WWI French Film Footage

Here's some interesting orignal footage from the First World War, courtesy of Le Figaro:

Exclusif : le film-hommage aux poilus
Uploaded by lefigaro

And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself

Here's a couple of pictures from HBO's "And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself":


For more, go HERE

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all!!

Trailer Training

As many of you have probably figured out by this time, getting into trailers has been a real challenge for both Max and I over the years. While I have successfully trailered Max places over the past two years, there have been instances where Max refused to go, something that I believe is behavioral rather than stemming from any innate fear. I've been able to resolve these by jerking the lead rope, getting in his face and growling "KNOCK THAT SHIT OFF NOW". It seems to have had an effect because the three times this has happened, Max immediately bowed his head and submitted and then proceeded to follow my instruction with no fuss.

Also, the fact that he's trailered for long periods of time and spent long stretches in an idle trailer further reinforces my belief that at this point, the issues are behavioral. He even stood quite calmly for some 45 minutes when we stopped in Malibu on our way home from Morro Bay in August (it was to drop off a passenger and her stuff).

I've decided to tune him up and reinforce his trailer training so every so often, I practiced loading him into a trailer. A couple of times he balked while I was walking him in a circle before stepping in but I solved that by revesing direction. Then it was no issue. Go figure. After a few days practicing walking in and backing out, on a lark I decided to see if I could get him to go in on voice command and it actually worked! What I do is to while verbally commanding him, I take the hand holding the lead rope and point with hit into the trailer as a cue. This seems to work very well. Max then turns and looks at me. I then make him wait a bit and then command him to exit (more like "out!"). Eventually I'm going to train him so he'll do it solely on voice command.

This is all very promising and while he may get stupid in a "real situation", it still has gone a long way to getting him to load successfully. My next step is to train him to do this in the dark/low light situations.

November 2008 GWHS Event

Here's a picture of me after a long day as Allied Commander at the Fall GWHS battle at Ozena Valley:

Thanksgiving Myths

Courtesy of the History Channel, here's some interesting information on myths surrounding the Thanksgiving holiday:

http://www.history.com/minisite.do?content_type=Minisite_Generic&content_type_id=874&display_order=5&mini_id=1083

Brush Fires - Oh Joy!

Sorry I haven't been around but life has been crazy in the past 24 hours. There is a major brush fire that broke out at around 2 am Sunday morning close to where I board my horse and I've been helping out with potential evacuation of horses and livestock. A friend of mine called me up at about 4 am with the news and by the time I got to the stables, it had burned to about a mile of the stables with strong Santa Ana winds fanning the blaze. You couldn't miss the flames and it looked like hell was on its way. We were also lept busy crusing around the property looking for stray embers and putting them out with shovels and dirt. Thank god the wind reversed direction or it would have been all over very fast.

Basically, if it looked like we were going to get overrun, we would have released the horses into the wash and let them work their way out. I actually saddled up Max and had him ready for a quick getaway if things went bad (which they can with a brush fire). Fortunately, with the wind reversed and multiple strikes by helicopter water drops (they were literaly flying overhead and dropping it almost on top of us), the fire was largerly suppresed until the winds whipped it up again and it began to burn away from us. It's still going but they'll knock it down if the winds don't get too bad.

Also, while the one approach is burned out, there's still several others that could go and endanger everything. I'm glad that I microchipped Max the week before. October has always been the worst time of year for this sort of thing and this one is no exception. Well, I guess we won't have to worry about clearing brush on some of the trails... Now to get some sleep and pray that nothing else happens.

Here's a picture of the affected area- four hours before this picture was taken, the hills were a blazing inferno.