pet connection

Our Dr. Marty Becker is at the North American Veterinary Conference in Orlando.  He noted yesterday that trading the snow of Northern Idaho for the relatively balmy days of Florida was a tough assignment, but a sacrifice he was willing to make. He’ll be Tweeting and posting to Facebook from the conference, and if he gets a little more time, he’ll write a blog post. He’s a pretty polished public speaker, but he has been working so hard on his major talk at the conference that I swear he was a little anxious about it. I’ve had a preview, and anyone who’s at the conference will miss one of the highlights if they don’t catch his address.

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As you probably can guess, I read a lot. Everything, constantly. And I find that somethings I read stick with me long after, and I often find myself revisiting them. This morning, I’m sharing some of these posts.

The first handful are horse-related, two of them from equine photographer Sarah Andrew’s Rock and Racehorses Blog. My favorite of the year from her: Her morning as a pony rider at Santa Anita, in the days before the Breeders Cup:

Captain stood obediently at the mounting block as I slipped my paddock boot into the small lightweight stirrup and mounted up. The stirrups were jacked up shorter than my shortest jumping length. Karen asked if I needed them longer. I smiled and said they were great- when in Rome… right? The pony’s back was broad and he felt quite solid. The saddle was remarkably comfortable.

I rode Captain to the edge of the shedrow and waited for Karen to get a leg up onto her morning’s ride: Silver Swallow, a mare who was entered in a Breeders’ Cup race the following day. Silver wore the signature royal purple Breeders’ Cup saddle cloth with her name embroidered below the logo. There were no freckles on her snowy coat; she was nearly white with a perfect silver mane. It is difficult to see shine on most grey horses, but this mare was different- she shimmered like alabaster. Her luminous, expressive, almond-shaped eyes were set wide on her head, offsetting her round jaw and delicate muzzle. Her ears were slightly curled at the very tips and one seemed to be set on a slightly steeper angle than the other, giving her a jaunty expression.

I rode beside Karen and Silver Swallow on their left, past the barns and toward the training track. Both horses briskly walked down the path; my pony knew his job so well he could have done it by himself. The mare was eager to stretch her legs.

Go read, and live vicariously. Then, check out her favorite pictures for 2009 and her favorite races for the last decade. Her No. 1? Zenyatta’s Breeders Cup Classic win, which would be mine, too, although I wasn’t there in the media pool for it, as she was. Go enjoy these, too. Sarah’s an incredibly talented photographer who just keeps getting better.

My favorite “find” in the blog category in the last year or more is Glenye Oakford’s Full Cry: A Hound Blog.  The hounds of the Iroquois Hunt aren’t “pets,” but they are loved and cared for from birth to death. Glenye’s writing is superb– no surprise, since she’s a seasoned pro who works for the Daily Racing Form and has a wonderfully interesting book to her credit. Really, you can just jump in anywhere and enjoy the read, but I especially liked her trip to the UK, where she visited the long-established companies that makes robes for royalty and hats for hunters and the military:

Before World War II, Dege bought another firm, Wilkinson & Son, which specialized in robe-making, diplomatic attire, and court dress and had made the coronation robes for every English monarch from King William IV to King George VI.

“This somewhat esoteric branch of the tailoring trade came into its own at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953,” the Dege company history says, “when there was a sudden demand for velvet Court dress, diplomatic uniforms, robes for Knights of the Garter, Thistle, and Bath, and, of course, peers’ Coronation robes and coronets.”

During “a few months of frantic activity,” the history relates, “robes which had lain in mothballs since 1937, and survived the Blitz and the subsequent flooding of the basement by the River Conduit, were resurrected and refurbished. Hundreds of silver balls on the tops of coronets were unscrewed, polished, and made good. The entire firm was in attendance at Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953, robing the Peers of the Realm.”

I’ve got a couple more items to add, but I have to meet a friend for coffee this morning. Look for more later in the day.later in the week.

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