I happened to find another really cool cowgirl website that I wanted to share with my readers. It was when I typed in “cowgirl” in the facebook search bar that Cowgirl Finesse popped up as one of the options. So out of curiosity, I clicked on the link and became a fan of their page. Cowgirl Finesse sells all kinds of western accessories—belts, purses, boots, tack, jewelry, and more!
In light of the Father’s Day weekend, I thought I’d share a couple of stories about the father of my kids, affectionately referred to on this blog as Cowboy Dad. While my husband would never claim to be a cowboy, I call him that because I think he has some old fashioned characteristics that remind me of an old west hero. Knowing him, he will cringe as he reads this, because if Cowboy Dad has a fault, it would be that he denies the credibility of all compliments. But he is the best person I know.
I have always been a non-confrontational person. And believe it or not, it carries over to how I deal with horses, too. It’s not that horses scare me or that I’m afraid to push my luck or take chances around them. I grew up with horses and I’ve never been seriously hurt by a horse, so I’ve never had any fear to overcome. But I have seen horses get hurt in bad situations, and spent subsequent years thinking of what I could have done differently that might have prevented their injury, and it makes me cautious and more respectful when handling them.
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.
