Goodbye Flag is Up

My last day at Flag is up went by so fast I can barely recall the details. I'm writing this on Wednesday, having spent several days in transit.

On Sunday morning after checking in for my flight and sorting various other travel details I went down to the stables to find Monty at work in the round pen. He was working with Bold and Brave, a lovely big race horse who had been written off as vicious and impossible to lead and was banned from the race track. Monty saw him as a lovely horse who was just phobic and in need of help. He had been working with Bold and Brave only a few weeks and already was achieving things that had been deemed impossible, including leading him from another horse.

How vicious does this horse  look?

If only the rest of the world would catch up to Monty's methods of starting and training horses then he would probably have very few cases like this to deal with. A horse doesn't just become phobic for no reason, there's always something that has happened to make it so, whether or not the owner of the horse is aware of what it is. Watching Monty work with this horse reminded me that I wanted to tell anyone that's reading this that there is so much more to his methods than the Join-Up itself. To use a building metaphor, Join-Up is a strong and level foundation, but it's not the house. Lots of people talk about using Monty's techniques but in reality they are talking about doing Join-Up and nothing else.

The Equus Online University is a fantastic way to find out more about this, it's really well worth the small subscription price and makes learning feel easy and enjoyable - and no, I'm not being paid to say that, I just think that the more people learn about Monty's methods the better, for the sake of the horses and people too.

The lesson appears to be working

Monty helping the horse to learn to trust

Firmness is sometimes necessary to help the horse's

intrinsic learning, but never violence or pain

Good Follow-Up on foot as well as horseback demonstrates that  Monty is using the right language - the language of the horse

After a quick lunch and with only a few hours left Pat took me out for the whistle-stop tour of the Santa Ynez Valley including the Danish town of Solvang along with its  Santa Ynez, Los Olivos  (I've linked to sets of images on Flickr as I only had time for a few snatched photos out of the car window). Is that what they mean by 'drive-by shooting'?

Solvang Features many Windmills

Both large and small

And many storks on Roof-tops

The Mission Santa Inés dates back to 1804 - very old by American standards 

One of the Stations of the Cross - the first outdoor Stations I've come across

Original Building in the small town of Santa Ynez

Window detail that caught my eye

Young Deer

Following the tour there was just enough time to have one last ride on Celebrity who seemed very reluctant, maybe he'd had enough exercise earlier in the day or maybe he was picking up on my feelings of reluctance.

Then it was time to finish packing up and say my bad goodbyes (I'm really not good at doing this, often preferring to just quietly disappear though that wasn't an option here). I was hoping that there would be some deer when I went up to the house to pack and I wasn't disappointed. I think I might have accidentally left my camera set on macro which may explain the slightly odd look of these pictures, but I quite like it.

Mamma Deer

Pat took me to the bus stop after bit of confusion about where the bus stopped had been resolved and Debbie who was en route to Flag is Up was waiting there to say goodbye, which was a big bonus for me.

The bus was a little bit late but soon I was loaded up and on my way. I had taken precautions this time so managed to get all the way to my hotel without any emergency trips to the on-board toilet. I even managed to make use of the on board wi-fi.

King Size bed with adjustable mattress

The Raddison turned out to be quite nice, certainly in comparison to British Hotels and their idea of what is an accessible room i.e. rooms with such narrow doorways I can barely get my scooter in and then there's no place to put it without it being in the way. As I had asked for an accessible room I had a wider doorway and lots of space in the room - enough to be able to turn the scooter around. I also had a huge king size bed with a special mattress not present in regular rooms that can be adjusted, using a remote control, from very soft to super firm. It ain't all bad being a crip.


My only complaint would be that most of the staff smelled like they had just sprayed themselves with very chemical after-shave/ perfume just seconds before I encountered them. I know I have an olefactory hypersensitivity but even so the smells must have been pretty strong, then again most people actually like that kind of thing. Perhaps the fact that I'd been in a place where unnatural smells weren't present played some part in it as well. I also noticed a sign on the wall at the back of the hotel where I was waiting for the airport shuttle the next morning that warned about chemicals present in the building and how they could be dangerous to certain groups of people - I wish I'd taken a picture because I can't recall the details now, just that it seemed a very peculiar thing.

It felt odd to be in the big hotel room on my own after two weeks being around people most of time, and strange to look out of the window and see a set of huge colour changing columns rather than the deer quietly grazing on the grass. I might have enjoyed it more if I hadn't just left such an amazing and idyllic place and such genuine lovely and caring people.

