Abby is Better!

Thank you to all who commented here on the blog or privately contacted me after I wrote the blog entry about Abby missing Diablo and Sultanna. I am pleased to say that Abby has perked up.

Yesterday she saw me walking out through the north pasture and she quickly met me at the gate for a chat.

We had a lovely visit and she was acting much more like herself.

Her general demeanor was happier; for a while she had been a bit cranky and impatient which is absolutely not Abby at all.

Hokey watched Abby and me visit with each other. He could've walked over and joined us, but loner that he is, he stayed by himself.

As I walked back through the north pasture to my car, Sultanna and Diablo came over to say hello. They are doing well. 

The horses seemed to be happy that we had a little sun, too. It may have been a weak, winter sun, but it was far better than the dreary clouds we've been having day after day!

Barn hands. 

My girl had been lipping some hay off the ground and when she licked my hands after her treats were finished, she transferred some of that dirt to me. The joys of horse ownership. (Which I don't mind one bit.)

I drove home in a better frame of mind. I've been concerned about Abby, and it was good to see that she is adjusting to her new circumstances and acting more like herself.

Color Changing Rakus

Yesterday someone posted a question in a china collectors Facebook group about her Lakeshore Raku "Art of Fire" Marshall, and her thoughts that its color was changing. I, too, have a Raku Marshall, so I was very interested in reading the comments as well as checking out a link to an article about how Raku colors are not stable and do change with time. 

Then I pulled out my Raku piece. He did look different to me - duller and with less variation in his color. A suggestion had been made in the group that polishing the finish with a jewelry polishing cloth might restore some of the lustre, so I pulled out a soft cloth and tried that.

 Off side before polishing.

 Off side after polishing. It did look somewhat shinier to me.

 Near side before polishing.

 Near side after polishing. Some of the green/turquoise seems brighter.

The Lakeshore Rakus are really beautiful pieces.

 I especially love the variation in the colors on mine.

I couldn't work on mine too long as I had something else to get to right away but it did look like I was getting some promising results.

I'm interested in continuing to follow the thread and seeing what results other people are getting as they try the polishing cloth on their own Rakus.

I may even start taking periodic photos of mine to document any future changes.

While I really hope my model does not end up some dull muddy color as time goes on, I also enjoy this part of being a collector. Every so often we discover changes or see something we had not noticed before, and it becomes researched and documented in the hobby. (For example, shrinkies, oozies, chalkies, and even unusual deterioration in Western Horses.)

A Raku model whose color is changing is another of those challenges to observe and figure out.

Horsemanship - How Times Have Changed

A lot of my early learning about horses came from the books that I read. I devoured anything about horses, both fiction and nonfiction, and subscribed to Horse and Rider and other magazines, anything to feed my passion for horses.

At first, I accepted everything that I read as true, but as I gained more knowledge and experience, I began to be able to sort out correct information from that which was not.

One book that I read was The Big Book of Horses by Edward L. Chase. While out looking for HSOs last Friday, I found a copy of it in good shape.

I already had my childhood copy of the book, but at only $3.50, it would make a nice show prize for Happy  Trails or a donation to someone else's show, so I purchased it.

Published in 1951, The Big Book of Horses is sixty-eight years old. As I leafed through it, I could tell that some of the information it contained was old and outdated. (I love this illustration!)

This sentence about it going to take a long time for machines to replace the work horse caught my eye right away. Nowadays, aside from Amish communities and a few others, you rarely see horses being used as work horses in the fields.

The purpose of using a heavy western saddle would be to make myself look like a cowboy and would then categorize me as one of "the worst riders"? An English saddle is the one to use when learning to ride as opposed to a western one? Reining and western dressage are only two disciplines using western tack that have put paid to those remarks! 

The page titled "Don'ts in Horsemanship" had some information that I disagree with now and disagreed with when I was just a girl trying to learn.

The author's focus on horses was quite different from mine. How could I not fall in love with each and every horse I have owned? Or those that were not mine but who were under my care? I was smart enough as a girl to know that this was not an instruction that I would follow. Ever.

The horse world has done a lot of changing since this book came out in 1951. Still, it was fun to take a look back into my own horsey history as I paged through the old book. And, I discovered that there was still something for me to learn from it - not only has the horse world come a long way, but I have, too.