Secrets of a Lazy Trainer

My Beliefs

2012-01-12T07:43:00.000-08:00

I've had a lot of time to think about my beliefs this past two years. Today I stumbled across the term "Christian Left". I went to Wikipedia to research it and decided that the following description fitted a lot of my personal beliefs.

Definition of Christian Left

As with any division inside the left- and right- wings of the political spectrum, such a label is an approximation, including within it groups and persons holding diverse viewpoints. The term left-wing might encompass a number of values which may or may not be held by different Christian movements and individuals.
As the unofficial title of a loose association of believers, it does provide a clear distinction from the more commonly known "Christian Right" or "Religious Right" and its key leaders and political views.
The most common religious viewpoint which might be described as 'left wing' is social justice, or care for the poor and the oppressed (see Minority groups). Supporters of this might encourage universal health care, welfare provision, subsidized education, foreign aid, and Affirmative Action for improving the conditions of the disadvantaged. Stemming from egalitarian values, adherents of the Christian left consider it part of their religious duty to take actions on behalf of the oppressed. As nearly all major religions contain some kind of requirement to help others, social justice has been cited by various religions as in line with their faith.
The Christian Left holds that social justice, renunciation of power, humility, forgiveness, and private observation of prayer (as opposed to publicly mandated prayer), are mandated by the Gospel (Matthew 6:5-6). The Bible contains accounts of Jesus repeatedly advocating for the poor and outcast over the wealthy, powerful, and religious. The Christian Left maintains that such a stance is relevant and important. Adhering to the standard of "turning the other cheek", which they believe supersedes the Old Testament law of "an eye for an eye", the Christian Left often hearkens towards pacifism in opposition to policies advancing militarism.
While non-religious socialists sometimes find support for socialism in the Gospels (for example Mikhail Gorbachev citing Jesus as "the first socialist"),[1] the Christian Left does not find that socialism alone as an adequate end or means. Christian faith is the core of their belief which in turn demands social justice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_left

Perfect Picture Moment

2011-06-18T05:29:00.000-07:00

I almost never have a camera handy when these moments occur.

For some reason Blarney, our Malamute/Border Collie, was being a real pest as I tried to eat my breakfast. He crowded close to my chair and panted as hard as he could. I have no idea what deliberate, heavy panting is about, but he seems to use it anytime he wants attention. Between the panting and drooling I was getting seriously ticked off with him.

I gave him the "go lay down" command, which is actually two commands meaning he is supposed to remove himself to another place and then lay down. He ignored the first command. I gave it again, louder. I didn't want to put down my cheese toast and make him obey, which is the correct way to deal with such a situation. So I got louder and he finally backed up a couple of steps and lay down. He put his nose on his paws and mournfully rolled his big brown eyes at me.

This is when Mamma Kitty, our smallest cat limped over (a whole 'nother story) and lay her head against his for a moment. Since his head is the size of her whole body this made for that picture perfect moment.

My Hidey Hole

2011-05-26T08:14:00.000-07:00

It has been over a year since I last posted anything to my blog. It says a lot about that year that my husband became quite excited when he saw me pick up a couple of How To Write books and take them back to my hidey hole.
The hidey hole developed during my first round of chemotherapy. I only slept an hour or so at a time and then I'd be awake for a couple of hours.
My recliner was hauled into the bedroom and tucked into a corner. My small drawing table joined it so I could have my computer, Kindle, IPad and books at hand. A special lamp was added so I could read during those middle of the night awake times. We had no idea just how long that corner was going to be used.
My first check up after my first round of chemo revealed that my Large B cell lymphoma wasn't defeated. Over the next year I've had to under go a second round of chemo, radiation and blood stem cell transplant.
I'm almost a hundred days out from my transplant. At first I was barely able to take care of my basic needs, but bit by bit I have been able to do more and my chemo brain seems to be getting better as well. I'm told it will take at least two years to recover from the transplant. I am at least beginning to see the possibility that I will be able to resume the things that are important in my life such as my writing, swimming and, someday, taking care of my horses again.
I think the hidey hole will stay though because it is a wonderful spot from which to watch birds and assorted wild life.

The Most Amazing Year of My Life.

2010-04-24T07:01:00.001-07:00

I didn’t know it at the time, but this time last year I began the most incredible journey of my entire life.

The start of this journey was a suggestion by our daughter that we go to Europe for a week after she finished her law school finals.

Discussion and research finally had us settling on Ireland, Dublin specifically.

What none of us knew at the time was that I was in the grip of Large B Cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and had been for a year or more. I knew I was tired all the time and (I thought) my asthma was getting worse all the time.

This was also the time everyone was panicking about so-called “Swine Flu.” With this background I climbed on planes wheezing and coughing constantly. I kept my inhaler at the ready and carefully explained to seat mates I was asthmatic which seemed to relieve their fears.

Our first day in Ireland was wonderful, a mild spring day with alternating sunshine and showers. I loved Ireland and its people. They were amazingly friendly and helpful. Whenever we got lost or confused someone would stop and help us.

The whole trip was a mixture of amazingly wonderful sights, sounds and feelings. And this was in spite of my constant fatigue and problems breathing.

When I got home things got worse until eventually my doctor began ordering tests. The initial results scared me out of my wits. “Masses in the lungs” meant only one thing to me. Lung cancer, which meant I was looking at a life span of weeks or months.

Eventually when enough tests had been done the final diagnosis came in and the cancer was wide spread but treatable. It was even a type that can be cured in some cases. At that point my spirits bounced from deepest, blackest hole they’d ever been in to the highest point I’ve ever known.

People now seem to keep saying “You are so cheerful. Every time I need to hear a cheerful voice I know I can call you and you will cheer me right up no matter what is going on.” I like being this person.

During my various testing and treatments I’ve met some incredibly wonderful people. Doctors, nurses, medical assistants, lab techs are the warriors on the front lines in the battle against cancer. Then there are the patients themselves because here is where you discover who you really are. Are you one who gives up? Someone who expects others to do all the work? A fighter who is going to do everything you can to help defeat this foe? Here is where you find out.

My year has provided me with some goals; I want to help others find out what they can do to help beat cancer. I want to go back to Ireland when I feel good so I can enjoy the home of some of my ancestors even more. I want to share my adventures and discoveries with others. And, as I move forward, discover more goals to strive for.

Making Money

2010-04-23T08:51:00.000-07:00

You'll notice a side bar advertising products you can get from Amazon. Amazon now offers the opportunity for people to make money off of them.

Since I spend a lot of money with Amazon I decided to take advantage of this new program. If you click on something in the sidebar and decide to buy it I get a commission off the sale. This is my BIG advertising effort for this business.

This is my brain on chemo; skip, blipt, skip, duh...

2010-04-23T04:56:00.000-07:00

One of the problems I didn't know I'd have when I started chemo is the effect of the chemotherapy drugs on my brain. My mind skips and jumps around like one of those old vinyl records that has been scratched up. I'll begin with what seems like a very good idea only to have it vanish before I get to the end of it and a new one takes its place only to vanish in its turn.

All of this skipping is even worse during and immediately after my treatments. My doctor and others who've gone through this particular treatment assure me that all of this will go away once chemo treatments are finished. I certainly hope so. I want to get back to being able to write coherently on a regular basis instead of just now and then.

I'd meant to record more of my experiences, but I now see this is going to have to happen after the fact. Meanwhile the chemo appears to be successful and I am nearing the end of treatment. Thank you all for your prayers and good wishes. I know they've helped tremendously.

People Chow any one?

2010-02-21T04:53:00.001-08:00

A friend sent me the following piece via email.

A TRIP TO COSTCO

Yesterday I was at my
local COSTCO buying a large bag of Purina dog chow for my loyal pet, Biscuit, the Wonder Dog and was in the checkout line when a woman behind me asked if I had a dog.

What did she think I had, an elephant? So since I'm retired and have little to do, on impulse I told her that no, I didn't have a dog, I was starting the Purina Diet again. I added that I probably shouldn't,
because I ended up in the hospital last time, but that I'd lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms.

I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that
it works is to load your pants pockets with Purina nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry. The food is nutritionally complete so it works well and I was going to try it again. (I have to mention here that
practically everyone in line was now enthralled with my story.) Horrified, she asked if I ended
up in intensive care because the dog food poisoned me. I told her
no, I stepped off a curb to sniff an Irish Setter's butt
and a car hit us both.

I thought the guy behind her was going to have a heart attack
he was laughing so hard.

Costco won't let me shop there anymore.

Better watch what you ask
retired people. They have all the time in the world to think of crazy things to say.

When I was at Sam's yesterday a woman at the next checkout counter had a basket of dog food Milk Bones etc. and I nearly choked trying not to laugh out loud.

BUT why don't they make a Chow for humans? Why does so called diet food always have to be sweet? Savory is my taste of choice and I'd like a nice meat, veggie or cheese tasting food bar to use for some meals.

New Directions

2009-12-01T09:53:00.000-08:00

November has left me dazed and confused.

It started just like any other month, but after the first week it was as if someone had stuck me in a barrel and rolled in down the mountainside.

A trip to the doctor for what I thought was a minor problem turned out to be anything but. It led to CT scans, PET scans biopsies and an eventual diagnosis of Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (non-Hodgkin's).

Once I realized we were dealing with cancer I was terrified it was lung cancer so the eventual findings were a great relief. What I do have is treatable.

Just to add to the drama of the month I ended it by falling face first onto a side walk. I didn't break my nose but I do now have two black eyes as well as a smashed nose. The rest of me is pretty bunged up too.

Be interesting to see what December brings.

Ahh, I'll be posting some stuff on AC about this new adventure of mine.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2439052/hitting_the_restart_button.html?cat=70

Creativity vs Logic

2009-10-07T05:42:00.000-07:00

According to my mentor creativity is not my problem when it comes to writing. However, I do need to do serious work on the logic of my stories.

This assessment has led me to a study of logic, which has led to philosophy and who knows where things will go from here. Venn's Diagrams have caught my attention for one thing.

Taking a creative idea and building a logical thread for it turns out to be a completely different task than merely thinking of a story in the first place. At the moment I'm deconstructing some well known fairy tales in order to understand why some work and others don't. This is leading to an understanding of why some of my story ideas work and others don't.

Writer-can't find a mentor?

2009-08-28T07:49:00.000-07:00

Mentors are important. Finding one, especially a good one is difficult.

I've been getting my mentoring from Holly Lisle for many years now. I've never met her, never talked to her in person or on the phone, but she is a writer who pays it forward and has been helping me improve for many years now. She has over 30 books published and a huge body of work dedicated to helping other writers available on the net.

Mugging the Muse for Fun and Profit was the first book I ordered from Holly and helped a lot. It is still out there for anyone who wants to learn more about the nitty-gritty of publishing.

Holly's course How to Think Sideways is the latest thing I've gotten from her. And I have to say I was delighted when the very first page of the course cleared up a problem I've been having ever since I decided to get serious about becoming a published writer. Though I am a published writer now I still have a lot more to learn about the business and I think this course is going to be of great benefit to my aspirations.

For those of you interested in becoming a writer or improving your skills go to for a look at Think Sideways.

Beginning of legend

2009-07-10T06:36:00.000-07:00

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1929392/horse_catches_bugler.html?cat=10

Forty-Five Years of Learning

2009-07-09T05:38:00.000-07:00

This piece was inspired by a trip down memory lane after going with a friend when she took her horse to the vet Tuesday.

https://publish.associatedcontent.com/cms_queue.shtml

Me and my Dalmatians

2009-07-07T07:34:00.001-07:00

A link to a story or two about me and my Dalmatians.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1918636/dalmatians.html?cat=10

Cats Then and Now

2009-07-05T07:37:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I was talking with a friend who had a suggestion for me. It is a variation of the “write what you know” theme, but she had a slightly different take on it.

I use stories to help people understand what I’m trying to teach them about their animal(s). According to her these stories are entertaining as well as instructive. She suggested that I write these stories down and use them as a basis for my next book.

I thought about this for several days and decided to at least give it a try. I spent some time trying to create an outline. The problem is I have so many stories I couldn’t decide where to begin or where to go. I had a choice; I could give up on the idea or I could do something different. I decided to go for different.

I sat down at my computer and wrote the first story that came into my head. Then I wrote the next one. As I wrote a story it would remind me of another one which, in turn, would remind me of still another story. I have no idea where this project will end up, but it is interesting enough that I am going to keep pursuing it.

Here is an offering of one of my stories.

I currently have six half grown kittens wrecking havoc on my house. It seems that this has been a common theme throughout my life from the first litter of kittens I remember from when I was three or four years old to when I raised Siamese to now.

The Siamese cats were all Doreen Tovey’s fault. I read her book Cats in the Belfry and fell in love with the idea of Siamese cats. This of course reminds me of why I got hooked on Dalmatians; which is yet another story (or three).

I prowled through the classified ads and found several ads with Siamese for sale. I saved my money until I had enough to buy a kitten.

I have to say now that according to the breed standards he had nearly every fault in the book. He was cross eyed, had a kink in his tail and was blocky in build. I named him Jing.

As promised in Cats in the Belfry and Cats in Cahoots he was demanding and loud. He talked constantly. I adored him. So much so, that I decided to get a girlfriend for him.

For those of you out there howling at my mistakes, do keep in mind I was only fourteen at the time. I found a lovely little blue-point that I named CiCi. I found a job working for a Siamese breeder and this led to me getting another Siamese queen, SoSlo.

SoSlo was everything a Siamese was supposed to be. She had safire blue eyes and slender elegant conformation. What she didn’t have were kittens. Or rather she had kittens, but would immediately eat them. I took her anyway.

I didn’t keep her in a cage and I fed her Purina Cat Chow free choice. In the cage she’d been a nervous cat inclined to attack any time the door was opened, which was why she’d been declawed. She could still bite though and I still have the scars where she nailed me.

Free to roam a large house though with other cats for company proved to be just what she needed. She calmed down and stopped attacking people. Dogs were another story. She didn’t have claws, but she had a slap that would make their ears ring.

She had a litter of kittens at the same time CiCi did and I quickly learned that any time they had kittens I needed to mark who belonged to whom, because the two queens would put both litters in the same nest.

Jing by this time was a big burly tom. Not what was wanted in a Siamese, but handsome nonetheless. When the kittens where about ten days old CiCi and SoSlo decided they needed a break from motherhood.

The two queens carted the kittens to the basket where Jing was stretched out in sultan-like splendor. Then they left. At first Jing was alarmed and jumped every time one of the little white worms wiggled near. Eventually though he started to take care of them. Rather than looking like a sultan anymore he looked more like a harassed father with his ten kittens surrounding him.

This remained the pattern until I decided to quit raising Siamese cats and had them all spayed and neutered.

Trek With BLM horse

2009-04-18T03:45:00.000-07:00

I received a tweet about a woman walking across America with her BLM horse. I will follow this journey with interest.
She calls her horse a Mustang, but just because a horse is feral doesn't mean it is a Mustang. Many of the BLM horses are mixtures of various breeds turned out or escaped over the years. In Nevada there are even some horses with Lipizzan blood in them because, many years ago, a Lipizzan stallion escaped and spent quite a while out there with the wild ones.
Back in the days when the US goverment bought huge numbers of horses Thoroughbred stallions were turned loose to "impove" the stock. Draft horses were turned loose during and after the deperession and added their blood to the mix.
Mustangs, as in desendents of the horses that came over with the Conquistedors, are not all that common.

http://www.walkingwithwinnie.com/why.html

Home Again

2009-04-15T08:26:00.001-07:00

Once we knew Chels was fine we started back. We stopped to see the grandchildren. Our daughter-in-law took us through the school showing us all the wonderful exhibts that were ready for the school's open house on Thursday.

The art work and science projects are absolutely amazing. There is such an amazing aray of talent among those children. I do have to brag that Brent and Brooke had some wonderful art work on display.

We went to lunch afterwards and then headed on home. Animals were well cared for thanks to our friend Betty.

Another friend, Mary Ann, helped us on the way by keeping us posted on the weather which was dicey.

Now, back to the normal, or almost normal. I've turned the horses into the yard and harvested the first spring greens from my garden. Onions, green beans and tomatoes are doing very well and I'm looking forward to their production soon.

The dogs are going nuts because Buddy likes to tease them by grazing just outside their fence. The cats are all stationed at various windows watching the many birds, who now have young just outside those windows.

Things seem to be back to normal. Or at least as normal as they ever get around here.

Heart Stopping

2009-04-14T05:33:00.000-07:00

No matter how old or accomplished kids are they have the ability to stop a parent's heart with one phone call.
Our call came Easter Sunday evening; "I just vomited up a lot of blood, Mom. Please come."
While asking questions and making suggestions; "Don't try to drive yourself to the hospital. Get a friend too." and How long has this been going on?" "HOW LONG?" we rushed around throwing clothes into the suitcase and throwning food at the animals.
After getting off the phone with dear daughter, there were frantic calls to friends to please come take care of the animals. We set a personal record by being on the road in less than an hour from the first ring of that call.
All during the looooonnnnnngggggg six hour drive to Oklahoma City Chels' friends kept us posted as to what was happening. I even gave up my long standing resistence to texting and began using it.
We reached the hospital in the wee hours of the morning to find her in ICU. NOT because she was that badly off we were quickly reasured, but because they didn't have room for her anywhere else. When you consider this hospital spreads out over four good-sized city blocks you know that they must have had a heck of a weekend.
She is now out of hospital and doing well. Our friends rallied magnificently and we will soon be taking a much shorter six hour trip back home.
One of the great blessings of life are those friends who are willing to drop everything in their own busy lives to help when something goes awry in oru lives and I am truly greatful for the blessings of our friends.

Horses

2009-03-17T07:45:00.000-07:00

My book Horses is now available at Amazon.com.

Talking heads vs Real people

2009-02-26T05:12:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to one of the best news stories I've read in ages. Enjoy.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-02-26/what-the-chattering-class-can-learn-from-the-heartland/

Cat Haven

2009-02-20T09:34:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has read any of my books, articles and blogs know I am all about animals. I am especially fond of horses and cats, goats and dogs are next on my list. And then there are goldfish and Beta's.

I found something I think is great. A ranch for cats.

Cats are actually very at risk animals. People, dogs, coyotes, large owls, hawks all regard them as targets and dinner.

Cats rank right up there with rabbits when it comes to being prey. And anyone who thinks rabbits are less able than cats to protect themselves has never been kicked in the diaphram by a full grown New Zeland or Californian rabbit. They also bite and scratch.

One man has created a haven for unwanted cats. He calls it Caboodle Ranch. I checked it out and immediately donated some money. The cats looked great and were obviously being care for. It looks like a wonderful place for them to be.

There is a wonderful video at http://caboodleranch.com/ .

New and Old Stuff

2009-02-10T07:34:00.000-08:00

I am starting a series of How-To manuals called Secrets of a Lazy Trainer.
Secrets of a Lazy Trainer # 1 is now available.

I found this article and think it is something worth reviewing this time of year. A lot of horses going to trail rides, shows, rodeos and to be bred will be getting their tails wrapped. It is always good to occasionally review even a well known subject.

How to Apply a Horse Tail Bandage

The correct application of a tail bandage is vital. It is important as:

protection for your horse's tail and/or plaiting when traveling;

to lay the hairs flatly and smoothly

as part of the grooming process; or

for covering a mare.

Here is how to correctly use a tail bandage.

Steps

Roll the bandage correctly. Before beginning to apply the bandage, first ensure that it's correctly rolled.
- Begin by rolling the bandage onto the tapes or Velcro fastening, so that the straps are inside.
- Then continue to roll it up firmly and straight.

