Another miscellaneous
Blackbear says:
Orange horse is fabulous. I am a little bit in love.
It’s funny that so many of you like him, because these photos are not good. He really didn’t have any butt when he came, although he’s beginning to grow one now, but he has a perfectly nice neck and a nice clean throat latch, and you’d never know it here. And of course he’s half asleep. I keep thinking that I hope that people who know what they’re looking at when they’re looking at a horse can see the potential there and I haven’t totally disguised it.
Particularly like the one where he’s got one leg delicately back, gives him a rather insouciant look… Is the dog on the left the terrier you’ve mentioned? He’s pretty charming too.
She. Yes, that’s Clover. Clover is a fruit loop, as terriers so often are*, although she is a very nice fruit loop**. I don’t think I’ve told you the Car Story? She has me pegged as a soft touch, so when she’s been let out of durance vile in the tack room*** she tends to follow me around, flinging herself on her back at intervals so that I can rub her tummy.† It didn’t take long for her to start following me back to my car. One day, when I opened the door, she jumped in. I laughed appreciatively, picked her up, and put her back on the ground. She immediately jumped back in the car again. I tried getting in the car before I put her out and she could still get back in before I could close the door: I swear she turns in midair, like a boomerang. So I thought okay, fine, started the car, and rolled downhill to the gate: Clover sat happily in the passenger seat: Great! Where are we going? Is it fun? Does it involve food?†† I left the door open while I opened the gate. Clover waved her tail madly when I got back in the car. I left the door open when I went back to close the gate. . . . Clover was still sitting in the passenger seat waiting for her next adventure. At this point I fished her out, grasped her firmly, and went in search of Jenny. . . . Clover still follows me out to my car pretty often, and has a nice little ride down to the gate, but she usually then gets out of her own accord. Usually. Sometimes I still have to go find Jenny.
Clover’s mum, Sparkle, has her own variation on a theme of human interaction, hijacking, and tummy rubbing. She likes to lie down in the road in front of the gate and roll over on her back. She rolls over on her back for cars, because she has figured out that cars have people in them, and when they get, crossly, out of their cars to move her, chances are they will relent when she waves her paws madly, wags her tail like sixty and flattens her ears at them. There are days that between the two of them–since chances are I have Clover in the passenger seat while I’m moving her mum–I wonder if I’m going to get home at all.
Vikkik says:
And he looks a lovely horse, but surely he’s chestnut rather than orange?
Mmrmph. Er, yes. I’m afraid I’m having my little joke about his colour because I do not like chestnuts. I didn’t like Palominos even when I was a little girl. I think it’s against the law for horse-mad girls not to like Palominos.
(Of course, I have practically zero experience of horses…) Any way, I think he’s a gorgeous colour.
Many people like chestnuts. There is no accounting for these things.
*pets Roland cautiously*
He’s a very sweet horse. He will put his head in your chest so you can rub his ears better. That is, in fact, what he’s trying to do in those pictures, and why he won’t stand still. He thinks there’s a perfectly good human on the other end of the lead rope and he doesn’t want to stand over here when she could be making herself useful by petting him.
R and B says:
He’s lovely–looks built uphill even at this age! How old is he–did I miss that? He looks to be about 16h?
He looks extremely nice going under saddle–there’s enough in the front and enough in the rear to balance. He’ll be four in March, and he’s 16.3. That’s another case of the camera lying–Jenny’s quite small, but I must be shooting them at more of an angle than I realise, because if she’s small he must be about 15 hands and I can say, having stood in his shadow, that he’s large.
But he really is a chestnut, right??
Snork! No, he’s ORANGE! Diane in MN says that horse people call her fawn Danes ‘golden chestnut’ which I find peculiar–dog fawn ought to be dun or buckskin in horse terms, which would then say certain things about its breeding.†††
Lucy Coats says:
But maybe orange only in the way that turning beech leaves in autumn are orange.
Oooh. Imagine a copper-beech-coloured horse. (Note to those of you who have never seen a copper beech: they’re, um, purple. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jacqamoe/166343428/ )
I am looking out at a magnificent tree in our field as I type–and it seems like exactly his colour. He looks as if he has what is known up here as ‘a kind eye’.
Yes, he does. They’re a little small–mind you, I’m spoiled, Connie has those enormous deer eyes that Connemaras are prone to–which is one of the things I didn’t like about him when I went with Jenny to look for a horse, but as soon as he turns it on you you change your mind. Especially after he’s craned over his stable door to put his head in your chest and say ‘pet me’.
Diane in MN says:
Am I right in thinking that mares come in season quite frequently until they’re bred?
Yikes, no. Well, sort of. They’re like a lot of other critters in that they tend not to come in season during the winter, and lengthening days bring them back into their fertile cycles–racehorse breeding mares live in barns with sunlamps so they can get them cycling early in the year, for example–and the cycle is usually around three weeks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_reproduction And there are certainly people who won’t touch mares because mares can be moody on account of fluctuating hormones. Well, yes. And there are certainly mares who are a real pain to have around when they’re fertile–and if you were sensible you would not breed them so as not to produce more mares like that. I mean, they do come into season if they aren’t bred and pregnant, but most working mares are fairly low key about it, or at worst are only a bit twitchy a day or two per cycle during high summer. Jenny is extremely cross about Connie because she says she’s never been ‘mare-ish’ before, and she’s had her three years or so–and that furthermore it’s spreading and here it is November when the estrous cycle should be closing down for the winter and there are several mares on the yard who are prancing around and whinnying and peeing. Roland is a gelding. Get a grip, girls.
Judith says:
Puppies are adorable — and puppyhood is also hell, and when I’m going through it with one I can’t wait for it to be over! I really don’t understand people who keep puppies until they grow up and then want to give them to the pound; they’ve paid their dues and are about to get their reward, for heaven’s sake! Old dogs just get richer with age.
