After a relaxing and enjoyable long weekend in Georgia, it was time to get back to business with Wizard. Yesterday, the veterinarian did a lameness exam and floated his teeth.
The exam began by watching Wizard trot on a longe line. I probably should have anticipated that Wizard would be a little fresh since he is fit and has had so much time off, but instead I was surprised when he came close to pulling me off my feet as soon as we began longeing! The halter with the longe line snapped to the chin ring is normally just fine for control but he was feeling his oats yesterday. The vet pronounced him sound in both directions. I asked her about his high action and she said it’s likely a combination of animation and a loose, flexible way of going.
She performed flexion tests on all four legs and the prognosis was good. She heard a little creakiness in the right front knee when she folded it, but it is probably a touch of arthritis and nothing that should keep him from the level of work we’re doing. His left hip is dropped a bit, which is in line with what the chiropractor mentioned about the tight muscle tissue in his hamstring and pelvis. I’ve known horses whose hips are dropped far more than his and they have gone on to perform well with correct strengthening work. The vet recommended more work with ground poles to help Wizard’s topline and hind end strength. His right hind leg also showed a little stiffness with one of the flex tests, but nothing that caused concern for his current workload. Wizard quite enjoyed the jogs on the dirt road and was arching his neck and throwing his head playfully.
The vet examined his back and carefully went over his acupressure points. No back pain and just a little tightness in his pelvis. She evaluated my saddle fit and said it looks good.
The veterinarian’s advice? Get back on Wizard and try riding again. If he still is showing signs of distress under saddle, treat or test for Lyme Disease. She also suggested doing another 4-day bute test (as a diagnostic tool, not as a treatment). If both fail, further evaluations will be needed, like x-rays or blood tests. But so far, everything looks good.
Wizard also had his teeth floated. All of the hooks have been fixed and more corrections were done to his wave mouth. She was pleased with the way his mouth looks and said he can have his teeth floated next in a year- hooray!
While Wizard was under sedation, I cleaned his sheath, clipped his bridle path, and pulled his mane. I LOVE how he looks with the pulled mane- it does my hunter/jumper heart good :^) I did a combination of traditional mane pulling and a little thinning with scissors by teasing the mane up and cutting the excess vertically with scissors. I did not want to subject the poor guy to an entire mane pulling- he had almost a foot of hair and now it’s the length of a pulling comb.
Thursday, Wizard has a farrier appointment. I hope to be back in the saddle very soon.
In Spanish, “Ritual De Lo Habitual” means the ritual of the habitual. Taking our daily lives and making them sacred, or taking our addictions and making ritual of them. It’s a high-minded mission, and it is for that reason worth celebrating. Most albums are content to share a good time (or a sad one) between the artists and the listeners, but some work to make the ordinary and the sordid to appear to us as truth and transcendence. –Justin Hall’s 1999 Nude As The News wrapup of the iconic 1990 Jane’s Addiction release, Ritual de lo Habitual
I’ve got a thing for discipline. I don’t like hearing about how Paul McCartney does not know how to write or read music. My head spins when I hear about people who learned to ride in a back yard on a green horse. My teeth grit when I read about painters who rocket to notoriety with artwork that has no foundation in the history of art. Without a foundation, art is cheap and one-dimensional. You cannot have subversive creativity without knowing what you’re subverting. One only gains artistic breadth and scope with an eye on every other artist who has tried before to express the very same concept, emotion, or theory.
Charles Pravata is our country’s best horse racing photographer under the age of 35. Imagine my horror when I found out that he’d only been shooting a year or so before his work started gracing Daily Racing Form covers and showing up in all of the most prestigious racing publications in the country. How did a person with no formal training and half a decade of practice become a highly-esteemed editorial photographer in the racing community and a big inspiration to my own development as a photographer?
A little more than three years ago, I remember wondering, “who IS this punk?” as I browsed through Pravata’s killer photos of Brother Derek on Flickr. I’ve been a racing fan since I was a little girl and I never saw his name before on photos credits in editions of Blood-Horse or Thoroughbred Times. At the time, I was looking to take a step into photography and was in the market for my very first SLR camera. I had sent out several emails to people who shot equine sports asking for help selecting a camera and a lens. Of the dozens of emails I sent, only a handful wrote back: Charles was one of them (Bud Morton was another). He was not the typical condescending, mystical, tight-lipped shooter- he was happy to share details about lenses and cameras and answer any questions I had.
