Anna Blake This is how it goes: Sometimes it’s just fine to go lollygagging around. The time isn’t right; you’re hungry or distracted by work or family, or where your gloves went to. You don’t want to ride alone but can’t find anyone to ride with. But then you find someone and spend the whole time … Read more
His bray begins with a shallow panting, as he aligns the end of his nose level with his back, his ears splay flat as the horizon. Then his ribs spread wide, gasping more air in and sounding the long exhale, punctuated by the flexing of his belly muscles for a prodigious honking howl, as … Read more
It was a sadly normal week in the larger horse world. Horses got hurt and humans waged war with each other about it. If you love horses, it’s easy to blame everyone in sight, easy to scream with vitriol and make sure everyone knows you are better than the haters who hurt horses. Social media … Read more
Writing Stable Relation, my first book, took me sixty years, give or take. Okay, I exaggerate, but I had anxiety about wanting to write it almost that long. When I finally sat down, stopped wishing and started doing, it was only a year to write and another year to edit. It was heavy work, every … Read more
Jerk out the fencing staples and carefully pocket them, leave nothing in the dirt. Pull the sagging wire fence free and drag it to open ground. Fold a few feet of the end over, stepping it flat, and make another fold, untidy as a fitted bedsheet from the clothesline. Reset posts as needed, unroll … Read more
People talk to horses constantly. The words are unintelligible most of the time, to both us and the horse, but we chatter away, explaining what we are doing as we do it. “Now we’ll clean your feet.” Sometimes we are so uncomfortable with the quiet that we fill in their half of the conversation, too. … Read more
We became strangers. I thought I knew her so well; that place just back from her ears where her mane flips to the other side. Her slow half-closed eye resting in speckled shade, head low to the flank of a gelding. Her outline in moonlight blue at the night feed, the horse from my … Read more
It was my job to haul him to his new trainer. He was a bright young gelding, some would call him hot, as if having too much anxiety was just how some horses are naturally. I’d call him low on confidence, not a crime in a young horse. He pranced a bit on the lead, … Read more
The sunset plays me. In the heat of the day, colors are flattened by glare and searchlight bluntness, work taken on, tasks finished. But when the sunset looks at me sideways, flirting through the clouds, changing expression in each instant, I come stumbling out on the porch, fumbling with my glasses, my camera, knowing … Read more
There was a time that I had a basset hound named Agatha and a bunch of friends with toddlers. It was hell. See it from Agatha’s side. Toddlers are short and take uneven steps, moving more like a prey animal than a human. A tipsy bunny. And they are sticky-sweet, sometimes wearing a soiled diaper. … Read more