jan 28 2018

honey in  coffee is  not the usual 1/ cup of sugar l like, but it is not bad at all...  2am to 4am is my creative time of day    --so i dug out a voice recorder and started in on  THE BOOK  ---  a chapter on  how to drive a car-- basically... informativ.. educational... from ny vvast experience...  the breif outline..." ***when you own a horse trailer- you will be befrended by people with college bound kids and shortly be in the business of  moving beauros, books and beds across town, between dorm rooms then  from appartment to appartment..-----.the most/heaviest  i ever "hauled" was for dr.paul williamson-- a  young co hort  of my husband's -- he had a moving party one night-- bunch of guys...  mostly MD's  -- we filled my 53' massive horse trailer with his stuff and went across the street and backed up th e driveway of his new home where they all  unloaded it....  i  did not ride in the back of that  trailer-- i had to back it.... but i have in my lifetime had teh occasion ot stand up  in a trailer and hold a big mirror while someone else drove acoss boston,  this was a significant part of my PHD in murphy's law....   It is not all peaceful a dn quiet back there... and i quickly learned alot about being an animal in a vehicle with someone else driving.  emergency stops are sometimes unavoidable... but ---there is no excuse for jack rabbit STARTS.. ZERO TO 60 IN 4.2 SECONDS IS NOT FASCINATIONG IN THE BACK OF A TRAILER...---when you drive you get to do 3 things ---  push the brake, use the gas, or steer.---my advice from the back of the trailer is... you should  not do 2  of those things at once ..because when you do you create one heck of a whipping action  to those  in the back...cloverleafs are deadly to horses ( and dogs) ---  you put the brake on -- this shifts the weight of the horse more to the front legs- once properly slowed , you then steer thru the cloverleaf which shifts teh weight to the  left legs....pull out of the cloverleaf into traffic and the weight shifts to the rear legs.. all nice and organized...HOWEVER...   to brake and steer and then steer and accellerate  is when you need"shipping bandages" on the horse or they will get all  cut up scrambling to stay on their feet. it is not a lot different with dogs.  true story " something is wrong with my dogs hips  he can't jump in the  car any more"-- after thouscands of $$ in hip xrays, pills and  the like, they came to me... and i rode around the block.. the dog certainly could jump in ht ecar...problem was... he wojuldnt't. and the reason was... the driver... and teh space in front of the back seats.....their dog had fallen in that hole once too often...  so we stufed newspapers in the space where the rear passengers legs usually went... covered them with a blanket. and teh dogs hips were all of a sudden not the issue. i remembered my father - teaching me to drive...--- he taped a wineglass to the dash board- so it was level.--- and filled it  to the brim with water..  if i spilled any water, i did not drive for a month.  so this is the lesson i now mention to people getting one of our dogs...  don't come back here and tell me yo you have them on 3 pain and 2 tranquiliers a day -when in fact you need to adjust your driving style... and remember-- you  can not accelerate at the rate with which  you can de-celerate..