Here's my goodbye to Flag is Up Farms and everyone I met there.

From Morning Mists

To Evening Sunsets

From Birds,

To dogs

To big flowers 

Little flowers 

and Prickly Flowers

From Lizards

to Deer

to Horses,

and Horsemen

And Horsewomen

It's been a beautiful time with lovely, lovely people

And I don't know how to say thank you enough. So I'll just say over and out for now...

and Monty, this one's for you.

Saturday, Penultimate Day at Flag is Up Farms

Tomorrow I have to leave this wonderful place and stay overnight in L.A. in order to check in for my flight in time, which is going to be a bit of a culture shock in itself, never mind the wrench of leaving. When I went to Las Vegas 2 years ago, even though we stayed only for 4 nights, I had horrible Jet lag that seemed to go on for weeks and weeks and brought on quite a bad bout of depression. So I'm a bit worried about how it's going to go this time having been away for even longer.

Very frustratingly my new Macbook Pro made it all the way to Santa Maria, only 38 miles from here, arriving at 9.30am, but Fedex don't deliver on a Saturday so I tried calling the Apple Store to see if they could do something about it. It's especially annoying because I paid the extra $18 for expedited shipping. Once I got through the automated gate keeper and spoke to a human they were sympathetic and tried to help, getting in touch with the Santa Maria Fedex branch who agreed to try and find the package so that I could go and collect it in person. I really had my hopes up and Monty had arranged me a lift but in the end they couldn't find it and I had to let go of being able to have it in time to take it home.

Cactus Flower with bee

Between that and the idea of having to leave, along with some of the things I'm going to have to face when I get home, I plunged momentarily into a bit of a despondency and went to lie down in my room for a few hours. Soon I realised that was just stupid and wasteful of my last few hours here so I took myself out with the camera. The first think I found was a huge flower sitting on the side of a cactus and the sight of that cheered me up a bit. After taking pictures of that I went off to see the horses in the paddocks. Horses are such big animals but so gentle it's hard not to feel better in their presence.

Cactus Flower

After taking some pictures for Anna Lena who was learning the figure 8 with Monty I had a ride in the arena with Celebrity. We had the whole arena to ourselves so there was plenty of room to practise the side passing down the length of the arena. 'Wiling Partners' is really a good description for these horses, bearing in mind that he is only 3 and being ridden in a halter by a still very rusty rider.

Celebrity has learnt to follow the scooter

Horses in dappled shade

Back up at the house Monty was calling in the deer so I took the chance to get some more pictures and a few minutes of video. When Debbie sent me the picture of Monty and the deer before I came out I really thought they were statues and I think other people might assume the same so the video is to prove that they are very much real. (it will probably take me a few days to process it).

Deer feeding on front lawn

I've just packed up everything I don't need for traveling into the giant oversized suitcase which is looking decidedly empty now that the canvases aren't in it and set the computer to double backup all the photos I've taken in both RAW and Jpeg formats. There's over 1,700 of them, so it'll probably take all night. so it's time to try and sleep so that I can make the most of my last day.

Friday blues

I'm starting to feel a bit sad as I'm so close to the end of my stay and it'll soon be time to go back home. It's been a unique and amazing experience to be here and of course it will be good to get back home and see my dog and my family and friends but it will be a wrench to leave and I doubt I'll ever have the chance to come back again.

As I sit here in the kitchen looking over the distant mountains now that the sun has burned away the morning mists I'm wondering what changes in my life ahead will come out of this. Probably it will be something that I can't imagine or predict right now, but I know that some alteration will occur or something new will come into my life. It's just not possible to go through an experience like this and not alter my life's course in some way.

I spent some in the morning scootering around taking more pictures of the beautiful horses and scenery, then after a quick lunch it was time for another ride. I did a few circuits of the track with Celebrity, then into the arena to work some more on his neck reining and my riding skills.

Although I still need help to get my right leg over the saddle when dismounting, I think my legs have improved somewhat, maybe because or maybe in spite of pushing through the pain barrier.

More pictures and a show

Both times we had ridden out onto the trail I'd seen so many things I wanted to take pictures of, so having put the scooter on to charge the night before I was ready for an outing.

