Technical Difficulties

We put Milo to sleep this morning. We'd been planning for later in July, but this last heat wave hit him really hard, and his trainer and I agreed that it was time.

I owned him eight years almost exactly to the day.

He's buried in a pasture on the farm where he spent his entire adult life. He was much loved and will be sorely missed.

We cantered yesterday! Two times around the arena in each direction! And good transitions, both trot-canter & walk-canter! (One of the canter-walk transitions was nice, the other one kind of a mess. But I have historically had trouble with canter-walk, so it's not surprising.)

He's getting acupuncture treatments. It's hard to say if they're helping, because he can't tell us, but we know he enjoys it.

Reminder (shameless self-promotion) that if you want more Milo updates, $2 at my patreon unlocks the Friend of Milo tier, wherein I make frequent reports.

Diana Wynne Jones famously deduced that the horses of Fantasyland are vegetative bicycles. Here are some ways that real horses are anything but:

1. Horses are very large animals. This is something that you can know in the abstract, as we all do, and still be taken aback by when interacting with an actual horse. Horses take up space. Their heads are massive chunks of bone. Even when they're being affectionate, they're still a good eight to ten times larger than a human being, and they are proportionately stronger.

My perspective on large dogs has completely changed after two years of dressage lessons.

1a. Corrollary: horses have very large, hard, heavy, inflexible feet. Obviously, if one steps on you, it's going to hurt. But even a glancing accidental blow is likely to leave bruises. As I was bringing Milo in the other night, my foot happened to get in the way of his. (See above re: horses take up a lot of space.) Entirely accidental on both sides. And I ended up with a welt on my heel where the edge of his hoof hit me.

2. Horses are, on average, thousand pound herbivores. This means their digestive systems have to keep on trucking pretty much constantly. Which is to say, they are poop machines. And you want them to be. A horse who isn't pooping regularly (by
which I mean several times a day) is a horse who is in trouble.

Also, and I'm sorry to burst the bubble of everyone who grew up with My Little Ponies*, horses fart. Noxiously. A lot.

3. Horses are also thousand pound prey animals. They do not think like human beings. They also do not think like cats or dogs. Even a very calm, sensible horse is going to spook, and he's going to spook at things that make no sense. Milo is in general unflappable, but he has spooked, for no apparent reason, at tree stumps, a wood pile, and an elderly VW. (He's also spooked at the barn cat, but I can kind of see his point there. She did emerge from under the bench quite suddenly, so we'll ignore the fact that she's at best 1/100th of his size.) He's also spooked at himself.

4. Horses are creatures with opinions. The are, for instance, herd animals. A solitary horse is an unhappy horse. They will try to follow each other pretty much automatically, which can be awkward for their riders. Take away their pasture mate(s), and they're going to be distressed. They're likely to call for their absent friends. (One of the horses at the barn screams.) And in general, if they don't like something, they will find a way to let you know.

5. A horse's primary means of interacting with the world is her mouth. (Hard, heavy, inflexible feet, remember?) Anything that isn't a threat is likely to be something that needs to be tasted. Also, horses are opportunistc and greedy (see above re: the needs of their digestive systems). Anything that can be tasted, will be tasted. And eaten if possible.

To sum up: horses have presence. They take up space in the world. They are intensely biological. They have opinions (often very inconvenient ones). And they have needs, both physical and emotional. They get bored. They get scared. They get lonely. They are the farthest thing from vegetative bicycles you can imagine.


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*Completely OT, but can I just say how utterly creeped out I am by how thin My Little Ponies have gotten? (Compare the first link, which is current MLP, to the second two, which are '80s MLP.) I mean, seriously, Hasbro, WTF? They're PONIES, not heroin-chic fashion models. FEED THEM.

1. The Jellicle Ninja is doing much better. Thank you for all your kind wishes!
2. Brit Mandelo has reviewed Somewhere Beneath Those Waves for Tor.com
3. Apex Magazine will be reprinting "The Yellow Dressing Gown" in their 31st issue.
4. I still like my job as a database thrall.
5. The horse continues to be a good horse. A goofy, exasperating horse, but a good horse nonetheless.

