each other, not opening up or not taking an interest that way. I guess there are different ways of being friends.

Oooh aaah, WIlliams - Pironkova is going to a third set!


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## tinyliny

I, too, say things like, " a friend I met on Horse forum . . . ". In my case, my husband knows the depth of my involvement, as I used to stew openly about moderating discussions/ decisions with him . . . . . Now that I am not a mod, we discuss it less, but I still harbor this idea that one day . . . . I will drive / fly around and see all the delightful persons I' ve met here. We are, well, . . a really nice mob!!!


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## SueC

I hope everyone is well. LIfe is a bit of a blur at the moment; I'm trying to get my garden ready for summer. Spring flush has started and I am now lawn-mowing again... Romeo really used to save me a lot of work but I have no other horse suited to the role - when Smartie was really ill he spent some time in the garden but now he just wants to be with the others again and run everywhere with them. This week I even saw him in the middle of the pack again pelting through the forest track. I've had three more little rides on him, including this evening, and will now have to get back to exercising him lightly every other day because of spring.

Today I spent a couple of hours weeding a bed to get it ready for the first planting of mountain corn; I extricated from it four 50-litre tubs of weeds for the compost, and several handfuls of small potatoes I may use for seed elsewhere (couldn't get seed potatoes at the nursery last time; pandemic shortages... and the supermarket ones don't yield that well and can introduce potato viruses). Left standing were two big groups of apricot-coloured calendulas (now weed free), a row of kohlrabi, several silverbeets that are still yielding, and some re-sprouting celery that I'd deliberately run over with the lawn mower last week because it was getting mottled and past its best. I'd intended to dig out the roots when weeding, but I found it re-sprouting what looks like healthy new stalks, so I'll see if they will grow back useful.

I watered the whole shebang to make the slaters disappear (also the little birds tend to descend on any places I've weeded the moment I leave, so I'm sure they're helping with that). Tomorrow I get to make the planting trenches artfully between the plants in the bed I want to preserve, dig in compost, water, plant the corn, and mulch between the rows. I'm throwing on lawn clippings for that because I have plenty after today... most of them went on the compost but there's still three 50-litre tubs of clippings sitting there for that purpose. And sunflowers. I must remember to direct seed some sunflowers... I've started some in the greenhouse, but also want to direct seed some...

This multi-headed one, by the way, came from planting the black sunflower seeds I used to get for the horses as a treat:



The packet seeds tend to produce single heads only, although I've got good colours this year and can't wait to grow them...

The first tomato seedlings for the year sprouted in the greenhouse a couple of weeks back, and I potted them on already to grow to a nice size before planting out. I've got various flowers too, and cumin, and various salad greens and spring vegetables, all starting off in the greenhouse at the moment, and today I prepared pots to raise the first pumpkin, zucchini, spaghetti squash and cucumber seedlings there as well - later on in spring, I can plant seeds of those directly.

@egrogan, @Knave, @Spanish Rider and anyone else who gardens here, did you end up having a nice summer harvest this year?

I'm still putting "girl week" hiking photos on Flickr - I've now put up a nice river walk:

*Thursday, August 27*

*Luke Pen Walk, Kalgan River*

In case I've not mentioned this before, the photos from that week were all taken by Eileen - they're in wide format. She's a wonderful photographer with a real sense for composition - she photographs like a landscape painter, as you'll see from these examples:



It was an exceptionally still day, so the water was like glass, which made for such striking photos...



WIldflower season is in full swing...



This is a paperbark tree; very gnarly specimen:



...near the other end of the walk:





Then we turned around and walked back; 14km (= 8.7 miles) in total.

The dog had a whale of a time; she loves this walk - she can swim anytime she wants, the whole way, because it follows a riverbank. When she's super happy she rolls for fun, as she did here:





You can see the rest of the photos here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/

Now it's time for me to do this: Zzzzzzz... (where's the emoji for that gone to? Maybe I'm too cross-eyed to see it...)

I hope everyone has a super day. :blueunicorn:


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## carshon

I just loved the photos!!!


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## AuG

Thanks for sharing the pics. I have not been out of my little town lately and its lovely to see through the internet window. I used to row on the kalgan river and never once took its beauty for granted. I am a bit too far from it now, but it was such a special place. I know there has been a bit of subdivision out there lately. 

I got the same sort of sunflower head from my stock feed seeds  I havent got any growing currently, but there are a lot of seeds out. My poor tomato seedlings did not survive, but the egg plant and herbs are going ok. I am babying a little watermelon seedling that just poked its head up. That rain last sunday followed by the few warm days really put the spring into spring! Keep up the great work


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## Knave

Wow, just wow!

My garden did produce enough to keep us in lettuce, tomatoes, collard greens and zucchini, and it looks like it will be good with carrots and potatoes, but everything else was a wash. I don’t know if it was the awful late freezes and then hot winds or if my seeds had gone bad... birds have taken to picking them too, so that’s a bit of a problem. Who really knows? I’m just chalking it up to a bad year. 

Oh, we did a crazy hike today!


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## Caledonian

@*Knave* - Oh, brave! Nope, I could not do that, i need wide open spaces...

@*SueC* - My garden is a mess. I've some brambles, raspberries and lavender but very little else. My attention was elsewhere over the summer and the 'weeds' took over and ran rampant through the beds and paths. I spent this afternoon clearing paths of foxglove seedlings, buttercups, grass and moss. I think some plants will need to be replaced. I can compost some of it, the rest will go out in the garden waste bin to be composted by our Council.


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## egrogan

With all the construction in the front half of the house, we never did get a garden in to the nice sunny spot that was torn up with the construction. It was a phenomenal year for wild berries of all kinds, but our apple trees are looking very sad this year. Here's to next year I guess! Hopefully spring will treat you well.


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## SueC

Hello everyone! :wave:

I promise I'll attend to all your posts shortly; I'm just juggling at the moment and have my attention split (washing machine is going and a few other things) and I'm going to post a few photos Eileen took of the farm and animals when she visited!

Evening group shot - not everyone present...



Horses investigating the new driveway:



Nelly & Ben:



Close-ups of Julian, who is normally aloof with people but really likes Eileen:









An Albany Banksia - they grow naturally around the coast but we got this one from the nursery for our garden years ago:



Don Quixote up close:





Cuddles with Sparkle: 



Ben & Nelly on the new driveway:



Our three remaining steers - we may buy in a new lot of weanling calves soon, but have been careful because of three years of drought:



Mary Lou (Irish Longhair donkey) is still around, just didn't make it into that round of photos!


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## SueC

Oh, and here is today's beauty spot, worth closing your eyes and sitting on the floor for. It's the wonderful poetry of WB Yeats, gorgeously set to music by The Waterboys (and Watergirls, if you look at the sleeve notes)...






Mike Scott is one of the very few artists in contemporary music who enunciates so clearly that it's easy to understand each and every word he sings.

It's spring here with wildflowers blossoming like mad, and just the right time of year for music like this...

I'll post some wildflower photos later this week; Brett has been busy taking lots...


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## SueC

carshon said:


> I just loved the photos!!!


Eileen is an excellent photographer; I was just able to sit back for the whole week while she documented. ...will post the other two days shortly...




AuG said:


> Thanks for sharing the pics. I have not been out of my little town lately and its lovely to see through the internet window. I used to row on the kalgan river and never once took its beauty for granted. I am a bit too far from it now, but it was such a special place. I know there has been a bit of subdivision out there lately.
> 
> I got the same sort of sunflower head from my stock feed seeds  I havent got any growing currently, but there are a lot of seeds out. My poor tomato seedlings did not survive, but the egg plant and herbs are going ok. I am babying a little watermelon seedling that just poked its head up. That rain last sunday followed by the few warm days really put the spring into spring! Keep up the great work


You have eggplants out already? I guess you might be closer to the coast than us - or at least not in such a frosty spot. My eggplants haven't even germinated yet, greenhouse and all... and I gave up on watermelons here altogether... 




Knave said:


> My garden did produce enough to keep us in lettuce, tomatoes, collard greens and zucchini, and it looks like it will be good with carrots and potatoes, but everything else was a wash. I don’t know if it was the awful late freezes and then hot winds or if my seeds had gone bad... birds have taken to picking them too, so that’s a bit of a problem. Who really knows? I’m just chalking it up to a bad year.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Oh, we did a crazy hike today!


Love the photo  - reminds me of a scene in _Lord Of The Rings_ where they go into the mountain to elicit the help of the dead...

It's good to hear that your zucchini grew this season. Maybe the world isn't ending after all, despite, fire, flood, pestilence, widespread corruption etc. I've just put some zucchini seeds in pots in the greenhouse to get them started - hopefully...

Late freezes and hot winds sounds a lot like what we get here. Last year the new, already quite large apricot tree had blossomed with such promise, and then we had a late frost just as its fruits were starting - killed them all (the other trees flowered later). I hope we get apricots this year... but yeah, frosts and hot winds are the things we struggle with too. Cucurbits were all _meh_ last summer - very little - hoping for a better season this time... tomatoes were OK (but not great), greens fine, next to no berries, tons of plums and cherries and apples and olives, first crop of pears, some nectarines, beans a flop mostly, mountain corn very reliable... ever grown mountain corn?




Caledonian said:


> My garden is a mess. I've some brambles, raspberries and lavender but very little else. My attention was elsewhere over the summer and the 'weeds' took over and ran rampant through the beds and paths. I spent this afternoon clearing paths of foxglove seedlings, buttercups, grass and moss. I think some plants will need to be replaced. I can compost some of it, the rest will go out in the garden waste bin to be composted by our Council.


I suppose you have winter coming up; you can start again in late spring? Love that saying about the apples, by the way - so true!  Listening to any good music? Any books you'd recommend? I saw that a book about a Glaswegian childhood has been short-listed for the Booker - _Shuggie Bain_ - have you read it? I'm thinking of putting it on the book pile...




egrogan said:


> With all the construction in the front half of the house, we never did get a garden in to the nice sunny spot that was torn up with the construction. It was a phenomenal year for wild berries of all kinds, but our apple trees are looking very sad this year. Here's to next year I guess! Hopefully spring will treat you well.


Did you get to freeze any berries for winter?  ...as we well know, the realities of farm life sometimes mean some things don't get done as the to-do list is too long... good luck next spring then and thanks for the good wishes for my spring. By the way, I expect you had lots of cackleberries this summer - do you call them that too in the US? ;-)

Speaking of work, back to it now...


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## egrogan

@SueC, I did freeze some berries as we went, but then I ate a lot of fruit and yogurt smoothies for lunch when the weather turned hot and used up all my frozen berries- oops!! :rofl:


Haha, I had never heard of cackleberries so had to look that one up- but yes, we have had dozens and dozens of eggs for months now, even though my hens are old ladies at this point (between 4 and 6 years old). I've been taking 5 or 6 dozen to the local food pantry once a month and giving them away to friends. I know some people do freeze them for scrambling in the future, but I mostly use them for baking (lovely husband eats two on a sandwich for breakfast every morning) so I haven't really figured a good way to make them last longer besides just storing in the refrigerator.


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## SueC

I've got an idea, @egrogan: Make sponge cakes (with lots of separated eggs) ahead and freeze - and then use for trifles down the track! ...we just had the most delicious chocolate and cherry trifle this week, from when I found frozen cherries from last summer under something else in the freezer (like an early Christmas! ). I made the chocolate sponge fresh, but often I make double quantities and freeze half for an easy trifle next time around...

Berry smoothies made with frozen berries are probably the best use of berries anyway, and taste best in summer. Of course, as the quantities increase, some of them may survive into winter... :lol: We've got some mulberries starting to ripen, so I better net the trees before the birds strip them...


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## egrogan

Fabulous idea to make extra sponge cake and freeze! That may be a weekend project :grin:


I love mulberries. We don't have any currently, but when we were in graduate school we had a beautiful tree in our backyard that was loaded with berries every year. We made some of the best pies with those berries. Do you happen to know if mulberries grow on bushes and trees, or just trees? Lately when we've been riding I've noticed some "blackberries" that look too long and skinny to be blackberries, and really reminded me of mulberries. But I've only known mulberries to grow on a tree....


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## SueC

I think it depends on how you prune them, @egrogan. You could hedge mulberries, for instance, if you prune them aggressively and plant them close by each other. They kind of look bushy when young anyway (if you keep them no taller than you are), and only grow into proper trees with time. Our trees are very young still, and it's the first year it's worth netting them, and will be our first mulberry harvest. I doubt any berries will make it into winter - maybe when the trees get bigger...  

I can't believe people have bred unpigmented "white mulberries" - antioxidants are great, and if you don't get stains on you eating berries it's not nearly as much fun! :happydance:


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## egrogan

Yeah, the mystery berries I've been seeing are on vines/canes and the leaves look like blackberries. Maybe it's just a different type of blackberry. :think: Never heard of white mulberries but that does seem quite ridiculous. Though we had a silver car at the time, and the birds certainly used it as a canvas for a Jackson Pollack-style painting throughout the mulberry season!


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## AuG

> You have eggplants out already? I guess you might be closer to the coast than us - or at least not in such a frosty spot. My eggplants haven't even germinated yet, greenhouse and all... and I gave up on watermelons here altogether...


I am on the sunny side of the mountains  I have been injured so am living through your hiking photos lol. Mum came down to visit from the city and bought the seedlings with her, they are currently living on the patio until they get a bit bigger. I had done well with watermelons before, but pests are the deciding factor in success. I thought about a mulberry tree here, maybe down the track. Its good to have info about them. I struggle to keep the birds off the grapes!


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## SueC

I love puzzles, @AuG. 

If by the mountains you mean the closest thing we have to mountains here, then you're north of the Stirlings... maybe in Cranbrook... or perhaps even in Kendenup, which seems like a lovely place each time we drive through there, if a bit dry. You could definitely grow watermelons in Kendenup...

On the other hand, you mention grapes... and while there's Fox River etc, grapes remind me of the area north of the Porongurups, so perhaps you're in Porongurup... Which is also a lovely place... and far less dry...

But then again, there's grapes all over the place and other places one could refer to as "the mountains"! ;-)

I hope your injuries are healing.


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## waresbear

*Sits here, looking at blueberry stains on fingers from scarfing down a fresh baked muffin, reading*


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## SueC

Aaaah, @waresbear, blueberries!  Our bushes are small yet but we have hopes. Meanwhile we buy them frozen, and warm them up for breakfast with home-made honey cluster muesli, and we also have grated apple on top, and yoghurt (me)...

_Scarfing_ is such a great word. It reminds me of a conversation Brett and I had last night. As we do. And I don't have to explain the agricultural aspects of the following conversation to anyone here...


*A Late-Night Conversation*

Brett: I like the word _halibut_. It's a great word. As is _krumhorn_.

Sue: Krrroom-horrrn. In slightly mis-spelled German, that means "crooked horn"... which is how it looks...










Brett: I'd like to start a cigar company called Halibut. That way I could say, "I'm smoking a halibut."

Sue: You could smoke a halibut in a krumhorn. Just dangle it in there and start a fire in the bottom; nice smoked fish a little later. How big is a halibut? ...oh, hang on. Maybe you'd need an Alpenhorn...










Brett: You could smoke an Alpenhorn.

Sue: What would you put in it? A biscuit off a square bale of cannabis? You know, use a pitchfork and stuff the bottom with it, and light it up with a drip torch? And then the Alpenhorn player plays reverse notes? (sings) _It's A Long Way To Tipperary..._

Brett: Who makes square bales of cannabis?

Sue: Oh, Farmer Freddy. After he mows and windrows his marijuana field.










Brett: He does that? And makes square bales?

Sue: Well, round bales would be a bit large for this application.










Brett: Indeed. How much would a round bale of that be worth?

Sue: Oh no, the hay shed's on fire!

(Scene dissolves into laughter and cackling, just another Friday night at home... _without_ recreational drugs - unless you count the chocolate and cherry trifle - 'cos our brains seem to automatically have such settings, plus we like to spend our money on books and CDs...)

PS: @egrogan, if the berries are borne on canes with leaves similar to blackberries, they may well be a blackberry cross - we have boysenberries and youngberries ourselves, both of which are blackberry crosses, and while neither look like mulberries, they don't much look like blackberries either - much fatter. I'd imagine blackberry crosses come in all sorts of shapes... and if you ever do find out what they're called, let us know!


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## SueC

Working through the girl hiking week photo backlog...

*DENMARK DAY*

*Friday, August 28*

*Starting in Town*

Where else would one start but in the Denmark Bakery, to fuel up on their award-winning pies so that the tank is full for the >10km, very hilly hike up and over Mt Hallowell, and then back along the road around the foot of the thing?

Their seafood pies are to die for...



This is a mural in the town centre:



Inside the local hippie outfitters, Eileen bought some warm knitted jackets and I a pair of highly colourful patchwork pants (which you will see in an upcoming post, someday soon). We also saw this: :rofl:



Then it was off to the car park at the base of Mt Hallowell.


*Mt Hallowell-Monkey Rock Returning Along Lights Beach Road*

On a mossy log at the start of the ascent, we found _Pterostylis nana_, commonly known as the Snail Orchid - you can see why:



The plants on the South Coast are extraordinary - we're in a world biodiversity hotspot.

To hike up and over Mt Hallowell, you follow the serpents, and after about half an hour you ascend from wet mossy Karri forest into an area with huge exposed granite towers.



There's a cave, and this is Eileen going in.



There's some nice art in and around the cave, done by locals:





This is the cave exterior:



There's forest right up to the peak of Mt Hallowell:



Ocean views from the first lookout:



...and the hinterland, on the other side:



The lower half of a Karri tree - really hard to photograph these:


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## SueC

Views of the coast, looking west, from the second (and highest) lookout:



...rocks on that lookout...



Clowning:



Up and over the highest point:



Views:



At Monkey Rock - taking a break, being a lizard in the sun:



Views west off Monkey Rock:



More slothing:



...and looking east:



Descent from Monkey Rock:



Road sign on the way back:



There's more photos here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/ - this is only half of them...and it was all taken before lunchtime, so there's still our afternoon walking by the seaside to go... :dance-smiley05:

Another time.


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## bsms

????????????????

"_Warning! Snakes are present in this area._"?​


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## SueC

:rofl:

Well, obviously snakes are present in the area, they're an important part of the ecosystem, but most of the time you don't see them because they're quite shy, and if you leave them alone, you don't tend to get bitten unless you have a habit of sticking your arms down holes or under logs, or of walking around blithely and barefoot and not looking where you're going and therefore stepping directly on them when they're sunning themselves, which they at times do in the middle of a path (because paths are generally sunny spots compared to undergrowth).

But the triangle with the serpent is the official Bibbulmun track marker (see https://www.bibbulmuntrack.org.au/), and the serpent depicted is the Wagyl, a dreamtime figure from Noongar mythology, and a variant of the rainbow serpent from wider Aboriginal culture (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagyl). On the track marker the Wagyl is quite stylised; here's more depictions:


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## SueC

@bsms, the discussion of the serpent track marker reminded me of a funny interpretation of various road signs in a joke book when I was a child. Here's the ones I remember:









Caution, flying arrows!









Caution, magic arrows that can fly around corners!









The arrows flying around this area have bent shafts!

:lol:


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## Caledonian

@*SueC* - The book sounds interesting. Honestly, Glasgow life can be as foreign to me as another country. I can count the number of times that I've visited the city and surrounding area on one hand. I rarely read fiction as i spend nearly every day at work going through our archive, books and articles, that i prefer to do something with my hands when i get home.

I took Hitchhikers and The Man in the Iron Mask to the hospital though. I finished the first and managed a few chapters of the second book. I think i wanted something familiar to keep me occupied.

While I'm not allowed to work on furlough, others who were doing research for one of my work projects, have been able to continue and we keep in-touch. I've been reading through the research so that we can chat. 

Often, bits of their information take my interest and I fall down a research/internet hole. The past week it's been the history of two Cree Nation men who were buried here during World War I and the history of a nine-year-old Highland boy who joined the army and went to the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, the West Indies, before retiring in Canada. We started researching him last year and I wanted to take another look even though we came to a dead end with the Canadian records. It keeps me busy :shrug::smile: !


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## gottatrot

Great reading on your journal and wonderful pics!


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## egrogan

We picked up a basketful of windfall apples yesterday and made a delicious apple crisp. Thought I'd drop a couple of pictures with my "helper" taste-testing our harvest here :wink:


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## waresbear

At least snakes do not fly into your car. We have flying deer, who managed to fly into the side of my vehicle once every year or so.


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## SueC

Oh no, @waresbear! ...our car has a dent in the bonnet from a kangaroo, which it got years ago when it was brand new of course, and we can think of better uses for our $500 excess than taking a dent out of our bonnet... (the kangaroo was OK, by the way, it was a low-speed encounter...) Let us now spare a thought for people living in armadillo habitat, because those guys jump over 3ft in the air when startled and tend to go through windscreens... 











@egrogan, Hugh is exactly like a dog should be!  It's great you now have a dog you enjoy and who enjoys you and all the world has to offer.


@gottatrot, hello and hope you're settling in well! :wave:


@Caledonian, did you go to hospital for your own health issues and I missed it, or was this because of your mother being in hospital? :hug: ...I can see why you fall down research holes on interesting topics like you're describing. Yeah, I hear Glasgow is a bit of another world compared to other bits of Scotland - and I also get why reading after work when you read a lot at work tends to be ditched in favour of physical and hands-on stuff, because that was me when I was teaching, too. But now I'm a dedicated bookworm again... currently reading Tara Westover's autobiography _Educated_ which is hair-raising but she was very brave to write it, stories like that need to come out into the light and we all need to think about that kind of stuff and talk about it as a community, or it will continue to fester... Before that I read the third of the Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellacott novels by JK Rowling writing detective novels as Robert Galbraith (which one are you up to now, @knightrider?) - excellent as usual - and the themes of this one really tied in with the themes of _Educated_ as well - Rowling is pointing a fine lens at misogyny on its many levels, in public life, in private, in crime etc, and that's again ultra important to discuss, because it's been so persistent - and we really do need to make a world together where people are treated fairly, and don't get treated differently for being a particular gender, or particular colour or ethnic background either. That, however, will take a lot of work on everyone's individual baggage, plus those who currently have disproportionate power and unearnt privilege are generally not happy to surrender it...

2020 has gone by so fast, but it's given me a chance to read more consistently than normal. And now I better get out in my garden, but first I'm quickly going to show everyone a place Eileen and I discovered after climbing Mt Hallowell (previous post), which neither of us had been to before! 


*Prawn Rock Channel, Ocean Beach*

After hiking over three hours, Eileen was saying it would be great to dip our feet in cool water, so we went looking for an entrance to Ocean Beach from the Lights Road end of Denmark, and found something called Prawn Rock Channel, which leads into Ocean Beach - it's part of the outflow from the Wilson Inlet, which is separated from Ocean Beach by a seasonal sand bar... amazing scenery, and plenty of cool water for our feet, all in crystal clear water at wading depth!



The line of breaking waves in the middle distance shows you where Ocean Beach is in relation to Prawn Rock Channel.



Lots of sediment at the mouth of the Wilson Inlet...



Nice place to wade, although definitely a bit cold - which was good for the feet though!







And check out this cool floating footbridge across the channel...



Hope everyone has a great week.  The sun is out this morning after a weekend of rain, sleet, hail and thunder; the rugs are off the horses and donkeys and they're off on adventures in the big Common, the rugs are hanging inside-out in the sun to freshen, and the garden is calling me! :happydance:


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## Knave

Ooh, that looks like so much fun! 

I liked your snake sign too. @waresbear made me laugh though remembering a story. We have rattle snakes here and bull/blow/gopher snakes depending on who you ask. They are hard to distinguish at first glance unless you see the tail. Obviously you usually know when a rattler is nearby because they tattle on themselves.

Anyways, my dad and uncle and brother were driving to the ranch. My brother was little, probably five or so, and a snake began curling out a hole in the dashboard. Those men jumped ship completely; they just straight up bailed out the moving truck, leaving my dear brother alone with the snake in a moving truck! Lol

My brother lived to tell the tale of course, and I cannot remember now if the snake was a rattler or a bull snake, but I’m sure he could tell me! Lol


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## waresbear

We have a type of insurance here if something runs out on the road and you hit it or it hits you, you are covered, you do have to pay a deductible though. I didn't, I got a bonus type of insurance when we bought the car new 3 years ago, that pays the deductible for 3 years only though, so I guess I'm done. I feel like I should put mark on the door for every deer that meet its fate with my SUV.


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## SueC

Hahaha, @Knave, the adults abandoning ship and leaving the poor kid to fend for himself... glad he survived... :shock:

Here's an incredibly beautiful bit of music - how else could it be, with a good interpretation of a Yeats poem - but it's the transition to the female voice (Irish singer Katie Kim) that really gives me goosebumps...


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## SueC

My membership of an alternative music forum has introduced me to some really lovely material I wouldn't otherwise have discovered. Here's something very beautiful from a Scottish band:






Thanks to Ulrich for the intro!


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## SueC

The last instalment of Eileen's photos from our hiking week.

*Saturday, August 29*

*Mt Hassell, Stirling Ranges*

Mt Hassell _again_!  We seem to be doing this one quite a bit. In fact, it was the last Stirlings peak Brett and I had climbed together before Eileen came down for our hiking week - she'd seen it on our Flickr photo page and registered a very keen interest to climb this particular peak herself. So come Saturday, after 36km of uphill-downhill coast and hill hiking, which had been preceded by a cross-country horse/dog/rider day as a warmup, we put the icing on the cake by climbing in the Stirling Ranges.

You can see Eileen was keen and happy to be there:



Behind her you can see the entire climb - you go up the first hill and then walk the ridge up the second hill and finally the sandstone spire. The start of the track:



Views to Bluff Knoll and Yungermere Peak:



There's great views of the whole valley pretty soon after you start climbing.



_Kingia australis_:



Valley views looking in the other direction:



A burnt Banksia which has released its seed pods (they open after fire):



Australian sclerophyll is adapted to a small-scale mosaic-burning pattern Indigneous Australians had practiced for 30,000 years. Plants have survival strategies for fire and in this ecosystem, fire recycles nutrients from dry, dead material back to the soil. In wetter ecosystems, this job can be very effectively done by fungi and other microorganisms. While Australian sclerophyll is adapted to fire, it's not adapted to large-scale or overly hot fires, which were prevented by Aboriginal people with their small-patchwork-style fire management - the whole point of the exercise was to prevent large-scale wildfires, and also, to increase the habitat diversity of the sclerophyll ecosystem in order to maximise the animal populations which Aboriginal people depended on for survival. Since European colonialists evicted Indigenous people off their traditional lands, the traditional "firestick farming" has stopped, dry dead matter has built up, and biodiversity in remnant vegetation has been reduced by the absence of mosaic burns (management fires are now mostly too large-scale, and wildfires run rampant again, now exacerbated as well by climate change), habitat fragmentation, weed invasion, dieback disease, introduced animals, etc.

Half the Stirling Range National Park went up in a hot fire last December - an ecological disaster which has brought more flora and fauna to the brink of extinction (in Australia, we have one of the highest extinction rates in the world already for reasons including the resurgence of large-scale wildfires). Because the post-colonial management burns are too large in scale (due to poor resourcing and poor understanding of traditional fire management), and at the same time aren't regular enough, the landscape has become very vulnerable to large-scale wildfire over the past 200 years, and in recent decades, climate change has exacerbated the problem. People in Australia are finally talking about returning to Indigenous style fire management, but don't hold your breath... we do this on the land we steward, and I'll post some photos of the extraordinary wildflower bloom we've got at the moment, in future posts. Every farmstay guest who's come on one of our wildflower/fire management tours has seen for themselves why indigenous-style burning is so effective - and has had neglected areas to directly compare to, across the fence on our west boundary (the east/south is managed similarly to our bush by an enlightened neighbour and is also in wonderful shape, as you'll have seen from my valley floor ride photos on this journal - photos here: https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page38/#post1970681183).

Nearly halfway up the track:



Looking back:


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## SueC

About to tackle the second hill in the ridge. If you look closely, you'll see ancient wave ripple marks in the rocks under my feet.



Happy walker - about to tackle the spire after a breather:



Views of Yungermere Peak from the summit:



Toolbrunup (the one Brett proposed to me on in 2007 ) and the Western Stirlings from the summit:



Looking the other way, due west, towards Bluff Knoll (topped by clouds) and Yungermere Peak:



Eileen on the cairn:



...and a few photos from the way back down:


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## SueC

After Mt Hassell, we went home to feed the horses and donkeys their bucket feeds. This is bucket o'clock:



Julian eats with four of the donkeys - left to right - Mary Lou, Don Quixote, Nelly, Benjamin. He's boss horse, but the donkeys finish faster than he does. Sparkle eats with Sunsmart in a paddock to the left of the photographer, and Chasseur in the yard behind.

And here, Eileen caught the late winter sunset that Saturday, at the end of August, in what we call the "flat paddock" - the first tree line divides this from the "hill paddock" and the shelter belt behind (see taller eucalypts behind first tree line) forms the boundary to our western neighbour. The tallest eucalypts to the left are remnant vegetation and part of our 50 hectare on-farm conservation reserve; a tree clump was planted for shade on the right of the photo.



Next morning, this was Jess waking up from a long sleep, after five days of unprecedented activity which she was part of from start to finish:





Three of Mary Lou, Sparkle and Don Quixote:







And as promised, here's some photos of my new hippie pants - and Nelly showing me an itchy spot:





Chasseur with Eileen:



Un-rugging Smartie:



He really does look like a yak at the moment, but thankfully this very day he's finally started to shed - got some hair out of him before riding him this afternoon. By the time he finished shedding, I should be able to stuff several pillows with horsehair...

Eileen saying goodbye to the donkeys:



...and to Chasseur, who is our one cuddly horse:



Notice Sparkle saying, "Hey, I'm over here, what about me?" :rofl:

Thanks again to Eileen for the multitude of fabulous photos from her stay. Except when I took photos of her, I was able to be completely lazy while she documented everything we did!

...and exactly one week later, she drove 800km to Monkey Mia to volunteer with the dolphins for a week, and immediately on her return, went down to Dunsborough for the weekend to take photographs in stormy weather! When she wrote, she said she had about three weeks of laundry piled up...


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## egrogan

@SueC, I think you and Eileen should submit your stories to the Equestrian Adventuresses podcast. I would love to listen to an episode with you two narrating the stories you've posted! I bet the hosts would love Eileen's angle of someone relatively new to horses making them part of a trip and yours as the "horse host." And since this podcast seems to primarily have guests from North America and Europe, they have had very few current travelers featured lately since these places are still mostly in lock-down.


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## SueC

*PLAYING WITH THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE*

Very luckily, I came across WB Yeats' poetry in high school, and he's always been a firm favourite with me, because of his connection with nature, and how he uses language. Then The Waterboys set _The Stolen Child_ to music in 1988 on their album _Fisherman's Blues_ and charmed me to pieces with their interpretation of this poem: An Irish narrator was speaking the verses and Mike Scott singing the repeating parts, while melodies both playful and haunting scudded across the musical backdrop, with flutes, tin whistles, strings etc.






It was inevitable that an entire album themed around Yeats would eventually be made by Mike Scott & co, and I've been featuring tracks off it on this journal after finally acquiring a copy recently. We were really wondering how they were going to approach _The Lake Isle of Innisfree_, considering how Mike Scott is comfortable in all sorts of genres. He made it all bluesy and it actually works!






The poem itself is a mere 12 lines, but so dense with imagery it seems to go on forever, and this one always stayed with me...


*THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE*

William Butler Yeats, 1890

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.


Have any of you ever used an existing poem as a template for writing about the exact same thing in your own life? It was so easy, in this case, to come up with something that told the story for us... I've got the first two stanzas ready-made in my head, and will have to work the third one out here... it's kind of cool to do this for the tenth anniversary of purchasing this little farm...


*TO RED MOON SANCTUARY*

We will arise and go now, to Red Moon Sanctuary,
And a small farmhouse build there, of straw and plaster made;
Some corn-rows will we have there, and hives for the honey-bee,
And we will live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And we shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the light of the morning to where the frog choir sings;
There midnight’s stars are crystals, and noon a golden glow,
And evening full of fairy wren’s wings.

We will arise and go now, for always night and day,
We see a hidden vale from whence wooded ridges soar;
While we stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
We feel its call in the deep heart’s core.


I might revise that last stanza sometime so that WB Yeats doesn't turn in the grave, but right now I have a headache that feels as if my brain is trying to come out of my ears.  So, perhaps another time.

But it's fun to see how easily you can sometimes change a few words in a classic poem so that it depicts your own situation. Any other tree-changers here who want to have a go? Alter this poem, or another poem you know, so that it describes your little bit of Eden?


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## Caledonian

SueC said:


> @*Caledonian* , did you go to hospital for your own health issues and I missed it, or was this because of your mother being in hospital? /QUOTE]
> 
> 
> It was for my mum. The hospital took care of everything so that i could stay in her room 24/7 for two weeks. I'll always be grateful for everything their staff did for us both. Oh! and thank you for the song a few posts back, I don't remember if i said anything at the time but she would've enjoyed it. :hug:


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## SueC

No worries about the song, @Caledonian. The Celts have such amazing songs for all occasions... and it's lovely that the hospital made things easy for you to stay with your mum. :hug:

I found a very beautiful, sad, bittersweet number recently...  Celtic of course... I think _memento mori_ are so important for the living...






We are all faeries...


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## SueC

I'm happy because it's peak wildflower season - and the West Australian sclerophyll is so full of wonder. The orchids are peaking, and some of the most amazing ones are really hard to spot because they're not colourful, oh no...

Meet the Flying Duck Orchid... I've talked about it before...










Brett took that one in the nature reserve we steward on our farm - if you don't know what you're looking for, it's hard to see them, drab and tiny against the multicoloured backdrop of Australian bush in wildflower season. However, he's always had an eye for detail, and if I lose an earring, he's my best bet of finding it quickly.  Likewise, he reliably spots stuff like this.

What on earth is it, and why doesn't it have nice coloured petals? Well, to explain that, I will explain the Hammer Orchid, which also grows on our place and is one of the best examples of something that, when scientists first worked it out, they held off publishing for fear of offending the "morality police" at the time.

This photo is not one of ours, it's an educational composite:










On the left is the wingless female of a native Australian wasp sitting on the end of a blade of bush grass waiting for a winged male suitor to elope with her. And on the right is the Hammer Orchid. It features an imitation female wasp body, complete with full-on pheromones, the combination of which the winged male finds irresistible. The male wasp grabs the dummy wasp and attempts to fly off with it, and because of the hinge in the plant, catapults head-first into the receptive female stigma of the orchid, where he hopefully deposits some pollen from another Hammer Orchid, if he's been previously duped, and picks up some pollen intended for another orchid. The catapulting action separates him from the dummy female, and he flies off (with or without a waspish headache), maybe to encounter an actual female of his own species, but frequently to be duped again by another Hammer Orchid.

This was deemed too risqué a discovery to bring to the attention of the wider public, not too many decades ago. Isn't it funny how, by contrast, humans have been quite happy to swing other humans off ropes, invade other countries, take indigenous people's land and resources, etc etc etc, without apparently feeling there's anything indecent about that. :evil:

Anyway, the hypocrisy of _****_ allegedly _sapiens_ aside, the existence of all the wonder, complexity and beauty out there makes me very happy. :happydance:


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> @SueC, I think you and Eileen should submit your stories to the Equestrian Adventuresses podcast. I would love to listen to an episode with you two narrating the stories you've posted! I bet the hosts would love Eileen's angle of someone relatively new to horses making them part of a trip and yours as the "horse host." And since this podcast seems to primarily have guests from North America and Europe, they have had very few current travelers featured lately since these places are still mostly in lock-down.


I've passed it onto Eileen in case it's something she wants to do, in which case she'll be able to cajole me into contributing. Something like that seems like "homework" to me just now - I've been taking a break from magazine writing this year for exactly the same reason. Since the pandemic, I've cut back on a few things like this that have stood in the way of other things, and I'm really reticent to take on extra "projects" - but thank you very much for thinking of us, and for the suggestion. I'm turning into a female curmudgeon! ;-)

By the way, if your renovations are at the point of yielding an article, I'm sure Lynda from _The Owner Builder_ would be very happy to hear from you. But maybe you're feeling a bit leaden at the thought of more projects too? Just the thought of them makes me go _splat_ at the moment. :rofl:


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## Knave

I didn’t know you were taking a hiatus! Are you enjoying it?


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## SueC

Yes, I am... after 10 years of writing to deadlines, I felt I needed a break and right now I only write for fun!


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## SueC

*SOUTHERN SPRING*

It's been busy here with the farmstay and getting the F&V garden planted out and prepared for summer - I promise to take garden pictures this week and share them. I've put in some potatoes, although I couldn't get seed potatoes due to the pandemic, so I had to recycle some of our own smaller potatoes and they don't yield as well as proper seed potatoes. The first patch of corn is in and growing, about finger high just now. Beetroot and radishes are developing. Broad beans are chest high and yielding, kohlrabi is getting big and we've eaten some already - need to harvest more today. The kale, silverbeet, fennel and mint are growing so madly that I load up every visitor with a bagful on their way out. The lemon tree is groaning with fruit and the younger citrus are growing well.

Brett and I have been busy getting the fruit trees prepped for spring and summer: Removing weeds, putting on some blood & bone fertiliser and dolomite, then mulching with straight horse manure, which we can only get from the paddocks until the dung beetles get active in a few weeks. We've already netted the almond and two mulberry trees, and are enjoying the berries in our muesli. The really icky job I had was clearing out the old canes and the weeds on the espaliered youngberries, then tying up the new canes (before mulching them etc). This is because I'm relatively new to gardening and have only just read you're supposed to cut the canes back all the way to the ground straight after harvest finishes, and that you bundle up the new canes that grow the next spring to make tying and later removing them easier. So, I've been handling prickly old canes that grew willy-nilly, and despite leather gloves and even pliers to handle them, I've got a few punctures and embedded prickles in my hands from the job. There's still the boysenberries to go as well, and they are growing so near a beehive that I will work in a bee suit - one side is in the flight path, which is inconvenient (we usually harvest boysenberries at nightfall, when the bees have stopped flying).

The first tomatoes are in the ground and growing, with more in the greenhouse, along with beans, sunflowers, leeks, and ornamental lupins and other flowers. I'm still waiting for the capsicums (peppers), eggplants (aubergines), cucumbers and pumpkins to germinate, but the zucchini are sending up first leaves in their pots, and I might plant one out today.

The farmstay has been so mad busy we actually blocked the calendar off this weekend and most of the week to have some time to ourselves. We've got someone coming to stay with us a whole month solid for a retreat who sounds burnt out and in need of recuperation, and this is a good place to do just that. It will be the longest stay we've hosted so far and will be an interesting experiment. Speaking of experiments, we also had a mother-daughter combination stay with us for a week ending yesterday - I'm a bit apprehensive about hosting kids at our farmstay because we're not really set up for that, and because of the complications that can arise.

(I was shocked when I first came to Australia because young kids that came visiting with their parents would jump around on the furniture and run wild through the house more often than not with the parents just looking on and getting offended if you asked for that to stop. I don't want that happening in our own house here, where we've already had friends' kids swinging off polybraid and damaging fences, which I now no longer turn off, and kicking at our lime plastered house walls, and throwing rocks into the dam - they were not invited back; thankfully, other friends' kids have been very civilised, no matter what the age. But you can see why I'm apprehensive - the animals in the fields are another story - and even our dog had the hair cut off the tip of her tail by a little girl once when we visited her family and left her in the garden... and _teaching colleagues'_ middle-primary-age children expected to be able to go through my personal belongings and look through the whole house, and both they and their parents were taken aback when I said no. Honestly, it's such a culture shock for a European in Australia...)

Anyway, our visitors were cultural Europeans and a total pleasure to host, no problems at all. The daughter was 12 and horse-mad but unable to afford riding lessons up in Perth, so I made a point of taking her on a daily lap of various trails on Sunsmart while they were here. The smile on her face was worth it, and the rest of us all needed the exercise anyway, and it's not a hardship to go walking through the bush trails with a horse, dog and lovely visitors. For her last day I took her on the long loop to Verne Road, the same route that I did with Eileen in late August (lots of photos of that here https://www.horseforum.com/member-j...ys-other-people-479466/page67/#post1970900669 and over the page from that). It gave her mum and me a good workout that took over an hour, kept the dog and horse entertained, and the daughter on Cloud Nine. 

Hope everyone else is well and happy. :wave: Some garden photos next time!


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## SueC

Oh, and as a PS to the above post about our unusual orchids, here's one of them, the infamous Hammer Orchid, on Attenborough as well as another fun botanical documentary I used to show in class:


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## Knave

That would freak me out with kids! I don’t know if it’s just my specific culture, but kids I am around wouldn’t act the way you described. Yes, a young child may do something dumb, but their parent would scold them. Of course we all learn our lesson about saying “my kid would never do that,” Lol. Kids are expected to treat things respectfully though, and adults are expected to parent them.

I can’t imagine anyone ever allowing their kids to rummage through someone’s belongings or to kick the walls! I could maybe see a kid hanging on a poly braid before being asked not too, but most would learn their lesson quick if you left it on! Haha. Not funny I know, but I’ve never turned mine off when people visit. I remember being little and everyone taking dares to touch the hotwire. It was a big thing to try and convince a boy to pee on it.


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## bsms

I get a little ticked about private landowners not allowing folks to pass thru their private property ON THE ROAD to access the Whetstones....but in their defense, a lot of those irresponsible kids turn into equally irresponsible adults and I can understand why a working ranch wouldn't want to be bothered. Riding today, someone had dumped 3 tires beside the dirt road. Why? *WHY!!!!* The county dump will take them for free! And folks on ATVs can be great, but SOME of them would undoubtedly leave the gates open, or close an open one, or feel free to leave the road to harass some cows. For "fun"! :evil:

And unhappily, if one out of twenty is a jerk, the person owning the land feels no choice but to bar the door and lock the gate. Respect for others and for other people's property needs to be drilled into kids and far too many can't be bothered. Talked with my sister about it a month ago. She said her grandkids learned early on that their grandmother and grandpa would NOT spoil them and let them do anything they wanted. You don't love your grandkids (or your dogs, or your horses) if you allow them to turn into monsters.


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## SueC

Just logged back on to share this:

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/oct/10/purrfect-match-cats-and-their-human-doubles

...excellent photos of owners looking like their cats! :rofl:


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## Caledonian

I love the people and cats. I wonder if we look like our horses or other pets! My hair used to be as red as my bright chestnut, now I'm darker with white hairs like my first grey. I hope i don't have their faces though!









I couldn't cope with children like that. Culturally our children were taught to respect people and property. We still joke about how a look from our parents was enough to curtail any naughtiness. I'd be horrified if a child in my care acted that way. However, I'm beginning to see more of the type you described, in shops, around the streets and at work. 

Through work, I get to experience large groups of children from around the world, including Europe, north America, Africa and occasionally Australia. While some are worse than others, we're never quite sure what we'll get, so we use advance warnings and a set plan to help us deal with their visits. I'm not sure if it's because they're away from their parents, poor leadership, or group pressure, but every week we've to deal with rowdiness, rudeness, damage and attempted theft. It's quite shocking. It's also a shame for the quiet, respectful children who want to learn.


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## SueC

You're all making me feel so normal! :rofl:

Mmhh, @Caledonian. Your question made me think of this photo from five years ago:



That's my "most alike" snapshot. :lol:


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## Knave

I love that picture Sue!


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## gottatrot

The photo is adorable.

One of my cats is sleek and one is scruffy. I think I look like the scruffy one.


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## SueC

Just checking in. Hope everyone is well. It's hayfever season here; it was OK at first and the antihistamines were actually working, but they also make me tired, and when the ryegrass started flowering, I was sneezing and getting itchy eyes anyway... I was going to get desensitised this year, but then the pandemic happened and I didn't want to travel to Perth for the testing part (why can't they do allergy testing in a regional centre?).

Anyway, it's better the last few days. In horsey news, I'm getting buckets of fur off Sunsmart at the moment because he's finally started to shed, but there's still a long way to go before he has anything resembling a normal coat. Nevertheless, he's enjoying the long curry-combing sessions (as long as I keep away from the tangled and matted bits on his ticklish belly), and I've ridden him several times on nice exploratory rides since our young horse-mad guest left. 

Last time, I trimmed his feet before we went, and then they fitted his boots easily, without straining to put them on. We went down Halls Road towards Sleeman Creek so the dog could go swimming there, but they've put obstacles in the way at the border of the nature reserve again, and while we can get through on foot or on bicycles, our usual bike cross-over point is too dangerous for horses because it involves a narrow sandbank, rocks and barbed wire. Next time we're there on foot or by bike I can clear a space to make it horse-safe, but I wasn't doing that with the horse in tow. So, we returned along Halls Road, where a delicious type of long grass was flowering in the roadside, and Sunsmart was very taken with it. Only problem was that his bit doesn't make for comfortable eating, and I had an idea - more on that in a moment... we went back through the cocky gate on our NE border and followed our eastern boundary track south so the dog could swim in the neighbour's dam before we returned home.

Instead of returning to the tie rail, I took Sunsmart's gear off in our garden, where I had a lead rope tied around a fence post - because there was a swarm of bees less than six feet from the tie rail that day, so we had found ourselves an alternative spot to tack up / untack. On Saturday morning Brett and I went to town to get various supplies, and I stopped at Cindy's to pick up some horse feed, and a bitless bridle I'd been contemplating for a while. That last ride where the bit interfered with the delicious tall spikes of grass decided me. Plus, this bridle converts to take a bit, if you don't use the noseband which I don't when riding with a bit anyway, and I really needed a new bridle, particularly if I'm going to start riding Julian. Sunsmart's riding bridle broke irreparably in an accident earlier this year and I've had him in a 40-year-old bridle that came with Sunsmart's great-grandmother. It works, but I wanted something softer and less decrepit.

I decided I don't need a bit anymore for what Sunsmart and I do in his semi-retirement, and that I want the horse to enjoy being able to eat nice things along the trails without anything annoying stuck in his mouth. He's 23 and doesn't run off anymore at spooky things like he did at age 11, nor is he as interested in being a speed demon anymore, so I think we're going to have some nice breezy retirement riding in something more comfortable. :cowboy:

The camera has been near the front door all week and I'm sure I'll remember to take garden photos soon...

Best wishes to all!


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## Rob55

Enjoy Spring as we enter fall. Looking forward to your garden pictures.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## SueC

Thank you, @Rob55. Nice to "see" you. I hope you're both in reasonable health and wish you a wonderful autumn. 

*GARDEN PHOTOS*

A long time coming, but finally took the camera out to the garden, where nothing is ever finished, of course...

This is the permaculture mandala as seen from the house, looking west. Apricot tree on the left, young blood orange in plastic protector, new peach in log border patch and Granny Smith apple behind that, white nectarine to the right; netted almond in rear of garden in front of tree lucerne hedge, and you can see some olive-green olive trees just left of centre, behind the apricot tree.



This is the new peach tree we just put in, on top of where we buried half the waste from our home kill in July - guts, hooves, head etc - we kept the hide and the edible offal. The other half is under the young blood orange in the plastic protector behind (and that's an olive tree behind that, we're already home pickling olives from four trees). The earthworms are still incredibly active in both areas and the reason we had to put logs around one of the burial sites is to keep the foxes from digging it all up every night (we weighted down heavy hardboard with them). The logs will be firewood next winter.



This is our full-size apricot tree, put in two years back. Last year we lost the fruit to late frost; this year there's a handful of apricots forming and I'm not sure if there's enough to warrant netting the whole tree yet. Maybe better luck next year. Calendula flowers beneath the tree.



Granny Smith apple tree - we had buckets of fruit off this young tree last year and it's just starting to come out again. A white nectarine is behind that. Broad beans near the trellis.



Olive tree on left of mixed garden bed - comfrey, leeks, beetroot, kohlrabi, young sunflowers etc left of trellis. Poppies and broad beans on right - waiting to plant summer beans on trellises but not warm enough yet.



Close-up showing comfrey, kohlrabi, beetroot, poppies and a compost bin:



This is kohlrabi - a central European vegetable. You eat the bulbous part, either raw in salads, or diced and cooked - tastes like a cross between potatoes and cauliflower. It's from the brassica family like cauliflower and really easy to grow, unlike heading brassicas (cabbages, cauliflower, broccoli). Poppies for splashes of colour and beneficial insects.



A Marguerite Daisy in the vegetable patch got rather big and I'll have to split it and spread it around the garden next winter. Kale, poppies, etc nearby:



From the other side, you can see two types of kale, plus poppies, and the bare soil where the potato crop is just starting to emerge:



The trellis is for summer beans (soon, I hope - working on a few batches in the greenhouse). Olive trees and then a tree lucerne hedge separating the garden from the bushland behind.

Close-up of the emerging potatoes, plus kale (Tuscan, plus Scotch Dwarf Blue which has crinkly leaves) and a lot of poppies...



I've set up a trellis at the back of the garden and planted out my first tomato seedlings for the season there - I was running out of spots in the previous garden beds that didn't have tomatoes in them last year, and you're supposed to rotate to prevent disease. They're starting to really grow:



Fruit and nut tree area west of the vegetable mandala. What's a mandala? It's garden beds laid out in a pattern that's both decorative and energy-saving to work with (less walking and weed control, suits chicken dome, fruit trees shelter vegetable beds etc). Our mandala is daisy-shaped with a central frog pond, and six circular beds laid out around it, with trees surrounding the bed and also in areas to the sides. There's a netted almond to the left, three cherries just starting to come out, a Mariposa plum behind the wheelbarrow (already laden with developing fruit, and a tree lucerne hedge behind that surrounding the garden), two hazelnut bushes to the right (one needs shifting as the spot isn't good):



I'm sure you can all see the horse manure with which we've been direct mulching this year - a few trees still to go.

Leeks, parsley, self-seeded Florence fennel (grows like a weed and great in orange/fennel/radish salad, or baked with cheese sauce, or in vegetable soups and stews, etc), a young tomato plant and companion-planted cumin:



An area of lavender I planted as a windbreak for a vegetable bed is now becoming enormous; Mariposa plum behind that and netted almond behind the plum. Espaliered Satsuma plum in foreground with cane berries out of sight behind it. Tree lucerne hedge at boundary:


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## SueC

The espalier with the Satsuma plum on the left and youngberries on the right:



Pear tree in full flower - we had our first crop off it last year, about one bucket full. These trees take seven years to start yielding...



Another mixed vegetable bed - tail end of broccoli, also kohlrabi, lettuces, fennel, Siberian kale, broad beans, and the bronze huge thing in the background near the netted mulberry tree is Red Mustard, a red-hot salad vegetable that's great to spice up your salads and sandwiches:



This one of our compost heaps ready to plant out with pumpkins - and after pumpkin harvest, we will use the compost in other places. This way, the compost heap is being used while still maturing, and we get huge pumpkin harvests. Mint in front, fennel and Red Mustard behind:



This is another compost heap, which has just received an Ironbark pumpkin seedling. There's silverbeet and fennel growing strongly around the edges, and a few weeds to remove:



A close-up of the seedling just planted out from the greenhouse for an early start:



Poppies, Scotch Dwarf Blue kale and Marguerite daisies:



The first zucchini seedlings were able to be planted out this week, after germinating in the greenhouse:



A wider view of a new tomato area and trellis at the back of the garden - cumin in front of the tomatoes:



My first three rows of Painted Mountain Corn are in, sandwiched between Calendula flowers to the left, and kohlrabi, five-colour silverbeet, young sunflowers etc on the right. There's celery on the right of the photo which is growing back beautifully after I ran it over with a lawn mower to get rid of it when it was mushy and infested with slugs - neat trick to know. Baby lettuces, mizunas etc near the stepping stones:



This bed has Siberian kale in the centre and young peas to the sides. I'm going to pack half of it off with a friend who's visiting and can use it but I don't actually need this much kale myself and will replace this plant with tomatoes from my mini-greenhouse in a couple of weeks:



So that's the garden, slowly getting ready for summer. Lots left to do, of course... and only just getting into the swing of it.


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## SueC

Eileen is staying with us this week and has been taking lots of photos and doing really cute little film clips, like this one:






So many times we've seen Don Quixote like this and wondered if he had died... :rofl:

The best photos will follow next week, when Eileen goes home! Meanwhile we're trying to make the most of our time.


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## SueC

...and this is a total masterpiece - Eileen interviewing Mary Lou and Sparkle:






:happydance:


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## Knave

She’s too cute! Also your garden looks wonderful!


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## egrogan

I am amazed by the variety of what you can grow- the warm weather fruit trees but also the cool weather loving brassica. And with spring just starting, you have so much ready to harvest! Looks like the start to a very productive season.


PS- I finally have someone with enough horsepower coming next week to pull the stumps out of the garden bed in front of our house, so I can daydream with the seed catalogs this winter in preparation for a kitchen garden next spring. I can't wait to have fresh herbs right outside the door again!


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## Caledonian

Great garden @SueC . I love the Marguerite daisies. They don't survive here, I've to buy new plants or take cuttings each year, even planting them in sheltered spots doesn't seem to work.


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## SueC

*ROUND THE FARM RIDE WITH EILEEN*

Some photos of one of Eileen's rides this week. Sunsmart looks like a Flokati floor rug at the moment, but it's all cosmetic, he's galloping around with the others daily and happy to be out riding, and he's growing a lot of muscle back too, recovering from his Cushings hole last summer. In fact, it looks like he's going to be rid of his tangle of long hair within two weeks, because since these photos were taken he's been on another ride and we got buckets of fur off him just currying him (which he really liked).

This walk-ride with a learner was a good opportunity to put Sunsmart in his new (cross-under) bitless bridle we got for him last weekend - to get him used to it, and to give Eileen real reins for the first time instead of a rope off a halter.





You can see that the supplied brow band was too short, as most if them are - so I took this one off and stuck his old one in the bridle instead; it's an inch longer. People really need to make some longer brow bands instead of skimping on leather - horses don't like having the narrow end of the poll strap digging into the sensitive spots behind their ears. You put an edge into the back of your own ear cartilage and see how that feels...

And off we all went, down the sand track:









I'm getting rid of the stable halter here and clipping into the chinstrap of the bridle instead, because the halter interferes with the bridle:



You can see the wildflowers are just crazy at the moment... a sea of white Pimelias in this photo - they smell similar to jasmine:





Casuarina needles below the Casuarina trees:



The we returned on the swamp track, and met our three steers:







The dead branches in the valley are from a hot burn two years ago, and serve well as bird and insect perches ecologically. Meanwhile, the tea-trees whose top branches died in the fire grew back from their roots and you can see the masses of tiny white flowers on them, as well as a ton of other wildflowers now no longer choked by old tea-trees, and new seedlings coming up including _Eucalyptus_. The fire has increased the species diversity of the patch, by allowing some species that had been displaced by the opportunistic tea-trees to germinate from seed stock left in the ground by previous generations.


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## SueC

We normally carry more than three cattle, but just put one in the freezer a couple of months ago when the feed was scarce (a 650kg Friesian steer, which will feed us for 2-3 years). We've had three years of drought and are understocked on purpose not to run the land into the ground. However, it does look like we're going to have to buy in about four weanling calves because the feed is crazy now that spring flush has started - the best spring for years and years.

The cows don't normally hang out in the bushland, but they do walk the access tracks for fun - and here they were giving way to us coming down the track with the horse.

The "middle meadow":



And here's Sunsmart with his rider and his long hair, which is making even our Irish Long-Hair Donkey jealous:



We left him with his friends in the Common and carried the saddle and bridle back to the shed.



I'm really happy Sunsmart got over his terrible illness and seems much like himself again (apart from his coiffure). It took months but he got better. The whole ride he was trying to pull on my sleeve when I wasn't looking. :rofl:


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## SueC

*AFTERNOON AT COSY CORNER*

Eileen is taking incredible photos as usual when she's visiting. Here's a sample from an afternoon at Cosy Corner Beach - the closest beach to us, by the back roads:











...and this is what happens when you don't know someone is clicking away... ♥ 



Which reminds me of one of my favourite pieces of writing about love relationships:

_Let there be spaces in your togetherness
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love: 
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. 
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. 
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, 
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. 
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. 
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. 
And stand together, yet not too near together: 
For the pillars of the temple stand apart, 
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.”_ (Khalil Gibran)

The rest of the beach photos can be accessed directly on the Flickr page (by opening any of the photos here).


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## Knave

I really love the poem.

Also I think Sunsmart is a cute wooly mammoth. He has such a long and slender neck from above, and I love how his mane contrasts with his color.


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## SueC

Hullo, @Knave! :wave: Thank you for the kind comment re our wooly mammoth. :lol: I was hoping to ride him this morning to try out his bitless bridle myself, but alas, those plans and the ones for gardening came to nothing due to:

1) Yesterday's heatwave continuing today - over 30 deg C (86 deg F) again - first taste of summer and easterlies blowing like mad. This may not sound like it's very hot to some people, but it feels like a furnace to me. So much so that...

2) Yesterday I did something very silly. After taking a shower at lunchtime, I stayed in my underwear because it was so hot (our guest went home and there's no neighbours to bother us), but continued to go outside at intervals to shift the sprinklers around. So I got sunburnt. Not drastically, not mildly, about medium, may or may not peel, reddish and sore - so now I know that the sun is definitely back to extreme UV - after avoiding any kind of sunburn successfully for the whole year so far...it's always something silly like this that gets some part of me burnt once or twice a year. You'd think I'd have learnt to completely avoid it by now... :icon_rolleyes:

3) On top of that, the weather has led to peak ryegrass flowering and pollen everywhere and my hayfever was out-of-control yesterday despite anti-histamines. Last night I took one of Brett's different type of tablet to try to stop the constant feeling of ants running around up my nose, and the constant sneezing, and my nostrils turning into a waterfall, and my eyes nearly swelling shut - and it helped a bit, but it's also the drowsy sort of anti-histamine, so this morning I feel completely sluggish, and in fact slept in till 9.30am, which is unheard of for me. So no morning ride. :shock:

The outside world is currently hostile with UV and pollen, so I've drawn all the curtains against the heat and light and turned the house into a cave, and am baking bread and planning some soups and salads, and going to do tax later, but also going to spend some time on the sofa writing stuff until I feel a little better. Maybe later this afternoon, after 3.30pm, I can go do some watering and then depending on the allergies maybe ride a little loop...




egrogan said:


> I am amazed by the variety of what you can grow- the warm weather fruit trees but also the cool weather loving brassica. And with spring just starting, you have so much ready to harvest! Looks like the start to a very productive season.


Thank you - I will re-read this later in the afternoon for extra motivation to make myself go out and water!  It's true what you say. The catch is that the only way you can grow anything though our dry summers here is to water it, so the summer production means a lot of time with the hose, and sprinklers running. I had to start two weeks ago, and if I stopped doing it, literally everything in my food garden would die - vegetables, fruit trees, berries - and all the lawn would die, and the native ornamental/windbreak plants around our house would mostly get so dry they'd go up in flames easily...

I expect this weather to start drying up our pastures within two weeks. Maybe you're going to get your first snowfall around the same time?




> PS- I finally have someone with enough horsepower coming next week to pull the stumps out of the garden bed in front of our house, so I can daydream with the seed catalogs this winter in preparation for a kitchen garden next spring. I can't wait to have fresh herbs right outside the door again!


This sounds good!  And yes, sometimes we do just need the right machines and help, as was the case with our driveway. Happy daydreaming!  I'm gonna have to grow the potatoes sprouting in the pantry because there's a shortage of seed potatoes due to the pandemic... it may help to order your seeds etc well in advance for your spring...




Caledonian said:


> Great garden @SueC . I love the Marguerite daisies. They don't survive here, I've to buy new plants or take cuttings each year, even planting them in sheltered spots doesn't seem to work.


I love the Marguerites too... and now I know I'm lucky not to have to replant a lot of stuff like this all the time (so long as I water every day in summer, hopefully avoiding sunburn in the process...)

Less than two months to Christmas. Where did the year go? I hope everyone has a nice lead-up to that season, and a good northern autumn / southern spring!


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## SueC

While Eileen was here, we did a lot of hiking, especially on Thursday, when Brett had a day off - we did a road trip to Walpole, further west on our South Coast and deep in the tall forests, to walk in several beauty spots. I will deal will all the photos of that later, but here's some film from a hill climb that day.

Near the top of the hill we encountered some very steep ladder-stairs, and I wasn't sure if the dog would be able to handle them. However, she did fine on the first short flight, and I gave her think time on the second, long, flight. In the end she decided yes, she'd do it slowly:






I could have left her at the base, tied to the rail, and just nipped up and back to the hilltop lookout - but she decided she'd come up after all, and crucially, I was under the mistaken impression that there was an alternative route back and we would not have to come back down those ladder-stairs - since clearly, the dog would be unable to do that. Dogs don't know how to reverse down a ladder, unless they're circus trained...

But I was wrong - we did have to come back down the same way. mg: I realised this at the lookout. One part of my brain began to ring constant alarm bells - "doggie danger" - while another tried to figure out a way of getting her back down safely, and a third was cursing me. We had no rope with us, and the dog is not on a harness, but a collar with a plastic snap that could break easily under strain. Jess weighs 22kg, so is not exactly the kind of dog you can just carry around easily in a situation like this. It's like trying to lug around a bag of horse feed - and on a ladder, where you could both fall...

So this is how we solved it. Surveying the available materials, I decided to borrow the scarf Brett had brought in his backpack as a sling, and carry the dog under my arm with the help of this sling (to grab on to in case she struggled), while he steadied her head with the collar and came down close behind us:






The dog was a very good sport about it all, and held very still, which was excellent - so I didn't have to grab on to her sling to steady her. However, by the time we got to the short flight of ladder-stairs, my left arm was basically numb, and only the fact that I really love my dog and was petrified of dropping her kept those arm muscles engaged for me.

I'm very glad we all got out of that one comparatively easily...


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## gottatrot

It's quite a chore shedding out a Cushing's horse. I found these black gloves a couple years ago and they work the best on Amore. I think they are called Hands On. They have longer nubs than the usual grooming glove and are more flexible. Usually I run them over her every couple days while I'm trying to get her to shed. Their hair is strange, it seems to loosen in sections and doesn't like to fall off on its own.

That ladder situation was crazy. I've run into problems a couple times hiking with dogs too. Once at Mt. St. Helens we had to cross a large boulder field but the stones were too big for our Dalmatian to climb over because he was getting arthritis. We almost got him stuck before going back.

Recently we tried a hike where the bunch grasses were above Gilligan our Papillon's head, and it was too tough for him to push through. He tried jumping but was soon tired, but he is small enough for me to carry him. 

I love all the great pics. My dad likes Kohlrabi too and often grows it. I think he used to eat it when he lived in Germany many years ago. It grows well here.


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## Knave

When you went up the ladder I was reminded of Jemma in her youth. She would climb the ladder and go down the slide with her girls. They were little too! (Jemma is the old lab sometimes seen in my pictures.)

That coming down was a shock though!! You were a beast and I’m glad you are strong!

My neighbors are closer than yours and I still run outside in my underwear! Lol


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## SueC

Haha, @Knave - on two counts: The underwear, and the beast bit. :rofl:


Hullo, @gottatrot!  Thank you for your interesting anecdotes!  It's kind of reassuring to know I'm not the only person who occasionally gets in a hairy situation with an animal. ...I meant the ladder and the dog and trying to come down, not the Cushings, hahaha - but the wording fits both... :lol:

Speaking of the hairy mammoth - this evening my hayfever had settled a bit, so I took the grooming kit out and worked on Sunsmart again, and amazingly, all his lumps and tangles came off today. I had to help a bit with scissors with some of them, but after two days of heat everything was looser and tons of hair came off him, and the lumps weren't so tight against his skin anymore, nor so firmly attached. So this is the first time in months that I can see the contours of his barrel properly, and he's not in bad shape - not fat (thank goodness), but no ribs sticking out (they were when he was really ill), well muscled (though he could use a bit more on his back and neck to be fully like "before"), not particularly pot-bellied (he was a couple of months ago). So that's all very positive.

He's in good spirits and ready for all sorts of mischief. The days are getting longer, so I put on his new bitless bridle to try it out from his back for the first time (he wore it twice with Eileen when I was leading them around, but I'd not ridden in it). I've ridden in halters before, and also in English hackamores (very gentle, short-shanked, with a leather strap under the chin), but never in a cross-under, which I bought principally because it was the only bitless bridle available at the local horse equipment store, and it's well-made, and I can easily convert it to a bridle that takes a bit if I don't like it as it is - and I needed a new bridle anyway, since Sunsmart's old one broke beyond repair late last summer. I was riding him in a 40-year-old bridle his great-grandmother had worn, since I brought him back into light work, and it had definitely seen better days.

Assessment of the cross-under after the first ride: 

- I think it's fine for short rides around the bush, and a little better than just riding off a halter, but not as simple as an English hackamore for horse or rider - and I'm not sure it's as effective for controlling sideways spooks or bolts as a hackamore (and definitely not as effective as a Spanish snaffle/Kimberwicke for that, or an unbroken Pelham for that matter).

- I think communication in it will improve with use and practice - but it was very different to the millimetre-scale sensitivity and speed of communicating with a bit. It was kind of like rowing a boat, as opposed to holding hands. Sometimes the boat drifted wide a bit when turning. Stopping from the walk was OK, but he already knows all my bodyweight cues for that anyway. Stopping from faster gaits is a bit like slowing down a cargo ship, as opposed to putting on your bicycle brakes. Practice can still improve things.

- The horse enjoys not having a bit, and likes being able to graze without bit interference. At the very least, I'll be riding him in the bitless for gentle walks around the countryside to places which include really long grass by the side of the road. If we get more athletic again or go further afield, I may use a bit again in such a case.

- I will most definitely not be trying to ride Julian in this contraption - he will start with a bit. He's got the same kind of rocket power and spook potential that Sunsmart had when I first adopted him, and I'd not feel safe on him bitless. If I was forced to do that bitless, I'd use an English hackamore, because with that at least there'd be no train wrecks. I think this kind of bitless bridle is very like a halter, and doesn't have the kind of precision I want when I'm trying to do something quick and specific, or when in hairy situations - it's the sort of thing you can use on a plodder, or on an experienced horse with which you already have an established working relationship.

- But: I'd definitely rather ride any horse bitless than in a jointed snaffle.

We'll see how it goes over the next couple of rides.


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## SueC

*A NOTE ON TEA AND LIFE*

We drink a lot of green tea, and out of the biggest soup mugs we were able to find. We stopped bothering with normal-sized teacups a long time ago. What's the point in having a cup of tea and then having to make another immediately afterwards? This is so much more convenient, and the soup mug size is just perfect for cupping both your hands around. Brett has his green tea plain, I have green jasmine tea with honey and with milk from the creamy top of the bottle (we have raw non-supermarket milk, straight out of a cow with no subsequent factory processing). In days past, I used to add a splash of rosewater to my concoction as well, but I've gone off this - our own honey imparts plenty of floweriness to the mix anyway.










I sometimes have Chai green tea, made with our own "doobies" - bits of star anise, cardamon pods, cloves, and slices of fresh ginger, with honey and milk of course... and I always eat the ginger, and sometimes the other stuff as well, during tea-drinking.

Brett sometimes gets mint from the garden and drops a few leaves into his green tea. He adds honey only when feeling under the weather, and the only milk he has in his tea, ever, is when he has black tea - he has one teaspoonful of milk in that, per soup mug - not even enough to make the tea opaque, it just kind of goes muddy. When I first met him, I used to joke that one lactating mouse would fulfil all his household's milk requirements. When I make the tea, I still ask him, "Green tea, or black tea with mouse milk?"

We always start the day by padding across into the kitchen to make tea, and then have that as the start of breakfast in bed (we stopped having breakfasts at the table years ago, except when we have visitors). It's a really civilised way to start the day, and allows us to ease into the world slowly, rather than experience jarring transitions at this delicate time of day.

Usually, I'm the person making tea in the morning, since I am an early bird, and Brett is a night owl. Therefore, I am officially the "morning magician" at our house, and Brett is the "evening elf" - because I am useless after dinner, and then he tends to me and brings me anything I'd like. It's nice how the differences in body clocks have worked for us - each of us gets a pampering, at opposite ends of the day - and each also gets to spoil the other senseless when they are at their most feeble. It's a lovely tradition.










In summer, we have a lot of iced tea - generally green, with mint, with citrus, with jasmine, sometimes with several of these at once. We make a big vat of it and keep it in the fridge, and it barely lasts the day.










Does anyone else sing odes to tea when the tea is being brought in, or is it just us?

_Here comes the tea
Here comes the tea
It's all right
Here comes the tea
_
...borrowing from the Beatles tune _Here Comes The Sun_...

...and in more formal moods, borrowing from _Here Comes The Bride_...
_
Here comes the tea!
Here comes the tea!_

Returning to The Beatles:
_
All you need is tea
La-la-la-la
All you need is tea
La-la-la-la
All you need is tea
La-la-la-la
Tea is all you need_

...etc...

Now over to you for your tea preferences, stories and rituals.


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## gottatrot

It's good to hear Sunsmart is doing well. I understand the medications are expensive, but I've seen horses that were left untreated and the (often) slow deterioration. Since I've also seen how well horses can do on the meds, I feel really sorry for those others.

Interesting assessment of the bitless bridle. I've been riding Hero in an English hackamore lately. But I put his kimberwicke in when we went for a ride this week. He does well in the hackamore and I know it will stop him from taking off too far. 

But he definitely knows it's not a bit. When we pass other horses in their fields, if he wants to go over and touch noses, he ignores my rein and pushes right over there. I didn't want him crowding the other horse on our ride.

My experience has been the same, with a crossunder feeling like a rudder with slower reactions. Sidepulls feel a bit quicker for turning, more like a snaffle to me. But if a horse doesn't want to stop...they're like a halter.

That whole idea that horses that would bolt in a bitless would also be unstoppable in any bit is bunk. Pain is not the only thing that excites horses.


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## SueC

Agreed, @gottatrot. I think the reason bits have an edge over bitless is nothing to do with being able to cause pain - that's a common misconception, and you can certainly cause pain with a bosal, and even break a horse's nasal bones with a long-shank hackamore, and strip the skin off their chins, if you're brutal (which IMO means you should be shot :evil. I think the reason bits have an edge over bitless is because there is more nuance and sensitivity, so that you can be really subtle with your cues, and have very varied cues, and very consistent cues for different things, and respond very quickly to a horse responding or not responding to a cue. 

Also, the kind of bits I ride in don't offer automatic pressure release when the horse pokes his nose in the air - they offer automatic pressure release when the horse tucks his head in - which means communication isn't interrupted if they do that, and also it's harder for a horse to bolt with his head tucked in; but the continued uninterrupted communication is IMO the overwhelming reason for the effectiveness of those bits when you ride in them correctly, i.e. subtly and gently and responsively and without causing pain.


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## SueC

...in semantic terms I think a good bit gives you a wide vocabulary of words you can whisper very quietly, while a bitless setup gives you a very rudimentary vocabulary at standard conversation volume (which is why you then become more dependent on other body language, weight cues etc on the horse, which is not necessarily a bad thing, and I think all of us should be able to ride in halters, at least in an arena setting on experienced well-mannered horses - and on other types of horses if you're more advanced).

...in terms of alphabet, I think a good bit is like braille, and a bitless setup is like kanji.


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## Knave

I agree completely about the bits. I personally haven’t ridden in a bit-less set up myself besides the standard old hackamore. I myself think I am better suited for a bit. I don’t dislike hackamore horses, Lucy is a wonderful example of one, I just don’t find myself as comfortable.


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## SueC

Of course, @Knave, at your place you sometimes ride entirely bridleless (even reversing around corners!) 

ETA: Was going up the ladder and down the slide your dog's own idea? Was it imitation - or was there some encouragement? It sounds hilarious! :rofl:


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## egrogan

@SueC - I love making chai tea at home, usually with black tea like English breakfast as the base. The recipe is pretty similar to yours otherwise. No tea-song though :rofl: As the weather has gotten colder, I've also been enjoying homemade hot chocolate. Definitely an indulgent treat with a couple of tbs of Dutch Process High Fat Cocoa powder and some milk and cream! Yum.


On bitless bridles- I ended up switching Fizz to a sidepull earlier in the summer while I had to wait for the equine dentist to resume pandemic-limited farm visits to deal with some sharp points and funky wear patterns that were making bits uncomfortable for her. I didn't know what to expect. Turns out she really ended up loving it. Brakes were still fine. We're certainly not doing any high level dressage movements but she will do little leg yields, serpentines, etc. across the trail just fine. I haven't had any formal dressage lessons in a very long time so not sure what that would look like. I agree with you the level of refinement wouldn't be the same as with a bit, though she was bitted fairly simply in a low port, mullen mouth d-ring. From looking at a lot of pictures of other sidepulls, I think the one we went with is constructed slightl y differently than a lot of sidepulls which keeps it stable on her head with no twisting or bunching. And of course the ability to freely graze/drink on the trail is a really nice bonus. Not that she had issues grazing with a bit, but it's nice not to come home with a bit coated in grass! This is the specific bridle we bought, which has been on sale for a few months now at a price that made it feasible to give it a try even if it didn't work out.










