Freeze, Flood, Rollkur and Riding

Yesterday, for the first time in nearly a month, the arena was not either frozen or flooded and three hairy, unfit horse got exercised by an unfit rider. This is a first for most people in Ireland. We understand wet, all to0 well, but frozen! Accident and Emergency have been clogged with broken bones, meetings cancelled, hunting a distant memory, water shortages because of people leaving their taps on to prevent freezing (again).

Anyway, a month of not riding has left me with time to think and get some of my ideas down on paper. Everyone has a book in their head apparently, and mine from an early age, was one on training horses. The problem is, I always feel I'm only just starting to get the hang of it, and that's after a more than 30 years!

One of the questions I've been pondering since a recent conversation is what is a good rider? With the hoo-ha going on in dressage around Rollkur (see http://epona.tv for video), there are clearly very very different opinions out there. To summarise the Rollkur issue, as I see it. Rollkur is the practice of riding the horse with his chin nearly touching his

chest, which is supposed to stretch his back and encourage submission. The Epona site shows an interesting video of riders of both dressage and show jumping horses warming up for competition and initially I could see nothing wrong. This is the way the pros warm up it's not the way I would ride my horses, but what do I know. Then I looked again and saw something I recognised but did not like. That feeling of power you get from putting a big powerful horse in a position of total submission, head arched, moving wherever you choose. I know that feeling of power, and I'm afraid it is called being a bully, and just because it's not only accepted, but encouraged by many in the horse world, does not make it ok.

To be clear what I mean by bullying, it's forcing a person or a horse to do something totally unnecessary just because you can. It's showing no respect for the person/horse and respect, I'm coming to find, is one of the keys to successful training. So coming back to what makes a good rider? First, what makes a competent rider?

The competent rider achieves three things: Firstly, a competent rider has a respectful relationship with their horse - they show respect for their horse and they expect, and get, respect in return. Respect is a bit out of fashion, it's a good deal harder than showing "Who's boss" or showing love and affection for our horses. Respect requires that I ask, not demand, that I listen carefully, not just assume any show of resistance is naughtiness. To my shame only today, I found Fred's reluctance to pick up his foot for the farrier was because he had a stone in the one he was expected to stand on, not a dislike of the farrier. Respect requires that I am consistent in where I draw the line. It's not fair to accept the yearling bouncing around on the end of the headcollar today because she is feeling fresh and I'm tired, only expect her to walk quietly beside me tomorrow. If I want respect I have to set a standard and stick by it.

Secondly, a competent rider does not get in the way of the horse. They stay in balance, not throwing themselves up the horses neck just as he tries to take off, or catching them in the mouth as they land, or hanging on to the reins to help them balance.

Thirdly, a competent rider gives clear aids to their horse, so he knows what is expected of him.

And that's all. The competent rider may not look that great, may not be successful in competition but their horses will be confident, relaxed and a pleasure to handle and ride.

A good rider, goes an extra step. They understand when a horse is having a problem and can help them with a slight shift in weight, increased leg pressure at just the right moment. They know from some kind of natural instinct and/or years of experience, when to put more pressure on a horse and when to easy off. They are like the perfect host at a party who puts everyone at their ease and keeps the conversation going, food and drink flowing all with without apparent effort.

The inexperienced rider does a lot to little effect, the competent rider learns to do less and achieves more, and the good rider does very little, but just the right thing and at just the right time.

Git and Unfuddle for python project - using .ignore

This is a reminder to me in case I forget how I got this working.

Main development environment is local laptop
Master reponsitory on Unfuddle.com
Live environment on remote server

There are a few files, like settings.py, that I don't want to be synced and as these files were already in the repository I'd created, git kept trying to sync them.

To resolve:
Assuming already have everything setup - remote server setup with clone from unfuddle.

Create .gitignore file as part of repository:

settings.py
*.pyc
*~
site_media/avatars/*

Remove settings.py from git without deleting on both local and remote environments.

In Local environment:

git rm --cached settings.py
git commit -a -m "remove settings.py"
git push unfuddle master

In remote live environment

git rm --cached settings.py
git commit -a -m "remove settings.py"
git push

That should do it. Now commits can be exchanged without settings.py being updated.

Jerky Mouse on Virtual PC on Dell Laptop

I'm recording the solution to this problem in case it helps someone else with this problem.

STICK SOMETHING IN THE USB PORT!

