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If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium
Jun. 15th, 2004 08:33 pmWe need to institute the 28-hour day. That's all there is to it.
Or move to Darkover. That could work. Move to the Alton estates, put the horses in a nice pasture. (Good contrast with all those fancy blacks.) Get a few house servants going on the daily stuff, and I can concentrate on the writing.
Pages are happening. More need to happen. Somehow I need to do three books at once. I'm not sure how, but I do.
Pooka has new shoes. Again. We hope these will stay on. The problem is clear: he's two and a half inches butt-high and his engine is just too powerful for his chassis. He'll grow out of it. We hope he'll keep his shoes on in the process. His foot quality is good, and he's not losing a whole lot to the shoe pulls (which if you know horses is impressive), but even so.
Keed also has new shoes. In three weeks, he's grown nearly half an inch of foot. A horse is doing well to grow this much in six to eight weeks. Keed has been growing. All over. He's very happy with his new feet, was ripping around tonight admiring his own magnificence. He's getting quite gorgeous and he knows it.
The Shoer Stories are always a highlight of shoer day. Today Curt told a really cool one--whether it's straight or edited truth, who cares? It's a great story. Apparently there is an elderly friend who is a sensei--a martial-arts master. This man is very good at what he does. He talks about something called the "red zone," which is the zone he goes into when he's in combat. This is the moment when body and mind are one, the thinking part shuts down, and action is instant and instinctive. (We've all studied our Bruce Lee, right?)
This man is terrified of horses. The reason he gives is, they live in the red zone. Their world is a perpetual present. Body and mind are always a unity. And they weigh upwards of half a ton, are faster than any human can possibly be, and can pack more power in a kick than Iforgethowmuch TNT (this has been tested, it's not imaginary). A human in this state is a killing machine. A horse in this state is a horse. He just is. And that's terrifying.
This got us off on horse thought processes, and how Lipizzans and other hyperintelligent horses think past pure instinct into a grasp of causality. Horses think scary world-scary thing-RUN. Hyperintelligent horses analyze the world, decide if a thing is scary, and then key the red zone. This makes them both safer--they can think their way out of a situation--and more dangerous because once they make a decision, they have a half-ton plus of sentient missile to put behind it.
And that gets you Camilla. Camilla has been having an interesting time. She wants to do something with me every day, and she's getting bolder by the minute. It's quite the experience to see her spot a scary thing, get as archy as cat, then--like a cat--stalk and kill it. She weighs at least 1100 pounds, probably more. That's a lot of Crouching Tiger and one not very well Hidden Dragon.
This morning as I was feeding the troops and happened to pass by her, she popped a kick at me. When Ephiny tried it, Ephiny did not connect. Ephiny is a thinker and a ponderer and she knows humans take a dim view of horses getting fresh. Camilla knows it and doesn't give a damn. It wasn't a hard kick, but she bruised the outside of my knee.
As soon as she did it, she knew she was in trouble. Parents of children and pets know that look well. "Oh SHIT!"
She got killed. Up one side of the turnout and down the other. She made it perfectly clear that she gets Whip Equals Forward, and Human Equals Death on Wheels, and You Do Not Take Liberties With Your Human. Finally she faced me and offered submission, and we worked on that for a while. And when she agreed that I was Alpha Prime, she waited for hay until I gave her express permission. For Camilla the Chowhound, that is huge.
Then I explained that I love her more than anything, but the rule is Safety First, and it is not safe for a human to be treated like a horse. She's been thinking about it ever since. She doesn't necessarily like it, but that's the way the world is, and she has to live with it.
Life with Camilla. A few hours later, she was standing perfectly still, no halter or other restraint, having her feet trimmed. She's the shoer's alltime favorite; he treats her like a person, and she returns the favor.
Camilla doesn't just live in the red zone. Camilla is the red zone. She's what they call in the biz A Whole Lotta Hoss.
Or move to Darkover. That could work. Move to the Alton estates, put the horses in a nice pasture. (Good contrast with all those fancy blacks.) Get a few house servants going on the daily stuff, and I can concentrate on the writing.
Pages are happening. More need to happen. Somehow I need to do three books at once. I'm not sure how, but I do.
Pooka has new shoes. Again. We hope these will stay on. The problem is clear: he's two and a half inches butt-high and his engine is just too powerful for his chassis. He'll grow out of it. We hope he'll keep his shoes on in the process. His foot quality is good, and he's not losing a whole lot to the shoe pulls (which if you know horses is impressive), but even so.
Keed also has new shoes. In three weeks, he's grown nearly half an inch of foot. A horse is doing well to grow this much in six to eight weeks. Keed has been growing. All over. He's very happy with his new feet, was ripping around tonight admiring his own magnificence. He's getting quite gorgeous and he knows it.
The Shoer Stories are always a highlight of shoer day. Today Curt told a really cool one--whether it's straight or edited truth, who cares? It's a great story. Apparently there is an elderly friend who is a sensei--a martial-arts master. This man is very good at what he does. He talks about something called the "red zone," which is the zone he goes into when he's in combat. This is the moment when body and mind are one, the thinking part shuts down, and action is instant and instinctive. (We've all studied our Bruce Lee, right?)
This man is terrified of horses. The reason he gives is, they live in the red zone. Their world is a perpetual present. Body and mind are always a unity. And they weigh upwards of half a ton, are faster than any human can possibly be, and can pack more power in a kick than Iforgethowmuch TNT (this has been tested, it's not imaginary). A human in this state is a killing machine. A horse in this state is a horse. He just is. And that's terrifying.
This got us off on horse thought processes, and how Lipizzans and other hyperintelligent horses think past pure instinct into a grasp of causality. Horses think scary world-scary thing-RUN. Hyperintelligent horses analyze the world, decide if a thing is scary, and then key the red zone. This makes them both safer--they can think their way out of a situation--and more dangerous because once they make a decision, they have a half-ton plus of sentient missile to put behind it.
And that gets you Camilla. Camilla has been having an interesting time. She wants to do something with me every day, and she's getting bolder by the minute. It's quite the experience to see her spot a scary thing, get as archy as cat, then--like a cat--stalk and kill it. She weighs at least 1100 pounds, probably more. That's a lot of Crouching Tiger and one not very well Hidden Dragon.
This morning as I was feeding the troops and happened to pass by her, she popped a kick at me. When Ephiny tried it, Ephiny did not connect. Ephiny is a thinker and a ponderer and she knows humans take a dim view of horses getting fresh. Camilla knows it and doesn't give a damn. It wasn't a hard kick, but she bruised the outside of my knee.
As soon as she did it, she knew she was in trouble. Parents of children and pets know that look well. "Oh SHIT!"
She got killed. Up one side of the turnout and down the other. She made it perfectly clear that she gets Whip Equals Forward, and Human Equals Death on Wheels, and You Do Not Take Liberties With Your Human. Finally she faced me and offered submission, and we worked on that for a while. And when she agreed that I was Alpha Prime, she waited for hay until I gave her express permission. For Camilla the Chowhound, that is huge.
Then I explained that I love her more than anything, but the rule is Safety First, and it is not safe for a human to be treated like a horse. She's been thinking about it ever since. She doesn't necessarily like it, but that's the way the world is, and she has to live with it.
Life with Camilla. A few hours later, she was standing perfectly still, no halter or other restraint, having her feet trimmed. She's the shoer's alltime favorite; he treats her like a person, and she returns the favor.
Camilla doesn't just live in the red zone. Camilla is the red zone. She's what they call in the biz A Whole Lotta Hoss.