I had once tried Isabel in the Dr. Cook style cross under and found it pretty useless- she'd just fling her nose straight up in the air and then muscle her way wherever she wanted to go. The Zilco flower hackamore actually ended up working really well for her though. I rode in a couple of low key dressage clinics in that with her and her level of responsiveness was fine with just baby w/t/c in the arena. And worked very well out on hacks.


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## SueC

Your sidepull sure looks sturdy, @egrogan! One of the problems with the cross-under is that it moves unless you apply tension equally to both reins, so you basically have to neck rein to turn. Because it moves, it's hard to apply consistent cues - the cross-under straps are constantly meeting in different places under the horse's jaw depending on what you've just done to the reins. I shouldn't have to worry about the gear staying in place when I'm giving rein cues. Also, the cross-under straps seem to get stuck in various positions and then the little rein rings end up in vastly different places each side and you have to actually get off to fix that. I'd hate to think what could happen to the bridle in a spook... Slides around like a halter, and gets stuck to boot...

Another thing I'm not convinced about is the idea of a head-hug. Maybe some horses like it, but it seems rather claustrophobic to me - and this on a herbivore, who surely has instincts regarding getting their faces crushed in a lion's jaw? That whole idea of distributing pressure all around the face seems unnecessary to me too because the best way to reduce pressure is to be gentle as a rider. On the other hand, of course, one thing I really like about curb bits is that they do spread the pressure out a bit compared to snaffles, but of course even more importantly, curb bits give warning as they activate, allowing a horse to respond to far gentler pressures than are usually applied with a snaffle. And there's little warning you can give with the bitless bridle I'm trying out, just as is the case with a halter.

The reason I'm up at this ungodly hour is hayfever. I'd rather distract myself than lie in the dark trying to ignore the sensation of ants having a barn-dance in my nose - plus my husband, who is similarly afflicted, woke me by making the most woeful high-volume whistling noises through his nostrils in his sleep. It was quite shrill, and worst of all, kept moving up and down the scale, so there was no sleeping. He's settled down a bit now so I might try to get back to sleep now... 

(Where did the zzzzzz emoji go? ...and it seems like the angels have left the universe...)


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## gottatrot

I have been drinking green tea from Japan lately that I bought from an Asian store. It tastes a little like dirt to me, but not in a bad way. Very different from green tea we can buy in the usual stores. The taste brings back fond memories of evenings in Japan.

I like the bitless @egrogan uses. I believe that type is called a scrawbrig. It crosses under just the chin like a curb strap. I have ridden in them but not on my own horses.

Amore couldn't take the under jowl squeeze of a regular crossunder. She is too claustrophobic. I used a nurtural on her, which is a crossunder with a piece added that stops the squeeze from going past under the chin. Very like a scrawbrig.

But I actually preferred hooking my reins to the rings on the side of the noseband and using it like a regular sidepull.

One difference I see is if a horse is very sensitive like an Amore, the bitless feels like it has a lot more subtlety. Maybe Fizz is that way too. In a way sometimes the responses were better because she could overreact to bit cues.

Hero is not a subtle type and responds far better in a bit. Halla was not a good horse to compare with because she always looked for advantages, and if I had one good ride in a flower hackamore, that was her test ride. After that she would know its limitations and run through it.

Halla was good in an english hackamore though, and I could get pretty quick responses on turns. I can see how people jump courses in them if a horse responds like Halla. I just direct reined though, rather than neck reined. I find that the only curbs that don't work well with more than super light direct reining are those with solid mouthpieces and long shanks. 

I have ridden in most kinds of bitless, as well as halters. Strangely, I have never used an S hack. 

I've ridden horses that were well trained to a bosal and they are nice if used right. But it is necessary to cue and release only. I've also ridden horses whose riders used constant pressure in a bosal and they would run through cues.

I do not like big mechanical hackamores with hard or abrasive nosebands. Or sidepulls with chain or hard chafing rope. I've met people who teach the horse to be light by chafing and rubbing the hair off the nose.

I don't really find much difference between a fitted sidepull, scrawbrig, or flower hackamore. A bosal is a little different but you can get a horse to respond the same. 

I guess my point is that I do like bitless bridles and have used them extensively. All my horses preferred having me put a hackamore on rather than a bit. They like to be able to eat, and I'm sure it's easier to swallow. But bits are very useful, and I think it's good to be flexible, maybe use different things for different situations and find what is best for each horse.


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## bsms

" _It was kind of like rowing a boat, as opposed to holding hands. Sometimes the boat drifted wide a bit when turning._" 








​That sounds like a good analogy. Bandit STEERS well in most bitless bridles. His stop is....adequate in a Dr Cook's, but he quickly decides how much I can annoy him using ANY bit or bitless design and adjusts how strongly he'll express his opinion. I've noticed - riding him bitless one day and with a bit the next, alternating multiple days in a row - that he seems more confident and more relaxed in a bit. When nervous, he WANTS to know what I'm suggesting and a good bit allows him to figure out what I'm thinking faster and more clearly than my bitless options.

"Another thing I'm not convinced about is the idea of a head-hug."

IMHO, a Dr Cook's shouldn't GIVE a head hug. If you need to use it hard enough to do that - and I've been there and done that - I don't find it very effective. It seems to work best where the "hug" is merely a way to prevent it from sliding higher on his face. Using a rope halter, the big problem was it would slide up on the horse's face and just not do much of anything (very old picture of me riding Trooper):








One of the things I like about Billy Allen or solid mouth curbs is that Bandit can eat in one and the grass/weeds won't get caught on anything. However, Bandit gets a LOT of practice eating in a bit and a single joint O-ring doesn't bother him often. On rare occasions, though, I have to dismount and clean it off. Never with one like this:


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## gottatrot

I wanted to add some pics. I used a chain under the chin on Halla's english hackamore. It was necessary. For Hero I use a leather strap.

Satin the Arab went well in a flower hackamore or regular crossunder. 

One photo of Amore shows how I attached her reins to the crossunder rings to make it a sidepull. The other pic is a bridle I turned into a sidepull for her.


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## SueC

Thank you very much for your bitless and otherwise reports!  They are much appreciated - it's great to compare notes - and I will respond properly when I am less comatose.




gottatrot said:


> I have been drinking green tea from Japan lately that I bought from an Asian store. It tastes a little like dirt to me, but not in a bad way. Very different from green tea we can buy in the usual stores. The taste brings back fond memories of evenings in Japan.


I think I know the type you mean - at a proper Japanese restaurant with a proper Japanese chef who happened to like Albany and move here, the green tea tasted different - I thought it tasted a bit like goldfish food smells - you know, those floaty flakes people throw in the aquarium.

We're getting a fair bit of Asian culinary and cultural education courtesy of Eileen, who speaks Japanese as well as Mandarin, and obviously English (and has just passed the boring Australian citizenship test without passing out in the process - an admirable feat of endurance - systems of government, historical dates, _snoooore_ - our real system of government here is that a) the highest bidders are buying our democracy, and b) the Murdoch press is like something out of _1984_ but of course they don't mention that in the course material... :evil.

It's great fun watching Japanese or Mandarin-language movies with her because she'll say, "Ah, these actors did such-and-such before, this is going to be a good one!" and she'll pause the movie to tell us, "The subtitles here aren't quite correct and are missing an important cultural subtlety!" and explain. Very educational. If you need a good Japanese thing, and haven't tried this, we really love it (but we've also watched pretty much every Sherlock there is):






Speaking of Sherlock, we watched this one last week and I think it's the best one ever:






We've been learning about Taiwanese snacks, and the ones we like best are ones which look like giant sesame-coated silkworm cocoons, and look like them in cross-section, sans the silkworm - it's spun sweetened rice, very cocoony. Also the Japanese mochi are nice - the last pack had red bean filling and was the best so far in my opinion - very delicious.

One evening Eileen made us a dessert which we happily referred to as "frog eyes and fungus" - we actually have "frog eye soup" in the West, in tapioca, as used to make puddings (and I've always done that with milk because I'm a dairy freak, and I love the texture of the "frog eyes"). Eileen's frog eyes were special giant ones which were brown (caramel added, we looked it up) and she simmered them in slightly sweetened water with ginger slices in, for a long time, including some standing time between simmering. The fungus was prepared separately - it's sort of bath-sponge looking when you buy it dried in packets, and gets rehydrated in a bowl of hot water first, and then it just goes in soups, desserts etc. It has a sort of seaweed texture, but negligible actual flavour and can therefore be added to pretty much anything liquid just for texture. (The liquid part is important - because we tried putting some that Eileen had left in stir fry, and that didn't quite work, and she laughed when she heard what we did. :rofl

Anyway, the frog eye and fungus dessert soup was really yummy - you can serve it with cream or coconut cream. We've been making our usual stir fries, and our Bolognese was a real hit with Eileen (funny that, the very first Japanese-author book I read - _The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle_ - started with the Japanese protagonist listening to The Beatles while cooking Spaghetti Bolognese - it's like the Asians invented noodles, the Italians took up the idea, and then the Asians make a full circle by appreciatively including what Italians did with noodles in their repertoire ). Also Eileen showed us how she makes sushi, which is slightly different to how we do it - she adds mirin, and fills them a little less than we do, with a neat tuck in the middle. Likewise, I show her how I make various things in my repertoire which are unusual in Australia.

I love cultural exchange. We had a fabulous week when Eileen was here. The latest thing I've learnt how to make is something called "cold noodles" - sounds unprepossessing, but it's basically Asian pasta salad. You mix cool noodles and julienned vegetables with a sort of satay dressing. Yesterday I used up the rest of the bulk dressing Eileen had made for half a bucket of vegetables I'd brought in from the garden, some of which I steamed (young broad bean pods, broccolini) and others I included raw (fennel, kohlrabi, bought carrots for extra colour and crunch), mixed with leftover wholemeal fettucine from the Bolognese, and it worked really well - we're having the rest of it for lunch today.

I'll gradually post the best photos.


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## SueC

I'm happy because even though I have to do tax paperwork, the garden out there is beautiful:



Photo courtesy of Eileen! 


*PORONGURUP RANGE HIKE - NANCY PEAK CIRCUIT*

It's so nice to walk through ancient mountain ranges. The granite in the Porongurup Ranges is over 1.2 billion years old (older than multicellular life), and at one stage the hilltops were islands in an ancient ocean. These photos are again taken by Eileen on a hike we did there last week.

The ascent through Karri forest (an outlier of this wet forest type, which survived here due to orographic precipitation - Australia's been getting drier as it's drifted north, which it does at the rate of approximately 7cm a year, so its temperate wet forests have receded to the higher-rainfall continental edges, and of course now things are getting drier more rapidly with climate change on top of that).



The tree-in-the-rock:



There was a cute little animal near the track - it looked like a potoroo:



Views near the top of the first peak:



Granite and forest:



The start of the ridge walk across three peaks - with the Devil's Slide in the background, across the valley. I worked out 20 years ago why it was called that, when I climbed it in the rain for the first time! :lol:



As the afternoon progressed, we got some drizzle - always atmospheric - and here's Eileen with her high-tech beating-people-over-the-head-with sticks:



Descent from Nancy Peak, the highest peak in the ridge walk. This peak was named to commemorate a cow called Nancy who was found by a farmer over a hundred years ago sheltering in the lee of this peak during a bad storm.



Descent from Morgan's View, into Eucalyptus woodland. Great fun to walk this track, and a decent workout.



The walk back through the valley floor track, in tall Karri forest:



Very nice outing.


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## SueC

*MORNING RIDE*

First thing this morning, I trimmed Ben's hooves, while Sunsmart ate an extra feed - then I took him riding. It was really windy, and he was jumpy, so I put him back in his bit today and rode the long ride through the valley floor to Verne Road. I was alone on the farm and therefore not interested in experimenting with new gear with a jumpy horse I was taking off our property - but I'm going to alternate between bit and bitless for a while. On our property he can go bitless, so I'll aim for an all-tracks bitless ride of our farm next time - and then I'll have more feedback, and will respond to the useful comments people kindly left on their own experiences (much appreciated, thank you, it's always great to compare notes ).

I really enjoyed the ride - Sunsmart felt very much like the old Sunsmart, before his health crisis. I also really enjoyed the instant connection I had with him through the bit - it was like having our familiar language back - millimetre rein cues are all we need this way, and it's not just me talking to the horse through it, it's also him talking back to me - I get information on how he's feeling by the way he leans into the bit, or moves it at his end, and then I can respond to that (in all sorts of ways, not just via the bit). It's definitely a two-way communication device, and he also seemed happy to have that back today, and really engaged with me - and as we were riding through the bush, there was nothing yummy for him to eat anyway.

It's amazing how much more aware you become of something if you're coming back to it after a break. I'd not ridden Sunsmart in a bit for nearly two weeks, and it really struck me how similar it is functionally to holding hands with your spouse when you're walking. You can convey things, you can steady each other, it's sensitive skin talking to sensitive skin, there's so much less you need to say in other ways when you're holding hands, and it's a gentle contact that makes you extra aware of each other's existence.

Sunsmart immediately stepped right into the bit - his head carriage was higher and with his chin tucked back more than bitless, and he was more animated - bitless seems to be more "relax mode" and with a bit "business mode" - and I've observed that before in other horses as well. It's especially strong in an ex-harness racer - these horses grow up literally grabbing their bits and leaning into them when going fast - looking for rein contact when really running, and if you relax rein contact driving a harness racer, the horse generally relaxes and drops speed. It's very different to the way this usually goes with riding horses - so much so that the first time I drove a horse in training on a racetrack, I got in a situation where my face was getting pelted with bluemetal chips from the track during pacework (moderate speed endurance exercise) and instinctively tried to slow the horse down the way I would have done in dressage - half-halting with increasing contact if necessary - but the moment I increased contact at my end, the horse increased contact at her end, and took off at race speed, which meant I got pelted even harder with the little rocks, while the world whizzed by me at alarming speed. Ah well, a harness racer generally only runs flat out for a mile or so, and the track is a safe environment when you're not in a pack, so I just put my head down to avoid the flying rocks, and waited it out. And it was when I relaxed the reins that the horse asked, "Is that it? Time to slow down?" :rofl:

That flying gravel was a real problem at that track - for horses, and for drivers. I was wearing sunglasses, but it's really disconcerting to have your cheeks and lips and neck painfully pelted with sharp projectiles - the horse was fine because she wasn't following another horse - and at this track, to avoid eye injuries, people put mesh hoods over the horses' faces for trials and races. (I never drove in those, I just helped with training sometimes - I wasn't really interested in horse racing, but that's what happens when your parents are obsessed with this sport.)

By the way, it's pretty disgusting how they decided to add bluemetal to that racetrack to make it harder, so that the track would produce state race records - it's not just that horses, who had no choice in the matter, were getting pelted if they sat in a pack, it's also that the harder track creates more wear on the joints, and a greater risk of fractures - and there were more fractures after they made the track harder - my own family lost a mare that way - open fracture of a rear cannonbone. I was there the day that happened and I carted water to the mare so she could drink before the vet arrived to put her down - and as there was no veterinarian attending the track for trials, a vet had to come from 25 km away. She was a really sweet little horse, beautiful nature, and I just hate horse racing now - yes, animals can break their legs anywhere, but it's so disgusting the way decisions about track surfaces are made with prestige and records in mind, instead of creating a nice cushion for the horses' comfort and safety while running. :evil:

But I digress. Anyway, when you ride an ex-harness racer, these horse tend to look for contact as the speed and/or intensity of the work increases, and to relax when you loosen the reins. I actually like riding this way - you just have to have a stop cue that agrees with both of you, and that's where cues from your weight distribution and legs come in (plus half-halting, which I've always explained to harness horses starting to work under saddle).

Ex-harness horses can actually be more relaxed rides in English hackamores than bits, since it removes a "serious work" cue. I'd recommend riding in an English hackamore to anyone who wants to adopt an ex-harness racer for riding, at least while getting to know their horse, unless they're prepared to go at race speed for a mile or so if there's miscommunication with the bit and the rider hangs on or even increases resistance in panic. Sunsmart's great-grandmother was an off-track trotter who'd raced in France, and I rode her both in a snaffle and an English hackamore as a child. She was definitely more ambitious when wearing a snaffle, which she'd been raced in - and she went best, and happiest, in an English hackamore.

Our English hackamores fell apart after a couple of decades, but I'm sure wondering now if that wouldn't be a better option for riding Sunsmart bitless than a cross-under bridle. It's straighforward, it's got consistent cues, nothing gets stuck or moves around the face, it's got a curb, it's gentle (it has a padded nose and short shanks, and if the chain it comes with isn't super flat like a good Kimberwicke chain, you can always replace it with leather), plus a horse can eat comfortably in one on a trail. I think my horse would adapt more easily to that kind of bitless with some overlap, than with a completely different system - although I'm going to keep alternating with the cross-under for at least a few months, just because it's good to do something different sometimes, and to learn another language, so to speak. It will improve my communication with the horse, even if we don't stick with it long term.

Back to the ride - I really enjoyed being out on the horse, in tune with it, and in the lovely bushland. At the Stoney's first dam we saw a bird of prey I wasn't able to identify - not a Wedge-Tailed Eagle, something smaller with lighter colouration through the wings. It flew up as we rode by and then soared overhead for a while. Once we got to Verne Road we returned through the big pasture up on that hill, and the other neighbour's cattle came running up to the fence - cows with calves about 3-5 months old, all curious and looking for adventure, kicking up their heels. Sunsmart watched their antics with interest; the dog got fed up and started barking at them through the fence when she thought they were getting too wild. :lol:

It was a hot day, and Smartie got sweaty. When we got back, I gave him his first bath with a hose since last summer, and he really enjoyed the coolness of the (tepid) bore water, and getting clean and less itchy. He's mostly shed his Cushings coat now - all the tangles are gone. There's patches of long hair remaining, and a thin fuzz of long hair over the summer coat coming in - but that summer coat is chocolatey and shiny. 

It's a good thing I fed the horse before the ride, because just as his bath was finished, the other horses decided to go pelting up the forest track behind the house, and he wanted to join them. When I let him out into the Common, he cantered about a quarter of a mile down into the field in the other direction, apparently just for the fun of it, before turning and heading back along the edge of the nature reserve, cantering and trotting down the path the others had taken. I watched him go into the forest track behind the house and was glad to see him so animated, and after a work session too! He'll be 24 on December 1, but didn't look like it to me today - he has never looked old, except when he got ill last summer. It's lovely that he has got this new lease of life - a sort of Indian summer.

Here's a photo of Sunsmart's great-grandmother in her English hackamore, when I rode her as a child - just learning to jump here, hence the slack in the reins and the dodgy position. 










But I've got another reason to include this: Because when I put the red browband on the cross-under bridle, I found the old blue browband Sunsmart's great-grandmother wore afterwards and put that on the old bridle with the bit on it - the old bridle I only used because Sunsmart's bridle broke irreparably last summer. So it turns out that what I had now done is put together the exact same bridle the French mare had worn when I rode her as a child, and today, Sunsmart wore it on his trail ride with me - nearly 40 years afterwards! (I've never ridden him with the blue browband before, because red is his "normal" colour.)

Imagine that.


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## Knave

Your world is such a beautiful one. 

I agree about the bit feeling. I like the feeling of the conversation. I mostly leave reins loose, but still very subtle conversation may be had. 

I can’t imagine that in a cart. I had a bad wreck when I was a little girl. It was my only cart experience before Zeus. It was the horse’s first time in the cart, and I offered to step into it. The wheel was flat and we didn’t know, and when I stepped into the cart it squealed. Boy did Shorty take off. I apparently wasn’t super smart, so after pulling on his head for a while I decided it only smart to bail. Well, instead of going off the back I stood and stepped to the side, which flipped the cart. 

I was fairly torn up and the horse was too. Eventually the harness broke. The cart was all bent up and the horse’s hind legs were all cut up. 

I took that same cart and harness and fixed it back up for Zeus.


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## SueC

mg: @Knave, that sounds like a terrible accident - I hate cart accidents! (There was one where a horse in a welded metal cart took off, lost the driver, went running all over the farm and ended up stuck in an electric fence... you can imagine how much fun it was to get the horse out of that situation!) Good on you though, for proverbially "getting back on the horse after falling off it" - and learning from mistakes, rather than letting it stop you doing stuff. 

Yeah, I have the reins loose a lot with a bit too when riding trails etc, but as you say, you can still "talk" a little like this, and if you need to talk more clearly you just take on a bit more contact. :charge:


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## Knave

It did stop me for a long time really. I was 11 I think when that happened, and the cart was still bent and the harness still torn when I asked my parents for them. We really had no need for a horse to pull though, so I’m not sure if that wreck was the stop of it all or what. I will say I’ve been overly paranoid about making Zeus good. Little girl took him out herself in the cart and I watched like a hawk and went over emergency responses a million times. Lol. He never has tried to run though. I’m pretty sure I’d panic.


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## SueC

I just wanted to say to my esteemed American friends here that no matter how you're voting and what happens today, I want to send my love and best wishes to you and your families and loved ones. We all wish for a better, fairer world, and unfortunately, in our modern democracies, this doesn't seem to be seriously on offer of late.










Thinking of you all. ♥


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## SueC

*VIEW FROM A DRONE*

One of our visitors early in 2020 had a drone and showed us a bird's eye perspective of the little oasis we have created at our place. This is in the middle of summer, after three years of drought. I kind of forgot we had this clip, but it was so lovely to see this point of view, of us in the wider environment, and what it all looks like to a bird. ♥ 






The 50 hectares of bushland behind the house are part of the block and managed by us for biodiversity conservation. All the trees and tree lucerne belts in the pasture around the house and the two western fields surrounded by shelter belts were planted by us (~7,000 seedlings) since 2010 for the purposes of more sustainable agriculture, wildlife habitat creation and livestock shelter. In the area immediately around the house and utility areas, we planted mostly flame retardant lush vegetation like acacias and tree lucerne (which double as green stock fodder in the summer droughts), fruit trees and berries. 

The summer "green zone" around the house is maintained by a low-capacity solar bore, which produces 10-20L of water per minute during daylight hours, which we manually move through the system using Wobble-T big-drop sprinklers, soaker hoses, and big-drop small-circle low-throw sprinklers placed on individual fruit trees and vegetable beds. Mulching for water conservation is extra important, both in the bird-attracting but mostly flame-retardant garden immediately around the house, and in the permaculture area adjacent to it, from which we're already getting over half the fruit and vegetables we need for the household, less than ten years into establishment. We have compost toilets at the house, so that the nutrient cycle is closed, with the waste becoming organic fertiliser for fruit trees, berries and summer pumpkins (resulting in amazing yields).

Hot composting of garden waste, kitchen waste, cardboard, the odd wheelbarrow of animal manure etc, followed by a cool stage utilising compost worms, creates compost and fertiliser for the rest of the vegetable beds.

Note that the Sydney tube solar hot water system on the house roof is half covered with shade cloth during summer - Sydney tubes are really effective, and otherwise the water boils on the roof.

We're completely off-grid, making our own electricity via solar panels (on the shed roof), with batteries for storage. As we live in an (owner-built) passive-solar strawbale eco-farmhouse, we don't need electricity for any space heating or air conditioning - the house mostly takes care of itself that way, staying naturally comfortable - in the cooler seasons the sunlight comes right into the house, falling on a mass coloured concrete floor which acts as a heater and thermal battery, and we have a wood heater running on average two evenings a week mostly to boost our hot water on consecutive cloudy days. In summer, the eaves exclude direct sunlight from the house (sun is at a higher angle), and the thermal mass and superinsulation, along with cool breezes in the night, keep the house cool.

In case you're thinking you need a big budget for this kind of thing, you don't - we're if anything below-average earners, and built this place ourselves on a below-average Australian mortgage: A$250,000 including the off-grid electrical system, compost toilets, rooftop solar water heater, water tank, greywater recycling, interior fitout and landscaping - but we did put five years of our own physical labour into it (the last four years part-time, while already living in a partly completed house). If anyone wants to live like this and would like some advice, contact us - we've done a lot of articles on "how-to" in the Australian Owner Builder, and we have building diary here (access extensive captions in slide show view): https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary/albums/72157628414190373


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## SueC

*PERSONAL SANITY PLAYLIST FOR THIS WEEK*

This week, I'm listening to a lot of Cure and Australian Indigenous music. Here's some of the Cure songs that are helping me stay sane.

First and foremost, a perfect song for all this:






_STEP INTO THE LIGHT

All of your faith in simple shadows from my hope for something more
How about yourself were caught in any reason to be sure
You believe, there's nothing more to add
You believe, it's as simple as that

I don't care about the aliens, ghosts, and fairies, all the voices in your head
It's when your "I believe it's true, I know", I start to get upset

Because you don't know, you don't know, you don't know
You just want it all true
No, you don't know, you don't know, you don't know
You just have to say you do
You can't really know, you can only believe with a confidence born of deceit

The only angels you should hear are reason, honesty, equality and love
The only devils you should fear are hatred, ignorance, greed and a world full of people scared dumb

You believe, it's as simple as that
You believe, there's nothing more to add

I don't care about your sinners, saints, and saviours, acting with mysterious ways
It's when your "I believe it's true, I know!", I start to feel dismayed

Because you don't know, you don't know, you don't know
You just want it all true
No you don't know, you don't know, you don't know
You just have to say you do
You can't really know, you can only believe
It really is insane, all this crazy desperate need
For unknowable magic, strange supernatural power
You're flying through space at a million miles an hour
For 4 billion years, the sun keeps coming up
It's all too wonderful for words but for you it's not enough
You should step out of the shadows yeah and step into the light_


Another obvious one for right now:






One whose mood captures the dislocation, nausea and darkness of that situation - with a fan video that adds to the imagery:






Apologies for the sound on that one, it seems a bit clipped. Here's my favourite version of it so far - showing what happens if you just keep on getting better and better at this:






Another song that simply fits the mood:






And of course:































And because it's at the heart of all this:











And because we can take refuge in the microcosms we create for ourselves and those we love:































...that's a nice cross-section of relevant songs.

Stay sane, everyone. ♥


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## gottatrot

Thanks for the well wishes. Your farm is beautiful!!

Regarding politics, I find it heartening that the US is still fairly "up in the air" when it comes to politics. My opinion is that we are healthiest when there are at least two fairly opposing viewpoints on most matters, to keep things from becoming too unbalanced.

It is my belief that a system without strong opposition can seem fine when you agree with whoever is in charge. But that means it can too easily flip and become unopposed in another direction. The power struggles in my opinion are far better than having a very large portion of a country kept repressed and silent.

What does bother me is a "we are good people, you are bad people" mentality. I've been reading old classics and racism and sexism abound. But stated as simple facts, with even the women saying of course they don't have the mental capacity a man does. Sadly, so many people still don't see the trap of how believing others are inferior because of physical characteristics, beliefs or culture leads to bigotry, marginalization and all the things we think we are above nowadays.

What I see in common between modern thinking and the old classics is the exception clause. An example without being too offensive hopefully is that poor people deserved pity and help, except gypsies who were dirty vermin. Nowadays we accept all people, except for those who disagree with us. They are dirty vermin.


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## Knave

That is a perfect conclusion @gottatrot. I completely agree. I am so shocked by the nastiness and hate going between the factions right now. 

Thank you for the well wishes @SueC. I agree with you too, nothing much to be done.


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## knightrider

@SueC. you have put me on to several really good books I have enjoyed. I just happened to pick up this book--I don't know why--esp maybe?--from the library.

The book is _Where There Is Smoke_ by Elisabeth Rose. It takes place in Australia, on a horse stud farm. The story is well-written. It is odd because the printing type is like books that are self-published. The characters are not perfect and very likeable. It's got horses in it. It's a lot of fun. I thought you might be interested in reading it. I tried to figure out where in Australia, since it is a big country, but I'm not sure where--out in the country where there were bad fires.


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## SueC

Hello! ...everything looks different and our cool emojis are gone, sadly...

Thanks, @knightrider, for your book recommendation.  

Bad fires could be anywhere in Australia these days except in the desert...

Hello, @Spanish Rider! Long time no see. How are you doing? Sadly Europe's been up in infections, but just maybe there's going to be a vaccine that works and is safe... what do you think of the new candidate?

Hello to everyone else I've not specifically mentioned! I'm a bit busy at the moment but will get back when there's some space/energy!


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## SueC

Well, hello again. I've got to say, everything still looks really weird and makes my eyes hurt, and it's hard to find anything or know where anyone is with this new setup. It's very visually uncomfortable to use this space and discourages me from posting or reading posts, sadly. And all the cool emojis are gone, and a whole bunch of ugly useless ones exist. Brett says I should give the techies a while to sort all this stuff out, and I hope he's right that this isn't necessarily the final look and features of this forum...

I'm going to have a go at doing a photo post... pictures Eileen took at our place (I've still not finished processing them all!).

Mary Lou:




Sparkle:


Don Quixote:


Benjamin:










Ben & Nelly:


Let's see how that goes... by the way, there's more photos on Flickr here: Brett and Sue Coulstock

...I can't re-post everything here... so if you want _all_ the photos, you can always see them there...


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## SueC

...and now there's no editing it seems, and the post I made above has completely different spacing to what I saw in the preview, and apparently it's not fixable. 🤮

PS: I just found the editing to edit this to say I found the editing, but it didn't let me change the fact that it puts in extra spaces...


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## egrogan

Hi @SueC! Sorry you're having a bad experience in the new platform. A lot of people are having trouble with the visual display and it sounds like that's been noted. It's so odd that you're finding extra spaces inserted here- I always had that same problem in the OLD platform, and had to edit every post after I hit "submit" to go back and delete the spaces. But now I DON'T have that problem. I'm sorry you do!

Lovely pictures though. Makes me want to reach through the screen and pet those noses!


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## SueC

Hiya, @egrogan! 🐨 🦘 🦇 I'll just have to ignore the spaces and let things be unbeautiful. Here's a few more pictures...

What's that expression, The Bluebird Of Happiness?



This is the Splendid Fairy-Wren, which lives in South-Western Australia. We've planted back around 7,000 native trees and bushes in the form of shelter belts and shade clumps in pasture, and created a bird-friendly native garden - and it's just wonderful to see literally thousands of birds thriving in this new habitat. We can't get away from the birdsong!

Our friend Eileen is a huge bird enthusiast, and always brings her (enormous) camera. She got the above shot and the following ones in our garden:









These birds are tiny, the size of a little mouse - but very noisy! They also have a tendency to knock their beaks against windows at dawn - which can get you awake at 5am. 😣

Here's one that had just woken us up:


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## SueC

These photos are nearly a month old. Here's Sunsmart before he shed out his Cushings coat:

...and the good news is, he has shed out that yak coat and apart from a few telltale patches of longer hair on his legs (which is still disappearing), he actually looks like a normal horse again. It's not quite his pre-Cushings summer coat - it's not as short as a normal summer coat, but it's a nice-looking, even, chocolate-coloured coat, and he has now stopped being sweaty on hot days.

In other good news: A couple of days ago I was watching the horses come racing around the back of the house headed for the forest track, as is their wont. Julian and Chasseur had run off ahead of the others, which was unusual, because for the past few months Sunsmart has been right with them again (just like before his health crisis), and even ahead of them a few times lately. This time, Sunsmart came trotting along with the donkeys who are always playing catch-up when the horses decide to race off...and then he spotted the sand patch behind the house (an old cattle camp), looked speculative, and decided to have a good roll there before proceeding into the forest.

When he got up from that, he gave a series of joyous buck-jumps, threw his heels up into the air like a young horse, and turbo-charged into a gallop punctuated by long leaps that weren't necessary for getting from A to B. It warmed my heart to see him like this - I'm so glad that tripling his medication in response to his Cushings crisis last summer has gradually restored him to his normal self behaviourally.

I rode him last night, after more than a week of being unable to ride: Last weekend we had a tremendous rainstorm pass through, and the horses were back in rugs while squalls hit the land for days on end, and temperatures dropped back to winter levels with the Antarctic blasts. Then I was ultra-busy with guests all last week... I remember the horse looking speculatively in my direction a few times during that week, as if to say, "Hey, are we gonna have an adventure?" He had that look on his face...

Yesterday when I took him out, he was super-enthusiastic, and halfway through his ride, heading back out on the swamp track, he said, "Let's go!" and cantered (not sedately, more like a chariot horse) the whole way to the back boundary off his own steam, which he hasn't done since he got ill last summer. He's feeling good - he'd already galloped up the first hillside as if turbo-charged, and after the swamp track, he galloped up the ridge in the other direction in a similar manner (lots of "yippee!") before we headed back more sedately on our western forest boundary. When I got off him, he was in a fabulous mood and literally smiling at me. After the ride, he wolfed down a small extra hard feed (with a bit of salt in it) before _galloping_ off merrily to join his friends at the far end of the hill paddock. It warmed my heart. ♥

I'll get up-to-date photos of him soon - just need to get through Eileen's photos first!


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## gottatrot

I know most are having issues with the new format. But for me all the pictures now are big and bright, and your blue birds look so beautiful! Plus the like buttons showed up again. But with this old phone some of the emojis just look like squares. That happens when people text me too.


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## SueC

Well, I'm glad it's working better for you, @gottatrot.  I'm slowly discovering some advantages to the new platform - it's actually easier to write posts because there's more room and the formatting buttons are logically at the bottom of the box, so you don't need to go to the top of the box anymore but have them always right at hand. 

Main gripe for me is the visual presentation of the posts, and losing our wonderful emojis for just the same basic dull set anyone else has (although Brett says that if they wanted to, the techies could also import the old emojis into the new platform). Also the lack of thread information on the main forum listing (that used to be in the right-hand column - most recent thread from each section), and that I can't see who's where anymore (both on the main forum listing, and under each thread - there is one option that allows you to see where all the logged-in members are, on the one page, but no info on visitors or individual threads).

I'm going to plough through some more of Eileen's lovely animal studies. Here's Julian...

This is Julian going "Grrrrr!" - which he always does when he's suspicious.

In his prior existence, before we adopted and socialised and free-ranged him with a herd, that facial expression used to be followed by a serious charge, and if there wasn't an electric fence or steel bars between you and him, he'd attempt to take chunks out of you, and he would have killed any small animal that came into his enclosure (his mother killed a sheep once that chanced into her yard - it had wandered from the neighbour's flock - she skinned it alive, and then it was put out of its misery with a gun before she could trample it to death - she was a nice mare, by the way, despite of this, but like her son, or indeed like Sunsmart, didn't take to "retirement isolation sand jail").

These days, it stops there (if you give him space), and he quickly turns into "nice Julian":




He's usually laid back now, and he's been enjoying his new life for three years this month - after _17 years_ of social isolation (he was with his dam for the first year, but that was that). I love watching him enjoy his social life, pasture, and freedom to explore 62 hectares of very diverse land.

For any "newbies" to this, his arrival and integration into our herd was photographed and documented here: Trotters, Arabians, Donkeys and Other People

This is our three Simmental X steers, who are around two years old now:


We've been in drought for three years and are therefore purposely understocked - usually we have 6-10 beef cattle on the property (12 hectares of pasture, the rest is nature conservation), and at one point we had 17 (some of them weanlings, some of them shortly outgoing to market). The spring flush this year has been the best in over half a decade - it's been rainy and sunny both, and we're knee deep in grass. We could buy in another half dozen weanling cattle immediately, but I'm putting it off for now to save myself hassle over the summer. It won't hurt the land to have long grass on it this summer, and we'll get firebreaks done to reduce fire hazard.

More donkey studies:


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## SueC

Continuing with the animal photos - here's Eileen plus donkeys, in mimicry mode. It's so funny how she gets them to look at the camera in her hand, and then adjust her expression to theirs...


...and here comes a study of Don Quixote's ears. He used to have the longest ears on the farm, but then we got Ben and he beat him in that department. However, Eileen's phone camera, which is optimised for landscapes, tends to distort things, especially around the edges - remember that hiking shot of me a while back where I looked like an Oompaloompa and sported Dolly Parton breasts I don't actually have? 🤭

Well, now she purposely used the edge distortion to make Don Quixote look as if he has extra-long ears:



That last one! 



This is his part-time grazing muzzle:

...and here's Nelly "winking":


This is our dog Jess taking a balloon to Eileen's room when she wanted to play with her:



And this is the room turning into a jewel cave at night:

...and what a pair of feet do after lots of hiking is to relax...

Eileen has very nice feet, because she was never forced into shoes too small for her. All the toes align properly! People often do to children what they do to horses - don't re-shoe frequently enough, and then things start to distort...

Some time later this week, I'll put some of our road trip photos in. Incredible landscapes... 🤩


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## Caledonian

Great photos Sue. The little fairy wren is beautiful. 

I'm not sure about the new format. I'm somewhere between 'I can tolerate' and 'I absolutely hate'. 

I'll admit that many things are easier, however, the bad outweigh the good at the moment. It's changed so much that I hardly recognise the site and it's not just the look and functionality. Time will tell...


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## Knave

I’m with you. It’s still hard to get used to the look. I’ll have to agree with @gottatrot though in saying the pictures look spectacular and I like the “like” button on here instead of having to swap views. I just am not sure about the coloring yet I guess... we’ll see.


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## SueC

It's snake weather again, and I've spotted a few tiger snakes around the house and garden recently. The dog has super instincts about avoiding snakes, and the snakes have super instincts about avoiding us. If I meet one suddenly going around a corner, it looks like this: I jump upwards and backwards simultaneously, while the snake rushes away. This is a good arrangement. We have easily hundreds of snakes on this 62-hectare property with lots of seasonal swamp and valley floor (plus the frog pond in the vegie garden). They very rarely hang around if they see people, including on horseback.

I know this critter aspect is one thing that worries a lot of overseas people about Australia (which is a bit rich from the US, since you have rattlesnakes, bears, alligators, big cats, Texas Longhorn cattle, armed sociopaths etc ) - so I'm going to share a funny cartoon about it. (The cartoonist lives in Tasmania and he's trying to stop other people from moving there because excess human population will kill the place...)










from I know all the things about snakes – more afraid of us than we are of them ARE YOU SURE?! | First Dog on the Moon


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## Spanish Rider

SueC said:


>


Best cow pic evah! I especially like curious cow number 3 off to the right.


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## SueC

I'll let Eileen know.  That steer in the distance is what I call our "palomino" and he is the one that is guaranteed to walk through a polybraid fence within two hours of being let into the paddocks with horse fencing, so he can lie down inside the shade clumps or shelter belts rather than in the shade next to them (which causes damage to any native seedlings trying to grow in these areas - cows think it's fun to rip these right out...not to mention I have to repair the fence...🐮).

Apart from being like a set of destructive bulldozers if let anywhere near polybraid or tree protectors or gardens, these steers have lovely personalities, like a set of overgrown labradors, and they're always wanting to hang out with us. They're happy to be within a foot of us as long as we don't touch them, or even extend a hand out, funny fellas. But they hang around sociably and want to know what we are doing, and if I call them, they come running.


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## Knave

It is funny you say that. I used to always want to go to Australia. I would tell my husband that we should go cowboy there for a bit. He would always shoot me down so fast, we can’t even visit Australia! There are terrible snakes there! Lol. He would not listen to the rattlesnake argument. I think he is convinced your snakes will randomly chase people while rattlesnakes leave you alone or run (?) away given the chance.


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## SueC

By the way, I'm getting more proper hippie clothes these days - I've not stopped at the rainbow-coloured patchwork pants. Here's my new hippie jacket, all cotton, which Eileen convinced me to try on when we were in Denmark:

This is not the same thing as the longer knitted coat I was talking about; that's an elegant number and I'll get a photo of it sometime.  It's the first time in years I've bought some nice things to wear... mostly I'm in camouflage pants and T-shirts and long-sleeved oversized old shirts for sun protection...


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## SueC

I've just got to share this: 

🥰 😍 🤪 🥳


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## Knave

I love the hippy clothes!!


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## SueC

They're very comfortable and fun, @Knave. 😀 I've got a little time to post some pictures from the road trip day we had when Eileen was here, which was when we got the clothes (both us girls, with Brett egging us on) passing through Denmark.

*SOUTH COAST ROAD TRIP DAY: DENMARK, CONSPICUOUS CLIFF, WALPOLE, MT FRANKLAND*

There's over 100 photos (selected from over 500 ) from a day we went on a road trip with Eileen to various far-flung hiking spots, so I'm doing this in dribs and drabs.

We'll start with my favourite little road within 20km of us: Mountain Road, which is one of the roads we take on the shortcut from our farm to our closest beach, Cosy Corner. On this excursion we went down the road deliberately on the way to Denmark, just to show Eileen:


It's so narrow and twisty-turny and has the most massive trees either side as it rolls through a hilly landscape. 🥰

Next stop was the Denmark Bakery for breakfast - we'd gotten away early...

This is just their sweets section; they also have amazing pies for which they've been cleaning up dozens of national competitions for the last two decades (their Seafood Chowder Pie is my personal favourite), plus superb sourdough bread.

Brett started eating while Eileen and I went on a quick visit to the Denmark co-op store, which is remarkable because it sells basically everything useful and nothing useless or badly made, and they're also paying attention to fair trade, quality materials and durability. 😍 When I need something, I tend to look there first now - we've got lovely towels from there when we needed new ones, after looking all over Albany's big outlets and not liking anything there - and a set of digital kitchen scales, some stripey bamboo/viscose mix underwear (singlet & matching undies, unbelievably comfortable and good looking), bamboo socks, a new sun hat for Brett, etc etc. Eileen took the opportunity that day to stock up on bamboo socks and various other goodies. Then we went across the road to The Sacred Tree to buy some more hippie clothes (I'd gotten my rainbow patchwork pants on a previous trip, and Eileen bought some lovely stretchy hippie coats).


That's Brett eating his pie, after which he came into the store to tempt us to buy things, which is kind of the opposite to how a stereotypical married man acts. 🥰 I rarely buy anything new for dress-ups these days, and he was egging me on incredibly, making comments about how various materials matched eye colour, were figure-hugging, looked elegant etc - and said things like, "Hey, I just did overtime, buy this!" and would kiss me when I was trying something on. 😋 He was also most encouraging to Eileen about how various things she tried really suited her - and he's not just spouting empty words, he has a keen sense of colour and design and what works and doesn't visually (he's an art buff and studied graphic design). In turn, Eileen and I were giving feedback and encouragement to each other. I normally hate clothes shopping, but this was fun. 🥳

It didn't take us long to come out with a few parcels under our arms. Here's some more streetscape:

_Of course_ Eileen took this photo - spot the donkey!

Then it was back in the car for a 40-minute drive west through Karri forest, until we got to Conspicuous Cliff, a fabulous bit of remote coast. Eileen had never been, and Brett and I hadn't been there over 7 years. Eileen was in photography heaven.

*Conspicuous Cliff*

This is the walkway down:





On the beach:


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## SueC

Continued:

Then there were rock pools and sheets of granite:






Brett found a seashell with a float:

We kept on working our way further west:


Another seashell with built-in flotation device:

And more rock pools:




After exploring the rock pools, we went around a headland until we discovered a little hidden beach. That will be the next instalment. 😊


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## SueC

Continued:



...and after following the rocky shoreline around, we came upon this little hidden beach:

This was the view back towards Conspicuous Cliff, the beach and the granite shore with the rock pools:

...and that's the view towards the ocean, halfway along the point to the little hidden beach:

The dog was playful, so I'd clambered ahead while Eileen was busy taking gorgeous photographs. We were enjoying the little hidden beach:

Eileen was making her way down, taking in the view back towards the ocean as she went:




Jess was happy to see her:

...and totally delighted in this little "playground" - she loves water, waves, beach sand, and exploring a new place. None of us had ever been to this place before!

We found a little cave:

I borrowed the camera to take some photos of Eileen.


Then I went to play with Jess, who was looking for a partner in frivolities - and Eileen captured some lovely photos of what followed:

On the above photo, I'm "chasing" her - and then I conspicuously turn around and it's her turn. Watch her:


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## SueC

Continued:

...and then she comes pelting towards me...


...until, tag!

It's funny how so many animals know how to play this game.

We had another few rounds:

...tag!


Off she went to chase the waves:



She really is a lovely dog.

Playing in the surf again...

...then ambling up to keep us company.




Happy dog...



Another game?


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## SueC

Continued:

Indeed, more games - but this time, it's the monkeys playing...




Then we headed back...


...and climbed the lookout on the cliff...














And that's the end of the photos from Conspicuous Cliff and the surrounding shoreline. More of that day trip when I get a chance to process more photos. Hope you enjoyed your vicarious little trip to Australia! 😀


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## Spanish Rider

An absolute treasure to have so much virgin coastline! 😍


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## Knave

Those photos are beautiful! I especially like how the wet sand glistens.


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## SueC

The reflections in the wet sand are always magic, @Knave!  And yes, @Spanish Rider, as a native European I still boggle at all that unspoilt coastline and the tracts of wilderness. However, I don't live near a major city - all the West Coast is looking like the southern Spanish coast these days in terms of population density... on the South Coast we are thankfully relatively remote to all that.

Continuing on with the road trip - after a picnic lunch in Walpole (lentil/beetroot/feta/walnut salad we'd brought from home, sourdough ryebread from the Denmark Bakery, and sesame "cocoons" for dessert courtesy of Eileen) we were back on the road:

I had this idea that we could get to Mt Chudalup near Windy Harbour, if there was a sealed road along the coast to take us there and we didn't have to go all the way around and back down again on the main highway. So we went to see if the road in question was good... and this is what we got:

...a warning that the 50km road in question was 4WD only! So, we decided to head to the Mt Frankland National Park instead.

*Fernhook Falls*

Some maps list it as Fernbrook Falls, but the information signs there said Fernhook Falls.








It's wildflower season:









The we got back in the car, and stopped on the bridge over the falls on the way to Mt Frankland.


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## SueC

[




*Mt Frankland*






This little flower is called "Southern Cross" for obvious reasons:


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## SueC

Then we had to get the dog back down the ladder-stairs, which is when Eileen took this film:





We went back the "long way around" circling the mountain on a proper rough trail:





Next time, a few photos of Walpole Inlet on the way home!


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## SueC

*Walpole Inlet*

Last stop on our road trip was Walpole Inlet, which is pretty and has house boats, some of which are for hire for holidaymakers. I've always thought it would be lovely to spend a long weekend puttering along on a house boat...

The floating jetty:

Slipway:

On the jetty:

House boats:

Inlet vistas:


And Eileen taking some photos of herself and Jess on the way home:



Really good day out, and hoping to do another get-together early 2021! 

Meanwhile, back at the coal face, I'm still trying to prepare the spring garden better for the coming summer. The cucumbers are still refusing to sprout, even in the greenhouse; I wonder if I need to put a pot indoors for them. Nights are still too cold; the zucchini I planted out are still sulking, as are most of the pumpkin seedlings, although one is taking off well. Tomato plants got out early this year and are looking excellent - the first batch are knee-high and flowering already. Must tie them today, and plant out another batch of seedlings in a bed I cleared for them yesterday, which had a large Siberian Kale in it. I cannot recommend Siberian Kale - we love the Scotch Dwarf Blue and the Tuscan Kale, but this stuff is coarse and any soup or stew you put it in smells like a carcass the next morning.  I still have seeds I could give to someone else, but maybe I should just bin them, instead of inflicting that plant on someone else... (who knows though, _some_ people must like Siberian Kale or it wouldn't have survived as a horticultural option...)

All the lettuces and salad greens are wanting to bolt within weeks of being planted out as seedlings, so I've got another batch to do... and want to start more beans in the greenhouse, first batch is out and slowly growing...


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## SueC

Eileen sent me a lovely photo of herself with one of the black cockatoos being rehabilitated at the centre where she volunteers! 🥰


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## SueC

*IF YOU GROW UP ON PONIES, YOU CAN HANDLE ANYTHING*

As I write, I have a guest out on Sunsmart riding the farm tracks independently - for the first time in more than 5 years - because I actually don't often get people who are well versed in riding coming to our place. However, this guest grew up in England on ponies, and if you can handle a pony, you can handle anything...










Of course, it was raining this morning - Murphy's Law of Planned Rides - but at least there are lengthy breaks between rain bands, so you get hosed for about 5 minutes and then it's sunny for a quarter of an hour, rinse and repeat.

It is so lovely to see a competent rider riding your horse - because you never see him from that perspective when you're riding yourself!  Sunsmart is looking normal again after shedding his yak coat, and looks in very good shape too - he's got most of his muscles back, and his ribs are just covered - he's not carrying excess weight even though it's spring flush, and the grass is knee deep around here - you can't see the donkeys' legs when they're in the pasture! 😃

Shortly after I started writing this, it began pouring down outside, and I was hoping our visitor was in the forest at this time, but turns out she had come back into the meadow and was all exposed as a result, and didn't think the rain would stop, so headed back, untacked the horse and then appeared as a dripping apparition in the corridor. Murphy's Law continued - the same thing happens on horse show weekends, we all know that - and of course, the moment she had the saddle off the horse the rain stopped and the sun came out again. I asked her, "Do you want to tack him back up? He's still here and the radar says the next rain break will be lengthy!" but she was saturated and her hands were freezing, so we decided to maybe try again tomorrow morning for a longer ride, when the front is through.

I gave Sunsmart a carrot as he headed back out to find his herd. He was in a very good mood and kind of smiled at me with an "I had fun!" expression - he does love to go on an outing with a monkey. I was very impressed to find the saddle and bridle hung neatly back into the shed where the visitor had not actually set foot before (I'd gotten all the gear out that morning) - she found the correct spots and everything, and had even managed to take the hoof boots off on her own, with no prior personal use of such items! (Renegades = easy velcro straps, quite intuitive too)

We made some hot tea and she told me about the ride. She said, "He was so well-behaved! At the other end of the property he cantered up the hill with me, and then slowed down again immediately I asked him to, and was instantly relaxed and walking, no arguments, just happy. I've never ridden a horse with that kind of big-stepping trot before and was just getting used to this when our ride was cut short by the downpour. But it was so much fun!"

Just like my last ride, except I didn't get soaked that time! Sunsmart is such a pleasure to ride, and is thoroughly enjoying his outings - I don't always get to take him out as often as I'd like because weather happens and hayfever happens and life happens, but we're always happy when we get to go on a little adventure together - especially because this is like an Indian Summer in his life, coming back like that from being so ill earlier this year. Fingers crossed, the pituitary tumour won't decide to have another growth spurt - it would be really nice to have him stable another 6 years or so. Tomorrow is his 24th birthday! 🥳 🥕🥕 🍏


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## Knave

What a good boy! I don’t know that I have a horse I would trust with an all alone rider I didn’t really know... if in an arena I might trust Bones. I guess I would trust Zeus to not hurt anyone, but I’m sure he could decide to be naughty. Lol

I hope you get 6 more years from Sunsmart! I will say at the Arabian ranch where I worked were two very old cushings horses and they were in the best physical shape I have seen of horses their age. My boss had an 11-yr-old step-son who would take the 33 or 34 year old cushings man out for rides. The horse (I cannot remember his name. All of them had odd names, and I can only remember my favorites.) seemed happy to go.

However, even now your boy has had a long life of productivity. I would like to think most make 24 in good shape, but that would be quite the lie I think. It seems that some injury, or even just arthritis, comes along in the life of many horses taking them out of the game early. Then I guess it is rare enough the horse still getting to go at 24.


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## SueC

*🌟 HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUNSMART 🥳*

Born December 1, 1996
*















*
...he is somewhat bigger now, and I really must get some new photos now he's shed his long coat. The reason he is called Sunsmart is because he always found a shady spot to lie down from the time he was born, so he was named after the West Australian skin cancer campaign at the time - because he was sunsmart! His two common nicknames are Smartie and Smartibartfast (after Slartibartfast in _The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy_).

...Sunsmart spent his birthday being fed carrots by the visitor in the morning, then going out into the 58 hectare common with his friends. Today they were especially active, racing flat out as a group several times on the track behind the house. I really must film that sometime! Today even the donkeys were in a hurry and galloping as fast as their little legs would let them. In the evening, after feedtime, I gave Sunsmart a good brushing, and then we headed out on a leisurely lap of the valley floor, with the bitless bridle which I decided I'm going to convert to a normal bridle, with the option of riding like a sidepull (because the crossunder straps don't release properly and always end up asymmetrical and annoying the horse after we've turned - and the horse doesn't like the sensation of having straps squeezing under his face). If I want more finesse with bitless than just riding off the noseband, I'm going to get myself a nice new padded English hackamore - I rode with those as a child, no hassle.

Happy 24th to Sunsmart - glad he made his 24th in good shape after the scare earlier this year, and may there be many more! 🌞


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## Knave

Happy birthday to Sunsmart!! I am so happy that he has gotten 24 of them!


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## egrogan

Happiest of birthdays to Sunsmart! 🎂


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## gottatrot

Yay Sunsmart! It is my mom's birthday today too. 😁😁

I do believe that for many horses, if the Cushing's is treated it slows things down to where the body's aging process is what affects the horse more. Amore is doing so well, if she didn't have the arthritis in her back I'd most likely still be riding her.

It's that other kind of Cushing's that we've both experienced that seems to kill the horse rapidly.


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## SueC

Thankyou everyone for the birthday wishes for Sunsmart, and I hope you're all having a great week! 

Eileen sent me a cute clip - she says that because she's been learning about horses at our place, she's learnt to speak a little "horse" and that when she was out walking this morning, this bunch of horses came up to say hello to her across a fence - one after the other! '






Young TBs by the looks of them and their brands. How friendly and positive they are before the racing machine gets its teeth into them...


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## SueC

*ANOTHER FIRST*

Culturally, hosting a farmstay is really interesting - such a diversity of backgrounds come to stay with us. Currently we are graced with someone of NZ First Nations ancestry (plus a bit of Welsh and Irish), and a visitor from Myanmar. It's so fascinating hearing about other cultures, and being able to ask questions. For instance, I love the haka, it's so powerful - first saw it at a televised rugby game while channel-surfing as a child, when NZ was playing! And the woodcarving, and how the Maori gave the English colonisers a run for their money. And what life is like in Myanmar, and how people are coping with the pandemic there. Just so many things.

Anyhow, this morning I did not one, but TWO laps of our valley floor, with two different riders! Our female visitor had never ridden a horse before - however, she had ridden an elephant! I just sprung it on her - asked at breakfast if she'd ever ridden horse-back, and when the answer was no - did she want to? And it was very like when Eileen did her first 20-minute lap on Sunsmart - initial apprehension that turns into enjoyment within five minutes. "This is normal, your brain is reacting rationally to being on a half-tonne animal and high up by saying, _Is this a good idea? _But give it five minutes, and if you're not feeling better by then - well, you can get off the horse anytime!" And within five minutes, the anxiety drops and the smiles begin. 🙂

I asked, "So what's this like compared to an elephant?" and was told that there were four people on the elephant, in a sort of carriage seat - not astride like on a horse. Higher up, though!

It's always lovely to spring something like this on a complete beginner (where your instinct is that they have both the fitness/flexibility and the right disposition for animals) and after the apprehension wears off, know they're having an experience they're never going to forget: First ride on a horse, led so it's safe, through gorgeous Australian bushland currently bursting with wildflowers. 💞

I took photos with the guest's phone at the end of the ride, and our other guest had just gotten back, so I asked, "Would you like a turn?" He ran and changed into tights and off we went again. This guest did have prior experience, growing up on a farm with horses. I apologised for having him on a led beginner setup, because impromptu and following a beginner (no bridle on the horse, just led by halter with a rope for "reins"), and he said no worries, it had been a long time since he'd ridden and he'd just enjoy the walk around the valley floor. Seeing as I was there anyway, I multi-tasked the ride into a conversation about fire management, wildflowers etc.

After the rides, one of the guests went out to explore the Torndirrup Peninsula, and the other spent the afternoon in a hammock between two trees in the forest behind our house, reading his book and having naps while surrounded by a flock of black cockatoos who happened to have dropped in. Days like this, hosting farmstays is magic!


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## Knave

Oh, I bet it was magical for them!! It is something I doubt they will ever forget, even when things seem easy to forget as we age.


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## bsms

I love introducing newbie riders to horses. It is amazing how quickly they start to enjoy themselves, and then lose the tension that ruins so much of riding - writing that as someone who has often been VERY tense on top of a horse! But Mia was a tough way to learn....


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## egrogan

@SueC, we’re having our first winter storm outside tonight so cozied up with butternut squash risotto and roasted sweet-and-sour Brussels sprouts for dinner; made me imagine you halfway around the world having peas, greens, and early berries for dinner after strolling around your lush, sunny fields. Enjoy!


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## SueC

That looks great, @egrogan! ...and is that beeeeeeeeer you are drinking? 🍻 I like Brussels Sprouts, and am going to have to buy some, because in five years of trying I've only had one batch of mature plants, and their sprouts didn't bunch properly but were loose and open. 😒

We do have plenty of greens, and today I made gozleme for dinner - Turkish feta and spinach pockets, for which I used a whole bucket of silverbeet (chard) leaves from the garden. The mulberries are finished, and the youngberries are forming nicely but still green. I've still got some packets of frozen cherries, and actually the Morello cherry needs netting this week because the cherries are forming.

No luck with peas here, except in the first year. Ever since, they get to adult height, produce a few pods, and then die off. They seem to have the outer layer stripped off the stems for a bit above ground level, and I've no idea what is doing it, and how to prevent it. I wonder if it's slaters. Or fungi. It's a shame as I love peas. At least we got a good broad bean harvest; I got the last of those in today. I've got proper beans planted out and starting; and more in the greenhouse. I've got to re-stock the greenhouse with lettuce mix, silverbeet, kale, more zucchini (the first two I planted out are miserable-looking specimens) and a few other things like spring onions, and plant out the flower seedlings and leeks...

Brett says he likes the plate, by the way! 😎


@bsms, I've said it before, but it isn't that surprising that a person who enjoys zooming around in a jetfighter would end up having a horse like Mia. Almost inevitable! 😇


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## bsms

Well, I will say that when I was in F-4s and F-111s, the pilot got to CHOOSE when the afterburners were lit! With Mia, she got to choose and she didn't always let me know in advance....


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## egrogan

Yep, a delicious sour beer to go with that dinner 🍻 

Strange about your pea problems. I've never heard of anything like that attacking the stems. My biggest problem when I grew them a couple of years ago was that I put them too close to other plants and their tendrils overtook everything else. I do love them straight off the plant though- I never managed to save enough for more than a dinner or two. Mmm...that's making me dream of fresh pasta with a lot of lemon, shallots, peas, and a tiny touch of cream. I don't usually like creamy pasta sauces but I'll make an exception in the spring for that. Even more than peas though, I do love small green beans like hericot vert or similar, sauteed quickly with a lot of garlic and olive oil and poured over fresh pasta. Won't see any of that here for quite awhile now, but I love the brassica family too! We've got some fresh Chinese lo mein noodles so will do a stir fry tonight with the rest of the Brussels spouts, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, and onions.

Thanks to Brett for noticing the plate 😁 It's from a Vermont potter and we love all their plates and bowls.


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## SueC

I'm remembering my late Arabian mare on her birthday. She was born on December 10, 1981.








She made it to age 32. This is when I was still riding her at age 27.








It's funny how they can still be a part of you even when they have died. ♥


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## SueC

I've got some scans from my paper journal back in 2008, when we brought my then-26-year-old Arabian mare down to agistment in Albany so I could do a bit of light retirement riding with her. She'd boarded with my parents before that, since her initial retirement. I just wanted to see more of her, and also felt that she should have a more exciting life than standing in a small paddock completely on her own year-in, year-out; and she had a fantastic "Indian Summer" down in Albany with us. By mid-2010 we'd bought our own place and took her and Sunsmart (whom I started working with in 2009) home with us.


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## SueC

And another journal entry, for a seaside adventure!


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## SueC

A very dear friend and literary sister lost her dog this week. He had an osteosarcoma so they knew it was coming. She wrote a wonderful reflection here. Beautiful photos too. ♥


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## gottatrot

How beautiful and touching. Dogs are the best people. Horses too.


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## SueC

Here's something silly we made for the slightly unhinged to enjoy at Christmas. 🤪






Merry Christmas to all of you! 🎄💫


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## Caledonian

Merry Christmas to you and Brett as well. I hope you both have a great day🎄


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## gottatrot

Very clever! Especially funny as we are rewatching Breaking Bad right now.


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## SueC

Bwahahaha, @gottatrot! Indeed! Maybe we should all write a chemical poem about that series together!  

Are you watching _Better Call Saul_ as well?

Thank you, @Caledonian! 🎅 Are you having a White Christmas? ...by the way, the COVID stats seem to suggest Scotland is doing better per capita than England - is that so, and if so, are you guys managing it better than Boris the Clown and his ilk?


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## SueC

*RIDING LOWERS THE BLOOD PRESSURE*

Usually our farmstay guests are really nice, but occasionally we get some shockers, and we had that scenario this week. Brett and I were attending to one of our beehives, taking honey, with a lot of excited bees buzzing around us, when a set of guests arrived 20 minutes before official check-in time. I was in a bee-suit and had to leave Brett to handle the bees on his own for a minute during a crucial stage 👺 while I ran up to the car which had parked beside the house, and told the people who were getting out they needed to stay in their car or go in the garden behind the house or they would almost certainly get stung, as we were in the middle of working with bees and no, I could not take a break from it and attend to them as it was not yet check-in time - we don't actually open to guests before 4pm (as is well advertised on Airbnb if anyone bothers to read the information 🙄 but some people - and they usually have a "hotel attitude" - seem to think that all farmstay people do is sit around waiting for guests and they can turn up whenever they like, regardless of what it says on our listing and regardless of the inconvenience this causes on a working farm).

We finished our bee work before official check-in time, and I checked in our guests. I did NOT apologise for not being at their beck and call before we officially open - this was their bad - I just checked them in, and was friendly considering the demeanour of the woman in particular.

(For comparison, we did have a couple turn up at 1.30pm a couple of weeks back when I was still in the middle of cleaning the guest wing, and I also told them I was unable to admit them yet as still setting their room and we don't open until 4pm as per listing - and they apologised for missing this information, and said they'd go lie under the trees in the shade until I was ready - it was a scorcher of a day too. I got them in the moment I was done, and no harm done, everyone was friendly and they were great guests for the duration of their stay - which is how it usually goes even when there's some misunderstanding about opening times, house rules etc at the start - most people are reasonable like that.)

Once we invited them into our private living room for a cup of tea after check-in, the woman sat uninvited in Brett's spot at the table when we'd shown them the guest seats at the end of the table and explained there was social distancing in our dining room as per health department protocol - on which I caught a bit of an eye-roll - so I had to ask her to please sit in the guest spot, and not in my husband's. She decided she didn't want any tea and was dead silent, while her partner had tea and at least made an effort to be friendly and chatty.

In the evening they had dinner with us and she said absolutely nothing - just picked the mussels out of the seafood chowder (thankfully we have a dog so no waste). I always ask people before they arrive if they have food allergies or dislikes and they'd said on PM they didn't and ate anything, but the next day at breakfast she asked for soy milk, which we don't have. I offered almond, which we happened to have, but that wasn't to her taste - which is fair enough, but if people need special milks and are picky about alternatives, they really should bring their own. I'd baked fresh rye waffles with our own fruit sauce, usually a hit with guests (and I always sound guests out about proposed breakfast options and offer alternatives, such as home-made muesli, home-baked bread with honey, commercial cornflakes etc), and she scraped the sauce off the waffle and left it on her plate (more for the dog).

She proceeded for the whole four days to not use the words hello, goodbye, please, and thank you - and only spoke when I directly asked questions (like would she like a cup of tea), and only in the very shortest and unfriendly replies, so I quit asking her questions. The second evening as I was preparing dinner they sat in our lounge entertaining themselves with their phones. While the dough for my Turkish pockets was rising, I took my cup of tea into our office and had a ten-minute break to myself after working on the farm all afternoon - I'd not had a chance to stop. Brett and another guest (who was lovely by the way, and staying in the other room) were out in the dining area talking. When I finished my break, the young couple had disappeared back to their room. I assembled and cooked the Turkish pockets, with our other guest chatting to me and asking if she could help at all, and when the food was ready, we sat down and ate.

The two other guests did not turn up for dinner, even though they'd specifically asked for it. The sounds and smells made it clear dinner was happening, and we don't go knocking on guest room doors to call people, it's up to them to come or not. Dinner with us is something we offer as a favour, it's not something guests pay for - Brett and I are foodies, so we offer for people to join us, and usually it's great fun to have dinner with guests while they recount anecdotes of their daily adventures and tell us funny stories etc. Our other guest did exactly that and we had a nice evening with her (and she got us a box of chocolates next day as a thank-you, which was lovely of her and not expected - but guests do this kind of thing and sometimes our pantry looks like a bottle-shop as a result, which is funny because Brett and I rarely drink 😀).

When we retired to our room, I mused to Brett that perhaps the young woman had social anxiety - there had to be something like that to explain her persistent unusual behaviour (which was really starting to irritate me - you invite someone to your family dinner, they don't pay a cent for it, and they can't even say thank you?). He said, "I really don't think so. I've watched her; she doesn't avoid eye contact, she doesn't make nervous gestures. I think she's decided she doesn't want to talk."

They were booked in another two days but from then on they left at the crack of dawn and never interacted with us again. We were at this point happy to avoid them too. They left early on check-out day too. Thankfully they'd left the guest room in good repair, although they had snuck into our kitchen at some point to make themselves tea, and had left the mugs in their room.

We breathed a huge sigh of relief not to have them in the house anymore, and I now send every guest who makes a booking a PM about no early check-in, reading our house rules and our pandemic protocol, so that those who find any of that unreasonable will hopefully cancel instead of turning up and making life unpleasant for us...

The irony is, for most guests I've not had to do this - they're just polite, considerate people - most of the Airbnb crowd is. You do this because of the one you get every three months or so who isn't.

So anyway, I said in the title riding lowers blood pressure. On night three I took my horse out in the evening before the guests were due back. I at that point was really tense because of the potential unpleasantness of further interactions with these people, coming at a super-busy time with farm tasks which had left me tired. As I got on my horse and rode off into the lovely late evening, I could literally feel all my tension drop from me. The horse had a snorty conversation with me, the dog was running around in joyous circles, the golden evening light was streaming through the landscape, the breeze was cool, the crickets were chirping, birds were darting about. On the south neighbour's place (where I have permission to ride), there were kangaroos grazing in the pasture as the sun was setting. We rode past a picturesque farm dam like a mirror, which the dog dived into with a big splash. Life was good. I couldn't believe how calm and happy I was, 15 minutes after getting on the horse. When I was off to close the gate, he was pulling on my sleeve and being friendly and interactive. I flipped his lip for fun and scratched his neck for him. He was enjoying his outing too!

It was that, or dance naked to AC/DC I suppose. Both have their place, but horse riding in lovely natural scenery definitely has the edge! 😋


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## bsms

In some ways having guests sounds like a lot of fun. In other ways....well, I guess people are people. I honestly couldn't handle it. Not sure even horses could calm me down.


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## SueC

Brett googled this person and found she had army background and is now in corporate management. The army background surprised us - surely there is some basic respect taught there? - but it's about on a par for corporate behaviour, we think. Anyway, social anxiety looks very unlikely.

It's OK though @bsms, we've done this for a year and only had a handful of annoying people, and as I said, I'm working on trying to repel them before they ever turn up... plus my revised listing wording means I can easily keep people from entering the private part of our house.

The people who arrived this afternoon are a perfectly lovely young couple from South Korea and it was a very nice experience sharing Christmas evening with them. Lots of cultural exchange. I made sushi for mains and chocolate pears for dessert and we had a nightfall walk in the bushland together - something they'd never done before. The moon was bright so we turned off our torches and listened to the crickets as we walked along. The reason we had a nightfall walk is because I took them to see the donkeys after dinner and they spent a long time with a very cuddly Ben and Nelly. They have cats at home and I said, "If you like cats you're going to like donkeys!" and now he says he has an ambition to have donkeys one day, in the countryside (because they don't like the city and would really like to be somewhere small).

These guests were also the first recipients of our new formal pre-arrival PM on house rules, check-in times, social distancing etc. I said, "I hope we didn't scare you!" and explained about our unpleasant guests and she said, "We spent some time driving down trying to memorise the house rules!" 😜


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## SueC

There's a fun article in The Guardian about Australian place names:








Here: https://www.theguardian.com/austral...s-dirty-hole-are-all-real-places-in-australia

They forgot about Denmark, Western Australia, and Dootown, Tasmania, and our favourite, Lower Crackpot, also in Tasmania:


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## Caledonian

Those are great place names



SueC said:


> @Caledonian! 🎅 Are you having a White Christmas? ...by the way, the COVID stats seem to suggest Scotland is doing better per capita than England - is that so, and if so, are you guys managing it better than Boris the Clown and his ilk?


The only snow is on the hills behind my house. It's missed this area so far, we might get some next week as temperatures are forecasted to drop. It's colder than last year. Further north and east have had heavy falls in the last few weeks though. Officially, it was a white Christmas, as there was a dusting of snow a few hundred miles south, in England.

Our covid numbers are improving but still growing. I think most would say that she's handling it better, also it helps that people are doing what's asked and social distancing. It's a shame that it's back, as we'd nearly eliminated it during the summer. We were down to five or six cases a day.

By returning to lockdown and closing the border (as much as we can), we'd hoped to stop the Kent variation heading north, but it was already here. It's the cause of 40% of cases now. Many are hoping that the South African and, I think, Welsh variations will remain down south, however people have been heading out of those areas...


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## Knave

Wow! First I must say I enjoyed Brett’s Christmas reading. Second, just wow about that woman! I have social anxiety, and it never looks like that! For me it looks like over apologizing and trying very hard to be useful and friendly, and then sitting in bed at night going over all of the interactions in my head obsessing over any misstep. If I can find a misstep I go over it for nights on end. Helpful, as you can imagine...  Then, I dread going places with people I am not especially comfortable with or those who are complete strangers (they never cause much anxiety for me, and I actually rather enjoy strangers). So, I practice avoidance and make myself sick over upcoming events. Often I would probably seem enjoyable though. Lol. People are shocked when I say I am nervous about people.

Anyways, I am sorry she was awful!


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## SueC

*CHRISTMAS DAY WALK*

On Christmas Day, we spent the morning slothing about opening presents and reading. After morning tea we drove down to Cosy Corner and went for a 10km hike along the clifftops, on the Bibbulmun track. The weather was kind to us; it was overcast and a cool 20 degrees C, or we'd not have done this, so late in the day - we usually avoid being out in the middle of the day in summer.

Very happy with a wonderful way to spend Christmas Day. The botanical diversity here is so spectacular that when I did go back to Europe once, I was really missing it... and the coast around here is larger than life in many ways; it makes me feel like a tiny ant, in a very good way! ♥

The steps leading up to the elevated coastal path from Cosy Corner:

Gorgeous woodland (Casuarina grove in this spot!) where the path runs between Torbay Hill and the sea - the hill sheds much water down to here:

This Dasypogon reminded me of Christmas baubles:

The trees grow every which way:

Old fire-scarred tree trunk:

Enormous dunes under coastal heathland:

The elevated track:

Extra-gnarly eucalyptus trees:

Dingo Beach. At the very far end, there's a little white strip you can see nestled in the headland. This is Dunsky Bay, which has a fabulous little beach where the wave motions are so amplified that when you're floating in the water just a stone's throw from the beach, you're going up and down around 4 metres, like a watery fairground ride ...I found this out when I walked there with a colleague who was practising for climbing Kilimanjaro in Africa 15 years ago - she was dragging me all over the place for strenuous walks, which was a good thing! 

Migo and Richards Islands, off Cosy Corner, on the way back:

Eucalyptus "nuts" forming:


That's a little selection of photos; if you want a vicarious walk through our coastline, click on any of these photos to get to our Flickr homepage.


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## SueC

Happy New Year!

I recently found a very lovely clip which promotes the idea of performing random acts of kindness as part of your daily interactions with the world. Brett and I cooed over this clip, and I got tears in my eyes, because I'm a big softie, but more to the point, because I really get, because I've been there, how little acts of kindness from strangers (that sometimes also end up turning into friends) can make all the difference to you when you're in a difficult spot in life; can keep you afloat instead of drowning, can keep you hoping instead of despairing - to be at the receiving end of kindness, but even just to witness it. So please, be a little lightbulb to others, because as we've all heard before, better to light a candle than all of us sit in the darkness. Kindness is the antidote to all the alienation, cruelty and general shiitake out there...






Plus of course, the music is great aromatherapy for the ears, as is much of the album it's from.