ME: [rummaging in tack room for ointment to put on a cut on Milo's right foreleg]
MILO: [from the cross-ties] I'm PEEEEEEEEEEing in the aisle, just PEEEEEEEEEEing in the--
ME: [emerging from the tack room like the wrath of god] STOP THAT YOU HORRIBLE HORSE!
MILO: What, me? I would never!
ME: Into your stall with you.
MILO: [plaintively] But I don't have to pee now.
ME: Tough.
[five minutes later]
MILO: I'm PEEEEEEEEing in my stall, just PEEEEEEEEEEing in my stall, what a glorious feeling . . .
ME: [facepalm]

1. saladinahmed is looking for a few good cartographers.

2. I am really tired of feeling like crap all the time.

3. OTOH, great dressage lesson yesterday, after which Milo got his revenge for having to admit I was the boss by (a.) depositing a generous pile of manure in the stable aisle, (b.) backing up to plant his foot in it, and then (c.) pretending he had not the least idea how to go forward again.

4. I R SRS CHEETAH. THIS R SRS FUZZ.

5. The pool was closed for maintenance all last week, but I got out there today. Of course, I forgot my watch. :P

Unknown amount of time, 20 laps.
308 miles, 10 laps.

I will not clothesline my human with the cross-ties.

Quick trip out to the barn today, to bring Milo his new winter hood. I went into his pasture and showed it to him (he is phenomenally not-spooky, but he hates not knowing what's going on) and put it on. To my relief, it fits. (The sizes are medium and large, so his trainer and I had to guess whether he's what Dover considers a "medium" horse.) While I was doing that, Milo's pasture-mate came over and explained to me that he is a NEGLECTED horse whom NOBODY LOVES. Certainly nobody EVER scritches his poll the way it needs scritched.

Incidentally, it is difficult to fasten a buckle with a horse's nose in your ear.

So I petted both horses a little, and then, as it was their dinner time and my ears, fingers, and toes were all beginning to freeze solid, I came home.

So my little cloth lace-up brace is my new best friend. Not only can I wear TWO shoes again, I can wear pants. (Pants! I have a whole new appreciation for pants, let me tell you.) And on Saturday I was actually able to ride Milo. It was for fifteen minutes, and it was the most boring lesson ever, and it was AWESOME.

However, some verisimilitude notes for writers. I still can't go downstairs normally; it's bad foot down one, then good foot to join it, then bad foot down one, then good foot to join it. Although I can walk relatively normally, and even fairly fast (although not without pain), there is a point beyond which I simply cannot go faster. There is, as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, no there there. Also, I cannot run. (As we discovered on Saturday night, I cannot even jog to cross the street ahead of oncoming traffic, and rarelylynne, I'm sorry for scaring you.) Uneven surfaces are hell. And this is with the brace. Without the brace, I can sort of limp/shuffle around on the nice flat floors of my house.

The RLS continues to be bratty and abysmal, and now that I'm off the narcotics entirely, it's harder to sleep. Sunday night I was up every two or three hours; last night, I was up at least once. (The difference between RLS and insomnia: with insomnia, I'm just not sleepy; with RLS, I'm desperately sleepy, but I've got the invisible goblins poking me and I can't sleep. I'll take good old-fashioned insomnia any day.) I'm starting magnesium supplements ("it might help," said the doctor's office), and on Thursday I have an appointment with an acupuncturist. I will of course report back.

This is one of the reasons I'm looking for a part-time job:



His name is Franco Donatello*; he's a 15.3 hand, five-year-old, chestnut Holsteiner gelding, and as of this afternoon, he is mine.

You can see that he celebrated with mud:



Also, that I take crap photographs. The best one I got was one of him modeling his fly-mask:



Which mostly shows you how weird fly-masks look.

I am undoubtedly insane for buying this horse, but there are a lot of things that I have wanted to do and not done because they were too expensive or I didn't have the time or I didn't have anyone to do them with, and I know what those regrets feel like. With dressage and horses, I'm taking the other approach, of going ahead and trying, even though I'm not sure it's going to work. Because this is something I really want to do, and this young, sweet goofball of a horse seems like he's going to be a good partner to do it with.

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*His current use-name is Donny; for a variety of personal reasons, I wish to change it, and suggestions are welcome, although of course I reserve the right not to use any of them.