I think that a lot of people are under the impression that my life is glamorous.  As I write this, I am sitting in a campground that spans about 5 acres and am surrounded by at least 500 people in campers and tents parked 10 inches from each other.  Everyone has a Boston accent except for me.  The campground is located across from Santa’s workshop.  My son is watching Elmo for the…

Walter likes to think of himself as amazingly athletic, incredibly fascinating, and wildly handsome, with an exceptional rack of ears. Remember Walter? He is the Corgi that came here to rescue us from the peace and solitude of the prairie 6 months ago.  Walter has…

....I often get asked how to find Great Horsemanship Clinicians or Trainers and how to determine the Good ones from the GREAT ones.....

Here are 5 Telltale Signs to Look for When Searching for Masters of Horsemanship.

•  People Like to be Around Them and Respect…

We have been having a record breaking amount of rain this summer, and yesterday was no different.  It was our 16^th day in a row of rain.  Huge storms barreled through in the afternoon, but stopped just in time for our ride.

My niece came out to ride.  Since Ranger is recovering from a stone bruise, my sister offered me Dante to ride.  (I…

Wet.  Humid.  “Tropical air”.  5.35 inches of rain in the last 7 days.  Dew points in the 70’s F, heat indexes hitting the low 90’s F.

Last Tuesday I ran down to my “local” tack store and asked Donna, the owner, if there were any breeches or tights cooler than and as secure as my FITS all-weather breeches.  She picked out a Kerrit’s full seat tight and a FITS Treads Lite breech with rubber dots where the FITS full seat paneled patches go.  I got the FITS breech…

Have you ever had the frustration

of going to get your horse who

 then turns and walks away from you?

Great Horsemanship Trainers use the Halter Test

It is a quick and easy way to get a TON of information about you and your horse. By simply paying attention to the bits of information the horse gives you as you are doing it, you can easily learn to use the…

My boy was in his first parade in Aurora on Canada Day, and he was awesome.

This is a moment of triumph; the culmination of a year and a half of careful work, of diligently following a detailed, specific  training plan, to acheive a horse that is calm and quiet, yet light and responsive to the aids. Quite the change. He is, indeed, a different horse.…

Monday July 1 2013

I was just going to pick his feet and groom him but when I was finished I decided to take him out on the regular lunge line and flat halter. Al put the treats in his bucket before I was done grooming and Cooper was trying to back into his stall. We did some circles, walk, trot, canter transitions while another boarder lunged also. He did great tonight, listening to my voice cues and keeping a loose line on the lunge, even at a canter this time. The other boarder…

Fabulous décor & nic-nac store on Main St, located inside the old Feed & Grain Mill carries all sorts of great horse themed decorating items and giftwares. No website, no email...but you can't miss it.

Summer weather has definitely arrived here, hot, muggy, and lots of afternoon thunderstorms.  NC has been in drought most of the past decade, but this year the rain seems to be determined to make up for the whole drought, we are 6 inches over “normal” instead of 6” below normal.  Everything goes “squish” now.

This time of year my seat riding usually disintegrates rapidly and the horses I ride get irritated at me for my unsteadiness, often telling me that I better…

People love to tell horror stories. Once they know that I have horses, they can’t resist telling me about getting bucked off, run away with, or stepped on.  Somehow this makes them very cool and the horses very stupid.

I tend to defend…

A recent study in the UK found 91% of leisure riding horses had behavioral issues as reported by their owners. 



Researcher J Hockenhull PhD said that of the 1,326 horses, 78% were ridden with artificial aids—such as martingales, whips, or flash…

Since the weather turned into summer down here in NC (hot and muggy) I have been getting pretty tired riding.  Two weeks ago the weather was particularly fine, cool and with low humidity, but Debbie was having a summer riding camp and I could not ride there.  Then the humidity came back but after riding only once in ten days, I am quite happy to be back riding three times a week and getting tired!

Because of the heat and humidity I tried to use my super, super, super…

Big News!!!!

My sister sent me an email to tell me she rode Dante across the river this morning—all by herself.  I didn’t even know she was going to try.  So I had to call her.  She said that at first he tried his spinning, but that didn’t work for him.  Then he tried to back up a few times, but that didn’t work for him, either.  Then, he put his head down to look at the water.  At that point, she knew she had him.  She clicked and treated him, so he did it again.  she…

A few weeks ago it was cold and dark; winter is miserable horse weather. It was impossible to ride some days and the best we could do was plan our summer riding goals. Now it’s almost the middle of summer. How are those plans coming along?…

Well time to get caught up. Last week's was a good start to all this, but maybe now it's time to get this figured out.

Three weeks ago was one of our most successful lunge sessions. Blue is a great horse especially when it comes to me learning things, she's very forgiving if I do anything wrong, which is great in a partnership.…

Cruiser and the River

Yes, another river story, but this once starts quite a few years ago.  Back when Cruiser was probably 13-14 years old, he got really weird when he was crossing the river in the spring.  I don’t know exactly what he would do, since I was always on his back and couldn’t see it, but it was terrifying.  All of his legs went all different…

Dante and the River

Life got in the way, and we weren’t able to tackle the river again for weeks.  There was high water one weekend, extreme cold on another and then there was the awful weekend that Ellen had to work.  We really wanted to get past the river, and we were both frustrated.

 …