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## egrogan

Love that @SueC! Happy new year to you and Brett. Your post reminded me of a random act of kindness I experienced years and years ago that has stayed with me all this time...I was in my early 20s, and had a very painful breakup with the first person I really loved. I had given up my lease because I was planning to move in with him, and just before I was going to move he decided he really wanted to break up instead. My response- admittedly a bit immature and irrational- was to decide to move anyway, except halfway across the country. That turned out to be a great thing for me, but in the first couple of weeks after moving to this huge new city where the only person I knew was my roommate, I spent a lot of time sitting on a bench in the beautiful park across the street from our apartment, feeling very sorry for myself and occasionally sobbing alone. One day an elderly man, who was probably homeless, saw me sobbing on the bench and stopped to ask if I was ok. Even though I told him I was, he seemed very concerned. He continued on his way, but about 20 minutes later, he came back and handed me a bottle of orange juice, and told me that always made him feel better when he was down. It was so sweet and unexpected, and probably not something he should have used his resources on. But still, something that simple seemed to snap me out of my funk and helped me get in the right frame of mind to really enjoy my time living in that city.


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## Knave

Beautiful clip Sue! I absolutely loved that @egrogan.


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## SueC

That's a lovely thing that man did, @egrogan. Thankyou for sharing the story! 🐙

I started my New Year with burnout, related to chronic sleep deprivation (hayfever season, October to mid-December) followed by acute sleep deprivation (three days out of four I couldn't have my afternoon nap after sleeping badly at night, because too busy with farmstay-related work) and lack of days where I was completely off the hook from all but the basic farm and farmstay work (1-2 days a week like that needed for me). I've really hit the wall, feel dizzy and sick waking up in the morning and tired, tired, tired all day, lack of interest in anything that requires energy expenditure - so I'm trying to just read novels or have naps in-between unavoidable stuff at the moment. We're booked flat the whole month but I closed the farmstay for the first two weeks of February, when Brett is taking annual leave - looking forward to that!


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## SueC

One of Eileen's films I forgot to post!


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## egrogan

@SueC, sorry to hear your batteries have been drawn so far down- hope you do get a few days of recovery. February will be here soon!


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## Knave

I’m sorry too that you are down. I think I was with you around Christmas, but everything slowed down and I caught up, although I am a bit sick now. The girls left for a basketball tournament the last week of 2020, and I refused to do much. Lol. I rode and I cooked and the first day I cleaned, and that was about it. I even sat down to read!! I took a midday bath twice. It was lovely.

On a whole other note; I still like the hippy clothes!


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## SueC

Thank you, @egrogan and @Knave - and I hope you're both well, and keeping warm!  I'm feeling a bit better; also a guest had to cancel this weekend, which means we now have the next two weekends to ourselves for a much-needed sanity break (because I've blocked off the calendar for the cancellation).

No problems keeping warm here, quite the reverse...

*HEATWAVE *

It's 3.30pm and I'm happy because the wind has finally changed from northerly to easterly, meaning that the red-hot 39 degree C afternoon is going to start cooling off, now that the incoming wind is blowing from the Great Australian Bight, and not from the Central Australian deserts.

I've just come back off the roof of the house, where I've thrown an old blanket over the solar water heater, because the water was starting to boil in the unit, and if you don't stop that, the unit rattles on the roof, and starts losing water - neither of which are good for the unit or the roof (boiling hot water with copper ions isn't great for the zincalume).

If you've never been in an Australian summer heatwave in the Mediterranean-climate regions of Western Australia and South Australia, let me describe it a little. The heat is leaden the moment the sun rises in the morning, and escalates to giant-hairdrier/oven levels by midday. We're on a farm and on days like today, I'm in for 15 minutes on the sofa in front of a fan cooling down and relaxing (and writing ), before going out again for 15 minutes with long pants, long sleeves and a big hat (the UV is brutal) to get our animals and garden through the day. I repeatedly check watering points to make sure water is available and cool, and that bees aren't preventing livestock from drinking. The cattle and donkeys are pretty good and will drink from the farm dam, but the (ex-race, artificially reared) horses are scared of the dam and rely on manually topped up watering points (large drums).

By mid-morning, every shaded building surface is covered in flies of all descriptions: Blowflies, bush flies, midges, seeking to escape the desiccating heat. Clouds of midges buzz around and settle in garden beds containing mint. Bees are flying in swirls all around the watering points, and are sitting on the rims of bird baths and at the junctions of tap fittings, imbibing all the moisture they can get before returning to their hives to help cool these down so the wax honeycomb doesn't melt and the bees don't die of hyperthermia.

I'm moving large-droplet sprinklers around all day to keep fruit trees and lawn alive, and hand-watering seedlings and thirsty vegetable varieties so they don't perish in the heat. On extreme days like today, I throw old bedsheets over the most recently planted vegetable seedlings so they don't die in the midday heat. Everywhere the sprinklers have been, bees are on the ground, drinking water. Little birds like silvereyes, New Holland honeyeaters and fairy wrens dive straight under the sprinklers to cool down; ravens lap from livestock watering points and puddles on the ground; any earthworms coming up in the wet are picked off by various of our feathered garden inhabitants.

It's so hot you can't stay out for more than 15 minutes without getting seriously overheated - leastways, I can't - I've got some Viking DNA and don't tolerate heat well at all. So you rotate your watering stations, do a spot of hand watering, then go back to the sofa and the fan and drink fluids and cool down again. If you stay out too long, you get dizzy - at that point, it starts to become seriously stressful, so you just avoid doing that, otherwise you'll end up with heat stroke and/or electrolyte depletion (and we keep electrolyte tablets in the house for days like today).

It's not like this every day, but this is the reality of getting a food garden and lawn areas through an Australian summer heatwave. We've had a mild summer so far; this is the first proper heatwave, of three scorchers like this in a row - December was mild, with only a handful of days above 30 degrees C. Last year, we had heatwaves like this from November through to March. Last year was also the third year of drought in our region; just 60% or so of normal annual rainfall, so last summer our landscape was parched, as this drone footage a guest took shows:






This year, we had a wet spring, and therefore a decent growing season. The bushland is green, and there is a good amount of green perennial grasses and legumes and dry annual grass in the paddocks. It will be interesting to see if the drought stays broken - that depends on whether the autumn rains come on time, and at normal rates - they haven't since 2017.

The green zone around the house is what I preserve through the summer, with the help of a low-capacity solar bore which gives us 8 litres of water a minute during daylight hours - that's enough water to run two garden hoses to watering devices throughout the day. That's the only way to keep things green in a summer-dry climate, and keeping the zone around the house green and lush is an important part of bushfire safety around here.

A few years ago I thought it was a bit crazy to spend heatwave days like this; a questionable use of my time, but then I saw the drone footage and realised what an oasis the green zone is, for hundreds of birds, dozens of microbats, thousands and thousands of insects; plus a garden that feeds us, and a safety zone from bushfires - and now I think differently. Computerised reticulation, by the way, doesn't suit our situation; you can spend as much time clearing ants from irrigation pipes as you spend rotating stations manually, and at the end of the day, an on-the-ground human makes better decisions about watering than pre-set time cycles, and can multi-task with other garden jobs while there.

I've just been back out to top up water drums; the bush flies cling to your face the moment you step outside, trying to drink from your eyes and crawl up your nostrils and suck up your sweat, such is the pressure for water on days like today. I wear a veil when that happens; so do the horses, who will come running if they see you with their veils, and literally push their own faces into them. Nobody wants to have flies all over their face.

The nights are getting warmer, which means the bush flies will very soon thin out considerably, courtesy of the dung beetles, which start to become active when the cold nights are over. We're looking forward to that.

I hope you've enjoyed this postcard from Australia.


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## gottatrot

That is beautiful how you've made such an oasis for all the creatures. Glad you are taking some time for yourselves.

Your post reminded me of our trip to western australia and getting out of the car in the outback. That heat was just incredible. But I remember figuring out with shock and exclaiming to my husband that the flies were after the water in our eyeballs! Then I was feeling sorry for them.


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## egrogan

@SueC, your post made me feel sweaty on this frigid New England morning. I really can't handle that kind of oppressive heat. I'd much rather be layered up in fleece and wool  Here are some frosty whiskers from this morning's breakfast to cool you down!!








I thought of you when I read this article today- not sure if an experienced beekeeper would see it as a viable design, but it almost makes me want to give bees a try. Our resident bear population holds me back though...one more thing I'd have to figure out how to protect with electric fencing...








Father and Son Build 50,000 New Beehive Colonies Around the World


These two men have increased the global honeybee population by 10 percent with their invention – a hive that lets humans harvest honey without harming bees The “Flow Hive” is a man made bee house, that bees can’t tell apart from their own hives, that allows honey to flow out […]



returntonow.net


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## Knave

It gets that hot here, but I think the hot is probably different than you described. It sounds miserable. We have the flies, but likely not the variety, and not many bees. Our hot is a very dry hot though, so it doesn’t feel as hot from what I hear.

I don’t like hot either myself. I’ve found that the hose keeps me from getting sick. Quite often I drench myself, and the water is very cold. I think it runs down my temperature. Riding I wet my clothes and stay close enough to a water source to occasionally redo the water. Most people seem to tolerate the heat around here, but little girl and I are like you and not made for it at all.

I have an air conditioner. I would die with just the fan!


----------



## bsms

In Arizona's dry heat, what hammers me is the sunlight. I can handle the heat provided there is shade. More years ago than I care to admit I did a two week stint controlling A-10s working the bombing range near Gila Bend. In June.









By A1C Chris Massey and SSgt Wesley Parrell (U.S. Air Force) - Main article: Barry M. Goldwater Range’s contribution to America’s air superiority image: https://cdn.dvidshub.net/media/thumbs/photos/1611/2986272/1000w_q75.jpg, Public Domain, File:US Air Force A-10C drops BDU-33 at the Barry M. Goldwater Range.jpg - Wikimedia Commons​
Highs were 115-120 F (45-50 C). We went out for 12 hours. Once we were on the ground to control the air, they locked the gates to make sure no one wandered out there by accident. We set up parachutes on poles for shade, had LOTS of water and actually had a pretty good time. Of course, the humidity was around 5-10% so we didn't have flies to worry about! But I'll admit, our top priority when we got back to the dorms in Gila Bend was soaking ourselves in the tubs. We absorbed water like sponges.

But without shade? We'd have been turned into toast. And oddly enough, it seems to me the sun hits me hardest at mid-morning. We'll be below peak temperature but it is like the sun can burn thru my long sleeves and fry me at 10 AM. By 3 PM, I can do yard work. Well....for 30 minutes at a time. And as soon as the sun sets, I can go hang out with the horses. The wife and I have spent a number of summer evenings shooting the breeze at the corral fence while three horses listen carefully and agree with everything we say.

PS: I'm a desert rat. I often go jogging in the summer at 1 PM. But when temps drop below 70 deg F (21 C)? It 's getting chilly! The other day it was almost 70 when I went for a run. I wore a sweatshirt.


----------



## SueC

Hello all!  I'm missing our old "waving" emoji... It's hot here again on the next day, but not the 39 deg C forecast (102 deg F) - this morning the sky was overcast, and has stayed that way all day, thank goodness. Terribly humid and still now though, which is great for the plants and means I didn't have to water again - instead I've wilted all day, had a 4-hour middle-of-the-day nap to catch up on some of the sleep debt, read online newspapers (and been horrified), and toyed with the idea of going to the beach for sunset if I can muster the energy - have just fed the horses early to make that a possibility... but hooray, we've got a weekend off (and next weekend too).


@gottatrot, haha, you have acquaintance with our heat and bush flies!  I hope you're not too cold and wet where you are, and I know the battle with hooves in wet winters - not my favourite part of winter... Right now though I am hoping for a thunderstorm, because Sunsmart needs a trim and I'd really like it if the weather helped me out here... hooves are like marble... (I'll have to go see what you're up to later)


@egrogan, I can't handle that kind of heat either, thankfully it's only in waves and we always have a cool house. The forecast for the rest of the week is maxima in the 20s (68-80 deg F) - I've got so many things to plant out from the greenhouse and maybe that will give me a window. Thank you very much for the cooling photograph, it all helps! 🥰 Love all your snow photos, and probably even more so because I don't have to deal with the reality of it. I'm glad your stables aren't flooding this winter and your taps and buckets have been behaving. (I'll catch up with your journal soon!)

Oh, and re the flow hives - the problem to me is that the honeycomb is made of plastic, which is unnatural and as you know, plasticisers from many plastics have been leaching into food - some of them endocrine disruptors, others poisons. Of course, so much food comes in plastic these days... We have Langstroth hives, and yes, it's a lot of work to get the honey frames out, extracted and back in again. The bees certainly don't get made homeless (that was the early Medieval hives etc, they just crushed the whole thing), and fatalities are low - usually you lose a couple to half a dozen bees because no matter how much you smoke them, they manage to crawl over the edge just as you try to put the lid back on the hive. The hive has 50,000 plus though, and birds take way more than that every day. The main thing is to keep the hive healthy and making new bees.

We've got friends with flow hives - the plasticiser thing is something to weigh up; don't let it stop you keeping bees though, if that's a method that appeals to you. If it wasn't for the plastic, I'd convert to them myself because I'm always looking for ways to reduce the workload...


@Knave, maybe I'm just very good at describing the misery! 😉 Your heat sounds pretty hot as well. I've often resorted to your trick of wetting clothes (sometimes I even dunked my head in a bucket to cool down, and wet my hair) when I was a teenager and living on the West Coast, where the summers are much hotter than here - they're just consistently hotter with more and longer heatwaves, and no cooler breaks in mild temperatures. Yesterday I was walking right through the sprinklers each time I picked them up to move them, to get my clothes damp and then enjoy the cooling effect - and five minutes later, I'd be dry again... 

I don't think you'd need an air conditioner at our place, yesterday it was naturally just 22-24 deg C (72-75deg F) indoors at the worst part of the day, even as it was cooking outside... the beauty of having a house designed for climate. We're always happy to have put so much design work and then labour into the house, when the summer heatwaves come - or the winter cold!  (I wonder what Queen is up and and will need to find out!)

...oh and most of the bees are ours, we have four hives = about 200,000 of them, arranged in our green zone! 🥳


@bsms, you definitely have different heat tolerance DNA from me! 😊 We mostly have dry heat here too, and what kills me is having to go out in direct sunlight between 9am and 4pm, which I can't avoid when I have to water, so that's why I do it in 15-minute stints, and then go in again... and the hat helps, and my shirt is white. When I was on the roof yesterday, you could have fried an egg on it... reflective zincalume, which is actually great for keeping the house cool (and we've angled it away from the north here, which is our sunny side), but itself gets extremely hot! (Big insulating blanket directly beneath, and even thicker insulation on top of the ceiling itself, personally installed without any gaps!)

Those temperatures you faced were very extreme - the hottest we've had here has been around 43 degrees C, very rare and not for long. Good thinking with the parachutes.

I hope your move is going well and will have to go check it out!


Meanwhile, I know @bsms will get this because he's been to Germany, has anyone else here? This amused Brett and me to death the other day:


----------



## SueC

Hullo everyone!  Still recovering here, but feeling a bit better on average. Brett only has one working day to go tomorrow, then we're on holidays for two and a half weeks, and only doing unavoidable chores. I've been a bit sparse here but have snuck in the odd ride, which I much enjoyed, and had three more guests enjoying taking an accompanied beginner ride around the farm tracks in early January.

I'm going to "reprint" bits of some music journalling I did over on my music forum, on a song about grief and loss, because I ended up talking about the amazing support the horse journal group give each other when we have difficult decisions to make with ailing horses, and just in general. In case anyone's ears were burning. I'm not sure anyone here is going to like the song, it's very alternative, and in this case pretty noisy, but it's an excellent discussion springboard.

This is only the second half of the discussion, but it's plenty long, as you will see...


*ALL MANNER OF GRIEF*






This song is basically a piece of performance art - take a black black mood and situation, set it to music. Usually with the music of this band there's a sense that all the instruments and the vocal are equally important parts of a whole; in this case it seems to me the vocals and the words take the front seat, and the instrumentation adds emphasis and drama to the human being turning himself inside out with raw emotion.

I think this works fine live as well (I've omitted the live track from here!), but this is one of those rare cases I actually prefer the studio version to the live version, with this band. If you go back and listen again to the studio track at the start of this post, the vocal there is brimming with electricity and doing all sorts of acrobatics that can be very difficult to replicate live, because they're so one-off and coming off the emotion of the moment more than technique, I would guess.

There's a few songs like this in my collection... here's one, by another band, where the vocal in live versions of this track I've heard has actually ended up disappointing:






...as is the case for _Pride (In The Name Of Love)_, _A Sort Of Homecoming_ and the title track off the same album - very hard to do vocals like that consistently live (and that's probably why Bono never sang like that on a studio album again), but the studio tracks, and the studio vocals, are scintillating, and still make me feel like I'm on the top of a rollercoaster and about to drop.

Let's have a look at the lyrics. I'll do a little annotating - however, not in the traditional sense where you're specifically looking at language and literary techniques etc, but more as free-flowing thoughts in response:


_THE PROMISE

How time will heal
Make me forget
You promised me
Time will heal
Make me forget
You promised me
Love will save us all and time will heal
You promised me..._

Something unspecified and terrible has happened to the narrator, and someone else has made promises about things getting better down the track. Which of you hasn't done that, when you've had a friend down a black hole who can see nothing but pitch blackness and pain? I know that's one of the things I do, apart from sitting with and acknowledging the feeling - something we generally have to train and remind ourselves to do, because there's this instinct to try to stop other people expressing such feelings and to try to cheer them up instantly - but you can't cut this stuff off, it will only go underground and it's actually good for a person to be able to talk about it to someone else, and to air the despair; otherwise they're alone with it. So, sometimes to be a friend means to sit in their darkness with them together, and to let them get some of this horrible stuff out of themselves, instead of instantly trying to switch on the light.

Brett still has overwhelming instincts to "fix" things, and I do to a lesser degree (these days), instead of sitting with this stuff - but allowing someone to express such difficult feelings is priority number one - unless the house is on fire. Obviously, there are many times when we have difficulties with things when it can be helpful to hear various strategies that we may not have come across before, that other people have tried - and remember, what may work really well for you may not work at all for someone else - or to be reminded of things we can try under the circumstances. But while we can support, we can't and shouldn't attempt to "rescue" or "fix" etc - the person we're supporting is in charge of what they're going to do.

So, the most important thing is to hear and acknowledge a person. Only after we've done this, and if they want it, we can brainstorm next steps, strategies etc with them - and we can share any insights we might have to offer.

Sometimes, a situation isn't "fixable" anyway - like when someone has died, or someone has a terminal illness. Then the best you can do is come to terms. It's amazing though how many people who lose a person they love or who get a terminal diagnosis find that people they thought were friends just disappear from their lives. This is usually because they are "fixers" and unfixable situations make them extremely uncomfortable. They think, "There's nothing I can do," but that's only true for the loss or the terminal illness and not at all true in other ways. A friend with terminal cancer was saying to me, "They don't even have to talk about the cancer to me. We could just talk about our hobbies, do things together." But many people tend to avoid this stuff, whether by avoiding affected people or by frantically avoiding mentioning it if they can bring themselves to socialise with affected people (as if you can make it go away by putting your head in the sand).

In my circle of journalling friends, there's a huge amount of support around loss - of people, of animals, and just general loss. These people don't avoid, they actively seek you out when they know you're confronting something tough. We all do that for each other, and we've all had loss (because most of us have animals and they tend to be short-lived compared to us; and because most of us have by now lost people we know, and people in our families). It's quite amazing to see it in action. When we had to put down a 34-year-old, much-loved horse a couple of years ago, I had backup from the moment I began thinking about having to make this decision - both at home, from my husband, and from these amazing people. We all hate having to make decisions like this, but we make them because in the end, it's how you can best serve an animal you love - when you can physically see the road ending, you can give them a quick out instead of letting them die by inches.

They all knew what day the veterinarian was coming, and on the day I found "thinking of you" messages in the morning - and photos of fields of flowers, etc. This time around, I was able to for once leave things in the competent hands of the veterinarian and my husband, and wasn't personally needed - the horse was having his morning nap and already comfortable with the vet, plus my husband was feeding him peaches. So this time around, I don't have memories I can't erase and which the horse didn't need me to have. Brett came in five minutes later and just hugged me, nothing needed to be said. And later on, my friends sent me another flood of supportive messages.

Good support is a marvellous thing and helps you see the bigger picture, and other people. Also, it continues to set an example of what to do when it's another person's turn for grief, so that it becomes the natural response, instead of something you're feeling your way with.


_How love will save
Make me forget
You promised me
Love will save
Make me forget
You promised me
Time will heal us all and love will save
You promised me..._

...and it's this sort of thing that can backfire, even though often it's true... like I said, generally after someone has shared something really terrible, I've reassured before parting, "But it won't always be this dark or feel this bad; gradually these things get better" - and usually that's true, and I think in the vast majority of cases it's good to offer some hope. For instance, when loner students from emotionally difficult home backgrounds have told me how sad it is that they feel alone in this world and how they're trying to make friends, I could always say to them that I was in that situation myself in the past (when newly arrived in Australia as a middle schooler; and later when I went to university; and to a lesser extent when I travelled and lived in different places), and that I'd hate to go back to my teens and 20s, but that gradually, a core set of friends I didn't lose to geography or differences started to accumulate, and now I don't feel like this - so my message was, "It's hardest when you're young, it gets better when you get older" - which for many reasons besides this was my experience, and the experience of a lot of my own friends (but isn't going to be everyone's experience).


_I trusted you
I wanted your words
Believed in you
I needed your words
Time will heal
Make me forget
And love will save us all_

...and in this case, it clearly didn't work out that way. I'm assuming this is a human-human situation, but at the start of this post (the one not reprinted here) I discussed it as also fitting a religious loss of faith scenario - because the emotions are the same. I think one of the reasons people are attracted to religion is because it offers "fixes" for the unfixable: Death, inevitable suffering, injustices that aren't getting addressed on this planet, plus prolonged loneliness that's for various reasons difficult to get out of for many people - things like this. So if you think these things are now "fixed" with your new world view, but then you lose your faith down the track, you have to mourn the crash back to reality, and come to terms all over again.

These words would make equal sense being spoken to a friend who promised things would get better and then they didn't, as they would to a person who took the Gospel of John literally speaking them in despair (and like a sort of aside) to the God they've stopped believing in.


_You promised me another wish
Another way
You promised me another dream
Another day
You promised me another time
You promised me another life_

Is anyone else noticing that we've come across some of this imagery before? On _Bloodflowers_, in various songs; for example, in _Out Of This World_. A lot of this is also central imagery in Christianity and other religions - because it's so central to the human struggle with life.


_You promised me...

So I swallowed the shame and I waited
I buried the blame and I waited
Choked back years of memories
I pushed down the pain and I waited
Trying to forget...

You promised me another wish
Another way
You promised me another dream
Another day
You promised me another time
You promised me...
Another lie

Oh you promised me...
And I waited... And I waited... And I waited...

And I'm still waiting..._


Yeah, that's tough.

Imagine if it's not like this:








But, I've always loved these sorts of reflections - here's more Leunig...


_*When the Heart*

When the heart
Is cut or cracked or broken,
Do not clutch it;
Let the wound lie open.
Let the wind
From the good old sea blow in
To bathe the wound with salt,
And let it sting.
Let a stray dog lick it,
Let a bird lean in the hole and sing
A simple song like a tiny bell,
And let it ring.


*What's the Use*

What's the use of this little hand;
What's the use of this little eye;
What's the use of this little mouth
When all the world is broken?
Make a cake with this little hand;
Make a tear with this little eye;
Make a word with this little mouth
When all the world is broken.


*Peace*

Peace is my drug;
It stops the pain.
In safe reflecting rooms
Or in a lane,
Or in a park,
I will lie
And have some peace
And get high.
If it's pure
And there's a lot of it about
I overdose
And pass out
And dream of peace:
My favourite thing
When nobody wants me
And nothing's happening._


Also I'm reminded of this little excerpt from _Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow_:



> YOU CAN TRY TO COVER UP depression in various ways. You can listen to Bach's compositions for the organ in Our Saviour's Church. You can arrange a line of good cheer in powder form on a pocket mirror with a razor blade and ingest it with a straw. You can call for help. For instance, by telephone, so that you know who's listening.
> 
> That's the European method. Hoping to work your way out of problems through action.
> 
> I take the Greenlandic way. It consists of walking into yourself in the dark mood. Putting your defeat under a microscope and dwelling on the sight.
> 
> When things are really bad - like now - I picture a black tunnel in front of me. I go up to it. I strip off my nice clothes, my underwear, my hard hat, my Danish passport, and then I walk into the dark.
> 
> I _know_ that a train is coming. A lead-lined diesel transporting strontium-90. I go to meet it.
> 
> This I can do because I'm thirty-seven years old. I _know_ that inside the tunnel, underneath the wheels, down beneath the sleepers, there is a little spot of light.
> 
> It's the morning of Christmas Eve. For several days I've been gradually withdrawing from the world. Now I'm preparing for the final descent. Which has to come. (...)
> 
> I've prepared myself by not eating breakfast. That expedites the confrontation. I've locked the door. I sit down in the big chair. And invoke the bad mood: Here sits Smilla. Starving. In debt. The morning of Christmas Eve. While other people have their families, their sweethearts, their blue-eared starlings. While other people have each other.
> 
> It proves effective. I'm already standing in front of the tunnel. Ageing. A failure. Abandoned.
> 
> The doorbell rings. It's the mechanic. I can tell by the way he rings the bell. Cautiously, tentatively, as if the bell were screwed right into the skull of an old woman he doesn't want to disturb. I haven't seen him since the funeral. Haven't wanted to think about him.
> 
> I go out and disconnect the mechanism. I sit down again.
> 
> Internally I begin to invoke the images from the second time I ran away and Moritz came to get me in Thule. We were standing on the uncovered cement apron that you walk on for the last twenty metres out to the plane. My aunt was whimpering. I took as many deep breaths as I could. I thought this might be a way to take the clear, dry, somehow sweet air back to Denmark with me.
> 
> Someone is knocking on my door. It's Juliane. She gets down on her knees and calls through the letter box. "Smilla, I'm making fish ball batter!"
> 
> "Leave me alone!"
> 
> She's offended. "I'll tip it in through your letter box."
> 
> Right before we climbed the stairs into the plane, my aunt gave me a pair of _kamiks_ to wear indoors. The beadwork alone had taken her a month.
> 
> The phone rings.
> 
> "There's something I'd like to talk to you about." It's Elsa Lübing's voice.
> 
> "I'm sorry," I say. "Tell it to somebody else. Cast not thy pearls before swine."
> 
> I pull out the phone jack. I'm starting to feel rather attracted to the thought of Ravn's isolation cell. This is the kind of day when you can't rule out the possibility of someone knocking on your windows. On the fifth floor.
> 
> Someone knocks on my window. Outside stands a green man. I open the window.
> 
> "I'm the window cleaner. I just wanted to warn you, so you don't go and take off your clothes."
> 
> He gives me a big smile. As if he were cleaning the windows by putting one pane at a time into his mouth.
> 
> "What the hell do you mean? Are you implying that you don't want to see me nude?"
> 
> His smile fades. He pushes a button, and the platform he's standing on takes him out of reach.
> 
> "I don't want my windows cleaned," I shout after him. "At my age I can barely see out of them, anyway!"
> 
> (Peter Hoeg, 1992)


And thusly will I conclude this post, if a post like this can ever be said to be concluded...


----------



## bsms

"11 _When three of Job’s friends heard of all the tragedy that had befallen him, they got in touch with each other and traveled from their homes to comfort and console him. Their names were Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. 12 Job was so changed that they could scarcely recognize him. Wailing loudly in despair, they tore their robes and threw dust into the air and put earth on their heads to demonstrate their sorrow. 13 Then they sat upon the ground with him silently for seven days and nights, no one speaking a word; for they saw that his suffering was too great for words. _" - Job chapter 2

In Job chapter 3, Job complains.

In Job chapter 4, his friends tried to explain what happened.

Heard a sermon once. Guy said "_If only Job's friends behaved like they did in chapter 2, and then kept their mouths SHUT after chapter 3, they'd have done right!_" One can't go too far wrong commiserating with someone's pain. Trying to explain, or to direct them on what to do next? That's a minefield!

But....I think I'll pass on tearing my clothes and throwing dust into the air. That may be a cultural thing from 500 BC. Might try wailing, though cussing is closer to my nature. I'm reading one of the Grantchester mysteries. Like the books much better than the TV series. At one point Sydney (the cleric) tells Geordie (the cop) not to take the Lod's name in vain. Geordie replies, "_I think the Big Guy is used to it by now.._.."


----------



## SueC

*Dealing with insurance companies * 😫

Here's a current real-life rant at our current Farm and Home insurance provider, with the name of the offending company changed for legal reasons. 😩 😫 😝 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear (insert name of insurance contact person here)

Re: _"I must advise that the excesses are a standard amendment to our insurance offering for each risk. You can amend the excess voluntarily however, any voluntary reduction in the excess will increase the premium and conversely any increase in the excess will decrease the premium.
If you want to review increasing the excess to any or all risks please let us know and we can provide you with a quote. "_

When we originally began insuring with Weasel Insurance Pty Ltd in 2013, the excesses in the policy were all at $250, except Farm burglary and theft, which was an excess of NIL.

Then Weasel Insurance Pty Ltd started changing the excesses _without discussion_; in the first instance, in 2014 increasing the Classic home excess to $300 the following year, and in 2015 to $400, while at that stage keeping the others the same. This was done without any reference or explanation in the cover letters, _and with no concomitant reduction in premium_. It was a pure reduction in value for money for your customer.

In 2018 Weasel Insurance Pty Ltd doubled our excess for Farm legal liability to $500 and imposed a $250 excess on Farm burglary and theft. We complained about it and for 2019 it was reduced back to its original value in consequence.

In 2020 Weasel Insurance Pty Ltd not only doubled our excess for Farm legal liability back to $500 without any reference or explanation in the cover letters, but also did the same to Farm burglary and theft (which had started out on our original insurance policy with NIL excess) AND increased the Classic home excess to $500 as well - thus making a mockery of the previous year's re-negotiation: What you gave in that negotiation, you took back more than twice over in the next policy. We were too busy to write to you about it that year but we now need this matter addressed on the current insurance policy offer: We need the excesses back AT LEAST to what we had negotiated in 2019 - and preferably to what they were when we started insuring with you.

Furthermore, if we agree to insure with Weasel Insurance Pty Ltd again, it is on the mutual understanding that the excesses do not move thereafter (not without mutual discussion and agreement) on any of our four separate sub-insurances. Excesses with car insurances etc (other providers) have been FIXED for us from the beginning of doing business with these providers - they don't constantly creep up and need re-negotiating.

The moral equivalent of Weasel Insurance Pty Ltd's behaviour in regard to the excesses on our policies is that of a food manufacturer keeping a box of biscuits the same size while reducing the product mass inside, and selling that at the same price back to the consumer who may not be reading the "drained weight" label on the tin every time they go shopping. It's trickery, and it's why Choice magazine exists. What is clearly seen by some businesses as "good business practice" is seen by some of the people who pay your salaries and generate your corporate profits for what it is - underhanded and unethical behaviour, which it is our duty to call out, and not to support.

We run a small business, and we do not treat our customers in this manner.

Yours sincerely

Sue & Brett Coulstock
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Provided with love and sympathy for any HF members who have similar issues with their insurance weasels - feel free to cut and paste any of this for writing your own complaints.

NB: The previous two letters I sent them on their policy weaselling were far more mild in tone, but they were still persisting their weaselling on the matter of excesses when I wrote them this. 😠


----------



## gottatrot

Oh wow, that is insane! "Weasel Insurance" is funny though.


----------



## SueC

I'm feeling heaps better and will write an update soon.

Meanwhile, here's a fabulous song. Totally mesmeric bass line and the bass and guitars working together like a string ensemble!  Not like standard "rock music"...


----------



## SueC

*START OF AUTUMN*

It's been three working weeks since the holidays, which did the trick for stopping the burnout. I've had really productive weeks work-wise; not so great at trying to re-start the three activities I was going to get back to doing regularly these past three years. The idea was that I would only work half-days after those holidays and dedicate half a day each day to doing those three things, but instead I've been working full days. The up side is that the garden looks great, and we've got lots of great reviews for our farmstay:









Airbnb: Holiday Rentals, Cabins, Beach Houses, Unique Homes & Experiences







www.airbnb.com.au













Airbnb: Holiday Rentals, Cabins, Beach Houses, Unique Homes & Experiences







www.airbnb.com.au





The most recent review on the second link (Beth) brought a tear to my eye. It's what we hope to do and it's no imposition to do that for really lovely people,

Here's some of our stone fruit harvest we took during our holidays in early February.

Nectarines...these are white; the yellow nectarine died a year after we planted it, this year we replaced it with a yellow peach; another two years and we may have peaches, since our first peach also died (the spot it was in got too wet after we started irrigating). Meanwhile we have white nectarines, and have had for over five years - we bought a white one by accident, didn't realise it wasn't yellow-fleshed, but they still taste nice (we love them crunchy off the tree and under-ripe), and we've made many pails of stewed nectarines to freeze, and then use for nectarine crumble over the autumn and winter.



Here's some Mariposa plums, getting 10% added sugar to draw out their juice, then 4 hours of stewing down in their own juice until you end up with a lovely concentrated spreadable fruit we use on waffles, pancakes and toast, and in yoghurt etc. We had buckets and buckets of fruit off this tree and have many glass jars of the plum spread in the freezer (I don't trust keeping it in the pantry). I don't make jam because I don't want to eat 50% sugar, 50% fruit. The concentrated fruit spread is much nicer.

Yet more plums being washed in the sink:

Nectarines and cherries:

Cherry clafoutis:

We freeze a fair few cherries, and this is their main way of re-appearing during the year.
A chicken salad with some Painted Mountain corn on the side:

Right now we have tremendous amounts of tomatoes, stacks of cucumbers, good amounts of zucchini, some eggplants, spaghetti squashes and all manner of salad greens to eat - including red and lime green mizuna, Wasabi greens (looks like a salad green, tastes like Wasabi), cos lettuces, red mustard etc. And of course, there's always kale and silverbeet. Pumpkins are growing on the vines and the last batch of Mountain corn is growing; apple harvest was poor because there was a storm when the apples were in blossom; but the pear trees are laden and we're just starting to harvest those. Olives are developing and will need netting soon. The lemon tree is producing well, other baby citrus are still sulking.

I need to take photos of the garden; but we've had overcast weather for most of the last two weeks - very unusual - and I keep waiting for a sunny day, apparently in vain. We've got a La Nina pattern, so had a comparatively cool summer with twice the usual rainfall, after a wet spring - which is nice after three years of drought (only 50-60% of normal annual rainfall in our district).

Sunsmart is very well and getting a fair bit of riding, from me as well as taking guests on loops - mostly beginners on a lead line, sometimes experienced people who can take him on our farm tracks on their own. The other two horses and the five donkeys are fine too. I've just trimmed Ben's feet today and given Nelly's a touch-up a fortnight after her last trim; she was the one with collapsed heels when we got her just over two years ago, and she now has nearly an inch of heel, but I have to keep at it with her and touch-ups really help make sure the breakover point stays in a good spot.

The annuals, clover and lotus dried up around Christmas; the perennial grasses are still green, and plentiful in this wet summer. The horses have been helping me mow the lawn, and this was the view out of our bathroom window a couple of weeks ago:
Julian in front, Sunsmart behind, the others out of view.

We've got Eileen coming on Thursday, for a long weekend, so I'm sure she will take hundreds of photos again...


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## SueC

Firstly we're ecstatic because the weekend election here in Western Australia all but wiped out our Conservatives - nowhere in the Anglosphere have the political right been ground into the dust like they have at this election:









Western Australia Election 2021 Results


Western Australia Election 2021 Results




www.abc.net.au





Current count: Labor 50 seats, Conservatives 5
Predicted: Labor 52 seats, Conservatives 7

Labor are (soft) neoliberals as well, and we despair of the Labor-Liberal duopoly in Australia, but this particular Labor government has been surprisingly good across a lot of policies - and you can compare and contrast Labor vs Conservative policies taken to election here:









The WA election promises guide: Here's what the big parties are offering


We'll be updating this handy guide every day as the 2021 state election inches closer.




www.abc.net.au





In summary, the proposed spending of the Conservatives mostly goes to a few of their business buddies (that's called "looking out for your mates" and is what our conservative PM is always spruiking), while the proposed spending of Labor gets spread more equitably across the community, in a more logically planned and less "let the market decide" manner, and actually addresses things like climate change, environmental degradation, social justice, improving things directly for the community instead of "stimulating private enterprise" (= throw our tax at the big end of town) to provide infrastructure and services in that direction.

The Education policy in particular was telling - the Conservatives were going to throw the majority of the money at a handful of schools in middle/upper class areas (which also means building contracts for their mates in the big construction companies), while the remaining hundreds of schools could apply for a grant to "improve their playgrounds"... 🤬 Labor proposed to share out the funding more equitably across schools in general.

Interesting going through the policy comparisons across the board. I don't know what it's like in your country, but here, the Conservatives have gotten truly evil - it actually has become a moral/ethical issue, not just a question of political preference.

On election day we also had another reason to be really happy - we did a half-day hike across a pristine section of coast; 16km in 4.5 hours including breaks. It's the longest hike we've done all year so far, and also the longest hike since before we had hayfever really badly for three months at the end of last year. We've been building our fitness levels back up recently, and it was fabulous to be back at the point where we were really motoring on the return walk - throwing ourselves up the dunes and then making long gravity-assisted steps on the downhill stretches. It's an amazing feeling when your body is capable of stuff like this again. Here's some scenery.

Cosy Corner - our starting point:

Dingo Beach with views to Torbay Head:

Looking back over Dingo Beach towards Forsyth Bluff, with Peak Head across the bay in the far distance (the spiky faraway point across from the island):

Descending into Shelley Beach:

Fun and games on Shelley Beach:

Thanks to Eileen for the pictures for this one!


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## Knave

It looks like a lovely hike!


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## SueC

*STARLIT BEACH WALKING*

We've got a late heatwave in Western Australia, where it's impossible to do a hike in the middle of the day, which made me think, "There goes the weekend!" as the cool change wasn't coming till Monday. So we did useful things around the house and outside (brief stints into the heat, like skin diving when you're holding your breath, before coming back in to cool off) in-between recreational indoors tasks. A whole list of things was done between us by evening: House cleaned, laundry done, garden watered, all the stock troughs cleaned and filled, the nine honey frames from one super extracted - I was uncapping, Brett was spinning with our little two-frame hand spinner, end result was 20kg of honey but it does always take hours (CDs and iPod type activity). I did the daily supplementary animal feed at dusk and noticed the sky was clear, with a low half-moon; also the heat was finally subsiding for the day, and it gave me an idea...

So after flying my idea over dinner, we drove to our nearest beach for a night walk. Last time we tried to do this we ended up nearly freezing in a cold wind, having come unprepared for an Antarctic blast in mid-summer; also there was a bit of cloud cover. But last night, there was only the gentlest of breezes and it was still 19 degrees C at 9pm. The sky was completely clear and the moon had dropped below the horizon and this is the Southern hemisphere, 400km from the nearest large city, so what you get on such nights is a black velvet sky with luminous crystal-like stars.

The Southern Cross hung relatively low over the southern horizon and waves rolled in beneath it in the wide bay at Cosy Corner, the surf illuminated by starlight. You'd be amazed how bright moonless nights can get where we are - after starting with the red light on our head torches to get down to the beach, we switched that off and walked as our eyes adjusted. (Red doesn't interfere as much with the development of night vision - don't use a white light when you go do this because you don't have proper night vision for around 20 minutes after removing yourself from that kind of light.)

This is the general view we had...








...except that's just a diagram; in reality the stars look more like this:









I never used to see it like that in the Northern hemisphere as a kid; too much light pollution in Europe and you need cameras with long exposure to get a look at the smaller points of light there - but not where we are; the clarity is amazing. We were thinking that it's so sad that since the invention of the Edison bulb, so few Westerners ever see a proper starlit sky - if they're not confining themselves to the indoors at night as is the cultural norm, and actually make a point of going walking at night, the light pollution from others cuts the view down so much in many places in the Western world.

Night walks are great for other reasons too - during the day, the majority of our brain's processing is visual. In the dark, other senses kick in far more strongly. I'm guessing most people reading know the difference between listening to music in daylight versus sitting quietly in the dark - now apply that to the outdoors... it's amazing how much you become aware of what you're hearing, and of the scents around you, and how your internal GPS activates when you're walking in the near-dark. We walk around the tracks of our on-farm bushland at night a lot, and you can _really_ hear the crickets, the various different frog species, the odd chirp from a roosting bird, leaf rustling if there's a breeze, and the low range of the calls of the hunting microbats - as well as some of their wing flapping when they get close! Also, the smell of Lemon-Scented Gum (a eucalyptus tree) on a still night is an incredible experience - it's one of our favourite smells in the world, and especially extraordinary when your brain doesn't have the usual background noise of daytime visual processing going on.

A night beach walk too is a totally different experience to going there by day, even on an overcast night. You become aware in ways we're not normally aware in everyday Western life. But on a starlit night, the universe is right there, without a curtain of clouds or daytime Rayleigh scatter (which gives us our blue sky). You can see beyond "Earth view" into "here we are in the universe" view - and you go from, "Look at all these amazing things everywhere!" to, "All this stuff around us is really small by comparison, as are we..." - 

Now add to that a little reflection on the speed of light and that when you look anywhere, you're always looking into the past - even when you look at your foot, the image is slightly in the past because of the tiny delay from the photons travelling from your foot to your eye. Across the vastness of space this becomes super significant - if you turned off our sun, it would take 8 minutes for us to notice - and the distant stars are many light years away. Sirius, which you can see from both hemispheres, you see where and as it was nearly 9 years ago when you look up at it. The Magellanic Clouds we get in the Southern hemisphere are around 200,000 light years away, so that's how old the image is that you see of them - and Andromeda, if you see it, you see where and as it was 2.6 million years ago...

Here's a song by Australian band The Church which conveys some of all that - with a lovely clip on the theme. Enjoy!


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## SueC

*ACTUAL HORSE PHOTOS AND CLIPS - MIRACULOUSLY

1. Julian*

It's been a while since I've taken horse photos/footage, so I made an effort today. I've got Julian and Sunsmart on film from today. The others will get a turn soon. I keep meaning to take a film when they all leave in the morning or run in at night or race each other in the daytime too...

Anyway, today the taking pictures started when Julian meandered down to the big tree behind the permaculture garden by himself - the others were grazing elsewhere. I was planting beetroot today, mowing and mulching, but the appearance of this lovely shiny horse behind the house made me double take and get my camera. I've not brushed him in over a month but he is free-range and has canola meal in his daily supplementary feed, which makes him ultra glossy...










And yes, his feet are due for a trim!

...here's a short clip from today:






He's a lovely horse, and this autumn I'm going to climb on his back at last. I don't need another riding horse at the moment, but look what @Knave is doing with Queen - it's always helpful to just do these little things anyway, if you intend to ride the horse down the track.

*2. Sunsmart*

After a busy day and an early dinner (Bronze Whaler Shark, Potato Wedges and Garden Salad which actually is from our garden - mizuna, mustard greens, cos lettuce, radishes, cucumbers, tomatoes in full swing), I decided to go twilight riding for my birthday eve and dared myself to go bareback. I used to do that regularly, but then Sunsmart got a Cushings crisis a year ago and took about six months to return to normal - barring that his coat is permanently weird (last winter he was a yak despite medication; I don't know yet what his hair is going to do this year but I swear I'm buying clippers if he starts looking like Mary Lou again...).

We've got a big hike planned for tomorrow, and I said to Brett, "I better not fall off trying to get on bareback, and break something." He offered to give me a leg up, the lovely man, but I thought that was even more likely to end in tears, and besides, I used always to get on by myself and I'm merely out of practice. The important thing is though, that I can't let myself get out of practice like this, so it's going to be something I'll do once a week again. A lady who lived to be a hundred told me when I was 28 and doing an impromptu handstand on the beach that I must never let myself get out of practice with things I intend to do for the rest of my life, otherwise I might lose them along the way, and I try to follow this advice (and wish for 40 hours in the day).

So I hoiked myself up and over Sunsmart's back like a bag of potatoes, so that my head was hanging off one side and my feet off the other, and he began to walk, so I circled him while attempting to get out of my not very illustrious riding position, into the standard riding position. I succeeded in this matter without hitting the ground in the process, and thought, "Well, that wasn't actually so hard, and with more practice it will get much smoother again!" 🙂

Since I was still alive and in one piece, I had this brainwave that my camera was still just inside the front door, and asked Brett if he would take some photos of the occasion. So he did. They're a bit blurry because the light was getting low.



We also got a highly amusing outtake when Brett was filming and accidentally started off with the camera vertical - and of course, it's not easy to rotate films...






Here's a longer one...just clowning, and then off to ride around our valley floor:






That was my first rein-back in over a month so it's not exactly show standard; I've not been in the arena with this horse for years now, in fact I dismantled my paddock arena, and we're just enjoying going around the trails inside our farm and outside of it these days. Sunsmart has been back in work around 2-3 times a week for the last half year, sometimes with me, sometimes giving lessons to visiting horse-riding enthusiasts, and on the odd occasion being borrowed by an experienced visitor to go on our farm tracks. He's been enjoying this programme, and I've been trying to get to 3-4 rides a week - maybe I can throw in one bareback session a week as my extra, which would get me there...

It was a lovely ride this evening - I actually really enjoy going bareback. The funny thing is, without the saddle on he gets all playful even at home, and wants to trot more than he normally would inside our own property. He usually reserves his fast gaits for going up hills, for after he's done one warm-up lap already on inside tracks, and going outside the property - but go without a saddle and he gets this comedic expression on his face and starts to chase the dog and make exaggerated movements, and he offers to trot, canter, gallop, which of these would you like, or would you like them all, or perhaps a little pirouette? 😇

I decided to go with trotting this evening, which on a horse bred to trot at racing speeds is already plenty fast - his normal, relaxed trot in terrain is the same speed as riding horse breeds doing a canter - and I know this because I've ridden him with riding breeds. When he gets more towards a racing trot, even a TB will be galloping - the year I was saddle educating him I made friends with someone riding an OTTB on the local trails, and we'd meet up for riding - since most of the other horses being ridden in the local area were plodders, and it's no fun (for horse or rider) riding an athletic horse with a plodder and having to wait all the time while the plodders walk at glacial pace (you'd be faster if you got off and walked yourself), or while they trot their little sewing-machine trots, or do their arena canters. My OTTB friend was finding the same - she used to do track riding for TB trainers when she wasn't eventing. TBs and STBs and working-line Arabians (and looking at @egrogan's experiences, working-line Morgans too) as breeds are like Kelpies and Border Collies - they really want to move; their strides are much longer than with general riding-horse breeds too.

I love riding horses like this and have done that all my life, since coming out of riding school at age 9. I rode Sunsmart's French Trotter great-grandmother then, and she really moved, just as he really moves - with the added quirk of being passing-gaited, and therefore dropping her hindquarters down in the process of going base-wide with the hind legs when the trotting got serious. Sunsmart's mother did it too, but he himself is line-gaited. Still, at a normal walk, his rear hoof will come down at least a foot in front of the front hoofprint from the front hoof that just left the ground, while many riding horse breeds tend to step directly into their front prints with their rear hooves. All the STBs I've ridden have done this, as did my Arabian mare, and my friend's OTTB.

I think I'm lucky to still be riding the old-type STB/Trotter, with nice length of rein - the modern trend in the STB is to have really short necks and be quite light-framed. I'm not going to ride that type when I run out of old-type STBs; my OTTB friend rescued one and though he's a lovely horse and covers ground, I like a more solid horse, and not to feel like there is no horse in front of me and I'm sitting on the edge of a cliff...


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## gottatrot

I was wishing Brett had video of you mounting bareback when out of practice, LOL.
Beautiful horse pics!


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## egrogan

Julian looks radiant, and so great to see Sunsmart looking wonderful too!

I love how you casually snuck in that your birthday is here. Hoping you have a wonderful day, full of good food and beautiful hiking! 🍰


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## knightrider

Happy Birthday! I hope you have a splendid day!


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## SueC

Thank you, @egrogan and @knightrider - I did! 

We did have an especially lovely day, because our free day coincided with my birthday this year. The birthday person always gets to choose the hike, and I chose Mt Hallowell - again! 16km circuit going up Mt Hallowell and then down to Monkey Rock, returning on the road - that's the boring part, so lots of ridiculous word games on that section. But the first three hours through the wilderness are superb and make up for that last hour.

We had an unexpected birthday cake that became hilarious by the time we'd dragged it up the mountain. When we're in Denmark, we fuel up for the walk at their prize-winning bakery and also take a few items for food breaks on the hike. I was going to get my usual individual strawberry tart for special occasions when I noticed they had a giant strawberry tart for eight people for less than half the normal price - just a few dollars more than the single serve. Talk about fate! Their strawberry tarts are amazing... 😋

The slight problem that presented itself was that we didn't have a sturdy container big enough to put the giant strawberry tart into for carrying it up the mountain, but the nice person from the co-op next door gave us a spare shoebox that fitted. Sadly, the only way to fit the box into the backpack was vertically. 😬 So by the time we got to the lookout, its shape was rearranged by gravity...



Brett made two films of the ensuing hilarity. Here's the first (I'll add the other one tomorrow) - look at the poor strawberry tart...






We have a much funnier film but it's going to take a long time to upload on our glacial internet speeds out here in the middle of nowhere.

Meanwhile though, should you want to go on a vicarious walk on Mt Hallowell (without the cake, but also without the sweating), we took some nice photos today. The first one is here:


__
https://flic.kr/p/2kNXJ4E
...use the LEFT arrow to go forwards. It really is a gorgeous place! Also, there's some funny "stories" in the photos, like interacting with our dog... 😄


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## SueC

This was Take 2 on the theme of "gravitationally rearranged birthday cake" - and what an apt metaphor this is for reaching the half-century mark! 🤪


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## Caledonian

Happy birthday Sue! It looks like you had a wonderful day and the tart still looks yummy!


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## Knave

Happy birthday!!!!!!! It does look like it was lovely! Also, Sunsmart looked perfect, and I always am excited to hear your voice on camera. You have the nicest voice!


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## SueC

That's so funny, @Knave, because last week I had a follow-up endoscopy 12 years after my initial one and yes, the right-hand side of my larynx is still completely paralysed, and because of the problems I'm having with it, I've been lined up for some surgery and speech therapy. Funny how long that took - but I fell through the cracks initially. 12 years ago my good GP had just left town and the random people I got booked in with didn't know me and I had difficulty advocating for myself because I couldn't talk above a whisper (and with huge coughing fits). They kept saying, "Shhh, don't try to talk, you've got laryngitis!" and I knew darn (I was going to use the Australian word but it gets censored) well I didn't have laryngitis. Had to refer myself to a private specialist and it took half a year to get in, and then the GP said he'd arrange speech therapy but never did, and I was so fed up with all of that I just dropped the medicos - we about-faced and started owner-building our house, and I did DIY speech therapy attempting to sing in the shower. I got back something I can kind-of have conversations with, but it's not what it was and I have problems with swallowing, choking etc - which puts me at risk for aspiration pneumonia.

When Brett started working at the medical practice, he introduced me to a very lovely GP who restored my faith in actually going to see anyone about a medical problem. So things are different these days. It still took two years from request to get a follow-up endoscopy - if my dog needed an endoscopy, she could have it the same week, but apparently people-doctors with endoscopes have long waiting lists...

Fracture treatment here is excellent, but having a half-paralysed larynx is so rare a thing that the system isn't geared to help very well.

Anyway, considering how much trouble it's caused, it's paradoxical to get a _compliment_ on my voice... thank you. 


@Caledonian, hello - is Scotland defrosted yet? Does it look like spring? 🦋🐝🐞 ...I'm now reading _Shuggie Bain_ and OMG, it's like a tar pit (but totally recommended reading...) I still love your signature saying!


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## Caledonian

I wouldn't have known that there was a problem with your voice. You sound great. I can imagine that the other issues are extremely scary though.

I've lost all faith in my GP practice. They use to be great, wonderful old-fashioned doctors, who'd drop in to check if someone was ill because 'I was passing anyway', and their receptionists would book an appointment within an hour, or at least that day, if you were feeling awful. Then all of them retired or moved away and a company took over and now it horrendous. I listened to a guy trying to book an appointment for a badly infected dog bite on his leg and he was told that he'd need to wait two weeks. An old gentleman sitting nearby yelled 'you'd be better going to the vet!'😂 I think they sent him to the nurse instead!

Our weather is fluctuating between warm and sunny and cold and with rain showers. Two weeks ago, I moved my office (my laptop 😄) out to the garden to enoy the sunshine, last week I was back inside with hailstones and wind battering the windows. It's supposed to be warm next week. 

I like that proverb as well, nothing worthwhile is ever easy and I think horses teach us that every day, 

I've used a few others: '_Chan eil carraig air nach caochail srut_h' there isn't a rock that the stream won’t change, agus _'Is ionmhainn leis an làimh na chleachd_' the hand loves what it has practised. Not forgetting Scots ' _Lang may yer lum reek_' otherwise known as live long and prosper!🖖😄

It's nice to see you posting again!


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## Knave

I had to screen shot that @Caledonian. Not that I would know how to pronounce it, but I like the rock one a lot.

I had forgotten about your larynx, and I truly do love your voice. I also can see how it would be scary though!

I have little faith in the medical system at all. The whole idea of having to have a referral is bogus and only adds another avenue of money to be spent and “t”s to be crossed. I doubt there are many people just pushing themselves in to see those specialized doctors without that added requirement, and any suffering accrued in the meantime is irrelevant I guess to the people who make the rules for the sheep.

Arg! (Now I am a pirate.) To be honest though, there is an absolutely lovely doctor in my town. She goes the extra mile to check in on patients, and often drove to my grandparents’ home to check on him and see if any changes needed to be made. She was willing to try a surgery on little girl’s toe when no one could get it together. Although it did not work, it was an effort that I am sure bought a bit of time until we were finally able to get her in.

If she was the only doctor I had to see in regards to things I would be more apt to go in. I just don’t care for doctors in general.


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## Caledonian

Knave said:


> I had to screen shot that @Caledonian. Not that I would know how to pronounce it, but I like the rock one a lot.


It is a nice proverb. It is said: chan-el car-ig ir nach cooch-al s-roo. The 'ch' said by pushing air between the back of your tongue and your soft palate, or don't say the 'c, replace with a breathy 'h'. The 'i' as in 'hip' and 'girl'. The words: Chan eil (is not) carraig (rock) air (on) nach (that not/which not) caochail (changes/alters) sruth (stream/flow). Words are placed in a different order to english.


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## bsms

FWIW: Just got a newsletter from the retired military healthcare insurance folks. It said to get COVID vaccinations thru the nearest military hospital rather than thru them. So I called the local military hospital. They said retirees were not allowed to get the vaccine from them and needed to go thru the insurance people. Great. But Arizona has a website to schedule vaccinations. It took 15 minutes to create an account. Then....no openings. Up until a few days ago, one needed to be 65 or older to schedule vaccination. I fall a few years short. But Arizona just expanded eligibility, dropping the age requirement from 65 to.....16!

A friend over 65 recently got vaccinated. So I asked her about the website. She said they drop appointments into their system every few weeks, and then the appointments are filled up in 30 minutes. So if you don't happen to log on within 30 minutes of the correct time a couple of times a month....

I asked how she handled it. "_I was an RN at hospital X for 30 years. So I called a friend and they entered me into the schedule...._"

Fortunately, I'm not very concerned about COVID. Rarely wear a mask, been to a variety of churches, have two kids attending school live full time for months. Pima County had a curfew, but I haven't been in Pima County and the curfew was only during hours I sleep anyways. New cases have dropped over 95% from their peak the first week of January. I planned to take the vaccine mainly as a good example for my wife, who doesn't want to get it at all. So I'm not sweating bullets. 

But I find our healthcare system insane. Apart from my kidney stone episode, and having a Doctor of Dermatology check me for skin cancer twice a year (for which his company is paid $200/visit), I haven't seen an actual doctor....well, since I left active duty a dozen years ago. But the healthcare system? It has no rhyme or reason. Oh, and my sister, after 4 months of trying, was FINALLY approved for Medicare. On 25 March. But they backdated her approval to 1 March, and now her Obamacare plan wants to be reimbursed for their subsidizing her health insurance in March. Because she was covered by Medicare. But she wasn't ACTUALLY covered until 25 March, so she needed her Obamacare insurance until then. But Medicare backdated her acceptance, so....

Insane.


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## SueC

There's so much I want to respond to and I will but mostly later because I've got to make breakfast, we've got guests...and then they're going horse riding - one beginner on leadline, and one who had a pony as a child who will probably be able to do the bushland trails out the back on her own - because it's in our fenceline and also the horse has done the inside trails hundreds of times and is totally cool on them.

Just a quick one on vaccination in Australia: The hospital and quarantine people have been getting the Pfizer vaccine and were priority one - and apart from in NSW and Victoria, there has been no community outbreak for a long time in the rest of Australia - in WA we've never yet had community transmission, just transmission from quarantine staff to family members sometimes (and initially from the cruise ship passengers to their families, early on). Our borders are tightly shut and anyone allowed in from overseas or from states with current community transmission has to quarantine for two weeks, and it's been really good to have been able to keep the "pestilence" out of our state. We're not in recession and after the initial cautionary lockdown when all this began, the economic damage has been far smaller than in most other places in the world. WA can be pretty self-sufficient so our state Premier was able to lock the borders like this and we could do it perpetually if needed.

Brett and I were offered Astra-Zeneca (which is what they offer to everyone else) early in the piece as part of being volunteer fire brigade, but we've not said "yes" yet for the primary reason that right now, there's no COVID in the state's community. We want to get vaccinated but in our case the question is, how long does the immunity last? Because if it's only 3-6 months (after full vaccination) like a flu shot, it's kind of a waste of vaccine to be receiving it in a transmission-free community - we want to time it so we're protected when the borders eventually re-open, and that won't be for at least another 6 months, probably not till next year. Meanwhile, they should use the vaccine for the more vulnerable groups, is our opinion - even though we're eligible because of the volunteer fire service.

Currently they're doing AZ vaccinations with seniors and other vulnerable groups and with emergency services etc. They're getting to the general community phase later on. They're doing AZ out of GP surgeries and immunisation centres. They had to do Pfizer at hospitals because of the extreme cold storage requirement.

Sayings (for now): One of our guests really enjoyed the home-made pesto, so I gave her the recipe, and said to Brett, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." ...which is an old Chinese proverb. And he said to me that the corollary of that is, "Give a man a match and he's warm for a day, set him on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."


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## gottatrot

I've been having a fun time trying to get a new primary care Dr. in my new area. I call the appointment number, and stay on hold for about 20 minutes. Then they say since I'm new, they need to transfer me to another number. That goes to voice mail, so I leave a message. They call me back, but I'm not near the phone so it goes to a message. So we go around again. I've done this six times so far. 

Something like 85% of our hospital system workers have been vaccinated. There have been very few problems. Some people get high fevers and feel ill. My sister-in-law has Covid right now, and it's mild but has been triggering migraines so no fun for her. 
The one thing we've seen is that people with autoimmune disorders have had some bad reactions to the vaccines. People with rheumatoid arthritis, lupus or other autoimmune issues. It is basically an overreaction, since the immune system is already attacking the body, it seems to trigger that kind of response. So wiping out the body's good gut flora and causing c.dif infection, or causing inflammation/breakdown of joints. These seem to resolve after a while, but some have been hospitalized.


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## SueC

You must have more patience than me, @gottatrot, because I'd have given up trying to phone after the second attempt or it would have driven me round the twist!  Is there any way you can go in person to fill out the paperwork?

It's interesting (and logical) about the autoimmune complications. Is this the Pfizer vaccine, and/or others as well? Have you had any kind of reaction yourself (if you had the shot)? I think with these SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, no matter which of them, we're expecting more reactions because of the whole issue of vaccinating against a coronavirus - and how one of the problems with the historical efforts to develop such vaccines pre COVID-19 is that they tended to get overreactions from the body if they could get it to respond at all. So I think it might be on the cards that I'll be a bit sore when I eventually get mine - like after a tetanus shot, maybe more than that; maybe some general lethargy etc. Or it might surprise me by being essentially reaction-free, like the flu shot sometimes is (and sometimes isn't).

But either way, the reason I'm pro-vaccine for myself, despite the shorter development period of this one and the historical issues they had with coronavirus vaccines, plus the massive money in it for big pharma, is because the side-effects we're seeing post-vaccination aren't in the same league as the side-effects some people get from an actual SARS-CoV-2 infection, and I doubt we're going to see worse long-term effects from immunisation than from actually getting the virus. And the virus is with us to stay, in the world, by the looks of it - even though in our country, if we kept borders closed and quarantine and contact tracing in place as we have, we'd not have it endemic in the community.

I can read about your horse adventures/thoughts on your journal but: How are you enjoying your new town? ...are you? Sometimes it can be disappointing socially to move, and you may not have expected it. Redmond isn't exactly a vibrant community - we've got two super families in the vicinity though, amongst a whole bunch of red-necks, misogynists, white supremacists, self-appointed land aristocracy etc. We're just thankful for the two nice families and also we meet a ton of lovely people through hosting Airbnb. But Elleker/Torbay to the south of us have a lovely and very active community; likewise Kendenup much further north - we know some of their people, and their fire brigades, and that they have theatre groups and food markets and community get-togethers etc. Not here - there's a progress association and we tried going there a couple of times, but it's dominated by petty empire-builders who don't welcome new ideas from anyone else and it's really hierarchical, rather than egalitarian. So we gave up on those things, at least for now, and are putting our energy where it has the best effect, for us...

How's the house going? Are you going to post any photos (or have I missed these somehow)? I like looking at architecture and how people arrange their interiors.  I suppose because our house was all over Owner Builder for nearly two years' worth of issues, and that magazine features houses inside and out all the time, I'm not shy about privacy in that regard like some people are (not that I'm implying you are, just a general comment). Plus of course I'm a hippie and so there's not much in the house any burglar would like to steal - all our IT, TV, stereo etc are far outdated and not worth breaking in for, and I wear beads not diamonds, and I've never heard of a burglar who stole books or old-but-not-antique furniture...

Also I don't think that many axe-murderers are waiting for us to drop anonymity online so they can track us down and chop us up, and even if there were, the pandemic makes travel a bit difficult (and very documented) at the moment, unless you're dealing with an intra-state axe murderer!


----------



## SueC

Caledonian said:


> I wouldn't have known that there was a problem with your voice. You sound great. I can imagine that the other issues are extremely scary though.


In the clips I sound fairly "normal" because I don't have to project my voice, because I'm having a good patch on a good day, and because I'm relaxed and unapprehensive because I'm with Brett and not a whole bunch of people who don't understand what goes wrong with my voice, and because I'm not talking for long periods of time - I'm just doing little half-sentences between laughs, nothing very long - and by the way Brett says that when we smile and laugh, other people are automatically seeing and hearing us more through more rose-tinted spectacles than when we don't (because we're social animals). That's not why I do it, though - I've just always had a well-developed sense of the absurd, so I guess that's coming in handy now in other ways.

But I'm still talking faster than I want to and not lengthening vowels like I used to, because I don't get as many words out per breath than a person with a normal larynx, because I have a bigger gap between the vocal cords when talking (and my left cord straining to stretch across the gap to meet the paralysed cord hanging in space). So I also don't get the same amount of resonance as a person with a normal larynx, because the cords don't line up perfectly and evenly, and it's a bit like playing with slightly out-of-tune strings. And because the left side of the larynx works super hard and overcompensates, I often get coughing fits and laryngeal spasms, and those then make speaking temporarily impossible.

On the other hand, I can be happy that I've got as much voice back as I have, in a good patch on a good day. It was really bad in the early years after the injury. I couldn't speak at all much of the time. And then there was a phase where I sounded like a cartoon character, really high-pitched and squeaky and people thought I was doing it on purpose... The ENT thinks I've adapted pretty well but has sent me for speech therapy and I have an appointment at last, plus he's going to stick some collagen into the paralysed side to bring it into better apposition, sometime this year.

The most annoying thing is the constant feeling of having a foreign body in my throat, because the paralysed side of the larynx just hangs in space instead of retracting when I'm breathing. And of course, all sorts of food gets caught on it, and then you cough, and all sorts of phlegm coming from above or below gets stuck on it, and because of the immobility you basically can't clear half your throat, and you're retching and making "rrrrrr" sounds to try to vibrate the stuff off the paralysed side that you can't clear normally by using the muscles around the vocal cord. And because you can't control the paralysed side of the larynx, you end up with frequent leakage of stuff you're trying to swallow down into your trachea - I tend to have to sit bolt upright when swallowing because anything else is dangerous, e.g. leaning back, or trying to drink through a straw when horizontal. Or, and this is really annoying, when I'm horizontal trying to sleep I can't swallow properly, and of course you do have to swallow regularly because of the saliva - and this can interfere with sleep. Often I wake up in the middle of the night not able to swallow properly and then I have to make myself a cup of tea and drink it sitting very upright to get the swallowing established again.

It could be much worse, of course: Some people are extremely unlucky and lose their other nerve as well and then that's totally it for speaking, swallowing etc. Then it's surgery and sounding like Stephen Hawking. And there are hundreds of general medical conditions I think are worse than having what I've got.




> I've lost all faith in my GP practice. They use to be great, wonderful old-fashioned doctors, who'd drop in to check if someone was ill because 'I was passing anyway', and their receptionists would book an appointment within an hour, or at least that day, if you were feeling awful. Then all of them retired or moved away and a company took over and now it horrendous. I listened to a guy trying to book an appointment for a badly infected dog bite on his leg and he was told that he'd need to wait two weeks. An old gentleman sitting nearby yelled 'you'd be better going to the vet!'😂 I think they sent him to the nurse instead!


:lol:

But no, that joke aside (and it's probably true!), this is not a good state of affairs.

Does anyone else need a laugh after all this? Here's something that I'm sure @Caledonian will have seen before, but I think this one can be watched lots of times and still be funny:









> Our weather is fluctuating between warm and sunny and cold and with rain showers. Two weeks ago, I moved my office (my laptop 😄) out to the garden to enjoy the sunshine, last week I was back inside with hailstones and wind battering the windows. It's supposed to be warm next week.


It's quite changeable here as well - cool and rainy between heatwaves...

Do you wear PJ bottoms when you work at your office too? Because your office sounds like mine! 😜




> I like that proverb as well, nothing worthwhile is ever easy and I think horses teach us that every day,
> 
> I've used a few others: '_Chan eil carraig air nach caochail srut_h' there isn't a rock that the stream won’t change, agus _'Is ionmhainn leis an làimh na chleachd_' the hand loves what it has practised. Not forgetting Scots ' _Lang may yer lum reek_' otherwise known as live long and prosper!🖖😄


I love these. I need to frame some of these and put them on the walls...




> It's nice to see you posting again!


It's nice to hear from you again too!  This isn't my main forum anymore - I don't like what happened on the open forums on HF with various official decisions that caused a lot of good people to leave and I'm really just here because I like the journal group and it's a bit insulated from all that other BS. Well, I do like a lot of people who aren't journalling, like yourself and quite a few others, but time and again talking on the open forum leads to unpleasant experiences sooner or later so I quit it entirely, and found another forum without these significantly unhappy issues, where I've been writing happily away for nearly two years now without unhappy incidents, plus the quality of my writing is able to be much better because it's not a PG-censored forum with restrictions on what topics you can broach or not broach. Turns out I'm really comfortable with post-punks and alternative music types, and feel much more welcomed by their admins and general posters than I do here. I like being able to talk about _all_ the things that matter and not have to bite my tongue because a topic is "not allowed" - especially since the pandemic has opened a lot of interesting discussion and opportunities for social change, and it's great being able to talk to other adults about this without having to wonder if I'm going to get pulled up for entering some kind of forbidden topic or for using some kind of forbidden word, plus this is a European forum so it's not got the same ridiculous puritanical-ness as the US about non-sexualised nudity, or for that matter, the raising of topics like sexuality, substance addictions etc, none of which I can completely avoid if I want to write freely about mental/emotional health in public - and I feel really strongly about writing on that topic, and the usefulness of writing honestly about that. And I'll never be able to do that here, so...




Knave said:


> I had forgotten about your larynx, and I truly do love your voice. I also can see how it would be scary though!


Well, I'm glad someone can love it. Brett does too, when I can speak at that level, and he thinks I sound "cute" in my good patches. 

I'm interested to see if the speech therapist can give me any ideas for dealing with the voice when it "sticks" or with getting improved swallowing. I see her mid-April for the first time. Will let you know if anything useful/interesting eventuates, but I'm excited to finally be working with a professional in this stuff - I'm sure she's going to have tricks up her sleeve, and will cause me to have insights...




> I have little faith in the medical system at all. The whole idea of having to have a referral is bogus and only adds another avenue of money to be spent and “t”s to be crossed. I doubt there are many people just pushing themselves in to see those specialized doctors without that added requirement, and any suffering accrued in the meantime is irrelevant I guess to the people who make the rules for the sheep.


Yeah, I think you're right! ...usually when I need a referral, I'll see the GP for another issue at the same time (double appt) so I don't feel like I've wasted my time or theirs. The really good thing about seeing my GP for a speech therapy referral (I initially self-referred, but the therapist said the GP paperwork will be useful...) is that she'll write a care plan with which I can get significant reimbursement for the speech therapist's fees.




> Arg! (Now I am a pirate.)


😄 I've missed you in your absence, and hope you're feeling a bit better. I'm sorry about your granddad. ❤




> To be honest though, there is an absolutely lovely doctor in my town. She goes the extra mile to check in on patients, and often drove to my grandparents’ home to check on him and see if any changes needed to be made. She was willing to try a surgery on little girl’s toe when no one could get it together. Although it did not work, it was an effort that I am sure bought a bit of time until we were finally able to get her in.
> 
> If she was the only doctor I had to see in regards to things I would be more apt to go in. I just don’t care for doctors in general.


She sounds really nice!




bsms said:


> FWIW: Just got a newsletter from the retired military healthcare insurance folks. It said to get COVID vaccinations thru the nearest military hospital rather than thru them. So I called the local military hospital. They said retirees were not allowed to get the vaccine from them and needed to go thru the insurance people. Great. But Arizona has a website to schedule vaccinations. It took 15 minutes to create an account. Then....no openings.


The insanities of bureaucracy and modern life etc. Sounds so Catch-22.




> But I find our healthcare system insane. Apart from my kidney stone episode, and having a Doctor of Dermatology check me for skin cancer twice a year (for which his company is paid $200/visit), I haven't seen an actual doctor....well, since I left active duty a dozen years ago. But the healthcare system? It has no rhyme or reason. Oh, and my sister, after 4 months of trying, was FINALLY approved for Medicare. On 25 March. But they backdated her approval to 1 March, and now her Obamacare plan wants to be reimbursed for their subsidizing her health insurance in March. Because she was covered by Medicare. But she wasn't ACTUALLY covered until 25 March, so she needed her Obamacare insurance until then. But Medicare backdated her acceptance, so....


I do think that's just a ridiculous amount of runaround, and that's why I do like our one publicly paid for, publicly run system for everyone. It's not perfect, but it does function a lot better than this, plus it's cheaper for everyone, and doctors and specialists can't charge like wounded bulls in our system (which the greedier ones probably hate, but they can go abroad). The only people in Australia who aren't broadly happy with our public health system are the private insurers, and the doctors who would like to be able to charge astronomically (and unfairly) for what they do (they already earn plenty here), and the right-wingers in parliament who have vested interests in this area. And I do know that @Knave's little girl would have been seen in a timely manner when she got that tumour on her toe, and it wouldn't have cost @Knave a cent out of pocket for her hospital treatment, nor would she have had to waste her time on phone calls to insurance companies, and stress about the hoops they were trying to get her to jump through...

The bottom line in my book is that a non-profit system isn't run by greed and doesn't have CEOs and shareholders skimming the cream off the top. We're also in a community bank for the same reason. None of these things are perfect, but they're better than their privatised equivalents over here. In Australia, the post-1980s privatisation of public assets like electricity, water and telecommunications has resulted in extra cost to the consumer, and worse service - not just from personal experience, but from the studies done into this stuff. And no wonder, with CEOs getting millions of dollars in "bonuses" - I don't think that is a morally defensible system. It's just legalised robbery of everyone else, and an incredible double standard in what a decent day's work is worth, and not worth...


----------



## SueC

Two lovely musical interpretations of Yeats' poetry by Mike Scott:











Also a rather hilarious live number that cheered me up no end the other day - go to 26:25 in this gig where Mike Scott explains why he wrote the song _Nearest Thing To Hip_ and conducts an audience singalong. 😄






As he says, I'm sure we've all seen it in our own towns.


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## SueC

*ANOTHER FIRST-EVER RIDE*

It's autumn here and the morning began with lots of mist - but unusually, not due to a low overnight temperature, but due to high humidity. The entire weekend had been another late heatwave, and Monday was to be no different - another scorcher.