Start the laying process. With a wet water brush, dampen the tail down. This will help the hair to lay properly when the bandage is applied. But do not over dampen the tail or the bandage will constrict and cut off circulation!

Apply the bandage. With the bandage now correctly rolled, place the beginning of the bandage, just above your horse's dock, which means his tail bone. Angle it at roughly 45 degrees.
- Remember to keep the actual roll on top.
- Flip your horse's tail, over your shoulder, if necessary. And firmly roll around the tail just once.
- Carefully fold back the diagonal flap over the bandage that you've just rolled.
- Proceed to wind down the dock in even and firm turns, to about three quarters of the way down the tail bone. It is vital that you make sure that there are no creases. And that the pressure is even, to avoid pressure points and irritation.
- Having rolled the bandage to three quarters of the way down, now wind the roll back up, until you come to the end of the bandage.

Secure the bandage. Keeping the fastening tapes flat, secure them by winding them around the bandage a couple of times.
- Be sure to leave enough length to tie a bow, which needs to be tied slightly to the side of the tail.
- Tuck the bow ends in and fold the above section of bandage over the bow, to avoid it being rubbed undone. Give your bandage a final check for any creases.
- Gently bend the tail back into shape. The bandage is now correctly applied.

Remove the tail bandage correctly. To correctly remove the bandage, fold the section of bandage back that is over the bow. Untie the tape fastenings.
- With one hand above the other, gently pull the bandage down. Pull it off in one go.

Video

Warnings

Never ever forget to remove it! Otherwise your horse will rub it off and damage its tail!

Always be careful around a horse. No matter how much you trust it.

If you leave a horse tail bandage on for too long or too tightly, it can potentially cause your horse to lose circulation in his tail.

Don't remove the bandage in one go as described above if you have bandaged over a plaited tail. The bandage must be unwind. Trying to remove it in one go will ruin the plait and may cause discomfort to the horse.

Things You'll Need

A tail bandage with Velcro or tape fastenings

A water brush

A bucket of water

Related wikiHows

How to Groom a Horse

How to Walk a Horse

How to Dismount a Horse

How to Look After a Horse

How to Bathe a Horse

How to Yield to a Horse on a Multi Use Trail

Sources and Citations

http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-apply-a-horse-tail-bandage" rel="nofollow">VideoJug A video on applying a horse bandage, demonstrated by Maylyn McEwan. Original source of article. Shared with permission and appreciation.

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Apply a Horse Tail Bandage. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Be Creative - wikiHow

2009-02-02T08:23:00.000-08:00

It takes a lot of hard work to be a Lazy Trainer.

In order to reach a goal of being able to do something the quickest and easiest way you have to devote a lot of time and effort to the process in the beginning. It is not unlike writing a computer program that will eventually save millions of man hours. In the beginning it takes a lot of hard work, creative thinking, and effort to save all those hours.

When I switched from training animals to writing about it I was prepared for the effort of learning a new way to be lazy.

My real dream in the beginning was to be able to write really good fiction. Needing income to support the horses still in my stable meant I needed more immediate income, so I set myself the goal of learning to write non-fiction and selling it. A much easier task than doing so with fiction.

Now that I've figured out some good Lazy Trainer ways of generating income with non-fiction I am determined to learn how to write those good stories I wanted to tell in the first place.

To which end I find it very interesting that when I have a real need for something all sorts of things happen to direct and fuel my efforts. This particular article seems to be one of those things that pertains to my goal of following Victoria Lynn Schmidt's Book in a Month program through until I've have a book that's been prowling around in my head DONE!

Be Creative - wikiHow

How to Be Creative

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit
Can creativity be taught? That’s a question without a simple yes or no answer. Creativity may not be able to be taught directly, but what what you can get better at is frequently aligning the circumstances of life which foster the greatest chances for true creative expression. Creativity is not like a lightning strike, but more like something which manifests itself inside those who learn to foster it and create the right conditions for it to prosper.

Steps

Ruthlessly limit your selection of tools to only the most vital. The more limited your set of tools is, the more creative the output will be. Having a limited set of vital tools forces creativity and really challenges you to use what you have to produce the desired results. As a byproduct, you’ll get incredibly good with that small set of tools and refine your use of them to a point you can literally do anything you like with them. You’ll be far sharper than someone who merely dabbles with a larger set of tools. Learn How to Be Resourceful.
Don’t listen to feedback, keep following your own path. The problem with asking for feedback is invariably the feedback will be given infused with that person’s preconceived notions of what the outcome should be. Others will unconsciously push you in a direction that they see as best. This is done with good intentions, however it actually hurts your internal creativity. Now this is different than sharing your work - by all means share, but listening to feedback is not a good decision if you want to truly find your own path of creative self-expression. Once you're finished with your creative work, whatever it may be, then you can listen to feedback. Just don't let criticism (even the constructive type) stifle your creativity during the creative process.
- Keep in mind that people will generally display resistance to your idea, because good ideas change the existing dynamic, and people, for the most part, like things the way they are. When you present something that challenges the status quo, many people (friends, relatives, co-workers) will feel threatened.[1]
Having a routine is actually not a bad thing. Routines are positive if they reinforce a healthy, creative consciousness and negative if they destroy that. While breaking your routine once in a while to force new ways of thinking is good, what if growing/learning/experiencing new things was built into your routine as a given? The people who get stuck in a monotonous existence and speak negatively about routine have simply not developed a routine that puts them on a path of internal growth. The key is to discover creative rituals that put you in a more creative mindset.
- Many writers not only have a minimum number of words they must write each day, but they also have almost superstitious requirements for the circumstances under which they write. The 18th century German writer Friedrich Schiller, for example, kept rotten apples at his desk and soaked his feet in a tub of ice water while he wrote![2]
- Set aside a block of time each day to foster your creativity. Kick the session off with a creative exercise or ritual that triggers a flexible state of mind. Whether it's meditating, freewriting, listening to a particular song, or rubbing your lucky rock--do whatever gets you "in the zone" and set a daily goal (e.g. one sketch per day, 1000 words a day, an invention or song a day).
Let go of perfectionism. Your natural output uninhibited by concern for creating something correct or incorrect will always produce creative results. There are limitless paths to achieve creative success; there are so many shades of gray. Imperfection is human, and sometimes the most creative artists leave mistakes unfixed on purpose. Nature itself is beautifully imperfect. Many try to be so perfect that they scrub away what made their work special in the first place. In a world saturated by overproduced, unnaturally perfect, and clean - the unpolished is the most creative and in many cases most inspirational.
- Work on the "bad" ideas – even if you are only coming up with what you feel are "bad" ideas, you are still being creative, so develop them, and it could turn into a great solution!
Ignore trends. If you want to be truly creative, you absolutely must ignore trends. Block them out - pay zero attention to them. Trends are the polar opposite of creativity. In many forms of art (especially music) the masses of artists are following whatever the hot trends set forth are. Then there is the other, smaller group of artists that are pursuing their own path and not really paying attention to external trends in their form of art of choice. There is certainly more money, fame and instant notoriety for following trends, but most of what is popular is hardly creative. If you want to make something truly unique, trends are irrelevant. Looking inside yourself is where you will discover a greater wealth of creativity than available in any hot trend. Here are some more suggestions for insulating yourself from trends:
- Don’t watch TV, don’t listen to the radio, and remove the vapid elements of popular culture from your life. These things aren’t bad for you in moderation, but they are great at normalizing your thoughts with the rest of society, and do not foster true internal creativity. Realize everything that you experience, every piece of content you consume plays a role in shaping your personality, even if at a subconscious level. It is all influence one way or another. You are in many ways a product of your experiences and stimulus. In one sentence, your creative output can be thought of simply as a personal interpretation of external stimulus. The best part about this is you get to control the input.
- Don’t try and fit into a genre. Actively trying to fit your art or work into a genre is severely limiting and a detriment to its quality, if creativity is desired. Don’t try and write for a genre, don’t try to follow trends within a genre, in fact don’t even consider genre when working. Labeling it in a genre is a necessary evil for people to be able to find your work, and you will probably have to do this - but it shouldn’t be something that crosses your mind when trying to work. Genres, styles and methods don’t matter for creativity and originality.
- Spend a lot of time alone. You don't have to be anti-social, but many people find their creativity really starts to open up when they are removed from others and able to have quiet focus for their creative work.
Ignore the past. Want to be really creative or original? Ignore or forget the past, ignore what the world has created up until this point. Sometimes considering the past will make you place a sort of unconscious time stamp on a style. That’s the antithesis of creativity and originality. Create things from within yourself that don’t draw inspiration from what has come previously or even consider it, and you’ll be on a path to creative output. In a creative state of mind, time doesn't exist - a few hours can feel like seconds, a moment can seem to last for hours, and you're completely immersed in the present.[3] Learn How to Live in the Moment.

Creative Exercises

Think for a half hour a day exclusively on one subject. At first, this might be very hard to do. You can start off by thinking about a single subject for five minutes a day, then increase the period daily until you reach a half hour. At first it is wise to practice this when alone, but eventually you should be able to do it even in the midst of distractions, such as when traveling to and from work.[4]
Write a letter or speak for 15 minutes without using the words I, me, my and mine. Make it smooth and keep it interesting, so that someone reading or listening would never notice anything odd about it. This forces you to turn your mind outward, and give up the preoccupations and obsessions of your own life.[4]
Have someone doodle a line for you, then challenge yourself to make a variety of cartoons based on that one line. Don't resort to drawing faces, though - those are usually too easy![5]
Take a familiar outline and challenge yourself to come up with drawings that could fit within that outline.
Combine ideas. Choose two random objects, and describe each one in detail. What does it look like? What is it used for? How is it made? Then substitute one object with the other objects description. How can I make object A feel like object B? Or do what object B does?[6]
Keep a journal, describing everything you do and feel with metaphors. Each day, challenge yourself to come up with new metaphors. (After all, how many different ways can you symbolize brushing your teeth?) See How to Write a Metaphor.
Write a list of basic questions, such as 'What is your name?', 'Where are you from?', What did you do last Thursday?' Try to come up with at least 10 questions. The more you ask, the better! Whatever question comes to mind, write it down, even if it seems foolish. Answer the questions with song lyrics. (Try not to use the same song too often.)
Play word association games. It helps to have someone willing to play along, but if no one will, you can do this alone. If you're doing it solo, write down your beginning word and spend 10 minutes or so just saying the next word that comes to mind. Compare the beginning word to the final word. They should be pretty diverse. This loosens up your mind to allow free association of ideas.
See how long you can talk (and make sense!) without using a common word, like 'and','but', 'the' or 'that'.

Video

Tips

Spend time around creative people. The most reliably creative people are children. Their imaginations aren't boxed in, and "mind merging" with them can remind you of what it's like to think outside the box.
Whenever you're challenged to create something, ask yourself: What's the most outrageous, preposterous, and nonsensical thing I can come up with?

Related wikiHows

Sources and Citations

TheFutureBuzz.com - Original source of content, shared with permission.

↑ http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/000932.html

↑ http://lateralaction.com/articles/creative-rituals/

↑ http://www.wishfulthinking.co.uk/2006/04/24/creative-flow/

↑ 4.0 4.1 Dorothea Brande, Wake Up and Live!, first published in 1936 (public domain)

↑ http://creativecurio.com/2008/09/exercises-to-cultivate-your-creativity/

↑ http://www.creativethinkingwith.com/Combine-Ideas.html

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Be Creative. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Where is the time going?

2009-01-27T03:39:00.000-08:00

Time got away from me. I've been writing and somehow didn't remember to write here in my blog.
At least the population in the attic seems to have declined with a constant trap and release program. However, the household critter population increased by one little mommy cat, six kittens and a daddy that's inclined to keep an eye on them. I think there must be a LOT of Siamese in these cats.
There is a cold front due in soon which is a good time to worm the horses. The wormers are good but really cold weather will do a number on any that might resist the lethal effects of the wormer.

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T06:05:00.000-08:00

Hope everyone has a wonderful year.

2008-12-27T07:32:00.000-08:00

Christmas is past and the New Year looming.
I've got one resolution for the coming year: Do something about my hoarding habit.
Hoarding isn't necessarily a bad thing; in moderation it is even a good thing. Squirrels and other such animals use hoarding to help them survive the winter and other lean times.
Humans have this tendency as well. Some of us just carry it too far. And I'm one of those.
I'm not as bad as my mother who filled an Edwardian (circa 1920) house to its fourteen foot ceilings with boxes of things she couldn't bear to part with, but I do tend to keep far more things than I should.
So I will try to get rid of some of my junk AND not replace it with more junk in 2009.

Doing Our Part

2008-12-14T14:15:00.000-08:00

We are certainly doing our part to jump start the economy this week.

We finally got our plumbing issues settled. We are happy about this and the plumbers even happier. They are going to have a good Christmas thanks to our guest bathroom.

We bought a new range because the old one is gasping its last. Since it is a gas stove this is not good. Unfortunately we probably won't get it delivered and installed until after most of the serious baking is done. Rats!

We are enjoying a windy but otherwise pleasant day before the winds reverse and winter returns tomorrow.

Country Living

2008-12-02T05:08:00.000-08:00

Once we bought a place from a family who thought living in the country was supposed to be cheaper than living in town. They were dismayed to discover this wasn't true.

It may have been true at one time, but it certainly isn't now. If you move to the country the very first thing that comes to your attention all the services you have to contract and pay extra for. Trash pickup is no longer a bill you automatically pay each month. Now you have to find someone and then pay what seems to be an amazing amount for much less service.

You now also have higher insurance cost because, if you do have a fire, you are likely to lose everything. This is because there are no handy fire hydrants with good pressure and no large nearby fire house with professionals just waiting for your call. I highly recomment all critical documents be kept in fire proof safes. The portable kind are best so if you happen to be home you can get these things out first thing. You might consider doing this with all the small things (pictures etc.) that cannot be replaced.

Then there are the plumbing problems. You have a septic system and it needs to be serviced on a regular basis. This bill always comes in one lump sum instead of a manageable monthly payment the way city sewer services do. When something goes wrong it is all yours. Even outside the house this is your problem.

Then there are the pests. And I don't mean just roaches, mice and rats, though those are also present. As anyone who has been reading this blog knows pests in the country are things like 'possums (looking like super rats) 'coons (we got attitude and we know how to use it) and snakes. I've learned to tolerate non-poisonous snakes, but the rattlesnakes that have been invading lately are definitely not welcome.

All-in-all I have to say country living is neither cheap, nor is it for the faint-of-heart.

Oh, and the myth that country people are friendlier? Only if you mean they tend to know who you are, where you live, and wave as you pass on the road. Otherwise? Well, why do you think they live someplace where the nearest neighbor is a half-mile away? People who live in the country have a low tolerence for neighbors. They get claustophobic if they can actually see another house, much less the people. And, posted or not, you'd better not step on their property without getting permission. Just what do you think those fences are for anyway?

Today's Capture

2008-12-01T06:35:00.000-08:00

This morning we have a 'possum in our trap. DH will release it later today.
We have a plumber here trying to find out what happened to the bathroom drains. It was, of course, our guest bathroom and, naturally we had guests when it malfunctioned. I'm very glad that it has turned cold. This will keep any rattlesnakes in their den for now.

Family

2008-11-30T06:52:00.001-08:00

I do believe that having evicted the family of opposums we are now invaded by a family of racoons.

We caught another one this morning in our live catch trap and it appears to be a young one. I offered it a dog biscuit which it took, hissing and growling at me all the while. It ate the biscuit and then began looking for another one, "I'm not your friend. Don't think that for a minute, but if you've got another biscuit I'll take it off your hands (hand too if you get too close)."

As DH just said, "I have to admit living here is interesting. Not always in a good way, but interesting."

A Little Too Much Excitement

2008-11-23T16:45:00.000-08:00

When Larry went out to feed tonight he discovered a large rattlesnake (Larry measured him at a bit over four feet) impeding his way into the barn. It was keeping warm on the concrete pad that is in front of the barn door. He came back in the house and got the shotgun. I went with him to hold the light.

He killed that snake and then while he was out in the big horses' pen he found another one. This one was smaller, only about three feet. This one was harder to kill. It took two blasts from the shotgun and chopping its head off.

The horses were very cautious coming in from the barn. They weren't going past those things until I led the way. That is except for the ponies and food or no they were not going past those snake bodies even if they were twenty feet from the barn. Eventually I did get them to quit trying to check out the snakes and come on in to the barn.

I could do without that kind of fun and games.

Pet Officially Deceased

2008-11-20T04:14:00.000-08:00

Okay. I've given up. My attempts at creating and maintaining sourdough starter are over. I killed my last batch. Since I don't consider myself a cruel person I'll just quit tortuing those poor little microbes and go back to using ordinary commercial yeast when I want to bake bread, pizza or sweet rolls. Besides the dogs and horses refused to eat that last batch of bread I attempted.

And speaking of sweet rolls, while I was trying to find a book I consider an important refrence I ran across various old books about cooking, gardening, goat keeping, and compost building, as well as other things. These are not only books I've collected over the years, but ones various relatives collected, including one created by my grandmother. It has recipes, crochet patterns and housekeeping tips in it. Some of them are clipped from magazines and newspapers and some are written out. She gave it to me in 1967 when I was first married and complaining about not knowing how to bake bread.

Back to the rolls. I found my grandma's old recipe and decided to try it. The first batch turned out okay, but needed something. The thing is she didn't use the measuring tools I have today. Her Cup was an old teacup. Her spoons were the ones she used for coffee, soup and serving. There is also the pinch of this and dash of that that are determinded by experience.

it turned out I needed more sugar in the dough, but not as much as I put in the second time. I tested the dough by making a small pancake and tasting it. Since the dough was too sweet and you can't remove the extra sugar I decided I would make her cinnamon rolls.

The cinnamon rolls turned out okay, but when she said to add a hint of caynne to the cinnamon and sugar mixture she meant a HINT. Still they turned out edible and that is good enough for me.

Deceased Pet

2008-11-08T06:06:00.000-08:00

After two weeks I gave up on my first attempt at growing sourdough starter.

I've started over and I'm trying a different method of keeping the temperature at a proper level. I put the container in the oven and left the oven light on. This seems to keep it at about seventy degrees, the recommended temperature.

I'll let you know if this works any better. If it doesn't, I'll probably give up. After all I can buy very good sourdough bread at a local store any time I want it.

They are late

2008-10-31T05:22:00.000-07:00

We have an annual event that usually occurs in early October. We know the date because our daughter's birthday is then and eveytime we've had a party (beginning our first year here) we've been informed of the arrival.

I'm talking about skunks. For some reason in the fall they take up residence near or under our house. Apparently they also decide who gets to mate with whom at this time and spraying scent is part of the ritual.

This year it didn't happen until last night. I don't know what delayed their arrival. I can't even blame warm weather because we've had hotter Octobers and they were here by the first week in October. No matter, they may be late, but they are here. And our olfactory senses are going to get their annual work out.

Lazy Trainer Tip

Forget caffine if you want to wake up. Buy a tiny bottle of eau d' skunk at a joke store. If you need to be wide awake, uncap and sniff. You WILL wake up.

A Friend in Need

2008-10-28T08:53:00.000-07:00

The various buttons on the left of my page are there because one of my fellow writers is in need. She is a full time writer who lives in Nebraska. Most full time writers have erratic incomes at best.

In this particular instance winter is coming on and her house needs some serious, major repairs to make it safe for its inhabitants during the harsh Plains' winter.

