#respecthorses

Hindsight Argument for Affirmative Training

He was a huge gelding with obvious draft blood. I could see white all the way around his eye. It had been months of every little thing being a really big deal. A big deal that he goes into a smaller pen of fence panels. A big deal to let a human in with him. A big, slow deal to get a halter on him. Breathe.

The client had ridden him at his old barn before she bought him. He was very timid, but…

Meeting the Przewalski’s Horse in Scotland

  Val and her son, Hulagu

They’re wild horses discovered by Nikolai Przewalski, a Polish-born colonel in the Russian Army, on an 1878 exhibition to the Mongolian-Chinese frontier. The colonel named the horses after himself.

Sara, 28, surprised everyone with a foal last year, after a nine-year break.

They are also referred to as takhi, the Mongol word for “spirit.”

By either name, these are true…

Photo (Poem) Challenge: Peek

Did he want to be invisible? As still as wood, his head holds solitude in the corner. This bay gelding does not have a lightning bolt blaze on his face or tall white stockings that pull my eye. His coat the color of honey in tea, his mane and tail a shade darker. He is elegance in understatement. Close enough to touch, I'm greedy feel his warmth, to run my fingers though the…

Young mare, on the full-moon night you were born, we recognized one another. It was an awkward kinship of un-belonging, both of us being more like the other than either of us were like our mothers. No baby talk or embraces, we each stood squarely as equals, never anyone's little girl. You're a coppery redhead, eyes ringed with white, a reverse racoon, and your body followed suit before the…

Safety and Being a Spoil Sport.

I’m a riding instructor. Wait, it’s worse than that. A riding instructor who has read the small print of her liability insurance, as if I didn’t feel responsible enough before. Beyond that, I’m certain that if one of my horses hurt someone, it wouldn’t be his fault and it would break my heart. Maybe literally. My barn isn’t safe for kids. Wait, it’s worse than that. My barn isn’t safe for adults,…

Mental Focus Means Not Trying Too Hard

My friend and I took yoga while we were in high school. It was 1971 or so, and I can’t remember if the group met in a church basement or at the “Y”, but I will never forget my red leotard. It had long sleeves and was a garish scarlet color, with matching semi-transparent tights–think Red Snapper–the fish. The class began, we were asked to close our eyes, and take some deep breaths. I didn’t…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Curve

The mingling of moist breath, the warm embrace of a curve, the uncomplicated wholeness that we covet. And the guilt we earn when we destroy the beauty we can’t rise up to meet. ___ Anna Blake, Infinity Farm. (WordPress Photo Challenge is a weekly prompt to share a photo–I enjoy twisting these macro prompts to share our micro life here on the Colorado prairie. My photos are taken with my phone, on…