But in the morning, it was still cool, and I took our two visitors riding - we were "gonna" on Sunday morning, but it was beach weather and all of us flew the coop instead and rescheduled the riding. This means that Brett and I did 2 hours through the uphill-downhill of the dunes near Lowlands Beach - on the Bibbulmun track there - before Sunday lunchtime (directly on the coast it was cool with a breeze), which counted as a fitness walk.

We've really enjoyed these two visitors - just lovely to host. One of the two young women had never ridden, and she was up first - had a bit of trouble heaving herself up at first, but then took a swing and made it. Once she sat, I explained that you treat the stirrups like a ladder and raise your toes (because "drop your heels" tends to make people force their leg, while toe-raising achieves a lowered heel without tensing up the leg), and sit like you do in Pilates - upright and centered, but relaxed, not stiff - and that when the horse moves it's like a swing, and you go along with the swing in a relaxed manner without slowing it down or speeding it up, unless you want your horse to be doing those things. And immediately she sat correctly, and it didn't take her long to go with the movement.

She was surprised by it actually - I guess non-riders don't realise it's not a smooth glide like a bicycle, because they've got nothing to compare it to. But this person dropped the adult beginner's apprehension within seconds and was commenting that this whole going with the movement and communicating with the big animal was an amazing feeling, "...and now I understand all the horsey girls from high school days!"

She got that it's about communication and relationship, just like that. I suppose it depends on the attitude you bring to the horse, and this was a very intelligent, very evolved person - as you could tell just talking to her even before she got on the horse. Needless to say, Sunsmart was happy to be carrying her around. She had a happy loop around the valley floor, and then it was her friend's turn. I kept the lead rope on until she was comfortable, and headed for the forest track. Once she was happy I unclipped her and she practiced halting and walking on. Then, pretty quickly, off she went at a trot, clearly remembering what to do from her pony riding days as a child - she was well-balanced and posting textbook. We could see her receding into the distance alternating between trotting and walking. When we met her again later back by the house, horse and rider were both smiling, she told us she'd even cantered. Just like back in the day on the pony.

It's a fabulous morning all round when you're doing riding with the right people, with a good horse and beautiful surroundings and a way of operating that keeps everyone comfortable and relaxed. I'm always conscious that it's a unique thing for beginner riders to start in this kind of setting, and also for people with more experience to rediscover riding. It's not how most riders are started, and it's so stress-free. I fell off on my very first riding school ride on a huge Warmblood when I was 9, because I had no idea how to steer or stop or go with the horse's movement, when the horse ran off at a trot in the arena within seconds of me being on its back. It's a good thing I bounced then, but it's unnecessary to make things so unpleasant for horse and rider - much better to give a rider a chance to get used to the horse's movement and being on its back without having to steer or stop or start or deal with the horse running off. Even better to do this out in nature, instead of in a ring - because riding, to me, is very much about understanding our relationship with nature better, and honouring that - it's about understanding we're a part of the whole, and not the masters of the universe...

Sunsmart had a lovely "shower" after we took his tack off him - nice and refreshing as the day was starting to heat up. Then we stuck his feed bucket in a shady area and he was smiling from ear to ear. Later on, I walked him out into the Common, around the back of the house, up into the forest where his horse and donkey friends had gone into the shade of a group of Christmas trees overlooking the paddocks. I didn't have him on a lead, he just followed along, sometimes close, sometimes further away, and there was ear-scratching all around once we arrived in the equine group. I enjoyed their company for a bit and they mine, and then I crossed the fence into the paddock and checked the level of the drinking troughs, and set them up for a refill (mine are manual). But I think one of these mornings, I'm going to just spend an hour hanging out with them in the shade on a hot day (when I don't have a week's washing to do!),


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## SueC

Just as a PS to the music clips in the previous post, here's Mike Scott doing a fabulous rendition of CS Lewis' _The Withering Letter_. Thankyou to Ulrich from the Curefans forum for bringing that one to our attention! 😎






😄


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## DanteDressageNerd

Happy Belated Birthday Sue! It looks you had a fabulous cake and some nice weather  

The starry night you posted in incredible. The only time I saw such lovely stars was in the mountains in Morocco. I like stars, they're a reminder of how small all of our problems really are in this big world. That we exist such a short time, we might as well make the most of it and make it meaningful. 

Also very good to see you on a horse, you look very happy


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## SueC

Hullo, @DanteDressageNerd!  Hope all is well in your world! ...I can believe that about Morocco! Over 20 years ago my flight back to Australia from Europe was re-routed through Africa because of a Middle East crisis. After a huge delay spending the whole day at Gatwick Airport, the plane finally left at sunset but it turned out this was the beginning of a great treat. Europe was so illuminated I could clearly see the English Channel, the Scandinavian coastline, and correctly identify major cities like London (obviously), Stockholm, Hamburg, Munich and Milan (I checked with the live flight map to confirm). ...and then we were over northern Africa, and it was dark! Ethiopia in particular was pitch black with just the odd winking light. As a result, the stars visible from the plane were magnificent... and I'd not seen them like this the entire time I'd been visiting Europe. 🤩

In general news: Just got our 65th review for our farmstay. Reviews here: Sue's Profile - Airbnb


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## gottatrot

SueC said:


> It's interesting (and logical) about the autoimmune complications. Is this the Pfizer vaccine, and/or others as well?..
> 
> ...I can read about your horse adventures/thoughts on your journal but: How are you enjoying your new town? ...are you? Sometimes it can be disappointing socially to move, and you may not have expected it...
> 
> How's the house going? Are you going to post any photos (or have I missed these somehow)? I like looking at architecture and how people arrange their interiors...


Yes, I think I'll have to give in and go in person to get signed up with a doctor.  It was both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines that gave people issues with autoimmune responses.

I think the vaccines are a good thing, and I've also been interested to talk to some traveling nurses who have dealt with big city Covid units and such. 

What is sad is that the nurses say a big reason why a lot of people had bad outcomes is because everyone wanted to have protocols for what to do with Covid patients, and so treating people as individuals got lost in the shuffle. First everyone needed to be on ventilators, but that meant many were put on ventilators and had bad outcomes because they shouldn't have been. Then they thought ventilators should be avoided, so people were kept off ventilators with severely low oxygen levels, and exhausting their respiratory muscles to the point where putting them on a ventilator was too late. They also thought everyone needed high pressures and ended up damaging and scarring healthy lung tissue past the point of no return, and blowing out lungs. 

It sounds like hopefully they are now going toward a more individualized response, and taking each person as they present. One approach will never work because you must adapt to people's responses (similar to horse training). What I've also heard is that people are always their own worst enemy. Those who understand they aren't breathing well and getting oxygen and come in early almost always have good recovery. Many people go through days with low oxygen levels and end up with a lot of tissue and organ damage, putting them already in a bad state when they finally decide to seek help. 

We really love our new town. It is just so easy to get around, and has everything we need except for a few things we can order online, or make an occasional trip in to a city for. I'm typing this while looking out the window at the river going by, with sand dunes in the background behind it. Here is a pic out the window:
We have a concrete pelican watching the yard. The sunsets over the dunes are just gorgeous.
Between the house and the steep bank going down to the river is about 15 feet. Deer, rabbits, birds and other critters walk along there right next to our windows.








The house...well, I'm not a good decorator and DH is not a good organizer. We have a clean house, but I have no concern about dog toys lying around with dog and cat beds in random places, our design is basically books everywhere on shelves and counters, with random horse decorations and mismatched furniture. My idea of a good couch is one the cats can easily scratch on. We don't have a table to eat at, because the table has a big computer set up on it. We just eat at the coffee table. We're just nontraditional and weird. Our old house just needs a little yard work and then we want to list it. It really was a big and beautiful house, with a sun room and a huge entertainment area in the downstairs and kitchenette. Which we used as a gym and tack room. LOL. 

I love how you are getting people out riding in such a nice environment, with low stress. I can imagine this experience will be something people remember forever.


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## SueC

gottatrot said:


> What is sad is that the nurses say a big reason why a lot of people had bad outcomes is because everyone wanted to have protocols for what to do with Covid patients, and so treating people as individuals got lost in the shuffle. First everyone needed to be on ventilators, but that meant many were put on ventilators and had bad outcomes because they shouldn't have been. Then they thought ventilators should be avoided, so people were kept off ventilators with severely low oxygen levels, and exhausting their respiratory muscles to the point where putting them on a ventilator was too late. They also thought everyone needed high pressures and ended up damaging and scarring healthy lung tissue past the point of no return, and blowing out lungs.
> 
> It sounds like hopefully they are now going toward a more individualized response, and taking each person as they present.


This is the same pretty much everywhere, I think, not just in medicine. This ridiculous expectation that there are one-size-fits-all protocols for dealing optimally with things. It doesn't work like that. What is required isn't a bloody protocol, it's intelligent, competent people using their brains to assess a situation, and cross-pollinating each other's thoughts and ideas - and the best places I worked were like this. You can't "idiot-proof" complex stuff; and by trying to do so, and imposing protocols, you are also tying the hands of intelligent, competent people, and giving them stomach ulcers, and making them escape onto a homestead where they are no longer constantly confronted by counterproductive bureaucratic idiocies. Bureaucrats usually create their own brain-drains from the professions they administrate (because the ignorant shouldn't lead the people who actually do the work and do it well). Now compare that to Finland, where the culture is to respect the professionals and let them get on with it, instead of bureaucrats interfering with professionals... (and don't get me started on why those bureaucrats think they deserve higher pay than the professionals actually doing the work 👹 👺 👾)




> We really love our new town. It is just so easy to get around, and has everything we need except for a few things we can order online, or make an occasional trip in to a city for. I'm typing this while looking out the window at the river going by, with sand dunes in the background behind it. Here is a pic out the window:
> We have a concrete pelican watching the yard. The sunsets over the dunes are just gorgeous.
> Between the house and the steep bank going down to the river is about 15 feet. Deer, rabbits, birds and other critters walk along there right next to our windows.
> View attachment 1111448


This looks lovely! 💕 🌈 🦀 And I'm glad you like your new area!




> The house...well, I'm not a good decorator and DH is not a good organizer. We have a clean house, but I have no concern about dog toys lying around with dog and cat beds in random places, our design is basically books everywhere on shelves and counters...


Sounds like a superb design to me. 🤓 😎




> I love how you are getting people out riding in such a nice environment, with low stress. I can imagine this experience will be something people remember forever.


I kind of see it as: How many people are in a position to offer exactly that? Combined with, How lucky am I? I never expected to be in this position. So I think it's only right that I share this. I'm so aware of that ability to create unforgettable experiences, and it's a privilege to do it, not to mention really rewarding and great fun!


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## SueC

Bwahahaha, @Knave - are you finding yourself singing, "It was the nearest thing to hip in this shiitake-hole" yet? It's _so_ catchy! 😋 😇 🥳

...and you should see some of the comments Brett made on the keyboard player:





Currently Listening to - Page 245


Currently Listening to - Page 245



curefans.com





It gets worse for a couple of posts! 🤣


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## Knave

😂 😂 😂


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## SueC

I don't know where Brett gets his similes from. Honestly! 😋 😇 🥳

It's a good thing he doesn't run the world. He would ban bananas, amongst other things... 😂


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## DanteDressageNerd

SueC said:


> Hullo, @DanteDressageNerd!  Hope all is well in your world! ...I can believe that about Morocco! Over 20 years ago my flight back to Australia from Europe was re-routed through Africa because of a Middle East crisis. After a huge delay spending the whole day at Gatwick Airport, the plane finally left at sunset but it turned out this was the beginning of a great treat. Europe was so illuminated I could clearly see the English Channel, the Scandinavian coastline, and correctly identify major cities like London (obviously), Stockholm, Hamburg, Munich and Milan (I checked with the live flight map to confirm). ...and then we were over northern Africa, and it was dark! Ethiopia in particular was pitch black with just the odd winking light. As a result, the stars visible from the plane were magnificent... and I'd not seen them like this the entire time I'd been visiting Europe. 🤩
> 
> In general news: Just got our 65th review for our farmstay. Reviews here: Sue's Profile - Airbnb


Hello! Mostly tired atm. Lots going on in my studies, learning a lot and am fortunate to have such good Professors who are passionate and really care. A few specialize in autism and ADHD research, so they get quite excited about me and ask me a lot of questions. Wonder is great, he is still himself but he's a happy kid!

That sounds like such an amazing sight! The scope of which is probably beyond my experience at this point. Ethiopia sounds magnificent, to see pitch black would be a sight to be hold. I don't think most of us in the modern world have really seen such a thing! Sounds amazing!

And congratulations on your review! It looks very positive and that you are all well  On second note, why can't Brett rule the world? He'd probably do a lot better than the ones running it now!


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## Knave

I’ve seen pitch black! The girls, my friend and his kids minus one, all snuck in to a few old abandoned mine tunnels. To be fair, he is a blasting expert for his career, so I felt safe. He’s been in lots of underground mines, and when we were very deep he told us to be quiet and try turning all of the lights off. It was pitch black. I was surprised that his little girl, who was about three, was more enthralled in the level of dark than scared. She was quite the kid.

There are a ton of old abandoned mine shafts here. They teach kids in school “stay out and stay alive,” and that is why one of his kids didn’t go. He didn’t learn the lesson in school, as he’s from another state, but he read the sign and about looked for cops to turn us in to. Lol. That kid is cool too, and maybe he’ll grow up to be a cop himself.

My brother used to rappel into the old shafts that go straight down for a bit, but I never went with him. They are dangerous, so I am not advocating to sneak into them, unless you are with a blasting expert. 😉


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## SueC

Super cool, @Knave! 😎 My experience of total darkness was around 15 years ago, when I went on a "ghost tour" of Albany's historic Old Gaol. They do it late at night and walk your group through the establishment by candlelight giving you a historical talk complete with alleged ghost anecdotes. Predictably they hire actors to pretend to be some of the replica people they've got on display (think Madame Tussaud's) and then come to life during a ghost story, and ridiculously more than half the grown adults in the random group fell for it (_Ho'mo ridiculus,_ alright)_. _After that stunt they brought us to the solitary confinement/light deprivation cell, and asked if anyone would be willing to go in there and have the door shut behind them. Ridiculously, most of the group were umming and aahing, so I said I'd go in. It was very solid stone walls all around, which you could see before the door shut, and it really was pitch black. I don't know why any logical adult would have a problem with the dare; clearly they can't keep you in there and even if the tour guide was a psychopath, there's too many witnesses...

Good to hear both you and the horse are well, @DanteDressageNerd! 

G'night all! 🛌


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## SueC

*BIBBULMUN TRACK - LOWLANDS TO WEST CAPE HOWE HUT*

Walking from Lowlands to West Cape Howe Camping Hut and back today - 10km.





















If you want to see them all, click on any and use the arrows (left is forward).


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## Knave

Very pretty!


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## SueC

*POETIC JUSTICE ANECDOTE*

Elsewhere we've been discussing April Fool's jokes and other pranks. ...have you done any practical pranks, perhaps in the pursuit of poetic justice?

I'm going to tell you about some odious men who apparently aren't properly house-trained, nor empathetic to other people's needs. Men you may share the house with who leave the toilet seat (and lid) up instead of putting both down after finishing with the toilet. Not closing the lid before flushing is actually really unhygienic if you have a flushing toilet - the resulting aerosols have been shown to deposit even on toothbrushes if the toilet is in an actual bathroom (and if you've got a compost toilet, then the lid needs to be closed after use so that the fan can continue to effectively create the negative pressure that stops the system from being smelly, and so insects don't fly down the toilet to breed). Not putting the seat down, by itself, is lack of courtesy to other users of the toilet, particularly female users, who don't use toilets standing up and shouldn't have to be putting the seat down after someone else has left it up.

Now my husband was properly house-trained when I met him despite growing up in a male-majority household - always puts down lid and seat after use - and doesn't leave streaks, or miss the loo when using it upright so that there's never anything sprayed around the toilet or running down the front of it (both of which you can commonly observe on unisex public toilets, or if you're house-sharing with male slobs, or visiting a household containing such individuals 🤢).

But my first boyfriend wasn't properly house-trained, and didn't care about hygienic and considerate toilet use when sharing with others, and being asked nicely didn't have any effect on him, not once we were actually in a house-sharing arrangement (funny isn't it; it's so much easier to get the cooperation of others when you can choose not to invite them back, as when you happen to belong to the same household). He, like some subsequent males in house-shares, used to argue that he liked "his" house messy and not having to care about stuff, after all it was "his" home, and if others sharing the space wanted it clean, they could choose to clean it. (Don't get me started!)

Once in the middle of night when I was a university student and sharing with this particular male, I staggered semi-comatose to the toilet, without turning any lights on because I'm generally photophobic in the middle of the night and also because I don't want to wake up fully because otherwise I have trouble getting back to sleep. When I got to the toilet, I sat down.

And disappeared into the toilet. It was winter, so the ceramic was really cold and clammy on the rudely shocked skin of my posterior, which was wedged in the bowl, and my stomach was turning because this was not a toilet that was constantly clean like when I'm not sharing, or sharing with a house-trained individual like my lovely husband. I was rapidly fully awake and having to extricate myself from a really unpleasant situation. And then I had to shower in the middle of the night because how can you go back to bed when your skin has been all over an unhygienic person's skid marks and urine spray. 🤮

The person responsible for leaving the toilet in this state and turning it into a trap laughed and laughed when he heard what had happened. It was soooooooo funny, apparently. I was really miffed and repeated my requests for leaving the toilet clean and with the seat and lid down after use. But this person didn't even pretend he was going to cooperate - he wasn't going "to be made uncomfortable in _his_ own home by a clean freak."

Needless to say he never cleaned the toilet, and I had to clean it more frequently than I would have had to not sharing. And soon after this incident, I was once again cleaning the toilet this person always soiled and never cleaned, and was really riled about it, when he was coming home from university. And suddenly I had a wonderful flash of divine inspiration, and began to laugh.

He came to see why I was laughing, and I said to him, "I've got a surprise for you, but you've got to put your head down the toilet." The toilet was pristine after cleaning, it must be said. I continued to laugh and repeat that he needed to put his head down the toilet so I could show him my surprise. And to my astonishment, he actually did put his head down the toilet...

...and I flushed. 😋 😇 😈 😜 😁

And then it was his turn to have a shower.

Sometimes the universe positions you to be the avenging angel, and it is very sweet.


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## SueC

*FIRST RIDE ON A BIRTHDAY, AND ORIGAMI HORSES!*

Yesterday was a guest's birthday - and I took her horse riding, which she'd never done before. She thoroughly enjoyed her beginner lap through our bushland and was really quick on the uptake - correct seat, how to move with a horse, the whole swing analogy (going with the swing rather than accelerating the swing or slowing it down). It makes me think about some dumb comment I caught on the main forum recently about feet hanging under the barrel, "How do you give leg aids? And it looks so bad." What piffle. I've got really long legs and my feet would hang even under a Clydesdale's barrel. Doesn't mean I don't ride, and appearances are so subjective - tell that to the Mongol riders, the people in Iceland, etc. I primarily use seat aids; the legs mostly just envelop gently, and may squeeze slightly with the seat when indicated. I've not used my heels on a horse since I was 10 because that's when they permanently started going under the barrel. 

Our guest was pretty instantly comfortable and enjoying the experience - beaming and saying, "Hey, I like this movement!" This morning she and her partner checked out; Kiko made me an origami horse! (She is from Japan and says this is her first origami horse!)

As her partner didn't want to ride yesterday, I was in my riding clothes and took Sunsmart and the dog for a proper long outing afterwards. By the time I got on, he was warmed up and keen to trot and canter. We rode all the way through the neighbour's side of the valley floor to Verne Road, where we usually turn right - and turned left for the first time in a long time, through the large cow paddocks and then back along the roadside reserve track (which I photographed a long time ago). The cow herd (about 50 mothers) was fairly recently calved and excitable - I was trying not to disturb them but they followed me in parallel, and when I tried to tack around behind them to lose them (cantering rapidly), they followed me in the other direction as well. My horse doesn't mind, it's just trying to avoid stress for the cattle when I'm riding on the neighbour's land. They're mostly just following because of curiosity, but when their calves are this young there's defensiveness in it too and they do get over-excited, as a horse is a rare sight for them.

My dog always runs parallel to the electric fence lines when I cross that paddock and goes the long way around, but because I changed direction to turn behind the herd, she ended up looking for us in the middle of the hilly paddock and being chased by excited mother cattle, who were gaining on her because the dog is nearly 9 and had already run fast for a long way. She was 100 metres away from me when they nearly had her, and this made her tack in front of them and head them off - so that she was chasing them now, not the other way around, so she wouldn't get trampled. I then called her off her impromptu herding exercise - the horse is one thing with the cattle, but the dog wouldn't be much appreciated interacting with them by their owners, even if she only did it not to get trampled - I won't be riding in that side of the block for the next month or two until the calves are older and the mothers less touchy, and will try to go around the external perimeter next time instead of crossing through the paddock. (Chances are the cattle will still follow us if they see us, but at least that way the dog has a fence line to stay behind and won't be chased by or chasing cattle.)

The ride along the roadside reserve was pretty as always. Good outing; Sunsmart got a handful of sultanas for dessert after his post-ride bucket feed, when I was letting him into the Common to join his friends.


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## SueC

*PLEASE PROVIDE INPUT ON YOUR OWN EXPERIENCES WITH ANIMAL RESPONSES TO MUSIC! *

Dear all - have you got any anecdotes with any kinds of animals, and music? Then I'd love to hear about it. Here's what I've got so far (from a long discussion elsewhere, where I've put in my own experiences):



> One famous set of studies (reported in _New Scientist_ etc) looked at the effect of music on the milk production of dairy cows: Playing classical music to cattle coming in for milking resulted in a measurable increase in milk production compared to other types studied (I can't recall which genres they looked at) or no music at all. The mechanism that was floated for this effect was that the cows were more relaxed and less stressed with this kind of music; and decreased stress is generally associated with better health and more energy etc (in all sorts of species including ours). People handling the cattle could see that they were more chilled-out when they were playing classical music in the milking barn, too (and perhaps it even chilled out the handlers and this had a flow-on effect on the cattle).
> 
> I've played music to cattle, horses and donkeys myself just for fun (not a formal study, just anecdotal stuff, preliminaries if you like). They're all curious about music and all of them seem to like the classical and folk from my collection - they go close to the speakers and you can see similar body language to when they're enjoying other stuff (food, back scratches etc). They don't have the same kind of positive body language when you play them Tool or anything with a loud, insistent beat - that tends to make them nervous - and they have similar body language around that as around scary, unpleasant things like flying plastic bags, falling objects, or me turning up with a worming syringe.
> 
> I've taken a violin out amongst various animals to practice to see how they'd respond - and most of them get curious. There was one mare on someone else's property who had a pretty sad life, and when I stood in the courtyard playing tunes to the nearly 20 horses in their various yards in earshot, she was particularly interested - came as close as she could to the sound, made big eyes, sighed etc. So I took the violin to her, and got into her yard. I ended up with the violin on the left shoulder, and the horse's head on my right shoulder, making long sighs and crinkling her eyes with pleasure (eye crinkle = horse smile). Her breathing slowed right down and she became floppy and relaxed. She didn't want me to leave - more so than when I just used to go in her yard violinless to say hello. She liked long, even, open-string notes on GDA but not E (too screechy - and I share that with her). She also rather liked jigs. She did not like ambulance siren impersonations or imitations of the _Psycho_ shower scene (even though I think that's fun - but our opinions diverged for those).


Not to mention that Sunsmart's great-grandmother loved it when someone played music when we were working in the arena when I was a child - and would adjust her rhythm to it, and go all floaty in her gaits...

Ever taken your violin and played it to animals, @gottatrot?

Particularly interested in whether anyone has noticed any different responses for different types of music!

Constructive criticism of how I'm thinking about this also super welcome.

(Original discussion is long and involved but started with talking about some work that was done that seems to indicated that "poppy" pop music has similar effects on the brain as junk food - that it's "addictive" and not necessarily great for your brain... compared to more complex nutrition... so if anyone wants to offer ideas on that, I'll post the link!)


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## gottatrot

Growing up, there was a lot of piano playing which the animals seemed indifferent to. 
The parakeets and finches I've owned always loved music on the radio and would freak out if I played a song often and it came on. So they definitely recognized certain songs. 

The dogs always seemed to love the violins, even when my brother and I were first learning to play. We had three dogs at the time, and they would come from wherever they were and lie down at our feet while we played. My Papillon also curls up and sleeps next to me whenever I play. 

The cats hate the violin. Kikko gets up and leaves if he is anywhere in the vicinity, and he will sometimes meow and complain loudly as he walks off to find somewhere to sleep far away. The cats love the cello, and will sleep very close by when DH is playing. Apparently the difference in pitch is a big thing for them. 
The parakeet and finch like both the violin and cello. I've never tried playing for horses. 

I'm sure you've seen the videos on Youtube about how much elephants enjoy listening to piano playing.


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## SueC

Oh wow, @gottatrot. No, I hadn't! 

Thank you very much for your observations. They're really interesting, so I'll cite you on this as an anonymous animal owner cum music enthusiast - please let me know if you want to personally participate in the discussion I've got going elsewhere!  (It's about more than animals and music, but you're just the sort of person who would be great to get opinions from - musical, sciency, interested in the brain...) 😎


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## Knave

I first played music to Mama Pepper when I milked, and it did settle her a bit, but oddly it was when I started listening to sermons and podcasts that she really settled down. She does like something to be playing though, and is a bit more antsy if it is completely quiet or I am on the phone. It does not make her up production though.

Cashman really likes music, and I ride to it part of the time. He is less spooky and more agreeable with music, but he does complain at certain songs. He lets me know if he doesn’t like it, and harder rock and that type of thing does not appeal to him.

Queen likes music that goes with her attitude best. I think she’s a rap fan, and I laugh listening to Lizzo with her (“I just took a DNA test), because that’s definitely her song. Another rap song, “she’s my best friend” makes me laugh with Queen, because it very much explains her.

I don’t like rap though, so it’s rare she gets the treat. The only reason I know their choices of music I don’t prefer is because I will let pandora pick music for me, and often I am too busy to skip.

Bones is five or take. He settles a bit with music, but I don’t think he actually enjoys it. An old horse I had called General actively disliked music (his condescending nature of course looked down on things of joy lol).


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## egrogan

I am not very knowledgeable about music, but here are a few albums I have in my riding playlist. I like music where the tempo changes a lot, and it's a bit of a game to try to adjust the length/rhythm of the stride to match. I think that's why I like watching musical freestyles in dressage- when the music is picked well for the horse, it really does look like magical dancing.

Any album by Menahan Street Band





The soundtrack to the movie Amelie





The Score (Fugees)





Vivaldi's Four Seasons





Rome (Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi)


https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhrglt2nmIGhizz6-3HOHtyc7Ni4Z90w7



And this is the silliest, poppiest song I have downloaded, but it's a great "pump up" song when going out on a long ride and doing the first big road trot.


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## SueC

*HAPPENINGS*

I've just come in from the evening supplementary feed and from rugging all three horses and three of the donkeys (not the two overweight ones, on recommendation of the Donkey Society - plus they have a shelter they go and use when things get bad). Because look what's sitting off our coast. I've never seen anything like this before: TWO cyclones approaching the northwest-Australian coast.








And tomorrow and Monday, we're forecast to get a lot of rain on the South Coast because of it!

It's been one of those weeks. I spent Thursday (our usual day off) at the emergency department instead of going hiking because of severe abdominal pain which had started at midnight the previous night (there's a bunch of dangerous things it's not but they're scheduling follow-ups). I'm OK-ish at the moment but something also clearly isn't right and hasn't been for about five weeks. I'm also trying to arrange to get the three cattle we had ready to sell over to the big cattle farm neighbour's yards to treat a developing problem with two of them which needs to be attended before they can be sold. It's that even though I bought them disbudded as weanlings, they've developed funny little blunt horns and two of them now have a horn each curving back towards their skull, and it's just started to break the skin, so the ends need sawing off ASAP before what's currently (looking at their behaviour) not distressing them will get really painful.

I've got all the gear to tend to the problems ready, but to shift the cattle along the road I need two more competent stock handlers to help me out (I'm happy to pay people) and right now nobody is available, and all my town friends are useless at handling large livestock, as is Brett (he's not comfortable with cattle and they can smell his fear, he doesn't communicate with them correctly, or know how to use his body position to influence their movement, and then when everything goes wrong he gets angry with them and throws hissy fits at them which makes things more difficult for me and isn't fair to the animals either, so I prefer not to have him around for crucial large animal handling).

@Knave, I'm sure that if you got here on a TARDIS for a morning with one of your horses, we could move the three cattle on horseback together with just two of us. The main problem in the move isn't taking them along the road, which is a bit icky because a section of it is tarmac in a 110km/h zone, but after 400m of that there's an 800m roadside reserve track off the road which is easy - but followed by having to cross the road into the neighbour's front gate, and the cattle always have a tendency to want to rush back home along the tarmac road when they come out of the reserve track onto the road crossing. When there's just two of us on foot / on mountain bikes, if we successfully stop them from doing that, then they're as often as not running down the tarmac road in the other direction, so we really need three people on foot to do this reliably (and four would be perfect, because then I could go ahead rattling a feed bucket, as our cattle always follow me when I do that...).

Anyway, I'm sure @egrogan knows that when you're setting up a farming block, some things come before others since none of us have a golden goose. But now that we've had the bore and the driveway put in over the last three years, we've saved up enough to think about putting in a small cattle yard with head-bail and loading ramp. Then there'd be none of this drama and trying to arrange help etc; I'd have head-bailed the two steers two weeks ago when I first saw that the horns were a bit close to their skin, and nipped off the ends. They were actually supposed to be off to the sales this week and I'd hoped that the horns wouldn't make contact in that time, but Murphy's Law etc.

@Knave, I'm looking at small yards for people who only ever want to yard a maximum of six cattle. I need a raceway into a crush with a head-bail and loading ramp. I'm looking at commercial kit options, and DIY, and DIY with assistance. I want the next lot of cattle we raise (which I went to look at this afternoon) to leave the property off our own loading ramp two years from now instead of droving them to the neighbouring farm to do it. Do you have any recommendations for a really small set-up?

It's been one of those weeks. At least all the guests we had were great, even when I had to cancel pancakes Thursday morning and get everyone to help themselves to muesli and toast because I was off to hospital. I've been contemplating all sorts of dark things like the inevitability of disease and death in our life span, and the disconnectedness in many communities these days. Although there are many pluses, on the minus side, moving to a farm has been pretty isolating an experience for me. Not only am I not working with hundreds of people each weekday anymore, I'm also not going to Pilates or choir or popping in on friends or having them pop in on me nearly as much as I did living in town. Sometimes the lack of human contact makes me miserable. Sure I'm mostly happily married, but I've got an extroverted side and miss having lots of connections to other people. The farmstay makes up for it a bit because I do get to meet many really lovely people in the process, and we get great conversations around the dinner table, but there's pretty much nothing in the immediate community. Two nice families we really like, including the people who let us borrow their yards, but though I tried to initiate socialising with both of them, they're all too busy with their own work or social circles to be proper regular contacts. And town is half an hour's drive away, which has precluded my going to things like Pilates (we share a car so if I drop Brett off to work to do it, then I end up driving two hours that day, to pick him back up at the end of the day as well since I can't spend the whole day in town...).






I can really relate to this song today. 😥

It's been some week, and sometimes you bottom out even though you swim swim swim with all you've got most of the time. I think we've all been there.


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## Knave

Seems to me that the moon must be playing with our minds and making us want human company... I think big girl and I will go into town today for coffee, but town doesn’t feel like the solution... maybe a bigger town, but that would take a day trip.

Anyways, that does tend to happen with dehorning. We have one cow that like clockwork my mother complains about, but we always saw it off in the fall time when she’s going through the chute. If you do plan on butchering the cattle quickly (a month out even) they probably wouldn’t be the worse for wear about the horns without sawing them.

I do think the two of us could move the cattle, but because of what you explained, three is always better on public roads. Brett could fill holes though. We could even get our human connection void filled!

I don’t know about what is available and what your price range would be. I probably could tell you if what you chose would be sufficient. I’ve seen some smaller set ups. My uncle has a smaller bunch of cows, and he bought a head catch that he used even for trimming his bull’s feet! (His cattle stay in the valley, so there aren’t the rocks needed for some to keep sound.)


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## SueC

Knave said:


> Seems to me that the moon must be playing with our minds and making us want human company... I think big girl and I will go into town today for coffee, but town doesn’t feel like the solution... maybe a bigger town, but that would take a day trip.


Have fun, whatever you do! 



> Anyways, that does tend to happen with dehorning. We have one cow that like clockwork my mother complains about, but we always saw it off in the fall time when she’s going through the chute. If you do plan on butchering the cattle quickly (a month out even) they probably wouldn’t be the worse for wear about the horns without sawing them.


You'd think that, wouldn't you. Since it's only just happened and at the moment is causing the equivalent of a skin graze, and the animals are not showing signs of pain or discomfort, same as when you or I scrape a knee after the initial "ouch" is over. We just go about our business then.

But I rang up my neighbour to ask him if he knew what the regulations were regarding matters like this at cattle sales. He has poll cattle so said he isn't up to date on that and to ask my agent. I have a relatively new agent and the first time we had him take a consignment of cattle, one of them was limping a little - he was the one we ended up home butchering and are now eating. I'd asked him if that was an issue to send to abattoir and he told me that if there were any problems they'd shoot him en route and send me the bill for craning him out of the transport.

I kept the steer with the younger ones and sent off the rest of the consignment, but the agent had made a bit of a dance about it. I still don't know what caused the steer's limping in the first place - his feet were sound, and he wasn't hesitant to place them, he just walked funny - maybe he pulled his shoulder playing on the farm dam wall. We gave it three months and it didn't go away, but he didn't seem particularly bothered by it, not like a lame horse - he'd go galloping off with the younger steers and kick his heels in the air, just favouring that leg though, and he wasn't hobbling around in pain. Also we found nothing obvious wrong when we cut up the carcass with the qualified butcher.

Anyway, I rang the agent to ask him, and the phone line was poor as usual and before we even got around to discussing this issue, he said he was out my way and could just drop in to have a look at the cattle (he knew I was planning to sell them). And then when he turned up he did a song and dance at me immediately about the problem with their horns and basically threw around words like animal cruelty and I ought to be reported to the RSPCA and that people like me had gone to court and been fined thousands. And like I said, two weeks previously the horns hadn't gotten into the skin but were close to it and I didn't think they'd grow in before we sold them - but he didn't believe me, seems to think I'm a bad stock manager and know nothing etc.

I've had newly disbudded animals on my place, and they're clearly in pain from the disbudding, but it's an accepted practice and yet when a horn is just beginning to grow in and you've only just noticed and are getting advice about it and they're not showing signs of distress, you're supposed to get reported and go to court for animal cruelty? That's sort of like getting reported when a horse of yours develops a hoof crack - because you didn't prevent it. Or having Social Services called on you because you have a child with the beginnings of an ingrown toenail and you've asked a more experienced parent for advice.

Anyway, there you go, though my neighbour, who came and had a look, says the same thing - they're not in pain at this point and they might as well go on the truck from that perspective, but them's the regulations now, apparently. So we're going to take an inch off the horn tips and let the skin heal over before we sell them.

Sending cows in is becoming more and more like making unblemished sacrificial temple offerings. 🌪 I can completely understand that if you have badly ingrown horns, then that can potentially really hurt if the animal knocks its horn during transport. Not so likely in such an early stage. But you want to know what really makes me mad? The double standards, and the straining at the gnat but swallowing the camel.

For example, the neighbour to one side of us starves their overstocked cattle every winter till they go down to skin and bone, and one year three of them dropped dead in a fortnight that we could see from the road, from exposure because of the poor condition they were in. We didn't ring the RSPCA, but we did report it to the Department of Agriculture because we felt sorry for the shivering, miserable, hungry herd and on the off chance there was a communicable disease involved which could get into our herd. We did many years ago make a report to the RSPCA when we were hiking near Northcliffe one morning after a severe overnight storm and found half a dozen dead newborn dairy calves in a little paddock without shelter within sight of the main farmhouse, and another half dozen shivering and miserable and totally unattended. The RSPCA told us they didn't want to get involved because it was too far from Perth and involved food animals! And obviously, once you begin discussing that with others, you start to hear other stories like this.

Every time we drive to Cosy Corner we drive past paddock after paddock of pastured cattle with not even a single tree in sight - no shade at all and no shelter from the cold storms that lash our area in winter. And nobody cares.

We plant shelter belts, are careful not to overstock, provide mineral licks and supplementary feeds, make sure even our food animals have quality lives with plenty of feed, socialisation, shelter and opportunities for exploration, and our animals are sleek and shiny and never thin. I've adopted retired racehorses who were living lives equivalent to solitary confinement prison in their previous lives (but apparently that's not a welfare issue). I've got donkeys from the Donkey Society who needed special management and are getting it here. I trim everyone's hooves to prevent deformities, rot etc, and blanket old or sick animals in cold weather. I attend to health problems when I notice them.

But apparently asking about how to manage a recent situation with horns I've never encountered on our place before (and we've turned off over 50 cattle from here over the years) makes me cruel to animals and a bad livestock manager. 😵




> I do think the two of us could move the cattle, but because of what you explained, three is always better on public roads. Brett could fill holes though. We could even get our human connection void filled!


Yes we could, and you could have a nice lunch at our place etc, and you're right, we could put Brett at the far end of the road with the car across it to stop the cattle from running to town!




> I don’t know about what is available and what your price range would be. I probably could tell you if what you chose would be sufficient. I’ve seen some smaller set ups. My uncle has a smaller bunch of cows, and he bought a head catch that he used even for trimming his bull’s feet! (His cattle stay in the valley, so there aren’t the rocks needed for some to keep sound.)


I'm going to have a good look around at options. I might scan some of them and post them for fun! 

Have a wonderful outing! 🚁 ⛵ 🚢 🗼 🌋 🏕 🎁 ☕


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## Knave

All I have to say to that is, “wow!” I don’t know if it is your agent, or if the Australian laws are just different... Sawing off the red cow’s horn (and every other cow I’ve seen it done to) is painful. It is something that may even make them take a little downhill slide for a bit. Yet, the horn will do no real damage to the animal in a decently short time frame, and they are going in to be butchered! It is a silly thing to cause it pain prior. I find it so irritating how legal matters seem to forget the logic of things.

Here that wouldn’t be an issue, nor would the lameness for a sell. If that were the case many cull cows would be shot and their meat waisted. What a bad law!

I do think that starved cows should be turned in, but I see it a lot here too. It’s sad.


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## SueC

Yeah, if I de-horned them completely it would cause them pain. That's why disbudding of calves is done on farms with horned cattle - if it's done early enough it prevents horn growth altogether, and prevents repeat procedures down the track, but sometimes it's a bit late or something goes wrong and little horns grow. The dairy calves I looked at yesterday had been disbudded so early that they'd healed over with no horn showing at all, and aren't expected to grow any horns.

Because the animals are going to the saleyard as soon as their skin has healed, I'm only going to take an inch off the horn tips, which in most cases would mean I'm not getting into the live zone of the horn, and therefore shouldn't cause pain. It will open up a gap between the horn and the face and hopefully won't grow back quickly enough to repeat the cycle during healing and still have a little gap when we do send them in.

I've got a wire saw which I'm going to slip into the hollow above the ingrown area and then I can work without being in the cow's face, so to speak. Because they still throw their heads in the head bails, I'm going to work with food buckets and a bit of desensitisation to touching the face with my hands, like you do with unhandled horses. Perhaps find a scratchy spot. These guys are pretty tame, although they don't let me touch them - I've had the odd cow that's actually let me touch their face over the fence and once they work out I can give them "scratchies" they start following me around showing me their itchy spots! 😄

Oooh, I've just had a call from my neighbour with the stockyards. He's got the day off and seems to be in major good-deed mode - he says he has some portable yards he's going to bring to our place in an hour and a half and we can set up a portable head-bail and he'll help me take the horn tips off. Wow. 😮 🤠

So now I'm going to track the steers down who could be anywhere, and give them some tree lucerne in our small paddocks so they're not unable to be located when the neighbour gets here.

How was your outing, @Knave? Did you do exciting things? Are you planning another mental health outing away from the ranch this month? Our farm is very lovely but if I didn't get off it at least once a week, and preferably twice, for hiking and hanging out in Denmark, I'd go spare...


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## SueC

*TEMPORARY YARDS*

These are the temporary yards we've put up this morning, on loan from the neighbour. He said I can test drive the system, and if I like it, he'll give me the number of the people who manufacture them, in Western Australia (which is good - support local industry). The rain hit just as we were putting the last bolts in and won't stop till at least tomorrow, so the cattle are grazing in the "inside" paddocks, are no doubt going to wreck a few fences while there (they don't respect polybraid - which is why I don't normally let them in there), but when the rain stops I can feed them in the yard and then manoeuvre them into the head-bail. I'm OK to do that myself but the neighbour has offered to come back when the rain stops - he's quite curious about the horns because his animals are a poll breed, and he thinks it would be nice if I had some training with the head-bail - if you're not quick with this one and don't lock it correctly, the animals tend to race out the front like thoroughbreds out of starter boxes...




The nice thing about these is that the panels are modular and you can make any size and shape yard you want and change things around as you wish - perhaps adding more panels later if you want to make your yard bigger. Everything is movable (and resellable). People apparently use these out on the big cattle stations in the rangelands (similar grazing conditions to @Knave's ranch) and pop them up where they need them, then shift them later. There's a trailer-mounted loading ramp you can get for this system, but that's the expensive bit (>$8,000), the basic yard we've got assembled is well under $5,000 with head-bail. So it sounds like that's a definite possibility for us, and we'll make a permanent ramp because it's way less pricey and we don't actually need a portable ramp.

And this will allow us to catch and properly restrain cattle for medical treatment, and also means we'll never have to take cattle on the road again - the pickup truck can come to us.

I'll take photos of the horn problems and doctoring when that happens. 😎

@Knave, our neighbour agrees with you - he says it wouldn't have been a problem to put these animals on a truck - not advanced enough a problem and rather silly treating this issue in animals that would have been at the saleyards this week and at the abattoirs the following morning.


*...AND NOW PHOTOS OF THE WHOLE EQUINE HERD*

You can see in the photos above that Mary Lou and Sparkle got highly curious about the new yards. They were standing at the common gate honking when we were putting the yards together and I let them in to have a look.

Here's photos of the horses and donkeys late this wet afternoon coming in for evening supplementary feeding, starting with Nelly and Ben and the horses being spooky in the background because they have just noticed the portable yard:

Mary Lou and Don Quixote were deemed by the Donkey Society to be ineligible for rugging unless they lose more of their blubber (they came to me very obese in 2012 and it helps them slim down not to be kept warm artificially on top of their existing very good insulation - but my main secret is grazing muzzles in spring which restrict their food intake so they can't hoover but can snack, and mineral supplementation so they don't get bad cravings...) - and they have a shelter available that they do actually use during rainstorms...

Some funny photos as I was waiting for the horses to un-spook a little...our three original donkeys had already figured everything out and were very keen to examine my camera:






The horses were now a bit closer:


...and Nelly and Ben are "thinkers" like most donkeys, and not so spooky, and saying, "We're gonna have a look at this new stuff..."


Cyclone Seroja is starting to cross the west coast of Western Australia, rather lower than where cyclones normally cross. The rain associated with the system started down here at lunchtime and isn't expected to stop until tomorrow or Tuesday. As the cyclone moves inland it is predicted to cross to the east of where we are, by then as a tropical low, but we could start getting gale force winds - not cyclone force probably, if it goes through the inland track it will lose much of its energy before it hits us - if it were to continue to go around the coast then things could be different, like in 1978:

Cyclone Alby - Wikipedia

At this point Seroja isn't nearly as strong a cyclone as Alby was, but it's still concerning it's predicted to make landfall in areas where buildings are not built to withstand cyclones. It's going to cause a lot of damage because of it, and there's masses of tourists in tents and caravans who need to evacuate to safety (Easter school holidays, peak tourist season)...

Here's a good summary:

Western Australia cyclones: Odette and Seroja spark evacuations amid ‘devastation’ fears

And here's a recent Bureau of Meteorology Update:

*Headline:*

Tropical Cyclone Seroja is moving towards the southeast. Dangerous weather expected to develop on the west coast from Sunday afternoon.

*Areas Affected:

Warning Zone*
Minilya Roadhouse to Lancelin along the coast, extending to inland areas including Mount Magnet, Dalwallinu and Paynes Find.

*Watch Zone*

Inland areas including Merredin and Southern Cross.

*Details of Tropical Cyclone Seroja at 2:00 am AWST:

Intensity:* Category 2, sustained winds near the centre of 110 kilometres per hour with wind gusts to 155 kilometres per hour.

*Location:* within 55 kilometres of 22.4 degrees South 109.6 degrees East, estimated to be 500 kilometres west northwest of Carnarvon and 750 kilometres northwest of Kalbarri.

*Movement:* southeast at 24 kilometres per hour.

Tropical Cyclone Seroja is moving towards the southeast and approaching the west coast of WA.

Seroja is expected to intensify a little during Sunday, possibly reaching Severe Category 3 intensity as it accelerates southeastwards towards the coast. It is then forecast to weaken back to Category 2 before it crosses the coast.

The cyclone should weaken as it moves inland on Monday but is still likely to be causing gusty winds east and north of the track, and heavy rain close to the track, as it crosses over the south of the state.

*Hazards:*

GALES with gusts to 100 kilometres per hour are likely to develop in an area between Minilya Roadhouse and Kalbarri during Sunday afternoon, then extend further south towards Lancelin and inland into the southern Gascoyne and the Central Wheatbelt during Sunday evening and early on Monday morning.

DESTRUCTIVE WINDS with gusts to 150 kilometres per hour are forecast to occur close to the centre of Seroja as it moves across the coast and into adjacent inland parts. The most likely area to experience destructive wind gusts is on the coast between Geraldton and Denham. People near Denham may see gales as early as midday on Sunday, tending to as early as dusk further south near Geraldton. The most likely time for onset of gales winds is mid to late Sunday afternoon near Denham, and during Sunday evening or overnight near Kalbarri and Geraldton.

Seroja will be moving fast, so weather conditions will deteriorate rapidly as it approaches.

HEAVY TO INTENSE RAINFALL and FLASH FLOODING are likely close to the track of Seroja during Sunday and Monday.

ABNORMALLY HIGH TIDES could cause minor inundation at the coast between Coral Bay and Lancelin, increasing to SERIOUS FLOODING in the Denham and Shark Bay region and near Kalbarri. Dangerous surf and beach erosion is expected between Denham and Geraldton.

PS: Live radar of TC Seroja crossing the coast at Geraldton at the moment (8pm our time):

http://www.bom.gov.au/products/national_radar_sat.loop.shtml

Will become boring radar in a few days!


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## Knave

That storm sounds insane!

I’m glad the neighbor came down and helped you! (We use the wire saw too.) I was looking at that set up and thinking I would surely lose cattle coming out the front... it looked difficult to me. Lol

I did have fun! This woman that I like came and had lunch and coffee with big girl and I. She is so refreshing to be around. She is friendly and kindhearted, and she seems to have and adventurous streak in her too!

Next weekend I am going to my half marathon. That will be in a city, and I think it will feel like an adventure! In any case it should feel like something completely different. My aunt and my cousin are doing it with me, and they will be a blast too.


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## Knave

I forgot to ask, are you feeling better?!


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## egrogan

That trip to the ER sounds a bit scary, so I hope you get to the bottom of things very soon. 

I got a good laugh of the donkey expeditionary unit checking out the new pens on behalf of the rest of the more cautious herd!


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## gottatrot

I hope you can get to the bottom of your abdominal issues and that it's nothing serious. 
I'm glad you've written about dehorning, it's very educational. I thought my sister should dehorn her Highland cow but she's an adult and now I realize that would be painful and unnecessary.


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## SueC

Knave said:


> That storm sounds insane!


Certainly was. A lot of property damage happened because the cyclone came in far further south than usual, where buildings aren't cyclone-rated construction. Pictures just coming through now.









Holiday town decimated after tropical cyclone moves south through WA coast


Kalbarri and Northampton residents bore the brunt of ex-Tropical Cyclone Seroja, which wreaked havoc on WA's mid-west coast, leaving a trail of destruction and power outages.




www.abc.net.au





It went through too far east of us to even produce any strong winds here - it's actually very calm and was all night; but it has rained nonstop, and is only clearing now. We may actually get a fine day.

What is really sad is that, days before the cyclone hit our coast, in Indonesia and Timor it caused floods and landslides that killed over 200 people and made thousands homeless. There's no reports of casualties from Australia and if that happened, will only be a handful of people (e.g. accidents in homes or while out driving or boating when they should have been sheltering).



> I’m glad the neighbor came down and helped you! (We use the wire saw too.) I was looking at that set up and thinking I would surely lose cattle coming out the front... it looked difficult to me. Lol


I'm glad too! Well, it's open at the moment of course, and when you put a cow in you have it closed and then you open it a little for it to put its head through and then tighten it up to restrain the head so you can treat the horn problem. But yes, the neighbour says it's easy to lose a cow if you're not quick about it and don't engage the locking system quickly enough when the head is through. Which is why he offered to come by for treatment and to train me on the system.




> I did have fun! This woman that I like came and had lunch and coffee with big girl and I. She is so refreshing to be around. She is friendly and kindhearted, and she seems to have and adventurous streak in her too!


This sounds excellent and I hope you can get together more often! 




> Next weekend I am going to my half marathon. That will be in a city, and I think it will feel like an adventure! In any case it should feel like something completely different. My aunt and my cousin are doing it with me, and they will be a blast too.


Well, this means you're fitter than me and reminds me to get my exercise programme back in order - the long hikes twice a week are good but not enough; I had gotten into the swing of also doing at least twice weekly mountainbiking sessions around our little uphills before the hayfever season but then it was summer blah blah blah and now the temperatures are cooling, I'm hoping to pick it up again this week...

Have tons of fun with your half marathon and the whole trip! ...maybe you can bring back a photo for us here! 😎




egrogan said:


> I got a good laugh of the donkey expeditionary unit checking out the new pens on behalf of the rest of the more cautious herd!


Yeah, made me laugh too: All the donkeys immediately came running when the trailer arrived at our place and looking on with great interest from across the gate as we were putting it together. By the time we finished, Mary Lou and Sparkle were still at the gate and honking at us, so I let them through, and as you could see in the photos, they immediately test drove the yard! Mary Lou stepped straight through the gateway and did a lap in it (Sparkle is blind so has to work by feel), which is not what a horse would do, but donkeys are like that! 😄

The other three donkeys turned up with the horses for evening feedtime and it was the horses hanging back and snorting in typical horse fashion while the donkeys said, "Oh, can we go have a look at this new thing now?" 🥳




gottatrot said:


> I'm glad you've written about dehorning, it's very educational. I thought my sister should dehorn her Highland cow but she's an adult and now I realize that would be painful and unnecessary.


Yeah, you can always just take the tips off sharp horns to lower the injury risk and you don't have to go into live tissue for that.



> I hope you can get to the bottom of your abdominal issues and that it's nothing serious.


Thankyou @gottatrot, @egrogan and @Knave for your well-wishes. 🐻

...I might actually float this here because @gottatrot is a medical brain, and because all of us are female and some of this is to do with that and so it's educational.

I went into ED Thursday morning and spent the day there because I had woken up at midnight with high levels of abdominal pain that didn't go away. It went on all night and was definitely in one spot - lower left abdominal, around where the transverse colon meets the descending colon. It felt like a partial obstruction - and this is from sitting through obstruction colics with horses many many times growing up on a horse stud where animals had sand in their guts from not being on proper pasture (the soil is deep sand and they were standing in it and eating out of it - a lot of horses on the West Coast carry buckets of sand in their guts, according to someone who works in a horse abattoir), were lot-fed three times a day and not exercised after retirement (it's a recipe for colics).

So there was the pain and a feeling of pressure and bloating behind the site of the pain, and occasionally you'd hear a gurgling sound and feel some of the gut contents (liquid and gas) pass through the impasse, and the pain would reduce around 20% and then build up again. This pain was resistant to over-the-counter paracetamol at the highest dose. There was definitely an impasse. It wasn't constipation. The rectum wasn't even filling properly, it was empty - the colon wasn't passing its contents on, and when it did, only in fits and starts, and when things did come through it was in small quantities and they weren't pellet-like but smooshy. (There actually is a stool scale and it was just below "sausage form" - not diarrhoea either.)

Now @gottatrot and I will be aware from our studies of anatomy and physiology that there's a number of different situations that can cause a gut impasse. You can get partial twisting of the gut, or an intussusception, or a blockage from things like tumours or faecoliths or even from chronic constipation (not me, but people have had faecal blockages the size of soccer balls removed from their bowels that had impacted so much that the bowel itself balloons out and doesn't go back to normal later). Those are physical obstructions.

You can also get situations where gas etc causes similar stretching and deformation of the gut so that you've then got bottlenecks and stretched areas, with gut contents always tending to build up in the stretched areas and difficulty with moving the contents on properly. Things like diverticulitis fall into this bracket. Sometimes there's even inborn bottlenecks that tend to get worse in time for that reason and will cause more problems the older you get.

And sometimes it's a physiological problem with peristalsis - this also comes in various types - can be affected by lack of fibre in the diet, food allergies, gut inflammation, abdominal epilepsy, high gut serotonin levels, excessive progesterone etc, plus lack of regular exercise. (Medication side-effects can produce this problem - commonly SSRIs, birth control pills, HRT.)

So it's not easy to work out why and needs a fair bit of detective work. The episode that I went to ED with was the worst I've had so far, but something has been off five weeks straight now and I've had similar issues before.

In ED they eliminated dangerous forms of bowel twisting (i.e. ones causing cut-off circulation to parts of the gut) via a blood test, palpated for obvious masses (found none by that method), and ultrasounded me to eliminate an ovarian cyst/tumour (which they have to do in women in case it overlaps with gut problems because it's so dangerous). Sadly they didn't ultrasound to have a look at the transverse and descending colon to see what was going on there, but they are offering to scope me (as a follow-up) for underlying problems and that's probably a good idea given that I had a grandmother who died of bowel cancer in her 50s (though that was mooted to be lifestyle related and nobody else in the family ever ended up with this problem), and that scoping will show if there's potentially polyps sitting in tight turns (happened to an acquaintance and those are removed during scoping) or any form of bowel distortion, and checks for a few other things.

The longer-term history: I did not have issues with gut transit time etc before my early 40s and neither diet nor exercise patterns have changed significantly. I first noticed a problem with gut transit time when I was on SSRIs post PTSD diagnosis seven years ago - I got colics at night after a while, and when we halved the SSRI dose that was much better. This makes sense because SSRIs elevate your serotonin levels and high serotonin slows down your gut. On the initial SSRI dose, which interestingly was considered the lowest therapeutic dose, my gut became too slow and then I had trouble with trapped gas causing colics at night. I seem to be highly sensitive to all sorts of medications as well as being one of those people that can't walk through the cleaning products alley in the supermarket without holding my breath because artificial fragrances give me instant nausea and pretty quickly after that headache. Can't wear polyester because it gives me rashes, etc. Can't walk in a straight line after half a standard drink (thinking seems fine and I don't get silly, but it really affects coordination and reaction time way before it does in most people, and makes me want to go to sleep - as do two paracetamols!).

I was off SSRIs pretty soon after properly processing the traumatic events that caused the PTSD (took about two years to do that - first six months were the worst) and only occasionally go back on a half-dose for a couple of weeks if a stressful thing starts activating the whole PTSD cascade again. That's not happened for some time so this is not a factor in the current gut issue. It is, however, an interesting demonstration of what can happen if gut transit time is slowed down biochemically.

I also had premature ovarian failure in my early 40s and have been on HRT for eight years because of it. The HRT is definitely a good idea (I don't want osteoporosis or total atrophy of my reproductive organs or thin skin etc etc) and I feel much better on it than off anyway, but the details of that are still being played with. The first thing is: In my reproductive life there was no form of contraceptive pill I could be on without unacceptable side-effects. Even on the lowest-dose thing at the time, I had persistent nausea, breast engorgement, weight gain, mood swings and profound loss of energy. I gave up trying different types in my very early 20s and refused to ever go back on them again. There's other forms of reliable contraception that don't affect your entire physiology.

So the whole issue of HRT is a bit wrought as well. I'm currently trialling two different ways to replace female hormones. One is an inexpensive option that's basically the lowest-dose contraceptive pill on the market. Interestingly, my reaction to that as HRT was a lot better than it had been when I was making my own hormones as a young adult. No nausea, no mood swings, but the breast enlargement and weight gain, on that option, could be kept in check by halving the dose. This worked OK, but I wasn't happy that the progesterone was a synthetic substitute instead of nature-identical, and also I think the ratio of progesterone to oestrogen is too high with that option, compared to a normal physiological state.

The second option I'm trialling is nature-identical micronised progesterone and a reasonably nature-identical oestrogen - a more expensive option. I cycle between the two every half year or so to see what the differences are for a whole bunch of parameters. This is also oral, but it's separate pills. When I first switch to the nature-identical stuff - and I've done this a couple of times - I feel better at first - energy levels are better, skin is better, a whole bunch of things are better - but after a few weeks, I get problems with dizziness, tiredness, breast enlargement, lower gut motility. I can halve the oestrogen, but because the progesterone is micronised it's in a capsule I can't halve that. I don't think taking it every second day would be a great idea either. It's not available in lower doses and maybe I have to go to transdermal for this to be able to reduce the dose. If I go back on the half-contraceptive pills, of course I can't adjust the oestrogen-progesterone ratio at all.

I strongly suspect that excessive progesterone supplementation is at least contributing to the gut issue. I've stopped taking progesterone altogether since I went to ED just to see what happens. Long-term I can't do that, but short-term I can - and need to find some way of trying out lower doses of the stuff.

And then there's possible food allergies/intolerances. I'm an omnivore and eat very widely (and much less sugar and refined carbohydrate than average). I've never had issues with that in the past, that I noticed; but it's worth investigating, because I've met people who've had gut inflammation from food intolerances that caused similar issues to mine. However, it seems logical to me to see as a first priority if I can find a progesterone delivery system that allows me to have half my current dose...

It's complex stuff. If any of you have related observations on taking oral oestrogen/progesterone, food allergies, etc, that could be useful for everyone reading! So many variables...

PS: In ED one of the nurses came to my cubicle and said, "Hiya, you used to teach me!"  That was lovely, and especially that she's really enjoying her job. Also: Brett was in ED with me and we were in the cubicle directly opposite the plastering room - a five-year-old turned up with a minor burn and the nurses blew up a glove for him like a balloon, which made him happy. And then Brett said to me, "I wonder if they keep alcohol in there!" I replied, "Surgical, you mean?" and he goes, "Medicinal. Because it's a plastering room you see, and it could make you plastered..."


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## SueC

*SUNNY AUTUMN DAY*

After we got nearly washed away with rain as a result of the moisture Cyclone Seroja brought down to our part of Australia - days and days and days of rain rain rain and grey skies - it's so nice to have sunshine again. It's Saturday and the morning was so lovely I decided to go for my first ride since all the complications with cattle and visiting the emergency department last week (and all the follow-ups from that).

Here's some photos. Getting ready to ride:





I usually feed the horse after riding, but it was a cold morning and traditionally the time of day they start grazing after resting, so I gave him a scoop of oats to keep the wolves from the door, and brushed him while he was eating. If I don't feed in situations like that, he spends a lot of time wanting to graze. So this was a "muesli bar" kind of morning, and he wasn't hungry while I was riding.

Gear on:



The horse lost weight after going into a Cushings crisis last year, and it took half a year to get him looking decent again. I'm happy with his muscling again - he's 24 and I think he's looking in good shape, regardless of Cushings. The coat isn't quite the same, but compare that to the coat he grew last winter:

That was October last year, shedding out - he was physically good again, but his coat was like a yak's - giving our Mary Lou serious competition:

...and she's an Irish Long-Hair, and Sunsmart definitely isn't.

This is post-ride, post-bath:


I swear if he grows a coat like last winter again, I'm buying clippers... but hopefully he won't, since his Cushings is under good control going into winter.

We had a lovely ride in the sun and he was keen to trot and canter. He's 24 so I don't push him anymore, I let him suggest the pace. It's good for him and me to get out - older horses and horses with controlled Cushings generally do better in light work than in complete retirement. It's good for their fitness and general outlook - they still like adventures too - and the extra food and TLC around riding is also positive for them. He's still keen to go out, and while he wants that, he'll get it.


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## knightrider

Sunsmart looks amazing! What a change. It was wonderful to read about your ride!


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## gottatrot

Sunsmart looks great!!!


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## Knave

He does look wonderful! Wow!


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## SueC

*CATTLE UPDATE*

On Thursday, the rain had finally stopped long enough for me to remove the end of an offending horn that was growing into the face of one of our steers. I've kept cattle 10 years and never had to do that before - freak thing. I yarded them peacefully in the portable yard the neighbour had dropped off for us, with food and lots of acclimatisation time and no pressure and this guy walked himself into the crush without pressure when I put a food bucket in the front and left him to it. Then I just had to close the tailgate and engage the headlock, and again let him settle with his food bucket before gradually getting him used to having his face touched. When he was OK with that I popped the wire saw into the gap between horn and face and found the lowest effective point to cut it, and pretty quickly it was off.

It's those camping saws you can buy - just a thin cutting wire on two rings - and because I didn't want my fingers broken in case the >700kg animal moved its head, I clipped the rings into nice thick cotton lead ropes. I was trying to avoid live tissue but as the local dairy farmer told me when I looked at calves last week, this isn't always possible and the main thing is to stop the horn from growing into the skull in a case like this. So there was a little bit of bleeding but it stopped very quickly and the steer was relieved to have that end no longer digging into his face. I flushed out the skin wound with chlorhexidine and then covered the crusty edges with good old Stockholm tar so the insects won't bother him, and he was actually rubbing his face on my hands when I did this, clearly glad that the pressure was gone and to have the irritated skin tended. When I let him out he didn't go far from me. I was going to keep the horn end to show others but the dog snaffled it!

Because of a headlock malfunction I didn't get to do the other steer yet - he's got a more superficial problem, so at least the worst case is done. The headlock ended up turning into a trap I couldn't release when he wiggled a shoulder out of the gap before I properly engaged the headlock. I had the headlock locked on partly open, just enough to get the head through (I thought) and went to close the tailgate in the crush; when I returned to the front the steer was wiggling his shoulder through. I thought I'd just open the whole clamp, let him walk out and try again later - instead of trying to intimidate him back into the crush. Horse principle - don't create bad experiences.

Having worked with horse equipment all my life, I thought all along that I could release the clamp under pressure if there was a problem - but it wouldn't let go, and the animal panicked, and we could not disengage the lock, even with Brett helping. Eventually he wiggled himself out but I was cursing that the equipment turned into a trap. It's so stressful for animal and handler. There were some horrible minutes where the steer was caught in the headlock by his hips and no matter what we did we could not release the lock. That was really awful - about 750kg of steer caught in this trap and plunging around trying desperately to release himself while we couldn't get the lock open. He telescoped the entire portable yard in his efforts to get free - and thankfully, somehow, he actually got free, just as we were thinking we'd have to angle grind him out before he threw the whole crush over.

The neighbour who loaned me the yard told me that most cattle headlocks don't allow you to release the lock under pressure. Talk about bad design - this means you can't let panicking animals out in an emergency! @Knave, you didn't like the look of that headlock - are you able to release stuck and panicking animals in emergencies, with the equipment you work with?

I'm extremely happy that steer got away without obvious injury and is still walking around (and still talking to me), and that nobody got badly hurt. But I bet he's bruised where he wiggled through the headlock, and that doesn't make me happy. I wish people made cattle headlocks with emergency releases.

The steers, funnily, weren't avoiding me one bit after that happened, not even the one who got caught. They've been hanging around to see if I would provide food or entertainment, and I'm doing both. They are also still quite happy to go into the yard (I've not tried them in the crush). Today is a nice sunny day and a good day to tend to the second steer. My neighbour has said he will come over for this one to be on the headlock, which he's very experienced with.

The wound on the other steer is almost closed over already. It didn't even form a crust, it's healthy pink granulation tissue. When I first removed the horn end there was a little depression in the skin, like a crater. By evening the wound was already level - probably because the swelling from the irritation went down and the granulation tissue quickly filled any spaces. It just looks like a little pink circle the size of a dollar - no crust, no weeping. Amazing how quickly they heal up - wish I could do that! 

I have no photos from the first session because I was too busy - will definitely take photos of granulating wound and other steers next time they're going through the crush. 🐂 🐃 🐂

PS: And I had a little ride this morning before breakfast, just a short quiet loop around the swamp flats! 🐎


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## Knave

Yes, ours are very easy. The main chute we use is a hydraulic chute and out of anyone’s price range for a small herd. It is ran by levers, and the most difficult part is not getting too excited and pulling the wrong one and letting something out. I only run levers to let out, although it would be easy to catch something, it is much easier to watch my father who never loses an animal running through. Lol. I feel like the wizard of oz when I run the chute. 

Everything about the chute is useful and simple (as long as you have decent reaction time). The sides pull down in individual bars if you need the room for arm space. the bottom folds down for things like milking out a tight bagged cow.

The other chute we use at the farm is manual. It’s really quite simple, and although pressure does make it difficult to release I don’t think it’s built in a way to have the same issue as you did. I wonder if it would be a price option, but I bet it’s still expensive. It has a back gate and the head catch, and the middle squeezes. Three things to manually do with bars, unlike the hydraulic with the levers.


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## SueC

Wow, sounds like an amazing system, @Knave - and fun to work when you get the hang of it!

Yeah, the pricing of a lot of these things is beyond the pale if you're only keeping a dozen cattle maximum when you're not in drought. I will try to find a headlock that doesn't turn into a trap - hopefully in our price range. Otherwise I might have to just do an old-fashioned race with some chest bars in front. Yes they can jump those if they get desperate, but they won't trap them in the process...and it's good enough for de-worming with pour-on. I don't have to earmark anyone or anything like that... and I'll try to get properly disbudded weanlings in future to prevent having this issue again. Funnily, we've had several lots of Friesian cattle who weren't that effectively disbudded, but they've never had trouble with ingrown horns before selling age. The beef lots we've had in were always poll, before this particular lot (Simmental X).

This is before their horns caused problems...I've got photos of yesterday which I'll show you when I get a chance to do some uploading.

Do you know of anyone who's done a DIY loading ramp that's worked well for them? These things used to be around. I'm trying to find a pattern that's doable for me without heavy machinery - or I might have to outsource...


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## Knave

Loading ramps are all diy on the ranch and farm! I’ll take a photo for you tomorrow if I remember after work!


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## Knave

So, I tried to look at what was closest to what we use for our manual chute and decided that they just don’t make the quality that they used to. Ugh. The closest I could find would be 6k, and I’m imagining you don’t want to spend that much...


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## SueC

Thanks for the photo offer! 😎 ...yes, we don't want to spend 6K, and that's just the crush (chute) bit, not the ramp or the yard... Maybe we have to go to a system people used before industrially produced cattle handling equipment. Or maybe I have to take roping lessons from you! 😜


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## Knave

Oh my, my brain just figured something out. Lol. You meant the chute, and I was thinking a loading dock. The ramp up to the semi trucks... the chutes are not diy, although that would be easy enough I’d think...


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## SueC

No, I did mean a loading ramp!  I don't have earthmoving machinery, but I suppose I could hire someone if I needed to.

And I'm also thinking about old DIY cow restraint systems - which aren't roping because I don't have that skill - hey, do you reckon a team of ropers could have immobilised a 750kg steer enough to treat his horn?


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## Knave

Oh perfect! I will try and remember today!

Yes, of course! Many horses will hold them tight for you to get off too. Now, their body would be stuck, but you’d need someone strong on the ground to mug that head steady while the other cut.

ETA: you put the head loop on the front legs after you knock them down.


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## knightrider

We once had a cow whose horn was growing into her head. I called the vet and expressed concern because we had no way of immobilizing her and she was not tame. The vet said, "No worries."

We coaxed her into a stall in the barn, then encouraged her to go out the other door (that leads to the inside of the barn), slammed the door on her shoulder, had two of us holding the barn door on her shoulder. The vet whipped it his wire saw and had it done in moments. I thought it was quite ingenious. 

We sold about 13 cows a year. The buyer would back his trailer up to the barn. We would coax the cows into the barn aisle with feed, then shove them onto trailer. You guys probably already know all this stuff and are doing it a smarter way. When we inherited granddaddy's farm, we didn't know cows, but neighbors were good and helpful. Sure miss those cows! They were fun.


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## Knave

The door idea is good @knightrider! To AI Mama Pepper we just put a panel up against a fence and squeeze her in. It works great, and is much easier than hauling her to a chute.

Here are the pictures I took for you SueC!


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## SueC

Thank you for the photos, @Knave! That's some heavy-duty carpentry right there! 😎 Might be able to get some recycled timber from the auction place to do something like that on a budget - doesn't matter if it's slightly warped on a project like this...

More on cows another time, other than to say they're already healing up very well - I guess I'll have to take more photos soon, besides the initial ones straight after I cut their horn tips. 🐮 🐮 🐮

But today, I just wanted to share a fun and educational programme that's now completely available on YouTube.

We're currently watching Giles Coren & Sue Perkins's travels through the culinary aspects of various historical epochs in various countries - we first saw that when it came out but it was such good fun we're doing it again.

The two hilarious presenters get a medical check, then dress up in the period costume of the time and spend a week trying out each epoch before getting a follow-up medical check where blood test results, body fat etc are compared to original values.

The pilot episode looks at upper-class Edwardian England:






The first breakfast alone has enough food to last our household for two days. Everything is meat meat meat and there's scarcely any fruit or vegetables in sight, and they've apparently never heard of a salad. When fruit and vegetables do make an appearance they're usually overcooked to the point of flaccidity. In fact, it's extraordinary that with all the expense and excess around food, most of it was done in a completely unappetising way - I'd be interested in very few of these dishes myself.

I concluded that upper-class Edwardian cooking was about show, status and greed, rather than enjoyment and nutrition, and generally a waste of ingredients, not to mention blind to what should be the nutritional foundation of any meal - fruit and vegetables and (mostly) wholemeal / wholegrain cereals, legumes etc.

Oh, and if you watch this episode and get to the duck press, tell me if that didn't make you want to throw up, rather than go, "Mmmmmmmh, yum!"... likewise with their "invalid food" of mince on white toast, and the "tonic" made from water they soaked raw mincemeat in (hmmmm, food poisoning, parasites etc) - because when you've got indigestion from eating tons of meat and scarcely a vegetable, what should you do to fix it other than have more meat and white bread... 

In many ways the fact that the Edwardian upper classes ate like this and their medical establishment didn't notice the problem, in fact contributed to the problem with totally idiotic recommendations, parallels our own ridiculous age which has so many elephants in the room that even most of our "experts" don't seem to see, let alone discuss...

The human race is doomed, and deservedly so.


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## SueC

*SNAP LOCKDOWN*

Only last week I'd nearly forgotten there was a pandemic because Western Australia has never had community transmission beyond close contacts of quarantine workers and at the start of all this some close contacts of people who were let off a cruise ship in Sydney without testing. We were still doing the social distancing / hand hygiene / signing contact registers thing, but the general public wasn't wearing masks (nor was it generally recommended anymore) and we've been back to eating out almost-normally (some restrictions on crowding and new hygiene measures) for months; sports have had up to 75% capacity crowds again and even concerts are back on the menu here.

The borders are still tightly shut to anywhere there is any community transmission at all, and opinion poll after opinion poll has shown >90% public support for this stance by the state government. WA is pretty independent and has had one of the easiest rides economically through this of any place in the world - everybody's been back at work for many months and we're nearly operating normally, except we've made a bubble of our state by only being open to places currently free of community transmission (so the border actively shuts to interstate places where community transmission starts again and re-opens six weeks after they bring it back under control).

But occasionally we get a quarantine leak, and today, for the second time this year, the Perth/Peel area is in a snap 3-day lockdown announced Friday afternoon (at this stage, the South Coast isn't). The case that leaked through quarantine is a person who ended up infectious in the community _after_ having been cleared with a negative test on exiting the compulsory quarantine for people arriving from overseas. Turns out he'd caught a highly infectious UK strain from the people quarantining in the adjacent room (possibly through air-conditioning) sometime during his quarantine so it didn't show up at the time because it can take a fortnight for it to show up as a positive test...

This guy has a very active social life and went through numerous public places before testing positive on a repeat test - and a close contact has already tested positive as well. So that's why the snap lockdown - to seriously reduce spread while contact tracers get on top of stuff, and to test all the people who went to the known venues etc. If we're lucky only close contacts will test positive, but this is one of those particularly infectious variations that jumped rooms and is wreaking havoc in the UK, so if we're not lucky it will be clusters to chase for months, and if we're really unlucky it will be a general longer lockdown - potentially also in the regions, because five days is a long time for the virus to travel...