If you will click on these buttons and check out the products you may find something of interest. Several of her books being offered are fiction. For the next few weeks all the moneys for any of the books listed will be given to her.

I hope you find a book or two that will appeal to you. And please pass this on to anyone you think might find something of interest on the site.

Thanks folks.

Fleas and other pet quandries

2008-10-27T05:35:00.000-07:00

I can't remember a worse flea season since 1973. Is it significant that was the first time we had a problem with fuel prices jumping, jobs shrinking, and problems that seemed insurmountable at the time?

I don't know but this weekend I decided enough was enough. I went to Callahan's a source for good animal advice I've turned to since I moved into the Central Texas area in 1971. Mr. Callahan (one of 'um) advised that I use a certain dip for the animals. He had a combination he recommended for the house and kennels.

I prepared the dip for the cats and captured one cat at a time to dip.

"Don't you believe her. She was trying to drown us. She held us in that nasty smelling liquid for hours. Then she poured it over our heads, and rubbed it all over our faces, getting it in our ears and eyes and mouths. Obviously she was attempting catacide." Frisky, Little Bit, Mittens, Flash and Kewtie Pi

NOT! I was very careful to keep the dip out of their eyes, ears, nose and mouth.
They were a sorry looking bunch when I finished though. Talk about the "drowned cat" look.

Making fun of us in our time of troubles. Typical of her. It took hours to dry and fluff our fur and this morning we STILL stink of that awful smelling stuff.

It does take a lot more time for cats to dry than most dogs. Blarney, our half Husky, is an exception. The cats were dry before he was. I expect some revenge to be perpetuated on me and my stuff today.

Oh, little does she know! After all that grooming we have an excellent supply of hair to hack up.

I also decided to take on the new pet I wrote about earlier. I'll post further reports about how that is working out.

Making Do

2008-10-25T07:31:00.000-07:00

During the seventies when we had high (for then, compared to our income) gas prices, higher inflation, and high unemployment we went green. Not that we called it that then, but because of the times it made sense to have a garden, keep chickens for eggs and have dairy goats for milk and cheese.

We learned a lot in those years. My mother-in-law lived with us and she was a young woman when the Great Depression started. My own mother was the same age and my grandmother was still raising young children when to bottom fell out of the economy. They all had some superior ways to survive tough times.

One of the first suggestions my MIL came up with was that we think about using cloth dish towels and table napkins instead of relying on paper products. A quick check showed that the towels and napkins could be tossed in the wash without and wouldn't increase expense by using more water and detergent. In turn that was an extra one hundred dollars a year saved, not to mention a number of trees. So even then green and saving money were mutually compatable.

We already had a small garden to supply some of our fresh vegetables. Since we did live in the country I began researching the idea of keeping a few chickens and rabbits. A friend immediately gave me the rabbits left over from her youngest son's FFA project, one buck and two does. They supposedly didn't reproduce and she didn't want to know what happened to them.

What happened was that since I didn't have rabbit hutches we put up a small A-frame shelter and fenced an area around it. The rabbits were turned loose and other than food, water and cleaning the pen left alone. A month later one of does had 8 bunnies. A couple of days later the second doe had eight as well. Doing pretty good there for non producers.

In the mean time I'd added a few chickens to the mix and learned that if you want eggs you'd better pay the extra money for hens. A mixed run of chicks yielded ten roosters and two hens. I couldn't bring myselt to butcher the roosters at first but once they began attacking us and using their spurs (we are talking stitches here folks) I changed my mind. We had them stewed because they were far too tough to eat anyother way.

We also purchased a couple of dairy goats, Nubians. I like goats. They are wonderful animals. But by the time we were through we had our Ph.D's in fencing. Goats require the very best fencing to keep them confined. Otherwise you might turn around one day and find them in your living room, looking for you. They did provide wonderful milk and cheese for a number of years. In a way I hated to give them up when we moved into town, but they were a lot of work.

I did not realize it while I was growing up but it is possible to grow a lot of food on a very small lot. We had a 40' by 60' lot in the middle of town with a large house on it. My grandmother protected us against the whims of fate by having yard that was almost completely edible.

Nearly every plant was in some way a food plant. We had a nice peach tree in the backyard. There was a fig tree in the sideyard. She canned these fruits and made jam from them as well. We also had pyracanthia which produces wonderful red berries around Thanksgiving and Christmans time. These make a good jelly as well. There were rose bushes that produced large rose hips; a fruit that is very high in vitamin C. She had pepper bushes that gave her peppers she would pickle in vineger. She also had various lilies that produced edible tubers of some sort. there was a speckled bean that she planted every year that wound its way up a pecan tree (nuts are a good source of oil and protein) and they would produce enough beans to provide meals for the next year and still leave some seed for replanting.

Since San Antonio Texas was aminable to keeping small livestock (and still is, you can keep a few hens even now) within the city limits we always had a couple of hens. Every Easter we would go to the Sears and Roebuck farm store and buy several chicks. Grandma didn't hold with the dyed chicks in the five and dime stores, but she'd always let me get some pretty Rhode Island red chicks or some Domineckers which were black and white. I got to raise them as pets and then they gave us eggs.

I think it may be time to brush off all these old tricks and update them for our modern world. The next couple of years may be as interesting as the thirties and seventies were.

Lazy Trainer Tip

Look around your place and see if there are ways you can insure you and your family have basic needs met even in the toughest of times.

New Pet

2008-10-19T07:27:00.000-07:00

I am seriously considering taking on a new pet. I got this from a friend and am still debating pros and cons.

SOURDOUGH STARTER

Of the recipes for homemade sourdough starter the we tried, we had the best results with Nancy Silverton’s from Breads from the La Brea Bakery (Villard, 1996).

Ingredients:
The recipe below is a slightly abbreviated and simplified version of her recipe. You will need an instant-read thermometer, cheesecloth, and a 1-gallon container (ideally, one with a lid). Make sure that your hands and all utensils that come in contact with the ingredients are clean. Use King Arthur, Hodgson Mill, or Heckers/Ceresota all-purpose flour or Gold Medal or Pillsbury bread flour. Make sure to use filtered or bottled water; chlorinated tap water may affect the development of the culture. The starter will be ready to use in about 2 weeks.

Directions For starter culture 1 pound pesticide-free organic red or black grapes, unwashed
32 ounces (4 cups) cups filtered or bottled water, about 78 degrees
19 ounces (about 3 3/4 cups) unbleached flour with 11 to 13 percent protein content
For refreshing the cultureFiltered or bottled water
Unbleached flour with 11 to 13 percent protein content
Day 1:Set bunch(es) of grapes on large double-layered piece of cheesecloth. Tie opposite corners together to form a bag around grapes.
Combine water and flour in 1-gallon container with lid and stir with rubber spatula until evenly moistened.
Hold cheesecloth-wrapped grapes over container and squeeze them lightly with your hand, allowing juices to fall into container.
Place grapes in container; use rubber spatula to stir mixture and then fully submerge grapes. Cover container with lid or with plastic wrap secured with rubber band.
Let container stand at room temperature (70 to 75 degrees).
Days 2 to 3:Mixture should form bubbles.
Day 4:Mixture should form large bubbles and smell alcoholic. Refresh mixture by stirring in 1 cup flour and 1 cup water, about 78 degrees. Replace cover and continue to let stand at room temperature.
Days 5 to 9:Mixture may appear separated, with liquid rising to top. If mold forms, remove it, then stir in 1 cup flour and 1 cup water.
Days 10 to 14:(Triple daily feeding begins.) In morning, remove bag of grapes, squeezing to extract liquid; discard grapes. Stir mixture well, then pour off and discard all but about 2 cups (amount you discard can be reserved and turned into additional starters, if desired).
First feeding: Stir in 1 1/4 cups flour and 1 cup water, about 78 degrees. Cover and let stand at room temperature 4 to 6 hours.
Second feeding: Stir in 2 1/2 cups flour and 2 cups water, about 78 degrees. Cover and let stand at room temperature 4 to 6 hours longer.
Third feeding: Stir in 5 cups flour and 4 cups water, about 78 degrees. Cover and let stand at room temperature for 12 to 15 hours.
Repeat process next 4 days, pouring off all but 2 cups before feeding begins.
Day 15:Starter is ready to use; it should form bubbles and should smell yeasty and nutty.

This might not be much more trouble than a puppy or kitten. At least that is what I am telling myself. Of course, I could also use the results as Chirstmas gifts...

We Got Armadillos

2008-10-12T15:52:00.000-07:00

In case you don't recognize it the title is a misquote from the movie Twister. "We got cows."
Any way the other night the dogs went off. They were barking so hysterically that Larry decided to go see what they were fussing about.

We had a cute little armadillo trundling about the yard completely unfazed by the dogs. This is the first time I've seen one on this place. We also now have a healthy squirrel population. I'm not sure what that's all about. They like to throw pecans at the dogs. We have always had opossums, rabbits and skunks; not to mention house snakes.

When we looked at the house the first time Larry opened the door to the cubbyhole the water lived in and said "No leaks. Mouse on top." and closed the door. The real estate rep had hysterics. She was not fond of mice.

Since then we learned our place is home to pack of coyotes, and are on the path of migrating cougars that, in dry years, come up to the barn to drink out of the troughs. Great Horned owls spend the winter in the loft of our barn. Red tailed hawks and Red shouldered hawks are regulars in the spring. They have the place neatly divided and return to their nesting spots each year.
Great blue herons and cattle egrets also use the place to nest. When the shooting starts in the fall we quickly are the place of choice for the doves.

Sometimes I feel as if we are running a private wild life preserve around here. It's pretty cool.

Surprise

2008-10-10T03:50:00.000-07:00

All day yesterday the cats insisted on living on our bed. They would leave for a few minutes and then having fed, drank or used the litter box be right back on the bed.

Since we had a bit of a cool night and the house was was a tad chilly I didn't really think much about this.

Until I got ready for bed and turned the covers back.

I had a present. Now when cat people say that they frequently mean that their cat used the bed as a litter box or hacked up a hair ball. This time was a little different.

Cuddled under the cover was a baby gecko. It was all of an inch and a half long. It quickly scurried under the pillows.

I called Larry. This wasn't because I couldn't pick up the little lizard and move it myself, but because it was so cute I wanted him to see it.

We admired the little thing for a few minutes and then finally caught it and, to the cats disappointment, put it outside.

Under those circumstances it was cute and funny. Had I not noticed the lizard and had it crawled on me during the night...

Lazy Trainer Tip: Checking the bed before crawling into it might be a good idea; especially if your cats are really interested in it.

Dog's Best Friend

2008-10-01T05:29:00.000-07:00

Last night on the news was a story about a Rat Terrier named Jake. As you all know I am a fan of the breed and not too surprised to hear one got in trouble with a shark.

Jake, who lives in Florida, went for a swim in the ocean. A shark decided he'd be a tasty snack. Jake's owner jumped in and by beating on the shark managed to make it let go of Jake.
Jake has some severe bites, but is doing well.

One news anchor commented that she bet Jake wouldn't go back in the water. Knowing Rat Terrier the way I do I wouldn't bet on that. I would not be surprised if I read next year that Jake has taken up shark hunting.

Here is the AP link to Jake's story.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SHARK_ATTACK?SITE=MAFIT&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Leaders

2008-09-30T06:22:00.001-07:00

Most animals and people want someone to lead them. Being a follower is much easier than being a leader. However, in most cases, even the most willing follower will not follow a leader that has repeatedly gotten them into trouble. If a leader consistently proves to be untrustworthy a herd, flock or pack will refuse to follow that leader regardless of what is going on. It is a simple fact that the current leaders of our country have used up all their leadership credibility. People do not trust them and will not just take their word on things any more.

When working with any animal it is necessary to gain that horse's or dog's (or any animal's) trust. Taking small, careful steps it is necessary to prove that, as a trainer and leader, you are not going to get the animal in trouble. A good trainer convinces animals that their best interests are met by working with the trainer. That the trainer will see to it they are kept safe, fed, watered, able to rest when they need to without worrying about predators. This all works so well that we humans, who are definitely predators, can convince prey animals to willingly work with us and for us if we convince them we are leaders that have their best interests at heart. Abuse that trust too many times though and the animal will completely cease to cooperate and even begin to fight the trainer. This is true whether a trainer is working with prey or predator.

This is were our current leaders have blown it. They absolutely convinced us they are not trustworthy leaders. They do not have our interest in mind at all. They are only looking out for themselves and if the wolves pick us off, that is okay as long as they are not the ones being picked off. Does this mean there is no way they could have convinced the average American to cooperate? Actually there are some ways they could have gotten the cooperation of the people, but it would have meant completely changing their usual methods of dealing with us. They would need to acknowledge that the average American has some intelligence.

For example, how would the public have reacted if the "plan" had been offered as an investment opportunity instead of a bailout? If those presenting it had offered a calm, reasoned approach with careful explanations to the American people about just how this could benefit them? Offered them a possible way out of the mess they perceived as being created by those same leaders? Furthermore why didn't those leaders take the time to look at the options they had at hand to ease things without having to completely depend on the cooperation of the Congress and the American public?

One simple thing they could have done is use the system all ready in place to ease the lending laws controlling the flow of money between banks. Instead, they chose to go for the "sky is falling" approach without examining their alternate options. Since they used this in the past, to our detriment, there is no way they could reasonably expect unqualified cooperation.

It doesn't really matter now because the leaders have blown it. There is no trust. To try to sell us on the idea of an investment opportunity (which this actually is) is going to have to come from someone that is not connected with the White House or the current administration.

Lazy Trainer Tip: Be a careful, responsible leader. No matter what kind of animal you are dealing with (including the human animal) do not get it into trouble. Keep the animal safe and secure and they will do almost anything they are capable of doing for you. Abuse this trust and you are on shaky ground. You may get a few more chances, but if you mess up with these animals will not merely ignore you, they will activately work against you, which can lead to dangerous situations for everybody. So plan things to increase trust not abuse it.

RIP

2008-09-24T07:25:00.001-07:00

SASSY

April 1987-September 2008

Trouble, trouble ...

2008-09-15T05:16:00.000-07:00

Once again the coast of the Gulf of Mexico is proving to be a dangerous place to live. Of course there are problems no matter where you live, but it certainly seems as if our coast lines are getting hit especially hard in this the early 21st Century.

As if Ike didn't cause enough trouble over this weekend there seems to be some serious news coming from our financial markets. The big boys of mortages and investing seem to be in serious trouble. The weather is causing serious trouble though rather than a dust bowl we have hurricanes causing major problems for people.

All in all I find the parallels between the 1930's and today truly alarming.

For those of you who don't know much about the Great Depression here is a site that offers a good overview.
The Main Causes of the Great Depression
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/6854/greatdep.html

I think reading this piece and comparing the statistics between and now might be enlightening. And frightening. The imbalance between the average person's income and the very wealthy may be even worse now than it was then.

7:15 am Someone on ABC just described the Lehman news as Armageddon. she then goes on to say this does not effect the average bank in the US. I'll agree to that, but I think it is ultimately going to cause all of us great concerns about our financal future.

One important lesson for the average person from the 1930's is probably that, as far as investments are concerned, don't just do something-stand there.

Lazy Trainer Tip:
At the moment doing anything is apt to be the wrong thing. My advice, hunker down and play the wait-and-see game. This is not the time to be making crucial decisons.

9-11-2001

2008-09-11T07:32:00.000-07:00

Like many people this is a day that I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard about the planes flying into the Twin Towers.
I was driving to a doctor's appointment and had NPR on my radio. I was right at a Y where three roads came together when the first report came through.
I knew as soon as the second plane hit this was not merely an aviation accident and that, like the day Kennedy was shot and the Challager blew up I and many of my fellow Americans would remember our exact place, the exact time and exactly what we were doing when we first heard about the attacks.
Whether or not memorials are erected we remember.

Change

2008-09-09T05:21:00.000-07:00

I have voted Republican most of my adult life, but unless something truly incredible happens between now and election time, I'm going to have to go with the Democratic ticket.

I reached this decision after watching the speeches by the candidates at the conventions, listening to the news analysts afterwards, and finally doing my research on the candidates, their histories, and their records.

I went to following sites to gather information. Women's League of Voters, www.lwv.com, Holding Politicians Accountable, www.factchecks.com Every Political Leader on Every Issue, www.ontheissues.com and finally, watching BBC news (that is the British Broadcasting Co.) All these sources provide information that allows the individual to really see the candidates without their personalities and presence getting in the way.

Experience: My feeling is that NO ONE is ready to be president. It is all on the job training regardless of who the candidate is. I believe history will back me up on this one.

Service: I like the fact that Obama has really worked among the poorest people in this country. I consider that even though he did not join the military he did serve his country.

I don't believe that military service is the only way to serve our country. It is a good way, but far from the only possibility for service. I have long felt that we should have a program where all people between the ages of 18 and 21 do something to serve their country. Doing work among others different from themselves, helping maintain our infrastructure, serving in public hospitals and clinics, and assisting teachers are just a few of the possibilities for young adults to learn about serving their country.

Taxes: As for the tax increase, if Obama is going to increase taxes so that someone with seven houses can't buy an eighth I have no problem with that. If taxes are going to be increased for the group that has to make a decision of whether to feed the kids or go to the doctor then I have a real problem with that. Who is going to get tax breaks and why?

Windfall Tax breaks: I think the numbers tell us why it is time for the oil industry to quit getting tax breaks and start paying their fair share of taxes. Lest anyone question this logic consider this; OPEC is meeting this week with the announced agenda of cutting production in order to maintain high oil prices. Drill, baby, drill was a real turn off for me. Yes, we need to drill, but that needs to be the last solution for our future energy needs, not the first.

Obama's ideas that alternative sources of power are where we need to put those windfall tax breaks sounds reasonable to me. Do I need to add that I'm on board with Picken's Plan?

Personalities: I was impressed with Palin's stage presence, but I've seen too many really bad horses that had that quality. It doesn't mean much without other more important qualities. Also, I didn't like the fact that on Good Morning, America only one of Palin's close personal friends said she'd vote for that ticket and then SHE made it plain she was voting for McCain. If none of your good friends support you there is a skunk somewhere.

I was very disappointed in McCain's speech. I respect his service and his history. I honor him for what he has done. I admire the man more than I can possibly say. BUT, this time I wanted to hear his plans for the future; not what happened thirty-five years ago. A brief synopsis of his service record and a few touches on his record in the senate for the past twenty-two years would not have been amiss. But the big failure of his, and Palin's, speeches was the lack of future plans. Fight, fight,fight is for pep rallies, not leading a country.

Obama and Bidden aren't as charismatic as Palin or as heroic as McCain, but at this point I think they may be our best hope for the future of our country.

Robert A. Heinlein said the difference between bad and worse was far greater than the difference between good and better. I'm not sure which one it is in this election year, but I do see that we need to be very careful which choice we make.

Study the issues, read the transcripts, and try your best to make your decision based on things other than stage presence and personalities. Your children and grandchildren's future may depend on your choice this November.

Late Summer Early Fall

2008-09-07T05:33:00.000-07:00

This time of year is always interesting. September first we wake up to the sound of shotguns banging away. Dove season is officially open and the hunters start as soon as the first bit of light can be seen.

The problem here is that the fence they are walking along is less than a hundred feet from our house. They are hunting on a hundred acre plus farm, but that particular fence is on the road side of the property and the road is a two lane country road with ditches on either side. Then there is our fence. In addition to the noise there is the sound of the spent pellets raining down on our roof. Sigh, I will be so glad when October first arrives.

