I love this article

The Perfect Horse

Is that cute or what? It pretty much hits the nail on the head. Everyone needs a Perfect Horse in their life at some point. :D

My mouth hurts.

There's a really good article about Wonder Bits that y'all might be interested in.

The "Wonder" Bit.

Why anyone would use something like that is beyond me. Using one sends out the message to the rest of the horse world that you are a moronic excuse for an equestrian.

I cried a little bit on the inside when I came across these bits.

Shame on you, Valley Vet. I would have thought better of you, but now I see that I was naive. Listen to the description:

(Charmayne James) This is a good beginner bit for young horses. Good transition from the D-ring snaffle, allowing more stop and control. An excellent bit for introducing the curb strap. Mouth 5 ½”, shank 6”.

I'm sure your three-year-olds will be thrilled to go from a snaffle to a twisted-wire gag. It's great for introducing the curb strap? That's news to me. I bet it makes a great first impression when this piece of shit has a horse in a headlock.

(Charmayne James) Designed for better turns and stops. Triple jointed mouthpiece is comfortable and will not pinch. Works well on all types of horses. Lifetime guarantee.

You are a dickweed if you think this bit is comfortable. Gags are designed to cause pain. And with that sliding action and the length of the shank, the amount of leverage you can exert on a horse's mouth is pretty much limitless. But hey, it can be yours for the low, low price of $59.95.

Furthermore, Miss James is now added to my Hall of Infamy. Go to her bits page and all you see are thin, twisted-wire leverage bits. All but one of them are leverage bits. Gag, gag, gag, curb, gag, wire, chain, gag. That's all it is.

She and people like her barrel race in these things. Awesome.

And what's more, all three of the stallions on her website are extremely downhill. I find this really irritating:

Clayton is Scamper's clone. Okay, so they're rich enough to clone a horse. Lots of BNT's are. He is horribly downhill and small and his stud fee is a whopping $4,000. He was also broken as a two-year-old and was standing at stud that early as well. This proves the greed of the BNT's. They break out their horses way too early and pimp them out as soon as it's physically possible for them to reproduce. Who cares if the horse is lame by the age of nine when you can still profit off of his stud fees, right?

Off topic, but that is the reason I was suspicious of the Jackson's motives when they put so much money into trying to save Barbaro. I have a hard time believing that any big time racing owners/trainers truly care about the horses. Even if he couldn't have raced again, his stud fees would have been sky high and everyone with a fertile mare would have been lining up to have a few minutes in his breeding shed. I believe that if big name Thoroughbred owners care at all about their horses, they care about their money even more. Do you really think any one of them would give up their class and social status if it meant saving a horse's life? I don't think so. People who have the horses' best interests at heart do not break and race them at two or flog them 30 times in two minutes or dope them up on steroids and/or bute.

[/end rant]

Back on topic. I know not all barrel racers ride like Neanderthals. But enough of them do to give the sport a bad reputation. The bad riders usually ride is some kind of leverage bit and would go flying off the horse if they weren't clinging to the horn for dear life. They do nothing but yank the reins and bludgeon the horse with their legs and reins all the way through the pattern. The horses are running out of the chute like banshees and crash through the pattern looking totally sloppy and out of control.

And Charmayne is marketing her very own signature torture devices for any greenie to purchase. I have no respect for anyone who endorses equipment like that. Like every other BNT website I've seen, there are no warnings about the harsh equipment they sell. Any beginner who has no understanding of bit mechanics can purchase these items under the false pretense that they work magic on problem horses. I know many horses who would flip over backwards with the slightest pressure from a gag. I would too.

Equitation FAIL.

When your horse is on the vertical all throughout the jump, you know something is wrong with your hands. That should be one of the first things a rider learns when beginning to jump.

And yet we have people that are competing with that kind of flaw. Contrary to popular belief, I do not have a problem with beginner riders, or even not-so-great riders (as I am one myself). However I DO have issues with riders who think they need to rush and do things they're not ready for. Even worse is when those riders are completely blind to their lack of skill and continue to move on to more advanced levels before they've mastered the one they're at. The first rider looks really good except for the absence of any kind of release, but that's an important factor. You can hurt your horse if you yank his mouth over jumps.

My trainer had me release over TROT POLES. She would screech at me until she turned red and veins popped in her neck if I didn't get it right. That's when her devil horns come out and she threatens violence against me if I continue to screw up. Not really, but she gets scary as hell. So does Victor, and he's even scarier than Lorena when he's pissed off. Heehee...

Anyway... How much are you willing to bet that none of the riders like the one up top have ever ridden anything but schoolmasters? Their horses must have the temperaments of puppy dogs and about $10,000 worth of professional training.
This rider is another ballgame. There aren't many good things about this photo other than the gorgeous, saintly pinto. I think you can pick out the issues for yourselves.

Again, the horse's nose is cranked in because the rider is leaning on the reins. Bet that hollow back feels real good during landing. The whole thing just looks tense and unbalanced. Horses should look natural over jumps. Not like a 15th century painting of Pegasus leaping into the air. Your horse is not a magical pony. He has a wind pipe and vertebrae that can easily be damaged in the hands of a careless or unskilled rider.

This one isn't all that bad, but it made me laugh. I'm not sure why her stirrups are so short, but that's probably why she's stuck in the chair position. This ended up on the blog because they used it as a sale photo. All they had to do was look at this to realize that it looks goofy and maybe they should have fixed her leathers and taken another picture. Oy.


Okay, last one. I didn't think much of this at first, just one of the thousands of fuglies for sale. I figured the sellers were typical fugly owners because the poor mare's name is Silly. And because she appears to be underweight. But that's to be expected from fugly owners.