We were informed Friday afternoon one hour before I had guests arriving from the lockdown zone - they were already on the road when the announcement was made, roadblocks weren't set up until midnight. It's a long weekend here and lots of people were already on the road Friday afternoon/evening going out to holiday in the countryside; all these people have been asked to wear masks whenever in contact with the public in non-lockdown zones.

So quick thinking was needed at our place. I messaged our guests and they picked up masks and sanitiser in a town on the way, and I created a "two-bubble" household for the long weekend. Normally we share the living/dining area with guests but we can't do that this long weekend - I'm passing meals to them on a tray through their French doors and we're all wearing masks whenever we're anywhere near each other, including outdoors. As the second set of guests cancelled, the guests that did come have the whole guest wing to themselves, and Brett and I are not using the general entry/exit door through that wing, we're leaving through another door instead.

Main transmission route is droplet/aerosol; so we're largely on top of that by not sharing indoor spaces at all and having masks on when we're talking (socially distanced) through the doorways or doing outdoors stuff together (like the meet-the-donkeys session Friday night and a guided walk-round-the farm Saturday - normally I wouldn't have bothered outdoors but we were all speaking and this is a particularly infectious strain). More minor risk of transmission on surfaces but we're all using hand sanitiser and all the trays etc are kept separate and wiped down with alcohol regularly, with dishes going in the sink. It's not perfect, but this is a percentage game and I think we're really cutting down transmission risk.

We're staying sane by making funny comments like, "Hey, we look like the Annual Meeting of Donkey Surgeons!" 😷😷😷😷


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## egrogan

@SueC, a few years ago here our public television carried a series of Giles & Sue on a similar topic, called "Supersizers Eat" and it was the same idea, monitoring health stats while eating these luxury meals from across historical eras. Very entertaining, but by the time they got to the end and their vital signs were tanking, I felt a bit bad that I had enjoyed the show while they made themselves physically ill. And then of course Sue went on to the Great British Baking Show until egos and infighting tanked that series too. I miss it! I don't know what she's on to now as we seem to get popular British shows a year or two behind in the US.

Sorry to hear about the virus spikes in Australia. I hope the lockdown measures work and keep things relatively isolated and treatable. I was volunteering at an endurance ride yesterday and some people were talking about a US-based endurance rider who's been in Australia since the winter and contemplating coming home now that vaccines are providing good coverage here (at least in our region of the country, others, not so much...). Amazing how it has been nearly non-existent for you all.


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## SueC

*WALKING OUTING*

We realised today on the way to a coastal walk we've done several times recently that we've not been anywhere totally new in months, and changed plans at the last minute after consulting the map. We went to the start of the Denmark Rail Trail from the Hay River end. This is a share trail for hikers, mountain bikers and horse riders and in 2009 I did the Hay River to Denmark section (and back again, about 22km) with the Albany Natural Trail Riding group, on Sunsmart, in his first year of saddle training when he was agisted in Albany. Brett obviously didn't come along on that outing and had never seen this trail, and I was keen to see the first section of it again after 12 years, so that's where we headed.

Since Sunsmart and I got a ride on someone else's trailer in 2009, I wasn't completely sure where we had parked, so this time around I parked our car at the easternmost possibility, which was at the start of the Hay River to Denmark section of the trail. The rail trail itself ran to the north of the highway directly from the car park and the map showed it crossing the highway later. I remembered we had crossed the road directly from the car park and there was a likely-looking track just across the road from the car park, which we took.

I had an idea we might have taken an alternative route to the south of the highway for scenic reasons back in 2009, so it was worth exploring. However, after 10 minutes of walking, this is where we ended up:

We definitely hadn't come there with the horses - but the dog was delighted by this unplanned foray to the shores of Wilson Inlet. I took some pictures, but we'd left the camera at home and so these are taken with the same iPod with which I've taken photos off horseback for this journal - not the best quality and very hard to line up the horizon properly!

From the photo above you can see two walks we've done and reported on for this journal, across the other side of the inlet: We walked directly along the shoreline on the Eden Gate-Pelican Point section (link back to that one in 2019 here), and we also walked from Eden Road via Nullaki Camping Hut to the Southern Ocean, at one point near the limestone road you can see going straight up the hill towards the left-hand side of the photo (link back to that one also in 2019 here). But today we were across the inlet from these walks.


The Paperbark trees formed a dense thicket by the side of the inlet.

We took some more scenic photos before returning to the highway crossing.



Then we walked west for a little bit on the highway in case there was another track heading south from the car park, but there wasn't. So, we decided to walk the section of the rail trail north of the highway, where we definitely hadn't ridden the horses back in 2009, to the place where it crossed the highway - instead of driving further, because the aim of today's exercise was to walk trails we've not walked before.

After maybe 20 minutes we came to the highway crossing, and the track to the south of the highway.

And this is indeed where we'd ridden in 2009; there's a car park on the other side of the road here too, but they have done some work on this section in the past 12 years. I vividly remember that a long section of the track was completely under water when we did this back in 2009 and as regulars will know, Sunsmart hates crossing water, and this is when he was still very green...so it was quite a feat to get him to cross back then, and at one point I thought I'd have to turn back and let the others go alone. But after a lot of drama he did decide to follow the other horses back then. 😄
We did another 20 minutes or so; the track was flat and boring to hike and went like this:

This is only interesting if you're a runner, or you're mountain biking or horse riding - we hate walking flat terrain, it's so "samey" unless you can do it at considerable speed. So we decided we'd bring our bicycles to do the whole thing sometime, and head home.



Indeed, there's so many off-the-beaten-track bicycle trails we can also take the dog on around the district that I might actually buy a mountainbike for myself too - Brett has one and I have a roadbike with touring tyres that get me some way offroad as well, but only on harder tracks. Because look at this:





Torbay to Elleker Rail Trail - Rail Trails







www.railtrails.org.au




...that's another trail eminently suitable for the dog to come with us on bicycle rides.

And I know, I know, you'd all ride your horses on these and that would be nice, but I don't have a trailer or even a tow bar and to hire both a car and a trailer is just too much hassle for an outing we can also easily do by bicycle with our dog instead, and there's trails near our farm I can ride on...

In postscript, if you've actually gone back to either of the links to those past walks; two years ago we went on a health and exploration kick: 2019 was when we were going to do a lot of walking on trails we'd not done before, and we did. Today we realised we have now cumulatively done all of the Bibbulmun track between Albany and Lights Beach to the west of Denmark, many sections several times over in the past couple of years. And we realised that having exhausted our local Bibbulmun track map - Map 8 in the series - we need to buy Map 7 and Map 6, which go from Lights Beach all the way to Walpole and then up into Pemberton, which is Karri Forest country - and we need to get walking on the Bibbulmun track to the west of where we're now completely familiar. We need to go on fresh trails and explore more countryside - both on foot, and by bicycle...maybe even on my horse, if the tree plantation to the west of our farm hasn't padlocked everything again...


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> @SueC, a few years ago here our public television carried a series of Giles & Sue on a similar topic, called "Supersizers Eat" and it was the same idea, monitoring health stats while eating these luxury meals from across historical eras. Very entertaining, but by the time they got to the end and their vital signs were tanking, I felt a bit bad that I had enjoyed the show while they made themselves physically ill. And then of course Sue went on to the Great British Baking Show until egos and infighting tanked that series too. I miss it! I don't know what she's on to now as we seem to get popular British shows a year or two behind in the US.


The series started out called "Supersizers Go" and the second series became "Supersizers Eat." I recently heard Sue Perkins talking about the fact that she was diagnosed with a pituitary tumour in the middle of the first season (not Cushings; a prolactinoma which means she can't have children). She kept that quiet until fairly recently.



> Sorry to hear about the virus spikes in Australia. I hope the lockdown measures work and keep things relatively isolated and treatable. I was volunteering at an endurance ride yesterday and some people were talking about a US-based endurance rider who's been in Australia since the winter and contemplating coming home now that vaccines are providing good coverage here (at least in our region of the country, others, not so much...). Amazing how it has been nearly non-existent for you all.


Yeah, it has been, we've never had a second wave in WA or even a first wave...thanks to early border closures, which is what Taiwan and NZ also did super early - and they've also performed incredibly well, avoiding first and subsequent waves altogether and mostly being able to live almost-normal lives (with social distancing, extra hygiene, some mask wearing etc). Our weakness is the occasional quarantine leak (quarantine is mostly repatriation of overseas Australians wanting to come home; non-citizens are generally not allowed in during the pandemic); so far we've not had any kind of real outbreak here, just quarantine staff getting sick and passing it on to their own close contacts. This time it was a person released from quarantine actually running around with the virus, who has so far passed it on to two close contacts. Obviously, we won't see the full picture for at least a fortnight.

As usual in situations like this, they make a list of everywhere the person has been while infectious, publicise it and then ask anyone who's been in these places to get tested (not just if they show symptoms) and self-isolate, and it's the massive public compliance with this which has saved our bacon a couple of times in WA and also in other states - and here we're really lucky because it seems there's places in the US and other countries where public support wouldn't be good enough to do this effectively (conspiracy theorists, people objecting to "government control" and "interference with their freedom" etc etc) - of course, we've got a few like this here as well but the culture is different; the vast majority of us believe that the health of our community is more important than our individual right to do as we please. Still, it just takes one "leak" to get a spill of this, so it's always anxious times when the virus has managed to get out of quarantine, hoping to avoid wider community transmission and hoping we won't have an unknowingly infected irresponsible person somewhere not doing the right thing.

In other states they've sometimes subsequently had to chase clusters and it's taken months to eliminate these altogether; and in some cases a failure to do so has resulted in waves of community transmission, like Victoria's really bad (by Australian standards, not by world standards) second wave which killed around 800 people (90% of total Australian COVID fatalities so far) before the strict lockdown lasting four months (longest continuous lockdown in the world) again eradicated the virus from the community.

It's this scenario we're always trying to avoid when dealing with quarantine leaks.

More information on the pandemic in Australia: COVID-19 pandemic in Australia - Wikipedia


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## waresbear

We call that giggly wire. Good job Sue!


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## SueC

knightrider said:


> We once had a cow whose horn was growing into her head. I called the vet and expressed concern because we had no way of immobilizing her and she was not tame. The vet said, "No worries."
> 
> We coaxed her into a stall in the barn, then encouraged her to go out the other door (that leads to the inside of the barn), slammed the door on her shoulder, had two of us holding the barn door on her shoulder. The vet whipped it his wire saw and had it done in moments. I thought it was quite ingenious.
> 
> We sold about 13 cows a year. The buyer would back his trailer up to the barn. We would coax the cows into the barn aisle with feed, then shove them onto trailer. You guys probably already know all this stuff and are doing it a smarter way. When we inherited granddaddy's farm, we didn't know cows, but neighbors were good and helpful. Sure miss those cows! They were fun.


Extraordinary story, @knightrider - like something out of James Herriot's _All Creatures Great And Small_! I'm amazed how you got the door on the cow and that she couldn't knock you over with it. I don't think I could have done this myself, and certainly not with these huge steers, over 750kg. Even with a headlock, one of them showed us he was quite capable of dragging the whole portable yard around if he wanted to - so we star picketed the crush section for round two...

We don't have a barn aisle, or we could try that way of loading/offloading! So far, we've been herding the for-sale cattle next door along the road, about once every 12-24 months, because a kind neighbour suggested we use his yards. He also takes the cattle to the sale for us - we pay him to do this and they usually go on the same truck as a consignment of his cattle.

But we'd like to avoid the herding along the road, and also to have a proper off-ramp for the inbound weanlings, who we've been unloading onto a hillock of dirt in the "inside" paddocks so far. Just, that hillock is now gone, we had it spread to an area that was eroding - and if we unload on the dam wall in the common, we have to round up the weanlings immediately and that doesn't always work so well. It does if they herd up, but once we bought a lot that came from two different places and they all ran in different directions after arrival, and one weanling we couldn't find for a week and presumed he'd died in the bushland, when he magically reappeared a week later... not very tidy!


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## Knave

My dad told me he liked an old Tico a lot that they had. I’m not sure how that is spelled. I’ll look them up later. It would be handy to have a chute. It turned out, the reason I couldn’t find a chute like the one we have at the sheds, is that it was custom built for my grandfather.


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## Knave

Teco


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## SueC

*WILD SEAS*

Today the rain moderated for long enough to be able to get out and do a section of the Bibbulmun we've not done before, near Muttonbird Island. It was a walk through woods and dunes to the coast, a descent down to Muttonbird Island, some rock-hopping to get around the point to Muttonbird Beach, and then returning along the dune-woodland trail again. Seas were phenomenal today - we get the full benefit of the Roaring Forties here on the South Coast...












iPod camera again as I wasn't taking the good one in the drizzle, so the resolution isn't great.

If anyone wants to see all 36 photos, just click on the first one to go to the photopage.


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## Knave

That picture of you is beautiful!!


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## SueC

Thank you, @Knave; and the scenery helps. I always think you and your family look beautiful too! ❤

I'm happy because we set a personal best for the longest distance hiked in one day today - we did 25km on the Bibbulmun track from Parry Beach to Boat Harbour and back - a beautiful, wild, remote coastline, and the track wasn't exactly flat either - really strenuous walk and even the one flat part, a beach before Boat Harbour, was hard work because it was "aerosand" - you sink in like in soft snow...

We've done around 20km several times before, mostly with a mad colleague of mine who was getting fit for climbing Mt Kilimanjaro in Africa, but that was 12 years ago - in recent years, our longest walk was 18km.

The ocean was insane with waves again today - typical winter pattern for us with the Roaring Forties etc. Have a look at these waves... and there wasn't much wind at all today, by the way, this is just what blows in from where there is lots of wind between us and Antarctica...




We did have some complications, like being caught in a 45-minute downpour near the start that was literally like standing at home under the shower - Australian weather can be pretty wild. So we got soaked to the skin even through our water-resistant thermals and soft shell (which thankfully still keep you quite warm when wet, sort of like a wetsuit) - and our boots were full of water, so we had to stop several times to wring out socks and insoles... and we still had hours of walking to go at that point...

One of the most beautiful walks I've ever done...










We took so many photos - if anyone wants to see them all, just click on one of them and go to the Flickr photostream. The coast here is so spectacular...


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## SueC

It's getting cooler here, and our dog is definitely into getting comfortable on her sofa.


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## SueC

*RETRACING AN OLD HORSE RIDE ON OUR BICYCLES*

Some weeks ago, I posted some photos from when went on a walk that took us on the start of a trail I'd done with my horse in 2009, as part of a trailriding group outing. I was keen to retrace our steps, but not on foot - long flat walking is terribly boring to us*, and since I don't have a horse trailer and we like bicycle riding, today we did the entire 20km Hay River to Denmark return trip on what the German language calls "wire donkeys"!

*...but if it's not flat, we'll walk it - like the 25km Bibbulmun hike we did week before last!

The Munda Biddi trail is a share trail for bicycles, horses and walkers that stretches along the coast from Albany to past Walpole.

The trail map for today's section:

Us at the Hay River car park:


If you wonder how I do this with a roadbike, I've got touring tyres and they are fine on gravel and firm off-road tracks. Not on soft sand or mud though! This trail is pretty firm and I only had to get off a handful of times to cross sand or mud.

Most of the trail is through gorgeous tall forest adjacent to an inlet:






The dog came with us, had a very happy outing, and went swimming periodically.

I bet you can all envisage yourselves doing this on horseback. It would be fabulous, and indeed the one time I did it it was (except that the trail group were all plodders and spent 95% of the time walking and this is such a nice trail for trotting and cantering...). But, better to do this by bicycle than not at all - and I can ride my horse on the trails around our local area instead. Also - I'm rather needing the exercise myself - we already walk a lot, but cycling is great exercise and will make me a fitter horse rider and general all-round person.

The Munda Biddi follows a series of old "rail trails" where historically there had once been a railway line. Here's an explanatory sign - it's a bit dirty but you can still read it...

Continuing along Wilson Inlet...


Coming into Denmark:

Where we parked our bicycles for a walk into town.

This is the footbridge over the Denmark River near the Wilson Inlet:


In 2009 we crossed this with our horses, and then hitched them to various rails in the picnic area, where a nice person had taken all of our lunch packs and thermoses in a car so we didn't have to carry them on the horses...


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## SueC

This is the Denmark River, along both banks of which you can walk into town. This gave the dog a bathing and walking break, and we were intent on having some goodies at the bakery before retracing our route. So here we were on the eastern bank, and when we came back later it was along the western bank you can see.

On the return bike ride we stopped at a few more places, like this bird hide:



These are Paperbark Trees - you can literally peel off some bark and write on it, as I used to when I first came to Australia as a child...it was fun to write little letters to my friends in Europe on this stuff...

The waterside was very peaceful.


...and soon we were back at the car park and it was time to go home. ...You can't do this bit with horses...

It really wouldn't work! This one's made of plastic but apparently caused a stir when some people couldn't tell it from a real one, nor did they apparently remember their high school physics...


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## SueC

*STEVE KILBEY & CO CONCERT*

Steve Kilbey is the bass player and vocalist of an Australian band called The Church, which started in the early 1980s and is still going in their 60s. They're to Australia what The Velvet Underground is to the US - a hugely influential cult alternative band, whom you all are most likely to know through this song:






But if you enjoy that, you might also like this one, which came earlier and was the song that made me notice this band as a teenager:






I can never help but sing the harmonies, and I defy you not to!

On Friday night, we went to a gig featuring Steve Kilbey and friends which I reviewed for the music forum I'm on. Here's a "reprint":

Super happy because we gave ourselves a kick up our backsides and got ourselves to that concert I was deliberating about yesterday (because it was $66 a ticket and we'd only heard about it the day before and my to-do list is miles long). I'd been under the impression Steve Kilbey was going to do acoustic versions of two of their early albums, with string backing - since he wasn't coming with the current incarnation of The Church, who by the way have made 25 (!!!) studio albums (I can see I've got a few holes to fill in their back catalogue... 😮). On reflection we thought that was worth going to.

And this is what we actually got: Full electric concert with a cellist and a violinist (both electric) standing in for synth! In a 600-seater, which due to the pandemic and to perhaps a lack of interest in alternative music amongst the older people in Albany was less than half full. That didn't dampen anyone's spirits, however - fabulous, enthusiastically received concert in an intimate venue with amazing acoustics.

I didn't have The Church's 1981 and 1983 albums because that was just a little before I got interested in music; the first one I've got by them is 1985's _Heyday_, which is excellent. But, as it turns out, so were these predecessors - this concert was a real treat... Here's a sample song off The Church's debut _Of Skins and Heart_:






This was all lushly presented live - the two string players really added something to the overall soundscape - and soundscape is what The Church did so incredibly well through the 1980s, and what sat so beautifully against the plasticky, trashy pop backdrop that was a large fraction of the 1980s mainstream. I've got journals from the mid-80s in which I decided to host my own music awards, and in them, The Church got Best Australian Band both times I held those - to my mind, they had so much more depth than INXS or the Hoodoo Gurus or even Hunters & Collectors (not to mention Pseudo Echo and their ilk), and were multi-dimensional in ways that few other Australian bands were (and Nick Cave hadn't grown up properly yet).

Hearing two early Church albums I'd not been familiar with (save a couple of songs off them) showed me all over again exactly why I took to this music back in the day. I sat enthralled in mesmeric, often gorgeous, sometimes experimental soundscapes, and let Steve Kilbey's richly resonant voice wash over me. The lyrics have always been above-average as well, which really helps to get people into my good books. The band played two full albums plus encore, but I could easily have listened to twice that this evening!

Steve Kilbey also amused the crowd with stories in-between songs; most of which centered around his memory of all the bad reviews they got by various critics. "This (_Electric Lash_) was called 'the stupidest song ever' by such and such a critic... - and this song was lauded as a better effort by us; he said that we should leave 'haunting' up to people who are actually good at it." (Heartfelt boos and hisses from the audience at these poisonous comments, one of which had been from the NME.)

He mentioned that gated drum reverb had been an issue on the next album they presented, _Seance_ - and they do it without live. Here's a nice sample off that album (which some critic had apparently called an "unnecessary stoner jam"):






With the added strings the intro to this piece was extraordinary, quivery, electric...this is why I listen to music...

A few things were given different arrangements - _Memories In Future Tense_, he said he preferred 3/4 not 4/4 and as a sort of 1930s Hungarian barn piece, and so they went on to play it like that, and it was excellent. The alternative arrangement also didn't have what he called the signature 1981 guitar sound, which he demonstrated on his bass. One song off their debut album he refused to play altogether, and said to it make up to us he'd play two B-sides instead. Much comedy was extracted from his explanations about vinyl, Side 1 versus Side 2 ("...but of course that means nothing anymore, nowadays it's all random!"), etc - and at one point he said to a guitar player, "In the 80s blah blah..." and got, "But I wasn't alive in the 80s." 😄

Somewhere in the middle of the concert, an audience member exclaimed, "Now I can die happy, Steve!" - and Kilbey joked, "What? I'm as deaf as a post - and also as blind as a bat!" - turning to the wings of the stage, bowing at 90 degrees to us, and telling us we were such a fabulous audience. 😂 He mispronounced "Albany" as quite a few Eastern States blow-ins will, and got some giggles which immediately informed him of the mistake - it isn't said like "Albury" - and he then went on to make favourable comparisons between our lovely seaside town and that landlocked place in Victoria ("and what sort of a name is Wodonga anyway?"). It's great fun when you're at a gig where there can be these kinds of conversational exchanges with the crowd. 😀

Interesting things happen when a singer plays bass instead of guitar - listening closely, I could hear that it affects the singing - since he's playing rhythm, and pretty complex forms at that, rather than accompaniment, and it seems like he has to fit his singing in between his playing because of this. It makes for interesting stops and starts and timings in the singing.

The encore presented three commercially successful songs by The Church which, bless their hearts, were still alternative songs - The Church never made pop: _Metropolis_, _I'm Almost With You_ and, of course, _Under The Milky Way_.

To make it perfect, I'd have loved another encore with _Pharaoh_, _Happy Hunting Ground_ and _Tantalized_ in it - but they clearly can't rehearse the whole back catalogue for concerts, especially with alternative musicians standing in for original band members. These did a great job, by the way - the guitarists not quite as sharp as the original playing, but of a high enough standard to sound fabulous.

I actually took some photos which I'll share tomorrow, but I'm too tired for that now! 😴

The photos...

Shaun & Adrian Hoffmann (guitars), Steve Kilbey (vocals, bass), Shaun Corlson (drums), Rachael Aquilina (violin), Anna Sarcich (cello); guest drummer "Lockie" behind string section, did one song outright on his own kit, and got an extra cheer and his name called out as they made their way off the stage post-encore - and he paused, smiled and gave a little bow.


We had the good fortune to be sitting right by the string section - both of us find strings extra-fascinating. Brett says that the first time he saw an electric cello at a gig, he thought it looked like a instrument from the future which had been beamed back in time...

Just from a low-range phone! And really just so we could remember it better...


----------



## Knave

The concert sounds great. I have only been to two in my life, and I enjoyed them, but I don’t think I’m as much into that scene as I should be.

I am however super excited about your biking! It was beautiful, and I really like riding bikes. Little girl has a bike fitting for that name, and big girl’s is barely any better. One is for children and the other for someone around the 5’0” height. I am debating purchasing bikes for them this year. It would be an expensive addition to my budget, but boy would we have some fun!

They would like a bit more variety in our lives. I’ve taken them running, and they are good for a shorter distance, but they don’t love it. I think they would really enjoy riding bikes.


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## bsms

It's beautiful countryside. I'd like to start bike riding, but I'm not sure when to fit it in between jogging and riding! My legs are usually worn out by the evening. And normally STILL worn out in the morning....age is not kind! My former pastor is 69. You couldn't pay him to jog or ride a horse, but he really likes his morning bike rides!

PS: It always seems odd to see a post from Australia say "_Coming into Denmark..._"


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## SueC

Knave said:


> The concert sounds great. I have only been to two in my life, and I enjoyed them, but I don’t think I’m as much into that scene as I should be.


It's the first gig we've been to since late 2019 - not so much the pandemic here as we generally don't have community transmission and so sports and concerts have been back on the menu for nearly a year and are now back to about 3/4 capacity. We don't make enough of an effort though, and often we don't even know what's on...



> I am however super excited about your biking! It was beautiful, and I really like riding bikes. Little girl has a bike fitting for that name, and big girl’s is barely any better. One is for children and the other for someone around the 5’0” height. I am debating purchasing bikes for them this year. It would be an expensive addition to my budget, but boy would we have some fun!
> 
> They would like a bit more variety in our lives. I’ve taken them running, and they are good for a shorter distance, but they don’t love it. I think they would really enjoy riding bikes.


My suggestion would be to buy secondhand. We are looking for a second mountain bike for guests and for places my road bike won't go. Couldn't find much on Gumtree (our Craigslist) and the new bikes are pretty expensive - then I went to our local auction house where we got lots of stuff for the house and they had a nice road bike in, same brand as mine, no mountain bike this week but they said to keep checking each week and soon I will have one. Past bids between $20 and $200 for nice good-condition bikes that sell for $500 - $2000 new. You can put a slip in and don't have to attend the auction and that's how we always did it.

People upgrade compulsively and there's so much fantastic secondhand stuff. We've never even bought a TV because people are always throwing their old ones at us...and you can pick them up off the kerbside recycling in town too...


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## SueC

bsms said:


> It's beautiful countryside. I'd like to start bike riding, but I'm not sure when to fit it in between jogging and riding! My legs are usually worn out by the evening. And normally STILL worn out in the morning....age is not kind! My former pastor is 69. You couldn't pay him to jog or ride a horse, but he really likes his morning bike rides!
> 
> PS: It always seems odd to see a post from Australia say "_Coming into Denmark..._"


Hahaha! 😀 Yes, and I'm always aware of this when writing about it, which makes it extra fun.

Well, my leg joint configurations and lack of coordination don't make jogging or distance running for me, as previously mentioned. So cycling it was, as an alternative to our beloved wilderness hiking, and even on the flats that's useful for getting your heart rate up.

Cycling is kinder to your joints than running. But, I'm gonna have to adjust my seat because even with padded bike shorts and a gel seat my contact areas got sore - and so did Brett's bum. It's our first big ride this year and maybe we have to build up some callus! 🙀 

Steve Kilbey is 66 now and still sounds fantastic - having not smoked (but having done far sillier stuff...)


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## MeditativeRider

The biking looks great. My husband would like that track. I will get him to look it up. He currently has a broken leg/knee (tibial plateau) and used to be a daily bike commuter and go on long bike rides on the weekend, so he is pretty bored and trying to keep entertained by looking at future biking possibilities. He is a gravel biker, which is another type of bike you could look out for at your sales as they are made for more off road than a road bike but not as heavy as a mountain bike and easier to use for sealed sections.


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## SueC

MeditativeRider said:


> The biking looks great. My husband would like that track. I will get him to look it up. He currently has a broken leg/knee (tibial plateau) and used to be a daily bike commuter and go on long bike rides on the weekend, so he is pretty bored and trying to keep entertained by looking at future biking possibilities. He is a gravel biker, which is another type of bike you could look out for at your sales as they are made for more off road than a road bike but not as heavy as a mountain bike and easier to use for sealed sections.


Thank you, @MeditativeRider!  I doubt _anything_ is as heavy as my husband's mountain bike... it's a 15-year-old steel-framed job and these days they're aluminium, like my nearly as old road bike, which I can lift up with one arm and get on the car roof easily myself. His mountain bike is a two-person lift and would brain you if it fell on you. But yes, it doesn't have to be a mountain bike and thanks for offering the distinction, I'd never heard of a gravel bike...

Sorry to hear your husband has a broken leg - and I guess because of where it's broken he can't use an iWalk (pirate leg type crutch where your lower leg straps into a platform, which you can use with lower leg injuries and which much reduces the rehabilitation you have to do post-injury as you still keep using the leg from the knee up)? How long has he got to go before he can weight-bear again?

We were looking for new adventures ourselves because in the 10 years we've had this farm we've not travelled interstate or "away" on holidays - best has been weekends off, but we usually do day trips - but as you can see, at least we live in a fantastic area for this. We were going to go to our beloved Tassie again last year but then the pandemic happened, etc, and farm sitting is complicated when you've got a "teamwork" type dog who's been with you uninterrupted since 2013 and a couple of ornery horses who want to eat you when you rug or groom them (doesn't bother me, but would bother anyone not super-experienced).

When we lived in Albany we cycled at least three times a week along the myriad of interesting and scenic tracks, but now that we're out in the hinterland, we've got the one same, same road to take us anywhere and we're so heartily sick of it we'd not ridden anywhere all year (except for my solo fitness loops on the mountain bike around the hills of our own farm firebreaks), so I really wanted to find some way to make us cycle again - and the only way I could think to do it was to transport the bicycles out to the various rail trails that also suit our dog (no traffic, soft enough footing, regular water). There's the Munda Biddi and there's various other old railway tracks around, several hundred kilometres of these in our region. It's a good feeling to have those on the menu now and to be getting into them; also we're hiking further afield from this year and have got three more Bibbulmun track maps for west of Denmark, having exhausted our local Albany-Denmark map many times over. It's so good to find fresh tracks and to explore, so we totally get your husband with that. Say hi from us and best wishes for a speedy recovery!

Whereabouts are you geographically?


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## SueC

*DILEMMA - WHAT WOULD YOU DO?*

Here's a hypothetical. Let's say you're a couple and the one staying at home doing farm and farmstay is pining to use her professional skills, which is a bit difficult given the location and the fact that at least one person has to be on-site most of the time. And let's say the other person, who works four days a week off-farm, is unhappy with things like workplace bullying and constant attention splitting of administrative work by having to answer phones constantly at the same time (in days of old, when people were valued, phones and immersive work used to be kept separate, but neoliberalism worships "productivity" and extracts every last second from people at workplaces these days, and the toll is pretty evident in mental health terms, with depression and anxiety on the up and up for this and other reasons). Plus, he is an introvert in a people-in-your-face role, which deeply depletes introverts in the long run and after seven years of this he's gotten to the point of locking himself up in the office when he gets home if there's farmstay guests, because he just can't face more people.

And let's say one of the magazines that the at-home person used to write for is up for sale because the editor wants to move on after 19 years, and is now shutting down because it hasn't found a purchaser even though it's an Australian independent publishing icon that's been around and celebrated for 40 years.

Between the two of you, there's no doubt you could run it - it's been run by one person for many years and she does it on 30 hours/week, having gotten good at it. The work-away-from-home person used to work in graphic design and IT, from home for many years, at a desk and no interruptions - he'd be all over the graphic design and layout. The stay-at-home person has been a writer for yonks, has been a top contributor to this magazine, and has the necessary literary, grammar, spelling and scientific background for the role, with a double science degree, editing experience, and specific experience in the subject the magazine is dedicated to.

Things like subscription management and advertising would be pains in the behind (you can't even say donkey anymore!), and you already know that the business management and admin side of that definitely are, since you already run a small business. That's a definite down side, but it's sort of like cleaning the toilet - you all have to do it.

The problem is, the proceeds from the magazine's operation are declining and last year made only around 3/4 of what the working-away-from-home person is making. If that were steady and guaranteed then it just might work out OK, because taking the car off the 300km/week commute would save well upwards of $5,000 a year, and the ability to distribute the income amongst the two of you would drop the amount of tax that's being paid so you'd be about even on that front, for now.

The declining popularity of print press is the worry - independent magazines are dying everywhere. On the one hand, you'd like to be able to save a flagship independent publication, and you know you've got the skills and passion to do it, and that this is the one forum for the particular topic in print in Australia. And the outgoing editor is nominating a number of ways the revenue could be increased that she just didn't have the energy for towards the tail end of running the publication - after so many years doing it.

The biggest issue - since the others could be resolved, by e.g. the outside worker dropping to half his hours instead of completely quitting - is that the business costs the same as a year's income from the current away-from-home salary, and that if the magazine folds altogether because of trends in the print market etc then this is money down the drain. Also, although you could find half of it without huge duress because of your savings (but they _are_ your savings...), you're both down-shifters living off very little and with little to spare in current operations. The other half is a problem, and you don't want to take out a loan because that is just too much financial risk, and burden. You're not in debt just now (besides a reasonably low-key mortgage) and you don't want to be.

Crowdfunding is a possibility for fundraising the difference - "Help us save this independent publication." How much that would raise is anyone's guess, but probably some, since the incipient loss of the magazine is already being lamented across the community. One could try...

Those are some of the down sides. The up sides are, no more commuting, back to a style of work the current away-from-home person is far more comfortable with, being your own boss, no more workplace sniping, and significantly utilising the professional skills of both persons that have been under-utilised since your downshift/move to the farm - all while saving a publication worth saving.

What would you do?


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## MeditativeRider

Hi  We are in NZ (South Island) but my husband (pre-Covid) travelled to Australia at least a few times a year for work. He also has an upcoming sabbatical (at least 3 months) when the university approves overseas travel again (still banned for work and not recommended for private; but I don't get how they think they can control the private travel). Australia is on the list for sabbatical, and he always likes to plan bike trips with his work travel (did one in Sardinia and had another planned in Ireland for just after Covid hit and the travel was cancelled).

Gravel bikes are a recent thing. Apparently they are very good for that type of riding. I would not know at all as I have never ridden one (the only bike I ride is our electric cargo bike). My husband is very obsessed with gravel bikes, gravel biking, and watching bike touring videos.

Currently he is on crutches with a knee brace. Has had 6 weeks so far and another 6 to go before weight bearing. It was not even a dramatic accident. He literally just slipped over on some dry, short grass when he had on shoes with a non-grippy sole. I have not heard of the iwalk. It has not been suggested, but our hospital is pretty busy and he has only had two short appointments with orthopedics. It looks very interesting. I think maybe a no because it says the injury has to be below the knee and you have to be able to bend your injured leg 90 deg at the knee (which he currently cannot do). Thank you for bringing it to our attention anyway.

When he is better and travel is all ok'd, I would love for us to go to Australia for a lengthy break. However, we also have dog "issues" at our end. A super clingy (to me) Australian Koolie. She even gets jealous and barks at me if I hug my kids. Currently she is only 7 months old. The super clingy started after my husband broke his leg and I have had to do all the care, training, and walking. I am not quite sure what we would do with her if we went away.

Could you find someone to house sit that would be ok with the dog and horses?


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## MeditativeRider

I just read your post about the magazine opportunity. Definitely worth investigating. I would research the heck out of it. Try to talk to some people other than the person selling as to the likelihood of the other pathways to increase revenue being successful. 

I work from home and am self-employed (science copyeditor) and have been ever since I finished my PhD in 2008. I really love it. My income is a lot less than what it would be if I worked a traditional job for my education/degree, but the lifestyle more than makes up for the drop in income.


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## Knave

I think that if both of you are excited and ready to take on the opportunity and the changes, that you will make it work. You are both determined and intelligent, and you have a ton of experience to fall back on.

Crowd funding is a great idea. I think creating a virtual publication of the magazine and building upon that could also bring in an income source to replenish what has been lost. You are both very good in that area as well.

If you are needing a change of pace, and both of you are feeling that way, there really is nothing holding you back from making a change. If this is what is appealing to you, then I probably would chase it. It is hard to get both people on board, but if husband and I wanted to make a change and committed to making it work I would believe fully that we could as a team.


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## bsms

My longest friend is a rancher. We've been friends for over 40 years. We often laugh about our different approaches to risk.

Not physical risk. I spent my adult life strapping into ejection seats, so that sort of risk if fine by me. But financially...I hate risk. I'm the sort who would never start a business.

He's been in debt almost his entire life. He just finished paying off a loan on the ranch, the second time in 35 years he has been debt-free. (The first time lasted a year.) One of his sons also finished paying off a loan, making that son debt free for the first time as an adult.

I'm the sort who would NEVER start his own business. He's the sort who could never work for someone else for any length of time. And of course, he's the sort who has been happy living with around the clock work, never going an a vacation and often having every free cent tied up in land, livestock and equipment.

I will say publishing seems an uncommonly risky investment. Magazines of any type seem to struggle. Print as a medium seems to be in serious decline. My youngest met an older guy, retired military, whose wife goes to the church my youngest is going to. (_She describes him as a "liberal, Yankee atheist". I asked her why she used 3 equivalent terms...  _) But he was shocked when he found out she had read books like "The Great Escape" (very different from the Hollywood movie). He loves doing Revolutionary War re-enactments. And he also believes print is a dying media.

I've started packing up boxes of books that don't make the cut for display in the living room. I can't bear to sell them or throw them away. My youngest, happily, told me I was NOT, REPEAT NOT! to throw them away! She promised that when I die, she'll gladly take them all. But...she enjoys Frank Sinatra's music too, so she lives (as I have) a bit out of time - certainly out of synch with the modern world.

I do believe it is better to live on a reduced income doing something you believe in and love than living a risk-free life. I was lucky enough to spend most of my adult life doing something I really loved. It would be torment to go to work daily, year after year after year, at 'just a job'. I realize many need to do that. But I'd much rather do what I loved at half the pay.


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## waresbear

SueC said:


> *DILEMMA - WHAT WOULD YOU DO?*
> 
> Here's a hypothetical. Let's say you're a couple and the one staying at home doing farm and farmstay is pining to use her professional skills, which is a bit difficult given the location and the fact that at least one person has to be on-site most of the time. And let's say the other person, who works four days a week off-farm, is unhappy with things like workplace bullying and constant attention splitting of administrative work by having to answer phones constantly at the same time (in days of old, when people were valued, phones and immersive work used to be kept separate, but neoliberalism worships "productivity" and extracts every last second from people at workplaces these days, and the toll is pretty evident in mental health terms, with depression and anxiety on the up and up for this and other reasons). Plus, he is an introvert in a people-in-your-face role, which deeply depletes introverts in the long run and after seven years of this he's gotten to the point of locking himself up in the office when he gets home if there's farmstay guests, because he just can't face more people.
> 
> And let's say one of the magazines that the at-home person used to write for is up for sale because the editor wants to move on after 19 years, and is now shutting down because it hasn't found a purchaser even though it's an Australian independent publishing icon that's been around and celebrated for 40 years.
> 
> Between the two of you, there's no doubt you could run it - it's been run by one person for many years and she does it on 30 hours/week, having gotten good at it. The work-away-from-home person used to work in graphic design and IT, from home for many years, at a desk and no interruptions - he'd be all over the graphic design and layout. The stay-at-home person has been a writer for yonks, has been a top contributor to this magazine, and has the necessary literary, grammar, spelling and scientific background for the role, with a double science degree, editing experience, and specific experience in the subject the magazine is dedicated to.
> 
> Things like subscription management and advertising would be pains in the behind (you can't even say donkey anymore!), and you already know that the business management and admin side of that definitely are, since you already run a small business. That's a definite down side, but it's sort of like cleaning the toilet - you all have to do it.
> 
> The problem is, the proceeds from the magazine's operation are declining and last year made only around 3/4 of what the working-away-from-home person is making. If that were steady and guaranteed then it just might work out OK, because taking the car off the 300km/week commute would save well upwards of $5,000 a year, and the ability to distribute the income amongst the two of you would drop the amount of tax that's being paid so you'd be about even on that front, for now.
> 
> The declining popularity of print press is the worry - independent magazines are dying everywhere. On the one hand, you'd like to be able to save a flagship independent publication, and you know you've got the skills and passion to do it, and that this is the one forum for the particular topic in print in Australia. And the outgoing editor is nominating a number of ways the revenue could be increased that she just didn't have the energy for towards the tail end of running the publication - after so many years doing it.
> 
> The biggest issue - since the others could be resolved, by e.g. the outside worker dropping to half his hours instead of completely quitting - is that the business costs the same as a year's income from the current away-from-home salary, and that if the magazine folds altogether because of trends in the print market etc then this is money down the drain. Also, although you could find half of it without huge duress because of your savings (but they _are_ your savings...), you're both down-shifters living off very little and with little to spare in current operations. The other half is a problem, and you don't want to take out a loan because that is just too much financial risk, and burden. You're not in debt just now (besides a reasonably low-key mortgage) and you don't want to be.
> 
> Crowdfunding is a possibility for fundraising the difference - "Help us save this independent publication." How much that would raise is anyone's guess, but probably some, since the incipient loss of the magazine is already being lamented across the community. One could try...
> 
> Those are some of the down sides. The up sides are, no more commuting, back to a style of work the current away-from-home person is far more comfortable with, being your own boss, no more workplace sniping, and significantly utilising the professional skills of both persons that have been under-utilised since your downshift/move to the farm - all while saving a publication worth saving.
> 
> What would you do?


I would not take on a magazine unless it had a strong online subscription base. And many advertisers to pay the bills.


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## SueC

Thank you everyone for your thoughts, both for and against this possibility - and both sides of that are really important. Anyone else who wants to chime in, you've not missed the boat! 🙃



MeditativeRider said:


> I just read your post about the magazine opportunity. Definitely worth investigating. I would research the heck out of it. Try to talk to some people other than the person selling as to the likelihood of the other pathways to increase revenue being successful.


We don't know anyone else in the industry or with an accurate crystal ball; and also this is a complex situation to predict - some of it depends on how much energy we end up having (and while we have some, we're not bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young people with endless enthusiasm and optimism who've not been burnt out yet!). Some of it depends on demand...

How would you research it, given those parameters?




MeditativeRider said:


> I work from home and am self-employed (science copyeditor) and have been ever since I finished my PhD in 2008. I really love it. My income is a lot less than what it would be if I worked a traditional job for my education/degree, but the lifestyle more than makes up for the drop in income.


Whereas we can't do any more drop in income - we're downshifters already, down from two professional salaries to the equivalent of one average salary between us - and that itself has been OK, except that my husband is quite unhappy with the nature of the work he is doing at the moment - it doesn't fit his personality and is endlessly draining to him, and it's really hitting him hard this year.

We can't reverse it either, and have me going out and him at home, because he's not a farm / animal handling / vegetable growing type and I am competent with those things. Also, the reason I stopped teaching over 10 years ago is because I have laryngeal damage that's incompatible with continuing to teach - and my science career is too far back, local opportunities nearly non-existent, plus Australian opportunities overall for science graduates have become grimmer and grimmer in the past 30 years, with a lot of programmes like the ones I worked in shut down. There's a huge braindrain overseas as a result, and less young people taking up STEM subjects in consequence.

Re the financial squeeze if we both did this at-home project - freeing up the one car and having another person at home means that I've got some opportunities for bits of off-farm employment myself, in case of cash flow problems. Of course, that always comes down to how much energy and time we have, and often there's not enough to do everything we want to anyway... priorities, obviously...




Knave said:


> I think that if both of you are excited and ready to take on the opportunity and the changes, that you will make it work. You are both determined and intelligent, and you have a ton of experience to fall back on.


That kind of thinking does seem to work in our experience; we've never taken on a project we've not been able to make work - which of course doesn't mean it couldn't happen - and part of it is that we have been pretty careful and researched things well. The owner build is the biggest example so far. It really tested us, and we could never do it again, we'd die - but it was really worth it, and we're glad we did it. And that could have ended in financial disaster as well.




Knave said:


> Crowd funding is a great idea. I think creating a virtual publication of the magazine and building upon that could also bring in an income source to replenish what has been lost. You are both very good in that area as well.


The magazine already has a lot of electronic subscriptions, but that area could be pushed potentially. Currently it uses FB as a website and we don't do FB for ethical and privacy reasons, and because we think FB websites aren't very appealing anyway. There's a lot of scope for doing a decent website linking to various resources and perhaps having some small-fee sections to it and kind of internationalising it. Brett did web design professionally for many years, as well as layout etc.




Knave said:


> If you are needing a change of pace, and both of you are feeling that way, there really is nothing holding you back from making a change. If this is what is appealing to you, then I probably would chase it. It is hard to get both people on board, but if husband and I wanted to make a change and committed to making it work I would believe fully that we could as a team.


Yeah, I'm with your thinking there.

Our curveball - and there's always a curveball - and this is one I'd like to hear from others about as well, is this: Both of us have been feeling the lack of use of our professional skills (and in his case, work that's really unsuited to his happiness), over the past couple of years especially, in mental health terms. In some ways having complex PTSD seems to protect me from getting "proper" depression - anything like that lasts a maximum of 48 hours for me before my survival autopilots kick back in and I get constructive again - and also, I've worked through a lot of stuff mentally/emotionally because of the PTSD - and I'm pretty good at counting my blessings, which are many. But my husband, I'm not so sure. He's had depression before, earlier in life, and I strongly suspect he has it now - and he's completely averse to the idea of talking to anyone about stuff like this, doctors, counsellors, anyone really (while I avidly DIY as well as periodically consult professionals on my own psychological "stuff"). He's never examined his family of origin patterns, patterns of thinking, what makes him tick psychologically, etc. Like a lot of males he doesn't talk to his friends about stuff like this (and like a lot of females, I do), and he's lost contact with quite a few of the friends he had when he lived in Perth, and doesn't seem particularly interested in making more friends, especially since we've been together, and that's been 14 years now.

I've often joked with him about not putting all his eggs in one basket, and one of the reasons I was initially happy that he was in a people job is because it got him out there with other human beings by default. Out here, it would have been too easy for him to become a full-time hermit and to seriously believe all the company and perspective he needed were his wife and the donkeys, and I personally think this is dangerous - and also an unfair burden on me. People need a support network, and he doesn't have one - because a wife and five donkeys is not a support network by my definition. It's just a start. What do you all think? I seem to have married someone with the disposition to be a loner. On the other hand, before he was married, he went out a lot more than he does now and he did make an effort to socialise with others in his time off.

What is it with some - many? - men and their reluctance to talk about their "stuff" with other human beings besides their life partner? I'd like to hear both from the men here, and from the women who love them.

Anyway, perhaps four days a week with people in his face all day are too much of a good thing and are actually making him withdraw in other ways... when he worked from home before we were on the farm, he did things like make book groups and writing groups, and he doesn't now, and his view of humanity right now is really really black, the blackest I've ever known it, and I've not seen his smile reach his eyes for months.

And by implication: Doing the magazine might be good for that, or it could spectacularly backfire as well, with its new sets of anxieties and financial uncertainty. I, by the way, am not a doom-and-gloom thinker and if we failed I don't think it would be the end of the world, there's other ways we could make things work again. But my husband at the moment seems to think failure is like the Apocalypse and there's no going back. He's incredibly stressed by little things just now and while he needs to make a change, he's also not in the best position to make one. Catch-22...




bsms said:


> I'm the sort who would NEVER start his own business. He's the sort who could never work for someone else for any length of time. And of course, he's the sort who has been happy living with around the clock work, never going an a vacation and often having every free cent tied up in land, livestock and equipment.


I appreciate these portraits! Thank you.




bsms said:


> I will say publishing seems an uncommonly risky investment. Magazines of any type seem to struggle. Print as a medium seems to be in serious decline.


Sadly, yes - but there are still a few of us left who love the smell and the idea and the physicality of a book or magazine. Alas, we might be a dying breed. But, this magazine is split across printed and electronic versions. Personally I prefer the printed version - it's not an ephemeral magazine, it's lasting-value stuff, like a good book... but others prefer to inhale the whole world via devices...




bsms said:


> (_She describes him as a "liberal, Yankee atheist". I asked her why she used 3 equivalent terms... _)


Bwahahaha, you're so naughty! 😜

And I can never understand why some religious people can't seem to see that Jesus (as a character, and even if you don't believe he was more than that) was very much a progressive in his time, and upset shiitake out of the religious establishment because of it - how _dare_ he question the religious elite? How _dare_ he talk to mere females in public, and about _consequential_ matters? How _dare_ he criticise the establishment, and question "authority"? How _dare_ he laud a _Samaritan_? How _dare_ he suggest poor people are to be helped and loved (not pitied, not told they deserved what they got, they didn't try enough, God is punishing them etc)? It's all such a long way from assumed cultural and institutional superiority and the so-called prosperity gospel... and it's one of my favourite narratives ever. It beats the heck even out of _Hamlet_! 😛




bsms said:


> I do believe it is better to live on a reduced income doing something you believe in and love than living a risk-free life. I was lucky enough to spend most of my adult life doing something I really loved. It would be torment to go to work daily, year after year after year, at 'just a job'. I realize many need to do that. But I'd much rather do what I loved at half the pay.


Completely agree, and that's why we downshifted. But even downshifting needs to be re-invented periodically...




waresbear said:


> I would not take on a magazine unless it had a strong online subscription base. And many advertisers to pay the bills.


Very good points! It has a good number of online subscribers, as well as an online back catalogue as long as your arm of electronic copies which still continue to be requested. It's a professional library, very much, and the only one of its type in Australia.

Advertising makes up a significant proportion of income for the magazine, and by her own admission, the editor hated pestering potential advertisers - and Brett doesn't mind doing this; he even had a go at it once as a favour! He has the capacity - fortunate or unfortunate - to abstract away the human beings he is approaching, and see the whole thing as a sort of percentage game - instead of feeling embarrassed or like a pain for asking. (But he hates telemarketing and says that's completely different.)


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## MeditativeRider

For research, I would try find anyone locally, either that you can meet in person or via an online meeting, that does business mentoring and knows more of the situation in Australia. Like here we have a chamber of commerce that does business mentoring for a small fee (a couple of hundred dollars) and I think you can also some get free business mentoring through our local council.

Another possibility is can you contact an established publishing society/body in Australia and ask to be put in touch with a mentor who you could discuss things with? I am on the copyediting side so do not know much about publishing and the only place I can think of that is Australia based is IpEd, which in the Institute of Professional Editors (Institute of Professional Editors Limited | To advance the profession of editing | Home). I am not sure if they would have anyone of use to you in your research.

Otherwise, maybe after you have researched it, it will not be the right opportunity for you but it will be the catalyst to find something else. Or maybe you will decide your current situation is actually ok and have a renewed motivation for it. 

In terms of your husband and depression and loneliness, I don't really know what to say except I totally understand. I probably have undiagnosed ASD Level 1 (and my husband agrees with this). ASD in females is thought of as the brain being similar to a male brain than a female brain. I am probably very similar to your husband in that I am an introvert but enjoy human interaction. Group stuff or too much overwhelms me and I get a social migraine and need time on my own. I tend to feel lonely no matter how many friends I have or people around me because there are very few people that I actually feel comfortable with and relaxed enough to be myself. And not being myself is both tiring and sometimes depressing. I also have a social/human interaction limit, so if I reach it with my kids, I sometimes don't have enough energy to socialize with my husband after work. If I have enough energy to socialize with him, I very rarely have enough energy to socialize beyond our family. Before I had kids + husband, I did socialize more with friends because I had the energy to do that. I don't ever discuss my feelings with anyone bar my husband really. 

I am not really one to get depressed as I tend to be more like you and revert to working my way out of it in some way. My husband has had depression in the past. He did not want to talk about it to anyone, but what seemed to help was just going on with life and doing all our regular stuff. Not giving stuff up because he did not feel into it. We still went biking, hiking, etc, and eventually it passed. My younger brother had lots of existential depression as a young adult and tried talking to a professional and it made him worse because he found the whole process frustrating (they could not give him answers etc.). So I don't think talking to someone is always needed or a help.

I hope you both get through this to something brighter.


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## egrogan

Thoughts I had reading through:
1. Have you seen the balance sheet already? How bad are recent declines?
2. Do you know someone else who would want in on the business as an investor? Maybe not feasible depending on their expectations for what they’d need to take out for their own compensation 
3. Is there a differenrt way Brett can shift out of his job, eg starting his own graphic design/web design consulting firm?
4. Debt scares us too. We actually had almost the same conversation about a local business that recently came up for sale. Lovely husband is really interested and there are some really attractive features-but the price tag is just too scary



@bsms said:


> She describes him as a "liberal, Yankee atheist". I asked her why she used 3 equivalent terms...


Hey, I resemble that remark


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## SueC

MeditativeRider said:


> Another possibility is can you contact an established publishing society/body in Australia and ask to be put in touch with a mentor who you could discuss things with? I am on the copyediting side so do not know much about publishing and the only place I can think of that is Australia based is IpEd, which in the Institute of Professional Editors (Institute of Professional Editors Limited | To advance the profession of editing | Home). I am not sure if they would have anyone of use to you in your research.


Thanks for the link and ideas! 




MeditativeRider said:


> In terms of your husband and depression and loneliness, I don't really know what to say except I totally understand. I probably have undiagnosed ASD Level 1 (and my husband agrees with this). ASD in females is thought of as the brain being similar to a male brain than a female brain. I am probably very similar to your husband in that I am an introvert but enjoy human interaction. Group stuff or too much overwhelms me and I get a social migraine and need time on my own. I tend to feel lonely no matter how many friends I have or people around me because there are very few people that I actually feel comfortable with and relaxed enough to be myself. And not being myself is both tiring and sometimes depressing. I also have a social/human interaction limit, so if I reach it with my kids, I sometimes don't have enough energy to socialize with my husband after work. If I have enough energy to socialize with him, I very rarely have enough energy to socialize beyond our family. Before I had kids + husband, I did socialize more with friends because I had the energy to do that. I don't ever discuss my feelings with anyone bar my husband really.
> 
> I am not really one to get depressed as I tend to be more like you and revert to working my way out of it in some way. My husband has had depression in the past. He did not want to talk about it to anyone, but what seemed to help was just going on with life and doing all our regular stuff. Not giving stuff up because he did not feel into it. We still went biking, hiking, etc, and eventually it passed. My younger brother had lots of existential depression as a young adult and tried talking to a professional and it made him worse because he found the whole process frustrating (they could not give him answers etc.). So I don't think talking to someone is always needed or a help.
> 
> I hope you both get through this to something brighter.


And thank you especially for this; that's very helpful! ♥

I don't know where I sit on introvert/extrovert: I do part-time in each. Interacting with others energises me - unless they are really unpleasant interactions. I didn't like desk jobs even if the subject matter was interesting, and loved having people in my face all day long, working with groups, catalysing positive interactions and learning, etc. I always had far more energy when I worked with people during the day. But then when I got home, I didn't want to see anyone for the greater duration of my spare time! I just needed peace and quiet, lots of exercise, and of course, I had about 2-3 hours of after-hours work each day when I worked in education, so I couldn't do much more socially than go to choir group once a week and to maybe tee up with a buddy for weekend hiking, but mostly I hiked on my own (especially small afternoon hikes I did after work - the South Coast is that kind of area, hikes everywhere, ditto Sydney Harbour) so I could recharge properly.

The funny thing is that I never found my husband clashing with my need to recharge. I can generally recharge as well with him around the house or on a hike as I can solo. And he finds the same with me.

It's so interesting to read about how your brain does human interaction, and very helpful. Neither my husband or I are neurotypical - we're outliers, and I think I sit towards, but not actually in, Aspergers - and I think he's a little further over on that scale than I am. I personally get and enjoy engaging with psychological workbooks etc, but that stuff gives him a headache. A question like, "What are some of the negative characteristics in your opposite-sex parent that are also present in your opposite-sex partner?" just leaves him completely blank, whereas my head starts getting really busy thinking about something like this. If he's asked to produce a list of five adjectives to describe the positive aspects of someone's personality, he's apt to come up with the skills that person has, rather than things like, "Kind, eclectic, good-crazy, thoughtful, warm." If I then say, "Well, is that person kind, for example?" he goes into long deliberations over whether you can possibly ever know if someone is really kind or not. So I say, "Are their actions kind?" and he scratches his head. And yet this kind of thing, other people in my circle answer so easily.

I used to think sometimes that he was being deliberately obtuse or not wanting to engage, but if this is a case of not being able to engage easily because his brain has trouble processing that stuff, it's a different angle altogether, and would explain why he always froze up when we went to counselling for couples or family issues early in our marriage, and got upset that a counsellor was wearing unmatching socks etc (which I at the time thought was fault-finding and being anti for the sake of it), and why he insists all counsellors are quacks even though one of our friends is one, and why he's never been able to get anything positive from it. Of course, mindset would do the same - it's a self-fulfilling prophecy when you think negatively about people or processes, and that can also be by choice, or because you don't want to confront your own stuff.

It's really frustrating for me that he appears to have social blindnesses like this, and also that he tends to get incredibly and sometimes really irrationally frustrated with tasks that don't come easily to him (he's got dyscalculia, which affects his ability to do maths, estimate volume, left/right, reading analogue watches etc - and at the same time he's really excellent at lots of other things), but if he's actually Aspie then that would be so much easier to understand... though I'm never going to get a definitive assessment on that because he's never going to let anyone assess him!




egrogan said:


> Thoughts I had reading through:
> 1. Have you seen the balance sheet already? How bad are recent declines?


About 30% over the last 5 years or so, if I remember correctly.




egrogan said:


> 2. Do you know someone else who would want in on the business as an investor? Maybe not feasible depending on their expectations for what they’d need to take out for their own compensation


No, I don't think this would be feasible for us - it would add another layer of complexity to an already complex beast, and we'd rather find a way to pay up-front than take on someone else.




egrogan said:


> 3. Is there a different way Brett can shift out of his job, eg starting his own graphic design/web design consulting firm?


He did that for a while in his 20s and hated it because it ate into all his spare time. He found that working for an employer gave him nice boundaries between work and home life, especially when he at first worked in offices. Later on, when everyone had to work from home because they shut the office down, he was still OK with that mostly, because he didn't have to get involved in the business side of things, it was just turn up, do XYZ, get paid.

Brett says it would do his head in to run his own firm and he'd rather turn up to an office to do something he hates, and then be free from it at home.

On the other hand, we're already running a business together, with me doing the businessy things while he works off-site for pay, and we both agreed that was fair. And we've had to draw boundaries between work and recreation, which we're getting better at (we both tend to stress when there's unfinished work, but we're learning to have set days off come hell or high water, mostly). So in terms of taking on a magazine, I think it would get him back to doing work he enjoys as a desk job, and it's nicely routine and, unlike web development etc, doesn't actually have a huge volume of ongoing changes which both of us are too burnt-out from previous professional experience to want to deal with - and that's a reason we down-shifted, and grow much of our own food etc. Doing magazine layout is doing magazine layout - writing is writing, editing is editing; and the e-side of that isn't daunting to him. The business stuff is what it is - doesn't excite anyone, is just something you have to do - like I do with my farmstay, or the primary production accounts etc. Since I'd have to deal with the businessy stuff he's allergic to, I could swap him for some farm jobs if we worked together on something like this.

His main concerns about the idea are its financial viability, and whether it would blur the boundaries of work-home too much (though we're already dealing with that with the existing business).



egrogan said:


> 4. Debt scares us too. We actually had almost the same conversation about a local business that recently came up for sale. Lovely husband is really interested and there are some really attractive features-but the price tag is just too scary.


Yeah, that's the boat we are in, pretty much, though crowdfunding may be able to help out there for the magazine.

Thanks again for everyone's input and thoughts! And that mental health/brain stuff is really useful to talk about, extra thanks! 😎


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## SueC

*COW PHOTOS*

I've just had to send them off, and that's always a sad day, but here's photos of our three steers, including a close-up of the one who had the horn growing into his skin (one one had it very slightly, one not at all) - healed over nicely and with hair growing back (look for the pinkish spot where the horn was).


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## knightrider

Very handsome cows! I love cows.


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## Knave

They are very handsome!


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## SueC

Yeah, they were nice animals, both to look at and in temperament. It's therefore been a stressful week. As humans we have to replace the predators we've made extinct in natural ecosystems, whether that be to control population excesses of deer in Europe and America, kangaroos in Australia, etc, so that their populations don't destroy the ecosystems they depend on - and ditto with feral animals. (Pity we don't take note when it comes to controlling our own population excesses, which we could actually do with adequate family planning as a species, and the social security that's required to do that in the developing world. Because as a species we are doing the very thing that we're preventing other species from doing by hunting them - destroying ecosystems through our population excesses. I suppose humans feel _entitled_ to destroy ecosystems, through the human-exceptionalism ethic of the West, as opposed to the First Nations, which actually view humans as a part of nature rather than the rightful lord of nature, and other species as our brothers and sisters, even though we're often at the receiving end of them in the food web, but it's still true. A pandemic is one of the ways nature can attempt to correct the imbalance before we destroy everything, but it's such a shame that we have brains and won't learn, as a species. It's so disappointing that as far as population and resources goes, humans as a species behave exactly like bacteria in a laboratory culture - which is to breed exponentially until the resouces are exhausted and then crash when it's all gone - as evidenced by a number of past civilisations already. But I digress.)

In an agricultural ecosystem, we're often replacing both predator and "mummy" and that's basically me, and those are interesting roles to juggle - to look after living beings and their quality of life, until you eat them, or allow other people to. In our agricultural ecosystem here on our farm, the emphasis is on sustainable agriculture and quality of life for the farm animals - we're not an industrial production unit; our animals all have room to roam and to properly explore, quasi-natural food sources (they all mostly subsist off pasture and tree fodder), supplementary feeding when and where necessary, good shelter and care and attention as required. In ten years we've lost one animal we were raising, out of approx. 40 cattle we've raised here - to a micronutrient deficiency most stock avoid by licking the supplied mineral blocks.

Looking at a herd of pastured cattle and at a herd of wild herbivores, one thing is the same: Most of the animals will die before they reach maturity, and only some will go on to reproduce. In wild populations, the rate of mortality of very young animals is higher than in captivity - this is when predators can catch them most easily. In wild populations, old age is the exception rather than the rule. Predation, disease, starvation and accidents will remove most animals before their prime. In an agricultural ecosystem, we're trying to reduce disease, starvation and accidents - and while we steward, we're also the predators. And while we kill many cattle at age 2-3, that's an extension of the life span many of them would have had in the wild.

I'm very serious about giving our cattle a decent life while they are with us, and as a result they become quite friendly with me. I was talking to the people who supply us with many of our weanling cattle to raise about exactly this when they were dropping off four dairy poddies to us on Saturday. They've got an old-fashioned family-owned small dairy farm, milking 150 cows, in an age where dairying and beef farming is becoming an increasingly industrialised, corporate game. They know their animals, and care for them. Since you have to take the young calves off the mothers to run a dairy farm, they care for them exceptionally well compared to other places I've seen - they're in little groups in runs with shelters in them, and Peter was telling me he often carries the really young calves back into their shelters in inclement weather until they learn to do that for themselves. They don't have their mothers, it's true, but they do grow up social, in creches, with human substitute carers, and at their farm they also get to roam in larger paddocks and eat grass part of the day.

I was talking to Peter's daughter Laura about how people say you should never let yourself get attached to farm animals, but how I ignore this because it makes a better quality of life for them to have a friendly human around, and decreases the stress they have encountering strangers when they go on transport and to the abattoir later on. She agreed with me and said it was always a wrench to cull out dairy cows you've milked for years and who you know well, and laughingly admitted she's got two "retired" dairy cows where she just couldn't bring herself to send them in. Her family, like ours, kills their own animals for the freezer as well, and she told me she's been to the Harvey abattoir to look at the process there, and says the actual dispatch is as humane as it is when we shoot old horses (she has horses too) or food animals on our farms - the difference is the transportation process. But, she could reassure me that the Harvey production line is done in such a way that no animal sees what happens in the kill box, or beyond. The kill box is a black box which they're in for under a minute and the stunning process is non-scary and instant, just like when we shoot animals on-farm (using good marksmen and sensible, low-stress handling).

I wish we could process all our animals on-farm, or at least that we had a local abattoir (animals travel 4 hours from our region to get to the main beef abattoirs; and because it's such a long way, it's uneconomical for us to get our own beef back so we can market it ourselves). But transporting a cow is no more stressful than teaching horses to transport - if anything less, because horses are more highly strung - and if I had to choose, for the death of my farm animals, between an abattoir and a natural predator, then I'd choose the abattoir. I have every sympathy for wolves, lions etc - they choose between starvation, and attacking lunch with their own faces and teeth - they didn't invent the system, and I'm quite glad I'm not having to hunt like that, with injury and starvation constantly in the background.

I still think, despite all of that, that nature is more beautiful than it is savage, and that life is generally worth having, even though it's pretty fleeting for many, including our own species. And I do what I can to be a good steward of our 50 hectares of wilderness, as well as our 12 hectares of pasture and the animals on it - to smooth the rough edges a bit too, where I can. At the end of the day, that's really all we can do - care for our own circle of influence as best as we can manage.


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## gottatrot

That sounds like a very good system and I agree with the process. I eat meat and think it is good food. My sister has a small farm and handles all the death very well. I personally believe there is nothing wrong with a humane death for an animal. 

That being said, I also treasure all the life I see and would not want to personally kill an animal unless it was suffering. 

We had a pet fly. I stopped fishing, because I didn't like to be the one snuffing out a beautiful life. If my dog and I were starving on a raft in the ocean, I would not eat a friend. He could eat me if he wished. I could eat anyone I didn't know. 

I've seen a lot of humans and animals die, so accept death. I just don't like to kill.


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## Knave

I rather enjoyed your post SueC, as well as @gottatrot’s response. Although our scale is larger, I feel that we raise our animals in a similar fashion. We know our cows and calves, and the girls and I even have names for many of them. Lol. The ones without names are called by their number, but generally you know everyone. Sometimes I will see a certain kind of cow, black and longer faced, similar in the herd to many of the others, and her number means nothing to me, but those are few. I’m sure that either my husband or my dad could give me ten stories about that cow, but I couldn’t place her except to tell you the year she was born.

I believe we do our very best to care for the cattle in a way that gives them their best possible life for the time they are alive. I wonder if the length of life has all that much to do with it really, and I don’t have a big problem with death. That said, I don’t desire to go around killing anything I don’t plan on eating unless it is in the kindness of ending ones misery. I don’t care for killing predators unless it is necessary and they have broken my boundaries of not trying to kill one of my own, and I tend towards letting things be.

I wouldn’t kill my own dog either on the boat, but would have zero problem eating anything else that came in our path. Lol

What I really like was what Sue said at the end. That we do our best to care for our own circle of influence. It is hard sometimes to remember that we do not control the government or our neighbors or anyone else who doesn’t follow our desired program. Yet, if we all care for our circle of influence we are doing what we can do.


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## bsms

I bookmarked this article a while back: *Lion is left bloodied and battered after buffalo fights it off in hour-long battle*. It is extremely gory, even by my marginal standards. From the Daily Mail, a British paper. The lion wasn't only left bloodied. He was hurt bad enough that he was finished off a few days later by hyenas.

I kept it because I sometimes encounter people who really think Disney nature flicks are real life. Or believe that somehow peace and harmony prevail if humans aren't there. I think we protected civilized people, who almost never kill our own food, need some reminders that life is indeed harsh. Predators struggle to stay alive. Very few wild lions live anything close to their maximum age. And in the Intermountain West, deer are usually limited in numbers by starvation during the winter.

I feel guilty killing a rattlesnake in our yard. I do it because I prefer killing the rattlesnake to seeing my dogs or grandchildren die, but I don't like it. Didn't bother me to kill the rooster we used to own, but he was a nasty animal even by chicken standards - and chickens aren't always nice to each other any more than horses are. The cattle at your place SueC have incredibly good lives compared to the large majority of animals. There is a movement AND a market for cattle that are treated at least a little bit more humanely than the lowest cost/pound model gives. I hope that market expands. I'd gladly pay more for my meat and eggs if the animals involved would be treated more like animals and less like mobile units of pre-packaged beef.

I liked Knave's comment above about doing what we can. We can't save the world from anything. But we can look for ways to make what is around us a little better.


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## SueC

gottatrot said:


> That sounds like a very good system and I agree with the process. I eat meat and think it is good food. My sister has a small farm and handles all the death very well. I personally believe there is nothing wrong with a humane death for an animal.
> 
> That being said, I also treasure all the life I see and would not want to personally kill an animal unless it was suffering.
> 
> We had a pet fly. I stopped fishing, because I didn't like to be the one snuffing out a beautiful life. If my dog and I were starving on a raft in the ocean, I would not eat a friend. He could eat me if he wished. I could eat anyone I didn't know.
> 
> I've seen a lot of humans and animals die, so accept death. I just don't like to kill.


I can really relate to this, and it made me laugh too, @gottatrot. The bit about how the dog can eat you but you won't eat it, I think I'd feel the same. 😁 Also "I could eat anyone I didn't know." 😂 I honestly think I could eat random dead human before I could eat horses or dogs I've had to put down (even though I'm sure the average human would taste repulsive - just ask sharks apparently, who rarely eat a whole human). And of course, when I have to put down a horse, if someone with a dog asked if they could take the meat, I'd totally let them take what they wanted from the open-burial site, but I wouldn't go look (and I don't anyway; I leave after we put the body out in our bushland and don't come back until three weeks minimum, when the body is at skeleton stage in summertime - fascinating as decomposition is, I've no desire to witness it in friends).

I don't like to kill and never did like it, but I have: Poultry for the table, small wildlife that needed putting down because they'd had accidents or were really ill, the occasional venomous snake when it gets too territorial about our garden. When I have to do that, I get all focused on being quick and humane - usually decapitation with a sharp implement. I don't have firearm skills and call in people who do for larger animals. I couldn't put down an animal friend of mine unless there was a situation where I was the only one who could and it was urgent, which thankfully hasn't happened, but I remember one time when I was growing up and my family were dilly-dallying about a mare with twisted bowel, where I said, "Give me the gun, I'll shoot her myself!" and I would have - she was suffering terribly, the worst suffering I've ever seen and it was clearly not going to get any better.

(It's sort of like surgeons don't usually operate on family members except in emergencies - it's because our bonds with others personally affect how we operate.)

And then there's rodents. I like them and think they're cute, but not in our house, and I can't have them hanging around and breeding up in the farm shed either, so I bait them in the shed and have snap-traps in the house, because occasionally one gets under the fly curtain of an open French door when I'm airing a room. When I've got a mouse just dead in a trap, I feel a regret and think about whether it would affect me the same way as a dying pet if I knew the animal well. Probably yes. But that's beside the point. I disagree with the people who have live traps in their houses and then let the mice go in the garden (poor neighbour) or, even worse, down by the beach or in the bush - mice are feral animals here, and will displace small native mammals in danger of extinction - and I find the smugness of these people about "saving a life" insufferable, because they're actually dooming a native animal they've not seen and never will, but they don't understand ecology enough for that, or maybe all they care about is that they themselves keep their hands clean by not killing directly, when all of us with our very existences kill indirectly anyway.

You get these smug vegans sometimes, drinking their soy milk in apparent complete ignorance that wildlife habitat was cleared in order to accommodate the soy monoculture, which in all cases is fossil-fuel intensive and completely hostile to any other life than the soy crop, and in most cases is really heavy on herbicides and results in land degradation (it's a problem with broadacre cropping). Do they not think about the habitat clearing? Do they think the wild animals can find a new home and new food? No, it's like bulldozing a suburb and saying, "These people can find somewhere else to live!" and indeed, in that case, humans are actually more likely to survive because of emergency aid, refugee organisations etc. Also, it's not just the cute animal we need to care about, it's all the species and the entire system they are part of, including the plants, who don't have less value just because they don't have nervous systems and big eyes.

I agree with the vegans that it's better to eat a legume crop yourself than feed it to animals and then eat their meat, and I agree with the vegans that industrial animal production is horrible and a big environmental problem to boot - but I don't agree with them that _all_ food animal production is unethical. I don't agree with the people who oppose kangaroo culls or brumby culls and clearly don't understand ecology. And I don't agree with the people who proudly write into _Grass Roots_ to say they've got their dogs and cats on all-vegetarian diets - poor animals - if they want a vegetarian pet they should keep a herbivore, and besides, it's so silly - you don't have to feed steak to your dog, the dog is fine with bones and some offal and waste cuts that you wouldn't want yourself, and a bit of F&V mixed in because they're not pure carnivores. Or with the people who buy all-vegetable soaps who don't realise beef tallow is a by-product that goes to waste if you don't use it, while palm oil production displaces rainforests etc etc etc. Ditto leather, which is biodegradable while synthetics aren't. The problem is, many modern people are just so completely divorced from nature, in their little suburban bubbles, that they don't get a lot of this stuff, and the complexities of this stuff.

I regularly get petitions sent to me for signing, to ban live export. Well, I do agree that food animals should be processed locally, because it's kinder to reduce the transportation and because we should darn well have the manufacturing jobs ourselves and if the people at the other end don't like it they can get their meat elsewhere or eat lentils, as far as I'm personally concerned. I'd never knowingly consign one of our steers to live export, and I prefer to sell abattoir-direct, which is what we did last time (and so far, our cattle were always bought by West Australian abattoirs even when they went to auction). But I wouldn't ban live export completely because it's important to exchange breeding animals with other countries sometimes - you will have to ship females for certain things, you can't just ship frozen semen.

Big topic, animal welfare and ethics.

And while we're on the subject, I'm sure I've killed thousands of ants hiking, but I'm not about to carry a broom and sweep the path before me wherever I go. Neither will I go and deliberately destroy an ant heap (unless it's trying to invade our house). I've no issue swatting mosquitoes but that's not because I don't value invertebrates on the whole. Etc etc etc.

More in a bit...