We are also being invaded by possums. We’ve relocated five or six of them so far. Then there are the squirrels; the other day I heard the dogs throwing a fit and went out to see what was upsetting them.

It took me awhile to figure out what was going on, but I finally spotted a young squirrel sitting on a branch near the dog runs. I know he was young because while he had a good coat he didn’t have the full bushy tail of the adult squirrel. I know it was a he because of what he was doing. Okay, so later when he scampered away I had other proof. That’s beside the point.

The squirrel would pick a pecan from the tree and, taking careful aim, throw it at the dogs. His aim was good. He would hit one nearly every time. He then waited until the dogs quit leaping on the fence of their run and barking. He selected another nut and tossed it. This went of for several minutes.

As Larry said when I told him later, “Kids will be kids.”

Ah yes, and to add to the uproar, the cats get in spats over who gets the best window seat to watch all this.

Possums Really Do Play Possum

2008-08-21T17:20:00.000-07:00

When I went out to give the dogs their morning water and dog biscuits I noticed a furry something in one of the indoor kennels. This is not something I'm thrilled to find.

When I looked more closely the furry thing turned out to be a young 'possum. At first I thought it was dead, but on closer inspection realized it was still alive. The dogs kept coming over to sniff at it and I made them go to their own kennels while I got the big scoop I use to clean their yard and tossed the unwelcomed guest over the fence. I am far more use to opposums attacking than playing dead so this was interesting. When I checked later there was no sign of it so I suppose it was unharmed.

Full Mail Box

2008-08-19T06:36:00.000-07:00

Wow, I got back from vacation to find my email inbox was stuffed full. Some was junk mail, of course, BUT there were also some emails offering me writing jobs, including one from a British editor.

She wanted to know if I would be interested in writing a HILO, High Interest-Low vocabulary, book. Since improving reading skills has been a subject near and dear to my heart for over thirty years now naturally I leaped at the chance. I am especially interested in creating reading material for the older reader.

On our mini-vacation we found a really choice museum in Clint, Oklahoma. It is the Route 66 museum. It has a wonderful layout beginning with the conception of the "Mother Road" and continuing up to the point it ceased to be a conduit from Chicago, IL to Los Angeles, CA. It is worth the tour if you are at all interested in the subject.

Well, I'd better get back to work on all those articles etc. that were in my in-box, as well as the book.

Lazy Trainer Tip

Take time to enjoy yourself. As far as we know we only go 'round once in this life.

Work and Play

2008-08-02T06:05:00.000-07:00

I was working a crossword puzzle and got to thinking about semetics, which led to the folloing musings about work and play.

Humans like to make a big deal of work and consign second place to play. Work is important. Play is not. Yet, if you look at the subject carefully, you'll see that work is acturally far in second place to play.

Consider the following. Anything we do beyond what is necessary to acquire the day's food is play. I base this statement on the fact that all life has to do something to acquire enough food to continue living. That can be considered work. Once a person has enough food to insure their continued existence for another day they have done all the work they actually need to do.

What about shelter? What about it? Many animals live all their lives without shelter. From birth to death they are completely at the mercy of the elements. There are places in this world where humans can survive without any artificial shelter. The fact we've learned to create such things allows us to move into enviroments that are hostile to us, but even there the effort to have shelter beyond that needed to allow us to survive has to be considered play.

What about clothing? Well, are there any other animals that we know of who create artifical colthing? Again clothing is something that allows us to move into and survive in hostile enviroments, but beyond the necessary clothing to achieve that? I say again it is play.

I am going to define play as anything that involves keeping score in some fashion. And the fact is almost everything humans do is to rack up points on some scoreboard to prove to other humans they are winning the game. Therefore almost everything we do is really play.

Lazy Trainer Tip

If you are getting stressed because of the current economic conditions ask yourself these questions. Do I have enough to feed myself and my family? Can I provide them with shelter from the elements of this enviroments? Do all of us have clothing to further protect us?

If your answers to these questions is yes then you need to step back and look at just how much the rest of it is scorekeeping on a giant playboard.

Trainers Signatures

2008-07-29T04:58:00.000-07:00

Over the years I've learned that every horse trainer has a particular pattern or way of doing things and once I learn that pattern it is fairly easy for me to identify horses trained by that person.

I had an email conversation going with a woman and she mentioned something about the way her horse responded to certain aids (signals). There was something familar about the aids she described using on her horse but it took a while for me to remember where I'd learned about this particular method of telling a horse what you want it to do. Something people either forget or never learn is that a horse will learn to do what you want via whatever signals you choose to use as long as you are consistent in their use. Here is some of my response to her.

I had to sleep on it, but when you mentioned the business of cuing your horse with your thighs I remembered when I was looking at Pasos I went to a farm that had one of the top trainers from Peru working for them. I rode some of their horses and he instructed me to cue the horses using pressure from hip to knee. The lower leg was used separately to signal forward movement and upward (collected) movement.

Later when I was riding a gelding at another place I used these signals and got a perfect response. I asked the owner how long the horse had been with that particular trainer and she was amazed I could tell it had been with him.

I learned back in my livery stable days that every trainer has a "signature" and once you know it any horse that person's worked with will be easier to handle if you use those signals. It is something that has stood me in good stead for a lot of years. When trying a new horse I don't waste time trying to give perfect aids, rather I try to find which ones that particular horse has been taught to respond too.

Lazy Trainer Tip

When riding or driving a horse for the first time ask the person responsible what aids the animal is accustomed to. Do not assume the ones you usually use are ones that horse will understand. If someone tells you a horse is trained to respond to different signals than the ones you know use what the person tells you not what you have learned.

Completely Off Topic

2008-07-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

The following has nothing to do with my usual subjects of animals and their care and training. It is an email a friend sent and my reply to her.
It concerns a subject I feel so strongly about that, as I explain in my comments to the email I received, I am going to put it up for all of you to read. Yes, I'm aware that some of what I say is insulting, but I consider the insults I'm replying to are far worse because they are so completely ignored by all and sundry.

Lazy Trainer

This is a very important READ for those of us who are women and those who love a mother, wife, daughter or good female friend! It has not been that long and I frankly, was not aware just how hard the vote was won!

Janine

***************************

I know many of us don’t think we have time to read long e-mails. Trust me. You DO have time for this one.
A friend forwarded this, an d I thought you also might find it eye-opening. The message was inspired by an HBO film that's on this month-- Iron Jawed Angels, with Hilary Swank playing Alice Paul. It is the story of our Grandmothers and our Great-grandmothers, as they lived only 90 years ago. It was not until 1920 that women in the U.S. were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.Thus unfolded the "Night of Terror" on November 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. The women were innocent and defenseless. An d by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic."They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food -- all of it colorless slop -- was infested with worms. When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for w eeks until word was smuggled out to the press.�So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because -- why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie 'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied Women's History, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was -- with herself. "One th ought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie," she said. "What would those women think of the way I use -- or don't use -- my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn." The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her 'all over again.'HBO released the movie on video and DVD. I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum. I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.The doctor admonished the men : "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know. We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Whethe r you vote Democratic, Republican or Independent party -- remember to vote.History is being made.

This is something we as women really need to keep telling our daughters and granddaughters about.
I don't know about you Janine, but even though I am not a fan of hers, I have been outraged by the way Hilary Clinton was treated during the primary election process. Things were said and done that had the "black" equivalent been said or done there would have been a public outcry that would have shaken the foundations of the whole process.
Yet, other than a few women blogging about it, there was hardly any mention at all about the indignity and unfairness of it. Every perceived threat and snub Obama endured was aired and discussed at great length. Yet, far worse things said and done concerning Hilary were almost completely ignored.
At the point where she clearly was the choice of the voters the Powers That Be of the Democratic party apparently decided that they would rather field a black candidate who had the required "meat and two veggies" than a woman.
As for the post I am all too aware of the reality of the subject. I was raised in an all female household and both my grandmother and mother were born before women had the right to vote. Even though we were quite poor (women were paid forty percent of what men were then) they paid their poll tax and voted in every election.
As for me, I am afraid I get a red haze of outrage going when anyone tries to tell me I don't understand discrimination.
In 1964 I was refused entry to the college of my choice because, as was written on the OUTSIDE of my application envelope when it was returned to me, "WE DON"T TAKE GIRLS." It took lawsuits by those who had the money and clout that went to the highest courts to change that.
In 1971 I was told to go home and be a better wife by a lawyer and judge when I tried to file for a divorce. The fact my husband had broken my glasses, blacked both my eyes and and given me a concussion wasn't a good enough reason to get the divorce. My offence that earned the beating? I couldn't stop coughing because I had a sever case of bronchitis and I was bothering him even though I was in a room, with the door closed, at the other end of the house.
In 1972 when I needed a good job to support myself and my child I was told, "You are the best applicant we have for the job, but I want a man in this position."
Later that same year I was hired for a job and told, "If the court hadn't ruled I have to hire a woman I would not hire you even though you are well qualified, but they did so I will."
For my next job I was the first woman hire by a very large company and much doubt was expressed that I could do the job at all. They now have many women working for them in the position, but at the time they made it plain I was only being hired because the new laws were forcing them to hire women. Incidentally, black men had long been able to go to that school and work at those companies in those positions. So, who was really being discriminated against?
We've come a long way, baby? Not even. As long as we are treated as third class citizens, paid less for doing the same jobs, laid off first and hired last we have not reached the heights our female ancestors dreamed for.
Okay, now that my blood pressure has gone through the roof and I'm panting as if I'd run a marathon, I'll shut up and climb down off my soap box.

Lost Weekend

2008-07-20T06:38:00.000-07:00

I've spent most of my weekend recovering from a computer crash. What caused it? Dunno. I do know that my external hard drive, keys and off-site storage have saved my bacon.

Lazy Trainer Tip

Back up! Back UP! BACK up! BACK UP! Got it folks?

Why Do You Do It?

2008-07-15T05:05:00.000-07:00

Holly Lisle author and my publisher sends out a newsletter every other week. Lately, "Why do you write?" has been her subject. This is always a question that facinates those of us who write as well as those who don't.

Naturally the subject of fame and fortune as a writer came up and discussions began. Some, such as King and Rowling, hit the writers jackpot and win big time. A lot of writers make a living at it without ever getting near such dizzing heights. Most who are lucky enough to sell a book will eventually sell five hundred or fewer copies of that book. What is the difference between the person who only sells a hundred copies and the one who sells a hundred thousand? Can you win the writer's lottery by planning to?

I have attended several events where a famous New York agent spoke. He said that, no matter how much a book is advertised and pushed, there is one thing no one can determine and that is the WOM factor. WOM stands for Word Of Mouth. And that is something no publisher, no agent, no writer, no publicity agent has any control over. And WOM is what makes a super star in the beginning.

Here is the letter I sent to Holly in response to her advice and comments about why some of us write.

Thanks again, Holly,
For reminding me why I'm really sitting at desk and computer for hours and hours most days.
I will say I write because I can't NOT write. Storytelling has been a vice since I first learned to talk.
However, now I am also writing in an attempt to transfer knowledge I acquired over the years. Some of my knowledge was hard won. Forget grades and college fees, broken bones and dead animals were the price paid for much of my knowledge. If only one or two are spared having to pay this price then I owe it to them to "pay it forward."

Thank you for giving me to opportunity to do so as well as aiding me in honing my skills to make my work better.

Lazy Trainer Tip

Holly's advice has always been to write the best book you can and work from there. My take is that that is all anyone can do in any endeavor whether it is writing a book or training a dog. Do your best and then see what happens.

Follow The Leader

2008-07-08T05:45:00.000-07:00

Before I begin my article here is a blog I like. http://abraxanminis.blogspot.com/2008/06/aridzona-jean-and-garden-of-doom.html

Last week my herd of horses decided they knew exactly what was going on and would just go line up at a gate before I got there.

Cute. But this is how you can get in real trouble without realizing it. It seems convenient to have them ready to go out, but it also means they are not "following" you as their leader. This means in short order you can lose control of the herd and suddenly you are the omega and being bossed around. A very dangerous state of affairs for a human.

To prevent this I began by walking towards another gate. They watched for a few seconds then rushed over there. I changed course for another gate and they zipped over there. It took four changes before they gave up and started following me. One horse didn't give up until I'd changed directions seven times. Finally he gave up and fell in line with the rest of them. I led the herd through a complicated pattern for a few minutes before I went to a gate and allowed them to go out to pasture.

Several years ago I got in trouble by ignoring just such a subtle sign at feeding time. My daughter's Arabian mare began by putting her ears back as I approached her stall to put feed in her feed tub. I was in a hurry most times and ignored the behavior. It escalated until one day I realized she was actually starting to charge when I approached. This is extremely dangerous behavior in a horse (or any animal you are dealing with) and I had to work for several weeks to cure the problem I'd allowed to develop.

Lazy Trainer Tip

Pay attention to subtle signs that you are being challenged as leader and take immediate steps to re-establish your position. If you do this right at the beginning it can be as simple as walking around a pen until they fall into line behind you.

Training People

2008-06-30T06:41:00.000-07:00

This weekend I got into a discussion about trainers and training methods with some other horse people. It got rather heated because I am a strong proponent of the Parelli method. I believe in it because it is designed to train people.

The old saying "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you feed him for life." holds true when it comes to animal training. The following story is how I learned this important fact. Warning you may need something handy to blow your nose on during and after reading it.

First Client

I opened for business as a horse trainer in the late sixties. My first client was a big Appaloosa mare that was "stubborn" and wouldn't canter for her owner. Since I had been working for an Appaloosa breeder for the past three years I approached the project with confidence.

Within the month I had the mare walking, jogging, cantering, neck-reining, doing sliding stops etc. Her owner, who had been on vacation, came back and with some friends tried out his newly trained horse. Since I was working out of a public stable at the time the only control I had was over my horses and equipment.

He proceded to gallop the mare up and down the arena doing slidding stops until her mouth and legs were raw. His friends got on her and blooded her sides using spurs. When they were finished they said I was miracle worker becasue she'd never done that well before.

She stood there, sweating, sides heaving and bloody, and looked at me with eyes that said "I did what you wanted me to. Why are you letting them do this to me? Wasn't I a good girl? What have I done wrong?"

I never trained a horse FOR someone again. Either I trained both horse and rider or I didn't train.

The mare? I didn't have the money to buy her so she ended up at the killers.

Lazy Trainer Tip

Forget training animals, train the people is my motto and I'm one hundred percent behind Pat on this one.

Animal Whisperers

2008-06-28T06:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had several discussions involving the rescue, rehabilitation, and recognizing of signals concerning various animals.

The series of discussions began because I was telling various friends and acquaintances about an upcoming event where Pat Parelli and Cesar Millan are going to do some work together. I am really interested in this because I am an admirer of their work.

I hope Cesar takes some pages from Pat’s book and organizes his knowledge in more accessible forms for others to learn from. The greatest contribution to the horse world the Parellis have made in my opinion is that they have taken what they know and broken it down into tiny bits so others can use this knowledge to have positive results with their own horses even if they don’t have direct access to Pat or Linda. They also organized a training program so that now, regardless of what part of the country you are in you can find a professional who knows how to use these methods to help you and your horse.

All that being said I’m going to put in my two cents worth about the term whisperer. It is bandied about a lot since a certain book appeared a decade or so ago. The problem with the word or term if you will is that it implies the person has some special secret language that he or she speaks to animals with. In a way this is true.

The real secret though about “whisperering” isn’t that the trainer or tamer is speaking, but rather that she is listening. Listening to what the animal is saying. Most people don’t realize that even humans have a rich vocabulary when it comes to body language. Animals have an incredibly huge vocabulary.

People who are really good at various occupations that involve dealing with large numbers of people know this and use it to improve their success. Successful animal trainers learn to “read” not only the animals they train, but the people involved with those animals.

In my persona as the Lazy Trainer I’ve been reviewing my “whispering” skills with my horses, cats and dogs; trying to analyze those skills so I can tell others exactly how to acquire them and effectively use them.

The first and most important key to being successful is the ability accurately read an animal’s body language. One time I was called in to work with an extremely “aggressive” gelding. He would attack anyone trying to enter his pen or even if they got near it. His owner, trainer and the stable manager all said he was a very dominant horse that wanted to be in control of everyone and everything.

When I got my first view of the horse my reading was he was a horse scared out of his wits. Everything he was doing was in an effort to save his life. Using calm, assertive lead mare body language I approached his pen. Instead of charging the fence he paused, looked at me for a moment, and then retreated to the far side of the pen.

I took my carrot stick with me because, even if he was thinking about the idea I might be a lead mare, that did not mean he wouldn’t try something dangerous. I prefer not to be run over by large (or even small) horses if I can help it. I entered the pen and went to the center. From there I carefully looked all around paying close attention to everything a horse might consider dangerous. When I completed my survey I then turned partially sideways to the horse where I could see him from the corner of my eye and assumed the position of a horse completely comfortable in its surroundings. I dropped the tip of the carrot stick (representing a long neck) to the ground and then “cocked” one hind leg.

The horse watched me for several minutes before taking his first cautious step towards me. However, he told me by his eyes, ears, nostrils, head position, neck position, leg position and body position that he was beginning to accept the idea that I might be “safe.” When he took that first step I gave him a lead mare look that said, “You better be respectful or I’m going to kick you!” He immediately dipped his head in a respectful nod. It took several minutes but eventually he was standing near me. Then I turned and walked back to the gate. He followed with properly lowered head. He had no desire to be in control. That horse really, really wanted to have a leader he could feel safe with.

It took quite awhile and a number of setbacks, but eventually I did get his owner to understand how her body language and the body language of other humans around him had caused this horse to reach such a high state of anxiety. The people who managed the place and the trainer were less willing to learn, so eventually she moved to a stable where the people spoke “horse” and he became a nice willing companion to her.

Being able to read body language fluently means you can stop bad behavior before it even gets to movement. If you wait until movement is involved then you have to work a LOT harder to correct it and that is against the Lazy Trainer’s Creed.

Lazy Trainer Tip

Learn to read your animals’ body language. Learn how to speak to them in body language and you will be on your way to being considered a “whisperer” even though being an animal whisperer has nothing to do with vocal language.

Working here

2008-06-24T05:31:00.000-07:00

I have been spending time writing content for various magazines and online publishers lately.

Some of my articles can be seen at Associate Content This link takes you directly to one of my more recent articles. Clicking on my name will take you to other articles I've published at this site.

Okay, back to the old keyboard for more writing.

Good News

2008-06-21T07:01:00.000-07:00

My friend is doing better. Her mother emailed me to let me know she is improved. Thank you all for your prayers and good thoughts.

Dear Daughter is in Morocco this weekend with her study group. Hope she brings back bunches of pictures.

Here is a wonderful blog, tbfriends.com It does carry a hanky warning though. Especially the story about the abused kids and Champ.

Hope you all have a good weekend.

Sometimes

2008-06-19T05:57:00.001-07:00

I can get very aggravated with computers. At least I think my problems have been with the computer. It might have had other sources. Ah, well. Maybe I'll stay online long enough to do this.

I just heard that a friend of mine who had a baby last week is having problems retaining water and with fluid in her lungs. Please offer prayers and good thoughts for her and her family.

It is hot and dry around here. I got what I hope is enough hay to last until we get some decent rains. If not then I'll just deal with the problem of feed stuffs when I get there.

Lazy Trainer Tip

Do what you can, when you can, with what you have. This is all any of us can do.

Father's Day

2008-06-15T04:31:00.000-07:00

Just how important is a father to a child?

