Blog – A Horse Leads Me to Water

Discovering the Gateway to Liberation

Without the voice of the trainers and clinicians in my ear my riding on Jim faltered as I couldn’t ignore his signals of discomfort with the bit, the spurs, the crop and ultimately the saddle too. Was I simply inept as a rider? Perhaps. But do horses not also resist or evade competent riders who may be better adept at overruling them? They do (and it often does not go unnoticed) . Not living up to the standards of my original equestrian dreams was disappointing, as well as confusing. Trying to avoid feeling as though it wasn’t a good idea in the first place actually kept hope alive while self-doubt rose and self-esteem fell. Could I turn things around? Besides […]

Listening to the Horses Speak

Even though we had brought him home from the trainer, the plan to sell Robert stood. In my short career with horses I had only bought them. I didn’t have a clue about selling them. It might seem that one merely does the transaction in reverse, butI couldn’t see it that simply. While we were figuring out how we would promote and execute a sale, I was going to do my best to keep Robert’s recent training up (just the riding, not the jumping). Kitt had retreated emotionally from the horse when he decided to sell him as it was the only way he could go through with it. Even now he couldn’t bring himself to be closely involved with […]

The Great Recession

When Casey’s owner found a permanent retirement situation for her, she left us in the Spring. That summer we bought a horse trailer and a tractor. Then, over the next two years I added two more horses to my collection One was a Thoroughbred mare, who I named Starfire, bought as a project horse from a rescue ranch and the other was a registered Appaloosa gelding who I bought because he was well trained and sound for riding. He was called Jim. Working with a trainer specializing in eventing, I first rode her Hanoverian to improve my equitation and prepare to learn how to jump and traverse the patterns of the dressage arena. Later I turned to riding Jim. A […]

Buying Happiness in a Horse Ranch of Our Own

You may have heard the humorous saying, “Whoever said that money can’t buy happiness never bought a horse.” I did buy a horse, my husband did too. And I was pretty happy. But I thought I could be even happier if I had my own horse property! Getting out from under the limitations and challenges of boarding situations, having our own acreage on which to keep our horses and make our home sounded like it would seal the deal for happiness with horses. No more long commutes, no more public ranch peer pressure or irritation. Just peace and quiet to enjoy our horses from the convenience of home. That we could even consider acquisition of horses, let alone a property […]

My First Horse

Vegas was given the name Vegas by one of his owners in the succession of owners that ended with me. If I understood the lineage correctly she was the owner before the owner from which the proprietor purchased him. Aside from knowing that he was originally owned by whomever organized his breeding, how many owners in between is lost knowledge. But counting the ones I know of, including me, there were at least six. When I met him his age was said to be 18. If six owners were all there were, Vegas’ average time with each owner was around three years. That’s a lot of handoffs. The impetus for tracking down any of those who came before me was […]

The Equestrian Complex

Arriving at the new ranch was a bigger adjustment than it had been going from the first ranch to Red Tail Ranch. I was still fairly green in the ways and means of having a horse – so dependent on others for knowing what to do and how to do it. Even the horse knew more than I did, though I couldn’t see that then. We were yet again on leased Stanford land. Spanning many hundreds of acres, most of the boarding was in a pasture arrangement. The mares were separated from the geldings. There was an out of the way, easily unnoticed, set up of stalls and small paddocks where some horse’s lived regularly, and a few found refuge […]

Assuming the Equestrian Identity

The equestrian identity had appeared to me as the salve for my struggles with the human condition, especially my emotional wounds and faltering growth. The delight of novelty crested as a tsunami of hope against my melancholy. With so much to learn, each new aspect of horse care and training remained full of positive potential even if things didn’t go as planned or were stalled because the horse or I lacked in some way. As soon as Vegas was officially my charge, it became uncomfortable to remain at the ranch where we started together. For all I had gratefully learned there from the proprietor, my independent study had expanded my knowledge of horses. As the owner of Vegas my […]

In Search of the Horse

Not long after my immersion into the world of Seabiscuit I announced to my dear husband that I was thinking about “getting back into horses”. He mentioned rekindling his own interest in sailing, wondering if that would be of interest to me too. It wouldn’t, my sights were firmly set on horses. He did not try to stop me. Our urban San Francisco location did not immediately facilitate my goal, even though there was a riding stable in the city’s famous Golden Gate Park. I researched horseback riding lessons there and on the peninsula, the suburban, if not bucolic area south of the city known well as Silicon Valley. Each interview with a prospective facility began with the question of […]

In Pursuit of Happiness I Went to the Horse

My early childhood came with a love of horses. Being with them signified happiness. My parents afforded me such opportunities as generously as they could, but it wasn’t in their ability or perhaps not even in their idea of their own lives that I should have a horse of my own. In lieu of any time with live horses I collected Breyer models and other equine imagery and lived out my dreams as a horse girl through books like Black Beauty and The Black Stallion. Looking back, disappointed as I was at not getting a horse, I can admit that it was best that one did not come under my charge then, whatever my parents’ reasoning. By the end of […]

Relating to the Horse

We all learn how to relate to the world from our experience of relating to the world. If the world was represented by a horse, I could analogously understand how I relate to the world by examining the way I relate to a horse. However, what if my knowledge of how to relate to the horse was actually ignorance that seemed like knowledge? Could that be the case for my knowledge of the world, as well? What about how I relate to myself? Do I have a mixed up understanding of who I am as an individual? What if I could remove ignorance? Without ignorance what would my knowledge be of the horse, of the world, of myself? How would […]