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## SueC

Knave said:


> Although our scale is larger, I feel that we raise our animals in a similar fashion. We know our cows and calves, and the girls and I even have names for many of them. Lol. The ones without names are called by their number, but generally you know everyone. Sometimes I will see a certain kind of cow, black and longer faced, similar in the herd to many of the others, and her number means nothing to me, but those are few. I’m sure that either my husband or my dad could give me ten stories about that cow, but I couldn’t place her except to tell you the year she was born.
> 
> I believe we do our very best to care for the cattle in a way that gives them their best possible life for the time they are alive. I wonder if the length of life has all that much to do with it really, and I don’t have a big problem with death. That said, I don’t desire to go around killing anything I don’t plan on eating unless it is in the kindness of ending ones misery. I don’t care for killing predators unless it is necessary and they have broken my boundaries of not trying to kill one of my own, and I tend towards letting things be.


Yeah, I have no food animal welfare issues with the way you guys run your cattle. I understand that we can't support flagrant meat eating in our bloated human population by the kinds of more natural production systems you do on your range and we do on our pasture alone, and I don't think it's right to make up the shortfall by feedlotting animals and producing them industrially, so I would prescribe more vegetarian meals and more rigorous use of contraception as an alternative - as well as, e.g., some backyard poultry keeping, preferably in backyard permaculture setups rather than private feedlot situations.

Looook: The Permaculture Home Garden

And we need more people on the land doing environmentally friendly food-production activities instead of having just broadacre, machinery-driven agriculture, and we actually need consumers to pay a higher price for their food so that people can do these things, and do them properly. So that means we need to have local abattoirs so farmers can market their own meat (we can't even bring it to the consumers' attention that our cattle are grass-fed and has decent shelter, social interaction and exploration and play opportunities) and for the government to provide these abattoirs themselves if necessary, rather than let the corporates push legislation so that small abattoirs become disallowed for alleged welfare reasons, or to dictate their economies of scale to everyone raising cattle or other food animals (or producing milk, eggs, etc). I don't have an issue with a government-run abattoir, since I'm a taxpayer and I'd like more of what I pay to go towards infrastructure the little people can use, rather than just having the little people's tax money subsidise corporates who push everyone else out of the market (while paying very little tax themselves 👹😡).




Knave said:


> What I really like was what Sue said at the end. That we do our best to care for our own circle of influence. It is hard sometimes to remember that we do not control the government or our neighbors or anyone else who doesn’t follow our desired program. Yet, if we all care for our circle of influence we are doing what we can do.


I also think it's possible to get very depressed about things outside of our control, and that this then saps our energy and ability to best serve our actual circle of influence. Maybe I'm too practical or survival-driven to want to be caught in that trap. My husband does get very depressed about the stuff that's going on in the world. I look and keep informed at intervals, but don't let myself be sucked in by the news cycle for starters - neither does my husband, but it just depresses him to already know how many things are. I guess I actively avoid things that make me feel bad enough for long enough to significantly impact my own ability to do positive things where I can. I can feel just as bad as he about things, but I just try to counteract that, and I think ironically that having a complex PTSD brain setup actually helps me there, because I've had to focus on the many beautiful things in the world and on the constructive things I could do, in the face of a really scary and unhappy home environment, since I was a toddler. While Brett had a largely happy home life so his initial microcosm didn't prepare him for the wider world in the same way. Not that I recommend a deeply problematic upbringing as preparation for the real world!





bsms said:


> I bookmarked this article a while back: *Lion is left bloodied and battered after buffalo fights it off in hour-long battle*. It is extremely gory, even by my marginal standards. From the Daily Mail, a British paper. The lion wasn't only left bloodied. He was hurt bad enough that he was finished off a few days later by hyenas.
> 
> I kept it because I sometimes encounter people who really think Disney nature flicks are real life. Or believe that somehow peace and harmony prevail if humans aren't there. I think we protected civilized people, who almost never kill our own food, need some reminders that life is indeed harsh. Predators struggle to stay alive. Very few wild lions live anything close to their maximum age. And in the Intermountain West, deer are usually limited in numbers by starvation during the winter.


Yes, I think the increasing urbanisation of places like Australia and the US, which are already highly urbanised anyway, aren't doing that any favours and more education is needed - but who's going to provide that?

Brett and I were also talking about abattoirs. One of the reasons they have this repulsive quality to us is because industrial-scale death is repulsive and horror-movie like. All those animals lining up in the kill line, the efficient production-line turning of them into meat and by-product. But that's neither here nor there for the animals, who, if the abattoir does its job well, don't see any of that, and get humane handling and a humane end, very like when we put down our pets but earlier of course. On the other hand, not every abattoir has high standards in those areas - which is where I do think things need to be stringently regulated and overseen.

I think modern humans have gotten used to living into old age, and expect that this is normal when it doesn't actually happen very much at all in nature. I could now go off on a related area, which is the tendency for many people to want to extend the human life span at all costs, even when the old and/or terminally ill people concerned say they actually don't want more interventions, and would like to die with dignity. I think that should be an unalienable right of an individual, to say enough is enough, and that the people for whom this is a problem need to work on their own "stuff" about death and mortality rather than let their own existential panic adversely affect someone else's right to die with dignity...




bsms said:


> I feel guilty killing a rattlesnake in our yard. I do it because I prefer killing the rattlesnake to seeing my dogs or grandchildren die, but I don't like it. Didn't bother me to kill the rooster we used to own, but he was a nasty animal even by chicken standards - and chickens aren't always nice to each other any more than horses are.


Yes, isn't it funny how when an animal is really obnoxious to its fellows we have less qualms in taking it out. It feels like a public service to the others. (Now, if we applied that to politicians...😜 😈)




bsms said:


> The cattle at your place SueC have incredibly good lives compared to the large majority of animals. There is a movement AND a market for cattle that are treated at least a little bit more humanely than the lowest cost/pound model gives. I hope that market expands. I'd gladly pay more for my meat and eggs if the animals involved would be treated more like animals and less like mobile units of pre-packaged beef.


And this is where we need the public to work with us so that we can have local abattoirs, etc etc. The problem is, we're in such a minority it's so easy to ignore us... and public grassroots campaigns can work wonders. I like the increasing interest a lot of urban people are taking in the production of the food they eat, that you see at farmers' markets etc. 👍 Which, ironically, we can't participate in because we're too small a producer to be able to afford the fees, and because the beef, which would make it worthwhile, can't be killed locally...




bsms said:


> I liked Knave's comment above about doing what we can. We can't save the world from anything. But we can look for ways to make what is around us a little better.


I think all of us can agree on that, and I think it lays the groundwork for the best possible use of our personal energies in the service of such ideals. 😎


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## waresbear

Mother Nature is a cruel hag, nature is cruel. We , as humans, should ensure an animal that we consume, are raised humanely, and slaughtered humanely. I grew up on a hobby farm, we took our Cattle to the slaughter house and watched the process. I was allowed to watch as a kid, was very painless, but the part that bothered me was the hauling to the slaughter. We had a family friend with a stock truck, I hated how they ran our steers, usually 2 Or 3 up the ramp, they looked scared to me. The killing was humane, steer walked down a cement alley and bang, he fell. When my dad was butchering our ducks, head on the chopping block, me as a little kid, pitched a huge rock & hit him on the back of the head. Pretty sure I felt more pain from my spanking then the ducks felt from the swift chop. When I was a teenager, I had no problem butchering young roosters, kinda revenge as they were raping our laying hens. They almost killed my favorite hen, I volunteered to butcher. If we didn't eat these animals, they wouldn't exist, very few people keep Cattle & whatnot as pets. There are a few, but they couldn't afford to without the meat industry, feed prices would break them financially.


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## SueC

I've got this huge backlog of things that happened that I want to journal about before they escape my mind but have been too busy to scratch myself, as we say here. So this Monday morning I'm giving myself a slot to get this stuff written.

First of all I wanted to go back to the day I took my rising 3 Simmental X steers to the neighbour's yard, last Tuesday, in preparation for the abattoir pickup truck the following morning - that's how we did it this time. So it went like this: Yarding on Tuesday, overnight feeding with hay, transport and arrival at Harvey abattoirs on Wednesday, in the kill line on Thursday. When you sell to them direct they guarantee to kill your animals within 48 hours of receiving them onto transport. You don't have that guarantee when you sell at auction.

Also, when you sell to them directly you get a set price per kilogram on-hook, agreed beforehand - and you don't end up scalped at the auction, as happened to us once - one lot of beef heifers we sold some years ago went at such a low price it wasn't worth the time for us to raise them, and they were good animals in excellent condition, so somebody along the line had all the profit out of that, but not us...

Hey by the way, do you have this saying in America? We have it here and I quite like it! You can even get it as a bumper sticker: *"Don't criticise a farmer with your mouth full!"


THE CATTLE SO FAR*

We started ten years ago with a motley crew of four Angus cattle that were left over from the Angus herd the original owner of our block had run across the four blocks he farmed before retiring. Sadly, nobody would buy the business, so he sold all his blocks separately and took all his livestock to auction. We bought two just-off-milk orphans they'd raised as bobby calves and didn't want to put on the truck, and a later a cow with a new-dropped calf they'd hung onto.

As we were so busy building our house at the time and didn't have yards, we just allowed the four cattle the run of the place for years, and they were belly-deep in grass. One day, a friend said, "Sue, you've got to sell those cattle!" The cow was nearly 5, her steer calf a huge 2-year-old, and the erstwhile bobby calves, Wills and Harry, were massive 3-year-olds. Wills was this gentle giant who liked it if I played with the water hose with him, and if he was standing by the farm dam I could go right up to him, sit with my back propped against one of his massive front legs, and he'd just chew his cud and we'd enjoy each other's company.

He also loved scratching himself against my tie rails:

A neighbour agreed with this friend and said we could use his yards and he'd ship them with his own cattle. So that's what we did. I'd have had to start trimming cow feet if we'd kept them much longer! It was really sad to see them go, especially Wills - for some reason _Waltzing Matilda_ kept playing in my head and I cried after they were gone, saying to Brett, "Now Wills is somebody's juicy jumbuck!" - in reference to the sheep the squatter in the song bags for his dinner.

The two older steers were so massive they broke the auction weight record for steers at Mt Barker that week and couldn't go through the ordinary production line - they had to go to a dedicated bull line as they were over 800kg apiece, and most cattle are sold for slaughter here at around the 400-500kg mark.

For the proceeds we bought nine bobby calves off a local dairy, and paid for a skilled friend to help us install our second-hand kitchen.

Here's Tim working with Brett (and me, but I'm taking the photo!):

The finished kitchen:

Time flies and the bobby calves grew up quickly - this is them as yearlings with our three original horses:

Soon they were 2-year-olds:

...and then 3-year-olds, which is when we sold them - dairy steers stay an extra year with us because they don't put on muscle properly before their third year...

We sold those in two batches, made a bit of money on them, and bought our first beef weanlings with part of the cheque - six sturdy Murray Grey steers from auction:

You could see they were hardy, and up to the winter weather immediately. It's an Australian medium-sized breed, kinder to the land than the larger breeds.

They grew quickly and we had them just over a year.

This was before the drought, so we were running these animals in cohorts - and buying a new little group six to twelve months before we'd sell the older group.

So we had another group of five this time mixed-breed beef steers coming up at the same time, some of which you can see here:

And this is the most cattle we ever had on our block; 18 of them at once the month we were selling the six 2-year-old Murray Greys and we'd just bought in seven weanling Murray Grey heifers:

That was shortly down to 12, and the Murray Greys sold very well.

But that winter we had a hard frost that knocked out most of our perennial pasture, so we quickly on-sold our five then rising-2 beef steers, who went to finish for six weeks or so at a feedlot - the first time we weren't able to grass-finish our own animals. I don't like feedlots, but they are preferable to starvation, or to us turning our place into a private feedlot and the animals trampling soil the frost had laid bare and causing degradation and erosion. The decision was made with ecology in mind and with the best animal welfare we could manage at the time. We kept the seven little heifers, who weren't a problem for the land and whom we could feed with hay through that winter.

You can see the orange patches in the pasture - that's dead kikuyu, killed by the unusual hard frost, and usually the mainstay of beef pasture through the mid-winter here.

The winter was so tough we even put them in the garden as lawn-mowers:

We fed a lot of tree fodder that winter - we have both _Acacia saligna_ for roughage, and tree lucerne. This is the heifers eating acacia:

A old photo showing our fodder hedges establishing - with acacias in the tree belt to the left, and tagasaste (tree lucerne) hedges around the house:

The foreground paddock is a neighbour's - we took this from a hill on a bushwalk - you can see the road and fences separating their paddocks from ours (and the horse in the red rug in the right of the photo is Romeo!). Since we don't have machinery, we grow fodder hedges, which also have lots of other benefits like making bird habitat, green firebreaks, winter feed for bees, stock shelter, soil erosion control, firewood etc.

As I mentioned, we got scalped when selling the heifers and were disillusioned, so we bought dairy poddies again, which are an economical purchase and this time, we bought without an agent, directly from a neighbouring dairy:

Besides, we were now in drought and therefore ran only half the cattle we usually run.

When the Friesians were getting bigger we bought in four Simmental crosses from the same people who'd sold us our original nine dairy poddies years earlier - these beef cattle were one of their experimental side projects. This was the mixed group, but only five of the eight as I was taking this from horseback! We could run these, as you can see from the state of the summer pasture, but we didn't buy more because of the drought, which also made hay expensive and hard to get.

The white-faced one in the foreground is the one we lost to a trace element deficiency the following winter, when Brett and I were both bedridden with the worst flu we've ever had, at the same time, and so didn't notice that steer starting to ail early enough to fix it - also we'd never had a cow that didn't lick the mineral blocks before, so we were stumped originally. We then brought his three remaining cohort mates into our smaller fields, dosed them with cobalt, and gave them hay through the winter as an added precaution. The Friesians were fine and stayed on the big pasture.

We ended up eating one of the Friesians when he developed a shoulder strain that didn't heal - this is after we'd sent the other three to auction rising 3. He stayed with our young Simmental steers initially. This is a cute shot a friend of ours took of them last winter:

...and you saw how they looked recently in the top post on this page. They were massive...


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## SueC

*ON YARDING DAY*

This is how I recounted yarding day to a friend last week:

_"Well, this was pretty much a day from hell - it's cattle sale time, which is not my favourite time because I'm sending animals off to be eaten, after they're put down of course. But since I eat meat, and since we own land, it's my responsibility to have herbivores on the grass both for bushfire risk reduction and to feed humans - if I didn't continue grass-fed beef farming here, I'd increase the pressure on two other things: Land clearing (wildlife habitat bulldozed to make way for more pasture) and feedlotting / industrial animal rearing. At least my cattle have a good life while they're here, and their 2-3 years at death is generally better than how it goes in wild populations, without human interference (there, the majority die before they're 1).

So I was on my own (because nobody else I'd asked had time to come help, and I even offered to pay people but there's nobody around at a loose end - and Brett couldn't take a day off work), trying to get the cattle to the neighbour's property: That meant taking them out of a gate at our NE corner they'd never been through before (and anything new is suspicious to them), and walking them 800m along the roadside track and then - and this is the hard part - trying to get them to cross the road and go through the neighbour's gate down his driveway to his yards. And before all of that, I had to find them first - in 50 hectares of bush, where they'd gone sightseeing - they weren't on the pasture. I walked 2km before I saw them, with heavy feed buckets - I've occasionally fed them cow cubes as a treat, and they've learnt to follow me when I have the buckets.

They were at the very back of the property and then I had to walk them 1km back around to the NE corner to get them out the gate - just rattling the buckets and encouraging them to follow me, which they did. I opened the gate and put the buckets down in the gateway, and gradually moved the buckets further out so they would come out into the general trackway that runs along the road - once I had them there I let them eat a bit, and then it was easy to herd them along the track because there's a fence to one side and thick forest between the track and the road. My neighbour had come down in his jeep to drive alongside on the road, to make sure the cattle didn't run back on it when we hit the road crossing - they have homing instincts like pigeons, and that's always the challenge. With a bit of to-ing and fro-ing and the strategic placement of the feed buckets into the neighbour's gateway, the cattle finally crossed the road, stopped trying to run back home on it or up in the other direction, and went through the gateway, and then it was an easy 500m up the driveway to the yards. Phew.

They've got water and hay there, and the pickup truck is coming tomorrow.

And that was the short part. Then I spent the rest of the day doing all the paperwork (the long bit...OMG...forms and forms and forms, and then getting grouched at by the agent about not being sure if we had the electronic information on the ear tags transferred and later on it turns out that that's not our responsibility but the breeders' and when I rang them they said they transferred them two and a bit years ago when we bought them so all that was a storm in a teacup...).

I had one slice of bread and an avocado all day before I had a bowl of cornflakes when starting the paperwork... and yesterday spent half the day doing online courses so I could sell these cattle, which only very silly people couldn't have passed the tests without reading all the info...

I don't know why everything has to be so complicated. E.g. anyone can pass an animal welfare quiz, but it doesn't mean that they're going to be kind to animals...

Pictures of the steers attached, including the nicely healed skin on the one who had the worst ingrown horn - you can see a slightly pink patch on the side of his face with hair starting to grow back. _(See top of page for same photos.)

_Tomorrow morning I've got to get the paperwork to the transporter and also check that nobody has lost their ear tags before they go on the truck, and if any are missing, I have to get a replacement from the breeder (before the truck arrives)...and then I can go home and do the dozen other things that urgently need doing..."_


*THE NEXT FEW DAYS*

The following night I had an interesting telephone call from the Department of Agriculture officer at Harvey abattoir. Once again, this is how I related it to a friend who asked how the paperwork and check went in the morning:

_"The cattle had all their eartags, but I was sad I hadn't remembered to check the previous afternoon when I yarded them at the neighbour's place. Because when they saw me they all went, "Moooooo!" - and clearly hoped I would let them back out again. I hate disappointing animals. I'd brought over some fresh corn stalks for them as a treat (I'm harvesting eating corn; we eat the cobs and the cattle eat the rest usually) but only one of them was madly interested - they'd had a lot of hay overnight so weren't starving, but the two who kind of turned it down were really saying, "Can you please get us out of this place so we can get on with our day?"

It's always hard for me when animals I've cared for are going to die. It's about the same stress on me when youngish cattle go to get turned into food than when I put down old horses. I've bonded with these things and know their personalities and my body just revolts for a few days, lose my appetite, trouble sleeping (I knock myself out with drowsy antihistamines for a few nights in situations like this or I won't sleep at all). And the reason I let myself bond with the cattle is that it gives them a better quality of life to be friendly with a human, and it will cause them to stress less when they meet other humans when they're transported and then put through the abattoir.

Oh, and you know this bit from before?

And that was the short part. Then I spent the rest of the day doing all the paperwork (the long bit...OMG...forms and forms and forms, and then getting grouched at by the agent about not being sure if we had the electronic information on the ear tags transferred and later on it turns out that that's not our responsibility but the breeders' and when I rang them they said they transferred them two and a bit years ago when we bought them so all that was a storm in a teacup...).

At 8pm last night I got a call from the Department of Agriculture officer who works at the abattoir to tell me that the eartags of the cattle had never been transferred into our names, so he had to verify with me before the abattoir could legally kill them. So I got my paperwork out with the sales contracts from back then etc and we sorted that out, and he told me (finally, someone told me) what to do so it doesn't happen again (and he was very friendly about it). The breeders are supposed to notify the database when they transfer stock to you, but there's no way I could tell if they had, and when I rang them to double check they said they were sure they had. Anyway, because this can happen, I'm also supposed to have a database account to check from my end within 24 hours of receiving new stock, that the animals have been transferred into my name on the national eartag database. Over and above having the paperwork. So complicated - why doesn't anyone email me to notify me - my dog is microchipped and the pet database emails us every year to say, "Are these details correct?"

Nobody could tell me how to do it, until it wasn't done properly and then the Dpt of Ag person got involved. _ 😠_ It's a completely separate thing to the usual livestock industry website we get all our official paperwork from and do the "cattle being moved from our property to other place" forms... _😠_ 

Anyway, we're getting four calves on Saturday directly from the same place again - we'll doubly make sure that the database thing gets done... they're a nice family and this bureaucratic stuff gives everyone false memories and all sorts of heebiejeebies. _😛"


*THE KILL REPORT*

Because we signed up for the MSA programme (a quality control feedback system which pays you an extra premium as well when you sell your cattle for processing), I got a kill report in the inbox on Friday to inform me my animals had been dispatched the previous day, and the summary quality scoring so far (more to come when the meat is chilled etc):








The Meat Standards Australia people aren't really interested in animal welfare directly, or in nutrition as such, just in their own parameters of eating quality, which is things like juiciness, tenderness etc. These are indirectly related to a few welfare issues, e.g. acute stress before slaughter adversely impacts these qualities. On the other hand, whether or not a cut is tough is also influenced by how you hang the carcase, and how long for. So while the MSA people are mostly interested in young animals with bright-red meat and marbling, for instance, in Europe there is now a gourmet trend to eating older animals with darker meat that have been hung properly post-kill and are therefore not tough, and have a more complex palate because more mature. I personally prefer that European line of thinking, which treats older stock that have come in post-breeding as good food if processed carefully, rather than as dog food or hamburger mince. Also I actually don't like marbled meat, personally, although I know the Japanese are crazy about it and that's one of our main export markets.

These steers didn't have much marbling as it's not in the traditional Australian beef breed genetics, but they still did pretty well on meat colour, not being too fat or too thin, and on the overall preliminary index. More information here: https://www.mla.com.au/globalassets...ia/form-3.7.1-producer-feedback-explained.pdf

I'm more concerned about ecology, heirloom breed preservation, animal welfare and nutrition, but I'm participating in the MSA programme so I can get some feedback on the carcases. In general I am wary of the parameters used in such programmes because they're too narrow and market-driven from what I can see, and strive for uniformity of product, which is one of the things that's leading to a huge loss of genetic diversity in farm animals (and fruit and vegetables), and to a loss of many valuable heirloom breeds. I bought Simmental crosses when they were available because I want to support breed diversity rather than just wall-to-wall Angus and maximum possible profit for a particular eating fashion of the day. And, I bought them directly from a family farmer, and they had a good life, and that's worth a whole lot more to me than whether their meat grades as well as Angus according to the parameters de jour.

I believe consumers need to be educated that nature is not about homogeneity but about diversity, in fruits and vegetables and the kinds of animals, farm breeds etc that their meat, eggs and dairy products come from - and that diversity is valuable and interesting. Also that you have to approach your cooking differently depending on what you are eating, rather than just expect the same technique to work equally for everything - and that it's interesting to learn how to treat your food with the respect it deserves.

We all agree that we have a responsibility for what comes out of our mouth. But, ethically, we also have a responsibility for what goes into it.


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## MeditativeRider

I really like what you said at the end of your post about homogeneity versus diversity, respect, and ethics/responsibility.

We (family of 4) are vegetarian and dairy free (we eat eggs and honey), but totally support food production like you do. We try to purchase locally produced food as much as possible. Obviously the dairy-free milk is a troublesome one. We do use soy because it has the best replacement protein content and is better than almond in terms of environmental impact. We buy organic soy milk to reduce the impact a little. 

The dairy free is because of intolerance issues and also ethical/environmental because dairy production in NZ has just gone insane. I am fine with producing dairy for the NZ public, but its all the high intensity dairy farming in regions it should not be in to produce by-products to ship overseas to markets that traditionally did not consume dairy products. And we end up with all the loss of habitat and water way pollution and degradation. The area I grew up in as a child has now started to be dairy farmed intensively. All this beautiful landscape is now covered in large irrigators and dairy cows.

The anti-leather (and wool) stance of hard-core vegans really irritates me too. Leather and wool are natural fibers, why would you want to produce more synthetics over them! If there was more of a wool market, then fewer farmers in NZ would convert to dairy.

We grow as much of our own food as we can on our urban section, and compost all our scraps. And I know many others like us too in our city. Not necessarily dairy free and vegetarian but trying to be ethical and responsible about food. Although our city council does have a local and sustainable food project, and we have a great farmers market. So I think there are many consumers that are aware. Hopefully over time that number will increase.


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## SueC

*THE NEW CALVES*

Saturday morning we took a delivery of four dairy poddies, right into a severe weather warning forecast for the weekend. This them settling into our small shelter paddock, with a shed in it and also tree lucerne hedges all around for wind protection and food self-service:


Here you can see two eating hay in the shelter and two hiding in the tree lucerne on the right (edible leaves, yum yum and they're going for it, and there's also some corn plants in the foreground for them to try because I'm harvesting our last batch of eating corn at the moment):

And a few more snaps...





As you can see, they settled in quite easily, although they soon began jumping over our temporary enclosure lines like grasshoppers in order to explore the wider world, and were chasing each other around the horse paddocks kicking up their little heels before the trailer that brought them had left the property! The horses were in the common at this time, away from all this, so there were no complications - although Julian got very looky from the other end of the property, the moment they began running around, and came to the fence to watch what was happening.

We herded the little mob back to their enclosure a couple of times that afternoon as the rain squalls were coming in, and each time they settled happily in their little enclosure with their food, before they'd fly the coop again the moment the rain stopped to investigate the wider area.

The polybraid in my enclosure fencing for the shelter paddocks and the horses' usual night-time paddocks is getting old and doesn't carry a "cow current" anymore, but has been good enough for the horses. I want to have it properly re-done with a single very hot wire at knee height so I can keep cattle of all ages in there again as well (as I used to be able to do when the polybraid was new), but because there aren't enough strainer posts in these lines I've been unable to do it myself. (The original "inside-paddock" fencing for the horses was done just with star pickets and polybraid.)

I don't have a tractor and need to hire someone to put posts in for me, and would actually like them for the whole job, but what's too big a job for me is considered too small a job for commercial contractors to do, so I'm still looking for someone with the equipment and skills to do it. Meanwhile, we're juggling the calves - at least the boundary fences are 7-strand barbed wire and pretty breakout proof. I don't want to run new polybraid in the internal paddocks because it lasts less than a year for cattle requirements, I just want to get that one hot wire in at chest height and look for someone who can help me do that, before these calves grow into little bulldozers.

Sunday night was cold and windy with sleet coming down, and I was happy because the four new calves were in their shelter and curled up happily in a bed of food while the storm was raging outside - a severe weather warning with a sheep weather alert means stock losses due to hypothermia can be expected, with sheep or other animals of around that size exposed to these conditions - and these calves are 100-125kg each and just off milk, and therefore you don't want them lying out in those conditions. (It may not be below freezing here yet, but between the rain and the Roaring Forties you can be chilled to the bone in no time where we live.)

The horses and the not-overweight donkeys were all in their portable Arctic sleeping bags for this occasion and they usually don't use the shelter when they have rugs on anyway, but just to make sure, I locked them out of the small shelter area - there's plenty of shelter belts in the large paddocks they know how to use, and they did exactly that, while the calves stayed in the shelter shed unmolested.

Phew. It's amazing how quickly chasing after a new set of calves and getting them settled and protected in bad weather has taken my mind off the fact that my last lot just met the end of the road. But here's the thing: The majority of their lives looks like you see in the photos here. The abattoir is their last day. I think the pictures of their lives are more representative of their total experience than pictures of their deaths - same as it is with our horses, and us. I could spend all my time thinking about how one day the little animals will grow up and hang from a hook, but that would be as pointless as spending all my time thinking about how one day I'm going to have to make a decision I don't want to make for my horses at the end of their road, or how all of my human friends will one day end up in a morgue with a toe tag and then inside a coffin. You've got to focus on life while you have it, or you may as well dig your grave right now.


*OTHER FARM HAPPENINGS*

I'm happy this afternoon because I've NEARLY finished roasting and freezing three massive Musqué de Provence Pumpkins that weighed around 20kg each, which is ridiculous because they're supposed to get to 10-15kg. Usually they store well, but all three had been nibbled underneath by slaters before harvest, so I had to preserve them quickly - and we're also eating lots of pumpkin soup, I've made pumpkin bread, last night we had pumpkin/feta/cashew pizza, and I'm making citrus/pumpkin/almond cake this week... and the dog is getting a bit of pumpkin with her dinner at the moment, and we did split up half a pumpkin into nine wedges which were doled out to friends to try...


Since we're away from main roads and too small to go to farmers' markets with our F&V excesses, I preserve most of these and feed them to us and to farmstay guests down the track, and share some excess fresh produce out with friends and Brett's colleagues, who also share their gluts out.

Also, the dog is happy - right now she's curled up on the sofa as the rain pours down outside, but these photos are more indicative of her usual daytime manner:






In other news, I put an old saddle on Julian the other day after trimming his feet, and he was fine with that. Next steps when the weather fines up. It's not even a hundredth of what @Knave has done with Queen so far, but it's momentous for us at the moment!


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## SueC

*COASTAL WALK BETWEEN COLD FRONTS*

Sunday morning there was a break between cold fronts with a little sun, so we managed to sneak out for a 90 minute coastal sanity walk - a bit of the Bibbulmun, followed by a stroll on Muttonbird Beach.




Brett has pandemic hair that's standing up dramatically in the wind:


There was this surfer out on the ocean we swore was motorised because he kept zooming from one end of the beach to the other:

Jess was chasing waves as usual.

Here's a film of her doing that on an inland lake a few years back. The bigger the surf, the more she runs, so this is a mild case of wave-chasing for her!






...and that's my writing backlog all caught up, phew! 🤪


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## SueC

MeditativeRider said:


> I really like what you said at the end of your post about homogeneity versus diversity, respect, and ethics/responsibility.
> 
> We (family of 4) are vegetarian and dairy free (we eat eggs and honey), but totally support food production like you do. We try to purchase locally produced food as much as possible. Obviously the dairy-free milk is a troublesome one. We do use soy because it has the best replacement protein content and is better than almond in terms of environmental impact. We buy organic soy milk to reduce the impact a little.
> 
> The dairy free is because of intolerance issues and also ethical/environmental because dairy production in NZ has just gone insane. I am fine with producing dairy for the NZ public, but its all the high intensity dairy farming in regions it should not be in to produce by-products to ship overseas to markets that traditionally did not consume dairy products. And we end up with all the loss of habitat and water way pollution and degradation. The area I grew up in as a child has now started to be dairy farmed intensively. All this beautiful landscape is now covered in large irrigators and dairy cows.
> 
> The anti-leather (and wool) stance of hard-core vegans really irritates me too. Leather and wool are natural fibers, why would you want to produce more synthetics over them! If there was more of a wool market, then fewer farmers in NZ would convert to dairy.
> 
> We grow as much of our own food as we can on our urban section, and compost all our scraps. And I know many others like us too in our city. Not necessarily dairy free and vegetarian but trying to be ethical and responsible about food. Although our city council does have a local and sustainable food project, and we have a great farmers market. So I think there are many consumers that are aware. Hopefully over time that number will increase.


Yeah, I completely respect people's right to be vegetarian or vegan, as long as they don't get smug and superior with people who aren't doing things exactly the same way as them, which clearly you're not, and a lot of vegetarians (and even some vegans) are not. Here's a sketch that lampoons what I mean:






Bwahaha, that JP Sears! 😄

We don't live in a black-and-white universe, and there's different approaches that can be taken in trying to live without causing unnecessary harm to the planet and other beings. I think the main thing is to engage with these problems, rather than put our heads in the sand and not care where our food is coming from, etc - and to respect other people who are engaging with these problems whether or not they take the same path as us, and to learn from each other. After all, it's not easy to do any of this well, and we all inevitably cause some harm by being alive.

Totally get you re NZ dairying, and any industrial-scale dairying, which is happening a lot in Australia as well. It's why I support local family dairies as much as possible, including by buying some of their weanling calves. The people we bought these poddies from already have to have one of the family working a paid job elsewhere because milking 150 cows ludicrously doesn't support a family anymore these days, because of low milk prices to consumers and because the middlemen put too much in their own pockets. But if they sell up, they're most likely either going to be snapped up by mega-farmers or the corporate sector, and things will get bigger, meaning the livestock isn't getting the same attention and care, or - in our region - that good dairying land is bought up by taxpayer-subsidised tree farms who make woodchips instead of feed people...


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## MeditativeRider

What are the woodchips from the tree farms for? Heating or energy production in some form?

It all gets so backwards when anything turns into industrial scale production and driven by profits for mega corporations. Most of my editing work is in the environmental chemistry area about degradation related to industrial production...

Ha, and no, we are not superior about our non-meat eating at all. In fact, until about 3 years ago, we did eat meat. Just not that regularly because we only bought local and ethically produced. Then it just got too expensive to sustain, so we just gave it up. I have been a "I prefer-to-be-vegetarian" for most my adult life, but I will politely eat any meat (or dairy-containing item) that I get served out for meals at other people's places, because if they have put in the effort, expense, and thought to cook for me, I am sure going to eat it and be grateful. At home, I ate it in the past because my husband and one of my kids like it, and it was easier than cooking multiple meals.


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## gottatrot

I think we should try to preserve native animals. What I dislike is the attitude that a non-native animal is a less valuable being. Such as when I found the injured opossum. There is no plan to eradicate the opossums. I would approve of capturing and neutering or searching for them and quick, humane euthanasia to get the numbers down. Instead, the plan is just to not help injured ones. So ignore the injuries and let them suffer, or euthanize.

If I find an injured animal, I see no reason to euthanize rather than give care when none of the other opossums are being culled. If you would not have sought out and killed the animal, why do I need to let you kill it just because I found it? As if one opossum will make the difference when there is no other plan to limit the population. This is senseless, and I personally want to help any injured animal I find, native or not. Not every animal needs to be released again, or can be neutered first. There are other solutions. Opossums actually make great pets.


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## Knave

I am excited for you and saddling Julian!! That is a massive feat! Congratulations!!!

I really am blown away by all of the thoughts on raising animals and food. I loved this discussion. It seems something people rarely think about in urban environments. No, that is wrong, it’s simply that I feel they don’t think about the whole picture, such as farming the land vs raising the animal.

Here we cannot sell meat directly to a consumer. I guess we could “on the hoof,” but we cannot butcher and sell animals without a whole lot of nonsense to work through. I cannot sell the milk from Mama Pepper either, as that is very illegal.

On the other hand, the people who argue for animal rights, tend to think all animals raised for meat or milk are bad. The ones who argue for ecological purposes do not want cows on the range, but lack the realization that we are the caretakers of the range, and thereby the other animals on it. When that realization hits they desire the mountain to have zero caretaking, but the feral horses are to be allowed to roam free and breed excessively without an actual understanding of those repercussions.

It seems to me that actual conversations about our food and how it is raised or farmed are important to be had. I appreciate those who are wanting to make positive changes in the overall picture, but I think they need to have all of the information before they come to their final conclusions. Just as you discussed the fire and that responsibility.

I think when the entire picture comes together, from an environmental perspective, what is left to discuss is exactly what you are discussing; creating positive lives for the animals we raise and those we effect. The animals themselves can benefit the land and feed the population.

Maybe, when it all comes down to it, our biggest problem is the population itself.


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## MeditativeRider

I grew up on a farm (we had dairy goats, merino sheep for wool, and various animals for meat), but have lived in a city all my adult life. So I guess I have the perspective of both sides (and some of my dislike of eating meat is from having to help butcher animals from a young age, like the smell of pork just gets me the wrong way because of having to help scrap hair off pig carcasses in a bath of hot water). One of my best friends is a second generation dairy farmer and works for the NZ milk industry, but there is a big difference between the way that her family manage their farms and what they do on the intensive dairy conversions in NZ. I don't really think population size is the sole issue because so much food is wasted and so much extra is prepared and converted to by-products than is actually needed, and a lot of that is done for profit (by mega corporations not the farmers) rather than to meet a need.

Personally, if I cannot produce my own food or can find and afford a source that I trust is selling me what the actually say it is (in terms of local, sustainably produced food), then I would prefer not to eat it.

The whole food fraud thing is another interesting conversation. In my PhD I used a technique (stable isotope analysis) that they can use for food origin authentication. Even since when I completed my PhD (2008), it has really exploded in terms of the need for food authentication.


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## knightrider

Coming way late to this discussion because I've been off camping with my horse.

Back to selling the cattle for slaughter, we sold our young males and kept the breeding females until we'd have too many. The day they hauled off the sold cattle was always a horrible day for me because the mama cows bawled piteously for several days for their babies. It is such an awful mournful sound.

I longed for children for 20 years before I was lucky enough to be able to adopt. When you adopt a child, it is incredibly difficult, time consuming, and every single day for months and sometimes years, you have to answer this question: "Is this really what I want to do?" So you have to want it very much for a very long time . . . which I did. When I'd hear those mamas grieving for their sold-off babies, going to be slaughtered, it was very hard for me. I can only imagine how hard I would grieve if someone took my child away from me to be killed. I know the mama cows don't know the fate of their babies and in a few days, they seem to get over it . . . but I wouldn't, so it was hard to hear them bawling.


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## SueC

MeditativeRider said:


> What are the woodchips from the tree farms for? Heating or energy production in some form?


No, Australia has coal and gas if we want to burn stuff, and of course we also have incredible amounts of sunshine so are eminently suited to solar electricity generation - our household here is off-grid and all the electricity is via solar panels. Albany, 30km away, has the main electricity grid running on 70% on wind power thanks to the Albany Wind Farm:








The woodchips from the blue-gum plantations are for paper pulp production largely for international newsprint, and sadly most of that still ends up in landfill as the majority of paper in the world is still not recycled. We actually don't need most printed newspapers anymore (if we ever did) and for those we do, a far higher recycled content could be used and so these plantations don't achieve much good in the world and have taken food areas out of production, therefore increasing pressure on clearing the remaining native vegetation here and elsewhere for farming.

It is especially sad that the government decided to throw our tax money at subsidising the tree plantation corporations, when the scientific advice to them 25 years ago was that the tax money should be thrown at helping farmers fence and rehabilitate on-farm areas and to establish shelter belts at regular intervals across the landscape - shelter belts that could be fodder trees or plantation trees or specialist furniture wood or nut crops or replanted habitat for wildlife corridors and biodiversity conservation. These shelter belts would have addressed livestock welfare, soil conservation, control of waterlogging and secondary salinisation (a huge problem here because of the widespread broadacre clearing for agriculture removing native deep-rooted perennial vegetation), and would have added wildlife habitat, permanent carbon storage (which tree plantations for harvest aren't), and diversification opportunities for cash-strapped family farmers - and the local farmers were very keen to see this happen, but the government gave the money to their corporate mates instead, to buy up family farms that were going to the wall financially and plant them fence-to-fence with blue-gums, thus impoverishing our rural communities with further population loss and transferring more land from the hands of the people to the hands of the international corporate sector.

I was part of the team of scientists the government funded for scientific advice on addressing the waterlogging, land degradation and secondary salinisation problem of a local focus catchment area 25 years ago. We had hydrological modelling to show that the least amount of land would be taken out of production from the necessary replanting with trees if it was done in repeating belts, on the contour, across the whole landscape; 10-20% of the landscape replanted would have controlled the main environmental problems that way and also addressed all the other issues mentioned above - and would not have resulted in a 10-20% loss of agricultural production on the farmland, because shelter belts increase livestock and crop production per unit area. Our research and recommendations, which had majority support from an enthusiastic farming community, were roundly ignored by the government. Way more than this has now been block-planted to blue gums, and the environmental problems have not been controlled. Instead, our rural communities have shrunk as land has gone from family ownership to corporate ownership, and soil erosion, waterlogging and salinisation have continued - just as we predicted for the block plantation model 25 years ago.



MeditativeRider said:


> It all gets so backwards when anything turns into industrial scale production and driven by profits for mega corporations.


Exactly. Case in point above.



MeditativeRider said:


> Most of my editing work is in the environmental chemistry area about degradation related to industrial production...


So you'll be extra aware of this...



MeditativeRider said:


> Ha, and no, we are not superior about our non-meat eating at all. In fact, until about 3 years ago, we did eat meat. Just not that regularly because we only bought local and ethically produced. Then it just got too expensive to sustain, so we just gave it up.


I take it you enjoyed JP Sears? 😄

We supported farmers' markets as much as possible before we bought our own smallholding, when we were living in town. It was easy to buy F&V and eggs that way, better quality, better ethics and competitive prices with some of the middle man cut out - although in our town, and many others, the stallholders are paying quite large fees to be able to sell there, and it cuts into profits and drives prices to the consumer up. It makes me mad because the town squares are already paid for with our taxes and council rates and there should not be additional fees for people to be able to sell produce and home-made items at community markets. I spent part of each year living in Italy before my family emigrated to Australia when I was 11, and there, the community market in the town square was a democratic thing that didn't have middle men that had to be paid for the privilege.

Between the stallholding fees and the lack of local beef abattoirs, it was almost impossible for us to buy farmer-direct meat at the Saturday markets in Albany - the price of getting the beef back after an 800km round trip to the Harvey abattoir makes it much too expensive. Even lamb and mutton - there's a local sheep abattoir still - was exorbitantly priced; like $40/kg for neck meat and chops, and even more for roasting cuts - and that was largely down to stallholding fees, expensive inspection requirements, etc. Dairy was similarly exorbitant for similar reasons and we simply couldn't afford to pay upwards of $40/kg for cheese, even when we were both working professionally. Also, there was no cheddar...

Actual food culture countries like Mediterranean Europe manage to do these things far more affordably for the average consumer through their farmers' markets and ability to sell even meat and dairy directly from the farm, which is not allowed in Australia, allegedly for health reasons, but really to keep smaller players from competing with existing monopolies. (Europe coped fine with the health side of things and I used to pick up milk legally from the local dairies there, and you could buy meat off farmers legally and much more easily and affordably.)

If you think about it, farmers' markets and farm-direct sales was how produce was originally distributed, before the advent of supermarkets etc. Even in our local district, that's how things were before the advent of middlemen and supermarkets. It is so ironic that people used to be able to afford to buy local food back then, and sure, supermarkets, when they became the big thing, were cheaper (at some price to farmers, the environment, etc), but now it's actually _less_ affordable for the average person to buy from local farmers than it was back in the 1950s and earlier, especially meat and dairy.




Knave said:


> I am excited for you and saddling Julian!! That is a massive feat! Congratulations!!!


It took all of 5 minutes and I should do it again soon. But it's like trying to get back into Pilates or music practice or finishing the attic - always so much else to do. I'm currently actively trying to reduce the amount of work maintaining this place, e.g. I've bought two truckloads of woodchips to spread thickly on garden beds and paths etc to reduce the amount of time I spend controlling weeds. I've decided to buy a hedge trimmer to make pruning the garden bushes faster. I'm looking for a fencing contractor who will put in strainer posts for me in the internal paddock areas, which are currently star pickets and polybraid, so that I can have one run of high-tensile wire at knee height that will properly carry electric current forever and therefore end the problem with cattle damaging fences when grazing in those areas (I can't tell you how many hours I've spent fixing those fences post bovine bulldozing; the polybraid simply isn't reliable for more than three months and I can't keep replacing it).



Knave said:


> I really am blown away by all of the thoughts on raising animals and food. I loved this discussion. It seems something people rarely think about in urban environments. No, that is wrong, it’s simply that I feel they don’t think about the whole picture, such as farming the land vs raising the animal.


I think that's right, and it's because they don't see the whole picture from where they are sitting. Most of the people in Australia, which is highly urbanised, don't have significant immersion experience in natural ecosystems, or good ecological understanding, or personal experience trying to live off the land - let alone growing anything edible themselves, although that part is getting better again, with more enthusiasm for backyard vegetable growing - and the pandemic has increased this further!

Our First Nations people, on the other hand, culturally did spend their lives immersed in natural ecosystems and living off the land until colonisation, and therefore have a much better cultural understanding of ecological realities, the interconnectedness of things, and the place of humans in the overall scheme of things (in siblinghood with other species, not as lord and master).



Knave said:


> Here we cannot sell meat directly to a consumer. I guess we could “on the hoof,” but we cannot butcher and sell animals without a whole lot of nonsense to work through. I cannot sell the milk from Mama Pepper either, as that is very illegal.


Similar to Australia. I make a point of buying as much "illegal" milk as possible, because I want to buy local and support local farmers. And because the national dairy herd has no TB etc, and is actually safer to buy unpasteurised milk off than it was in Europe, where buying and drinking raw milk was considered a public right. And if you look at the whole issue of what's happening to gut flora in modern humans, I think the clamouring to exclude pathogens largely came at the expense of also killing beneficial microflora. My gut is much happier on raw milk than sterile milk.



Knave said:


> On the other hand, the people who argue for animal rights, tend to think all animals raised for meat or milk are bad. The ones who argue for ecological purposes do not want cows on the range, but lack the realization that we are the caretakers of the range, and thereby the other animals on it. When that realization hits they desire the mountain to have zero caretaking, but the feral horses are to be allowed to roam free and breed excessively without an actual understanding of those repercussions.


I guess we're back to Disneyfication problems here - and just lack of understanding. Also, I think even with your rangeland production, just as anywhere else, the downward pressure on price is incompatible with continuing to make livelihoods without putting more and more pressure on the land. We see that in Australia, all over the agricultural areas too. Consumers have got to pay a more reasonable price for their food, and less of it has to be taken by middlemen, for people to be able to steward the land properly, and enough people to be out there to do it - which there currently really aren't, in Australia.



Knave said:


> It seems to me that actual conversations about our food and how it is raised or farmed are important to be had. I appreciate those who are wanting to make positive changes in the overall picture, but I think they need to have all of the information before they come to their final conclusions. Just as you discussed the fire and that responsibility.
> 
> I think when the entire picture comes together, from an environmental perspective, what is left to discuss is exactly what you are discussing; creating positive lives for the animals we raise and those we effect. The animals themselves can benefit the land and feed the population.
> 
> Maybe, when it all comes down to it, our biggest problem is the population itself.


When I was 16, I wrote something in my journal which I now think was spot on: "If you're looking for the Apocalyptic Horsemen, just look in the mirror in the morning." 👺


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## SueC

Hiya, @knightrider!  I hope you had a great campout. Have you got pics and a story? I'm always happy to think of you going on your early morning rides and regular big campouts! ❤

In fact, it's nice to be in this position to care about these people from all over the world who correspond here, and wonder how they're doing, and compare notes, and read updates, and have conversations like this! That's a good global-village thing; I think this journal group is the best example of a global-village thing in my life! 🧸🌏


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## bsms

Hmmmm...if folks needed to depend on local farmers in Tucson, we'd all starve. There were big cattle ranches near at one time, but farmers have switched to dairy (dairy?!) and cotton. Water intensive. In the desert. May make business sense but ecologically it is a disaster. Foreign investors have built huge dairy farms based on 1,500+' deep wells and sucking out the groundwater. Incredibly STUPID but I assume they are paying off the politicians. Or maybe it is based on the greed of the local people who value short term jobs over devastating consequences down the road:

"_Though the arid Willcox area averages 12 inches of rainfall a year, the farms have access to huge amounts of groundwater. There is no restriction on how much they can pump out of the ground. Big farms around Willcox draw on wells as deep as 2,500 feet. As they do, water levels throughout the area are plummeting and homeowners’ shallower wells are increasingly going dry. As the water is pumped out, the ground is sinking. As the earth settles, fissures are gouging cracks in the roads. Farms and other well owners are pumping more than four times as much water as the estimated natural recharge that goes into the ground in an average year, according to data from the Arizona Department of Water Resources...

Willcox is a closed basin encircled by mountains, without any major river that runs in or out. The entire basin drains into a large dry lake just south of Willcox. Other than local rain and snowmelt, there is nothing to recharge the underground water supply._"









In southeastern Arizona, farms drill a half-mile deep while families pay the price


Around Willcox, corporate farms are drilling wells up to 2,500 feet deep. Water levels are dropping, and homeowners are struggling with the costs.




www.azcentral.com





Consider:

"_Comanche Springs, once the sixth largest spring in Texas, has a long and storied history, from
mammoths sipping its brackish flow to hosting conquistadors and frontier forts to irrigating
thousands of acres to being the focus of a key court decision. Unfortunately, due to pumping_
_seven miles to the west, the springs started to fail in 1947 and stopped flowing in 1961 for 25_
_years. Along with the loss of Fort Stockton’s natural swimming hole and the livelihoods of
more than 100 families downstream was an ecosystem that supported several species now
recognized as endangered, including the Comanche Springs pupfish. In 1986, the springs
sprang back for a couple winters, disappeared, and then returned off and on in ensuing decades.
Consistent winter flow over the past decade had posed the question: What would it take to
bring flows back over the entire year?_"









New Report: Bringing Back Comanche Springs — AUSTIN GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY


AGS members Robert Mace and Doug Wierman (and Sharlene Leurig and Harry Seely) have recently published a fascinating and important report on the hydrogeology of Comanche Springs in Pecos County, Texas. As you know these are the iconic and now infamous springs of west Texas that were “dried up” by th




www.austingeosoc.org


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## Knave

@bsms we are having massive problems with that here. They are working to change the laws, depending on what side you are on there are huge arguments.

The law would be to shut down all of the water rights given after a certain year (our groundwater is being overpumped, and now it is not only a hugely different landscape than it once was, but the water is disappearing). Now, they don’t want that to happen, so they are trying to instigate a plan which socializes the water. Therefore everyone is cut a certain amount, but they can move that water and sell it, and that makes a whole other onset of issues.

They don’t want to end people’s livelihoods, but they do have to solve the problem. It is such a mess!


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## SueC

Sadly, it seems that resources are over-allocated and silly things done all over the world, and the problem is, if you make a free-for-all at the start with a finite resource like groundwater, then more people come to depend on it than can be sustained in the long term, which is the situation @Knave and her community find themselves in. And that's similar to the story along Australia's Murray River as well - it's been overpumped for decades, as have the nearby aquifers - scientists were calling a red alert about that when I was still in middle school, nobody listened and the chickens have come home to roost. Sadly, both irrigation farmers that came to depend on the water and the entire Murray River ecosystem are suffering as a result, and there can be no win-win solutions here - only environmental degradation, business failure and human heartbreak. This is what happens when you take over twice as much as is sustainable, and human beings don't seem to learn when it comes to these things - and especially, it's a case of governments not listening to their own advisors and allowing this to happen.

All along the West Australian west coast, groundwater was overpumped in recent decades as high-water-use mega-vegetable farms were allowed to establish, and then what was left of the Tuart forest on the Mandurah-Bunbury stretch started to die "mysteriously' - it was no mystery to people who thought about it; the trees were running out of groundwater, and ridiculously it took another decade for the science to catch up with that obvious fact. All the way up and down that coast, which carries millions in human population, the salt water from the ocean started to encroach into aquifers as people pumped them out for their farms and golf courses, so that coastal bores went salty.

The tragedy is that these situations could be prevented in the first place by the use of common sense - by preventing overpumping in the first place. But apparently, that's beyond human communities, where everyone just takes what they want and the consequences show up later.

Ridiculous to be dairying in the desert, @bsms, just like it's ridiculous that rice and cotton are grown in Australia's dryland agricultural areas by irrigating with water from the dying Murray River. Human beings as a species really are a cancer on the planet, and if we don't mend our ways soon it's going to come back to bite us big time.


*THE DAY'S ACHIEVEMENTS*

In other news, today I finished moving one truckload of woodchips around the garden (photos soon) for good-looking anti-weed mulching that will save me time, trimmed two sets of donkey feet, and even managed to go for a 20-minute bareback loop of our valley floor tracks, walking and trotting. @gottatrot may be interested to know that this time there was less embarrassing heaving as I mounted bareback from the ground and I was on quite smoothly, and did not lie across the horse like a bag of potatoes with my feet hanging off one end and the head off the other with the horse walking in circles while trying to turn myself 90 degrees. 😜

However, I did have to get off 15 minutes into the ride and walk the remaining 800 metres home because I managed to chafe my backside painfully in that short time. The horse's spine is a bit more prominent than it used to be with age and Cushing's and not doing regular intensive riding anymore, so he's not quite as cushioned with back muscles as he was, and as a result I get too much friction in the wrong spot - and too much tension on my bum crack of all things, which exacerbates the friction problem. Maybe I need teflon underwear.

Nappy rash cream has been applied and fingers are crossed because tomorrow is our day off, with a good weather forecast, and we are hoping for another cycling expedition...

The calves have settled in well and spent last night in the big paddock with the horses, as there's mild weather and no wind and rain just now, so I'm not attempting to lock them into the small paddock with the shelter shed and the tree lucerne hedges all around - though come the weekend, I'll see if I can't persuade them back there, with another 40mm of rain expected over Saturday/Sunday... tonight too they're out grazing with the horses, and after the horses were fed, I took some cow cubes and a biscuit of hay for roughage to them in their current favourite spot, which is grazing the grass under the trees in the western windbreak, which I opened up to them (but not the horses or donkeys) by removing the bottom polybraid line a couple of days ago. Calves like the shelter amongst the trees and seem to find the shade-grown grass there extra tasty, although they also come out into the open paddock during the day to graze the sunny grass there.

They are very cute when I come to visit them with food, or just on welfare checks to see how they're doing and to remind them where the water is in that paddock - it's in a bathtub and I go splashing it demonstratively when they're nearby, which always results in them running over to investigate, and drink. They're still saying, "Hmmm, this isn't milk is it, but OK..." - having drunk milk from buckets at the dairy. It's why I've bought them cow cubes, because they're so young and even though it's normal to wean these things at 3 months and they're apparently OK to subsist on pasture as long as they get enough roughage, I think giving them some cubes for a couple of weeks will help them make that transition to all-grazing better.

But, they seem happy and are kicking up their heels when running around, so that's good - four days here and starting to get the geography of our inner paddocks - the 4 hectares that we've fenced off. They won't be going into the common (8 hectares pasture, 50 hectares bush) until spring, because the pasture there is too wet in the winter and because I don't want these littlies getting lost in the bushland where I can't find them. In another four months they will be more than twice the size they are now and far more sturdy and streetwise, but until then there's plenty of feed in the inside paddocks for them.

Dinner tonight was pumpkin soup and tuna pasta salad (with capsicum, cubes of cheddar, and home-grown spring onions, celery, tomatoes and olives, all in a Greek yoghurt/whole-egg mayonnaise dressing), while watching classic Dr Who (we're in the middle of the Sylvester McCoy era from the late 80s). Half an hour in I fell asleep at the ridiculous time of 8pm; that's what happens if you're shovelling and wheelbarrowing all day. Three hours later I woke up again in need of tea and a late-night snack, and it seemed as good a time as any to update my journal. The nappy rash cream is working already and I'm hoping that with extra precautions and my padded bike shorts I'll be OK to do the Torbay Rail Trail with Brett tomorrow!


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## SueC

*NEW PRINT FOR OUR WALL*

And now for something completely different. A while back I bought a print at a fundraiser for a heart charity. It was done by the singer/guitarist of one of our favourite bands, and we'd not have bought it if we hadn't actually really liked it. It took about a month to get here from the UK and then it took six weeks for the framing I'd chosen for it to get to the picture framer's. But I hung it up last week. I took some photos of the print in its place and of its companion decorations - and you can see why we had to hang it in that room.

The one place we had left in this room was a place we used to have a framed photograph of a view from a house we lived in on a working holiday to Tasmania, but it kept fading and we were fed up with replacing it. So we had room for this print.


It may seem out of the way, but we see this every day and it's like another little window out into the night sky at night. It's a bit fuzzy here because of the glass reflections, but it's a gorgeous night sky reflecting in the ocean.

The other good thing about hanging it in a private room is that we won't have to explain to people that no, that's not whale blood or a nuclear explosion, just an allusion to kissing. (Which is kind of nice because we do understand this, "The universe is so beautiful and I love sharing it with you" thing you can get in a couple.)

Here's a close-up of the best-matching frame I could find it:

Here's the companion wall decorations that were already in the room - a print of "Pensée Musicale" by Valérie Maugeri, which we bought in Hobart over a decade ago, and our favourite wedding picture in a frame friends gave us for our wedding.


This is the wall we don't hang art on because it's already art:

This is Brett making that art back in 2012:

And this gives you an idea of the overall room - we took this photo for the Australian Owner Builder magazine in which we have about a dozen articles on what we've done around here.


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## SueC

from Existential Comics


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## bsms

Downloaded. Am emailing THAT to some friends!


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## SueC

Well, it's good to see some other people getting something out of these cartoons, bwahaha! 😜 There is actually another that really tickled me today...










@egrogan might also like this one as a follow-up to existentialism and the whole Jean-Paul Sartre cookbook thing... (see The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook)

This cartoon could be seen as taking the mickey out of either position here, but to me it just shows up the negative, self-absorbed, self-pitying nature of existentialism - at each point where the character imagines he is conducting philosophical discourse and drawing valid conclusions, he is actually making self-limiting choices. Why choose to obsess about death when it's pretty miraculous you're even alive? Why look the gift horse in the mouth? Why waste your finite time worrying about the end of your time? Like the Stoics said, while we live death is not with us, and when death is with us we are no longer there. Existentialists are like children who, when you give them an icecream, say, "Oh, this is too small for me to enjoy it, all I will think about is how terrible it will be when I run out of icecream." And they are not happy unless they have an infinite supply of icecream, and if you gave them that they would probably find something else to complain about, like their impending and allegedly inevitable obesity or the monotony of infinitely eating icecream.

And then this view that you "have" to make choices, rather than seeing it as a privilege - always that poor-me negativity and this casting oneself as this imposed-upon victim, because one is alive, for heaven's sake. And if your life is meaningless at the end because you die, well then it's because you've not thought about anyone else but yourself, because if you have planted a tree or made someone smile you have had a meaningful effect, to mention just two examples.

Existentialism has got to be one of the most myopic, emotionally immature and self-centered philosophies in the universe. Too right, go take a run around the block. Maybe to a soup kitchen to help someone else instead of moan in this ludicrous manner. For further information, see the above cookbook link. End rant.


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## bsms

SueC said:


> Why choose to obsess about death when it's pretty miraculous you're even alive? Why look the gift horse in the mouth? Why waste your finite time worrying about the end of your time?


The Christian in me believes in an afterlife, and I don't worry about "reason" per se. As much as I value reason, I know MY reasoning powers are limited and I assume ALL of us have limits to our reason based on how, when and where we live. A lot of very intelligent, "reasonable" people have supported things like slavery, raping the earth, etc. If they can make errors like that, then why would I trust MY reasoning powers?

That said, I've argued before that if I didn't believe in God, I'd still believe in karma. People who live for themselves, who value profit or power over doing "good" - and most societies worldwide have a lot in common on how they define good - over the long term strike me as having miserable lives. I'm not sure THEY would agree, but I've never met someone who behaved like that whose life I would like to step into! I've met high-ranking military officers who sacrificed their families and their values to advance their careers. And I thank God I'm not them! I wouldn't trade my life for theirs for anything. I feel that way as a Christian, but I'd feel that way (I think) if I were an atheist.

In The Silver Chair, CS Lewis has the character Puddleglum give this speech:

“_One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one more thing to be said, even so.

Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things-trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. 

*I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia.* So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say._”

I'd rather be intellectually shallow and foolish and blind to "the real world" and live the life I've had than be a smart existentialist. I'd rather enjoy my family, the dogs, Bandit and the horses, try (although often fail) to do right by others, etc - because I've met people who didn't, and if there is no God, then truly "Karma" is a [expletive deleted]!

Or, as you put it more succinctly:


SueC said:


> And if your life is meaningless at the end because you die, well *then it's because you've not thought about anyone else but yourself*, because if you have planted a tree or made someone smile you have had a meaningful effect...


​


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## knightrider

Nicely put! I have a much-loved quote on my wall.

*“One of the very first things I figured out about life...is that it's better to be a hopeful person than a cynical, grumpy one, because you have to live in the same world either way, and if you're hopeful, you have more fun.”*

― Barbara Kingsolver


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## SueC

Just throwing in a song that came out today. It's a bit more electronic than I usually like my music, but the atmosphere of this is excellent and so are the lyrics.






_HOW NOT TO DROWN

I'm writing a book on how to stay conscious when you drown
And if the words float up to the surface
I'll keep them down
This is the first time I know
I don't want the crown
You can take it now
You promised the world and brought me it hanging from a string
Stuck in my mouth, into my throat
Told me to sing
That was the first time I knew
You can't kill the king
And those who kiss the ring

Tell me how
It's better when the sun goes down
We will never escape this town
I wasn't scared when he caught me
Look what it taught me
Tell me how
It's better if I make no sound
I will never escape these doubts
I wasn't dead when they found me
Watch as they pull me down

I'm writing a chapter on what to do after they dig you up
On what to do after you grew to hate what you used to love
That was the first time I knew
They were out for blood
And they would have your guts

Tell me how
It's better when the sun goes down
We will never escape this town
I wasn't scared when he caught me
Look what it taught me
Tell me how
It's better if I make no sound
I will never escape these doubts
I wasn't dead when they found me
Watch as they pull me down

Watch as they pull me down
Watch as they pull me down
Pulling me down
Dead when they found me
Watch as they pull me down
Watch as they pull me down
Watch as they pull me down
Pulling me down
Dead when they found me
Watch as they pull me down

I'm writing a book on how to stay conscious when you drown
And if the words float up to the surface
I'll keep them down
This is the first time I know
I don't want the crown
You can take it now
You can take it now
Take it now_


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## SueC

I'm happy today because Nelly is feeling better after giving us a scare.








She's in the foreground, with offspring Ben behind.

I don't know what she ate but we found her unable to walk properly in the edge of the bushland last night when she didn't come in for bucket o'clock. There was a severe weather warning (again!!!) and it took Brett and me half an hour to shift the 200kg donkey the 100m back around the house to the internal paddocks and the shelter, with one of us pulling at one end and the other pushing, and lots of encouragement. She was starving hungry so we fed her some hay after her hard feed, and because she then lay down in a big sand hole outside the shelter I put a rug on her.

A late-night phone call to the emergency line of our usual veterinarian had the duty vet suggesting she might have laminitis, which really freaked me out because it's the middle of winter and she's not obese and she didn't get into a feed bin, and with laminitis you really have to know the cause and eliminate it, or it can conceivably kill them. It was suggested I ring the vet clinic in the morning.

Early morning when I went to check on her she did a fabulous dead donkey impersonation which gave me a scare - lying flat on her side with glazed eyes, and unresponsive to my calls. However, Ben responded to me with a loud bray, which is sort of like a foghorn, and this startled Nelly awake - phew! Not dead, just in deep sleep.

Example of a dead donkey impersonation, starring Don Quixote:

Nelly was definitely not happy. Nobody at the vet clinic could come out before lunchtime and they suggested I ring around to see if anyone else could do it earlier - which is how I contacted Dr Shae from Nullaki, who whipped out to our place after finishing a bit of surgery. I instantly liked her and her approach to the animal and trying to figure out the problem. Like me the night before, she couldn't find evidence of a bounding digital pulse or of pain when pressure-testing her soles, so she listened to her gut sounds and found them too quiet, and had a look at her last batch of droppings. Her hypothesis was that Nelly had a bad belly-ache, at least partially caused by probably not drinking enough the previous day, which had dehydrated her manure and made her uncomfortable - and possibly by eating something unsuitable out in the bushland. She also said because her heart rate wasn't badly elevated and her colour was good, she wasn't particularly worried about her at this stage. I should encourage her to drink (I'd already placed a bucket next to her previous evening but she wasn't that interested) and keep an eye on her.

The vet gave her an IV painkiller and told me donkeys are incredibly sooky when they do eventually get overwhelmed by pain, but that like in humans, gut aches can be really bad without actually being dangerous. But because we didn't know the cause, to call her again if she wasn't up and about next day.

Nelly was up and about in the afternoon, still a bit staggery but determined to do some grazing, so I let her and Ben into our garden, which is where they are spending the night. She's looking better and hopefully will continue to improve.


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## egrogan

Goodness, that does sound scary. Hope her discomfort passes quickly and she's out and about soon!


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## SueC

Hiya, @egrogan! 🙂 Nelly is better, as in up and about a bit instead of lying on her side like yesterday morning. She's still ill though; I'm not letting her out in the Common with the horses because I'm suspicious that she ate something she shouldn't have in the bushland, and if she heads back for more it could make things worse. I've no proof that this is what the problem is, but she and Ben are always sampling all sorts of native vegetation instead of staying on the pasture, and we do have some poisonous plants in the region, possibly on our block - and we'd certainly have things that would give livestock a stomachache if they ate it.

Ben over the last few months has been occasionally coming in at night with a mild bellyache, which has him refusing his evening bucket and standing straddled and looking preoccupied. He's always been fine again the next day but I was starting to wonder what was going on - and now Nelly, so since these two are always gallivanting about together, it does make me very suspicious about what they might be eating.

We've run livestock in the Common for ten years now and never before now had a possible case of animals having trouble with native plants, even though they've always had access and all of them - horses, cattle, donkeys - will nip into the edges and eat bush grass. But perhaps, with Ben and Nelly, something more adventurous and less advisable? Or maybe I'm on the wrong track and it's something else altogether.

Nelly definitely still has abdominal discomfort - eases herself from one hind leg to another and looks back at her belly, occasionally nipping at it. She's eating and she's on phenylbutazone so that makes her more comfortable. There's a chance that she does have mild laminitis on top of her bellyache - and if she ate something untoward then the two could easily occur together. Her heel bulbs are warm, but it's hard to tell if they are warmer than any other donkey's - no flinching on the hoof testers yesterday, heart rate and colour pretty normal. She does walk as if her feet are sore - very careful and short with lots of lifting her feet up - but better than yesterday and looking brighter than yesterday (which you'd expect on bute).

Still, the best thing for her is to walk around, graze and take her mind off things - true for colic as it is for mild laminitis, according to Dr Shae. Donkeys aren't as heavy as horses so are less likely to mechanically damage their feet walking around with mild laminitis, and as the vet says, if they don't walk around then the blood doesn't circulate properly through their hooves, which you need for healing.

It's because I'd kind of apologised for walking her around the house on Wednesday night because so many people, including experts, say, "Do not move an animal if you suspect it has laminitis!" ...but 1) we had a severe weather warning with sheep hypothermia alert, so I had to get the sick donkey under shelter, and 2) just rugging her wouldn't have been helpful as she needed to be with her herd, or at least with Ben, and I couldn't leave both of them out there eating bush plants if there's any chance it's been making them ill. And we do not have a forklift, so.

The donkeys are all braying disconsolately as I type because they want to go into the Common. I'm not going to let them unless I can supervise Nelly and Ben, and I've got a ton of work to get through - right now I'm waiting for the washing, and for my spaghetti to cook, and then I've got to make up more seed trays and direct sow more broad beans and peas in the garden. There's a pipe to repair and a leaky laundry tap to fix and some tax paperwork to do and the windows and floors look like they need attention again already, although they probably won't be prioritised today - and the western barge on the house has peeling paint and needs sanding and repainting, which I've know a while and probably won't fit in today. Anyway, the donkeys have got four hectares of space in the internal paddocks to walk around and I've cut them acacia for roughage, so...honestly!

Nelly and Ben are both big cuddlebugs and when I was fixing up a bit of fencing this morning, I literally had one donkey under each arm. Nelly was really enjoying having her itchy spots scratched and kept following me around.

@egrogan, how are you finding the to-do list for your homestead? What are you currently tackling, and what jobs are sitting there needing to be done but you can't get to them just yet? And how are you coping with having more stuff to do than you have time for?

And how often do any of you clean the windows in your houses? We vacuum and do a basic clean of our house weekly, but that doesn't include windows, which I tend to tackle in sections every three months or so - not all of them at once or I would scream. We also do deep-cleans of various rooms and areas when they really need it - something we can't do with the standard weekly clean. All up, to do a standard clean of our house and the week's laundry takes about a day out of every week here - but that includes the guest wing...


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## SueC

And now for something more fun, following on from a previous topic:



SueC said:


> Existentialists are like children who, when you give them an icecream, say, "Oh, this is too small for me to enjoy it, all I will think about is how terrible it will be when I run out of icecream." And *they are not happy unless they have an infinite supply of icecream, and if you gave them that they would probably find something else to complain about, like their impending and allegedly inevitable obesity or the monotony of infinitely eating icecream*.


A cartoon I read yesterday put this well:








Schopenhauer appears to be another of those misery-guts philosophers, and from some accounts not a very nice person either. He sort of reminds me of a toddler with oppositional defiance disorder, at least in his cartoon version here; though it does strike me that quite a few people who are revered as serious philosophers didn't confront their inner demons and instead projected them outwards and called it a philosophy.

So people like Sartre and his ilk had problems with finding meaning and with personal responsibility - but it's so infuriating when people extrapolate their own deficiencies out at the world, and then pretend they know something about the world noone else does, and that the way they see the world is the true and correct way to see the world. So like religion, actually, and I've often said it, it's easy to exchange the "mind mould" of organised religion for another "mind mould" from philosophy. To me, the whole idea of philosophy is to consider various different perspectives and let that make you think and synthesise and come up with your own ideas, rather than adopt one perspective like a religion. You can see where that leads... and yet, people who substitute a philosophy brain mould for a religion brain mould then often feel so superior to the "dumb" religious people they've left behind. But really, their new mould is just as limiting.

Just general observations, and I'm not saying that every narrow-field philosopher or all religious persons have "mind moulds" and don't question anything critically! 🌟 If you look through a psychological lens every now and then, the human race seems extra weird.

Here's some more fun cartoons:

*A Day In The Life Of Arthur Schopenhauer*

















*Schopenhauer's Despair*









😁 😂 🥳 🤪

More here: Arthur Schopenhauer - Existential Comics


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## Knave

I was so glad Nelly was well. I do sometimes believe though that one should trust their gut over what the vet says. Sometimes, like with Bones’s hoof (remember when they wanted me to put him down?!), you have more information floating around in your brain about that animal and that specific situation. It works that way with kids too (remember the doctor who tried to put wart cream on little girl’s tumor?!). I’d go with your gut. Donkeys are particularly smart though I’ve heard, and I would believe she learned her lesson maybe if she is similar to Zeus.


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## bsms

Concerning the cartoons....when I get hungry enough, I'm a flaming [expletive deleted]! Back when my rancher friend was my college room mate, he glared at me one evening and shouted, "_Just EAT SOMETHING! I'm tired of your {stuff]!_" And...he was right. Something we sometimes laugh about 40 years later.


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## SueC

More cartoons, but this time I want to know: To what extent do you agree/disagree with each philosopher, and why? ...because all of you work with "animals"...
















from Rene Descartes - Existential Comics

PS: Kierkegaard's body language in the first "group shot" - bwahahahaha! 😂 🤪


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## Knave

I think they are all wrong. How to put my unconventional thoughts into words….

I think that humans are arrogant creatures who like to believe they are highly intelligent and emotional beings in comparison to any other animal. Who knows what the ant thinks about the giants around him?

I think animals are no less than humans are. I think they think and communicate in their own ways and their priorities seem to be different. To them, we probably are the ones who are beneath, or they don’t measure in such a way, or perhaps they are serving God in the way they have been asked to. Our arrogance allows us to assume our superiority. We cannot know what it is to be a horse or a lion or a bee. We can only hypothesize, and then convince other humans of our theories.


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## SueC

@Knave, I totally agree with you on all of this - that was basically what I thought, after reading the cartoon! I didn't want to say what I thought before others had had a go, but I did suspect that a few of us would strongly disagree with most or all of these guys - since we've got extensive experience working with "other" animals, and aren't sitting in cities - and all of these philosophers were linked to cities, and to disconnect from nature and animals, and in my view they then widely speculated from their own ignorance and made personal psychological projections which tell you more about them than the external world etc etc, which is how I'm beginning to see a lot of philosophy...

(...and I've got a hypothesis about Kierkegaard: That he definitely wasn't carried around in a sling as a baby. Maybe he was left in the crib for long intervals and his caregiver didn't show up regularly enough and ignored his crying so little baby Kierkegaard's first experience of being in the world was disproportionately of hunger, pain, despair, separateness and hopelessness? And more of the void, than of warmth and interaction and being cared about? So that's his first experience of the world...and went on to be his lasting one, it seems...)


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## gottatrot

I agree with @Knave, very much. I also think humans take their arrogance further, and consider one or two types of intelligence as superior and more valuable than others. Even among humans, there are things like IQ tests and other ways of measuring intelligence that disregard all other possibilities. 

Animals have intelligence in areas we can't imagine, such as sensing electrical or heat readings from other creatures, superior mapping memories, and other things. Some humans also have intelligence in areas not measurable by IQ. In particular, Iceland does not allow Down Syndrome children to be born, considering them not valuable. However, the Down Syndrome people I've known have highly developed emotional intelligence, sensing and helping others with emotional needs. 

Conditions like Autism are also considered defects, rather than variations of normal. People who may not be suited for "any" job or career are considered less valuable. However, none of us are suited for "any" job or career, and I believe that everyone has talents and ways they can contribute to the world. Something that comes to mind is Jen Arnold, who is a little person physician who works in neonatal intensive care. I think it's amazing she realized she would be particularly suited to working on tiny babies because of her size. 