I have great difficulty answering this question because I grew up without one. Did it hurt me? Oh yes! Even as a very young child, before entering school and finding most of the other kids had fathers that stayed with their families, I felt the lack of a father. Uncles and a grandfather did not fill the void.

I see in my own children the difference that results because of the presence of a stable father figure. My son is a good honorable man who in his turn is a good father. My daughter is a strong, confident, independent woman. I believe those traits are directly related to the fact they had two parents to depend on while growing up. Especically a man who was there for them-day in and day out-all the time.

Does this mean any father is better than no father? Not in my opinion. Having met my father in later years (I got a letter from him two weeks before my 30th birthday saying he was now ready to be a father) I can only be grateful he was not a presence while I was growing up. To say he was unstable would be understating the the case by astronomical magnitudes. While the uncles and grandfather did not fill the void they at least provided me with examples of what good fathers should look like and how they should behave.

Lazy Trainer Tip

Perfect isn't necessary to being a good parent. In fact, perfect can really get in the way of accomplishing anything in any field of endeavour. What is necessary to be a good parent is to BE THERE. That is what kids need, someone who is there for them.

Feed Costs

2008-06-14T06:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I got a load of hay and felt like I got a really good deal on it. Then I went to a special board I like to hang out on and keep track of other horse people. This morning they started a discussion about the cost of hay in various parts of the country. Some were paying prices that made me whimper with envy and others were paying prices that had me glad I'm where I am.

I shared the following with the board that I learned many years ago. Prices are all over the place when it comes to feeding horses and around here droughts usually keep the price of hay pretty high so I learned how to manage my costs and yet keep my horses in good condition.

I bought a scale and tape and started weighing my horses and their feed.

Once I started doing that my feed costs dropped dramatically and yet my horses stayed in good flesh.

I began by feeding two pounds of hay and half-a-pound of hard feed (I like pellets) per hundred pound of horse. This is 20 pound of hay and 5 pounds of pellets for a thousand pound horse. I divide it into two feedings. I turn out during the day (no night turn outs because we have a problem with dogs in this area). My pasture ranges from great to awful depending on season and rain.

I then measure my horses daily and if anyone is gaining or losing too fast I adjust the amounts. My Welsh ponies get one pound of hay per hundred pounds and a handfull of pellets. My DD's Arabian mare gets a pound and a half of hay and a pound of grain per hundred pounds. My gaited horses get two pounds of hay per hundred and a pound of pellets (just one pound period). All are healthy and in good flesh.

I taped them daily and adjusted amounts if I upped their exercise or noticed anyone gaining or losing weight.

Lazy Trainer Tip

The best way to control feed cost is to buy a good scale and tape then use them until you know what each horse really needs to maintain good health and energy levels.

Oh yes, don't forget regular worming and good dental care too.

Definition of Lazy

2008-06-11T06:26:00.000-07:00

The word lazy is a fairly recent addition to the English language. It entered our language sometime during the 16th century (1500’s) and means idle or slothful. The orgin is uncertain.

The definition following the above one is lazy-tongs, meaning a tool that allows one to get objects beyond arm reach.

Some people use the word lazy to describe anyone who doesn’t do things the way they do them.

I believe there are a number of different types of lazy. There is a type of laziness that means someone isn’t doing a task at all. This may be for any number of reasons; they don’t how to do it, they are afraid of it, they just flat don’t want to do it

There is the type of laziness where someone is trying to avoid an unpleasant task, which is more properly called procrastination. Or procrastination can happen because the person realizes that once she is involved it will be a long time before she can stop doing whatever it is.

There is also the case where someone may appear to be lazy because they are so good at what they do they finish long before anyone else.

There is a smart lazy where someone figures out the best way to do a task. Someone who is really good at what they are doing can make it appear simple, easy, and requiring very little time or effort to accomplish.

Recently I was watching The Dog Whisperer where Cesar Millan was instructing the owner and employees of a grooming shop about handling difficult dogs. At one point the client commented, “That took you thirty minutes to accomplish.” And Cesar shot back “No, it took me thirty-five years.”

Cesar accomplished his miracles by being very quiet, confident and focused on his task. The shop owner was a man who came to the grooming business from the corporate world and was a busy, go-go type. He didn’t realize that by taking the time now to retrain these animals he would save a lot of time in the future. Cesar also suggested that he have a price structure on his lists that told the customers upfront that they were going to be charged for this extra service. All of which made good sense to me.

I have learned over the years to project a quiet, calm, assertive manner around various animals. I am especially good with horses, but I don’t do so badly with cats, dogs, goats, cattle or sheep. I can even sometimes convince wild rabbits, coyotes and other assorted wild animals I am not such a bad person to be near. Sometimes what I'm doing to deal with a difficult animal can appear as if I doing nothing at all with the animal.

I recently worked with a horse that did not respond to the usual ways of "catch-training" in a satisfactory manner. I set up to change his mind by turning the horses into my yard and then sat down in the area I created for my clients to use while I still had a public stable. I had a drink, a book, grooming equipment and a lot of carrots.

I set up a rule that only one horse at a time could be in the area. One by one the rest of the horses came up for grooming and carrots. No one was allowed to drive the others away and no one was allowed to "hog" all the attention.

It took nearly two hours and almost a whole book but finally he sneaked over to see what was going on. I ignored him until he reached out and nudged me. Then I gave him a carrot coin (piece of carrot the size of a quarter in this case) and continued reading until he nudged me again. That time he got a scritch on his neck. It took another hour but evenually I had him groomed and playing an advanced version of the Friendly Game.

Since I spent a lot of that time sitting there with my nose in a book there are horse trainers that would say I was "lazy" yet, when you look at the fact that I groomed six horses, and convinced a difficult people-shy horse to accept handling during that four hour period could you truly call that "lazy?"

I’ve also seen a lot of cases where people set themselves up for a lot of hard work by failing to do something small right at the beginning. Instead of a quick, small correction to prevent a horse, dog or cat from escalating a bad behavior they either don’t see it starting at all or they ignore it hoping it will just go away. Ignoring isn’t going to work. Better to be lazy and take steps to stop the problem in the very beginning.

I can do this with my animals, now if only I could convince myself that this is the best way to do housework; an area I can procrastinate in until the cows come home.

Lazy Trainer Tip

If you have a problem with your horse or dog watch carefully and try to see the very first tiny sign that the behavior you don’t want is starting. As soon as you see it quickly correct the animal. You do this in a quick, quiet manner and do no more than you have to. BUT you do just as much as you have to in order to get the desired effect. If the problem is long standing you may have quite a ruckus on your hands. If it is a dangerous problem find a professional you are comfortable with and respect and work with them to resolve the issue.

Back in the day

2008-06-10T04:51:00.000-07:00

While in high school I worked for a vet. Among my jobs was feeding animals staying at the clinic as well as the vet's own animals.

He kept an excellent supply of prescription foods for his clients, but never used them for his own animals. This may sound as if he was a cheapskate who didn't want to spend money on his own cats and dog, but in fact he had some good reasons for feeding the way he did.

He believed dogs were really omnivores rather than true carnivores as cats are. Back then dogs were labeled carnivores and fed high amounts of meat sourced products. He believed dogs needed at LOT more fruits, vegetables and grain in their diet than the up scale companies provided. Eventually I came to agree with him. After all it's hard to disagree with someone whose animals habitually live to ages near the ones recorded in the Guiness book of records (wasn't around then, but later...)

For many years now I've followed his policy of feeding "cheap" dog foods. Some of my dogs seem to be overweight, some have looked underweight, but most have lived to be OLD. Those that haven't were either stolen (we lived in an area where someone came through every fall and swiped small purebred dogs) or met with untimely accidents. In one case a seventeen year old dog was digging after a mole and dug under a support pier of our house. The corner of a house landing on you will cut your time on this earth short. We will not discuss the bill to repair the damage to the house.

Currently I have a 21 year old Rat Terrier, Sassy, who has been on the "cheap" diet all her life. Every time she went to the vet I heard "She needs to lose weight. She'll live longer if she carries less weight." The past few times that's been trotted out I've retorted that she is old as dirt now.

When Sassy developed pancereites (sp?) I tried the prescription food but she quit eating entirely. She would have nothing to do with either canned or dried. So I went on a hunt for low fat, low protein dog food. I had to read a LOT of labels but eventually found some brands that contained the low amounts of fat and protein she needed. That was three years ago and she's still perking along on her "cheap" diet.

Lazy Trainer Tip

When we are caring for our animals we want the best for them, but we need to remember the best for them may not be anything close to what is best for humans. Our animals enrich our world and meet a lot of our needs. We need to be sure we return the favor by meeting their critical needs.

Changing the way we see

2008-06-08T04:08:00.000-07:00

I had an Email from a friend this morning. She commented on the fact that travel to other countries changes a person's view point so that they don't always look at the world from a solely American view anymore.

I never quite thought about the affect of traveling causing one to see the world from a different view than just that of being an American. I think that may be because I never had that. I went to Mexico any number of times before I ever left Texas to visit another state. After all, it was just a couple of hours drive to Laredo where there were awesome shopping opportunities. It was part of the Christmas experience, just as going to the mills in New Braunsfels to buy material for school clothes was part of the summer time.

I was eleven the first time I went to another state and then we went to California to visit relatives. That meant going through New Mexico and Arizona. While all are unique states they still have the strong Spanish influence that I grew up with.

It was a real eye-opener when I finally did begin traveling in the US. I grew up in a community where I was a minority-nearly all my friends and school mates were of Mexican ancestry. Because the school I went to (Catholic) was one of the first totally integrated ones in the country I also had Asians and Blacks in my classes. When out of thirty students five are "white" three black and two Asian (one Chinese and one Japenese) one grows up thinking of one's self as being "different."

Come to think of it, even though my ancestors came from the British isles and interbred with the various Native people on their way to Texas, I was a minority even among the white students since most whites in my area were of German and Northern European (Polish etc.) extraction.

My first trips to other US states really were eye-openers. The first time I was in a town where there were nothing but whites I felt very uncomfortable. And despite the proof that a majority of Americans are of pale Caucasian descent I still think of myself as a minortiy.

Because of this upbringing I have reached the conclusion that I truly do not understand most Americans. I don't claim to understand any other culture either, but the ordinary white American is just as foreign to me as any group from Europe or the Far East and any points between.

She's Off

2008-06-07T06:08:00.000-07:00

We deposited Dear Daughter at the airport at 5 a.m. and now she's off to study abroad.

We were amazed that she managed to get a whole summer's worth of clothing etc. in only one bag and one carry on. DD has been a life long advocate of carry everything you might even remotely need with you. She packed more stuff for an overnight stay with a friend than she is taking to Europe with her. Of course, Dear Husband thinks he put his back out lifting her one bag into the car.

The grandcats seem to be taking her departure in stride. They've pretty well settled into life here, staking out their postitions for naps, bird watching, ambushes and various other important things to cat life. They have even begun to play with some of the other cats so I think we are good to go for awhile.

Guilt Trips

2008-06-05T04:16:00.000-07:00

I had a conversation with a woman yesterday that left me, once again, pondering the way I view the world around me. My upbringing, especially my religious upbringing, was eclectic in the extreme. The following comes as close to explaining my mental map as anything.

One time I told a fellow writer about my Baptist/Catholic upbringing. My grandmother took me to the Baptist church. I went to Sunday School, Sunday morning church service, Training Union (this taught us about Baptist beliefs and history) Sunday evening Church, G.A.s (Girls Auxiliary of the Women’s Missionary Union) and Wednesday Prayer meeting.

My mother sent me to a Catholic school because she wanted me to have a better education than I would get in a public school. She was right; I did get a better education, but I was also well taught in the Catholic faith and doctrine.

This upbringing confused the heck out of me because, at the time, the Catholics believed the Baptists were going to hell because they weren’t saved. And the Baptists, equally fervently, believed the Catholics were going to hell because they weren’t saved. Throw in the occasional trips to the Methodist and Lutheran churches with my cousins and I was even more confused. They all professed to believe in God and that Jesus Christ was the son of God. He came to save humans and restore them to fellowship with God. He died for them. He was raised from the dead and ascended to heaven. Why were they all snipping at each other? What was the difference?

To add to the confusion some of my mother’s friends were Jewish. When I talked to their kids I got still a different view of God and the Bible. As a teenager I sometimes went to the synagogue with them and there learned still more ways to be confused and baffled by the way humans could get into arguments and fights about worshiping God.

In college I met Buddhists and Muslim students (I was raised in San Antonio Texas which had a language school at Lackland AFB that had people from all over the world attending to learn other languages.) as well as some Atheists. After meeting a number of Atheists and listening to them I concluded Atheism is a religion too, the believers being as adamant as any other believers that their view is the right one.

After listening to my explaination of my background my writer friend said, "I'd pay good money to see one of your guilt trips."

I had to laugh because I have a lot of roads and trails on my map when I do go on one of those guilt trips.

Leaving the Nest

2008-06-04T04:52:00.000-07:00

Our place is a haven for wild life. We have trees and plants that provide food and shelter. Water is available, and this is very important during the dry spells that occur so frequently in this part of the world.

Currently we have a barn swallow nest that I can easily see from were I am sitting right now. This particular nest is apparently regarded as prime property. There is always conflict before it
is settled just which couple of Barn Swallows or House Wrens is going to get it.

Right now though there is a different sort of conflict. The first clutch of baby birds have been raised and left the nest. The parents are now started on the second clutch, but the first kids keep trying to move back in. Papa is kept very busy shooing them away. This provides a lot of entertainment for the cats as well as some quality thinking time for me.

I was raised by the "cut the apron strings with one chop" method i.e. You are 18, you finished high school, now it's up to you. I consider this reasonable when one considers my mother was the sole support of her mother (recovering from severe burns in a hotel fire) and siblings when she was 14. I had an extra four years of support that she didn't have.

However, it was a shocking experience and I decided to do things differently. I begin sniping the apron strings one thread at a time. At a certain age I quit trying to do a particular task for my child and left it up to my son or daughter to solve the particular problem. I was available for consultation (as I still am) but only if asked. My goal was to create people who, by the time they were legal adults, could survive, better yet thrive, if we weren't around. It seemed to work.

While we till have our connections I know our children are more than capable of surving on their own and that is probably the best gift one can give to the next generation.

Ouch, ouch, ouch

2008-06-02T08:19:00.000-07:00

DD got home to find the old folks had managed to score a Wii Fit.

This morning the Ibuprofen bottle was her first stop. Seems an hour of Wii Fit will do a number on you if you haven't worked up to it.

Since it isn't safe to walk on our roads (70 mph drivers on a 45 mph road) and DH is getting his exercise on a regular basis since we got the gadget I'm pretty pleased with it overall. I tried the fitness club routine several times and it just doesn't work for me. After about four months I quit going and the rest of my year's fees are wasted (or waisted, if you will).

The Wii itself is fun and has been in fairly constant use since we got it last year, but the new board kicks it up a notch and that is good.

Lazy Trainer Tip

Any new exercise program for you or you horse (or dog) is best approached with caution. Begin with fifteen minutes a day and work your way up to avoid a lot of soreness and the chance of stress injuries.

Adjustments

2008-05-31T04:39:00.000-07:00

At the moment there are some big adjustments going on around me. Daughter arrived home last night complete with the grandcats.

The grandcats are old man Tigger (16 years old) and Mango, the gentle giant. They will be spending the summer with us while she studies law in other countries.

Both cats have stayed with us before and are well acquainted with our house and the cats in residence. Never the less we are now in a period of adjustment because the group dynamics of the clowder (group of cats) have changed. The old cats, Tigger's sister Frisky, Little Bit, and Mittens are taking it all in stride. This is nothing new to them. The two youngsters are more upset though. Flash is wearing a haunted look as he tries to keep his distance and Kewtie Pi has made it her business to "defend" me from the invaders. This is difficult since Mango does not believe in suffering in silence and wants to sit on my feet or lap in order to explain his unhappiness with this situation.

There will be a period of lurking, sneaking, hiding, and the occasional guerilla attack, until everyone adjusts. Eventually things will settle down. All the cats will claim particular areas to nap and bird watch. The youngsters will make up and join in the several times daily steeplechase.

I know from past experience all will be well, but meanwhile I'm keeping the spray bottle of water handy.

Lazy Trainer Tip

When changing the status quo with a group of animals expect scuffling, posturing, and warfare until everyone finds their particular place in the hierarchy of the group. But also be prepared to inforce and reinforce your position as the ultimate leader of the group. I will use voice, body blocking and the water spray to insure that things don't go beyond jockeying for position. All out war is not allowed in my clowder.

Upcoming Releases

2008-05-30T05:05:00.000-07:00

I have several reports and a manual of Lazy Trainer Secrets that I am going to make available soon. I sent copies to various friends involved in working with animals and am starting to get some feed back from them.

Here is an E-mail from a friend who specializes in rescue work and is an acknowledged expert with dogs. She is a tremendous help when it comes to the sections in my work concerning dogs. We both crossover to other animals, but have our first loves we center on. My area of concentration has always been horses and hers has always been dogs.

E-mail feedback

Well, great minds on the same track... I always say.... "now this is a Lazy Lady's secret tip".. on dogs, cats, anything...

Lazy works for me.
LAZY is really making the best use of your time, effort and energy with the least outlay of time , effort and energy! ;->

Janine P, LA

Lazy Trainer Tip

Having someone check your work is always a good idea. It is amazing what errors can sneak in to your efforts. Ever now and then get a spotter to watch what you are doing and give feed back on areas you need to be careful of.

Expert

2008-05-29T04:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had a young sales clerk inform me that NO ONE is truly an expert at anything.
I have to admit that triggered my geezer mode.

I figure when there's a group of a hundred people who know something about a subject and one person in that group knows more than the other ninety nine the expert hat can rest on that head.

After spending all my life studying horses I think I'm entitled to wear the "expert" label. I remember the comment my very first riding teacher made though. She was in her seventies and one of the best in her field but she said, "The more I learn about horses the less I know." I keep it in mind.

I certainly know what she meant. I know a lot about horses, but now I look out over a vast body of knowledge and realize that, as much as I know, there is far more I don't know about horses and, furthermore, will never know. Still I'll claim that "expert" title because I feel like I've darn well earned it. I will continue to learn even though I know I'll never know all there is to know about horses.

An E-mail conversation

2008-05-28T04:41:00.000-07:00

This morning I had the following in an E-mail from a friend. It especially got to me because this past Memorial Day a young man from my daughter’s high school graduating class got a special honor. A building at the high school was named for him. He was killed in Iraq Memorial Day 2007.
And while getting a building named after you is an honor, what about the facts in the following article?
Usually I’m 180 degrees opposite Rush Limbaugh, but in this case I agree with his observations. Those who give so much should be treated a lot better than our country is treating them.

Numbers and statistics correct, Check snopes for further discussion.

