Relaxed & Forward Blog

EOY P&L: Life, Death, and Tears

EOY P&L... my last post of the year always has some math involved. I don't have the math skills to quantify the number...
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Weekly Photo & Poem: Favorite

  Her years on flat open prairie, the hard-scrap jumble of danger and chance left only the essentials: skeptical wisdom,...
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Talking Animals at Midnight

Just in from the night feed. It's longjohn weather, my head bandaged with layers of hats and a muffler, thick boots,...
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Photo Challenge and Poem: Ascend

Riding looks as easy as sliding a boot into a stirrup and throwing a leg over the horse's back. As...
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Seriously Lighthearted

Do you ever get the impression that your show up at the barn and your horse is watching you with...
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Photo Challenge & Poem: Cheeky

He's a goat who's had a bit of a weight problem since the cast came off. A free spirit, butting...
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Big Dreams, Low Expectations

I've become a real party-pooper when it comes to talented young horses. It isn't that I can't see the potential;...
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Photo Challenge & Poem: Serene

The cowboys I knew didn't dress like the movies. No neckerchiefs or fancy Mexican spurs. They wore easy smiles under...
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Calming Signals and Pain

  First, last, and always, make sure your horse is sound.  That's the warning that any decent equine professional gives...
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Getting In Cars with Strangers

My mother told me not to, but I do. I get in cars with strangers. More often than you'd think....
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Photo Challenge & Poem: Transformation

  The old gelding's eye sockets are hollow or maybe he's pulled his gaze inward. Once a trumpet blast of...
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Thanksgiving from a Cowboy Girl

You could tell it was the 1980's because I'd done something with my hair that made me look like a...
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Photo Challenge & Poem: Experimental

They live with us now, hooves half in their own history and half in ours, so closely inbred that our...
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Trust: A Suspension of Disbelief.

You love horses. No, you really, really love horses. Because they are so amazing. We share videos of blind horses cared...
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Photo Challenge & Poem: Temporary

He has walked on from this place into memory, this creature of heart and spirit. He can't remember a time...
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Circles: A Soft Bend

I'd led a sheltered life. I was thirty years old before I visited my first Saddlebred barn. I was just...
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Photo Challenge & Poem: Peek

  Did he want to be invisible? As still as wood, his head holds solitude in the corner. This bay...
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The Middle Path: Why Gaits Matter

Let's say you like to jump and so does your Arabian. Let's say you do endurance on an Appaloosa. Let’s...
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