Christie DiColla's Visit

Christie DiColla of the Zenma Equine Wellness Institute will be visiting Bellwether Farm from September 16 through September 22. Christie is an FEI Permitted Therapist and Balanced Body Movement Specialist. During her visit, she will be teaching a Level Three course (only available to those who've taken Levels 1 and 2), and an Owner's course.  She will also be doing bodywork and saddle fitting consultations.  Comment below if you'd like an appointment, or would like to take the Owner's course!  Links to the fliers follow.

Owner's Course September 19 and 20, all day.  Lunch and snacks will be provided. Bring your horse! $750 for both full days.  I have one more spot available in this course.

Bodywork Session September 21 and 22. Plan for about 2 hrs. $200. I still have a few spots available.

Saddle Fit Session September 21 and 22. Plan for about 2 hrs. $250. Find out more here about Christie's philosophy and method for saddle-fitting. She will work on any saddle, just be aware that if your saddle is in warranty, it may void the warranty with the company if you have an independent saddle fitter adjust your saddle.  I still have a few spots available.

Of course, there is a spreadsheet. LOL. Here is what I currently have from the previous Facebook post; I'm sure there are changes!

Prix Caprilli Tests

Greetings Ogden Dressage Group!  Here are Mike's official tests for the Prix Caprilli at C&M Farm in September! 

Intro Level, Walk-Trot Test Maximum height: 18". Test may be called. There are three jumping efforts.  More information can be found on the PDF, which also contains the scoresheet with the pattern.

Training Level, Walk-Trot-Canter Test Maximum height: 24". Test may be called. There are five jumping efforts. More information can be found on the PDF, which also contains the scoresheet with the pattern.

First Level, Walk-Trot-Canter Test Maximum height: 24". Test may be called. There are seven jumping efforts. More information can be found on the PDF, which also contains the scoresheet with the pattern.

In Memoriam: Helene Detwiler

I remember a particular sunny day.  I have a picture of me on Gram's horse, Punda.  I was about seven.  We were in the big pasture next to the farmhouse.  The wind, maybe, or a dog, or a passing cloud, set Punda running.  And little, tiny Gram, running after, was shouting "Sit up straight! Pull on the reins!"  I did, and Punda stopped.  Gram ran up panting, out of breath.  Seven looked at 52, and said "Let's do it again!"  52 looked at 7, and said "Not for any money!"  My gram taught me to control a runaway horse.  She taught me how NOT to panic.

I remember a particular sunny day.  It was my chore to hang out laundry, and fold it and bring it in.  We worked side-by-side, in the beginning, and she showed me where to place the pins, and how to shake out the jeans with a SNAP! so they would fold flat with no wrinkles.  And we talked.  I still hang out my laundry, and every single time, I stand in the Sun and think of her.  She taught me how to take care of the little things---the everyday things that matter, when you craft a home for the family you love.

I remember a particular sunny day.  Two bushels of peaches arrived unexpectedly.  I looked at her, and she looked at me, and we both looked at the peaches.  Then we blanched them and peeled them and packed them away in the freezer.  It took several days, and we talked the whole time.  This summer, I packed 17 quarts of peaches in my cupboard. My Gram taught me what to do with unexpected, glorious abundance; how to save it up for when it's needed.  I have some abundance stored up to help me through now.

I remember a particular sunny day, one of many like it.  Last summer, I got to spend ten days with her.  We worked side-by-side in the garden, pruning and clipping and raking.  Stepping back, looking, thinking "Which way does it WANT to grow?"  Then pruning and clipping some more.  And talking.  She taught me to care for both plants and the shape of a garden.  To wait and see, and then fearlessly seek perfection.  This year, trees will come to my garden, because I finally see where they want to grow.

All of these sunny days---the lessons learned, the time shared in useful, busy work---these days braided our lives together.  I like to think of the light of those sunny days, and how light travels in space forever once it leaves Earth.  The light from those days is traveling still, traveling out through space, carrying a sort of record of our sunny days together.

It is a comfort to me that she spent so much time in the Sun; that nature keeps a record of her life; that I am a part of that record; and that all of her teaching and learning is traveling now, lighting up the spaces between the stars.

Just a Fluke?

I've been debating about weighing in on this Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke thing, but now I just have to get my thoughts out there so I can stop fretting about them. This whole event is disturbing on so many levels. I have always been extremely sensitive to the fact that birth control pills are prescribed for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with birth control. When I was in college, I had many friends who were on them, not because they were having sex, but because they had uterine fibroids. Now that I have been diagnosed with endometriosis, I could take birth control pills to control the growth of the condition. But I've had a bad experience with them before, so I'm going to have a hysterectomy and ablation instead. But imagine if I was 20. Or wanted children. The calculus of these decisions is somewhat different then.