The people I totally take my hat off to are the ones that raise seeing-eye puppies. Year after year after year of puppy–as you might say ‘hay fever’ or ‘foot rot’–as soon as it’s old enough to start proper training, it’s gone, and they have another wretched puppy peeing on the floor and eating their shoes. I repeat: puppies are darling, but puppyhood is still something you get through to have dogs. But some of the idiots who take their post-puppies to the pound are in shock from adolescence. You hear a lot about puppyhood but the facts of adolescence are downplayed. She says feelingly, her aging adolescents being fast asleep about three feet away. But people forget that brains take longer to grow up than bodies do and foolishly despair.
Diane in MN says:
This puppy is obviously very good at looking like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. It would be interesting to know how long it takes, after he settles in, for the halo to slip. Of course, he may be like MY puppy, whose halo has barely budged.
He arrived halo-free: don’t let that face mislead you. Look at those calculating little eyes. This is not a hearts-and-flowers puppy but a right little bruiser. I understand that the sock population in that house has already dropped dramatically. However given that he’s still about three inches square and has been pitched into a family of about fifteen (technically it’s only Daisy and Roy, but in practise it’s also three kids, three spouses/spouse equivalents, eight grandchildren, and the odd in law) this is exactly what he should be.
You want to encourage your perfect puppy to eat the occasional small noncrucial piece of furniture or when he hits adolescence he’ll suddenly think, yeep, what am I missing, and start staying out all night and coming home drunk and disorderly in the company of girls of dubious virtue.
Southdowner says:
Some people think that having more than one pet makes you love them all less
Pet [sic] peeve alert. This philosophy–and I get it too, although I only have two critters instead of eleven‡–makes me nuts. What is the matter with these people? Hearts are infinitely expandable. There are critters, just like there are people, which are easier and harder to love, but the more people of all ages, sexes, species, etc you have in your life, the more room(s) in your heart you have. The end of a well-lived life your heart is going to look like Gormenghast Castle, only cheerfuller.
- no! it just means there is fur to bawl into when the time comes…
That too of course. Sigh.
Mrs Redboots says:
Having a new puppy is like having a new baby – thankfully, though, the “must-be-aware-of-what-she’s-doing-every-second” phase only lasts about six months, compared with about five years in humans!
Six months! You have had much mellower, more amenable puppies than I have! (However, all mine have thrown up in the car on the drive home from the breeder, so obviously I’m doing something wrong!) The saving grace of puppies over human children, if you’re asking me, who never raised any of the human variety, is that you can lock them up in their crate and run away for a few hours if you have to.
Skating librarian says
| Can anybody tell me enough about the taste [of chestnuts] so that I’d know whether I should give them another try? Thanks! |
Susan from Athens says:
Well it’s a very nutty taste. In purree form it is very thick and sticky in mouth – somewhat like peanut butter (the smooth kind, obviously – but I don’t particularly like peanut butter).
Ewwwww! I love peanut butter and I love chestnuts, glaceed, pureed, or any thing else, but I deny that chestnut puree is anything like peanut butter. It’s much lighter and airier than any nut butter, smooth, barely sticky, and while chestnuts are nutty, they always taste to me like a near relative of a real nut rather than like a nut themselves. Chestnut puree tastes to me like something with nuts in it, not like nut puree.
Melissa Mead says:
I’ve always thought they taste vaguely maple-y. Sort of like a rich smoked maple hazelnut? I didn’t like them as a kid, either, but I’m slowly coming to. Roasted, they have an almost soft texture.
Soft and a bit crumbly, yes. And yes . . . almost mapley. And yes, a bit more hazelnutty than . . . well, than peanuts, or cashews or something. Mapley hadn’t occurred to me (although crumbled chestnuts are good in waffles. . . . But then since I like chestnuts I’m liable to throw them experimentally into all kinds of things) but I think you’re right. They aren’t themselves sweet but they taste like they might be somehow.
Rachel says:
My mother had a version of this recipe , known as Slut’s chocolate chestnut log because it was so quick and easy. She used icing sugar and rum instead of caster and orange juice. And wrapped the whole thing in silver foil instead of putting it in a tin.
I don’t myself use tin foil–it’s also implicated in those of us with auto-immune problems–but icing sugar works fine, and rum is excellent. My original recipe called for orange liqueur rather than orange essence, but I prefer the essence if you’re going for orange.
Southdowner says:
We ARE a cult! Yaay! Robin has a cult following!!!
I’m still worrying about this. . . . Following me where . . . .
* * *
* All right, name me a dog family that doesn’t have serious fruit loop tendencies. But they do vary. Terrier fruitloopery is significantly different from hellhound fruitloopery for example.
** And my Exhibit A when the hellhounds and I have just been jumped by another nasty, aggressive little, or, worse, not-so-little s.o.b. of a terrier and I’m shouting that I hate terriers
*** Or when she escapes, which also happens. It is very difficult to get into a tack room carrying a saddle and not let a terrier bent on freedom out. Then you rack the saddle hastily and go in pursuit. I’ve chased her into the schooling ring where Jenny is giving a lesson more than once. Generally speaking it’s very nice using Jenny’s tack room instead of one of the two bigger ones for the boarders, but the terrier situation is problematic.
† I’m with Jodi about fuzzy tummies. I’d be an instant ferret slave too.
†† Clover, unlike other dogs we could mention, has a positive attitude toward food.
††† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equine_coat_color This is not really satisfactory and only barely scratches the surface. But there’s a lot out there about colour types and genetics . . . which I’ve just wasted most of half an hour on and I still have to play the piano tonight. . . .
‡ Or is it fifteen now, and you’re just afraid to tell us?
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