I met Charles the following year and we got to spend some quality time in my home state, standing on ladders in torrential downpours on the inside rail at Monmouth Park for the 2007 Breeders’ Cup. Photographers all around us complained about the weather and groused about water in their cameras, but Charles enjoyed the mud and the grit- you can almost taste the sloppy track in his photo of Curlin winning the Breeders’ Cup Classic. It was a far cry from the arid air and synthetic racing surfaces of his home state of California, where the Breeders’ Cup was held the following year.
When I went out to Santa Anita for the 2008 Breeders’ Cup, I learned first-hand just how challenging the light can be, with the harsh sunlight and the off-kilter grandstand angle. But when you look at Charles’ work, the shadows and angles are incorporated handily into excellent images. He is a master of harnessing light and using it to his advantage:
Santa Teresita, by Charles Pravata
Colonel John, by Charles Pravata
But mastery of light is not the only ingredient in his images. Through his lifelong love of racing, he manages to capture the essence of the track and distill it into his photos:
Storm at Santa Anita, by Charles PravataSanta Anita, by Charles Pravata
Del Mar Start
Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY and now residing in California, Charles knows the best and worst of both coasts of racing. Talk to Charles and you’ll learn a lot about the sport- look at his photos and you’ll learn even more. From a deeper place still come the most creative and evocative photos of his collection, from his artistic statements about the sport to his creative treatment of the warrior Curlin and American girl, Zenyatta. I so dig the surreal and illustrative treatment of his favorite horses.
Zenyatta, by Pravata
And sometimes Rock and Racehorses gets way out-rocked!
Andy Summers, by Charles PravataPerry Farrell, by Charles Pravata
Discipline is needed to shape an artist. But perhaps my definition of discipline is a little short-sighted. Perhaps art school is not the only place to learn the laws of composition and exposure and to study the greats who have come before us. Maybe the hot California sun is the spotlight on the studio of Santa Anita. And maybe the work of the Old Masters surrounds us at the racetrack, hangs on the walls in the racing museums, and lives on the pages of our epistles, the racing trade publications. No matter how I attempt to define it, Pravata has made a holy ritual of our habitual. Truth and transcendence.
What does Charles Pravata rock out to on his way to the track? Here’s his list of the Top Ten Albums of All Time:
One of the funniest things about Nothing’s Shocking, Jane’s Addiction’s much-ballyhooed 1988 release, was how it skewed the conventions of L.A. Sunset Strip metal, managing to be distinctively perverse in a world already saturated with bad taste and bacchanalia. At times the music was glorious, playful psychedelic metal, as Perry Farrell’s avant-gypsy garb, weird eye makeup and prepubescent voice plugged you into the visionary amorality of children. With its trippy nature imagery and porno bent, Nothing’s Shocking struck the gong.
Ritual de lo Habitual finds Jane’s Addiction thin and wandering, blowing ploys that worked before – overdubs and echoes, loose jamming, Farrell’s playground melodies. Split into a hard-rockin’ side and a prog-rock side, the album doesn’t cohere – whatever the band members have been doing for the last two years, they haven’t been practicing much. –Erik Davis’ 1990 Rolling Stone review of the iconic 1990 Jane’s Addiction release, Ritual de lo Habitual
Life imitating art: Charles Pravata (center) costumed as Perry Farrell
2. The Police- Regatta De Blanc – Every album they recorded was great, as evidenced by the present day Karma of the great filly Zenyatta.
3. The Clash – Story of The Clash Volume 1 – One of the most dynamic bands of all time, and this compilation is evidence of that.
4. The Ramones- Ramones Mania – Another compilation; call me a cheater. The guitar player steals the lead singer’s girlfriend, marries her, and the band stays together. That’s true punk…. and Joey Ramone is the epitome of style.
5. Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin – Even though they robbed most of the songs on this album and took credit for writing them (I can replace this album with any other Zeppelin album).
6. Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon – Many adventures to the Hayden Planetarium for this album’s laser show between the ages of 11 and 21. Was fortunate enough to see Roger Waters perform the entire album live a few years ago. Epic.
7. The Smiths – The Best of the Smiths 1& 2 – Listened to these albums, and The Queen is Dead on my drives down to Del Mar last summer; hurled me into a depression that I just recently started to come out of. It’s all about impact, good or bad.
8. The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced – Inspired a lot of people to take acid (so did #6 on my list).
Rock and Racehorses: Sarah K. Andrew 