Friday, August 9
Aug. 10th, 2024 01:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
Beautiful weather again today. A hint of crispness, which is weird for August, but enjoyable.
I did my normal chores and so on, and went to see River.
He was kind of sleepy today, but we got some work done. I was trying to stay alert to keeping him moving forward well, not letting him get draggy or ignore my cues.
Then one of the neighbors started target shooting, and River's focus was gone. He was upset by the noise, even though it wasn't particularly close. We worked through that, but I don't feel like anything we did after that was progress. None of it was really reaching him, he wasn't engaged.
Then I stayed to work another horse (not Quidley/Maverick this time) that is a new resident being trained by R.
This horse is morbidly obese, and R is upset (though she has to be careful how she expresses it) with the owner, as she worked with this horse about four or five years ago, before he was obese.
Obesity is very bad in horses, as it is with most animals. It's hard on their joints, and makes them prone to laminitis (an inflammation of the hoof that can sometimes just ruin the horse if it's bad enough).
She had to tell the owner that she couldn't go straight to the training that the owner wants her to do, as this horse is TOO FAT. R literally won't be able to put a saddle on this horse. She's going to try using a bareback pad and see if that will stay on.
So, I worked with him today, and all I really did was lunge him at a trot for most of the hour, with some breather breaks. For all that he's obese, he was breathing well and seemed very willing to move out.
I enjoyed working with a horse that's willing to move out nicely, since River always makes it MY JOB to keep him moving (it's actually tiring sometimes for me to have to keep him moving, in a mental way, because it's like never letting down your guard).
He's a sweet horse, and I hope R can help him lose weight, and I hope the owner recognizes that it IS an issue, and follows through with managing his weight going forward.
I came home and let everyone out, and my Sweetie got home from his trip to Toronto (he was so happy that it wasn't hot and muggy here, he said he's felt sticky all week long in spite of air conditioning).
South Africa is easy enough to find on a map, it's literally the big one at the bottom of Africa (though within it are the separate nations of Lesotho and Eswatini).
There are around 62 million people there, with familiar city names like Cape Town and Johannesburg. It is now ranked highly as a democratic country in Africa.
The region was colonized by Dutch traders, then Britain got into the mix (they didn't want that area to be occupied by France during the Napoleonic wars), and of course it eventually led to civil war (between Britain and the Boers, who were originally Dutch/German/French colonists) in the form of the horrific Boer war (and even Canada got involved because of their allegiance to Britain).
The British did win the Boer war, by being absolutely relentlessly horrific to the Boers. The Boers mostly left the colonies of Johannesburg and the Orange Free State and went North, where they lived spread out, and continued to farm.
So, it's kind of like there were three opposing groups, the British whites, the Boer whites, and the African people (who were incredibly marginalized).
South Africa was not free of British rule until 1931.
It has the highest population of White South Africans in Africa, as well as other groups who are descendants of people brought by colonists from China and India to work on plantations.
Thus the official languages are Zulu and Xhosa, and Africaans, with English in there a bit.
The somewhere around 80% of the population of African people were not enfranchised as voters until 1994 (when Nelson Mandela was elected as President), and before that the country struggled with the policy of Apartheid, which sought to separate the racial groups.
The country IS trying to develop, and IS trying to industrialize, but it's taking a while for it to reach all of the population.
"Since the end of apartheid, government accountability and quality of life have substantially improved.[31] However, crime, poverty, and inequality remain widespread, with about 40% of the total population being unemployed as of 2021,[32] while some 60% of the population lived below the poverty line and a quarter lived below $2.15 a day.[33][34][35] Having the highest Gini coefficient of 63.0, South Africa is considered to be one of, if not the most, unequal countries in the world.[36][37]"
Amazing archaeological discoveries suggest that humans have lived in this region for over 3 million years.
Most of the country is a fairly flat plateau, with an escarpment (reaching elevations of 3000 feet) all along the bottom edges a bit inland from the coast.
The North is drier, becoming part of the Kalahari Desert. Most of it is more temperate because of the exposure to the ocean.
It's interesting that it pretty much has no natural lakes. Rivers, but no lakes. There are now some man made reservoirs, but think about it. That huge country, no big lakes.
It's economy is partly agriculture, largely mining (gold, as well as other metals) and developing industrial activities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa
https://youtu.be/tP6G2wDrUUU?si=semWJ-mT7Cgp5mVA
Beautiful weather again today. A hint of crispness, which is weird for August, but enjoyable.
