Tails From Provence

Why do I Like Horses?

A friend posted this on Facebook this morning (thanks Caroline). It’s so true and so worth sharing – if you’re anything like me you’ll find yourself nodding and smiling all the way through!

Why do I like horses?
I reckon I must be mad.
My mother wasn’t horsey
And neither was my dad.

But the madness hit me early
And it hit me like a curse.
And I’ve never gotten better
In fact I’ve gotten worse.

My stables are immaculate.
My house is like a hovel.
Last year for my birthday
I got a brand new shovel.

I hardly read a paper
But I know who’s sold their horse
And I wouldn’t watch the news
If Mr. Ed was on, of course.

One eye’s always on the heavens
But my washing waves in vain
As I rush to get the horses in
In case it’s gonna rain.

And though they’re wearing 15 rugs,
The best that you can get,
I bring them in to keep them dry
While I get soaking wet.

I spend up every cent I’ve got
On horsey stuff for sure.
I buy fancy rugs and fancy rugs,
And then I by some more.

I should have had that hair cut
Or bought that nice blue shirt
At least it wouldn’t be now
Ripped to shreds and in the dirt.

I can’t make a bloody sponge cake
I don’t even try
But I can back a car and trailer
In the twinkling of an eye.

It’s pants and R.M. boots
That I live in night and day
And that smell of sweaty horses
Just doesn’t wash away.

Once in every now and then
I can dress up for a ball.
Make up and a hairdo
With high heel shoes and all.

I ache from long forgotten falls.
My knees have got no skin.
My toes have gone a funny shape.
From being squashed again.

But late at night, when all is still
And I’ve gone to give them hay,
I touch their velvet softness
And my worries float away.

They give a gentle nicker
And they nuzzle through my hair
And I know it’s where my heart is
More than anywhere.

I’m not sure who the author is but Liz over at Equine Ink said that it’s attributed to NZ para rider Rachel Shiree Stock. If you can confirm or deny this, please leave a comment!

Tags: rachel shiree stock, why do I like horses poem

Les Mouches Plats II – The Undead

(For readers with strong stomachs)

I posted a link to my post, Les Mouches Plats, on A Matter of Horse (a small, friendly forum for horse people) and received a couple of comments. This one, from littlewhitehorse, who has a lovely blog about her work with her Camargue mare Lucie, stood out :

Good idea with the duct tape, will definitely try that. Like the blog post Martine! I remember my first encounter when we came to France was of one of these landing on me, trying to brush it off and swat it and not understanding what this thing was that kept crawling back. This was before I had horses here. Now of course I’m dealing with them regularly.

Made a mistake the other day; Lucie came home with a stock of them under her tail, I flushed them out and pulled them in bits. Shortly after, Lucie started kicking wildly; turned out I hadn’t beheaded the gruesome things efficiently and bits of them were still alive & crawling out of the dust and up Lucie’s leg and she couldn’t shake them off because they could no longer fly and hung on to her coat!!!! Shades of the Terminator… So make sure you behead them efficiently or squash them totally on a hard surface or they’ll be back!

Thanks, littlewhitehorse, for completely creeping me out. Speaking as someone who has hauled a semi-rotted dead mouse from Puppy Cinnamon’s stomach (by the tail that was still sticking out between her teeth), that’s not easy to do.

(Ok, Sara Louise, time to give this blog another mention on your lovely, romantic, expat-in-France blog... )

Tags: hippobosca equina, horse ked, horse louse fly, mouches plats

Sunday Stills – Photoshop

I don’t have Photoshop. The LSH uses Lightroom and I’ve used it a bit when processing photos after an equestrian event, but I find that iPhoto is sufficient for my needs.

One thing I’ve never figured out, though, was how to add Text to a photo in iPhoto. I’ve kludged it a few times using Powerpoint : insert photo into slide, add text and overlay it on photo, save as JPEG and reload into iPhoto if necessary. Much more complicated than it should be, so I decided that I would use this week’s Sunday Stills to force me to learn an easier/better way.

I googled “add text in iPhoto” and found this :

nheacock

Feb 4, 2011 3:45 AM

So I was helping someone add text to their picture and was SHOCKED to see that iPhoto still won’t let you do it (what an oversight for a program that’s on version 9 for crying out loud).

Anyway, without having to download or install anything, I set up Preview as an external editor for them. With preview you can do “text annotations” and because it’s linked as the external editor when you edit a photo it instantly and seamlessly loads Preview and when you save the file it’s instantly saved in iPhoto.

Granted there are much better editors out there the Preview, but this was quick and easy and the person was pleased as punch. This little tip may help you if you’re looking for an easy way to add text with the tools already available on your Mac.

(The full thread can be found here but I got all the information I needed in the second paragraph. Thanks, nheacock!)

I’ve had an image in mind to use for a sort of inspirational poster, so I snapped this photo this morning and added my text in about two minutes flat. Not only that, but I added a © line as well!

I call it “Stand Out.”Feel free to share, but I’d appreciate being credited with it.

And here’s one I prepared earlier (just because I like it).

Here’s the Before :

It’s a bleh photo of a pretty horse; nothing special and the rider’s head is chopped off – unforgivable!

Here’s the After :

When I cropped it to concentrate on the horse’s head, it was just a little too soft. I emphasised the softness using iPhoto’s effects : antique, fade colour and edge blur and I was very pleased with the result. This prints off nicely as a soft, romantic shot and makes a lovely postcard!