It is my pleasure to offer another great horse story to my readers by way of a book giveaway! This book is uniquely written in the voice of the horse himself, named Pie, an old brown cowhorse. It’s very interesting to look at the world through the eyes of a horse, and this book lays out this individual horse’s life with vivid descriptions and unforgettable scenarios. I loved meeting each of the horses presented in this story; they were described so well I felt like part of their herd.
I attended a training clinic several years ago, put on by a good friend of mine, Kevin Wescott, a horse trainer from west-central Nebraska. It was a general horsemanship clinic, where local people brought their own horses and asked Kevin to help them through issues they were having, or give advice on their riding, and so on. I was there with my mare Daisy, whose behavior at this clinic you might remember from my previous blog post. But aside from that, I observed something at this clinic that has stuck in my mind ever since.
I have said before—and been quoted as saying—that a horse is born with it’s disposition. Good or bad, that horse can only be one way the rest of its life, and any amount of training is merely a slight modification of the true nature of the horse. But I think I have to change that statement slightly by saying that a horse’s disposition is formed at a very early age (not exactly at birth) and once it has formed that initial, instinctive code of conduct, it is set—good or bad—and it’s very difficult to change it completely.
Most of us horse lovers have been inspired by horses and riders in the movies at one point or another. Whether it was growing up watching Bonanza or seeing Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken for the first time, those horses and the people who rode them made a big impact on us and deepened our interest in becoming a rider or owning our own horse someday. There are just a few things that have crossed my mind when watching some of the Hollywood-style riding, and wanted to comment for the benefit of the total beginning horse enthusiast.
Ever since I was a little girl I recall wanting to be a cowgirl. I had this pair of cowboy boots that you would have thought were permanently attached to my feet. They were an old beat up pair of boots that were way too big, but no matter what the weather was like, I always had them on.
Last weekend we took our cows out west where I grew up. From here, it’s a four hour ride in a car…a six hour ride for a cattle pot and truck and trailer with seven people packed into the crew cab. Saturday was one long hectic day. But it was one of the best weekends I’ve had in a long time, because to me it meant going home.
I have a horse story to share that my oldest sister Kandra has written, telling about her very first horse, Apache. If you’ve read very many of my own horse memories, you’ll remember that my sister is the one who influenced my siblings and I to love horses, and I wanted to know the details of how she came to own her first horse, because it happened when I was just a toddler, and I don’t remember it so well. I have always felt a strong gratefulness to the man who gave her the horse, as his generosity set off a wave of fondness for horses that encompassed my whole world, and changed all of our lives. It is Kandra’s favorite horse memory, and this is how her story goes….
I am a writer, and one of my favorite things to do is to tell a good story. I have often said that getting a horse is like getting a brand new notebook. You open it up, and it’s blank….just waiting to be filled in with adventures, experiences, knowledge, sentiment, good memories, colorful adjectives, and whatever else comes your way. So it is when you get a horse….I went for a ride with Cowboy Dad yesterday. We had talked about trailering out to some trails or something, since we had a whole afternoon and warm sunny weather.
Today was amazing. Well, if you don’t count the fact that it’s the beginning of January and still a little cold for my taste. And if you don’t mention that today was my husband’s first time to get bucked off a horse. It was sunny with no wind, a Sunday afternoon, and he said we’re crazy if we don’t go for a horse ride today. So we did. Here’s how it went:
I am happy to announce a new giveaway here on CowgirlDiary.com! This is a brand new horse book, just released yesterday, November 1, 2011. I got the chance to read it beforehand, and was pleasantly surprised by it. An avid reader of horse-related literature, I expected a rather indulgent account of far-fetched fluff. What I found instead, is that the author lets you into her world and honestly portrays the true realities of horse ownership. I found my own horse experiences mirrored in the thoughts and feelings of the writer, and by the time the last page was turned, I felt that I knew her so well I had found a kindred spirit.
Our weanling stud colt is just a handful. I had forgotten what it’s like having a horse this young, but he is certainly a lot of trouble. The main problem is that he has got too much energy and not enough experience. Watching him careen around the farm full-tilt is entertaining until you see him run into something. Owning this colt is like having a teenager who just got his own drivers license and is anxious to demonstrate his skills. It’s exciting, it’s entertaining, it’s often hilarious…..but it’s also scary.
When we went to pick up the new horses last week, we took my mare Daisy along. Not as a travelling buddy, but because there was a horse sale going on in a town along the same route, and we decided to consign Daisy in it and just see what might happen. We have talked about selling her several times, and buying two more seemed a tad bit excessive, and the trailer was going that way anyhow, so we took her to the sale with a reserve price firmly established in our minds.
News flash! We have new horses! We saw a classified ad, made a phone call, took a road trip in the rain, wrote a check, went back with the horse trailer, and look what we got: a sweet little buckskin mare and her four month old stud colt! This should come as no surprise if you know us well—we have been looking for a buckskin horse for about four years, and have skimmed through countless horse classifieds in search of the perfect one. And in true horse-collector’s fashion, we bought not one, but two!
When I was a kid, my favorite days were the long summer ones when we spent the day horseback. There was always something to do around the ranch…either moving cattle to a different pasture, checking the wells to make sure there was adequate water, or riding colts always prevented boredom from overtaking us. But I can think of some stories when we just had too much time on our hands.
We scheduled our trip west this spring so that we would time it right to go along on the big cattle drive up Pass Creek to summer grazing in the mountains. This morning began as every morning does on my parents’ ranch: (my husband would interject, “Slowly!” here—ha ha!) with a big breakfast, a Bible devotional, and some long drawn out discussion about which person is to ride which horse, and what other horses might be taken along in the trailer for substitute mounts, and what horses have been shod and which haven’t
I was at my folks’ house last weekend, and was looking through some boxes of old photos, and came upon a letter I had written them many years ago when I was a lonely school teacher just out of college, with only horses to keep me from feeling homesick. Reading through it gave me a mix of feelings—happy to remember the fun day on horseback, sad to think that I ended up buying and losing this mare in a horrible accident, and very glad that I had written it all down in a letter so I could treasure the memories more completely.
My mom used to sing this song to us when we were little, and I loved this version by Catherine Raney, from the movie Flicka. I wanted to show you the horse photos that I took last week on my parents’ ranch in Idaho, and thought this song would best accompany them while you browse through them. I never met a horse I didn’t like, but some of these are plain gorgeous.
I have a friend here visiting from Australia for a couple of months, and we went horseback riding yesterday. It’s finally starting to warm up here in the midwest, and with warm breezes beckoning, we put on our riding boots and headed out to the farm.
It’s been awhile since I’ve had the chance to just spend the day following my horse around. But today I was thinking back to when I was a kid, when I would be at the barn all day, not necessarily riding, but just spending time with the horses. There’s a lot to be said for getting solid hours of horse time.
Every body’s got a tale to tell, and if you’ve been as enthusiastic about outdoor activities as I have, chances are you have some scars as reminders of your experiences. I noticed a scar of mine the other day, which made me start thinking about how I got that scar, which made me wonder just how many scars do I have that are horse-related? I have to say, almost all of my scars have a horse story behind them.
