Remember the Stepford Wives–a little too submissive, a little too darkly docile? I saw horses just like them last week and I’m still in a snit. They were at a riding facility–a group lesson of fairly novice western riders. Each of the horses had a shank bit, each of the riders used spurs. The horses moved like the zombie-wives who had lost the will to live… altered into submission by their self-important husbands. If one of the horses did lift his head to see where he was going,…

Riders know this lesson; if you get bucked off you have to climb back on. That’s the rule. Horse or rider are better for it. They say that the hardest thing about riding is hitting the ground (sigh) but I disagree. The recovery is often more challenging.

I think we are afraid of what we know- more than the unknown. Experience makes it personal. Once we have…