Which brings me to Sandra Fluke. She asked to testify to the GOP committee, and they would not allow it. So then she spoke to the Dem. committee. It took me one click on an Internet link to get to a transcript of her testimony. She spoke rationally and thoughtfully about her friend who was on the pill to control her uterine fibroids. When she could no longer afford it, she went off the pill, her fibroids have grown, and she is now a candidate for major surgery and is likely infertile.

So this is the person that Rush and any number of others have chosen to vilify. So fine, whatever, we all know he's a shock-jock who is just trying to get people riled up. It's his job. The thing that upsets me is that it's working. I have yet to find anyone in commentary who has bothered to click through and find out what she actually said. I suspect that if they did, they'd be on her side. Uterine fibroids and endometriosis are among the leading causes of infertility for women. So why would conservatives (who seem to feel a vested interest in the state of women's wombs), deny this medication to women with these conditions? It's illogical and inconsistent, and I don't understand it. (And of course, the reason a woman is on the pill should remain a confidential matter between her and her physician. Do they really want to open the Pandora's box of requiring that the owner of a company, or a pastor or a legislator needs to approve medical decisions? No, I thought not.)

The attitude of conservatives feels threatening and hostile to me. It informs my decision to have surgery rather than go on the pill for my own condition. If I can not be sure that that the drug option will be there for me tomorrow, I will not choose it. Many years ago, this fear also played into a decision to opt for a surgery that made me effectively infertile, because I was not certain that I would always have control over my own reproduction, especially here, in the most conservative state in the union. At the time, I thought I was probably being paranoid. As time goes by, and I watch what's happening on the right, which dominates what happens where I live, I become more and more certain that the only way that I can exercise my will and make my own decisions is to take drastic steps to be sure the decisions are irrevocable. I am not certain that I will be free tomorrow.

I am filled with fear for my sister, coming of age in this environment, when hatred and oppression of women is being so readily expressed and enacted into law in so many states across the country. I can not imagine how different her world is than mine was when I was her age. Many in the right make noise about Sharia law coming to the U.S. Take a look around at laws pertaining to women that are being passed in Georgia, Alabama, Utah, Arizona, and proposed in Federal Congress. Then take a deep think about the distance left to go before what we wear, read or do is as circumscribed as the medicines we are allowed to take.

Slow Cooker Porridge

This is a new favorite breakfast recipe, and it makes an enormous amount that can just be heated up in the microwave during the week. I usually add a poached egg on top, especially now, when we are getting between 8 and 11 eggs every day! If you are not up on your fiber, ease into this---just a word to the wise... This probably has a full day's ration in one serving. Can be halved if your slow cooker is smaller than mine.

Slow Cooker Porridge:
1 1/2 cups mixed whole grains (I commonly use 1/2 cup hard white wheat, 1/2 cup brown rice, 1/2 cup barley, but I've also used rye, wild rice, hard red wheat, whatever is in the cupboard)
1/2 cup dried fruit
1 t vanilla extract
1 t lemon juice
8 cups water

Put it all in the slow cooker, cook on high until the water starts to steam, then on low for 12 hours.

That's it! I find it plenty sweet just like that, but you could add maple syrup when serving. It's dynamite with a couple of poached eggs on top, and there's something about a big bowl of grains that makes my belly happy all the way through to lunch time.

Danni update...

It's been a while, so here's an update on the gorgeous girl!

She's running up to three years old now, and so her winter has been full of changes. She grew another inch (at least!), all in the legs, it looks like. She spent several weeks being higher behind than in front (oh no!) and then several weeks higher in front than behind (hooray!) and then too high in the back end again (oh no!)... But I'm quite certain that when she's doen growing, she'll be built uphill, like a proper dressage horse!

Along about the end of November, she started losing her baby teeth, and spent most of December and half of January on the near side of completely cranky, because the caps were tearing up her mouth a little as they worked loose. Yet another reason to give her most of the winter off!

About two weeks ago, she started sleeping through the night. Until then, she'd wake up at least once, maybe twice, and start banging at her stall: "I'm awake and I'm bored! Someone come entertain me!" only slightly maddening to the humans in the house, because horses are big and strong and stalls are big and echo-ey, and so it was all loud enough to hear in the house!

Of late, the weather has been quite bad---wet and rainy and muddy. For a bit, it was so muddy that we couldn't turn the horses out in their paddocks. So they had to go out in the arena (probably the best engineered piece of flattish ground on the planet!). Danni had all kinds of excuses to be bad, and she did not take them.

