Clever horses

Yesterday the entire family I work for and I were at a showjumping thing and one of the kids was doing the course on Major and her sister was videoing it and I was just watching when a big horse, fully tacked up, went galloping past us, just behind Major and on towards a gate at the end of the paddock. A few people nearby began to approach the horse as it stood against the gate but before they were anywhere near it, and after only about 20 seconds, the horse opened the gate and charged through. It proceeded up a hill at great speed, pursued by its owner, and began to jump around playing tag with her among the horse floats and tethered horses.

Two things struck me from the experience, firstly that is an excitable yet clever horse and secondly Major is extremely well composed to not even bat an eyelid. His rider knew nothing about it till we told her.

Superstition

I am NOT superstitious but I can see why people are. Here in the "Sunny" north, it has been raining almost constantly. My employer has a nice pair of boots that we call 'rainboots' because every time she wears them, it rains. We have now forbidden them but it only sort of stopped the rain. For my birthday, mum and dad gave me an incredible raincoat, designed by a person who actually went into the rain at some point. As a result of this, I would not mind a bit of rain so I can wear it and not feel silly. Almost since my parents visited, it only rained significantly while I was visiting Brisbane.

IF I was superstitious then between the rainboots being banished and my raincoat wanting to be used, we can cause a drought :)

Sisters

I have two sisters and the older one, Jessica, tries occasionally to improve me and my brother (my other sister rarely needs "improving" but she still tries). Such improvement attempts over the years have included giving Matthew a "man-grooming kit" in the hopes he will use it, taking me clothes shopping, teaching me to sing a tune while she harmonizes, telling Matthew that, contrary to what Matthew may think, he actually DOES enjoy things like gardening and shopping.

The most recent one was giving me Chai Latte as part of my birthday present. I laughed when I saw it and the family I work for instantly began saying they should have bought me a mug for it to go in BUT they knew I don't like hot drinks. I said Jessica knows this too but she is trying to improve me long distance.

Most of these "improvements" are fine and often even helpful, it just amuses me that she is still doing it long distance. Thanks Jess.

Nagging and Narking

A lot of people say that nagging is annoying, but they classify nagging as being asked more then once to do something. In my mind Nagging can be defined as asking multiple times for a person to do something and Narking can be defined as continually interrupting a person who is doing as asked with adjustments and questions. These are not helpful and tend to be along the lines of "I would not have done it that way" and "It is better if you do it like this" and "Why did you do that?" and occasionally "your hopeless, just let me"

Therefore I reckon that Narking is worse because Nagging can be stopped if the Naggee does what they are asked to do but Narking is entirely the cause of the offender and the Narkee can't do anything to prevent it. Plus if I am trying to do as asked and it is continually put down and corrected, I am unwilling to try again and may just give up altogether.

Narking is worse, both are annoying

Training ponies

There are 2 little ponies that are around 12 hands high (Their backs come up to my ribcage). It has been a long held, and much confirmed theory of mine, that the smaller the horse or pony, the meaner and sneakier it is. There are some exceptions to this rule but usually it is the case. I reckon this is mainly because people see a miniature pony or similar and they go "awwww, what a cute little boy. Does oo want a carrot?" and they treat a dangerous intelligent animal like it is a dog. Dogs are naturally friendly, horses naturally indulge in self preservation.

These two ponies put a considerable amount of their intellect into making up tricks to get out of doing things they don't want. This means that if I teach them tricks their intellect will be used to find out what I want so I will stop bugging them. At the moment I want to teach them to jump over a jump without a rider or a lead rope. I got Arakei to jump one twice this evening without a lead rope by teaching him to follow me then leading him over a much lowered version of the jump. Once he worked out what I wanted he was more then happy to comply and trotted and jumped beautifully. Next I hope to teach him to jump without me having to lead him.

Unpredictable weather

I have already mentioned that I live in a weather bubble. Be that as it may, I have still managed to learn the weather patterns, daily and weekly ish. It rains, the wind picks up and blows the rain away, a couple of clear windy days, then a clear not windy day, fog builds up and 4 days of rain. This was a pattern that lasted until the day I worked it out and told somebody. Then it changed. These last 4 days were meant to rain rain then clear up and be nice. So far I have had intermittent rain and constant fog as well as a howling gale (but no sun).One of the irritating things about rain is that it produces mud. One of the irritating thing about puppies is that they get thoroughly over-excited about the prospect of breakfast and dash inside and bounce all over the place leaving cute little foot prints. I prefer sun.

This is all I can see most days here. It is stunning and I can see about 20m.

This is the same view but different days