Hot to trot

If a horse is going to blow up on you, there’s a good chance it’s going to happen in the rough seam between a trot and the canter. Which makes sense: if you’ve got a kid doing the dishes, and you smile and say, “Hey, after this, I want you to scrub the toilets,” you’re going to get about the same reaction—a lot of real earnest kicking.
Especially a new horse. A young one with some ginger up his nose. Which is why I did not want to be the first one to ask my colt for a canter.

But here comes Storm Crow Geneva, the horse maven, warning me I’d better get him into a canter soon, before he grows fangs and bat wings and begins to stalk the night, looking for innocent children to trample.

And I was so dang elated that I’d ridden the trot on my colt—trotted him around like crazy in fact, thinking the whole time – what do I need to teach him? How will I teach it? Like a real horse owner, almost.

Why is it always guilt with me? Look what I’ve done: I’ve trained up a colt in the way he should go. Me. The person who only dreamed of horses. But whatever it is, it’s never enough. No. Now I had to CANTER. Never mind I’m old and brittle. Never mind I’m a perfect coward.

Enter more angels: first, Stan – then the Great B.

The Great B

The Great B is Rachel’s oldest son—and just happens to  be a horse genius. A horse genius who just got out of school for the summer and has two mornings a week off work. His mother has given him to me. He is now my minion. Or, he would be if he weren’t as sassy as my colt. So GB (that’s short for Great B) came over last Thursday, after I’d ridden my colt three days two weeks ago and EVERY DAY except Sunday SINCE, and prepared to help me exercise the rest of my horses while I wrestled with the intention of (drum roll) finally introducing the canter.

The Great B, focused

Here’s where it gets really good: remember when Rachel was the Other Horse on that bike of hers and saved me from riding alone on the river path?

the other horse   (picture stolen from her website)

Well, I’d just about finished the ground work with the colt, and was JUST PUTTING MY FOOT IN THE STIRRUP (not really) when this storm cloud of a ninety-five pound fury comes leaping over the arena gate—Rachel herself, with a look of determination on her face that could have scared off the IRS.

Of course, I have no pictures of the actual day I’m writing about, so I’m borrowing the next day as Rachel and Sophie make up, and Sophie sadly finds out that Rachel is the alpha after-all.

“Is he warmed up?” she demanded.

“Ummmm,” I said.

“Give me that rope,” she said. “Give me that stick.” And proceeded to dance with my colt, getting much livelier footwork out of him than I had been getting. I gave her my helmet after that (I had to), and up she swung into the saddle, saying, “It’s time he cantered, and it has to be done NOW.” Then she took off.

I probably should have told her about his tendency to stop on a dime. But she figured that out pretty quick. He showed her his lovely trot, and his propensity to stay in the back of the arena, far from the barn (a point that had been driven home many a time – with the hope of riders keeping their heads on their shoulders as a continuing thing). And then she asked for the canter.

“No hablo,” he said, bringing out his A-level trot as a peace offering.

“Oh, yeah?” Rachel said, and squeezed tighter and added a little spanker. Up shot his behind. But then, out shot his front legs, and he was off, three whole strides of canter. She kept at it, and got no more back-end bounce ups for her trouble. They never quite achieved a sustained canter, but it was a HUGE step forward. HUGE. And I was dancing in barn. Then she got off and left the rest to me. Kick-in-the-behind friends. Does it get any better than that?

Rachel with Zi

So up I got and after a few moments, Tiger (Hickory, Junior, the colt) and I were cantering all over the place, first in short bursts, then, as The B shot by on a flying Dustin, we slipstreamed them and ended up cantering a good halfway around the arena, not one time shooting off for the barn.

Elation reinstated.

Zion with cheese

The GB took over after that, and under him, the colt behaved like a pro, cantering all around the arena time after time without any shenanigans at all.

The Great B and the Great Colt

In the canter – you can tell because the outside fore leg is forward, the two inside legs are close together, and the outside back foot is in the air.  Oh, and The Great B is rocking back with the gait.

I now have five real horses.

The lovely colt.

Thanks to a crazy woman and her son.

The next day,

It was a stormy day.

we worked on tuning up some of the other horses, and invited Misty over to re-acquaint herself with the odd feeling of sitting on a thousand pounds of self-directed muscle.

Horses make us happy.

And she brought Aunty Em.

Auntie Em

It was a horse party. A glorious horse party.

Even the barn was happy.

Part II

A little bit on the work that I do.  As I said, Friday was a stormy day, and worse, I was shooting (camera) under prime exposure by 1.7 stops.  I can’t remember why.  Add in the fact that I was shooting these exciting horses and not paying attention to my meter.  So the images we shot that day were terribly dark and dull. But hey – what’s life without a project?  And my project for the next two days was trying to find the picture in all that gray.

Here are four shots.  Shot 1 is the SOOC.  Yucky.  You can see the dead gray sky, and the low contrast on everything else.  Target: more contrast, more drama, more energy.

Shot 2 was my first attempt.  I tried to preserve the darkness of the shed roof and grass behind Rachel and Sophie, and the sky while bringing out the brights in horse and rider.  But the tail was too intricate to mask on the fly, so it came out badly.  And the tool I was using made nasty dark stains on the lower sides of the shot.

Shot 3 , below, is a different approach, isolating only the sky, mountains and trees to keep them dark, but bringing up the light values in the lower half of the shot.  This has its charms; we have a clear picture of the two busy tails.  But masking Rachel’s face was messy, and the roof of the shed and the grass – too bright for a stormy day.

Shot 4 is my last effort.  Again, I tried to keep the background stormy, but in doing that, lost the clear image of Sophie’s tail.  So the question is, which shot – if any – works?  So I’m asking for input, here.

Of course, ultimately, the most important element of the shot is what is so lovely and heartbreaking about horses; the joy of the movement, the energy and grace, the momentary unity of woman and great animal.  Rachel looks happy and focused and free.  Sophie looks like she just might not mind carrying her.