Barb

By Rush Limbaugh: I think the vast differences in compensation between victims of the September 11 casualty and those who die serving our country in Uniform are profound. No one is really talking about it either, because you just don't criticize anything having to do with September 11.Well, I can't let the numbers pass by because it says something really disturbing about the entitlement mentality of this country. If you lost a family member in the September 11 attack, you're going to get an average of $1,185,000.The range is a minimum guarantee of $250,000 all the way up to $4.7 million. If you are a surviving family member of an American soldier killed in action, the first check you get is a $6,000 direct death benef! it, hal f of which is taxable. Next, you get $1,750 for burial costs. If you are the surviving spouse, you get $833 a month until you remarry. And there's a payment of $211 per month for each child under 18. When the child hits 18, those payments come to a screeching halt. Keep in mind that some of the people who are getting an average of $1.185 million up to $4.7 million are complaining that it's not enough.Their deaths were tragic, but for most, they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Soldiers put themselves in harms way FOR ALL OF US, and they and their families know the dangers. We also learned over the weekend that some of the victims from the Oaklahoma City bombing have started an organization asking for the same deal that the September 11 families are getting. In addition to that, some of the families of those bombed in the embassies are now asking for compensation as well. You see where this is going, don't you? Folks, this is part and parcel of over 50 years of entitlement politics in this country. It's just really sad. Every time a pay raise comes up for the military, they usually receive next to nothing of a raise. Now the green machine is in combat in the Middle East while their families have to survive on food stamps and live in low-rent housing. Make sense? However, our own US Congress voted themselves a raise. Many of you don't know that they only ha! ve to b e in Congress one time to receive a pension that is more than $15,000 per month. And most are now equal to being millionaires plus. They do not receive Social Security on retirement because they didn't have to pay into the system. If some of the military people stay in for 20 years and get out as an E-7, they may receive a pension of $1,000 per month, and the very people who placed them in harm's way receives a pension of $15,000 per month. I would like to see our elected officials pick up a weapon and join ranks before they start cutting out benefits and lowering pay for our sons and daughters who are now fighting.' When do we finally do something about this?

Barb,
Believe me I am well aware of this inequality and am completely outraged by it as well.
Even worse than the financial inequality is the fact that if a soldier doesn't complete his term of service because he is injured (loses a limb, brain damage etc.)she/he has to return the sign-up bonus. The follow-up medical care for injured soldiers is abysmal and shameful.
The care for the families of soldiers who are serving is so horrific (WHY do any families of soldiers have to have food stamps in order to survive?) that our leaders should be covering their faces in shame.
Sorry about the tirade, but this is something I feel frothing at the mouth strongly about.

Hugs and blessings,Bettye

Don't think it's a tirade. Goes along with my long held belief that the ribbon decals (mostly sold by Walmarts for 4.95) seen on bumpers and fenders are an abomination, why don't those people spend their 5 bucks on a phone card to send to the medvac'd personnel at Walter Reed? Most of whom arrive much before their records (and money) and don't have the resources to let their family know where they are? What started as a fund raiser for a Veterans organization has become an additional profit item for the world's largest retailer.

One of the reasons I included you in the forward was to get your response! Also, as you (and Linda) have a wider audience on your blogs you might find this useful for a comment there. Since I'm not working this summer I don't have my soap box handy and I don't think the great unwashed masses usually think about this and related topics. Alond with Health Care it's one of the issues I have been looking at during this season's political activity.

Barb

Pay It Forward

2008-05-27T04:02:00.000-07:00

Sooner or later everybody gets caught with the writing assignment "What I did during my summer vacation." One way or another we all do a lot of writing whether or not we have any aspirations to be a writer.

This year I am going to offer a course at our local library on how to write-a book, report, short story or essay. Iv'e been writing for a long time now and and I've learned a lot of tricks since that first WIDDMSV essay. Tricks they don't ever teach you in school so I'm going to pass them on to anyone else who wants to learn a faster way to accomplish the task.

Lazy Trainer's Tip

What does this project have to do with being a Lazy Trainer? The main secret of being a successful Lazy Trainer is passing lessons learned on to others. When you teach someone else you learn a subject better yourself.

Memorial Day History

2008-05-26T07:03:00.001-07:00

We may have lost something when we changed the name from Decoration Day to Memorial Day. While Memorial Day does suggest we tap into memories it doesn’t have the same specificity as Decoration Day.

According to David Blight, a professor at Yale University, the first Decoration Day was observed in 1865 by liberated slaves at the historic Charlestown race track. They undertook the job of relocating Union Soldiers from a mass grave into individual graves. They then build a fence around the new cemetery and an arched gateway declaring it a Union Cemetery. This was both a daring and dangerous thing to do at the time. Sometime around 1887 they returned to clean and decorate the graveyard with wildflowers they gathered from the surrounding countryside.

The Confederates had a number of different days they observed to honor their fallen dead.

The name Memorial Day was first used about 1882, but did not become the common name for the day until after World War II. It wasn’t an official Federal holiday until 1967.

Now the Memorial Day weekend is mostly regarded as a time to get together with family and friends to watch the Indy 500, BBQ and is generally regarded as an unofficial kickoff to summer.

For some of us though it is a time to remember those who paid the ultimate price for our freedom to pretty much say and do as we please.

Anniversary

2008-05-23T04:50:00.000-07:00

Today is our 33rd anniversary. We've got PLANS.
When we got married in 1975 it rained. It rained so much there was serious flooding in the Central Texas area. Nowadays people talk about the BIG flood in the 90's, but I suspect we have a big flood on Memorial day weekend about every ten years. It certainly is likely to be raining 3 out of 4 Memorial Days.
In '75 we were trying to combine two complete households. We rented a storage shed to do this. Because we planned on an extended trip to West Virginia to meet Larry's family we only took the weekend off. On the morning of the 24th we went to the shed to put another load of stuff in it and discovered it had flooded. The water had reached a depth of over two feet and ruined a lot of stuff.
That was when I found out what kind of stuff my new husband was made of. He looked at the mess and said, "Well, s#*t! I guess we'd better start cleaning this up.

Lazy Trainer's Tip

If you want a good marriage focus on your partner's good points. The more you look at what they do that you like the less you'll notice the things that aren't so great.

When Will They Ever Learn?

2008-05-22T04:48:00.000-07:00

"When will they ever learn?" is the refrain in a folk song that was popular in the 1960's. It would be a bit more accurate if it was when will WE ever learn?

This song was brought to mind by a conversation I had with a young woman in Barnes & Noble Tuesday. She had tons of stats at her command and was just as passionate as I was back in the day about conversevation. I tried to gently point out to her that we made a start then and if we'd kept on the path of alterternative sources of power we most likely wouldn't be having the problems we have today. I'm sure, of course, that we'd have some problems or the other that being the nature of existence. We didn't need to be repeating this particular set of problems caused by escalating oil prices. If we had continued developing our technologies for using solar, wind, geothermal, wave, water, and garbage conversion as energy sources we'd be far ahead of the game.

Instead, when oil prices stablized, people immediately went back to their old dependence on the substance and refused to pay the, then minor, extra price to develop and use alternative sources of power. We not only didn't move forward to develop these technologies we actively moved back in some cases. We need to keep in mind that while there is still a sufficient amount of oil available it isn't infinite. Solar and wind power may not be infinite either, but when we have problems with them energy will be the least of our worries.

Meanwhile there is the refrain, "What can I do?"

Here are some things I did back in the 1970's when one night I went to bed to gas at one price and woke up the next morning to discover it had doubled. Ah yes, gas has NEVER, EVER gone back to the price I saw that night on my way home from work.

Walk if at all possible.
Ride a bike.
Consoladate any trips you have to make in your car.
Plant a garden.
Use the mantra our grandmothers used in the 1930's:
"Use it up, make it do, do without."

Things you need to consider; if it isn't safe to walk in an area then don't. There really are places you should not be on foot. The same consideration applies to bikes.
If it is safe to walk, but you think you can't haul whatever you are going to get back in your hands then think about getting a basket on wheels, or use a small garden or child's wagon to carry the stuff.
Got a big dog?
Teach it to pull a cart to carry your supplies.
An additional benefit--the dog will not let someone take your cart while it is parked outside the store and the two of you will become even better friends as you work together.

If you live in an apartment you can't have a garden. Or can you? If you have friends who have a house with land see if they might be willing to let you use some of their yard for a small garden. If they already have a garden offer to help them work it.

Start a container garden. Tomatoes, peppers, chives and a lot of very expensive herbs can be grown in pots. This has the added advanage of cleaning the air in your living space.

Lazy Trainer's Tip

Free your mind by getting some of the old Foxfire books written back in the seventies and reading how others have faced the current problems and overcome them.

Oh yeah! I'll write up instructions on how to teach a dog to pull a cart and tell you where you can buy them.

Respect

2008-05-21T04:05:00.000-07:00

Respect can be a subtle thing. Respect is frequently demonstrated in how close or far someone stands from another person. Years ago I was at a museum inIndiana. There was an exibit that demonstrated the way different cultures had different requirements for personal space. Americans and western Europeans are about mid-way in their requirements, most needing about 18 inches between them and someone they are holding a conversation with to be comfortable. The distance varies some depending on how well acquainted they are with the other person, families being encouraged to come closer by hugs and a newly met stranger being subtly held at a distance by an almost fully extended arm when shaking hands.

People from Japan and other Far East regions are at the extreme end of require the most distance for themselves. People from the Middle East are at the other end of the scale, requiring the least amount of space. This can lead to some unconcious judgements about the intentions of other humans when people are trying to interact with one another. Each tries to adjust personal space to a comfortable distance and this can result in an unconcious opinion that another is pushy or unfriendly when it is a matter of seeking a comfort zone.

Something I see over and over again is that people, all people, do not respect animals' personal space. Worse yet, if they are comfortable with animals, they don't expect the animal to respect their boundaries. A horse or dog without respect for a human's personal space can be dangerous. I have been body slammed many times by horses and dogs whose caretakers have failed to instill a proper respect of a bubble of space between them and humans.

A well-established bubble can save you from injury. I had a friend over to ride one time and we were walking through my pens. A higher-ranking gelding began chasing another horse. Just as my friend was walking through a gate opening the mare charged for the same opening. When she saw a human in that opening she bounced off the invisible shield I had taught her to respect and ricocheted off in another direction. This was only about a year after I had been taught how to create that protective shield, but the incident made a real believer of me about the importance of teaching animals to respect humans' personal space.

Teaching an animal to respect a bubble is a simple task, but one that requires persistence and concentration. You make certain that your horse always, no matter what, stays that magic distance away from you. It is a matter of knowing where the zone is around you, and if the horse comes into it you send her out of it. EVERYTIME!

It usually isn’t necessary to do any more than quietly back the horse to the line you draw in your mind, but sometimes you have to get firmer with an animal who is used to casually walking all over people. That type may take a lot longer to convince, but even they can be taught. You must make the line of demarcation so strong in your own mind that you automatically move a horse outside it, every time the horse crosses the line. One you have gained this habit of insisting a horse or dog respect your personal space without thinking about it you will automatically teach it to every animal you are around.

Ain't Gonna

2008-05-20T06:32:00.000-07:00

This morning Star decided she was not going out to pasture. She balked in the gate and refused to move forward. This also blocked all the other horses as well.

Now, there are different levels of balking, or refusing to move. One is caused by human impatience. You don’t take time to remember the cycle of; from your brain to your muscles, to the horse’s muscles, to the horse’s brain, back to its muscles, back to your muscles, to your brain. This is a LONG chain of events and most people forget to allow for it. In other words, you did not allow enough time for all the information to be processed and acted upon. The horse did not balk, it just didn’t have enough time to do what you ask. Slow down.

There is the case of the true balk, but only for a moment. Something happens that the horse needs to study before deciding whether or not it should proceed. A good horseman will acknowledge the horse’s concerns before proceeding with the task.

Then there is the balk where the horse says it absolutely will not go where it is being asked to go. This calls for some serious thinking on the part of the handler. Is the horse justified in refusing to go? Are you asking your horse to do
something it cannot do? Are you asking your horse to do something YOU cannot do? All of these questions need to be reviewed before taking any drastic action.
If the horse truly is balking for no apparent good reason then the first action should simply be to attempt to untrack your horse, i.e. move one step to the side, then one step to the other side, until the horse moves forward.

The last and most serious type of balking is the most dangerous. All prey animals have a mode where they shut down. They cannot process any information. This seems to be nature’s way of dealing with the cruelty of being eaten while still alive. When a horse hits this mode you had best get away from it and wait until it comes out of this particular mode.

As quickly as possible, make certain you have some control of your horse, get the reins over its head and go to the end of them (be sure you are off to the side, not in front of the horse). If it’s in an enclosure of some sort tie the reins out of it’s way and get away from the horse. Some horses will just suddenly come back, shake themselves off, and be ready to continue. However, there are horses that will explode wildly out of this mode, and begin fighting for their lives. You do not want to be near the horse that does this.

If your horse has displayed such a behavior you need to review what you were doing. It is important to determine how to make certain you don’t stress your horse so much that it feels as if it is being “eaten alive”. In other words, you need to learn how to stop acting like a predator.

The reason Star was balking? A neighbor's dogs were in the pasture and she wasn't going out there until they left. Lucky for them as her usual mode for dealing with dogs is to roll them up and play soccer with them.

New Old Fashioned Way?

2008-05-19T04:55:00.000-07:00

I chuckled as I read an article yesterday about a brand new way to save money on grocery bills. It seems a community in Kentucky is renting space so apartment dwellers can grow their own vegetable gardens.

I thought such gardens were new in the seventies, but a friend’s mother put me straight on that with stories of Victory Gardens during World War II. When she claimed that was new her mother said renting a spot for a garden was common in Europe and had been for centuries.

The idea of renting or leasing a bit of ground in order to grow food is probably as old as the concept of humans living in cities. Any idea that has been around for that long is probably a good one.

Besides assuring a supply of food, gardening is healthy exercise. Instead of paying money and time for a gym experience you can use those resources to take care of part of your food supply, get exercise and save money. It’s hard to beat a deal like that. Better still you have a pretty good idea of what is in and on the veggies and fruits you are consuming.

Back in the seventies we really went all out for the organic lifestyle. We bought land and in addition to a garden and orchard had dairy goats, rabbits, chickens and ducks. Our freezer was full and we usually bought staples such as flour, salt, sugar, spices and various cleaning supplies.

Over the years we got away from all that keeping only a small herb and salad garden. It is amazing how rapidly the garden expanded as we got into the latest round of increasing costs of living. I am going to add here that it held off longer than I expected.

I began moving us away from gas guzzlers just before 2000 because I realized it had been quite awhile since we’d had fuel prices increasing exponentially. Each time we needed a vehicle I tried to make sure we got whatever had good mileage. I noticed friends who’d lived through the seventies or thirties were doing the same thing. I predict that all my friends going through this for the first time will recognize the signs next time and have survival modes in place.

Lazy Trainer’s Tip

During this cycle of increasing prices it is a good idea to learn how to make the best use of all resources, but especially that of time. Time is the one thing we have a finite amount of and need to be stingy with. Don’t spend it on things that are not important to you.

Aggravation and Frustration

2008-05-18T08:26:00.000-07:00

I should have realized things were going a little too well.

We rented a Ditch Witch to dig the trench to find the leak. It showed up quickly and Larry proceded to dig all the way to the main connect point so he could replace all the old iron pipe with plastic. This house was built right after World War II and we've been cleaning and fixin' ever since we bought the place ten years ago.

This morning Larry dug some more because he had a couple of other areas that he wanted to lay new pipe as well. Once this was finished he loaded up the Ditch Witch and got ready to return it to the rental place. Well, he came in the house for a few minutes to change out of his dirty clothes.

He left the back door of the van open. While he was gone a feral tom cat hopped in and marked the van. PHEW! Then it got better. Because of said open door the battery ran down. Now we have to go find a truck to rent so we can return the Ditch Witch. Then we need to get a new battery et cetera et cetera. The fun never ends.

Cheese with that whine?

2008-05-17T07:18:00.000-07:00

Today was going to be a whinney post about busted pipes, but then a friend sent me a wonderful email about a pony named Molly.

Molly is a survivor of Katrina with an amazing story. Pam Kaster wrote a book called Molly the Pony, that is now available. I think it is going to be a best seller.

Molly is an example to anyone going through incredible difficulties. She just keeps going and others, seeing her perseverance, take heart.

Her story reminds me of a little Tuxie cat we had that got hit by a car. The vet didn't think much of his chances of regaining control of his back legs and tail, but Taz kept trying. Each day he would try to do a little more and eventually he fully recovered from his accident. It was amazing to watch and gave all who saw him lessons in taking things one day at a time and doing what you can when you can.

Lazy Trainer Tip

Our animals can teach us a lot about moving forward instead of just giving up and wallowing in the past.

Hunting and Gathering

2008-05-16T12:13:00.000-07:00

I call Friday my hunting and gathering day because that is when I go out to buy feed and supplies for all the animals and people in our household.

Today I started unusually early because I had to go in to have blood drawn for tests. I needed to be fasting for these test so naturally I went in as early as they were taking patients. Then I treated myself to breakfast at IHOP. I needed coffee as much as anything. What can I say? I'm addicted to my two cups of java every morning.

Lazy Trainer's Tip

Planning all your trip ahead of time for buying food and feed as well as other necessary items can save you a significant amount of fuel and time.

Pep Talks

2008-05-15T06:48:00.000-07:00

If yesterday’s blog seemed aimed at writers more than animal trainers that’s because it was. Specifically this writer. I need reminders that many projects are not going to be accomplished in one day or even one year. I need the occasional pep talk to keep me on track.

Currently I’m working on an equine version of Marley and Me with Doc as Marley. This is going to take awhile. I already have about a quarter of the first draft done. I tend to begin a book with a vague idea that I jot down on an index card. I add index cards as more ideas present themselves. I try to have only one idea/scene per index card. Usually a book takes about 100 index cards; give or take a few.

Once I have my cards I put them in some sort of order and create an outline on my computer. The outline is a little more detailed than the index cards and gives me a better idea of how the narrative is going to flow.

This is somewhat how I deal with training animals. I acquire the horse, dog or cat, i.e. idea. I then spend some time observing it and learning its personality. Usually I give a horse or dog a week to get used to its new environment. I keep it in a stall or pen so it won’t get into trouble and has a chance to see how things work between us and the other animals. New cats are also kept separate from the clowder, but it usually takes longer for them to settle in and be comfortable with the new life.

Once an animal has settled in I begin with a grooming session. As I’ve mentioned before this translates with horses to “I’m the leader.” I’m not sure exactly how this works with dogs, but I do know things go better once a dog accepts my right to groom him. As we go through grooming I find all the areas the animal isn’t comfortable being handled and begin to work on these. This may take minutes or months, but I keep going.

My usual pattern for training sessions with animals or people is to begin at the beginning and keep going forward until a problem shows up. That is where the day’s training/work session begins. Over the years I’ve discovered I have to do things slightly differently when I’m writing; especially when I am writing a book.

I cannot allow myself to review previous material too far back (in fact I try to set things up so I only see the last paragraph I wrote the day before) or else I’ll be rewriting before I’ve finished writing my first draft. Down this road lies confusion, aggravation and unfinished manuscripts, so I try very hard not to do it anymore.

First draft first; THEN rewrite. I make notes about potential changes as I go and use different color text so I know when I begin my rewrites that this is a particular area that needs work.

When training horses (or dogs for that matter) I had to learn to keep moving forward. Doing the same thing over and over hoping for perfection led to the opposite result. Finally a dressage instructor gave me an important key to the problem. She said, “Once you get fifty on something, move on. Staying there will only lead to boredom and frustration. Moving on to the next thing will result in improving the previous exercises.”

If you are wondering about the significance of a fifty—when taking a dressage test the score is determined on a scale of zero to ten. Tens are so rare anyone getting a ten frames the test and puts it where everyone can see it. Sixty and seventy is good enough to win gold.

Lazy Trainer’s Tip

When you and your horse have a good feel for the task, move on to the next one. Warm up and cool down will be sufficient to keep the previous lessons fresh and on the road to improvement.

Big Goals

2008-05-14T05:44:00.001-07:00

It isn’t just a good idea to have big goals; it is a great idea.

