Do you follow the Iditarod, too? Northern breeds are such athletes with their instincts on full display. These half-wild dogs are perfect. They get to run with their pack. Then they stop and all lie down to rest. They eat better than most of our dogs. And then, with very little steering, they run some more. It’s a beautiful thing to see dogs get to do the thing their instinct compels them to do. Like equine endurance events, this race has required stops and safety procedures. Mushers take brilliant care of their dogs. At the end of the race, the winning musher and his lead dog both look fried ..read more

I saw a video this week that I can’t get out of my head. It lacked the drama of the usual train wrecks played for humor on social media. It was as slow and quiet as a PBS documentary. It was almost like we were peeping at the horse from a thousand yards. He felt that safe. I’m old enough to remember the days when the only opportunity to get a video of your horse was at a show if there was a photographer to hire. Technology, especially digital photography, is a miracle. Instant replays aren’t always flattering, but they help us catch up on what we missed while we were distracted. Besides, we l ..read more

It’s time for my annual announcement. Your horse doesn’t have a training problem. It isn’t a brain tumor, and he hasn’t gotten into the duck chow. It’s late winteritis or spring fever. Both are bad, their symptoms are unpredictable. One day, the pond is defrosting and I think I have survived the longest meanest winter I can remember. The next day, the wind is whipping through my scalp at thirty miles per hour and it’s sixteen degrees. On the blustery days, the inmates stand in the shelter and grumble. They have started to shed, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I don’t brush them. Two days later ..read more

It’s springtime in the Rockies. The time change was last weekend, so I’m waking up at three am now, but there’s more light in the evening. I can see tiny bits of green if I bend over for a close look. Earlier this week we were out in shirtsleeves and now we’re halfway through a thirty-six-hour snowstorm. The horses are exhausted. It’s a dangerous time of year to be a horse, especially an older one. On Tuesday, I had a carcinoma removed from my nose. It took a few injections into that fleshy part of the bridge of my nose. Bad joke, I’ve already had so many pre-cancerous growths burned off, tha ..read more

My first ex-husband used to tease me about my frantic love of shortcuts. I was always up early, on the run, impatient as a kindergarten class five minutes before recess. My multitasking skills were nothing short of genius, I thought. I did the work of a dozen in half the time. When my plans derailed, as they often did, he had a name for my shortcuts: alternate routes. We joke I should wear a big flashing yellow warning sign. On one of my shortcuts, I was irretrievably lost, my car broke down with no pay phone in sight, and swearing was no help at all. There was simply no way to be where I nee ..read more

We are sick to death of the violence against horses. It isn’t just the damage caused by rollkur in reining and dressage, or racing youngsters until their legs break, or the tragic mess rodeo has become, or the horses being tossed to auction for the crime of being old or lame. My personal thorn in the eye is the general acceptance of fear-based training in horses too young to be ridden. The numbers are astronomical, way higher than the abuse stories that hit the news. How did terrifying youngsters become so common that we barely notice it? Researchers inform us that they found the fabled “domi ..read more

My Grandfather Horse was so good with latches he could have broken out of Alcatraz and made it back to Colorado, but he wasn’t special. We all brag about how intelligent our horses are when they react to the sound of our car driving up the driveway. They’re geniuses when they know it’s dinnertime, or when they nicker to us as we walk into the barn. Science has proven that horses recognize humans from years in their past and other studies show horses recognize the emotions on our faces. Don’t these things sound a bit self-serving, even egotistical? As if it’s the horse’s highest calling to be ..read more

Sometimes it happens behind a trailer. The horse needs a moment, but the human is in a hurry. Horses and humans famously define “hurry” differently. The human tries one approach, and the horse is almost ready to get in, but since the human doesn’t read Calming Signals, they give up and try something else. Then the horse has to start over, too. With each successive change in approach, the method escalates, and the horse can’t settle and think. We can’t give in and convince ourselves that harsh methods are needed. Now there are ropes and whips and we feel as cornered as the horse. The dream of ..read more

The worst thing about remembering a horse in the past is that maybe there are options now that your horse only missed by a few years. For all that we don’t know about horses, for all the worry and grasping at symptoms, eventually it will be revealed. The stray symptoms, the unusual events, the chronic fear of not knowing will eventually tie itself up in a bow and become clear. There will be an answer, even if it’s too late. Or at some point, it hurts so much for both of you that it ceases to matter why. It just needs to stop. I had scraped every square inch of what anyone knew. Vets, bodywork ..read more

Nube (Nu-bay) was particular. He required my undivided attention in the saddle and on the ground. My focus had to be laser sharp. Most advanced horses require it and it was something I’d learned to do. Odd for such a young horse, but I decided it was good. It meant he would be a sharp horse. And he was a dream to ride, so willing and curious. His ears were inquisitive even trotting down the rail. He was young and I was slow to introduce new things, but nothing confused him, each transition from my breath, no fear or intimidation. If someone walking by the arena said hello to me and I responde ..read more