But then I saw that they're asking $3000 for her.

Okay. You do not ask a small fortune for a horse that looks like that. No one with a decent head on their shoulders is going to fork over that kind of money for weak, ugly hindquarters and an ewe neck. Her coloring is stunning, but that means nothing to anyone who knows anything about conformation. She will never be athletic, so how do they figure she's worth three grand? There are better horses in auctions that are going for 18 cents a pound as I write this. It makes no sense.

No wonder Arabians are loony.

Not all of them, but most of them. Just look what they're subjected to.

I'm especially cringing at the crown piece. That's one of the most vulnerable areas on a horse and Schneider Saddlery is marketing this thing.

Ever met a horse who didn't like his ears touched? It's probably a trust issue. A horse's cervical vertebrae are pretty well protected until you get to the top of the neck, which is where the bones have the least protection. So if your horse lets you touch his ears and the area behind his skull, that says he trusts you.

This piece of shit would most definitely make a horse headshy. I can just see that curb strap pinching the hell out of there jaws.

Arabs are hot blooded anyway, so why add fuel to the fire? You KNOW any horse would be extremely upset if this was on his head. Imagine a flaky, two-year-old Arab colt. Yikes.

If you can't train a horse to square up and stand with a plain halter, you need to step back and reevaluate your skill level. And question whether or not you should even have horses. It doesn't take long for anyone who knows anything about horses to figure out who knows what. In the horse world, you can't hide incompetence or lack of knowledge. Everyone is gonna know, and you'll look like that much more of a fool if you try to deny it.

Your opinions on dog aggression?

This is a very controversial subject. There are a lot of people who would put a dog down the first time it bit/nipped/snapped at someone, no questions asked.

The only way that I would put a dog to sleep because of aggression is if it came to the point where I didn't trust the dog at all. Meaning, if it became a frequent occurrence, if he injured someone enough to be life threatening, or in the rare case that it was unprovoked.

When I was little, we had a Chow Chow and a Shar Pei. The Chow frequently growled at me because I would crawl on her and pull her fur and whatnot. Then one day she bit a delivery guy and the shitstick neighbor lady almost had a pulmonary and long story short, my parents had to put her down. I don't remember her, but I still feel bad about it. The Shar Pei snapped at me a couple times too, so they gave him to a home with no kids. In the case of both dogs, their growling and snapping was my fault.

Case in point, dogs rarely attack without a reason and it's almost always the person's fault. Our second Shar Pei turned on my dad and actually drew blood, but we didn't put him down. It only happened once and it wasn't very serious. He was a good dog otherwise. That kind of thing is to be expected from Shar Pei, seeing as they were initially bred as fighting and guard dogs. All three of our Shar Pei had strong resource guarding instincts as well.

I grew up with food aggressive dogs, and I'm still alive. That's one thing I don't like about most shelters and rescues. They usually don't adopt out food aggressive dogs. And it's really not a major issue.

You know how you solve that problem?

You stay the hell away from them while they're eating. I would bite too if someone tried to take my Doritos away from me. I understand how they feel. I learned at a very young age that you don't bother dogs when they have food in front of them. Shelters should put regulations on them and only allow them to go to homes with no or older kids. Make the adopters sign an agreement that clearly states that they understand that the dog has resource guarding issues. I do not believe that it's the shelter's fault, either. I do not pity the moron that gets his fingers bitten off when he touches the dog's food. And if a dog bites a kid, it's the parents' fault for not teaching the kid any better. If a child is old enough to walk, it's old enough to understand not to bother the dog. Either that or feed the dog in a separate room and close the door.

Furthermore, if you tease a dog, you deserve to get bitten. Do not whine and cry like a baby when it happens because everyone with a decent head will know that it was your own fault.

I also hate it when people (mainly solicitors) carelessly walk right up to houses with BEWARE OF DOG signs. Do you know what that sign means? That is a clear warning to anyone who does not live in that household that there is a dog there that will attack a stranger if given half a chance. They're called guard dogs, and that's exactly what they do. I do not want to hear about boneheads that get bitten after they went and did something stupid.

So. Any thoughts?

Does anyone else think this ad is really bizarre?

giant white mushroom.... could be dried out for decoration...... not for food, could be poisonous....$5 ..... still growing........

That is one big 'shroom. I can picture what the sellers where thinking...

"Hey mama, did you see how big that there mushroom's gettin'?"

"What'd y'all reckon we should do with it?"

"Dun sell it is what we gon' do!"

Why would you sell a random plant that's growing in your yard? I would just as soon throw it away if it's bothering you that much. It seems like this could be a situation where the people are really hard up for money and are selling everything they can possibly live without.

Furthermore, they don't even seem to know what species it is, since they said it could be poisonous. Like anyone would buy that thing to eat...

That would be the ugliest decoration in the world. This ad made me giggle.

This made me so angry.

Shame in the Horse Show Ring posted this, and I'm dumbfounded yet again by the stupidity of some people.

Harry Meade rides an exhausted horse.

Doesn't that make you sick?

You know what I don't get? Meade is competing at pretty high level events and he's either too stupid to realize when his horse is about to drop dead or he just doesn't care. Or both. You could see poor Dunauger was starting to lag and get clumsy and he barely made it over the last few jumps before he got caught. You'd think it would be a huge clue to stop when your horse is stumbling over jumps and heaving like a half-dead moose.

Guess what Harry. You're fucking stupid. Dickweed. I'm sure there are plenty of other people who would like to wring your neck, too. Do the world a favor and pull your head out of your ass before you swing your leg over another horse.