She's been much better about her feet in general, although she still prefers to have all four on the ground, rather than me holding one up... But she improves, and today, even though the grooming stall was muddy and slick with creeping damp, she eventually let me pick out her feet.

I've been doing a bit of ground work with her when I can, and she is gradually learning the three most fundamental lessons a horse can learn:

1) kicking and rearing are COMPLETELY unacceptable around people (young horses always think you are a horse, and that they can't really hurt you). Today, she actually kicked herself, by mistake, so I bet that has come to an end...

2) all those noises and gestures and nudges have information in them that leads to treats, pets, and praise, if she can figure out what they mean.

3) pressure means "move away", not toward. This is a surprisingly hard concept for them. If you rub on a horse, they will lean into you, because it feels good! But if you press on them, you mean for them to move away. It's counter-intuitive for them. But eventually, they figure out the difference between an "aid" and a rub.

Meanwhile, she grows more beautiful by the day, with her snip becoming more prominent, and her body and head becoming more like a grownup horse. In a couple more weeks, I'll put her back to work, and her grownup life will begin. By the end of March, I will have her in regular work under saddle, and we'll see if we can learn to dance together. Between the introduction to riding that she had in the fall, and the intermittent work we've been doing on the ground, the foundation is there, and I can't wait to see how she comes along in the spring!

The Smash and Grab Job

So, not such a good day. Yesterday began the recurrence of my recurrent health problems, which brought me home from work for a day and a half, mostly to curl up in a tiny ball on the bed and just TRY to breathe slowly. I had charted this out, and it should have started tomorrow. Well, never mind. Next week I get to see an another specialist, who actually specializes in this kind of pain, and we'll see what she can do.

BUT. In the meantime, I have turned 40. Which means I had a mammogram scheduled for today. I got to crawl out of bed, put actual clothes on (ow, because my abdomen is so swollen that even my undewear hurts it) and go across town to the radiology clinic, where they have a cheery, welcoming sign that reads:

Some people are like slinkies.
They are essentially useless,
But they still make you laugh
When you push them down the stairs.

So I check in, and get my piece of paper to fill out, and they send me to the changing rooms. I sit down to start filling out the paperwork, and I'm not even 1/3 of the way down the page, when the radiologist comes to get me. So I say, "but I'm not even done with my paperwork yet!". And she says "just get changed. You can fill that out afterwards."

So I pull the curtain over, and it doesn't close all the way, but the person is waiting, so I just turn my back, and get into ye olde hospital gown (which for the first time in my life is supposed to go with the ties in front. This may seem obvious in retrospect, but I've been well trained that the ties go in the back, where you can't reach them!)

And I grab up all my stuff, because the last time I was here, I had to take all my stuff. And she says, "No. Leave it. Just bring your purse.". I'm juggling my purse and my clipboard and my pen, and trying to drop my clothes back onto the bench. Finally, I get that accomplished (was I only imagining the foot tapping and the heavy sighs?), and go across the hall.

The radiologist takes my clipboard, glances over it, draws a line through everything I haven't filled out yet, and says "you don't need to do that part anyway". Then she asks if I've had all my mammograms there. To which I reply "this is my first one", which was on the part of the paper I DID fill out, so she should have known that.

I get straightened out on my incorrect dressing, the fact that I should not have been wearing deodorant today, and away we go to the machine.

After lots of pushing and shoving and having to stand very awkwardly with my head tilted back to one side, one hip dropped down to the left, and my toes pointed to one side, the plastic plate drops, and is surprisingly painful, cold and uncomfortable. "Don't breathe." she says. There are some clicks and whines, and the plastic plate slides up. There is silence for a long moment, while I try to figure out if I'm allowed to breathe or move, and then she says "ok. We have a problem." which nearly causes me heart failure. But apparently I just have very...dense...breasts. Sigh. So there is extra smashing and grabbing. Just for me.

Finally, after several more episodes of holding my breath, flinching, and trying to figure out who engineered this particularly stupid invention, which does not allow for the fact that you will actually have a person, with a HEAD and FEET attached to the tissues in question, she leaves me standing there for a very long interval before she says, "good. Ok. You are done. You can go now."

So I pull my hospital gown back together, and ask, "so my doctor should have the results when?" and she tells me to call my doctor in a couple of days, but they'll send me a letter in the mail in a few weeks anyway. So off I go, back to collect my clothes, definitely feeling like the victim of a smash and grab job. And more than usually ticked off to be a woman in society today. Because for certain, if it was a testicu-ography, there would be no uncomfortable smashing. And someone would have taken into account that other parts of the body also stick off the front, and good engineering would make a place for those. Oh, and you betcha, the little plastic plates would be all toasty warm too.