I started off, just beyond the Roberts' house, taking pictures of a neighbour's flowers. I'd only taken a few when a big scary man came down the drive in his pick-up. I did my best tourist impression (well, not an impression really, since I am a tourist) and asked him if it was ok to take pictures of the flowers. Once he had established that I wasn't working for a company he stopped looking quite so fierce and was quite happy to let me get on with it.

I was kneeling on the ground shooting up at some agave when I noticed a lizard sat up on a rock that was in a bucket holding up the mailbox. I've been wanting to get a picture of one of these so I quickly zoomed as far as I could and hoped it would stay long enough to get a focus.

To my amazement it was completely still for at least 5 minutes, long enough to not only get a whole bunch of pictures but even to move my position and shoot from another angle. Eventually it decided to amble off but by then I had plenty of nice shots.

I carried on up the road, stopping to take pictures of various plants and cacti as I went until I reached the end of the Tarmac and start of the sandy trail.

At that point I left the scooter and set off with just the stick. I soon found the little purple flowers I'd been seeing whilst out riding and found that without the horses to scare them away there were butterflies flitting from one flower to another. I'm quite phobic of butterflies and especially so of their night time counterparts (so much so I can't even bring myself to type the word) so I'm trying to get myself over this by taking pictures of them.

I carried on snapping away, moving a step or two as I went and suddenly realised I was quite far from the scooter and it was uphill to get back to it. It wasn't really all that far in objective distance but I felt like I'd gone a few miles by the time I got back to the scooter. The other side of the road on the way back presented me with lots of different planting so I was able to get even more pictures.

When I got back to the house Anna Lena said that Pat was going to a 'show' and did I want to come. Without really knowing what kind of show or any detail other than it was in Santa Barbara I thought I may as well go and see what it was all about. I just had time to put the morning's pictures on to download, swallow my lunchtime pills and grab some water and a cereal bar.

Down at the stables Pat had two horses saddled up and ready to load and I realised that she was going to be competing. The two horses practically loaded themselves and then it was time to go. After the bus incident I was very grateful to be allowed to sit in the front of the pick-up.

Blingish

The journey was about an hour and mostly on big wide roads so I felt ok, if a little nervous a few times with the casual driving, but that seems to just be how people drive here. Once we had arrived, parked up and offloaded the two horses I had a bit of time to watch what was going on before the events that Pat was competing in.

Blingy bling

I saw a lot of women dressed up in very blingy outfits with sequins that reflected the sun in quite a dazzling way. I'm not sure if the photos will show up just how bling bling they were.

Bling O'Rama

Little terrier chasing his reflection

Lots of people had little dogs, mainly dachshunds, chiwawhuas and a few Jack Russells, including one very sweet little fellow who was busy chasing the reflection from his name tag.

I saw some rather odd riding whilst waiting for Pat's events and some of it I didn't really like very much. I watched several people lifting their reins right up in the air and doing a sawing motion, yanking first the left then the right, up and down. Anna Lena said this was to get the horse to bend its head down, but they were getting the horses' heads so far down it looked really unnatural and seemed like the horse was about to trip over itself. I suppose I've become so accustomed to people working horses in a gentle way that encourages the horse to want to do its work, that it was a shock to see people being so rough with them.

Blue Bling

The class before Pat's was another surprise as it seemed to be all about getting the horses to move in slow motion. There was about 8 competitors all spread around the arena and they were being told to change pace from walk to jog (trot), then to lope (canter) but all in slow motion. It was very strange to watch. They were all using thick rope reins that were tied in a knot underneath the horses' chins and all the horses had their heads right down and looked rather sad.

The next event was the reining competition which Pat was competing in. They have to ride a set pattern which includes sliding stops from a fast canter, spins and turns and pace changes.






Pat's first horse went well, executing the pattern flawlessly enough to place her first in the class. The second horse she rode had other ideas altogether and did some odd manoeuvres so they didn't get any points at all.

After the competitions were all over there was a barbecue laid on so we stayed over to eat though I did get some odd looks when I refused the steak, asked whether the beans had meat in them or not (she didn't know) and took just salad and garlic bread. On the way back we were treated to a very nice sunset along the pacific coast road. I was on the wrong side of the car to take pictures but sometimes it's as good to just enjoy the spectacle.

Back at Flag is Up Farms the horses were offloaded and put to bed. I was late taking my evening medication so had some time to download the pictures from the show and review them along with the others from the morning before falling into bed.