Making War on Horses: Is it Leadership?
By reader request: "Horses need a dominant leader; you have to make him respect you." "You can't let him get away...
Sleeping With The Wrong Dog
Warning: This is not an upbeat rescue story. It's a sad story with a sad ending. Proceed with caution. Or...
Photo Challenge: Delta
Walking the washout, high desert ground between pond silt and prairie pasture, I know to look for crushed cans, bits...
Caring for the Lead Mare
It was a perfect day. There were just enough clouds to soften the heat. The front gate didn't open once all day...
Mounting Block Conversations
This is Andante. He likes to have a conversation at the mounting block. He wasn't always like this. In his...
Photo Challenge: Dense
Stupid. Dense. Stubborn. Lazy. Until we stop seeing others in our own worst self-image, these words will describe us. .......
Circling Back: How We Became One.
We were hooked and it was written all over us. The first weird looks passed between our parents. We were...
Do You Communicate Like a Coyote?
Some of us baby-talk and cuddle our horses like they're twelve-hundred-pound teddy bears. Some of us enter the pen with...
Climate Change: Not Just Bad for Polar Bears.
Farm kids, like me, learn early that a healthy anxiety about the weather is the subtext of every task--from lambing season, to...
Safety and Being a Spoil Sport.
I'm a riding instructor. Wait, it's worse than that. A riding instructor who has read the small print of her liability...
The Politics of Holiday Pie
Inconceivable: I'm going to share my pie recipe. I'll pause and give my friends time to pick themselves up. They know...
Photo Challenge: It’s Not This Time of Year Without…
bucking tradition: when seasonal words don't fit when obligation overwhelms desire when some mourn or have none or do not when the...
The Passion to Punish
First, last, and always, this is the truth about communication with animals: Punishment is the lowest form of expression. A...
Winterizing the Compassion Fatigue. Again.
Chatting lightly about weather is considered the tiniest of small talk, unless you live outside the urban bubble. We take...
The Fine Art of Cantankery.
I've had a hard time acting my age. That's not it, exactly. It's more like I'm straddling the Grand Canyon...
A Trailer of One's Own
A horsewoman told me that, at sixty-three, she was the proud owner of her very first horse trailer. I let...
Money: If Wishes were Horses…
"How much does a horse cost? Do you have to be rich to own one?" I can tell you how...
Weekly Photo Challenge: Pure
Not politics, religion; not money or guns. Answer deep and pure, in our heart, soul; our Earth and Sun. ~~~Read...
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