I assume tiny creatures such as flies and spiders are highly intelligent in ways we don't understand. I've seen spiders have territorial battles, and we had a pet fly for a couple months that would follow us from room to room, sit near us and take little crumbs we fed him. He seemed social and enjoyed sitting on my arm and washing himself, and would sit close to us and just "hang out" when we were watching T.V.


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## SueC

*FLOODS AND MAYHEM*

It's been an extreme winter here, after three years of drought. We only had 50-60% of normal annual rainfall here in 2018, 2019 and 2020, and now we've got one of the wettest winters on record, and this is not good news - it's too much water all at once turning low-lying and flat areas of the landscape into a bog for hundreds of square kilometres through this region. We drove to Denmark for a day out last week. crossing three rivers, and I've never seen them as high as they are now - my first year here was 1994 - they're almost up to the bottoms of the bridges, and all around the region the roadside drainage was full to the brim, in places running like whitewater and in others spilling out over the roadways.

We've had severe weather events at least once a week for the last six weeks or so - sleet, hail, torrential downpours, gale-force winds and accompanying livestock hypothermia warnings. On the weekend we had another; over 50mm (about 2 inches) of rain were dumped here in under 24 hours on the Sunday - and that's after a similar day the previous weekend, and other surrounding days with falls of 10-30mm. This is what our place looked like on Monday morning.

The farm dam has never been this high and is overflowing through the back. 


The seasonal wetlands in the bushland-covered valley floor are overflowing, and the water flow from these has eroded the bank in places (and also, I saw this morning, on our neighbour's dam, where water was still running over the eroding edges like a mini Niagara Falls).


This is taken off the dam wall - you can see it overflowing into the field, and how wet the whole landscape is:


Water from this and the general load all across the landscape is making its way across the field into the roadside drainage ditch. The water is flowing towards the road on the north, and you can see it banking up along the fence because the roadside drainage ditch can't cope with it all:


This is our seasonal creek - usually nonexistent in summer, and a tiny thing in winter that horse or person can easily leap over. It takes excess water from the valley floor and its seasonal wetlands to the roadside drain.


The valley floor is so oversaturated it's spewing water at every edge, not just into the creek. Here it's flowing straight out onto the pasture as sheet water.

This is our driveway. We were finally able to afford to have a decent driveway built last year, and Keith and Tom Abbey did a superb job on it, cambering and compacting the gravel and installing drainage to keep the water away from it. It's stood up to the wild weather of the last six weeks superbly. Before we had this driveway, in prolonged wet weather we'd have to park the car three quarters of the way to the house and cross the mud patch/miniature swamp with gumboots to get to the house. We love our driveway.

This is the driveway drain diverting water away from the driveway:

So far, so good. But yesterday morning, the roadside drains overflowed, and flooded our road crossover.



Excess water overflowing into the drain from over the top:

You can see it eroding the driveway surface there - it's washed the clay and silt out on that side of the driveway, and left mostly gravel etc. That's also why the water looks red.


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## SueC

A few more:





We were able to cross through the water with the car because it wasn't too deep; this morning it's no longer spilling over the crossover. The driveway at the crossover is usable, but the surface is damaged on the drainage side. We may get the whole driveway re-compacted at the start of summer - we'll see.

And this is just a minor example of what's going on it the region. Driving to Denmark last week, quite a few sections of road were inundated - shallow enough to get through, but other roads have been completely blocked by points like this being too deep to cross by car, and after Sunday's over 50mm of rain and 80km/h winds, widespread waterlogging, flooding and damage are worsening from west of Denmark to east of Albany.

Livestock all over the area have been in super-wet pasture for six weeks, and it's eating away at hooves in cattle, horses and donkeys alike. Where they have access to higher ground, they seek it, but even there the grass is wet. Our own place has never been as wet as this in the ten years we've been here. The animals here are hanging out on higher ground and have sodden hooves after each severe weather system. I've been using Stockholm tar before each new onslaught to give them an antimicrobial and water barrier, which has helped our susceptible donkeys not to go lame through rot.

Nelly still has mild laminitis for unknown reasons - her hooves actually looked OK because she hangs out on high ground consistently. It's the wrong season for laminitis, she didn't get into a feed bin, we've not had a donkey with laminitis before etc so I'm scratching my head. She's been on bute nearly a fortnight and is improving, but I'd like to know why it happened so I can prevent a recurrence. I've started feeding dolomite in the bucket feed to get extra calcium and magnesium into them all. Usually I don't feed it because it interferes with the vitamin/mineral supplement I give them as standard, or I alternate the two. Right now it's all going in - I can't do two separate feeds and don't want to alternate in case the problem is acute and to do with calcium/magnesium supply (supplementation is recommended on kikuyu pastures, but so is feeding extra selenium etc etc).

I've only ridden a handful of times in the past six weeks because it's either raining or the ground is sodden in most places. Also, there's other problems. The generator we use to top up the home battery supply when there's not been enough sun took several services before the inverter decided it could talk to it and let it charge the batteries. So we went through the start of winter with minimal electricity (sun only and there wasn't much) whenever we had bad weather systems coming through, while the generator kept returning to the service department. Finally, over the last two weeks, we had the luxury of a generator which actually charged the battery bank when we needed it to - it was wonderful.

And then yesterday morning it started malfunctioning again and the inverter spits it out and tries to shut down the whole electric system, which discouraged me from persisting with the generator. So we had to turn all the fridges and freezers off last night and hope for sun today and I will have to take it in to the service centre tomorrow again, for the third time this year.

By the way, we're lucky compared to the people on mains power in the district, because they've been having regular outages over the last six weeks, some lasting over a day, while the electric companies scramble to repair the damaged grid. We've only had to ration - and we've only ever lost power completely once, in the eight years we've been off-grid, and that was only for two hours one morning after we'd red-lined the system (the system automatically shuts down if battery levels go under 30% and they're not actually supposed to go below 60% for optimum battery life).

Added to all that, Brett's workplace has been unhappy for him since the new manager took over last year. I'd personally go for mediation - at least in the public service you can do that, and I've done that successfully in a similar situation so that the nastiness doesn't go on and on - but the manager is refusing mediation, and we have no idea what the labour laws are about mediation when you're not in the public service, so I guess we need to do some research. And perhaps after eight years, to look elsewhere for our off-farm income - although of course it's galling that two people at a workplace of over 30 people which generally have been a happy workplace can make life such a misery, just by one of them being in a power position and siding with another who has said extremely rude things and chronically not followed agreed work protocols. How can it be that everyone has to do XYZ, but then some people apparently don't have to, even though officially they do have to? How can there be double standards like this?

We're looking at the possibility of co-farming our place with other interested people, because we really don't have enough time and energy between the two of us, especially with one working off-farm for income, to get the best out of this place, which has so much more potential than what we can develop given those constraints. I'm always chasing my own tail just trying to get around the basic tasks and some of the accumulated maintenance/repair list. Again, we'd have to find the right people, but some recent guests are connected into a Tiny House/sharing community, and they were fantastic - so we've asked them to put word out amongst those people with whom they could personally go into a co-venture (because you can't do that kind of thing with, I would guess, over 80% of people - insufficient skills, flaky, all sorts of potential trouble - have any of you ever house-shared, when you were younger?).

The Internet has been terrible all week, like dial-up used to be, and yesterday it dropped out completely for most of the day. Combined with electricity rationing, this means I've not been online as much. In fact, so I could do this journal entry, Brett let me have our backup laptop battery this morning - it was already charged. But I have to ration it!

Fingers crossed, we'll figure out what's wrong with the generator. It's something that kicks in after a while, that makes it malfunction under load, and then the inverter spits it out. We're wondering if it's vibration changing the internal settings - would a vibration mat help? Currently it's bolted to a concrete floor to stop it walking. Or maybe ants or other critters got into its air supply somewhere between last week, when it was working perfectly, and yesterday...


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## egrogan

Can’t like your post @SueC because it sounds like a stressful time. It reminds me a lot of the winter we had this year, extreme snow topped by extreme rain topped by extreme snow again. It is stressful when your equines live out in the weather and there’s only so much you can do to dry out their feet. Hope things with Nelly improve, and for Brett too.

We’ve considered the possibility of trying to find young farmers who could do something with some of the land here. There are regional “matchmaker” websites that are supposed to be good for connecting landless aspiring farmers with people who have land that could be worked. We tried to make a match last year with a guy looking for 10 acres for veggies to take to a local farmers market, but he couldn’t manage to show up for our introductory meeting, rescheduled twice at a time convenient for him, so that was a pretty good sign it wouldn’t work out and we haven’t tried again. Our town is very restrictive about zoning and water/sewer requirements for tiny houses (I offered that option to a young family looking for a place to park for awhile, and they didn’t think it would work because of previous experiences with the local town) and I can admit I don’t like the idea of sharing my personal living space with someone I don’t know, so we’d likely need to find someone living elsewhere but close enough to be able to get here to take care of their crops.

If you’re only getting a fraction of the value out of your land, then I’m not even sure where we’d fall on the scale


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## gottatrot

Sorry to hear about all the tough times. I wonder if Nelly might have Cushing's? Could be a reason for out of season laminitis. 

Flooding can be tough to deal with. I don't have experience with drought, fires or the other things some go through, but flooding is something we deal during a lot of winters. Where I used to live the cows would sometimes have to be emergently rescued out of fields when their patch of land above water shrunk too much. Be careful not to drive your car through a puddle too deep, many people do that around here and wipe out the electrical system.


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## bsms

I'm WAYYYY behind. But I enjoyed the cartoon. It reminds me of Systematic Theology. I'm an Arminian, not a Calvinist. So I have spent more time considering "theology" that most people in church do because I doubt 1% of baptists know what an Arminian is.

But what I REALLY believe is that anyone who wants to dissect God has missed the point of who God is. What matters isn't what I think of God but what God thinks of me. And that what I think of Bandit isn't nearly as important as what Bandit thinks of me. In turn, what Bandit thinks of me (or what Jack the BC or Sammie the GSD thinks of me) tells me more about who I am and if I'm heading in the right direction than my appraisal of them.

Philosophers (and theologians) need more pets. Or maybe more time on a farm. I like CS Lewis's "Out of the Silent Planet" but I also suspect it is MAN that is silent, and that the animals have not lost their connection. As in Knave's signature line on Balaam's rear (oops, that would be donkey since the software doesn't approve of the more traditional terms):








*WE* are the blind ones. The planet is silent to *US*.


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## Knave

I’m sorry! That sounds like a whole lot to deal with at once. It seems that it is going that way for a lot of people right now.

I never have dealt with any real sort of flooding at all. I will wish you the best though!


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## SueC

So much interesting stuff here to reply to, from before the flood post as well. Alas, I'm on the iPad which is great for looking but awful for typing with its fake keyboard you actually have to look at. So I will read stuff now and get back to people when I have a proper keyboard! Have an excellent day, everyone!


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## knightrider

Wow, you are truly going through some terrible stuff. I haven't been on Horse Forum that much and missed a lot. I hope things calm down for you and soon! My heart is with you.


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## SueC

Morning, everyone! 🙂🙃 ...and thanks for the well wishes. ❤ We'll muddle through. We're already feeling better.

*The Generator*

Yesterday I went to town to sort out some of the mechanical problems that have stumped me. The generator was one - after load testing it continuously, the fault I was reporting showed up 30 minutes later for them and they think it's one of the windings on the alternator being faulty and getting hot after a while. Replacement alternators for that model are no longer available but similar ones are or they can get a quote from someone who re-winds the things. Repairing the thing is probably going to be expensive and not necessarily give us a usable device for charging our battery bank, because its wave forms may not stay acceptable to the inverter in our off-grid system for it to admit its input. So we're looking at various options.

We don't want to buy a new generator because that's $2,500 for admittedly, ten years later, a type that is specifically designed to produce "clean" waves for charging off-grid battery banks...we might have bought that in the first place had it been available at that price in 2012, but the warranty on that is four years and that's about the trouble-free runtime we had out of our first generator, and we think that's too expensive, especially if it's not going to last 10-20 years (and few machines do, and then there's the yearly servicing expenses), for a machine we would only use maybe four times a month for four months of the year (and maybe twice that in a bad winter like this one), and that we actually lived completely without for five years at one stage.

We're only running electric low-wattage lighting, a water pump, one fridge and two freezers off our system as daily "must-haves" - and the freezers can be turned off at night without causing issues. TV and computers are usually optional and I can do my business paperwork on sunny days. I've always washed on sunny days by default because I line dry, vacuum cleaning also is generally done when the sun is out and that's not an issue. We have gas cooking and in low-sun times we toast our bread under the grill instead of the electric toaster, and use a hob kettle instead of the electric fast-boil. The house is amazingly passive solar and we don't need external inputs for heating or cooling, other than about two evenings a week with the wood fire on in winter.

It seems nonsensical to spend $2,500 (plus annual service fees) again just to boost batteries a few times a month for four months of the year, and have no guarantees that it will work longer than four years. We'd rather behaviourally adapt as we usually do, or look at alternatives like wind power backup or extra solar panels. Also it's possible that our generator may still be usable in "limp" mode - producing half its maximum load and taking twice as long to boost the batteries, but still working. We had it in that mode at one point when the inverter didn't like the wave forms it was making at maximum output, but after the next service the inverter was happy with the maximum-output wave forms again (for three weeks). I'll do some research. There's this cool design for a DIY on-ground wind machine with sails instead of a turbine that has me intrigued, for example. It runs at 24V and therefore is eminently suited to trickling charge into batteries.

*The Pole Saw*

I'd had issues with our pole saw: The chain had kept coming off during operations, and this had bent three chains in short succession. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong and the machine had become unusable. The large hardware store I bought it from has a resident genius, Tim, who's an ex-farmer, who has given us incredibly useful advice on many DIY things over the ten years we've been out here doing things we'd never done before, like build a house, use power tools, fix up plumbing etc. By sheer stroke of luck he was rostered on when I brought the saw in. He determined it was a manufacturing fault in the system that's supposed to maintain chain tension, that is actually to an extent present with all of the saws in that line, so he had it replaced under warranty and showed me a trick I could use to make the chain retention system work better in the replacement saw (which isn't in the instructions). With online registration I've got a 6-year warranty on this one, so it means I don't have to worry about the saw breaking or misbehaving in the next 6 years.

*The Car*

Our car is now 9 years old and I caught up with our long-term fabulous mechanic when booking the car in for a service (Brett has done that the last few years). I tend to want to drive my cars to death because to me a car is an A to B machine, and I only stopped driving the previous one at a similar age because someone totalled it for me by crashing into the back of me at speed (and we'd just had the gearbox replaced, grrrr). So I asked Greg what's replaceable on these, could you get a new engine for them if the old one blows up, what major costs are we looking at keeping it on the road. He says putting new engines in is no longer economically viable on these because it's cheaper to buy a low-mile second-hand car exactly the same than to change the engine, with parts and labour costs these days.

He also says that the engines on the i20s and similar are so reliable these days that he doesn't expect to see major trouble with it for many years, so long as the radiator is replaced when it does a sub-optimal job - since that is the main cause of engine trouble with these engines. So when it needs it, we can replace the radiator and if the gearbox fails, which it might not (the last type of car we had, the gearboxed were predisposed to failure) that can be replaced. Brake bits, other bits, as needed. So that's good news, because we've got nearly 200,000 km on the clock.

*"Spring" Cleaning*

When I got home I decided to do something about something else that had been weighing me down - the state of the car interior. Because of the priorities list and the wet winter and the fact that we've been buying the odd square bale of hay and straw for the new calves and the donkeys respectively (on a roof rack, but it rains down into the car the moment you open a door), and that our dog has the luggage section of the car, the inside of the car resembled a potato field. In pre-farm days, when I was renting and had zero gardening or property maintenance to do, I used to vacuum and wash my car once a week - not anymore. I often wish I had a horde of Oompa-Loompas to do things like this for me while I sleep at night, but they have not eventuated.

So I decided, as a mental health thing, to devote two hours before returning to town to talk to the generator people and pick up Brett from work to cleaning the car interior - while listening to two of my favourite albums on the iPod. It really took that long, and still isn't super clean, though it's now acceptable. I was able to shake out and air the dog blankets and floor mats, wash the rubber cargo mat, and vacuum everything thoroughly, including under the seats - all the bits of grass seed and the beach sand and mud take a long time to get out of the carpeting and the cargo bay. I used hot water with some lavender oil added to wash the plastic bits like the console, door trims and cargo trims, and the seals, and to remove some of the stains on the upholstery.

Really what I need to do is hire a steam carpet/upholstery cleaning unit and properly wet clean all the carpets and upholstery in the car, and while I have it hired out, also do the three rugs and the sofas in our house - that's on the priorities list now. When I've done that I can perhaps buy a dedicated washable cargo insert that covers the whole backs of the rear seats and all around the walls of the cargo bay that the dog travels in - you can get these now, and that would stop the cargo area getting so dirty.

Meanwhile though, I got a huge improvement with two hours of work, and the car now smells lovely, without artificial fragrances - just from having most of its internal dirt removed and the splash of lavender in the cleaning water.

*Awards Afternoon*

While cleaning the car I thought how grateful I was for the external genius in our lives and decided to make some thank-yous and awards, so when back in town later I brought Tim a jar of our wildflower honey, a copy of the just-out magazine in which I'd written about the plumbing problem we'd had thanks to the plumbing "standards" in Australia and how we'd fixed it (Tim advised us and found us all the necessary bits so I could do an easy DIY) and a few other back copies (it's a really inspirational magazine full of gorgeous home-baked architecture and DIY solutions); and Greg and his wife Julie got a jar of honey and a freshly picked pumpkin (miraculously undamaged and therefore able to be stored without refrigeration).

I also had small jars of honey for the three people at the generator place who've been dealing with our generator problem for months and have surely listened to me describing the problems for hours by now. 😊 I know we pay them to work on the darn generator, but they went beyond the call of duty I think.

*Dinner*

Ever have a super-comforting evening meal that makes everything seem so much brighter? We had chicken breast, mashed potato (with added cream and Parmesan), carrots & peas and coleslaw - and I can't describe to you adequately how perfect the mashed potato was and how it soothed all sorts of interior aches and stresses. So much, actually, that we went into a food coma and retired to bed early!


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## waresbear

Mashed taters...mmmm


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## SueC

And now, one of the interesting things I've been wanting to reply to (and I'll get around to the others later).



bsms said:


> I'm WAYYYY behind. But I enjoyed the cartoon. It reminds me of Systematic Theology. I'm an Arminian, not a Calvinist. So I have spent more time considering "theology" that most people in church do because I doubt 1% of baptists know what an Arminian is.


I've read a lot of theology and found a fair bit of it fascinating - started at age 14 when I began haunting the university library on student-free days at our high school, and hanging out particularly in the philosophy, sociology and theology sections. That's where I discovered Martin Luther King (his theology made a lot of sense to me) and also obscure people (to non-theologians) like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

That cartoon I think brings out a human quality that can often be seen both in philosophy and theology (as well as other areas of human endeavour) - the "I'm right, you're wrong and only I have The Correct World View" type thing that crops up everywhere. Both in philosophy and theology, a lot of people spend their lifetimes digging in behind their pet views (that I think really relate more to their own psychological issues and early life experiences than to the actual external world) and getting really entrenched, but let me get back to one of my favourite poems here:

*The Blind Men and the Elephant*
John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887)

_It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a WALL!"

The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, "Ho, what have we here,
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a SPEAR!"

The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a SNAKE!"

The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he:
"'Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a TREE!"

The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a FAN!"

The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a ROPE!"

And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!_

*MORAL*
_So, oft in theologic wars
The disputants, I ween, 
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean, 
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!_

😜

I usually leave the last stanza off when quoting this poem because this doesn't just apply to theology and I usually use it for a wider metaphor. (Also I think the message in this poem applies to complex phenomena in general more than it does to theology, since nobody has seen that particular elephant and so everyone's just discussing their abstract constructs in that case - nothing is truly verifiable in that case - but it's still worth having the discussion anyway, to an extent, unless you're dealing with people who are pretty invested in Their View being The Correct View - I don't have this discussion with Jehovah's Witnesses and other fundamentalists of any description, because it leads nowhere for anyone).

...and if these learned men from Indostan hadn't argued about how their own limited perspectives were the correct perspective, but instead had sat down cooperatively and made a synthesis out of their different perspectives, they would have come up with a pretty good model of the elephant after all...

...and that's why discussions like this can be so incredibly valuable. 😎




bsms said:


> But what I REALLY believe is that anyone who wants to dissect God has missed the point of who God is. What matters isn't what I think of God but what God thinks of me. And that what I think of Bandit isn't nearly as important as what Bandit thinks of me. In turn, what Bandit thinks of me (or what Jack the BC or Sammie the GSD thinks of me) tells me more about who I am and if I'm heading in the right direction than my appraisal of them.


I think that's a really refreshing viewpoint, and one that's far more likely to result in learning and progress than the more common inverse of that viewpoint. It's always a good idea to start with the basic premise that we're not perfect and have lots to learn, and there's beings out there we can learn from - although we do have to select those carefully. I notice you've not included any human in that particular selection! 😉 I'm winking because I think animals are actually safer on the whole to learn from than the average human being is - they're very unspoilt and undistorted (unless they've spent too long with spoilt and distorted humans, and if we work with those unfortunate creatures we can learn a lot about ourselves too, and about the flaws of humans).

While some people are tremendously good to learn from, and we can usually learn something from most people, there's also some people that mainly serve as "bad examples" and people who are very unsafe to learn from because they distort reality, lie, manipulate, gaslight, etc. Generally, the people who are really worth listening to are the ones who don't blow their own trumpets, who've got intellectual and personal humility, and who don't parade themselves around as a person you could learn lots from. This includes Tim and Greg from my last post, and our neighbour Noel, and Greg the farrier, and Lynda the editor - hugely competent in specialist and other areas but don't run around with swollen heads, are kind and personable and don't talk down to other people.




bsms said:


> Philosophers (and theologians) need more pets. Or maybe more time on a farm.


That would certainly give them an opportunity to broaden their views. It's rather shocking to realise though that Schopenhauer had a dog, as did Hitler as a matter of fact. I guess it depends on how they view their dog etc.




bsms said:


> I like CS Lewis's "Out of the Silent Planet" but I also suspect it is MAN that is silent, and that the animals have not lost their connection.


Love that book and its concepts, and yes, I think there's something to that thought of yours. Humans have lost something, I think - and there could be many reasons for that, but the quasi-divorce from nature, for most modern humans, I think is a significant part of it - and thinking themselves as superior, whether to other species or to each other, is another piece of it.

For me personally, when I was a Christian mystic (age 14 to late 30s - these days I'm agnostic and sit comfortably on the fence - more on that later), connection to nature and connection with God seemed to go hand-in-hand, and I couldn't conceive of having a connection with God if I took a divorce from nature.




bsms said:


> *WE* are the blind ones. The planet is silent to *US*.


As a species - I can only say "Amen to that" - but I do think some people don't perceive the planet as completely silent and do let it speak to them. This is an uncomfortable area to talk about because I think there's a lot of New Agey BS around, just like there's a lot of religious BS around. In my experience though, the people who do hear and see a little don't go around proclaiming themselves as great seers and gurus, they're not perfect and they're aware of it, they just sort of get on with it, and they have a kind and respectful attitude to nature, animals and other people.

I'm going to talk a little bit about what I used to believe when I was a Christian mystic, because my mind was looking at that last night in its subconscious, and it's topical here. It's not easy to talk about, but I'll give it a shot. I became a Christian mystic at the age of 14 as a result of having a "conversion experience" as I was taking a walk in the dark in the bushland one night - something I often did as a teenager, and still do a fair bit. I seemed to be encountering something enormous and benign and warm and filled with love that seemed to be both through and beyond the universe and that paradoxically seemed to be interested in me, in connecting me to this bigger picture, and connecting me with itself, both as a favour to me (I really needed it) and so I could become something better than I would have been on my own, in order to make me a better part of the whole (we can primarily change the negative aspects of this world by changing ourselves - we can't change other people, though we can be good influences on one another).

I discovered the gospels and thought Jesus had a pretty good handle on what love was and what the problems with us were - hypocrisy, vanity, unwillingness to learn, lack of love and compassion and kindness, a "master" attitude rather than a "servant" attitude (entitlement), tunnel vision, greed, egocentricity etc. All of which can be summed up by lack of love - in the sense of the word he's using it, which is not the same way as it's used in pop songs (where it's mostly like "I love icecream" or like codependency, and not this universal sort of benevolence, compassion, kindness and connection).

I was never a Biblical literalist; I think fundamentalists are prone to a sort of idolatry of a literal interpretation of what is in my view just a collection of writings in which various people put forth their necessarily flawed ideas of God. I think in the Bible, the gospels get the closest to what I ever personally thought God was, and that the epistles, while they have good things in them, are also full of human flaws and misunderstanding, just like a lot of things you can find under "theology" on the library shelves. I've never privileged any of the writings in the Bible except possibly the gospels as being any better than what you'd on the whole find in a philosophy/theology/sociology section in a library or bookshop - and yes, I've read it cover to cover, and more books of it than the average Protestant reads - because the Protestants got rid of writings they didn't personally agree with in the Reformation - I read the extra books in the Catholic version, some of which are actually really interesting, and am keen to one day get my hands on the Ethiopian version, which has even more books that were rejected by other forms of Christianity...and I've read a lot of the Dead Sea Scrolls stuff, in a collection called "The Other Bible" which has some gorgeous poetry in it - here's something both Brett (atheist) and I love, called The Thunder, Perfect Mind - and the link has a lot of the Nag Hammadi library in it for anyone who likes poking around in old literature. I love all sorts of literature and read all sorts, and learn all sorts of things, and I don't dichotomise literature into canon or not-canon because I don't think it works like that - I think people who make canons are wedded to the idea of having The Correct World View, which I don't think any of us can have (and I try to avoid people who think they have The Correct World View, or at least to avoid discussions on topics like this with them).

This doesn't mean I think "anything goes" either - that would be the opposite extreme. But literature, music, art - I try to find what speaks to me, what helps me think from different angles, what I find beautiful and inspirational, what is kind and compassionate and helps to solve problems rather than entrench them, what offers me consolation and acknowledges the struggles and the pain as well as the moments of light and love and beauty. And most of these, I don't find in the Christian canon/s (although some I do) - I find them in the writings, art and music of "ordinary" people to whom the planet isn't that silent, I find them in the writings about indigenous peoples and their ideas (the people the West ironically thought needed civilising and Christianising, and raped and exploited in the process), and I find them in ancient and modern writings that would be considered heretical by the self-proclaimed gatekeepers of The Correct World View (of which there are many - see the many schisms in organised Christianity, philosophy, politics etc).

I didn't know at age 14 that I was a Christian mystic, I only learnt that later. I don't do religious dogma (and this means I never sit comfortably with any form of fundamentalism); what interested me in Christianity (as set out in the gospels) was love, and what love is. In fact when I first got to town at age 14 after that experience I went to a local Baptist church (because Martin Luther King had been a Baptist and I liked his book _Strength to Love_), and was astonished that the pastor I talked to had never heard of MLK and that he seemed to think I was a deluded fruitloop because I thought I'd had a spiritual experience. So that ruled out just joining a community (I tried others over many years, similar issues - I could hang out with some fruitfully on a personal level, but never do their dogma) and gave me an eye-opening experience in people who go around saying God speaks to people then doubting God would speak to someone like you, in real life. The Protestants seem as attached to their gurus, "authorities" and middlemen as the Catholics, and sometimes even more so! Many Catholics I worked with had far less black-and-white views than a lot of Protestants I came across, and they certainly didn't all believe what the people they called "the Career Catholics" were saying - they were more in it for the community, and didn't care if they disagreed with the official lines of the church. I met really wonderful people there.

I also hung out with Quakers quite a bit, because they actually don't have a dogma, or middlemen, and they sit in a circle on Sundays instead of in pews facing a middleman/career church person, and whoever felt moved to speak would speak. Also, I shared a lot of practical concerns with Quakers - better stewarding of the environment, ending destruction of nature, and I'm generally anti-war, and pro social justice - so have lots in common with these people.

But for me, if I wanted to commune with God, I'd go climb a mountain - and I'd serve the planet, the community, the people in my circle, the whole connected thing. Nature and music to me always expressed God far more than any church service I could go to, which was mostly human blah-blah-blah and its associated problems. (Though the Catholics do wonderful dramatic and musical symbologies as part of their services for children and teenagers, which the kids largely present themselves.) The whole point of God to me was to become more immersed in the kind of love that's needed to heal ourselves, and the world we have broken.

In my early 40s I started having long-delayed and very vivid PTSD flashbacks from a traumatic childhood - from real, verified things that happened to me. It broke down a Great Wall of China in my head that had hitherto shielded me from a lot of the emotional ramifications of the unprocessed early childhood experiences, that I'd previously only been able to access intellectually. This resulted in a lot of astonishment about the sorts of tricks our brains can play on us when we are under duress, and necessitated a re-thinking of my own history and world view (which has always been a working hypothesis that I've modified as I've gone along). I ended up reading buckets of stuff on trauma, psychology, neurology, etc, and that's on top of many many podcasts on nitty-gritty areas of philosophy, theology, the mind, etc that I'd been listening to for years. As a result I personally think my spiritual experiences were most likely artefacts of my own mind, much as some people can and do have experiences very like the one I had when they're ingesting psilocybin etc, and this can have spectacular ramifications for how they see the world ever after.

I've written about that aspect of it at length elsewhere but won't here, because there's people of faith in this community and I've got no intentions of wanting to dissuade anyone from their faith. I'm just sitting on the fence with all this these days, and it's actually a nice spot from which to talk to people on both "sides" and find common ground - something I think there needs to be a lot more of. Having a faith was a really important part of my own journey and one which shaped me in ways that were really good for me personally. It's not easy to crawl out of the emotional basement of growing up with family violence, emotional abuse, neglect and general dysfunction (masquerading to the outside world as a successful and respected middle-class family, as not infrequently happens - I'm sure you've all heard a lot of pillars-of-the-community stories like this), and when I discussed some of this stuff with a really astute professional in my late 20s, he did an assessment on me and came back astonished I was so functional when the assessment showed extreme emotional deprivation in the parental home and isolation in childhood (which was jarring, but explained a lot of things, and was also a bit validating for me for how I'd felt as a child, which was lonely and disconnected and sad and empty - and if at the time I mentioned anything like that to my caregivers, I was told it was my own fault, and/or that I was spoilt and ungrateful - so I learnt not to mention it and to suspect I'd been born an oddity).

Apparently people like me more easily end up battling substance addictions, eating disorders, etc for significant periods of adult life, than they are likely to become people who are reasonably healthy, balanced and empathetic, and engage in positive, constructive activities in their communities, whatever the obstacles might be. Not that I'm a poster child or anything, but I did do OK looking back, and I'm still doing OK. I don't have any big regrets on how I've spent my life so far, and I'm still learning. My aim was never to become rich or famous, and I've successfully avoided both - my aim was always to make worthwhile contributions to the good of the planet and its inhabitants - and there's many ways to do that.

Where faith came into it, for me and for some friends of mine who also had really rough childhoods without emotional or physical safety in the parental home, is that it's a kind of re-parenting which can put right some of the things that went wrong for you in your family of origin. Suddenly there is someone who's much bigger than you who is also stable and kind and interested in your growth and development, who is glad you exist and who makes it very clear to you they love you, in ways you can believe. This is someone you can go to with anything at all that troubles you without ever getting laughed at or blamed, who will show you constructive solutions; someone you can vent to when you're angry, and rhapsodise to when you've experienced something beautiful that your family of origin wouldn't care about or understand, and whose shoulder you can cry on without encountering ridicule, indifference, anger or anything but love and understanding. This is someone you can bounce ideas off, and ask to hold your hand when you're on a balancing beam, whether physical or metaphorical. In short, this is like an ideal parent (who probably doesn't exist on this earth, but many people's parenting is good enough not to produce net damage).

And at the end of the day, in terms of your psychological development, it doesn't matter whether God existed as an independent, personal entity, or whether it was an enormous Imaginary Friend who was made up by your traumatised subconscious in a state of emergency into all the most wonderful aspects you could ever imagine. It was still immensely helpful, I wouldn't wish to take that away from anyone.

There's some people who say, "Dismount your donkey at the summit." That many roads lead to the mountaintop. I tend to agree with them. I don't believe in one single correct world view, I've always cherished diversity, and when I was a Christian mystic, I used to wonder at some of the Christian theologies out there which seemed to me to be like some kind of egotistical video game in which you're supposed to accumulate Brownie points to get yourself into a paradisiacal afterlife. Or to "believe correctly" in terms of dogma, when I thought believing "correctly" was more about becoming part of divine love, and therefore part of the solution in some way. I think theologies and philosophies tell you so much more about the people that thought them up and champion them, than they tell you about reality. And so we're back to _The Blind Men and the Elephant_! Reality is complex, and you can see so much better when you're collaborating and open-minded than when you're invested in being the person who had The Correct World View.

A really nice podcast I heard years ago and I sometimes re-listen to because I like these people and they make me think and laugh, is a four-part interview of the three so-called Interfaith Amigos, who got together as a result of 9/11. It's part of the Mormon stories podcast, which is presented by a person who journeyed their own way out of organised religion, and then out of faith altogether, after being born into a Mormon community. Losing your faith comes with grief, and it did for me as well. It's the loss of something you have loved and that's meant the world to you. But it doesn't mean that your values are suddenly radically different, and it doesn't mean you stop doing the things that are important to you. And the things that are truly worthwhile are worthwhile regardless of whether you get an afterlife or whether there is a personal God. It can be enough just to have taken your place on the stage, if you did your part well and you helped others go forward in a positive way. If you perhaps left your own small spot a little better than it was before.

If anyone needs humorous, intelligent viewing on what makes a good life, we thoroughly recommend this:


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## knightrider

What a lot of thought and care and time went into that answer! I appreciated every word of it! We are lucky to have you making this journal. Thank you for being you.


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## SueC

Well, thank you for being you, @knightrider, and ditto @Knave, @egrogan, @bsms, @gottatrot, @Caledonian, @CopperLove, @waresbear, @lostastirrup, @DanteDressageNerd, @weeedlady, @Kalraii and anyone else I've not mentioned (because I may not have bumped into them a while) who hangs around these journals regularly enough so that we can get to know each other more than superficially. It's not that any of us are perfect or that any of us agree on everything (I think we all really value independent thinking), it's that we have important things in common (such as an attitude of respect towards animals and nature, and the intention of being polite to others and to consider their points of view, even if we're not always perfect at that either), and that, because of this, our differences give us cause for thinking and discussing in a more fruitful manner than is standard in this world (and especially online), and we learn from the process.

Also I think this group of people really gets how to support one another through various crises, which is remarkable considering most of us have never met face to face (but perhaps it's not remarkable after all, because why should we act differently to human beings online than we do to human beings in general - we're still human beings - though I think the written medium probably favours careful thought and reflection and makes it easier not to offend each other during differences of opinion).

This is a nice little "village" we can all come to - and it's down to each of us that it is. A lot of forums are more about information exchange/platforms for propagating personal opinions, but here we've been able to relate on a human level instead of being these faceless information-and-opinion-wielders. I think that's because the journal format allows us by default to go to many different topics (not all though, because of the PG thing, which is one reason I also write on another forum where this is not a barrier, and why I've not been able to bring everything I want to write about to my HF journal), and to generally openly discuss things that are more personal rather than purely technical etc.

Anyway, I genuinely appreciate you all. ❤


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## SueC

*QUICK FARM UPDATE*

Yesterday I was finally able to take the rugs off the horses, after nearly six days straight of rain and cold. The rain had _finally_ stopped, but it was cloudy and a cold wind whipped around. Still, the horses needed to get out of their rugs so they could scratch themselves and their skin could breathe, and they were all relieved to be bare again.

It was also the first day in a week I was able to do any laundry. There was lots accumulated, and I got it all out, but nothing dried in the cold, sunless air. I left it out overnight, which was still and got as low as 5 degrees Celsius.

Today is gorgeously sunny. I've just made and eaten some of a Butternut Bisque, from one of our pumpkins - this variety is super delicious in soups. There's bread baking, yesterday's washing finally dried, the guest room bed is re-made, our own bedsheets got a lavender rinse (I don't always wash our sheets in detergent, I often just refresh them in plain water with a splash of real lavender oil and it makes them totally delicious) and they're back on already, and there's more washing on the line.

This morning I walked the perimeter and then trimmed one horse, and Nelly. She's still tenderfooted from mild laminitis and was due for a trim. It's a juggling act to trim an animal with sore feet - you have to be super careful not to take too much off and exacerbate the laminitis, but you do need to reduce the leverage on overlong hoof walls, as that itself increases the tension on the laminae, especially if you've got an animal that's still trying to get back to correct hoof angles. Nelly came to us with zero heel, and I mean zero - she was walking on the hairline of the heel. She's got over an inch of heel back but her feet were so distorted I'm still correcting them. Her laminae were under stress from this severe deformity and had already stretched and separated, especially around the toe.

I don't think she's got Cushings, @gottatrot, because she doesn't have any other symptoms of it - normal coat, normal drinking, normal behaviour, OK topline etc. I can't be sure without a blood test obviously, but it would surprise me. I'll keep it in the back of my mind. But I do wonder: Did our unusually wet winter create problems for her already stretched laminae? Cause them to pull away more? When hooves are wet, they are prone to stretching, and to deforming easily.

I rasped her hooves to shorten them and to continue correcting the angles. I was careful not to persist if she in any way said "ouch" - I didn't want to remove too much sole (with donkey hooves, you're always removing sole just by rasping as the sole is closer to the ground), so I did a fair bit of mustang rolling to take the stress off her toes and bring the breakover back. Then I tarred her all-round with Stockholm tar, to reduce infections and provide a bit of a moisture barrier. After the rear hooves were trimmed and rolled, she stood much better - square on her hind legs and not pulled under - so hopefully, the angle correction has reduced the pain. When she walked away, she walked much more easily, with longer strides, so that you'd not have known she has foot soreness unless you were a particularly good observer. There was just a hint of hesitation left. It felt good to see the improvement from the trim.

With house tasks out of the way, I'm about to pop out and try out the hedge trimmer I bought two weeks ago. Today is the first time the foliage is actually dry in weeks. Then I'm going to pop a roast (own beef) into the over for tonight, feed the animals, and later on do roast potatoes, turnip mash (my first go at growing turnips this year; we ate the first one harvested in a soup last week and it was actually delicious), greens on the side, gravy for the meat and potatoes.

The new calves have settled in well after a month here, and are much chunkier. Because it's been so cold I've fed them commercial cow pellets at 3/4 to 1 litre a day each - not something I usually do, but they were just off milk and barely 3 months old. Feeding a bit of hay on the side was too messy with the wind and their pooping all over it - waste of money. They thankfully don't poop in their feed bowls.

I'll try to get some photos in the next couple of days - including of my boggy vegie garden, in which fruit trees may have drowned (because some of them weren't dormant yet).

I hope everyone enjoys the close-to-full moon tonight!

PS: Dinner was fantastic. Butternut bisque for starters. The roast beef was deliciously tender with a crust on top and as this was a big piece, there will be encores and roast beef sandwiches and secondary dishes based on it later in the week like perhaps banh mi. The potatoes were the only bought things and were wonderfully crunchy, the mashed turnips were good, and we also had fennel gratin and steamed snowpeas on the side. I was ravenous as I'd not had afternoon tea, so I followed up with two slices of the newly baked bread slathered with butter and our own honey. More food coma! 🎃 Good home food production showpiece.


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## SueC

*BOOK REVIEW*

This is one I really wanted to share with you all, but I think the title of the book I've reviewed (via the scenic route, as usual, so you get the story of my recent trip to the local rubbish tip first 🚵‍♂️ 😇) would be "verboten" here, so here's the link to where I've written the review (and where I normally write book reviews):





__





Here it is... the book thread! - Page 15


Here it is... the book thread! - Page 15



curefans.com





If anyone wants to discuss any of this, you can just quote things straight from there and paste them in here and then we can all have a good chin-wag. Just, you know, substitute "barnacle" or something similar for the title word...


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## gottatrot

SueC said:


> ...If anyone wants to discuss any of this, you can just quote things straight from there and paste them in here and then we can all have a good chin-wag. Just, you know, substitute "barnacle" or something similar for the title word...


I read your book review and it sounded somewhat interesting, but I was more interested in the other book you mentioned.
"For a far superior treatment of that situation, read Haruki Murakami's wonderful novel _Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage_."
I've read a few Japanese books now and find that they have a different and educational perspective on a lot of things, so I am ordering this one to read. Thanks! This is one of the more popular authors we haven't tried yet.


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## SueC

I think you'll enjoy it, @gottatrot, it's so thoughtful and well-written. Brett got me into this author and the first of his I read was _The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle_, which is surreal and complicated but brilliant...in places it's shocking, like the cruelty of the war in Manchuria - there's a bit of time-travelling in that one, you see - but again, it teaches you so much about humans, and makes you think.

Murakami was my first Japanese author, and I've read quite a few of his books now. I started the first page of that first book full of anticipation about learning about the Japanese culture, and the protagonist at the start is cooking Spaghetti Bolognese and listening to the Beatles!

I also read _The Bonsai Tree_ by Meira Chand when I was a teenager - the author was Swiss Japanese and writing about a Westerner marrying a Japanese and discovering some down sides to the culture, not just the up. It was very good and I ended up reading another by her that was set in China.

If you've got some Japanese-author books to recommend, we're both interested in sampling more!


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## gottatrot

SueC said:


> ...Murakami was my first Japanese author, and I've read quite a few of his books now. I started the first page of that first book full of anticipation about learning about the Japanese culture, and the protagonist at the start is cooking Spaghetti Bolognese and listening to the Beatles!
> 
> I also read _The Bonsai Tree_ by Meira Chand when I was a teenager - the author was Swiss Japanese and writing about a Westerner marrying a Japanese and discovering some down sides to the culture, not just the up. It was very good and I ended up reading another by her that was set in China.
> 
> If you've got some Japanese-author books to recommend, we're both interested in sampling more!


Are you interested in more modern books or older ones? Many Japanese novels seem odd compared to our culture. They approach responsibility and adversity differently, and suicide is also seen much differently. Goodbye Tsugumi is interesting, by Banana Yoshimoto. Two cousins who have grown up together, one seems like a dark character, but the other sees her with an understanding perspective. An older, very beautiful book is Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata. The imagery is very good. The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe is a bit chilling and creepy but also interesting.


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## SueC

Oh, that all sounds interesting, I'll look those up, thanks, @gottatrot! 😎

Brett says he already has _The Woman in the Dunes_ on the e-reader so that's easy, and also _The Ruined Map _by the same author, and hasn't yet gotten around to reading either, and that he has another book by Banana Yoshimoto called _Mrs Ice-Cream Sandwich_ which he couldn't get into (but I'm going to give a shot) because he'd just read some other Japanese books which interested him more: _Convenience Store Woman_ by Sayaka Murata which he says has a bit of black humour and interesting characters, including one he thinks was basically autistic but nobody around her realised it.

I do love reading books from other cultures which offer us different perspectives on everyday life, and good descriptions of the locality and way of life too.

Three Japanese screen dramas we highly recommend:






This one because the protagonist's oddities really come up against Japanese culture even more than they do in the West (e.g. with the BBC's recent _Sherlock_ series). And it's just so well done, shot, written etc.

Something completely different which was so educational and enjoyable:






Just a beautiful film... 😍

Also this one...






Got any Japanese films to recommend?


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## SueC

*WEIRD DREAMS*

We've been having weird dreams the last two nights. Last night Brett dreamt he had accidentally driven to Perth to get some batteries or something ridiculous, which you can actually get locally or online. He then realised Perth was in lockdown and he'd not be allowed back home. (This exact type of lockdown has happened a couple of months ago and we're starting another one like that now as the Delta strain got out in Sydney and someone with the Delta strain got into Perth having initially tested negative - I don't know why they weren't instantly quarantining travellers from NSW coming into WA when the Delta strain got out there; it's been shown again and again that people testing negative can go on to test positive, just like with HIV - because there's a development period...less than 5% of the population here is fully vaccinated and less than 25% have had their first shot... and of course the current vaccines may not be effective against some of the new strains developing now...)

I dreamt that I'd ordered some special baking premix from overseas - similar to the bread premixes I actually use (to mix with stoneground flours at a proportion that results in bread that's not a brick). This one was special because it was oatmeal-based and had special microbial cultures in it that gave you a sourdough fermentation, if you made a dough from it and left it to mature, etc. You could then keep your sourdough starter going in the usual way.

So there were ten packets of this and for some reason I thought I had to use them up, and was frantically baking these big apple strudels made with this dough. Usually you'd make (German) apple strudels with a paper-thin pasta dough, but these were made like (German) apple pockets, with a microbially raised dough (for standard apple pockets, you just use yeast, which is a unicellular fungus, but this special mix had a variety of species including bacteria, as in sourdough).

All this was happening in someone else's kitchen, with strange equipment. There were these rectangular tray things with bamboo covers over the top and I was frustrated when I was trying to clean them because the opening in the cover for accessing the tray beneath was really narrow. Then I worked out that if you closed that access hatch you could slide the whole bamboo cover out of the way from the side. I never worked out why these things had bamboo covers. There was also another contraption with a cover like that which harboured gas burners underneath and I realised when looking through the cupboard that one of the gas burners was still going on low. That horrified me because of the bamboo cover and the possibility of starting a fire, and I turned it off.

Someone else was working with me at this point and she was rolling some pastry out, and laughing about the earthworms in it - and I had a look, and she'd rolled out two earthworms that were in the pastry till they were flat. Poor earthworms - and I wasn't going to eat that, it didn't look very appetising.










I then realised the earthworms came from the premix and read the booklet that came with the product. It said that they indeed had worms in their premix but not to worry, they only ate the premix so it was all perfectly clean, and that they were special worms adapted to this diet who therefore had a super gut flora for digesting the premix, and that this was the basis for the microbial mix featured in this type of sourdough. However, please sift out the worms and return them to some premix or other flour to do their work, and don't actually include them into your dough and bake them.

My awake assessment is that the microbiology part is actually plausible - but earthworm-type worms couldn't live in the dry premix (mealworms can). Also it's true it would be a clean process, just as happens when you put culinary snails in bran for a while before eating them to purge them - and even earthworms get this treatment, for those who use them in their snacks, and don't laugh, this was a thing in the 90s and our local Department of Agriculture was even putting out information sheets on how to grow and purge earthworms, and recipes for using them...

More info on that here: Earthworms - Eat The Weeds and other things, too


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## knightrider

SueC said:


> More info on that here: Earthworms - Eat The Weeds and other things, too


That was certainly interesting! Thanks for sharing. Of course, the very famous children's book _How to Eat Fried Worms_ by Thomas Rockwell is a huge favorite with kids.

The worm discussion triggered a memory of long ago for me. I was sitting in church, age about 9 or 10, and the pastor was describing how terrible life was in Biblical times. He said the people were reduced to eating earthworms. And then he repeated, quite loudly, "EARTHWORMS!" as if that was the most shocking thing you could ever imagine.

I remember being quite shocked. The pastor was sweating and almost trembling. I thought about me eating earthworms and it did sound quite dreadful. But, I continued thinking about it. At the time of my childhood, TV was fairly new, and we watched whatever was on. There were a lot of nature programs and informational programs about native life in other countries. I was well aware that other cultures ate things that I wouldn't feel comfortable eating. 

I thought that perhaps eating earthworms in Israel in Bible times might have just been a cultural thing, and not something horrible that only starving people did. I thought perhaps my pastor had not done all the research he should have done.


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## SueC

..after all, you pastor probably enjoyed eating condensed bee vomit, @knightrider!

Which is what honey is. It's amazing how often I've asked kids in class, "If a friend of yours came back from Africa with this jar of stuff all excited and said, 'You've got to try this, it's so nice, it's actually bee vomit but it's delicious!" would you eat it?"

And got predictable sounds of disgust and mass vows never to eat such a thing. And after a while, pointed out to them they had all eaten it already and most of them enjoyed it. Also that they ate plant ovaries (apples, etc) and plant embryos (in almonds and other nuts, in grains, in flour), not to mention assorted animal body parts. Also that plant sperm (pollen) flies through the air each spring. Stop the world, I want to get off etc. I'll only ever eat celery from now on, etc.

But usually a bit more reconciled to it the next day! 🤪

_The Twits_ by Roald Dahl also has a nice chapter on "wormy spaghetti"...


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## SueC

Further to this post:

Some vaguely good news is that I'm less stressed out about the medical support situation with Sunsmart. I've switched to the more local vet closest to us who treated Nelly when she was acutely ill a couple of weeks ago and she came out to see him this morning. I really liked her manner with Nelly last time and just find her easy to communicate with, and she took a lot of time over her animal consults, compared to the previous vet who was further away (= double the mileage) and always rushing around because his practice is so busy. I'd ended up feeling on my own with Sunsmart and his Cushings, paying $880 a year on Prascend mark-ups just for the practice supplying it to me, and the fact that my horse got sharp edges on his incisors as a result of dental work done on him at the time of his Cushings crisis in March/April last year (which also IMO took too much off the molars as all three horses had more difficulty chewing after the dental treatment than before).

The sharp edges I think had come from the incisors being ground down and then it seems nobody finger-checked the enamel edges and tapered them off, because I saw a couple of days later that he had cuts in the front of his tongue that were ulcerating, and finger-checked myself and found the super-sharp edges, which after spending several hundred dollars on dentals should not have been there. I called the practice about it but I don't think vets like believing bad press about dentals - anyway, he said he'd pop out to assess and fix the situation next time he was near our area and then I waited and waited while my horse's tongue got more and more cut up, and a number of days later I gave up, equipped myself with a diamond nail file and blunted the sharp edges myself. It then took weeks for the poor horse's tongue to heal up because he was in such a bad state with his Cushings breakthrough (and he took three months to improve on the tripled medication) - he had trouble with infections and gum bleeds and wound healing in those months and was losing weight, had no interest in going around with the herd, was just dragging himself around and apathetic.

I never did hear from the vet again about those edges; he must have forgotten about us with his busy practice. I'd been a bit miffed that when he was phoning through blood results after the tests he kept referring to Sunsmart as "she" - yes, people can make mistakes, but it sort of indicates there's maybe a bit too much going on if a vet can't remember the sex of a patient he's seen several times. The lab panels had a ? next to the sex. Don't get me wrong, I think this is a very competent vet, just perhaps a bit much on? But it doesn't feel great.

So I kind of soldiered on with this horse on my own, and the next I heard from the practice is when I re-ordered Prascend earlier this week and was emailed back, "Oh, we can't dispense it to you without blood tests this time and our quote for doing that is over $500." I was down to a week's supply of drugs and felt like I had a gun held to my head: Pay up, or your horse falls off a cliff (which I'm pretty sure he would after experiencing what happened to him when the initial medication levels were no longer enough summer before last). And since they were indicating yearly re-tests that would have meant $2,500 a year to treat him.


Romeo, 2017

The cumulative cost of Romeo's care for his last five years worked out at $10,000 when we added it up after he died, and we swore never to do that kind of cumulative hit again, since this would easily have covered the cost of the driveway we could never afford until last year. Parking 25 metres from the house in wet winter weather and continuing on with gum boots through a lake of mud to get to the house is one thing if it's just the two of you, but it also affected our farmstay guests the first winter we were open, and that was not a good look. We're limited for raising extra cash: Brett is fully extended with his super-busy stressful job, although he sometimes volunteers to do overtime, and I'm fully extended here at home trying to get through all the to-do lists around the house, vegetable garden, farmstay, grounds and general building and farm maintenance jobs (plus I trim all the hooves here), and besides, the reason I had to give up my professional job was trouble speaking after one laryngeal nerve packed in over a decade ago, and you can't teach lessons all day on one functioning vocal cord, and that has somewhat limited my options, which is why we built our own house, had a go at growing our own food, I wrote freelance for a couple of magazines for ten years, and I started the farmstay.


Our three horses in 2017

And there's a bit of income coming off these activities, but there's also large things looming like having to deal with rotting boundary fencing (we have about 3km of 30-60-year-old post-and-wire perimeter fencing), building a basic set of cattle yards in the next two years, and figuring out what to do about our solar-electric system backup in the long term. Also we were kind of hoping to be able to take on the Owner Builder magazine, and that would require a fair bit of up-front funding too (e.g. you pay the printer $15,000 in advance to print an issue and don't recoup it until the sales come in).


Boundary fence with road

So the last thing we needed, after having one high-maintenance retiree, was to have another one with comparable ongoing costs, but Sunsmart had his Cushings crisis a year after Romeo died and then became medically high-maintenance, with a tripling of his previous medication costs taking it into the same ball park as where we'd been with Romeo. And then, to be asked for an extra $500 before I could get his next pack of Prascend.


March 2019

Anyway, the good news out of today was that we discussed the pros and cons of various blood tests, which given a new person was taking over treatment I could see more sense in. So we decided together that a general blood panel, which they could do in-house, was useful (also to make sure his treatment wasn't damaging his liver) and could be used as a basis for ordering further tests if necessary. The general blood panel came back all good in all respects and so a re-test of ACTH etc wasn't seen as a huge priority. While I'm buying my next lot of Prascend off their practice because I'm too short to order it online with a script this time around, at least that's a possibility. Also the vet suggested it is theoretically possible that 1 tablet a day would keep his symptoms in check instead of the 1.5 we were giving him as a result of the severe crisis he'd had summer before last, and we could investigate that further (one reason ACTH levels are sometimes useful to know). I'd had him on 1 tablet for the last three days to stretch out my diminishing supply in the face of the situation because I preferred potentially underdosing him for a week to the idea of him having a gap in his medication. I don't particularly want to find out if that's enough to maintain him by having him go into another crisis, so I'll think more about that. I'd probably rather play safe. And if I can get a script for an online order, it would take over 40% off the previous treatment cost.


May 2021, Cushings stable and in good shape


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## Knave

This is difficult, and I am sorry.


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## SueC

It's looking a bit more doable now though, @Knave. I think I'll play it by ear. And maybe freelance some more articles somewhere, or come up with some bright idea. We don't just have horses to look after, and other animals, there's also the whole property and the 50-hectare native ecosystem in it, and the farmstay, and all sorts of things to juggle that you don't need to juggle if you're agisting, and working an ordinary job. I've done that too, and the costs are far more predictable and there's a lot more emergency funds and not so many emergencies! 🙃


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## egrogan

He looks so good in that picture of him from May.

Have you considered one of the online English teaching programs, working with professionals who need one-on-one tutoring to learn the language for their career? My understanding is that it can be fairly flexible in terms of scheduling, and you are paired with the student for a reasonable amount of time so you get to know them a bit. Just a thought!


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## MeditativeRider

Sounds like you have a lot to juggle! 

Glad you found a vet that will rationalize costs and tests/treatment with you. We had a similar experience with a vet when our dog was unwell last year. One vet was all in on recommending every test and treatment under the sun with a cheery smile (thinking of the $$ for her) and "shall I go print you off a quote for that?". Whereas the other helped us rationalize out a much more cautious and cheaper approach. 

Ultimately, our dog had an aggressive oral cancer that we decided was not treatable (within an amount of $$ that we would be comfortable spending and it was likely it would only prolong his life by a few months if we did treat it). Even then, we ended up sending about $2500 over 4 months on tests, pain relief, and then euthanasia + cremation (as we do not have sufficient space to bury a dog and the kids wanted him back). 

Initially, because he had mouth pain and a couple of loose teeth, they thought it was dental. So we paid a decent chunk of money on cleaning and tooth removal, so that did not help (either with his pain or our finances when he ended up having cancer). Then they thought it could be his kidneys because he was drinking a lot, which was the point at which the eager vet was recommending all and sundry in terms of tests and treatments and I was like "woah, just slow down". That was when we saw a different vet who said it could be x, y, z but it is not clear right now, so they recommended we just wait and it would become apparent soon (rather than paying for unnecessary tests).


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## SueC

@egrogan, I had no idea I could do that online and actually this is something I'd love to do! 🤩 I miss teaching and love the quirks of language teaching and laughing with students about the many foibles of the English language, and showing them tricks for getting around those. (Do you like mnemonics? I made one up that got all my students doing the UK/Aus spelling for "manoeuvre" correctly - "Remember, *O*llie *E*ats *U*nderpants!" which they said was unforgettable. 😅) There's a lot of scams online so I would be really grateful if you could tell me a good programme to approach. That is such a brilliant idea. I love working with people! 😀

@MeditativeRider, I'm so sorry to hear about your dog. 🙁🐙 (The octopus is my substitute hug emoji since the forum changed platforms and we lost the coolest emojis on the Internet, many of which were animated. We had a great animated hug emoji and also one of a person rolling around on the floor laughing, and a person falling off a horse in a great arc, and those got regular use around here and could even be made into sort-of cartoon stories...)

Yeah, it is good to be able to work around the realities a bit with someone, because the criteria and expense for gold standard medical/veterinary care keep skyrocketing and are actually out of reach for a lot of our population - though not so much the medical here in Australia, since we have an excellent Medicare system which is not-for-profit, everyone pays into via tax (2.5% of income, less for below-average earners, more for above-average earners), and gets decent care when they really need it, although that's not necessarily gold standard because there can be a doubling of cost for a 10% improved outcome etc and that's taken into account with our public system, and I think should actually always be taken into account, since few people have a golden goose that lays golden eggs and even if they do, should be able to do their own cost-benefit analysis for their situation.

Two examples of "the gold standard" actually interfering with getting good equine health care on the whole are:

1) The advent of power tool dentistry, which has doubled the price of horse dentals but not doubled their effectiveness - power tool dentistry doesn't increase the time span to follow-up treatment compared to conventional manual filing, let alone double it; and in my own experience has resulted in several problems I never saw in 40 years of manual filing either on my own horses or those of people I know. The worst thing that could happen with manual filing is that not enough was taken off, so you'd just go back and do more (after administering the carrot test). It's my opinion that the molars of my horses were overly ground down with the power tools and that's why they had issues eating after the appointment, including eating carrots, that they didn't actually have before (they were just done because it had been a year and that's now "standard") - and I've heard some reports like this from other people around the world as well. My new vet, who also uses power tools, says this can happen and you have to be very careful not to overdo it (which is so much easier to get right IMO if you're doing a manual job which is slow and you can feel at your end too). I prefer the old way of doing dentals - they worked fine in all the horses I had anything to do with over 40 years, and they didn't require even placid horses to be sedated. If it's not broken, don't fix it - let alone invent some new "gold standard" that doubles cost, which, in the absence of magically increasing incomes in parallel, for most people means they can now only treat half their herd, or treat at longer intervals than before, rather than as-needed with a relatively inexpensive, time-honoured, effective system.

2) Ridiculous ideas about the need for surgically sterile environments for minor problems. When I asked for a wound edge to be cleaned up on my horse after a lump that turned out to be a lobulated lipoma fell off his umbilical area, the vet I had then (someone completely different, two vets back) said that I would need to trailer the horse to his surgical facilities. I was astonished. The wound was the diameter of a peach, the weather was good, and this was the kind of case that when I was growing up, veterinarians would have given a short-acting anaesthetic there and then to drop him on the grass, cut off the ragged bits at the edge, dress the wound and get the horse back on its feet. I've been to tumour extraction surgeries that were performed like this, on the grass, in good weather, and with very good outcomes. Insisting on taking cases like that to expensive equine theatres these days IMO isn't good use of resources, and ramps the costs of such relatively minor surgeries (we're not talking body cavities, just cutaneous) up astronomically (not just double), which means that treating such matters is now out of the reach of a lot of people.

To be honest, I wonder sometimes if people who insist on such "surgical standards" should be large animal vets - maybe they should do humans, or small animals, and leave large animal doctoring to people who aren't primadonnas about their work environments and understand that the interests of large animals are best served by procedures which are affordable to the average large animal owner. If you're wondering what happened to my wound cleaning case, after I made clear I wasn't trailering the horse into a surgical facility he was sedated and had an elastrator ring applied to the biggest bit of ragged wound edge. This made him uncomfortable for a week or two and did not give the same results or speed of healing decent surgical wound edge cleaning would have given him. It was better than nothing, but a huge step backwards from what would have happened when I was a kid.

Also, incidentally, the veterinarian in question said that wasn't a lobulated lipoma, it was something malignant, and that he expected the horse to die in the next year or so and I should get ready. Because I'd frozen the tumour to preserve it after it fell off, it wasn't soft when I presented it to the vet (it was frozen, duh) and he said, "No, lipomas are soft, this is not a lipoma." It was a bloody lipoma, by definition - made of fat, round, non-invasive, and benign too - the horse is still alive, as I expected him to be, over half a decade on and is showing no signs of metastasising cancers through his system that were predicted by our Dr Doom who apparently forgot about the kinetic theory taught at Year 10 level in high school (solids, liquids, gases, the effect of temperature increases and decreases on each etc).

Here endeth my rant - for now. Anyway, it's good to find a practical vet who actually likes working with large animals - I can see it in her demeanour - and who takes her time and considers all sorts of possibilities instead of grandstanding one instant diagnosis, or one particular approach. We had a vet like this for a while - he was actually a locum of Dr Doom and excellent every time we had him out, and at one stage he saved my Arabian mare back in 2009 after a botched stomach tubing performed by an emergency vet for a choke - that vet hadn't cleared the obstruction, just pushed it further down the oesophagus, and when water continued to come out of my mare's nose whenever she tried to drink after that procedure, I called that vet out again and she insisted it was just pharyngeal swelling from the stomach tubing - and when I called for a second opinion from another practice the following day when I was absolutely shocked by the deterioration and depression in my mare, I had the excellent luck to get Dr Thomas Kock, visiting from Denmark-as-in-the-country-in-Europe, who came out, assessed my mare, said no way was that blockage cleared and put her right within 20 minutes (on a Sunday and at a quarter of the bill that the botched-procedure vet sent us and insisted we pay in full) - and then we had to treat her for aspiration pneumonia, thanks to the delay and the horse's age. She was sick for weeks, all unnecessarily. 👺 Sadly Dr Kock returned to Europe, in part because he was appalled by the lack of professionalism in equine circles around here (colleagues such as I'm describing, stud farm managers trying to tell him how to do his job even though they actually had no clue, etc).

And because I don't want to finish on this note: A good friend of mine had a wonderful dog who developed an osteosarcoma. They were able to reduce his pain and extend his life for eight months (metastases got him in the end) by spending $1,000 to have his leg amputated. Even in retrospect without the hope of a longer time with him, she still felt the quality of life for the dog over the eight months following surgery was good enough to warrant it - especially as he was in terrible pain before the amputation and recovered quickly after, adapting very well to three-leggedness and getting back to play and regular outdoor adventures.

This was Ratchet after surgery.








To see lovely photos of the dog enjoying his second lease of life the surgery bought him, and to read the reflections my friend wrote after his death, see: Love Lessons

While death is normal and expected, it's also inevitably linked to grief in those who go on without that individual. A few months after we lost Sunsmart's mother, I had a walk around our nature reserve to plant native everlasting seeds on her grave site. That walk and the things it got me to reflect on resulted in a piece of writing I shared at the time. A loss is always sad, but it's also good to see the greater scheme of things: What you had, that it was real, that it was good, and that life has a way of renewing itself on this planet. Here's the link:

Flower Memorials


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## bsms

Excellent post, @SueC!


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## gottatrot

I agree about the ridiculous prices from vets. I've had times where I definitely felt scammed. Once we paid to have a special horse dentist come to the barn, and he tried to have us let his wife do the filing. Someone who did not go to vet school!! He also charged more than I'd ever paid before. 

I'm glad you have found a more reasonable vet to work with you. It's not being "cheap," either, assessing whether procedures and things are necessary for the animals. Such as trailering a horse into a vet clinic, expensive but also stressful for a horse. As you say, castration and so many other surgeries have been done in the field for a long time. It's not necessary to bring a horse somewhere away from home unless it requires special equipment to do the surgery.

My last vet was very practical. She knew I was willing to pay for anything that was necessary, but she always told me ways to save money. If she didn't think a test would help us, she wouldn't do it. She actually never tested Amore's ACTH for Cushing's, because she had so many obvious signs and it was gradually getting worse each year. We dosed her medication by starting with a half pill, and when that didn't seem to work anymore we went to one pill. 

She told me that horses often responded very differently to the pill, so in some cases it was better to go by symptom relief than by the numbers. For example, she said a horse might have a very high ACTH, but have the numbers go down to normal and complete relief of symptoms with a half pill. Other horses might have lower levels but need more pills to bring them down. She also felt that for a horse without laminitis, the other symptoms were a good indication of whether the treatment was working. This was based on her experience doing the tests and seeing how those correlated. With Halla, we tested her twice, right away with the laminitis. In that case, she said the test was necessary because we didn't know what was going on and her symptoms were severe.. 

The vet would also give me compounded omeprazole for ulcers. She felt that many people would not treat ulcers because of the cost, and that the compounded omeprazole worked for most cases. She said we could always bring out the big guns if it didn't work, and it always worked for the horses at our barn. So I thought she was great. 

I'm always nervous when getting a new vet, and I'm going to be watching closely when my horses are seen later this month. I've heard so many horror stories about dentals. I couldn't believe someone's vet was filing the incisors down. I've never seen that once in my 20 years of watching dentals. I do understand why a vet would want to do a power float, after talking to my last vet about it quite a bit. She was telling me how attempting to do a good job on the five or six horses she might do some days would require a level of fitness she could not keep up. It can take a bit of strength to push and pull a file, similar to being a farrier. That doesn't mean every vet will be skilled and careful enough to use a power tool on a horse's mouth. I've been reading online reviews about my new vet facility, which are very good, otherwise I would not let them near my horses. 

I view it as similar to dentists or surgeons. There is a lot that can go wrong so you have to be very careful to get a skilled person working with power tools around delicate teeth and bones. I've known bad surgeons to crack bones in surgery. Many of the unhealthiest people go to doctors too often and take every treatment recommended. People do this with animals too. We have to realize that if we tell a doctor or a vet about a problem, they will try to give us something to make us feel better, like it is being addressed. They almost never say everything is fine and do nothing. People are unsatisfied if they do. But as my one friend used to say about some of the doctors we worked with, "Someone had to graduate at the bottom of the class." Which means some of the doctors and vets out there will be at the lowest level they could be and still pass. Buyer beware.

So unnecessary treatments are a huge problem, and they do cause harm. My belief is that people should avoid medications if at all possible. That way by the time you are old, you will be on two or three pills instead of a dozen, which we see frequently in older people. All of those medications have adverse effects, and in the long run might be worse than what you are taking them for. Same with horses. It's definitely a risk vs benefit proposition. But the healthiest people I see are those who have only used doctors the way many of us use vets. They go if there is a problem they can't fix by researching and trying home treatments first. I know you believe food and exercise are medicine, and for horses that is also true.


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## Knave

I think practicality is a dying thing. I don’t know why either, maybe it relates to the over mandated nature of our government, or the lack of applied learning. People are quick to focus on numbers and studies and completely dismiss the overall picture of something, like @gottatrot’s example of the Cushing meds.

I have a dislike of many in the medical fields. Vets and doctors can carry a tendency to believe they are so much smarter than anyone else is capable of being, and so they are dismissive and arrogant. I know that’s not true of everyone though! I’ve met vets I’ve loved, and one of my greatest friends right now is a doctor. She is actually brilliant, but oddly lacks the arrogance of those I’ve seen less able than her in her field. She carries with her an old timey attitude, and is about the actual fixing of problems.

On Gotta’s next point: I have an autoimmune disease, as most of you know. I was so sick at one time I was sure I was going to die. I was going to this doctor for test after test and medication after medication. Some of them didn’t even make any sense, and I couldn’t at all figure out where his mind was going with his many diagnoses. He was very book learned and stuck to the rules, and my mind was fried by all of it.

One day I decided I’d had enough. I wanted to try the celiac diet in the case that was the problem, but I figured I would stick to it anyways for pretenses (I really wanted to stop going to doctors), and stop all of the medicines. Now, I don’t have celiac disease, but the dramatic change in my diet did push my autoimmune disease into remission. Now, whenever I am getting sick I do something like that, and I exercise consistently, and I feel really good. I am the picture of good health! Lol

I did so much better when I decided to treat myself in the same manner I would a horse. Diet and exercise.


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## egrogan

@SueC, I’m asking some of my former teacher friends to recommend an international English tutoring company as the one I had in mind requires you to be US-based.

I have also enjoyed the discussion on approaches to vet and medical care. I try to be a minimalist in both human and animal scenarios. I’ve definitely had vets that lay on a thick guilt trip for not “trying everything,” but happily right now I think we have good people who know modern tech and treatment options but don’t go overboard. I am definitely on board with quality over quantity for aging pets.


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## SueC

*SUNSHINE AND SEASHORE*

I'm super happy that we got a lovely day of sun and seaside walking to start off the weekend, in the middle of what is turning into a long, bleak winter. It was like an unexpected bubble of golden light and happiness in a sea of grey.

Here on Western Australia's South Coast, we've had three years of drought (only 50-60% of normal annual rainfall) followed by one of the wettest winters on record - our region has literally been drowning for the last two months and large areas are affected by flooding, waterlogging, soil erosion, structural and landscape damage. There's been a severe weather warning with sheep hypothermia alert at least once a week - normally we would get that once or twice a month in winter - and we've been regularly lashed with gale-force winds, sleet, and never-ending downpours. We live on a smallholding and I've been walking everywhere in gumboots for weeks. It was wet last weekend and it's forecast to be wet again later this weekend and for most of next week. Just what we need - more rain when the whole place is like a giant bog.

We made a pact that if we got a bright sunny day on one of our days off, we'd go somewhere we'd never been and make a day out of it, and that's exactly what happened. Having walked the Bibbulmun track from Albany to Denmark in day-walk sections several times over now, we bought track maps for Denmark to Walpole and north to Pemberton and the inland Karri forests, so we can systematically walk another 150km or so of the famous track in sections over the next couple of years. We got a good start to this fitness and sanity project by doing a 25km walk from Parry Beach to Boat Harbour and back in May - I posted some photos of the spectacular, pristine coastal scenery in this thread at the time.

West of Boat Harbour is a little settlement called Peaceful Bay which we'd never been to before, and that's despite of the fact I've lived and walked on the South Coast for decades. It's simply such a vast place that you can keep yourself busy just climbing every Stirlings and Porongurups peak every year and doing the dozens of short and day walks in the Albany-Denmark region over again. But the Bibbulmun track has got to be the best way to see the coastline from Albany to Walpole, properly, on foot and totally immersed.

We'd warmed up for this big day out by doing a 10km hilly section locally on the Bibbulmun east of Bornholm on Thursday afternoon, and the hike we planned around Peaceful Bay was to go west around the seashore for about 7km and then shortcut back to the village via a 4WD track - about the same distance.

Fabulous outing. We started on the town swimming beach:

The end of that beach was a rocky cove: 

From there on, we walked through a succession of beaches separated by dunes and rocky points. So this is the second beach, and you can see the next "up-and-over" at the end of it already:

Our dog loves to chase waves; here's a nice photo of that:

The geology of the Peaceful Bay area is mixed and diverse: Ancient granite, more recent intrusions of basalt etc, quartz veins, limestone, all creating a diverse and spectacular seascape:



The South Coast has a lot of very white, fine-grained icing-sugar sugar beaches from sand made of granite. On this walk, we also found cream-coloured beaches because of underlying limestone geology and the erosion of that. This particular little beach had much of its sand made of broken-down seashells:

We kept on following the shoreline, walking beaches and track...


The coastline in the distance behind Brett has the huge sand dunes behind Quarram Beach (we've not been there yet) to the left, and then the 12.5km Boat Harbour to Parry Beach stretch we did that return walk on in May, to the right of the photo.


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## SueC

From here, the climbs became more serious as we got into more elevated coastline:



Look closely at the next photo - there's two kangaroos in it. They were less than 10m from the track and quite unconcerned with us as long as we kept walking!

The track got increasingly elevated, and there were quite a few sculptural-looking rocks around.

This is the coastline west towards Rame Head and Conspicuous Cliff.

Quick snack stop - one thing I do quite religiously from two hours into a walk, to keep energy levels up...

More rock pools, and crabs!


A rounded-rocks shoreline:

Imagine where this log came from, and how much power the sea has to toss it up on the shore like this:

This was entering a zone called The Gap:

There was a beach in this cove, at the end of which we sat down to eat and drink, before taking the 4WD track from there to shortcut back to Peaceful Bay village.

By this time my feet were feeling the walk, and Brett produced a pair of headphones from his backpack and invited me to listen to the music on his iPod, which I'd carried to take photos. I don't normally do this, but I tell you what, a cover of "Blue Monday" by an outfit by the name of Orgy sure woke me up, and we made the 2.something km back in no time, despite the deep sand...

Peaceful Bay reminds me of a cross between Tasmania's Dootown and the South Coast's Windy Harbour - little informal villages of holiday houses, not built to suburban specifications - with a quirky feel to them.


Really good day out - and looking forward to more hitherto unexplored tracks, hopefully within the next fortnight. 