I did my normal chores and so on, and went to see River.
He was kind of sleepy today, but we got some work done. I was trying to stay alert to keeping him moving forward well, not letting him get draggy or ignore my cues.
Then one of the neighbors started target shooting, and River's focus was gone. He was upset by the noise, even though it wasn't particularly close. We worked through that, but I don't feel like anything we did after that was progress. None of it was really reaching him, he wasn't engaged.
Then I stayed to work another horse (not Quidley/Maverick this time) that is a new resident being trained by R.
This horse is morbidly obese, and R is upset (though she has to be careful how she expresses it) with the owner, as she worked with this horse about four or five years ago, before he was obese.
Obesity is very bad in horses, as it is with most animals. It's hard on their joints, and makes them prone to laminitis (an inflammation of the hoof that can sometimes just ruin the horse if it's bad enough).
She had to tell the owner that she couldn't go straight to the training that the owner wants her to do, as this horse is TOO FAT. R literally won't be able to put a saddle on this horse. She's going to try using a bareback pad and see if that will stay on.
So, I worked with him today, and all I really did was lunge him at a trot for most of the hour, with some breather breaks. For all that he's obese, he was breathing well and seemed very willing to move out.
I enjoyed working with a horse that's willing to move out nicely, since River always makes it MY JOB to keep him moving (it's actually tiring sometimes for me to have to keep him moving, in a mental way, because it's like never letting down your guard).
He's a sweet horse, and I hope R can help him lose weight, and I hope the owner recognizes that it IS an issue, and follows through with managing his weight going forward.
I came home and let everyone out, and my Sweetie got home from his trip to Toronto (he was so happy that it wasn't hot and muggy here, he said he's felt sticky all week long in spite of air conditioning).
South Africa is easy enough to find on a map, it's literally the big one at the bottom of Africa (though within it are the separate nations of Lesotho and Eswatini).
There are around 62 million people there, with familiar city names like Cape Town and Johannesburg. It is now ranked highly as a democratic country in Africa.
The region was colonized by Dutch traders, then Britain got into the mix (they didn't want that area to be occupied by France during the Napoleonic wars), and of course it eventually led to civil war (between Britain and the Boers, who were originally Dutch/German/French colonists) in the form of the horrific Boer war (and even Canada got involved because of their allegiance to Britain).
The British did win the Boer war, by being absolutely relentlessly horrific to the Boers. The Boers mostly left the colonies of Johannesburg and the Orange Free State and went North, where they lived spread out, and continued to farm.
So, it's kind of like there were three opposing groups, the British whites, the Boer whites, and the African people (who were incredibly marginalized).
South Africa was not free of British rule until 1931.
It has the highest population of White South Africans in Africa, as well as other groups who are descendants of people brought by colonists from China and India to work on plantations.
Thus the official languages are Zulu and Xhosa, and Africaans, with English in there a bit.
The somewhere around 80% of the population of African people were not enfranchised as voters until 1994 (when Nelson Mandela was elected as President), and before that the country struggled with the policy of Apartheid, which sought to separate the racial groups.
The country IS trying to develop, and IS trying to industrialize, but it's taking a while for it to reach all of the population.
"Since the end of apartheid, government accountability and quality of life have substantially improved.[31] However, crime, poverty, and inequality remain widespread, with about 40% of the total population being unemployed as of 2021,[32] while some 60% of the population lived below the poverty line and a quarter lived below $2.15 a day.[33][34][35] Having the highest Gini coefficient of 63.0, South Africa is considered to be one of, if not the most, unequal countries in the world.[36][37]"
Amazing archaeological discoveries suggest that humans have lived in this region for over 3 million years.
Most of the country is a fairly flat plateau, with an escarpment (reaching elevations of 3000 feet) all along the bottom edges a bit inland from the coast.
The North is drier, becoming part of the Kalahari Desert. Most of it is more temperate because of the exposure to the ocean.
It's interesting that it pretty much has no natural lakes. Rivers, but no lakes. There are now some man made reservoirs, but think about it. That huge country, no big lakes.
It's economy is partly agriculture, largely mining (gold, as well as other metals) and developing industrial activities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa
https://youtu.be/tP6G2wDrUUU?si=semWJ-mT7Cgp5mVA
no subject
Date: 2024-08-11 03:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-11 08:00 am (UTC)A beautiful day in Canada is a precious thing.