Install VPC 2007 on Dell laptop (with no mouse) running Windows XP and every time I'd open the VPC guest OS, the mouse would be so slow to respond, sometimes seconds, that it was unusuable. Installed Virtual PC additions, fiddled with the memory settings and all the other solutions I found online, no difference at all. Then found the suggestion to put something in a USB port and in desperation put in a USB stick. It worked! Well that only took 5 hours to solve.

The Future of the Irish Sport Horse

Since the glory days of the 1960s and 70s, the number of Irish horses competing in Show Jumping at the top level have dwindled. While our Irish riders still compete at the top level, few of them ride Irish horses because there just are so few able to compete at this level. Horse Sport Ireland have put together a task force to consider what can be done to regain our ranking and their recommendations include education for breeders, better information and communication on breeding, improvements in the production of young horses and changes to the way mares and stallions are classified. All good stuff, but it got me thinking about the sport horse industry as whole and this is an extract from a submission on the subject:

1. We are currently very successful in the breeding of event horses. Any plan to improve show jumpers must ensure we do not lose that ranking.

2. Are we trying to breed IRISH show jumpers or EUROPEAN show jumpers bred in Ireland? I suspect that most of the potential breeding stock in Ireland already have a substantial amount of continental warmblood and that they would be taken to top class continental stallions. There is nothing wrong with that if you aim is to produce a top class show jumper. However, if producing Irish Show Jumpers was a business, we would be asking what is the USP (unique selling point) of the IRISH horse otherwise why will people travel to Ireland to buy a horse that differs little from those produced on the continent?

Maybe the advertising for an elite sales in Ireland in 10 years reads " Looking for a hose that is easy to train, will get you out of trouble and stay sound for years? Come to the Elite Irish Show Jumper sales... "

I am aware this is a challenge for which there is no easy answer but maybe this is a starting point. What gets measured gets done, goes the old saying, so identify what makes Irish horses unique and give these measures prominence in the stud book. Also ensure that these qualities are included in the branding of irish horses.


3. Consider the aim to produce top class show jumpers as part of the overall strategy of building a thriving sport horse industry in Ireland - that includes eventers and leisure horses. What is the traditional Irish Horse suited for? Clearly eventing, at which we continue to be successful, and the leisure and amateur sport horse where the good nature, intelligence and agility of the irish horse are highly prized. It would therefore make commercial sense to focus on the markets for which we already have a good product. That is not to say that I would not like to see Irish Show Jumpers represented again, but suggest that to achieve this we should focus on quality rather than quantity. Properly support a smaller number of specialist breeders with the interest and competance to breed and produce show jumpers, rather than hoping the farmer and small breeder are going to create a large enough pool from which a few good horses will emerge.



By developing all three strands - show jumpers, eventers and leisure horses, with a focus on breeding straightforward horses that are trainable, intelligent and sound, we build a solid foundation for all forms of sport horse and avoid a situation where horses bred for a specialist purpose that cannot fulfill their potential are not suitable for anything else.

Install Gas/Oil or use Night Rate for underfloor heating?My cold damp house is

My stone and earth, cold, damp house is heated by two wood (and occasionally a bit of coal) fired stoves. The wood has so far come from felling 40 year old Sitka spruce on the property and I have some willow and other copice trees growing. But unless I keep both fires going full pace all day, most of the house sticks at 5 degrees C through the winter. Miserable. I have underfloor heating installed, but rarely have enough hot water for it to make a difference and the cost of running the 12KW of immersions in the water tank is high.

Having been purist about using only wood for the first 7 winters, I gave in and started putting the odd bucket of coal in the stove and I have to say it makes a HUGE difference. Even one bucket of coal a day gives enough extra heat for the UFH to kick in a bit and at least one room is positively warm for most of the day. Having looked at the cost of installing more biomass solutions - a ceramic stove or gasification boiler, both costing over €10k, and the extra work and wood required, I've also had to consider gas or oil at an installation cost of only 2-3k.

But what I have been holding out for is real time pricing. The electricity companies buy from a pool supplied by the generators. When it's windy that price is low because wind companies can sell at whatever price they can get, their costs are the same if they sell or don't. If it's a still cold afternoon in winter, the price can be very high as extra gas fired power stations are fired up. So the electricity companies buy at variable prices and sell to us at fixed prices. I want to buy my electricity at a fixed premium above the pool price, so when it's windy I get cheap electricity and can turn on my UFH at a couple of cents and hour and when it's not, I put an extra few logs on the fire. You can read more about Real Time Pricing at Jerry Sweeney's blog at http://synergy.chipeservices.com/, it's coming but we need smart metering etc.........

