redroanpony

I'd like to introduce you to someone who is very close to my heart.



She's close to my heart pretty literally, most of the time. Especially if I'm sitting on a particularly delicious bit of grass.



I don't know if you realize this, but whatever bit of grass you're sitting on is always more delicious than the rest. I have a theory that it's because your body heat has pre-warmed the grass and therefore made it more tasty.



Or possibly they just like to see if they can get you to move. They want to know exactly how soft your heart is so that they can discover ways to use that to their advantage.



In any event, this is that special someone I wanted to introduce you to. This is my Juno. (No, I did not name her after that movie with Ellen Page, though I like both that movie and Ellen Page. And no, she is not pregnant. Even when she sort of looks like it.) Juno is my horse, and when I say that she is mine what I really mean is that I am the person who is privileged enough to feed her and dote on her and keep her in the luxury to which she has become accustomed.



Juno is somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 years old. I think. Possibly. And she's a mustang, which is awesome, because I'm all about mustangs, and she was wild until she was about 10 years old or so, which I always like to tell people because it totally makes me sound impressive.



Here on this shiny new blog, I'll be posting a lot about Juno and our various shenanigans, so here's what you need to know, in a nutshell: Juno is my best friend. She's a work in progress as a horse living in the human world, and I'm a work in progress as a human trying to open some meaningful lines of communication with a horse. We're getting there, and we've already reached some big milestones. (The biggest one, I think, was when Juno decided I wasn't half bad. It kind of all falls into place from there.) We've got more work to do, and I hope you'll come along for the ride as I natter on about training and share epic and overzealous photo essays and perhaps write a haiku or two about just how soft Juno's nose is.

Because it really is incredibly soft. And kissable. And expressive and wiggly and fuzzy. And it smells of grass. Just look at it, and admit it to yourself: you are helpless to resist the power of that nose.

You might be forgiven for thinking of horse training as a low-tech pursuit; the point, after all, is to climb onto an animal and get said animal to do something you want, like racing or jumping or carrying you closer to your enemies so you can javelin them or something. (That last one is a particular favorite of mine; I practice it every weekend.) The equipment involved tends to be made of leather and rope. It's not as if getting your horse around a course of stadium fences requires you to build your own Large Hadron Collider in your basement. And anyway, if you wanted to go high-tech you wouldn't even have a horse, you'd build your own robot and go destroy Tokyo. Or maybe just buy a Roomba and watch your cat ride around on it for endless hours of entertainment.

But no. You're a horse person. You're old school. You might think you're doing pretty well with what you've got, and you might scoff at that girl at the stables who rides in some state-of-the-art gel-cushioned saddle made with memory foam and spare bits from an old space shuttle or whatever, but that's just a sign that you're woefully behind the times. Allow me to bring you into the digital age, while simultaneously blowing your mind. Allow me to introduce you... to the Kurt System.

It's the ultimate in "hybrid" vehicles: horse-computer hybrid, that is. It's like something out of a dystopian cyberpunk future: horses strapped into massive machines that look like astronaut training gear. But don't be so ridiculous. We're not training these horses to go into space. We're training them to... well, I'm not sure what. Ride the subway, maybe.



The Kurtsystems Rail is sort of like a hotwalker, if hotwalkers cost a bajillion dollars. It's an overhead rail system with room for horses (or camels!) to be strapped inside, at which point they... um... move around and around. It's sort of like a model train, only not model-sized. And with horses. Okay, it's not at all like a model train.



Like many innovations, the Kurtsystems Rail seems to have been designed mostly so that somebody could have a shiny toy with buttons to push. (Okay, it's also for physical condition and training horses and blah blah blah buttons.) These gentlemen with unfortunately fish-eye-lensed heads are admiring all their buttons. Plus, that one guy's even got a walkie-talkie. Clearly, the Kurtsystems Rail will totally get you laid. It's a chick magnet.

But it's tough to pick up women when you've confined yourself to the driver's seat of a horse monorail system inside the private indoor racetrack at your palatial desert estate. Luckily, you can also cruise the strip in style with the Kurtsystems Car.



It goes from 0 to 60 in... well, I'm not sure, really. But it is a high-performance vehicle! I can't wait for them to get around to reviewing this one on Top Gear. I'm sure Jeremy Clarkson will have only nice things to say and it should make terrific time when The Stig takes it for a spin around the racetrack.

All kidding aside though, that's one sweet ride. It can measure the horse's heart rate and oxygen uptake and... other stuff I don't understand either. And it has its own starting gate built-in, and lights, and you get to sit inside and drive it. There aren't any pictures of the buttons, but I'll bet you there are tons of them.



I can only assume that the mask thing is for... um... protection from hoof and mouth? Or, no! Zombies! That's to protect your horse from zombies. (Zombies, no matter what you may have been told, are always a danger. Keep safe out there, kids.)

And if that wasn't enough to sell you, there's the baby horse vehicle. This one's so epic that even the Kurtsystems website can't find words to justify describe it. So I'll describe it for you: it's just like the other things, only way more ghetto. You attach it to your tractor, apparently, instead of having an entire car for it. This is for either foals or people who can't afford a full-sized horse after buying the Kurtsystems baby horse vehicle.



Can't get enough of these amazing technological feats of... technologying? Can't believe your eyes that these amazing photographs are real? I feel you. That's why I'm pointing you to the video. Oh yes, there's video. There's video of horses and foals and camels all rocking their dope whips. (I particularly recommend "Kurtsystems Car with Foal," which is just the right blend of ridiculous and pointless to be a true star on the YouTube stage. And when you're done with that, watch the camels. Why? Because camels running is awesome.)

On the up side, once you've got your horse trained to work with one of these things, I imagine not much will bother him anymore. Soon, we'll be able to mechanize all aspects of horsekeeping and we won't even have to touch them anymore! Next stop: Terminator jockeys. They'll blow away the competition. Literally.