To see all the photos and do a sort of "vicarious tour" just click on any of them to go to the Flickr photostream.

...and I will get around to responding to people's posts properly soon. I scrambled to do the washing this morning before the arrival of the next front. This is now coming in half an hour and I need to get the horses rugged and the mostly dry washing in...


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## SueC

*TOTAL BOG*

Riding is just impossible at the moment as ludicrous amounts of rain continue to fall on our saturated landscape. I slosh around in gum boots trying to feed animals. Parts of the pasture that have never waterlogged before, the hilly bits, are squelching as you walk over them and there are puddles on all the flat bits. Traffic areas and gateways are turning into mud bogs. Horses are frequently in rugs 3-6 days without a break. The crossover at the road was near flooding again last night. The forecast is rain rain rain and it looks like things won't get anywhere near normal until maybe September.

Have a look at the clip in this link to see how Perth looked yesterday - and up there isn't nearly as wet as down here: Perth streets resemble rivers as WA braces for strongest cold front of the season on Monday

On our days off we go hiking in relative rain breaks, out to the coastal trails which aren't boggy. Yesterday we walked from Muttonbird Road to the Grasmere wind farm and back in water-resistant thermal pants and light waterproof breathable jackets - our current hiking uniform. I've never done this section with Brett before and the last time I walked it was in 2007 or thereabouts with the Year 9 outdoor camp kids. That was in summer weather; yesterday we had rain squalls and even sleet, and the odd burst of sun, but it was so good to be out and moving we walked 3 hours and covered over 15km. The dog had been mostly on the sofa for two days and was ecstatic to be out. I will post photos when we get around to it.

I picked up the Pergolide the day I ran out and was disappointed that it was a small packet, at $4 a tablet, which is even more expensive than the $3.10 a tablet I was paying at the other practice. I can't get hold of the vet and the receptionist is still rude and apparently a bit short of grey matter as well. I'd like a script to buy my own online because there I can get in for around $2 a tablet.

General question to all of you with Cushings horses: How shaggy do your horses still get while treated? On 1.5 tablets Sunsmart still looked like a shagpile last spring so I am a bit leery about my current advice to reduce him to 1 tablet. I've done that for nearly two weeks now and while he looks OK and is cheerful and energetic as always, what if the reduced dose will precipitate another crisis like two summers ago when half a tablet was suddenly no longer enough? It took months for him to get better then and he looked absolutely shocking - lost weight, no interest in life, walked around like a frail old man, got tongue ulcers and sore gums and infections - I don't want him to go through all that again...


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## SueC

*STORMY WALKING*

The amount of rain we are getting is ridiculous - five fronts in one week, three of them associated with severe weather warnings. Well dammit, we'd had enough of being indoors and yesterday started the weekend by going out out to walk 15km (Muttonbird to Grasmere Wind Farm End return) as one of those fronts was approaching. 

It felt so good to stretch our legs we walked merrily for three hours, through bursts of sun alternating with downpours and even sleet. What never stopped was the wind, which turned the 11 degree Celsius maximum into near-freezing due to wind chill. They don't call'em the Roaring Forties for nothing...

The secret was to walk fast, and I'd had coffee, which tends to hypercharge me.

This is a sort of natural Stonehenge...there's a few of them around the coast:

Views west to Grasmere and Albany Wind Farm...

A burst of sun... (...and spot the dog, who was ecstatic after mostly being on the sofa for two days...)

The heathland is starting to flower:

This is a Holly-Leaf Banksia:

Grasmere / Albany Wind Farm:

Happy dog, who can't understand why we're not always driving somewhere to go for a walk and then coming home to eat and collapse on the sofa (her favourite type of day):

Between coffee before walking, thermal mountain pants, a rainproof breathable jacket and walking fast all the way, I wasn't too hot or cold:

Turning around on reaching the first Grasmere turbine, to return home:

Pretty spectacular cliffs, and Torbay in the background:

On the way back, we side-tracked to a campsite to shelter from a burst of sleet.

Of course, when we got to the hut the sleet stopped. We decided to go again a couple of minutes later, and within a minute, sleet was coming down at about a 45 degree angle on gales. The storm clouds were pretty impressive:

As usual, to see the full set go to the Flickr page by clicking on any photo...


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## gottatrot

Looks like some great hiking!!

Amore has been on 1 mg. Prascend for 5 years. She still gets a serious winter coat, but I don't mind that as long as she sheds it all the way out. Here's her winter coat.








But her summer coat is as sleek as anyone else's.









I read the book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki. It was an interesting read, thanks for recommending it. 
You can often get tones of eastern religion coming through with some ideas, including how things are fated to be. I like how the characters came to accept themselves and others, and the pain they'd been through.


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## SueC

I'm glad you enjoyed that novel, @gottatrot. I think Murakami wrote an incredible inside portrait of depression at the start of that book. I like how the healing process eventually happened for the main character. Isn't it typical that after he was ostracised, HE was the one who felt defective, until he eventually discovered the bigger picture.

That's an acceptable winter coat on your mare and still less fluffy than a non-Cushings Connemara. Sunsmart was about like that until a week or two ago and is now starting to dreadlock underneath again as the hair grows longer. This is how he looked at the end of last spring, just starting to shed:



That's just too hot and horrible for the poor horse, and all those knots... I hope he doesn't get that bad again. I'd need to sedate him to clip him and even then... but that was on 1.5 tablets a day. Now he's on 1 and I don't know that's such a great idea. I don't know if the hair went that super-long because of the crisis he'd had in March and if it would be any better this year but it's already becoming unacceptable again. Also I'm worried the dose is too low now and he'll crash again before too long if I don't return him to 1.5 tablets...


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## gottatrot

Something I've read is that not every horse will have an improved length of coat even if all the other symptoms are better. I'm not sure if the coat growth relates to a different process of the endocrine system, but my vet warned me that I might still have to clip Amore even on the Prascend. Does he hate clipping enough you'd have to sedate him? I've clipped a few horses, but the only one that couldn't adjust to it was a barely handled donkey. Something I've noticed is that Amore's coat was getting progressively thicker and longer each year until I started her on the Prascend. But it seemed to arrest at that point once I started her on it. She didn't go back to the shorter coat she had when younger, but it hasn't gotten worse. I hope Sunsmart's coat will change back. I've seen a couple horses with untreated Cushing's and hair like a musk ox in the summertime.


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## egrogan

Maggie's coat has been behaving oddly this year. It's mid-summer, and she still has a few longer wintery patches on her rump and along her barrel that haven't completely shed out. The rest of her coat is slick and shiny. I have gone over those patches with various curry combs and they just aren't budging. She also has stereotypical sensitive chestnut skin so I can only attack the hair so hard before she wants to jump out of her skin. This is the first time she's ever held on to hair so long, though it took her into the summer to fully shed out last year as well.

Her winter coat has never been overly thick, in fact, I'd say both Fizz and Isabel are hairier than Maggie in the depths of winter. But the past two summers, she's taken by far the longest to shed out.

She's been on 1 tablet of Prascend for just under a year now- I believe we started her in October of 2020. She's always had the 1 tab of Prascend- vet started her at that dosage (vs. starting with a smaller dose for "loading" and then ramping up) and we haven't made any adjustments. She actually tested in the "Cushing's negative" ACTH range during spring bloodwork this year, but we kept her dosed as she was before even after the better bloodwork this spring.

Not sure if a sample size of 1 is any help, but figured I'd relay our experience.


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## SueC

Thank you for sharing your own observations and reading about Cushings horses, @gottatrot and @egrogan, much appreciated.

That dreadlock hair coat Sunsmart got the winter and spring after his Cushings crisis was far worse than anything before. When he started with Cushings, he was just a fluffball in spring, but not going lumpy or getting Rasta locks - his coat got over 15cm long in places.

@gottatrot, it's not just clipping. Sunsmart had the worst ground manners of any horse ever at my parents' establishment - and the best work ethic once you were in the cart or on his back. Cause would be combination temperament, frustration at the lack of social contact and exploration he had as a solitary stallion behind electric fencing and surrounded by paddocks full of other horses, poor emphasis on groundwork - it was always rush rush rush to get to the cart stage with my father, who just did not know how to take his time and just would not do the foundation level things that are best done before you inevitably get into trouble in a cart or saddle if you don't - like, he never actually taught his horses to slow down on the ground but then expected them to be able to do it in the cart, and the ones he had trained were really bad at that, especially in pressure situations - and he produced neurosis in animals because his own rubbed off on the more nervous of them, and he didn't desensitise them to weird/scary things, instead trying to banish anything weird or scary from the place, and even having a go at people for wheeling bicycles along or wearing flappy skirts that blew in the breeze etc. Anything that scared the horses was "verboten" but at the same time, and paradoxically, you couldn't point out to him that his horses were getting emotionally and mentally damaged by his institutionalisation of them and not letting them have herd life and places to explore on their own.

Anyway, Sunsmart improved massively with his ground manners within a year of my adopting him and bringing him to Albany when he was 12, but he's still not easy about some things (because they weren't taught early enough, which is where all that rushing and cutting corners in early training ends up leading, especially in a horse that is very defensive). When I first got him, he didn't want to be touched or groomed at all but would tolerate tacking up because he knew that would lead to an interesting outing and exercise. I'd have to tie him short and groom him carefully because he was so ticklish over the ribs as well, and do it quickly - and if he tried to turn around and bite I'd stick the dandy brush in his gaping jaws and say, "Oooh look, you've got a dandy brush! Aren't you clever!" 😁

Eventually he started to enjoy aspects of being groomed - he loves getting his neck, shoulders and hindquarters done but is still really sensitive on his ribs and belly - and that's with a brush. If he's got anything near his belly that needs attending, like a wound or scratch, I have to hold a hind leg up and get someone else to tend to the issue while sort of hypnotising my horse with a mixture of growling at him not to even think about it and then the moment he relaxes making encouraging noises etc. Doing anything near his ribs or belly is really difficult - and clipping, well, I really would have to sedate him, for those parts anyway; I could probably desensitise him enough on the less ticklish/guarded bits of his body, but his ribs and underside are exactly the areas in most need of clipping because they are the areas that dreadlock...

I don't have clippers and I'd probably do a terrible job. My vet though says she can sedate and clip so maybe I will leave that one to her. When he's sufficiently "drunk" he doesn't mind as much anymore, and even if he does, there's little he can do when he's like a delayed-reaction jellyfish...


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## SueC

*TWO BOOK REVIEWS

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn*








Just finished Gillian Flynn's _Sharp Objects_ - excellent debut, really well observed, to the point of being physically disturbing. Basically, a young reporter is sent from Chicago to her hometown in Missouri to investigate an apparent child serial killing there. Camille hasn't been home in eight years and when you meet her dysfunctional family you'll understand why. In her mother you'll meet the pillar-of-the-community narcissist who is a nightmare to have as a parent but always manages to publicly be seen as the devoted mother of difficult children. Quite a trick, not infrequently performed - and since I grew up in a dysfunctional family, I saw the general formula firsthand.

So Camille deals with the fallout of not having been seen or loved as a child, while being viewed as spoilt and difficult through her mother's poor-me, ungrateful-child propaganda. There's a sickly younger sister who died in the back story and I immediately thought, "Could well be Munchhausen's by proxy," and so it turned out. In the present day there's a 13-year-old sociopathic half-sister. The protagonist doesn't "label" this kind of thing - most people don't - but if you've grown up anything like this, and done your background research in consequence, you'll get to that point eventually. The most useful thing when dealing with narcissists and sociopaths is knowing that's what it is - but Camille is still second-guessing herself, and still significantly susceptible to the emotional BS.

Mother and young daughter were my equal prime suspects from the go-get in consequence - based on narcissism/sociopathy. Sure, they weren't the only warped people in the little community, and were off most people's radar for the mysterious child killings in the town - but both struck me as eminently capable of it, and I could see how either of them could have dealt with the practical problem of separating and killing the victims, even as most of the small town thought the murderer _had_ to be a man.

So _which one_ was it? The protagonist got into hair-raising situations - to an observer with that perspective - with both of them, which again showed me how easy the child killings would have been for either of them. Meanwhile, we see a social tableau of systemic dysfunction - a small town where the wealthy care for little besides their status and being "higher-up" than the working folk - a distinction that repeats generation after generation, and begins in pre-school. These people live shallow, self-absorbed lives that do actual damage to the have-nots in the community (and the planet in general) - while those lower on the totem pole scrabble to make a living, and their labour enriches the wealthy more than it does them.

The pig factory farming backdrop is gruesome - I already don't like intensive animal production (I say that as a free-range producer) for all sorts of good reasons pertaining to environmental impact and animal welfare. Some of the practices described I'm pretty sure aren't legal in Australia, but wouldn't surprise me in the US, where the right to make an almighty dollar seems to be seen as holier than any other principle (sorry US readers, honestly my impression, and a guest from Connecticut we've been hosting three days agreed with this perception & Australia has its own big national flaws, the biggest of which IMO is this perception that Australians are better at "mateship" than any other nationality, which is total BS and actually they could take lessons from other cultures, particularly about being inclusive and not just having mates who look like you and think like you...). Factory pigs have about the same living standards as battery chickens - or barn chickens, if they're lucky - meaning, they're never allowed to live anything resembling a normal life for a social animal. It's pitiful. Not living a long life is one thing, but never actually living a proper life is quite another.

In the book this serves to draw interesting parallels to the way we treat each other, as well. How much do we stand by and accept as "normal"? Or do we challenge the system, and face the personal consequences?

For me, doing the latter has been impossible not to do from the go-get. Maybe because I've seen the absurdity, injustice and cruelty in society from little, even when it's presented as normal and laudable. I could never not see it, so I never had to wake up to the fact that there are huge problems with human "standard mode" in our society and systems. Possibly it was made easier by never benefitting particularly from these, compared to some people. There was less to give up that way... but still so much that needed giving up, and it takes a lifetime apparently... Also, I had some excellent people in my life along the way, which helped hugely (some of those, I only knew by their work, but even that can make so much difference).

A book to make you think, and squirm, in equal measure.

♣ ♦ ♣​
*Adventures of a Waterboy by Mike Scott*

After an initial random flick-through when I first got it over a year ago, I've been properly reading Mike Scott's autobiography _Adventures of a Waterboy_ in the normal front-to-back manner. I'm up to the bit that recounts the recording of _This Is The Sea_ and its aftermath and have enjoyed the read so far. Mike Scott writes excellent prose, reflecting extensive reading as well as listening to music in which lyrics actually matter - the best prose I've read by a rock'n'roller, if occasionally patchy - though that's a natural consequence of the breadth of subject matter which is part of what makes this bio interesting.

It's not just, "I did this, I did that, he said this, she said that" but little asides about what it's like to live in certain places, deft character sketches, the politics of the music industry, love affairs gone wrong, all sorts of commentary. Dry stuff like the logistics of touring clearly isn't going to bring forth soaring verbal flights, but talking about his favourite stuff is - and there's a lot of that.








The thing I like the best about this autobiography is that Mike Scott is largely grounded, even as he recounts some cringeworthy anecdotes of 20-something learning experiences. We've all had these; I respect that he's so honest about this, instead of editing it out or glossing it over. He wrote this bio 40+ and it's interesting to read as a 40+ and compare notes.

The Waterboys were one of my favourite bands growing up and remain so, but I'd never really read any interviews, feature articles etc, so this was the first solid printed thing related to Mike Scott and his group that I've immersed myself in. As a 40+ looking at a 40+ person's recount, I had to laugh: At 15 you're listening to the lyrics going, "Oh, I want to be that articulate and deep-thinking when I'm 25!" and then at 40+ you're looking at this autobiography going, "OMG, he was naive and had shipwrecks at 25, same as I did!" 😁

With me it's pretty obvious why that happened given my dysfunctional upbringing and all the corresponding baggage, most of which you don't even know you have and takes a fair bit of detective work to unravel. But as far as I know, Mike Scott didn't grow up in a violent, manipulative, distorting refrigerator household that never sorted out its shiitake or made peace in any meaningful way. He seems at any rate on good terms with his mother (although people aren't always frank in public about that kind of thing for various reasons) - but the father had deserted the family in Scott's childhood.

Almost everyone has something like that to grapple with, some hollow place that makes life difficult especially in early adulthood. However, compost can be used for growing flowers, even while you're still having blind spots and shipwrecks, and people can come out of things like this with a lot of compassion for others and a clearsightedness they'd not otherwise have acquired. The mind has that in common with muscles - if you don't use them for difficult things they kind of turn into custard.

The "Kate Lovecraft" story in Mike Scott's autobiography is worth reading as a prototype dysfunctional romantic relationship not uncommon in early adulthood - and I think her name must have been changed or she would likely have sued his posterior off for printing the story, given the character traits and incidents related. And, it's not the last cringeworthy romance related either - and that's how it often goes in real life anyway.

So how can someone write such amazing lyrics at 25 and still get sucked into a manipulative romantic relationship? The same way you can write excellent scientific literature at 25 or dance a beautiful ballet at 25 or discover a new mathematical theorem at 25 and still end up with personal shipwrecks. The same way marriage guidance counsellors themselves don't necessarily have glowing, trouble-free marriages. Because intellect and emotion are two different beasts and intellect is far more straightforward to work with than the subconscious. So you can sound intelligent and wise and deep and still struggle with interpersonal stuff. Also because it's always easier to deal with the things that are one step removed from your own life, than with your own stuff.

Another thing I like about this autobiography is that the person writing it mostly has his head screwed on straight about priorities in life. He doesn't give a barnacle about fame and wealth and status, he doesn't schmooze and play the game and constantly name-drop in self-important ways. He relates anecdotes about meeting his musical heroes that mostly don't make me cringe; he respects artists for their work rather than for their status etc.

I particularly liked this little snippet about going to Dublin, on the invite of a fiddler who's on quite a few of the albums in my personal collection:



> I flew into Ireland on the fourth of January 1986 to visit Steve Wickham for a weeklong trip that turned into six years...In Steve's basement flat I was introduced to his wife Barbara and shown the guest room, a tiny chamber with a single narrow bed and a window onto a grimy backyard. Then we went out into the soul of a Dublin Saturday night...
> 
> Finding myself in Dublin was like going through the back of a Narnian wardrobe. I was in a convivial parallel universe, led by The Fellow Who Fiddles down colourful streets into dusty cafes where roguish men with scarves and glass eyes said things to each other like, 'I hear you're playing chess for money these days.' Or archaic newsagents' shops with fifties decor, which sold Irish cigarettes - Major and Carroll's Number One - and whose magazine shelves contained little songbooks with titles like _A Collection Of Sea Ballads_ or _Sing An Irish Song_. I gathered this strange new world around me like a fog, quickly realising Dublin afforded me space and distance. The wilful voices of agents, managers and record companies were out of hearing. And after the shock of discovering, as I believed, that Kate Lovecraft could read my mind, Dublin was a safe haven. Even if Kate really was psychic the Irish cultural fabric was a hazy, mysterious domain of which she had no experience and couldn't penetrate. She didn't know where I was, didn't have my phone number or a mental image of my whereabouts. I felt secure.
> 
> I set about enjoying myself, regrouping my band and planning my next assault on the citadel of rock'n'roll. I wrote to Gary Kurfirst (American agent), split with him, hired a solicitor-cum-big-brother...and found myself a flat, a bright little cave in a leafy lane a mile from the centre of town. And that would be the end of one part of the story, and the beginning of all the others...


There's a few things in this book that raise the eyebrows of people not in Mike Scott's particular branch of human endeavour - like the apparently inevitable 1980s after-gig cocaine. Clearly a different work set to my own - as a science educator, my idea of fun shenanigans was to drink neon-orange fizzy Berocca straight from a laboratory beaker at a department meeting, as a layered metaphor. And my Berocca was the plain basic B-and-C vitamin type, not the American stuff with added caffeine and guarana. Trust me on two counts: 1) Berocca looks much more at home in laboratory glassware than in an ordinary drinking vessel, and 2) typical department meetings make extra B-and-C necessary for your health. 

In Ireland, brown recreational liquids probably superseded white recreational powders, but you'd have to ask Mike Scott, and anyway, that's inconsequential overall; as are the occasional assumptions that appear to be made about certain situations being related (...you don't know for sure what's going on in someone else's head and heart unless they tell you, and are honest, including with themselves). I'm much enjoying this bio for its language, stories, settings and illumination of what it's like to be on the other side of music I've loved since I was in school, and think it's one of the more readable rock autobiographies out.

And isn't this true...


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## SueC

Construction note: I'm going to make an index for my first page, because this journal has become so complicated and long! Now that we can edit old posts, that's possible.

I've just put in a contextual preamble on the first page because otherwise the first post (which keeps getting "shown" on the forum's "recent posts" whenever I do a new post here) will give a really bad idea of this journal! 🙃


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## Knave

I can imagine his ground manners when he came. Bones has such issues from that same treatment before I purchased him, and he only made it until 2 there. He overcame much of it much easier I am sure, but he will never let go of the self mutilating when he is overwhelmed or bored. Some things, like putting on fly spray, I just do while he throws a tantrum.

The horse my parents sold back to his owner, the one I called a ballerina, was very bad on the ground. He also was ticklish on his sides and would intend to bite during grooming. He was particularly rude to be around too, but a very talented horse ridden. I guess ground manners are irrelevant to many persons.

Cash is not my favorite on the ground. I assume it is because of his being started in prison be people without experience. He is pushy and sometimes (rarely) nervous, but that is a terrible combination. If something manages to make him worry I dread leading him. Maybe it is simply his nature though and not his start, because the horse will do the same to other horses in the corral. If he is upset he is so big that he simply expects others to get out of his way.


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## SueC

Knave said:


> I can imagine his ground manners when he came. Bones has such issues from that same treatment before I purchased him, and he only made it until 2 there. He overcame much of it much easier I am sure, but he will never let go of the self mutilating when he is overwhelmed or bored. Some things, like putting on fly spray, I just do while he throws a tantrum.


The problem with "displacement behaviours" like self-mutilating and cribbing and other reactions to stress is that each time they're done, they deepen the "neural groove" - the pathway that's being established. Every behaviour becomes more ingrained with repetition, and after a while of this (like at the point your horse got to before you bought him, or my father's self-harming horse Chip got to) undoing the behaviour can be hard, as anyone who's tried to change their own destructive / useless habits will tell you. That book I just read, _Sharp Objects_, was narrated by a cutter - the self-harm brings release from stress through breaking tension and releasing endorphins etc, so there's an element of biochemical addiction to these kinds of behaviours - sort of like with OCD as well. If you can reduce the anxiety you reduce the behaviour, but to an extent the urge to self-harm will still be there in the next super-anxious situation.

If you're human you can think about this stuff and try to substitute one "release behaviour" with another - with a less harmful behaviour. For instance, it's easier for smokers to quit if they chew nicotine gum instead. That's not just because it's a less harmful way to get nicotine, but also because chewing something is a substitute release behaviour to smoking. I'm not sure how to teach a horse a better release behaviour though, that it does in its own time. All I know is how to take the pressure off and change its living circumstances, and reduce anxiety and boredom for it, and give it positive experiences that will give it endorphins without destruction. Which is what you're doing with Bones.




Knave said:


> The horse my parents sold back to his owner, the one I called a ballerina, was very bad on the ground. He also was ticklish on his sides and would intend to bite during grooming. He was particularly rude to be around too, but a very talented horse ridden. I guess ground manners are irrelevant to many persons.


In my father's case, he was always rushing around as if chased by Legion. He had no time for anything, which was his own mindset. He had to do mostly two things: 1) His established routine (and God help anyone who tried to alter that routine in the slightest, which is one big impediment he had to learning new things or improving his general technique), and 2) progress towards laudable goals by his definition - making money, winning races, winning competitions, winning arguments. If it didn't potentially make money, it wasn't considered properly worthy - which is one reason I had so little support for endurance riding, gymkhanas etc - that was a mere hobby, nothing "serious", and was never going to repay the money invested in it, so if I wanted to compete I should race horses with him, he said - which I never had the desire to take him up on; I think horse racing is dull and corrupt, and I so much prefer other things one can do with horses, which have more communication and longevity in them - and for "serious" I had other plans for my life, like studying science and educating people.

The two main reasons I helped him in my teens and 20s (on holidays/weekends if I was around) were as payment for having a horse on his place, and because it was pretty much the only semblance of social activity I could get with him - we never travelled together as a family once we came to Australia, we didn't do family activities worthy of that name - I don't think watching TV together qualifies, for example. Family time was always the fa'g end of what was left when all the "serious" work was done - when there was no energy left to do anything else. I was never asked, "What would you like to do?" and if I voiced anything in that direction it was mostly just dismissed. I personally think spending your life mucking out stables that horses don't even want to be locked up in, over and over every morning, and spending your day walking horses into yards and then back again, and driving endless loops around training tracks in harness, is a miserable existence that achieves very little besides being a hamster wheel and a sort of genteel form of socially acceptable gambling. I don't see that it does the community any good, improves anything; and I don't think it's a great lifestyle for the horses either. It's just a hobby too, but one in which there is the illusion of it being a "business" - but do you know that old joke, "How do you make a million dollars with horses? Start with two million..."

He saw it as a business, but even in his best year he made less than an average salary, and that was before deducting all the expenses. He could have worked part-time as a cleaner and made more money than he made out of horses over 30 years, and still had half the day each weekday to actually spend with family or pursue hobbies that don't masquerade as business (like maybe travelling a bit to get to know the country he'd moved us to). And he actually had enough cash to retire by the time he was 40. Interesting retirement. I wonder if he would have spent more time talking to his children if he could have made money out of them. Meow. I think he just didn't know how to connect with other human beings. And I think some of his behaviours suggest he has OCD.

But I digress. So, because he was always rushing everywhere, his horses walked flat out with him all the time, and never got taught to walk slowly or, God forbid, stop, unless there was a really important reason to stop, like the ground had opened up a sinkhole or he'd accidentally arrived at the edge of a cliff. He was speed-walking his many horses from their stables into their many separate yards every day, so all the horses knew how to do, on the ground, was to walk fast when being led, and occasionally stop in an emergency, or when arriving at the tie rail. The only place they consistently stopped for more than half a second, in their whole training, was at the tie rail, when they were tied to it.









(...that's Sunsmart in 2009, the year I adopted him - several months in, and now actually standing still for increasing periods of time when asked to, even in new and exciting situations like this one, which was his first outing to a large water body, to challenge his hydrophobia! He had no idea how to stop anywhere except at the tie rail or an obstacle when I first got him - not on the ground, not when driven or ridden - he'd never been asked to do such a thing. Sure, he stood around in his paddock, but that just wasn't something you did around monkeys...until this particular monkey, apparently...)

The horses he'd not bred himself had actually been taught how to walk slowly and stop etc on the ground, and they did it - at least to begin with. They were his most successful horses - the ones that had been ground-trained by other people, and sold at yearling sale or as harness-started horses. Every single horse he bred and entirely handled himself at some point had an above-average problem with rushing in races, not being able to be restrained in races, and breaking gait in races - so many of his horses got made "out of draw" at mobile events so they'd not endanger other horses, or got sent back to trials for breaking up in races. That last horse of his who won his first start broke up every race after that and was eventually banned from participating in races - he'd bought that one as a yearling but it soon forgot its early halter education for lack of continued practice.

Other contributing factors to the horses breaking gait in races was that after the 1980s he stopped training with other people on a regular basis. He would just train the horses solo most of the time, and mostly at home, so that eventually, the first time his young horses were working in company was in an educational trial - and for most horses, that's just too much new stuff to handle all at once. Most horses start with training buddies etc, and gradually build up to trials. You don't just drop them in at the deep end and expect them to do well. Predictably, his horses would then have a poor experience at the first trial, getting upset and breaking gait, and if you aren't starting with a good experience the horse gets even more apprehensive next time around. 

Eventually, my father even stopped using a stopwatch in his solo training, claiming he knew how fast they went. Once I went to the training track to time him and he was overestimating the horses' speed by 5-10 seconds a mile, which meant they were out of their depth in trials rather than comfortable with their speed. I bought him a new stopwatch as a birthday present and he used it a while before going back to using his "feel" for speed. All the while, horse performance was declining. Training wasn't anywhere near what it had been in the 80s when he started and had a successful strike rate with every horse he raced - back when he worked with another trainer and his horse and horses didn't just mostly work solo at home without a stopwatch.

What my father was good at was correcting gait problems with proper trimming and some corrective shoeing. This gave him an edge early on over the average competitor, with his horses who came to him with established ground and harness training anyway. He was also good at turning previously over-raced horses into good performers, and turning around horses who had been cruelly treated elsewhere (by that I mean, in this case, when interacting with humans during training). But he didn't get better with his weak sides because he could never admit he had any, or that he made mistakes. He'd never have read a how-to-train book by Tom Roberts because what could he possibly have taught him about horse training, etc. He was completely impermeable to any attempts I made to show him how to teach horses from the ground first the things they failed to do in harness - said I was hassling him, they weren't my horses, it was none of my business, why did I think I knew so much blah blah blah. And that's despite of the fact that I had spent years "buddying" his young horses during dangerous phases of harness education. It was my job apparently to shut up and do as I was told, and not to offer opinions on how to solve problems that were being encountered. Often I could influence the problems just by how I buddied the horse, without having to talk to him about it. But as I got older, I lost interest in working with him, and did it less and less.

It's kind of as if you're helping someone with mathematics and they can't solve a quadratic equation, but if you want to show them where the problem in their process is, they go, "What would you know about quadratic equations?" even though you can actually solve quadratic equations. I taught human beings in university and high school classrooms for nearly 20 years and only rarely encountered people like that - the vast majority are happy to have a sympathetic person help them learn things, and make it fun. I do recall one mature-age male university student who seemed offended by the idea that he should learn something from a young woman (as I was then) - least of all science! He was as repellent of my efforts to explain things to him and as aggressive as my father. He was so nasty I ended up sitting down with the senior coordinator to discuss it - and the senior coordinator said this student was making trouble everywhere, that he barely passed a course, and that he always threatened to sue his instructors or the university for failing assignments. I shouldn't worry about it; the student had form, he wasn't going to pass my class for two reasons: Unwillingness to admit he wasn't a brilliant student and seek and accept help, and lack of basic aptitude for science. He said the guy had a massive ego problem.

Yeah, and I had one very like that in my family of origin. Several, actually. Neither of my parents can admit they make mistakes, and therefore they can't learn from them. My father will never adopt a technique he didn't work out himself from first principles - he won't learn from other people, except occasionally through a book of his own choosing (never through a recommended book). I've learnt so much more than he ever did because I voraciously learn not just from empirical situations, but from all sorts of books and directly from other people, and I'm always quizzing other people about how they solve various problems. It's standard conversation for me and it's really interesting to listen to what other people say about how they solve problems or approach topics. When I was teaching, I learnt as much from my students as they learnt from me - because I was interested in them and how they saw the world. When I train horses, I learn more from them than they learn from me. Teaching and learning are two-way streets, in my world.




Knave said:


> Cash is not my favorite on the ground. I assume it is because of his being started in prison be people without experience. He is pushy and sometimes (rarely) nervous, but that is a terrible combination. If something manages to make him worry I dread leading him. Maybe it is simply his nature though and not his start, because the horse will do the same to other horses in the corral. If he is upset he is so big that he simply expects others to get out of his way.


That is actually really scary! Most horses will go around other horses, and people. The ones that barge straight on like a semi-trailer can be really dangerous. Do you just lead him off a halter? Have you got any tricks for working with him when he gets like this, that are helping any at this point?

Julian's dam Juliet was a barger. Everyone had to disappear from space when she occupied it - horses, people, wildlife. I never led her without looping the lead rope around her nose so she wouldn't run off like a steam train with me water-skiing behind her when she got in the mood for it. If I was in her paddock and she was running, I cleared out of the path she was heading for very quickly. Most horses you can stop in the paddock if they're running, by standing in their path with your arms out to your sides. This one would have flattened you no questions asked. She was an alpha mare and the boss of everything. Not big like your Cash, but you know, it's not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog.

I think Juliet would have done better if she'd been properly ground trained in the first place, and if she'd had a more interesting life. She was my father's most successful mare, won 7 races and placed in many more, set great speed records. She got especially bad after retirement; she was depressed and bored just standing by herself in her little sand yard day in, day out. She can't have thought human beings were a very good thing.


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## gottatrot

I enjoy reading these perspectives from people who understand you can't just "make" horses do things and that some horses will always have difficult behaviors. 
I was remembering Halla, who could be an excellent horse to lead around, and very light and responsive. Yet if she was afraid or needing to move, you better not stand in her way. Nothing you could do would stop her from pushing through or over anything to get where she was going. Thankfully you could circle her as much as was needed. 
I just don't understand the perspective that you can simply "make" a horse do or be the way you "insist" they will be, if you just do it hard enough. That is just not true. People say they won't accept certain things, and therefore they don't happen. Sounds like a fairytale world to me.


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## SueC

Well, @gottatrot, sounds like human ego and a human superiority complex to me, and those are the rule rather than the exception. People are usually brought up with it from the cradle - this idea that they are the Lord of All on Earth, or all the so-called "lower creatures" anyway. That these things are there to do their bidding and to be used for convenience. That the human will is to be imposed on other creatures, since humans are so "superior" to "mere animals" - and that it's perfectly OK to bulldoze rainforest, scrubland, bushland, any of the increasingly scarce wildlife habitat and just annihilate everything to make way for human "development" - what would they say if someone drove through their own suburbs with a bulldozer and declared, "Well, there's so much suburbia already, we need to build something else here, and the inhabitants can just go find homes in the masses of other suburbia out there!" (Which is the line humans take with habitat destruction and wildlife displacement. For another angle to this - how do most mainstream humans react to the idea of helping _human_ refugees - letting them live on their patch? You've got a spare room, can't a refugee have it? Overwhelmingly that would be a no, but do people think about being consistent, or just use any surface argument to justify doing what they want to do?)

I've a good friend whose hypothesis sort of differs from mine - she'd say it was lack of love, and lack of learning to love. Like everything is a big love deficit and if only that wasn't there. And maybe that's part of it, because to treat other creatures as if you're their rightful Lord and Master lacks love, as well as respect, including self-respect (and it lacks miles and miles of understanding and wisdom). Of course, humans will often do the same thing to fellow humans, especially those they perceive to be "lower" than themselves on this construct they make called a social hierarchy. I've often observed a strong correlation between people bullying other people, and bullying animals - including advocating the bullying of horses, and calling it training. There's this sense of entitlement that just sticks out like a sore thumb. I personally feel nauseated when I encounter it in its usual blaring, strident form.

Not all horse people, or animal people, are like this - a minority think differently. I think the First Nations cultures had, and some of them still have, a far healthier relationship to nature than the West. They generally recognised the interconnectedness of the biosphere, they traditionally didn't kill for sport but to eat, they acted to steward the species they relied on for food and to limit their own numbers. Most Westerners are sadly ignorant they're even living in a biosphere, and there's much killing for sport and people tellingly posing with one foot on the body of the animal they've just shot, and animal cruelty and neglect, and many don't think twice about cutting down a tree that's in your way or bulldozing several hectares of wildlife habitat to make a car park, or throwing rubbish out of the car. The idea of limiting your family size is seen as an interference with individual freedom. A human embryo is sacred but sentient creatures are kept in concentration camp conditions in factory farms with little thought. The sense of balance is completely lacking here - including in vegans, but that's another story.

It is possible to treat other beings with respect, including if they are your food animals. It is possible to have mutually beneficial relationships with companion animals, where the companion animals don't get chronic problems from our lack of consideration for their biological requirements (and decent treatment should be equally afforded to food animals). The problem isn't that we need to stop eating animals or working with animals - the problem is how we do these things - that we do them with care and humanely and with minimal suffering, and that we stop thinking ourselves entitled to consume resources willy-nilly and reproduce above replacement. The problem is that we need to grow up in the West, and stop acting like we're three and the world revolves around us and we can do what we like.


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## SueC

A history lesson in a particularly effective medium...


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## SueC




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## Knave

I haven’t been on in a few days. I understand what you say with your father. My own father makes particularly talented horses. They do not have the deficits in performance that your father’s developed, but they are hotter animals. Everything is sensitized and requires an edge. He can work that edge perfectly well, excepting on the roan horse he gave away. That edge gives his horses a boost above any competition.

He doesn’t compete anymore, but trust me when I tell you that when he did he won. His horses, like your father’s, are expected to do everything in a rush. Unlike your father’s, they must be taught to control themselves and go slow if that is his expectation. It isn’t a mosey type of thing though. Also unlike your father’s horses, they lack boredom. They run together and are used both for work and for show (when he showed). I think the work aspect is the only reason many of them didn’t lose their minds with the pressure.

Some horses, like my mare, could not stand the pressure of expectation. They lost their minds to their anxiety. Maybe that was the roan’s problem as well. I wondered what would happen if I tried to desensitize him. I figured though that I would be afraid of him always. He had my number, so there was no reason for me to try.

I think that your friend is right. We forget to love. I think some people are scared to love; it makes them too vulnerable. So, they see things apart from themselves.

Cashman is quite scary when he is like that. Luckily it is very rare anymore. I only lead him with a leadrope or his reins when I am riding. I’ve taken to trusting him again, but I would much rather face him from his back than the ground if he were scared. His plowing me over that time was one time too many, and if God hadn’t stepped in I’m sure I would have been entirely damaged.


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## SueC

*FOREST OF THE ENTS: OLD-GROWTH KARRI/TINGLE FOREST*

We've been doing a lot of coastal walking, and Brett wanted something special for his birthday yesterday. I pored over the Bibbulmun maps near Nornalup and found a likely section which met with HRH's enthusiastic approval, in the rare remaining old-growth Karri/Tingle forest, the majority of which has historically been pillaged for timber. Most tourists go to a curated place on the South Coast called the Valley of the Giants. The Bibbulmun track is walkers-only and takes you to places you will meet very few if any people - because most modern people don't want to get out of their cars and go for long walks. Bit sad, but given the human overpopulation, this makes for special experiences to those of us who like walking.

Karri forest has an understorey with a distinctive peppery smell that's unique to this forest; it's like being in a building filled with exotic incense. Walking in the Karri feels a little indoorsy, because you don't see much sky and your footfalls are so muffled by the thick "carpeting" underfoot. Brett says these forests have a cathedral quality - with tall columns going way way up and the same sense of hush, and very similar light.

The sheer size of the older trees is jaw-dropping...

...and to think that this was once the norm in many forests, before human destructiveness took over post-industrialisation. 😢

You literally can't get even a quarter of a tree like this into shot with a camera.

It's like a Lilliputian experience.

These trees are hundreds of years old - typical life spans of Tingles exceed 400 years and they attain heights over 75m. Karris reach similar heights and live to 300+ years if people will let them, which they usually won't. Old-growth trees are full of nesting hollows for birds and native marsupials.

Creek crossing...lots of water in the landscape as you'd expect from this incredibly wet winter, more on that later...


In the "cathedral"...and while these photos give the appearance of having been shot lying down looking up, this is in fact just from face height walking along.




It's very oooh-aaah... very _Lord of the Rings_, which was shot in New Zealand for a reason - there's so few forests like this left in this world... NZ and Australia still have patches like this, though sadly, the vast majority of the forests even here have been either cut down entirely to make room for agriculture, or looted for timber.

Here's an old eucalyptus tree (both Karri and Tingle are eucalypt species) hollowed out progressively by fire, which is one of the natural mechanisms for making animal shelters.

This is a close-up of a Karri trunk - no wonder it's called _Eucalyptus diversicolor_...

After a few kilometres, the Bibbulmun track joined up with a vehicle access track that was going to the famous Sappers Bridge, one of the few over the Frankland River and built largely with natural materials. We needed to cross that bridge to get to the other side of the river and up into the hills to our walking destination, the Frankland River camp site...


We came from the "X" at Boxhall Road and were going to head via the second "X" on the track map to the campsite, and then loop around and return on the riverside track (dotted red line) to check out the rapids en route - which would have been a nice long walk but alas...


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## SueC

Our birthday-person-on-his-birthday-walk, Brett, was laughing till he was bent double, and of the opinion that this sight compensated him for the walk being rudely cut short. 😄 He also said he "couldn't get over it" bwahahaha, puns are such fun. 😜

I have been telling people for two months about how unbelievably wet this winter is. So here's the Sappers Bridge all washed out, and they're going to have to do repairs, because the road surface has been undercut and worn away so that the bridge has become inaccessible structurally, and not just because of current flooding. Typically for bloody-minded me, I was looking at the railings to see if a pedestrian could cheat their way across after all, but I'd have had to jump 2 metres across rapids to the edge of the bridge, onto the concrete base before clambering on the handrails etc, and of course I can't jump 2 metres, and God only knows how many metres I'd have had to jump at the other end, plus we have a dog etc.

This was the view of the oncoming and outgoing water respectively:


If you're wondering about the foam, it's a natural phenomenon linked to the tannins in the water. When we got home we found that the bridge was first closed because the foam had made it impassable for vehicles - here's an official picture of that:








That was before water levels kept rising and the bridge itself was flooded, and the roadways to it washed out. 😵

Here's a historical image of this bridge prior to being fitted out with its metal rails, to show how much water there usually is beneath it when things are quiet...








So we can agree - that's a helluva lot of water running down the Frankland at the moment...

Therefore we retraced our steps, but it was still a lovely walk back, plus of course we have 2.5 weeks off from Thursday and plan to do a lot of hiking on new-to-us trails. We're planning to do that circuit walk properly when the waters recede - although that probably won't be till September.

Brett thought it would be hilarious if I stood in front of a certain road sign partly obscuring its writing...

Backtracking...

When we got back on the proper foot-only trail, we found an uprooted old tree. Here's a human for scale:

It's such a fabulous forest.

The foreground giants are Tingle, the background white trees are Karri.

And then we were back where we'd parked.

We hope you've enjoyed your virtual Australian Ent-forest adventure! 🙂

There's a few more photos on Flickr directly as usual...but this time I've used most of them in the walk report because it was such a fantastic place...


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## Knave

That is insanely beautiful! The foam is mind blowing!!


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## SueC

I feel incredibly lucky to live on the South Coast, @Knave. Career sacrifices were made to do it - neither of us wanted to live in the city and it was here or Tasmania for us. 💫 

That foam is something... makes you think, "OMG, did the shampoo factory have a spill?" 😋 Have you seen this kind of thing in the US? Just from plant substances in the water?

I hope things are well on the ranch. Are you still home schooling, or is school back? Are things busy? My food garden is still drowning. No point planting anything into the mush. I've got a bunch of spinach and lettuces drowning underwater in one of the lower-lying beds. Some surviving stuff further up, including some prize-looking broccoli plants growing (but who knows, they may only end up having tiny heads for all that!). I decided to put half the area into potatoes in spring, seeing as that amount is fallow now and I can't do anything with it. Brett says I should try growing seaweed...


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## egrogan

This walk was exceptionally breathtaking, loved all the photos of those majestic trees. And that bridge washout was something, particularly with the "typical" shot of the little trickle underneath. I too loved the foam. I can't recall that I've ever seen anything like that on fresh water, only at the ocean. I will have to think about it more.

Though our seasons are reversed, we're having the same kind of wet weather and starting to worry about flooding.

And did anyone else see the photos from all the flooding in Germany this week!? This one I pasted in below was in the NYTimes on Friday, and I have to admit that after picking my jaw up from the floor at that massive series of...sinkholes (?) on the right, the first thing I noticed was that the decimated property in the front left corner had to have been a horse farm, with the block row of stables, turnout pastures, and trailers flooded in the back. I haven't been able to stop wondering if the horses were in there when the land gave way. And of course dozens and dozens of human lives lost across Europe...


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## knightrider

Those pictures were amazing. The foam looks like ice, but I knew you hadn't written about the weather being super cold. Hard to believe there could be so much foam. We need rain, by the way. I know the West is in a bad drought too.


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## SueC

I'll try to send some your way, @knightrider - how do you do an anti-raindance / send-the-rain-where-it's-needed dance?

@egrogan, I saw that too. 😲 Thought it was a horse place also. All the buildings stayed intact so far which is good, though no doubt they'll have to be abandoned...have a look at the human residence and imagine the view out of their front windows adjacent to the massive breakaway... I don't think anyone is going to be able to fill that hole in and make it structurally sound again. Perhaps if you could divert some lava from an active volcano through a wormhole...and even then you'd only have a plug, and erosion could continue around the edges of it...

One hopeful thing here is - any animals in buildings would have been OK (except they were locked in buildings, which you know I think isn't a good way for horses to live). Paddocks that crumbled at the edges lost 1/3 maximum. So now we're down to probabilities if any animals were in those fields, but I think the chances of horses surviving in that situation are greater than 2/3 because they seem to be able to sense things like this coming and react to it - if they have the space to run.

Our horses here went for a very fast run around the back of the house yesterday. It sounded more urgent than when they run for fun. Three minutes later there was a sudden short rainstorm. They could sense it coming and ran into the forest for cover. They do this a lot - I remember a time Brett and I were working in the "hill paddock" about 300m from the house. Then the horses, who'd been grazing near us, as an orchestrated group suddenly ran flat out for the trees. We weren't wearing raincoats, and I immediately ran with them. We _nearly_ made it to the house before we were deluged... 😄


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## SueC

A song for @gottatrot at this time. Such a good one to listen to after losing a horse, for some reason.


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## knightrider

That was surely haunting and beautiful. Thank you for sharing!


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## gottatrot

Thank you, just beautiful. It felt healing to me.


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## SueC

Good music is supposed to do just that. 🌈

I've got an idea, @gottatrot. You're more advanced at violin than I am...I don't know if you find playing soothing when you're grieving (I do) but if you do, you could go one step further and noodle around a bit and maybe compose a little tune (or even a few) that you think expresses the spirit you saw in Amore. Probably works best if you just improvise without thinking too much about composing - thinking about your mare instead. You'll never know what might come to you.

Many years ago I saw a lovely TV series called _Down To Earth_ in which a city family moved to the British countryside so they could live a completely different life. There was a teenage daughter and a little girl who played violin. She was practicing _Greensleeves_ for one of her tests one week, and her father died suddenly just before her test, which was next day. Her mother asked if she wanted to stay home that day but she went and performed the song for her father, and it was such a heartfelt version I cried buckets watching. Music can be such a lifeline, and such a tribute, and so so many things. It can give voice to a beauty we knew as well, and keep that alive this way.

I've found that performance of _Greensleeves_ by doing a bit of digging. If the "timer" I've set on the clip doesn't work, it's at 20:47.


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## Knave

I am late to everyone’s journals. Things have been good, just busy in a way. I’ve been riding, but nothing interesting.

No, I’ve never seen foam! I haven’t seen a lot of things though. In reality I’ve been pretty secluded to my own area.


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## SueC

Ah, @Knave, but if you're secluded to a particular area you will get a deeper view of that than if you travel the globe 24/7 and see everything superficially and without time for any of it to truly seep into your bones! 

It's why I tend to read new work by authors already known to me over just lots and lots of authors - and ditto music - because otherwise I can't make a deep connection. I'd rather be connected deeply to a few things than superficially to infinite amounts of things...


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## Knave

SueC said:


> I'd rather be connected deeply to a few things than superficially to infinite amounts of things...


I really like that. I will remember it.


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## SueC

*SAND PATCH/GRASMERE*

Yesterday there was enough interruption in the downpours to be able to have a decent 2.5-hour walk of about 10km through the dunes and along the clifftops of the Torndirrup peninsula coast. This is the twin of the Muttonbird to Grasmere return walk we did a fortnight ago, where we came into our turn-around point in Grasmere (Turbine 19) from the west. So this time we walked in from the east, from the entrance point at Albany Wind Farm.


There was drizzle on and off, but the wind chill was the biggest issue - we were walking between 11.30am and 2pm when temperatures peaked at 15 degrees Celsius but the wind had the apparent temperatures down to 1-2 degrees Celsius - and that was at the airport where such data is recorded; not out on the windiest edge of our wild coast, where the town's 19-turbine wind farm is located. There it was brutal and certainly felt below freezing, but we're equipped with outdoor thermals including gloves, and within 15 minutes of walking at a decent pace you're fine, as long as you've got enough calories on board.

This is the view down the tourist lookout platform at the ocean, which was properly roiling not just with wind speeds peaking well over 50km/hour, but mostly from the long stormy fetch between the South Coast and Antarctica.

To see this on a photo doesn't actually give you any idea, because it doesn't quite give you the scale - everything about the coast is huge, so you feel like a tiny ant walking around. The cliffs tower, dunes are massive, ocean and sky are infinite, and the waves are enormous, with king waves known to exceed 10 metres in height and sweeping unwary anglers off the coastal rocks every year. Even the "ordinary" surf crashes into the cliffs with a force that makes the earth shake. We used to live a mile inland from Sand Patch and we could hear the waves thundering from there. Standing on the edge of the coast, you physically feel their force; in your ears, in your legs, in your ribcage.

On the South Coast, massive wind turbines with nacelles the size of buses and 35-metre blades look like children's toys in the landscape, just as huge cargo ships entering King George Sound look like toy boats in a bathtub.

Walks like this in nature make me happy. Not just the healthy exercise in ultra-fresh air, but being able to do that in this wild, majestic landscape, where you understand that the human species is not quite as clever and powerful as it likes to think it is. In view of the decidedly un-_sapiens_-ness of our species, it comforts me to know nature in the raw, and to know that it will still be here in some form when we've wiped ourselves and lots of other species off the planet with our un-_sapiens_-ness. (For more on that, see the last photo in this post.)



The coastal heathlands of the South Coast are a botanical wonderland - near-pristine pieces of ancient Gondwana and a world biodiversity hotspot. We oooh-aaah our way through this stuff even now, after decades of acquaintance. It's like walking in a botanical garden, and the best kind - one not put in place by humans as a collection, but a place where staggering species diversity occurs naturally. Here at the edge of the world, you can get a pretty good idea of how life used to be before humans industrialised the planet, and you can mourn for what people have destroyed, and what they will yet destroy with their so-called progress. But eventually, by doing this, they will destroy themselves.

Wildflowers are beginning to come out in a steady stream that will become an explosion in spring.

These are Banksia flowers in varying degrees of expansion:


When their filaments first come out - between the two stages shown - Banksia flowers make a good "bushman's compass" because they unfold on the north side first - facing the sun, here in the southern hemisphere. There are hundreds of Banksia species in Australia.



The Roaring Forties don't just shape the waves, coastline, general landscape and vegetation here, they're also pretty good for line-drying your washing on a winter's day without actual precipitation - such as today; laundry day is also when I write up walking reports in-between tending to the twin tub (a hippie washing machine popular in Japan) and the line drying. 😜

Next is someone's idea of a practical joke - carrying off the car park sign and placing it in an interesting spot, especially for car park directions:

Interesting car park indeed - and no, it wasn't us; I prefer to prank people with ultra-realistic fake huntsman spiders. Humans are the deadliest species on the planet but recoil at something a thousand times smaller than them that has a lower chance of killing them than a flying champagne cork, and about the same level of interest. Look in the mirror and be afraid, people - not for yourselves, but for our fellow creatures and the planet. 😮 It's just as ridiculous as all those stereotypical "hostile aliens coming to kill you" movies - don't people _love_ to project.

Brett with a Roaring Forties hairstyle:

See, Robert Smith could save so much hairspray doing it like this (with the slight inconvenience of having to remain on location). 😇

A tunnel of Banksias:

Slowly creeping up on the Grasmere extension (Turbines 14-19) - and creeping because I'd forgotten to have morning tea and it was now lunchtime. I'd been so full from breakfast I'd blithely only brought morning tea - fruit, peanuts, a slice of lemon meringue pie to share - but now I was full-on fantasising about a nice roast beef and cheese sandwich made with wholemeal mixed-grain home-made bread and a whole shrubbery of salad leaves, including Wasabi and Red Mustard (which are leaf varieties, if you grow heirlooms, which we do), slathered in whole-egg mayonnaise and dusted with freshly ground four-colour peppercorns, and with a dollop of home-made tomato sauce between the cheese and the beef.

Alas, I would have to wait until 3.30pm to get my jaws around one of those. Meanwhile, we had a snack break in which I attempted to re-fuel on peanuts and fruit. This did improve my walking speed again (but nowhere near when I'm walking after a good lunch with a cup of coffee in me - I can walk many hours on a good lunch and as I rarely have coffee, it increases my walking speed around 25% - woohoo).

Later on, we got to Turbine 19 and had another food stop - more peanuts and fruit and the lemon meringue, but my beloved husband also produced a surprise bar of chocolate I didn't even know we had, because he'd bought it on the sneak and sequestered it away for an emergency (which he says he sees as being part of his job). Sadly, my body was screaming for a decent lunch and didn't want chocolate, but I ate some anyway because I didn't want to crawl home. Therefore we made a decent pace back.


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## SueC

These walks are one part of what our dog considers a perfect day: A drive in the _broom-broom_ with outraged barking if we have to slow down, a lengthy walk preferably in new territory where she can say, "All of this is now mine!" with her frequent territorial marking (she's an alpha female and actually lifts her leg to do this), another drive in the _broom-broom_ surveying further opportunities for expanding her personal kingdom, and then a nice big dinner, after which she curls up between her pillows on her personal sofa, getting her belly rubbed by the Useful Monkey (a dog's life indeed) while the Useless Monkey pontificates at her ("Where's your dignity?" etc) and the Useful Monkey reminds him that he has precious little dignity himself when it is he who is getting his belly rubbed, etc, to which the Useless Monkey always says, "I don't know what you mean."

The sun smiled upon our backs on the return walk, which warmed us nicely. There was even a rainbow.

The fungi, and the amphibians, just looove this super-wet winter. Fungi out everywhere.

The dog always wonders why I'm stopping _again_ when the camera is out...


And then we were back at the starting point (from which the total displacement was zero, you might like to know 😋). 

Here's a good closing thought:


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## SueC

Some music to go with the scenery, from one of my favourite bands.






_Bheir mi sgriob do Thobar Mhoire
Far a bheil mo ghaol an comann

Sèist:
E o hi urabho o hi u
E o hao ri ri
E o hao ri sna bho hu o
E o hi urabho o hi u

Far a bheil mo ghaol an comann
Luchd nan leadan 's nan cul donna

Luchd nan leadan 's nan cul donna
Dh'oladh am fion dearg na thonnan

Bheir mi sgriob dhan Lochaidh luachrach
Far a bheil mo ghaol an t-uasal

Far a bheil mo ghaol an t-uasal
Gheibhinn cadal leat gun chluasag

Gheibhinn cadal leat gun chluasag
'S cul mo chinn am bac do ghuala_

More about folk music and connection to landscape here.


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## SueC

*LIGHTS BEACH TO HANGING ROCK*

This little expedition was done on the Thursday just before the Sand Patch/Grasmere trek, but it can be hard to keep up with writing these things up if you're potentially doing 2-3 of these a week because you're on holidays. We don't photograph and write up every big walk we do, only the ones we've not done before, not done in a while or not documented previously. Sometimes we just walk.

Because we've not been "away" on holidays for ten years - ever since we bought our smallholding, planted 5,000 trees, built our own house, started growing our own fruit & vegetables and doing general farm, nature reserve and livestock management - we decided to have a genuine holiday closer to home by doing a lot of new-to-us remote walks on the South Coast. We're really enjoying this - what was driving us mad was doing the same 30-odd walks (Stirling Ranges, Porongurups, Albany Coast) all over again and never exploring anything fresh.

One day we hope to go to Tasmania again for, you guessed it, more walking - but right now there's the pandemic. However - we've got the maps for another 150km of Bibbulmun trail we've mostly not done before, between Denmark and Pemberton. The Forest of the Ents walk was a sample from there; with more to come soon.

Lights Beach to Hanging Rock is just west of Denmark, and another good place for a Roaring Forties hairstyle:

I last did this particular walk with a colleague called Sharon over 15 years ago, pre-Brett. I've long wanted to show him this one, but we have a dog, and this section has "dogs forbidden" signs because of 1080 baiting of feral animals and other avoiding-lawsuit-related reasons from the managing government department. I used to be a law-abiding citizen, and then I moved to the country, and started doing things like buying milk straight from a person with a cow (forbidden) instead of letting the truck take it up to Perth for bottling and then bring it down again so I can buy it from the supermarket with 500 "food miles" and most of the profit going to middlemen instead of the cow owner. Rebel that I am. I now do lots of things that are _verboten_, mostly as a form of protest against unjust regulations that favour the wealthy, and actually remove ordinary citizens' rights to do useful things that were lawful for most of human existence, like grandmothers selling jam at the markets (now forbidden, unless she's hired or bought a stainless steel kitchen to make the jam - of course, McDonalds can legally make people ill from their stainless steel kitchens...).

The trail leading out:




If that bit seems easy and straightforward, look again at the first photo in this series: Because it's been so wet, we had to make our way across that stream, and upon leaping across, we landed in quicksand. Not very bad quicksand, just the type that makes you go, "Oh, it's quicksand!" as your foot suddenly slides into it up to your knee.

We love the vegetation tunnels regularly encountered on the Bibbulmun trail...

Also the shapes of trees when they're wild things growing in their own wild way:

You just don't see them like this in parks.

As mentioned on recent walk reports, there are a lot of fungi in the landscape at the moment. This is a coral fungus.


The landscape is full of water this winter. Even the higher-up areas are like saturated sponges; in the low areas there's inundation. We're about to break "wettest ever July" records.



More fungi:

Some of these are hallucinogenic, and this is the time of year police in Nannup deploy two full-time people for several months to discourage mushroom tourism in the local tree plantations. As if they have nothing better to do. As a taxpayer I object to the expense of this operation. The "really-bad-consequences" they are citing here include some dude high on mushrooms selling his $10,000 car for $1,000 (squarely his own problem), someone walking around nude in the centre of Balingup (I'm sure we've seen it all before), and someone else going missing for four days sleeping in the forest thinking he was in a bear cave. Ho hum. Personal responsibility, natural selection, etc, and I for one would rather these two police were chasing burglars or breath testing drunk drivers instead of pontificating about fungi while we pay their salaries.


Lake William:


Mushrooms everywhere...


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## SueC

On the way to Hanging Rock:




The view back to Mt Hallowell and Monkey Rock:

The coastal heathland is like a Japanese garden... only better!

Here's some photos of Hanging Rock.



There's more on the Flickr page but I'm going to abbreviate the rest; too many photos and I've got chores to go do. So if you'd like to see the full set, just click on any photo to go to the photopage.

It's not officially called Hanging Rock but I called it that when I went there with Sharon many years ago, because it's reminiscent of the scenery of the classic Australian gothic horror flick _Picnic at Hanging Rock_.






Tomboy foolishness indeed. OMG. Speaking of, the track to Hanging Rock actually had an official diversion around it, with a sign saying it was "dangerous" - we duly ignored it, and went to see for ourselves if there really was a problem. There wasn't - one fallen tree it was easy to clamber over, a couple of exposed roots, nothing to worry hikers who do the Bibbulmun, which is a serious track, not a park cakewalk. We later worked out that the real reason they had put a diversion around it was because a new tourist access road was constructed a little further up from Hanging Rock two years ago, and they apparently forgot to take the sign down when the construction project was finished over six months ago. This explains why other hikers before us had removed the barrier that had been erected on the track. Honestly, hello.

But it was Hanging Rock I had wanted to show Brett for years, and so I wasn't abandoning that trail without good reason, which it turns out there wasn't anyway. And we had our picnic at Hanging Rock.


We went a bit further, towards the new tourist access road - down a steep, densely vegetated valley and back up into dunes with lovely sea views. Then we turned back. Those photos you can see on Flickr directly.

Something abstract from the way home:

This is just sand patterns in a temporary stream which has tannins in it. Brett loves these sorts of photographs because they could be alien planets etc - there's no sense of scale. Here's the context:

And I conclude with another fungus - this is a Brain Fungus...

Another happy walk.


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## SueC

More demonstrations of the low-intelligence/low-empathy levels of the anti-lockdown protestors:








Total posterior orifice hurting a horse during lockdown protests in Sydney this week. What has the horse done to hurt this guy? Just about the worst thing you can do is yank the metal bit in their mouth painfully against their jaw (_and_ he punched the animal in the face). Let's put a nose ring in this guy and then attach a lead to it and yank on it suddenly and see whether _he_ likes that kind of treatment. 😡

His T-shirt is making it pretty clear that his personal free-dumb is more important than anyone's feelings/welfare, whether horse, human or anything else apparently. Refer to this week's Guardian article on how the far right, and the plain stupid too I think, call their own selfishness "freedom"...

That guy is now in jail, where he belongs. And of course, refusing a COVID test. This means he's being kept in isolation, as is the health protocol - and his lawyers are whining about it. No sympathy from me - animal abuse on top of complete disregard for the safety of the Australian community. Typical bully, and like all bullies, only know about their own rights, not anyone else's - and protest loudly when there are consequences for their cruelty and antisocial conduct.


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## SueC

*WALPOLE ADVENTURES*

Sandwiched between Monday/Tuesday's destructive severe cold front and the next one like it forecast to come in Thursday, we grabbed the chance to go on an outing to Walpole on Wednesday. However, we hadn't been entire slouches during the severe weather and did a 5km hike through the local valley floor in our wet weather gear on Tuesday morning. Mostly this was in sheltered woodland and not so bad - not like being out on the coast, where 100km/h wind gusts were occurring and could have blown people off the cliffs. All the normal animal paths through the bushland had turned into creeks though, so we had to pretty much hop from bushgrass clump to bushgrass clump to avoid the water in many places. 😮

Today the rain hasn't set in yet, but the wind gusts inland where we live are now working themselves up past 80km/h and are forecast to potentially go past 100km/h; not a good time to be on the road, and later tonight the next deluge will hit. So we are happy to have gotten out yesterday. Walpole is just over an hour west of us past Denmark and home to tall Karri and Tingle forests (and lots of historical and modern clearfelling 😩); it also has houseboats on an estuary, and lots of scenic coastline we've only explored a fraction of so far (meaning, on foot, in the wilderness areas etc, not just driving from tourist car park to tourist car park).

We got to Walpole at morning teatime and decided to warm up for a slated Bibbulmun track section in the afternoon by doing a circuit walk around and into Walpole itself. If you only ever drive into a town, you don't really get to know it, so we decided to park at Coalmine Beach out of town (marked X on map below) and take walk trails from there to the inlet and then through town (mostly the yellow tracks) and back out again on a circuit (red dashed line), as a way of getting to know the place better.


*1. THE CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF WALPOLE*

These are our "setting out on another happy adventure" photographs at the Coalmine Beach car park.


This, by the way, is typical happy body language from Brett and he did exactly the same at our wedding nearly 14 years ago... 😋








From Coalmine Beach, a walk track runs through a conservation area to the Walpole Inlet and the outskirts of Walpole. This is typical coastal heathland grading into woodland.

The trees, as is so typical for what grows wild on the South Coast, have all sorts of sculptural qualities.




A rather impressive bridge/boardwalk over the Collier creek brought us to the town periphery.

The ants have been building their nests higher out of the ground than usual with all this wet weather we've been having. These mounds are now everywhere and are presumably in aid of an ant colony not drowning below ground level, where all the soil is like a saturated sponge.

Coming up to the Inlet:



Paperbark trees:


This is on the Swarbrick Jetty:

...and this is the amused reaction when the photographer says, "You've got a spider on your nose!"...


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## SueC

Metropolitan Walpole!




Walpole feels like a cross between a typical small SW-WA country town, and a holiday-shack village (e.g. Windy Harbour, Peaceful Bay, Tasmania's Doo Town). We walked through the residential streets to the main street where craft and gift shops and coffee shops cater for visitors. There we had fish and chips and bought some treats to take on the afternoon's forest walk. Then we completed the circuit walk back to Coalmine Beach.

This is Coalmine Beach:


Then we drove a short way to the Hilltop Forest car park to begin the afternoon's walking in quite a different environment.


*2. HILLTOP LOOKOUT WALK*

The section of Bibbulmun track we ended up doing is bounded by double arrows on the walk map in the above post. We had meant to start at the base of the hill but couldn't find parking there - and the track which led to the Bibbulmun there wasn't signposted. So we drove up the main track.

This is regrowth Karri forest, which a lot of people who don't spend much time in old-growth forests oooh and aaah about. If you live in a city, or if you live in Europe where there really isn't any pristine wilderness left, you may be overjoyed by walking or driving through a forest like this - beautiful tall trees as far as the eye can see.

But if you're a biologist or keen amateur naturalist, and you live in a place where you can spend a lot of time in old-growth and near-pristine ecosystems, this kind of forest makes you grieve. It's closer to a plantation than to what it was before industrialisation: The understorey, where most of the species in these kinds of systems reside, has become hugely impoverished, causing local extinction of species and contributing to world biodiversity loss. The species diversity of the canopy trees is also reduced, and the trees you do see tend to be of fairly uniform size and age, because they were all seedlings who regenerated in what was essentially a humanly caused natural disaster area, and all grew up together, competing for light as they went and growing more closely together, taller and straighter than trees do in what's called a climax forest - and of course, the foresters prefer that kind of regrowth because it suits their commercial purposes better.

Old-growth forests (and other pristine ecosystems, such as Western Australia's coastal woodlands and heathlands) took thousands of years to evolve into their present degree of diversity of species, form and ages, and to become intricately interconnected. As a European I'd never seen an ancient ecosystem before I came to Australia. Even the remnant bushland we have on our farm represents millions of years of largely uninterrupted evolution from ancient Gondwana - never were the woodlands on it clearfelled, and never was the understorey or the heathland bulldozed: Unlike the majority of the planet's land surface, especially since human industrialisation which started about 1760 - less than 300 years ago.

We're destroying everything. It's hard enough to get some people to care about genocide and refugees when they're in human form, but what about all the other species we share the planet with? That's even more difficult, because modern humans feel culturally entitled to take what they want from nature, and to exterminate so-called "lesser" species. My problem, by the way, isn't with being part of a food chain (in both directions), it's in the complete imbalance as each day, more and more of the general biomass is replaced with human biomass, as the human population grows exponentially like a pandemic, devouring not just individuals from other species, but whole other species, either as food or as convenience. Humans as a species are behaving exactly like bacteria in a laboratory culture - they explode exponentially until they exhaust their resource base and die in their own wastes.

It's because advances in medicine and sanitation increased infant survival and the general human life span, and modern human beings still don't effectively limit their family sizes to replacement-only levels with contraception (and many would be mortally offended were they asked to do so). Actually, these days even replacement is too much - as we've already exceeded the planet's long-term carrying capacity, and are now irreversibly damaging the biosphere.

And it's not talked about, because we're drowned too deep in the narcosis of civilisation; most of us don't see it. Our economic system pretends that you can have infinite "growth" in a finite system with limited resources and space. Societies like Australia have a financial elite who thrive on land speculation; who parasitise scarcity and property booms, and they won't let up until they've carved up every acre they can claw their way into for "development" - agriculture initially, and now mostly creating more and more suburbia for booming migrant populations. This makes millions and millions of dollars for real estate agents, real estate speculators, construction companies, "investors" (people who have enough surplus money to own more than just their own home, and out-compete a lot of people who can't afford a home of their own), councils who can charge land rates, etc.

People only rarely seem to feel they have enough - enough stuff, enough prestige, enough money in the bank. Westerners expect constantly rising living standards - i.e. constant increases in the energy and resources available to them, and to their children, no matter how many, on a finite planet. We talk scathingly of parasites, of freeloaders - and yet as a species, that's exactly what we are. We're the very worst parasites and freeloaders who have ever inhabited the surface of this planet, and most of us can't see it. We're eating everything else alive.

But I digress. To see real old-growth forest, have a look at our Forest of the Ents post. That is what the forest either side of the access road in the picture above used to be like, less than 200 years ago.

We drove up this access road until we got to the Hilltop Lookout car park. It was a one-way road, so we couldn't backtrack. Therefore we decided to walk in both directions from there, not from the bottom up as we'd originally planned to. Here's some views off the Hilltop Lookout, where a section of the forest was removed so people could see the coastline.



The ribbon of blue is the Frankland River leading to the Walpole-Nornalup Inlets, and the views across are to East Point and Rocky Head, and beyond that Saddle Island and other offshore islands.

The section of forest we began to walk through to the east and south of the Hilltop Lookout was ecologically better than what we'd driven in through. There were still old "giants" in it - not everything had been cut down by forestry; logging had been more selective, and some trees had been left standing.





This last group of photos, Brett took with a proper camera (which he first got out on the lookout) - most of our recent walks I've just documented with a little iPod camera, for convenience. Makes me think it's worth taking my own proper camera in again too. The iPod is fine for "sketching" quickly, but you'll be able to see its limitations for yourself by comparing the photo qualities in the mixed batch to follow!


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## SueC

You'd just not get shapes like this in plantations, or in ground-zero regrowth - they take a long time and a complex environment to form.

It's nice to come across old "survivors" like this. ♥

Here's what the bases of these trees look like when they eventually fall over...

I just loved this next tree...

Brett took photos of bark textures.


This tree had a little window through it...


It takes many years for these tunnels, hollows and cavities to form - and they are ultra-important as shelters and nests for native birds and arboreal marsupials. You won't find these in the kind of regrowth forest we drove in through. One of the many reasons our Black Cockatoos are endangered is because many thousands upon thousands of their erstwhile nesting hollows have been cut down with the old trees. Black Cockatoos have a life span of around 60 years, so it took people a while to notice that most of the population that was left were essentially pensioners.

The blue Cortinarius is one of the prettiest fungi in the forest...

It grew near a "tunnel" in the base of a tree you could have sat in.

You can just see this little tunnel in the broader "porch" behind Brett.

Here was an attempt to photograph a sort of pond in a fallen tree trunk, which was a bit impeded by taking it with an iPod...

Everywhere you turn there's something amazing.

Like a fern growing in a "natural flower pot" high up in a tree, and catching the sun.

We walked back to the lookout and then in the other direction, down the hill. There Brett did some lovely studies of shelf fungi.




That last close-up was hand-held and would have benefitted from a tripod. So, Brett should bring his tripod in future, and I my proper camera! 😋

Our final photo from the walk was meant to demonstrate an unusual phenomenon: As we stood there, it was raining significantly behind the tree with the fungi on it, but not at all where we stood maybe 10 metres away - and it went on like this for quite a while!

The sunlit gap behind the tree was actually filled with a shower of raindrops. None of it ever moved further south to start raining on us. We kept on walking downhill, and when we got near the highway, turned around and made our way back up. When we came to the same spot, the same thing was still happening! We then made our way through that extremely narrow stationary rain band, continuing up the incline.

Something else I saw a demonstration of, and wanted to relate, since we're in a pandemic and all that: Just how much aerosol you exhale when you're exercising heavily! At one point I stopped and leaned against a mossy fallen log, trying to catch my breath, when the slanting sunlight combined with the high humidity in the forest made the aerosol I was breathing out (through my mouth, because I'd been climbing for a while) clearly visible, and we could see it drifting for over three metres away from me on a light breeze. Wow! If I had SARS-CoV-2 and you breathed that in, you'd highly likely get it. Under the right conditions, from more than three metres away, and in an outdoors environment.

Breathing out through the nose cut it down, but breathing straight out through the mouth made truly spectacular amounts of aerosol. Proper layered masks are really good for cutting down on aerosols (and even better with droplets), whether produced by heavy exertion, coughing, sneezing or just speaking. Works best if both parties are wearing them - the aerosol-maker, and the bystander. I'd not generally wear masks exercising outdoors because we walk quite remote trails, but I would in a higher-density outdoors situation, and I'd certainly move a few metres off the track to let someone else pass when I'm not wearing a mask - and face away from them. I've already done that out of an abundance of caution, in supermarkets as well - but I was quite amazed just how far those aerosols can carry.

I have, by the way, finally had my first vaccination. Brett is still waiting. We're doing second worst of all the OECD countries in the vaccine rollout. But even fully vaccinated, I'd still consider wearing masks under certain circumstances. Like, it's not actually fun to catch ordinary colds or flus either, so I'd from now on wear masks if I had any kind of respiratory infection and for some reason had to venture into public - or if I was around such people. And, people can still catch, harbour and transmit virus when fully immunised - what the vaccines are good at is preventing serious illness. (At least until the virus evolves new spike proteins. Then we'll be playing vaccine catch-up again.)


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## SueC

I'll close these posts with some photos of the very swollen Frankland River at its intersection with the South Coast Highway, that we took on the way back. This is the river we couldn't cross further upstream on our Ent walk because the Sappers Bridge was flooded (plus it had foam all over it).


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## egrogan

Love all the tree photos.
I just snapped a shot of a “fern flowerpot” while walking with Hugh the other day. As you can probably tell, we were walking on a logging road in a section that was recently cut-with just a few trees left to anchor the regrowth. But I liked the spirit of the happy fern growing from the cut trunk.


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> The trees, as is so typical for what grows wild on the South Coast, have all sorts of sculptural qualities.


We finally have a rain free afternoon, and I was thinking of this post when I went out to feed. There are a few tree sculptures I love along the wood line right outside our house, and I admire them every day when I go out to the horses:


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## SueC

Beautiful, @egrogan! ❤


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