Category: Horsemanship
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The Devolution of the Pushbutton Horse
About a decade ago, I went to the Scottsdale All Arabian Horse show. I was excited to revisit a place I had happy childhood and early adulthood memories of. I sat in the stands, watching an English class, feeling a sense of unease washing over me. As the class went on, all I could see […]
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What Sustains You?
We were working in Arizona last month, doing a series of clinics. After the warm day had cooled to a crisp desert evening, my friend Lori asked me this question. “What sustains you?” I didn’t have an answer off the top of my head. More disconcerting was that upon reflection, I couldn’t come up with […]
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Quality Vs. Quantity
Where there was once green grass, there’s now snow and the leftovers of what was a lush pasture. It’s March, which means it’s also time for our horses to come home. As Mark and I walked out, the halters jingling at our sides, we saw six sets of furry ears pointed in our direction. Each […]
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Truce
When I started learning about horses, it was from a place of deep and abiding love. The way of being with horses that I fell into came from a place of entrenched warfare. Not everything done to them was horrible, or drew blood, but looking back I can see how dominating it was. Between learning […]
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Sanity in a Wheelbarrow
I confess: cleaning stalls, scrubbing water troughs, and slinging hay have been my lifelines to sanity this year. Add in horsehair in my mouth as I groom the summer coat from our horse’s bodies, and I can almost forget this is 2020. The barn, the horses, and all the chores that aren’t really chores are […]