So in the meantime, should I bow to pressure to get a programmable fossil fuel solution to my heat problem, get some heated fingerless gloves or use night rate electricity? I've experimented with turning on the immersions during the night - the UFH kicks in automatically when the water reaches a certain temperature. By using 60kw a night at a cost of €5.22, I can rise the temperature of the whole house from 5 to 10 degrees and the rooms with the stoves in maintain a toasty 12 degrees overnight. A huge difference in the quality of life of the inmates.

Here is the cost calculation:

Price of Night Rate Electric kw	8.7
Price of Gas per kw	4.8
Units per night	60
Cost per night electric	€5.22
Cost per night gas	€2.88
Gas saving/night	€2.34
Installation of Gas boiler/tank	2000
Worst case - 200 nights/year	180
Payback period years	4.7

Ignoring maintenance costs for the gas/oil boiler and assuming the ratio between electricity price and gas/oil price remains unchanged, 4.7 years before I'm saving by putting in another solution! And my bet is that electricity will become, relatively, cheaper as we increase the proportion of wind. And Once the real time pricing kicks in, I could be heating the house for €1 a night on renewables and helping to balance the load on the grid. Then I would be smug and snug!

New Scenarios for Ireland 2025

Scenario Based Planning

Scenario planning is a technique for exploring the future by creating several plausible but challenging alternative futures rather than making a single prediction. It has been used by commercial companies since the 1970s when Shell was the only oil company prepared for the oil shocks of that decade as a result of its use.

Why use Scenario Planning?

A prediction is (almost) never right. The unexpected always happens and the assumptions, conscious and unconscious, that apply today may not apply tomorrow. For example, at the end of the last century, London could see no solution to the ever increasing amounts of horse manure on the roads, then along came the motor car. This highlights the difficulty with using forecasts: they carry forward current trends, problems and constraints and do not allow for the unexpected.

Scenarios are versatile. Scenarios can be used not only to prepare plans for the future, but to check existing plans for robustness. Will a plan work in more than one scenario or will fail if any of the underlying assumptions change? If we can develop flexible plans that will work with multiple scenarios, then, when the unexpected does happen, there is a better chance that the plan can be adapted to the new circumstances.

It is difficult to get consensus for a prediction. You can either agree or disagree with other people's predictions - and the tendency is to disagree. Scenario planning is about building plausible futures, a much less contentious task because we only need to agree that a scenario is possible to be able to use it. We don't even have to agree that it is likely.

Good scenarios challenge one's thinking and stimulate discussion. The human species has spent most of its history telling stories rather than looking at graphs and spreadsheets. As a result, the implications of a rich story about the future can be more easily understood and used. It is surprising how much information a scenario can convey in a few words. For example, the following classified advertisement can tell us a lot about what the future might be like under a particular scenario:

For Sale: 4x4 with axle suitable for conversion to wind turbine.

This can be interpreted as: Increases in the price of transport fuel have meant that vehicles with high fuel consumption are no longer in demand and it is becoming difficult to sell these vehicles. However, with increasing prices of home electricity, there is a boom in DIY windmills. A component of these windmills is the back axle of a car.


The original Energy Scenarios Ireland, originally described in 2006/7 have been updated, though in a many ways they have not fundamentally changed.

Business As Usual has become Celtic Kitten - our focus is to get back to 'normal' but without a property boom to support the economy and a mountain of debt to support, it's a bit of a disappointment.

Enlightened Transition has become Celtic Phoenix - rather than emulate the ambitions of others, Ireland plays to the talents we have. A well educated work force, adaptable and creative, a small country with plentiful renewables - just what is needed to build and trial new products and services. Ireland markets itself as a big hothouse for new and growing young businesses.

Enforced Localisation has become Celtic Hedgehog - Back to the land and a life of frugal comfort. It takes decades for Ireland to re-emerge.

Fair Shares becomes Celtic Fox - In honor of Colin Campbell who used the Celtic Fox in his presentations. Ireland applies it's abilities to make the best of difficult times to adapt to a high cost economy. Times are tough but we are now well placed to build a stronger economy.


Further installments to follow, with particular focus on Celtic Phoenix.

Relief in Copenhagen as the cause of global warming is traced to a single address

Entry in a caption competition:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/