It has been SOOOO hot and humid this week. One of the few good aspects of my MS is that when it is hot I am guaranteed not to work the horses too hard for the weather conditions. I can't do much more than walk with an occasional short trot. This weather is not good for vigorous athletic pursuits, and with the pollution it isn't good for the lungs to do deep breathing, for both horse and rider.

I have been working on keeping a…

Summer is hard for most people with MS. The heat reduces the effectiveness of my nerves, and when it is really humid then my body can't cool down and my core body temperature just goes up and up. Since my ice vest was causing days long muscle cramps I switched to the system that works by evaporation, but since the humidity is so high the cool vest does not evaporate very well and I just get hotter and hotter.

I…

This has been a horrible week for riding down here in sunny NC. Temperatures up to 101 F (ca. 38 C), high humidity, and all the smog from the big Northern cities flowing down to make the air a blackish yellow soup. Definitely walking weather. Why wear out the lungs?

When I first started riding Mia she was a timid mare, and she shied gently at the most inconsequential things, both in and out of the ring. I knew that part of the…

Forty years ago today I got my first horse. My father had inherited a little money from his mother, and decided that I needed a horse, finally. We had trail ridden in South America for four years while I was in grade school, I did not learn much about how to ride properly back then, just posting and using the reins clumsily to turn and stop. I never stopped hanging onto the pommel when cantering. Of course I thought I knew how to ride until I started reading…