The zoo gets zooy

I have written about the zoo I’m living at, and I’ve written about riding on the beach, I have a feeling there are going to be plenty more stories involving the animals around here because the play such an important part in our lives.

Samantha has been eventing since her early teens. Eventing is a horsing event in three parts, dressage, show jumping and cross country. Dressage came about from military maneuvers, and traditional dressage still uses the same movements developed by the military, but modern dressage is a bit more like a dance, the horse and rider show off their control and ability for fancy foot work. Show jumping is jumping in an arena over poll jumps, the polls are easily knocked down should you bump them. And last but not least is cross country, again, a jumping event, though this time it isn’t in an arena, the jumps are large solid obstacles and the landings are frequently in water or at an angle and what not.

The reason I bring up eventing is I’d like to take it up myself, and have been doing a lot of riding and a little jumping. At the moment Samantha has three horses still competing, or that can be competed, Luna is her main guy, her champ, Cullen was the first horse she broke, a fantastic jumper, but has the personality of a dog, and Scooter, her new guy. We are still bouncing the idea of selling Scooter on; it will depend on how well he performs for us this year. For me, I’ll likely be doing show jumping on Cullen. He isn’t such a big fan of dressage, and while he loves cross country, you can’t just do cross country, you have to do all three if you want to do cross country.


Cullen and I jumping.

I may try eventing on Cullen just for the experience, but I’m quite sure he’ll show his dog nature during the dressage portion of the event. I may also event on Luna, at this point the more practice I can get the better. Samantha will compete Scooter; since he is new to the game having a couple of beginners jumping could be disastrous.


Luna jumping and Cullen... Not...

As for the dogs, Buster has yet to be fixed, and is currently testing his position in the pack. Being the new guy he is at the bottom, and feels it really unfair. He has tried to prove himself against Sophie, and I’m sure would have won had the humans around not intervened, now he is testing himself with George. This is more problematic than him testing himself against Sophie because George is a much bigger dog.

We can’t be sure of either of their breeds, they are both mutts. George’s mother we know was a full bred Mastiff, his father was a fly by night donor. While we don’t know what his breed was, we do know it was big, perhaps Burmese Mountain dog, maybe even St. Bernard. He has the size for it. Buster we were told was a Weimaraner (think grey blood hound) and a black lab. While his color would suggest as much, he has some other features that suggest American Staffordshire terrier (Pit Bull).

Last night after getting home from school the two got into it. It is generally a bad idea to jump in and try and break up a dog fight. Especially a dog fight in which one of the dogs is bigger than you and the other was bred to kill adult bulls. George is luck to have his Mastiff skin, Buster can’t get a good hold on him, so George is in no real danger from Buster, but I might be in some real danger from George. As soon as we got Buster off of George, George lunged for Buster and bit my back instead of Buster… An easy mistake I’m sure.

As I sat writing this blog I got to opportunity to break up another fight between the two, and this time, while whacking Buster with a night stick (think steal rod) my knuckle got between Buster and the night stick. At the moment it does feel a bit like they fight, I get hurt… Yeah, I wouldn’t recommend breaking up a dog fight between two large dogs, but don’t expect me to take my own advice. I’m sure things will improve once Buster gets a visit to the vet… I hope so, to many more of these fights and it’ll be me in need of a doctor…