Neither John nor Dennis was at dancing tonight, and I have to admit . . . it was a relief. There were a ton of guys there tonight, though, and I totally enjoyed the dancing. There was this really cute guy there tonight . . . Sam. About twenty or twenty-five years old, cute personality, and southern accent. This is a big confession for me . . . but, now I think I understand how "old" men my age fall for cute young things!
I was reading an archeological novel the other day, and I came across something interesting. I know that the authors do a lot of research, so even though it was a novel, this is probably true. One of the characters described certain gorillas (or maybe all) . . . and she said that gorilla females always gravitate toward the alpha male in the group.
This helps explain what happened in India with the young girls and the older men who wore the black and white robes . . . the teachers . . . they could be perceived as the alpha males. It makes perfect sense!
The difference between a sixty year old man with a twenty year old, and a sixty year old woman with a twenty year old . . . the sixty year old woman knows she looks like an idiot! Ah, well. So much for Sam.
Tuesday
Today, I went back out to the horse ranch. I met Alicia, who is her assistant, and Kelsey, a student from the local college here. She is in the last class of that horsemanship program that I wanted to get in.
First, Alicia got on a young, green horse, and Kelsey lunged her. That's when a rope is attached to the halter of the horse, and the person holding the rope is in the center of a circle that the horse goes around. Usually, the horse is riderless. Alicia was on today as a transition. Many of the commands are taught to the horse before a rider ever gets in the saddle. So, as a transition, once the rider is on the horse, it is lunged to tie together the initial ground work and having a person in the saddle. I've actually never seen this before, but it does make perfect sense to me.
At the same time Kelsey was lunging Alicia, Jennifer was riding another horse at the other end of the arena. She had like a running commentary telling me exactly what she was doing. The horse was incredible . . . a high stepping gorgeous . . . Lipizzan stallion, I think. He had a lot of energy, but Jennifer kept him perfectly controlled the entire time. It was a thing of beauty to watch. Jennifer apologized to the horse, telling him that she didn't ride as well as she used to, and that it might confuse him a little bit. But, they still did well together and it was awesome to watch.
After that, Kelsey went to get a green mare . . . she could barely lead, and was very spooky, and Alicia got a horse that was in for re-training. Jennifer said that the horse lost its "want." She says that horses are herd animals and that they *want* to please you. This horse, who was overfed horse cookies, had lost its *want.* It had been rearing up, bucking, and never standing still. I saw it stand still, and Jennifer and Alicia said it took weeks to get that to happen.
Jennifer also said that domestication is basically a symbiotic relationship with man . . . each entity comes out ahead. I never looked at it like that, but it's exactly right.
She also made this great analogy involving cults . . . but, I can't remember the other part of it . . . was it animals in a herd, or was she talking about horse clinicians . . . you cannot argue with them or they throw you out. I think it was the latter, and since I am going to one in another week or so, it should be in-ter-es-ting!!!!
Dancing was a blast, as usual. I'm really getting into this. I'm improving, but I still have trouble with some of the spins . . . the spins are different for every dance. And that's the hard part for me.
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