You heard the but coming didn’t you? The problem with big goals is they cannot be reached in one step. If you want to train a Grand Prix dressage horse, a dog that reaches the highest levels of agility, make a million dollars or write a book you are going to have to learn how to have the ultimate goal out there yet break it down into teeny, tiny daily goals.

Furthermore, you don’t just break such plans down into monthly, weekly or daily goals; you have to take them all the way down to minute-by-minute goals. You have to write a sentence before you can write a paragraph; which comes before a page. Beyond that scenes and chapters are necessary before you have the book. The million dollars rests on the first penny you dedicate to your goal. The horse suitable for Grand Prix has to be acquired first as does the dog for agility.

By now you know I consider ground manners in horses important. You have also seen champions who have no manners at all and the people around them allow this. In race horses sometimes they even encourage it saying a winner needs to be like that. Why?

If you think about it, the reason most horses are behaving so badly is because they are frightened. I think, no I KNOW, being frightened interferes with performance. If you fear something you are going to get in your own way to protect yourself from the perceived danger.

I understand this all too well because I’m an expert in shooting myself in the foot when it comes to achieving big goals. Remember the earlier blog where I told you about winning the spelling contes--and then having my best friend tell me she hated me because of it? That fear of having people “hate” me because of winning a goal has stayed with me for nearly sixty years now.

I have a lot of company. There are millions of people who get in their own way because of their fears. I’ve coached many people who used the excuse, “I want to show, but I need a better horse.” as I stood there looking at a potential champion at the end of their lead rope. Their minds won’t let them see the potential or hear when someone tells them about the possibilities.

The way I’ve learned to get around this handicap is to play tricks on my subconscious. I don’t set myself up to win. I tell myself my goal is to get third place. The trick to this? Which third place?

I taught myself that if I want to win a third place at a national level then it is okay to take a first place at the local level. After all, in the overall picture, a first place locally is nothing in the overall scheme of things. Really, it doesn’t even qualify as a third place when you look at the regional, state and national levels.

Does this mean I’m allowed to have a goal of making the New York Times Best Seller lists? Sure. If that’s my goal then I don’t have to worry if I make some other list do I? How about if I get a book to the first place on the NYTBS list? I’m still safe because there are lots and lots of writers who’ve make the list multiple times for multiple weeks.

If you have a really BIG goal you must break it down into the smallest possible bits. If your mind gets worried and tries to sabotage your efforts give it something else to worry about. If it is panicking over the production of the all time best dressage horse, agility dog or a record NTBS book then it isn’t going to be paying attention to today’s effort to meet a tiny goal.

Lazy Trainer’s Tip

Break your biggest goal down to the tiniest possible steps. Give your brain something huge to worry about so you can accomplish those little bits without interference. And enjoy the ride.

Free

2008-05-13T05:39:00.000-07:00

That cute little mare in the photo came free with several other minis. All of them are nice animals and well cared for, but before it is over they will cost my friend a significant amount of cash as well as time and effort.

As a kid I’d have been thrilled if anyone offered me a free horse or pony. It never happened. Now I have people approach me on a regular basis wanting to do just that. Because of past experience I look that gift horse in the mouth every way I can. I’ve learned there is not only no such thing as free, but a free animal can cost you more than if you went and bought one outright.

Case-in-point Our last “free” animal cost us over five hundred dollars before we’d had her a week. We acquired her this way:

We went out for a nice Sunday drive in the Texas Hill Country. For those of you unfamiliar with Texas that is, roughly, an area west of I-35 that extends north from San Antonio to the Dallas/Fort Worth area and west to the Edwards Plateau and Staked Plains. We had a nice drive and stopped at a rest area to check out the view.

There was a young black and white kitten. I judged her to be about 16 weeks old and she wanted to approach us, but was terrified. We went back to the nearest town and got a big box (we were driving our new car and did not have a crate in it yet) as well as some cooked chicken.

Cooked chicken is something cats and dogs find irresistible. I carefully lured her close with the chicken and Larry grabbed her and stuffed her in the box. But not before she laid his hand open.

It was a good thing we’d been given a full “tour” of our new car and knew about the first aid kit because we needed it. Her back claws really did a number on his hand.

We eventually named the kitten Kewtie Pi (she’s an engineer's cat after all) and she is a very loving little girl now that she's recovered from her scare of being out in the big outdoors.

Lazy Trainer’s Tip

Check offers of free animals carefully. Sometimes, as with the kitten, you just have to take an animal. If you have a choice though be as choosey as if you were putting down big bucks for the animals. Because, one way or another, you will be.

Learning Language

2008-05-12T08:26:00.000-07:00

I went to the feed store to pick up my usual order of feed and supplies. As a regular client of many years I’ve come to have a pretty easy relationship with the owner and his employees. I drive up and they are getting my order together before I ever hit the door.

This time the owner was doing the grunt work himself because he’d fired someone. We talked and he commented he’d given the guy eighteen months and if he hadn’t figured out how to do the job by now he probably never would.

From this launch pad we went into a discussion about communication. He was frustrated because he hadn’t been able to get through to the kid and I was a bit aggravated because I’d spent my morning trying to convince someone, who should have known better, that she didn’t need to shout at her horse; shouting being why her horse wasn’t cooperating in the first place.

Mr. Feed Store Owner shook his head, “Yeah, I see stuff like that all the time. I want to tell the people, ‘Why don’t you go get a job with someone who only speaks Russian and then yells at you because you don’t understand him? See how well you do?’”

“Wow that is a great visual. Okay if I use it?” I asked.

He generously gave me permission to use it. And now I’m sharing it with you. Stop and consider how you would handle it if someone who didn’t speak English had control of your life and yelled at you in their language when you failed to do what they wanted. Now consider that this is what we do with our animals all the time.

Lazy Trainer’s Tip

Make an effort to learn how animals communicate through body language and use this to improve your training skills.

Mother's Day

2008-05-11T05:27:00.000-07:00

It's a a beautiful day. A front came through and it is cool, low humidity and Spring. So I am going to go out and play.
Hope all of you have a wonderful day.

Lazy Trainer Tip

Don't be afraid to seize the moment and enjoy it.

Public Wrecks

2008-05-10T06:36:00.000-07:00

When I go to a clinic or seminar given by an animal trainer guru I watch the event differently than most people. I watch for the wrecks and how the trainer pulls out of them without giving away the fact he or she just had something go haywire.

I’ve also noticed that most of the men tend to never, ever admit they just had a wreck, while most of the women will tell the audience that something went wrong and this is how they are fixing it.

I’m a connoisseur of wrecks because I’ve had so many of them myself. I mentioned in an earlier post about the wreck where I got a rope around a foal’s neck and then didn’t know what to do next. That is how most wrecks happen. You do something and then don’t know what to do next.

Since that first incident with the foal I’ve put ropes, halters, collars, and harnesses on hundreds of animals (including my daughter) and gone beyond the first step to a subject trained to lead perfectly.

I mention my daughter because, after halter and collar breaking hundreds of horses and dogs, I had an all mighty wreck teaching my daughter to wear a harness.

I know some of you are going to object to the idea of a child wearing a harness, but my view point is this: I put a lead on a horse or dog to keep it safe because it is valuable. Much as I love animals my children are far more valuable to me than any of those animals. Therefore I will do whatever it takes to keep them safe.

My daughter was an active curious toddler that got into everything. One day at a mall, after several other incidents, she got away from me and stuck her head through some railings. I thought we were going to have to call the fire department to get her out. But fortunately we finally got her head turned just the right way to get it out of the “stocks” she’d put herself into.

I spotted a store for children and went in to ask if they had harnesses. I’d worn one as a child and decided maybe my grandmother had been on to something. The store had such harnesses and I bought one. Once we were outside the store I went to a bench, sat down and put the harness on my daughter.

Every thing was fine for a few moments. Then she spotted something she wanted to see up close and took off. When she hit the end of the lead she stopped looked around incuriously at the lead and then threw a bucking fit worthy of any foal or puppy I’d ever trained.

The fit was so impressive that when I went in the store with her two years later to buy a replacement harness the sales lady commented when I put the new harness on her, “That’s nice. One time we had a woman buy a harness and put it on her kid out front. The kid had a temper tantrum that lasted fifteen minutes.”

I blushed, but confessed, “That was us. I’d recommend to anyone who is going to put a harness on a child that they do it at home the first time.”

Why I didn’t realize I’d have to teach her to wear the harness and lead just as I would a foal or puppy is typical of the blind spots we have concerning other humans. They need for new things to be taught step-by-step the same way an animal does and we cause all sorts of problems for them and ourselves by not learning how to do this.

Lazy Trainer’s Tip

Don’t assume anything when introducing something new to human or animal. Learn all the steps of the process from the first one (getting the rope on) to the final step; a companion leading quietly on a loose lead.

Additional tip

The harness and lead saved my daughter from any number of bruises and skinned knees because when she tripped, instead of falling, she was supported by the harness and let down easily instead of hitting the ground.

Just what IS lazy?

2008-05-09T05:57:00.000-07:00

I thought about this question after watching a woman and her dog in one of the pet allowed stores get in a major battle over whether or not the dog was going to get to keep a bag of dog bones it grabbed. It was a pretty good sized dog and it took several minutes for her to get the bag back. Just out of curiosity I kept following the pair and watching the show.

Now a lazy dog owner would have taken a different path to resolve the various issues. Some, the truly lazy, would never take their dog into such a store anyway. Another type of lazy would put the dog in a basket and push it around.

A smart lazy, the kind I am and advocate, would stop the problem before it got going. A quick correction when the dog first looked (a dog looks with its nose first incidentally) at the shelf of goodies would have kept the whole ruckus from happening.

Something I had to teach my students over and over again is that you can’t just sit on a horse hoping it will behave. You have to take an active part in the process and the quicker you get active the less work you’ll have to do and that is being smart lazy.

This is a pretty good plan to follow with children, employees, dogs, horses or any other being you are in charge of. See the problem and take steps early on to redirect. Don’t just wait and watch, hoping the wreck won’t happen.

Incidentally the wait, watch, hope strategy is really unfair to all concerned. When you do this it takes a LOT more effort to correct any problems and can leave the one corrected feeling confused and abused; which then sets up a whole new round of problems.

Lazy Trainer’s Tip

When you see the very first hint of a problem take action right THEN and THERE. An huh-huh, a tiny sideways tug on the leash, a stop of the hands on the reins or the seat in the saddle, can keep a tiny problem from becoming a major one and will not cause the resentment a bigger correction can.

Learning To Be a Trainer

2008-05-07T06:11:00.000-07:00

When I first got Doc he was a yearling who hung around humans and went with them when on a lead rope because he wanted to. He was not truly halter-broken and I was betting he wasn’t trained to stand tied either. I had a lot of experience with these problems by the time I acquired my big, black horse. And it was a darn good thing too!

The first time I ran afoul of the problem of an animal not being trained to wear a halter or collar was when I was about six years old and my grandfather gave me a puppy. If you want to know what it looked like look at the picture of Sassy. Incidentally, Sass is a descendent of the dogs my grandfather bred.

My grandmother named him Tripper because he would run between her legs and cause her to trip. Now, at sixty myself, I have a LOT more sympathy and understanding for the problem.

Putting a collar on Tripper was easy enough. He pitched a fit about wearing it, but eventually settled down and carried it. The real problem began when I tried to put a leash on him. He pitched a fit and alternately either was at the end trying to run away or laying down being dragged. I think my mother was the one who eventually taught him to lead, sort of. Tripper was never an ideal dog, but he sure taught me a lot of important things about animals.

My education with teaching animals to lead continued when we were at the farm of one of my mother’s cousins and there was a new foal. It was by a stallion named Yellow Jacket, something I didn’t appreciate until many years later, just as I didn’t recognize the significance of Joe Hancock as the sire of the old stallion another relative kept. For those of you not familiar with Quarter Horses these are some early stallions that contributed to the breed in a major fashion.

I was out in the pen with the mare and foal. Being a kid I found a bit of rope and managed to get it around the foal’s neck. The foal got away from me and wouldn’t let me near it again. Finally, afraid the foal would hurt itself with that noose around its neck; I went into the house and confessed what I’d done. The cousin who owned the mare went out and removed the loop. Then he told me, “It’s best not to mess with other people’s animals if you don’t know what you are doing.”
Sometimes I wish I’d taken that bit of advice to heart, but I didn’t.
I continued messing with other people’s horses every chance I got.

It may help you to understand when I tell you I was the kind of kid who, after watching her first episode of Superman, got a towel, tied it around my neck, climbed on the garage roof and jumped off. For most of my life that is how I’ve done things. Watch someone do it, then go out and try to do it myself.

Really now that I think about it this isn’t too far off the mantra of how to make a surgeon. Show one. Do one. Teach one. I will say though you end up with a lot more injuries when this is the way you learn to train horses and dogs.

As for Doc it was a good thing I had learned my lessons well by the time he came into my life because, as big as he was, I needed every thing I’d ever learned to turn him into a well-mannered horse.

Lazy Trainers Tip

To learn to train an animal find a professional you are comfortable with and learn how they do it. Then try it yourself. After that—teach someone else how to do it.

Voices

2008-05-06T06:12:00.000-07:00

I love to watch Dirty Jobs. Mike Rowe has a wonderful voice, thanks to his training as an opera singer. I also have to admit that when watching him deal with horses I frequently end up laughing myself silly.

Last night I was watching him handle a group of draft horses and was amused at both his body language and his voice. While trying to lead four Belgium horses (he called them Percherons, but if you want to know what a Percheron really looks like look at Doc's picture) he tried to slow them down and stop them by repeating whoa in an increasingly higher tone of voice. The body language alone was enough to cause the horses to ignore him, but add the voice and you were assured those horses were not going to regard him as anyone to take seriously.

When I was a teen I thought I wanted to be a vet. It was the wrong time because women were not allowed in vet school; which was a good thing in my case. While I’m very good at dealing with animals I’m lousy when it comes to dealing with humans. A vet has to be good with humans as well as animals.

Nevertheless, I got a job in a vet clinic while I was in high school and learned a lot there. One thing I learned was the importance of quiet confidence when it comes to handling any animal, regardless of species.

An early example of this was the day a woman brought her Peke in for his annual check up and shots. When the little guy strutted into the examination room I said "Hi, kiddo," and reached down, grabbed him firmly and hoisted him onto the table. Everyone, the Doctor included, gasped. It seems this particular dog had quite a reputation for biting.

I’ll have to confess here that I had an advantage concerning this particular dog. He was one of my mother’s breeding. I knew how he’d been started out and his basic temperament so I had confidence that he was a sensible dog. Which he was, he’d just been allowed to think he was top dog in his household and took full advantage of it. When confronted with a person who knew better he was perfectly willing to behave.

That absolute confidence is what every animal trainer needs in order to handle animals safely. Without it even a Chihuahua can control the human. With it a human can control an elephant. The confidence has to come from knowledge and skill. But we humans like to use our voices. We are a very vocal species. We can use this tendency either in a right way or wrong way.

It is necessary to learn how to “read” an animal and its body language. Dogs are fairly easy because they are predators and humans are predators. We have a common language that we can use. Horses are difficult because they are strictly prey animals and have a vested interest in doing just the opposite of what we want them to do.

One of the first things I always tell students is “Everything you want to do naturally is wrong.”

In working with horses we have to completely retrain ourselves in order to gain a horse’s trust and cooperation. This takes years of effort and practice. Gaining that absolute confidence is a long journey and there are more than a few pit falls along the way.

None of this is to say you can handle dogs without making the effort to acquire knowledge and practice skills; because you must learn how to meet their needs and communicate in a manner the dog can understand in order to have a successful partnership with your canine companion.

One huge mistake a lot (really most) people make with both dogs and horses is using a high pitched voice. The reason this is so wrong is because among horses high pitches signal danger and distress. Dogs have a different take on a high pitched voice. To them this is the sign of a prey animal they can take down. As you can see the reactions of horses and dogs are opposite, but the result is bad for humans in both cases.

Low pitches to horses are friendly. These are the pitches used among companions, mares and their foals, a stallion to a mare. Low pitch is good.

Likewise low, calm pitched voices are good with dogs because this doesn’t rev their hunting and killing drives.

In addition to low-slow speech is also a good thing. Animals have lightening quick reflexes and the more you can slow these down the easier it is to handle your horse or dog.

Lazy Trainer’s Tip

About the most important thing you can do when around animals (besides using correct body language) is always use a low pitch when speaking. Practice using the lowest pitch you are capable of until it becomes second nature when you are in the presence of a horse or dog.

Don’t forget to add slow to this practice as well. While body language is how both dogs and horses really do most of their communicating they do use some vocalization and we can take advantage of this by keeping the low and slow mantra in mind.

Beginnings

2008-05-05T06:26:00.000-07:00

I trained my first horse from scratch in the summer of 1964. I was 16 years old at the time.

For many years after I focused on all the things I did wrong training that colt, but now, forty-four years later, I can look back and see alot of things I did right.

One important thing I got right was training the colt to have good grooming and ground manners. At the time I was riding some good horses, including a California Spade Bit horse. For those of you who don’t know about this type of training this is the equivalent of an upper level dressage horse. The horse is started in a bosal hackamore at age four and finished at eight, finished meaning ready to carry a spade bit. The critical word here is carry. A properly trained spade bit horse has a mouth that is so sensitive and delicate that you can ride it using silk thread as reins. The real key is you use your seat and legs to give the signals.

Maybe it was being raised by people who raised dogs, but one thing I noticed at even that early age was the fact that many horses were excellent riding horses, but had terrible manners when handled from the ground. Some to the point of being dangerous. I saw one friend get her leg broken by one of these ill mannered horses and knew of a young woman who was killed when her horse lashed out and kicked her in the head. It seemed to me at the time it was just as important to teach good manners when you were handling the horse on the ground as it was for the horse to be well-mannered under saddle. I had no idea of just how right my idea was.

That almost perfect California Spade Bit horse was so bad about having his feet handled that there wasn’t a good farrier in San Antonio who wouldn’t charge extra to shoe him. I knew how much importance my mother, grandfather, and uncle placed on good manners while being groomed. I didn’t understand why horse trainers didn’t have the same standards.

When I found a book by Margaret Campbell Self I discovered someone who did place importance on good ground manners. In fact, when I trained my first horse I did so consulting her book every step of the way. That was one of the smartest things I ever did with horses. I still recommend that anyone just starting with horses find her books, read them, and take her words to heart.

I still didn’t realize just how critical good manners while being groomed were when I wrote an article for Horse and Horseman magazine in 1987. Side note here, this was Doc’s first official modeling job. He was two and I was just beginning his training. We used him as the demo horse in the pictures that accompanied my text. I got a lot of comments about his size.

It was another eight years before I finally realized the critical factor in grooming. Horses groom one another. Everyone is familiar with the picture of two horses standing nose to tail scratching one another.

What took me so long to realize was that grooming among horses isn’t just a mutual friendship thing. Grooming is a way of establishing rank. Only a higher ranked horse can start the grooming session. What Parelli likes to call the Friendly Game is actually a game of dominance. This dominance begins a few minutes after they are born when their dams (mothers) begin licking them and nipping at them to get up and get moving.

If your horse will not accept grooming with good manners it is because the horse thinks it has a higher rank than the person doing the grooming. Having to cross-tie a horse is a sign that the horse does not consider the human to be in charge.

When meeting a horse for the first time it is important to be quietly confident and to be the one to initiate the first physical contact. The act of reaching up and rubbing a horse’s neck is establishing your right to be in charge. In a horse that is absolutely convinced it is superior to all humans this simple gesture can provoke a reaction such as a lightening fast bite or kick. So don't assume "petting" is a safe thing to do to any horse you meet.

