Photo & Poem: Reluctant
Stay outside until the sun is low, reluctant to let the day end, tidying halters, raking loose hay into...
Does Your Horse Need a Tune-Up?
This is how it goes: Sometimes it's just fine to go lollygagging around. The time isn't right; you're hungry...
Photo & Poem: A Donkey’s Years
His bray begins with a shallow panting, as he aligns the end of his nose level with his back,...
What to Do When You See Cruelty
It was a sadly normal week in the larger horse world. Horses got hurt and humans waged war with each...
Authorblog: A New Book. Does It Count If I Haven’t Suffered Enough?
Writing Stable Relation, my first book, took me sixty years, give or take. Okay, I exaggerate, but I had anxiety...
Photo & Poem: A Cure for Sadness
Jerk out the fencing staples and carefully pocket them, leave nothing in the dirt. Pull the sagging wire fence...
How to Have a Conversation with Someone Who Doesn’t Talk
People talk to horses constantly. The words are unintelligible most of the time, to both us and the horse, but...
Photo & Poem: I Cannot Know
We became strangers. I thought I knew her so well; that place just back from her ears where her...
Calming Signals: Trust Above Training
It was my job to haul him to his new trainer. He was a bright young gelding, some would call...
Photo & Poem: When the Sunset is Through With Me
The sunset plays me. In the heat of the day, colors are flattened by glare and searchlight bluntness, work...
Calming Signals: Do You Tease Your Horse?
There was a time that I had a basset hound named Agatha and a bunch of friends with toddlers. It...
Photo & Poem: Sentient
Long in the tooth, people say. Gray hairs dusting his temple, this gelding plays the part of good uncle,...
Aggressive or Assertive?
She was a breathtaking draft-cross mare who I met at Duchess Sanctuary this year. There was just a presence about...
Photo& Poem: Go Fish
Mom took us kids in the station wagon to the church bazaar. Homemade women’s goods for sale; boring cross-stitched...
Affirmative Training for Colts and Fillies
Foals are irresistible. They are precocious and lively; they cavort and air gallop and sleep flat-out. When they wake...
Photo & Poem: Faraway Friends
I would show you the adolescent Canada geese on the pond. Better behaved than we ever would have been,...
Brain Science as a Training Aid
It was a two-day-long science class and we were promised a brain dissection. I signed up immediately and have...
Photo & Poem: Dwindling Light
His swayed back so warm in the late afternoon but he doesn’t lie down. His shoulders bear his weight...
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