A cowboy walks into a bar. He’s dusty, fresh from the barn. Shuffling his feet, keeping his eyes low, he crosses the floor. Voices stop as the cowboy collapses on a stool by the bar, pulling his hat off with one hand and burying his head in the crook of his other arm. The bartender … Read more
I was raised by people who didn’t let dogs in the house. The common opinion was that dogs should live outside or in the barn. On our sheep farm, there was a hard line between us and the animals we depended on for a living. But my mother insisted I spend the day outside with … Read more
“I owned horses for 20 years until divorce happened,” the reader said, asking me to write about it. “I think they are the only thing that kept me sane and leaving them was the hardest thing I have ever done.” The reader said it was literally a matter of life or death. I believe her … Read more
Most of us start with an allergy. Our noses get stuffy and our eyes are red and teary all the time. We’re allergic to not having a horse and it’s chronic. We start sniveling when we’re kids. We cry if we can’t have a pony, we cry when we get a pony, and … Read more
It’s January first. The calendar has flipped over and I’m happy with the new numbers. New Year’s is an excellent holiday if you like fresh starts and I certainly do. Like most horse people, I’m a perfectionist, and besides, there is always something on a list I didn’t get done. I know a change on … Read more
Even on holidays, our family dinners don’t look like other people’s. Neither do our hands or shoes. We look different; we have chronic hat hair from helmets or broad-brimmed favorites that never quite keep us out of the sun. We buy half our clothes in the men’s department which explains why we are unrecognizable the … Read more
This blog will get back to some sort of new “normal” soon. What a year, huh? For now, just a note to say how grateful I am for your time here with us. I so appreciate you. Thre is a new book out and this is an audio version of the title poem, Horse. Woman. … Read more
It’s Thanksgiving time and I should write something special, but I feel kind of ordinary. All I can think about is how dry it is. Last week a fire started on a neighbor’s property. They got it under control quickly, but I stood with my mouth open watching. I was frozen, knowing … Read more
If horse people know one thing, it’s that it’s never just one thing. Having horses also means we partner with the land. Sometimes it’s hard to tell us from our land; we bear the same scars. Colorado is in a drought, as many areas of the world are. We have the two largest wildfires in … Read more
I usually write a gray mare rant annually on my birthday. I’m late, but that’s because I had to let it lay in the sun for a while until the varmints picked its bones clean. It needed to decompose a bit before I could articulate my feelings into language that wouldn’t scare the goats. Like … Read more