If the horse you are working with does not have impeccable grooming manners then you need to seriously work on this. You need to play that Friendly Game until the horse will accept your touch anywhere on its body with any object you choose. Anything less is not enough.

Lazy Trainer’s Tip

If there are any problems with grooming your horse then that is where you need to begin your work with your horse. Start by rubbing your horse with your hands and do not use anything else until it will accept you touching all part of its body. If you have problems please consult my book How to Have a Civilized Horse for detailed instructions about how to resolve these issues. There are links at the bottom of the page to my books.

Oops

2008-05-04T08:36:00.000-07:00

Forgot the Lazy Trainer's tip.

Learn what is really important to the animal you are dealing with. For horses comfort, play and a safe enviroment are critical. They need a herd and a secure place within that herd. They need to move. In the wild a herd will travel a sixty mile loop in a week. That's a far cry from a few hours in a paddock or an hour ride.
Dogs need to move. They need to know their place in the pack. They need to know the one that is in charge will meet their needs.
Other animals will have similar yet different needs. Meeting these basic needs will enable you to be a better trainer with far less effort.
I wish I didn't have to say this, but I know I do--be sure your animal has adequate amounts of water and food as well as suitable shelter.

Some Definitions of Leader

2008-05-04T06:23:00.000-07:00

The Encarta Dictionary offers some of the following definitions of what a leader is;
1. Someone people follow
2. Someone in the lead
3. Someone in charge

I’ll add the definition most of us pick up in our first years in school
4. First in line

Notice that the idea a leader should be trustworthy is not included. Yet that is the very foundation of being a leader of a herd of horses or pack of dogs. It is also critical to cows and goats. I do not include other animals because I have not had a chance to observe group interactions as I have with these animals.

A common mistake a lot of people make is that control and leading are the same things. They are not. Most of us want control of our immediate environment, but we don’t want to be the one responsible for everybody else. This is okay. Too many leaders can lead to chaos as anyone who has dealt with two alphas (i.e. leader types) in a group of animals can attest. Something many don’t realize is that among horses two omegas can cause just as much chaos. I’ll do a blog on that later.

I was raised as an only child among older adults. I saw my cousins a couple of times a year and occasionally played with a little girl that lived several blocks away from me. I had no skills in dealing with groups of other children when I went to school.

We started in first grade back in those days. I was a leading baby boomer so the class was large—about thirty children. Further more I was the only one who spoke English for the first couple of months. Everyone else in class spoke Spanish. They also had lovely, straight, black hair, large brown eyes and beautiful tanned skin that didn’t burn to a bright red when they stayed out in the sun for fifteen minutes. I had curly light brown hair, green eyes and the pale hide that burned.

I was raised by people who were accustomed to dealing with animals. The closest thing I had to a sibling was my mother’s stud dog, a Pekingese with the kennel name of Pug, and a cat of my grandmother’s. My grandmother had been a horse trainer in her youth (someone had to teach horses to wear sidesaddles and not spook at skirts) and kept a few chickens even in the heart of San Antonio, Texas, which is where I grew up. Animals I knew. My perception of people was they were big and wanted me to stay out of their way.

My first grade teacher decided I was going to be a “leader” because I already spoke English. I wanted to learn Spanish so I could talk to the other kids. Because of this we all got in trouble. The other kids decided I was not a good leader because they got a lecture on the main rule, which at the time was, “Spanish is not allowed at any time during school.”

What they didn’t know was I got taken to the principal’s office and my grandmother (my primary caregiver) called in to deal with my disobedience. Because I spoke English I was some how supposed to know better than to break the RULE!

The next thing that happened was later in the year when I won a spelling contest. By then there were several other children in the class who were not Mexican American. One was Chinese American and the other three were like me, northern European and/or British mutts.
Just in case you haven’t figured it out I know very well what it is to be a minority. It wasn’t fun.

Back to the spelling bee. I won it and got a mechanical rabbit for my prize. When I got back to my table the girl who was my best friend declared, “I hate you. I wanted that rabbit and I’m never going to speak to you again.”

Forever was ten minutes, but I never won another contest. In fact, I decided third place was a good safe place to be. No one gets too upset if you place third. Any first place prizes I acquired after that were by sheer accident.

That was also when I decided being a leader meant having a big bull’s
eye painted on your back.

It was twenty years before I connected that what I was doing with animals was leadership and that I could use the same techniques with humans.

Being the leader does not just mean being first. It can mean being the one who knows which direction to take. Call it being the navigator if leader is an uncomfortable title. The leader/navigator of a herd or pack is the one that knows where food, water and safety is. They know where they are supposed to go and what to do when they get there. The one that knows these things will be the real leader even if they are in the middle of the herd.

When watching a herd of horse the way to determine the lead mare is not by who is first in from pasture, but which horse all the others turn to when something out-of-the-ordinary happens. That is the true leader of the herd. The true lead male (who can be a gelding) is the one that gets between the herd and danger.

So, being the leader to you horse or dog means; knowing how to meet the needs of your animal, keeping it out of trouble and protecting it when danger threatens. It isn’t about being the one who yells the loudest or beats up on others. It is about knowledge and protection. It is also an excellent way to take care of your family.

Once I realized those points I sometimes did allow myself to be the leader of a group of humans as well as an animal leader. Sometimes a group needs someone to pick a direction and when someone does that person tends to end up leading the group.

There are a lot of bad leaders in our world. They are all about being first and doing things for themselves. We don’t need that kind of leader any more than a herd of horses or a pack of dogs does. We need superior navigators who will guide the group and protect it.

This is what we need to be to our animals. We take them into our lives and unnatural circumstances therefore it is up to us to teach them the rules and guide them to the safe places in our world.

Weekend Change of Pace

2008-05-03T05:30:00.000-07:00

I'll continue stories about my misadventures of being a Lazy Trainer in my next post, but this one is going to be a catch-all for several things that near and dear to my heart.

One is the Make-A-Wish foundation. I saw several stories this week that really impressed me.

One was on Dog Whisperer about a young woman, suffering from cancer, who wants to be a Dog Whisperer. She, her family and dogs were sent to California for a session with Cesar Millan. I'll have more in later posts about children who are especially gifted when it comes to animals. This is just as great a talent as being able to play music or paint pictures in my opinion, but is seldom recognized as such.

The next story was about another young woman who is battling a different type of cancer. Her wish was for a house to provide shelter for orphans in Zambia. Here is a link to her story and how you can help her make her wish come true. Make-A-Wish provided seed money for the project. http://www.legacymissions.org/

I've recently become aware of Zambia because a friend and her husband went there on a mission trip recently. She wrote a blog on April 30, 2008 that is also worth reading. Mary Ann's View

Also, please note Mary Ann's post about the wall along the Border. I have other reasons I'm against this project (WHEN in all the history of the world have such walls worked?) but this is one potential problem we need to be aware of and conduct some studies on before arbitrally throwing up such a barrier.

I'll get back to revealing the Secrets of a Lazy Trainer in my next post by telling you how someone who doesn't WANT to be a leader (me) can become one anyway.

Just a note

2008-05-02T05:52:00.000-07:00

The horses on the covers of my books (bottom of page) are my horses. The gray mare has the distinction of being one of the most dangerous horses I ever trained. She's a sweetie now, but I still would never turn her over to any but a highly skilled horseperson.

Leadership is everything to a Lazy Trainer

2008-05-02T05:15:00.000-07:00

“A little learning is a dangerous thing.” Ignorance is too, so one might as well make it a point to learn.

When trying to teach others how to train their animals the most difficult thing to teach is just how much effort is really needed to accomplish a goal. The correct answer is just as much as it takes and no more.

Too much effort is just as bad as too little effort when teaching an animal something. This is also true when we are training people.

Just how far is it necessary to go in order to train a horse or dog? The following story will demonstrate the far end of the “As much as it takes” scale.

I had been training horses and people for twenty-five years, but had gaps where my methods fell far short of my goals. I was an accomplished trainer and many would say the places I failed were just because the animals weren’t suited for the task. Deep in my heart I knew the real fault lay within me not the horse or dog. But I didn’t know how to correct the problems.

A friend gave me a ticket to a Parelli clinic and it was as if a whole new universe had opened up to me. Through the application of the Seven Games I began to mend the holes in my methods. For a year or so everything went great. I was frustrated in the beginning because I was using too much effort to get my horses to do what I wanted but I began to see how to damp down my body language so it became easier and easier to do whatever it was I wanted to do.

I began to think I’d really gotten the hang of things when a friend mentioned some problems she was having with her mare. The mare is one that we had trained together and she was endlessly patient with my friend’s grandchildren, but she only had one speed sloooow. Since she was an Arabian this was quite puzzlement to anyone who dealt with her.

I went to my friend’s stable and we started using the Seven Games with the mare. Things were going along pretty well. I forgot one important thing a trainer had told me many, many years before; “The most dangerous horse you’ll ever tackle is the old packer horse that is convinced it is in charge. That horse will not give up its alpha position without a fight.”

Six weeks into the Arabian mare’s rehab I found out just how dangerous that reliable packer horse could be.
The session started out well enough. We played the Friendly Game, the Porcupine Game, the Driving Game, the Yo-yo Game (though she drug furrows in the dirt when I asked her to back up) and were on to the Circle Game. There is where it all went to heck-in-a-handbasket. I halted her, and before sending her in the opposite direction, asked her to back up. It was both the biggest mistake I ever made and the smartest thing I ever did.

At that first Parelli clinic the instructor spent the first session teaching the people, without their horses, how to use their equipment. One of the exercises was rope twirling. Now this sounds silly. What does twirling the end of a lead rope have to do with training a horse? Turns out—a LOT. I took her seriously and practiced the twirling until I could do it with both right and left hand. I could also touch any target I aimed at with the little leather bit on the end of the lead rope. A far more valuable skill than I realized at the time.

When I asked my friend’s mare to back she decided she’d had enough of this human challenging her authority. Now, unlike a dog, a horse is not out to kill. Even the worst horse is actually acting from fear or the need to maintain herd position. The only problem is a horse can dish out and take a lot of punishment. A kick that will make another horse back off a step or two can kill a human. A bite that will merely correct a disobedient herd member can remove a human arm. So, though the intent isn’t to kill it can still be deadly.

The mare slicked back her ears and came straight down the rope, mouth agape, headed for me. I don’t mind saying that was one of the most frightening sights I’ve ever seen in my career. I twirled the rope and caught her on the end of the nose with that little leather bit. It stopped her first charge. It did not stop her attempt to subdue me. We spent the next twenty minutes with her making every attempt to put me in my place as a beta to her alpha.

Finally, both of us dripping with sweat, she stood and dropped her head. I asked her to back and she did. Then she made a ‘lick and chew’ motion with her lips. This is a sure sign a horse has accepted new knowledge; which in this case was that I was her leader.

I walked up to her and rubbed her neck, not realizing at that time that I was reaffirming my alpha status. Grooming is very important because only a higher ranked horse can initiate a grooming session.

In most cases establishing myself as leader requires no more than walking up to a horse with a confident manner (and make no mistake, after that session with the Arabian mare, my confidence is real) moving it out of its place, occupying territory and then rubbing its neck.

But the most important thing, the reason people like Pat Parelli and Cesar Millan are so successful with animals, is that once in the presence of an animal it is necessary to do whatever it takes to gain the leadership position. This is not accomplished by being cruel. It is done by doing only what needs to be done. Like Doc in the previous post it may only be necessary to crowd the horse or dog until they move and yield space. Or it may be necessary to stay in the fight until the animal yields.

If you are going to deal with difficult animals you MUST accept that you will get bitten, kicked, pawed, clawed and body slammed. But you have to hang in there until you’ve convinced the animal to accept you as the leader.

Most animals and most people are looking for a leader they can trust. If you are that leader your cat, dog, horse or other humans will follow you and do your bidding willingly. The reason there is sometimes a fight is because the subject, be it animal or human, has learned that others are not trustworthy.

Lazy Trainer Tips

Confidence is everything. When you buy or otherwise acquire a horse or dog choose one that you are confident you can handle. If you are a couch potato don’t go out and buy a young Arabian or Thoroughbred. In fact, don’t buy a young horse of any kind. If it is a dog you are acquiring, again think about getting an older animal. A dog that is three or older is a wonderful animal to have. Depending on breed you can have it for a long time. I currently have a twenty-one year old rat terrier. She’s getting a bit creaky, but she is still pretty spry.

Practice with your equipment, leash, lead rope, whatever, before you try to use it with an animal. Like the ‘rope-twirling’ the ability to react without conscious effort may even be life-saving for you or your animal.

Before getting any animal learn what that animal needs in a leader. And then commit yourself to being that leader. You owe it to any animal you bring into your world to do the best you can by it. That means being a good, trustworthy leader as well as meeting its needs for food, shelter and other necessities.

Your reward for practicing good leadership skills with your horse, cat or dog will be an unconditional love and friendship. This is something a lot of us need in our busy, stress filled lives.

Horse Trains Man

2008-05-01T05:12:00.000-07:00

We had a family/friends get together and naturally wound up out with the horses. It is usually that way at our place.

Most of the people at our summer BBQ were experienced animal people and some were experienced with horses. We saddled my daughter’s horse, a twentysome-year-old Thoroughbred mare, and let anyone who wanted to ride. Foxy was a great horse. I didn’t get her until she was eighteen, but for the next ten years she took care of my daughter and students while teaching them good horse etiquette.

While she was giving rides Doc, my black stallion (now a long time gelding) was hanging with the people. He likes people, but he is also an alpha horse and any human, horse or other animal that comes within his reach is going to be tested. Most of the people instinctively (read—were well trained) knew to not give him an inch of ground. One man, the new husband of a horsewoman, didn’t know anything about horses.

Doc homed in on the man and when he got too close the man would move. It didn’t take long for the rest of us to notice what was going on. We all watched in unholy amusement as Doc herded the guy all around the group. When the man noticed us smiling, snickering and some (the kids of course) laughing outright he demanded to know what was so funny.

I finally explained to him that one way a dominant horse will exercise its will on another horse is by making the other horse move. Then the higher ranked horse will stand where the lower ranked horse was standing. Doc was training him to be an obedient herd member. Since the man was a fairly successful business executive this information came as an unpleasant shock. He was used to being the alpha and the notion that a horse had dominated him so quickly and effortlessly was not easy to accept.

It is easy to see this type of horse behavior in action at any place there is a gathering of horses and people. If you watch you will see people standing, holding their horse, talking to another person and, when the horse moves too close, they will move and let the horse stand where they were standing. The horse is convinced it is the dominant one of the pair.

Tip For The Day

The Lazy Trainer’s secret here is this--anyone dealing with horses should train themselves to never move when a horse begins encroaching on their territory. It is important to train yourself to always respond to a horse that is trying to move in on you by making the horse move and standing in its territory. At first it takes time and alertness to teach yourself this, but by making the effort consciously, all the time, you will eventually reach a point where your automatic response to a horse trying to move into your space will be to move the horse over and stand where it was standing.

Incidentally, this technique of occupying territory and claiming it also works with dogs. It isn’t always possible to transfer training methods from horses to dogs or dogs to horses because one is a predator and the other is prey. This means sometimes they have opposite reactions to stimuli. In the case of occupying territory though, both horses and dogs are inclined to regard this as a test of who is dominant within the group.

How much effort should you expend doing this? As much as it takes. How much is this? Well in my next blog I’ll tell you how much energy it took to convince a mare that’d been alpha to humans for a decade to move her feet and let me stand in her spot.

Black Stallions

2008-04-30T07:15:00.000-07:00

Last month I went to a meeting that takes place among horse people in my area. Vets, farriers and other horse experts come together and people can bring their horses for evaluation and treatment.

I met a young woman who had her first horse since she was a child. Like many, if not most, of us she dreamed of owning a black stallion. Unlike many this is what she bought, a two year old black Arabian colt. Now when he was four she confessed she was afraid of him. Despite two years of professional training and gelding he was still too much horse for her.

It is a story I’ve heard over and over. Someone has dreamed of having a horse and finally reaches a place in their lives where they can have one. So they set out to get their dream horse. Usually the afore mentioned black stallion. It is the sort of mistake that drives people out of the world of horses on a regular basis.

What the first time horse owner really needs is a twenty to thirty year old horse with many years of experience and training. Such a horse may not be totally sound, arthritis takes its toll on all of us in time, but with proper care it can teach the first time horse owner many things before it passes on. Unlike a younger horse, while this older horse may need special care it will most likely not get in trouble because of racing around and injuring itself. When something happens an experienced old horse will stand there and wait for some human to show up and extricate it from its predicament. The young horse will panic and run up an unbelievable vet bill in no time. I simply cannot say enough good things about the older horse for the first time horse owner.

In fact, if the first time horse owner is bound and determined to have that black stallion they can find one in that age bracket and fulfill their dream in a much safer manner than by going out and acquiring ANY young horse. I don’t recommend that the tyro horse owner begin with a stallion because stallions do have special needs, but if nothing else will do then by all means get a stallion of twenty plus with lots and lots of training and then place yourself in an environment that will help you learn to cope with your black stallion.

What does this little tirade have to do with being a Lazy Trainer? Well, in my next blog I’ll introduce my black stallion and tell you how he taught me to be a better, more effective, horse trainer; as well as enabling me to increase my status as a Lazy Trainer.

Whose Fault Is It?

2008-04-29T05:42:00.000-07:00

I am a lazy person. I've been assured of this many times in the past by family and teachers, so of course it must be true.
"It's never the horse. It's always the rider."
I heard that quote over and over as a kid when I was learning to ride. It was the response I got every time I said, "This horse won't do what I tell her too."
I used it myself when I began teaching and students whined, "This horse won't do what I tell it to."
The fact is the horse was ALWAYS doing what it was told to. It wasn't until I was involved in higher level dressage when I whimpered, "I know it is me, not the horse, but it is so tempting to blame her." that a teacher pointed out, "It really doesn't matter whose fault it is. You are the one who wants to do this. The horse would rather be out in pasture, hanging out with her friends, so it is up to YOU to make this possible. If you don't want it enough to make it happen it isn't going to happen."
My epiphany at that moment was that, no matter what animal I'm dealing with, I, the human, am the one that has brought this animal into my world. It is up to me to make things right. When I introduce an animal into our civilized world it is my job to take care of the animal and keep it safe. It is up to me to make sure the animal doesn't get into trouble with other people and animals.
It is not possible to accomplish my job of taking care of a horse, dog, cat or any other animal if I focus on the idea that a problem is the animal's fault. The animal is being what it is and I'm the one responsible for bringing it into an unnatural enviroment. Therefore it is my responsibility, no matter what my dog or horse or cat is doing, to make certain things go well.
If I've rescued an animal I cannot look at previous owners, circumstances or anything in the past and spend time blaming. That will not solve the problem in the now. I need to get on with resolving the issues that are before me right now.
In fact, when I look at life in general, I realize that as long as I focus on the idea that my problems, no matter what they are, are someone else's fault I cannot make my life better. I cannot make an animal's life better. I cannot make another person's life better. I have to own my own life and problems before I can get down to fixing anything.
In order to accomplish anything I have to be clever about it. So my first line of attack concerning any problem is to own it. My dog is barking because...my horse won't canter because...my cat is clawing the sofa... because I haven't trained it differently.
There it is; the whole Secret to Being a Lazy Trainer. It is always up to me. No one else can or will do it for me. Therefore I have to train myself first.