This is not the easiest post to write. Dorian and I have been through some pretty deep water in the last month. Thankfully, we've both come out of it well. I'm not sure I can write about our experiences with even a modicum of grace, but I'm going to try. "Your identity is a mirror covered with dust." Jay Shetty quoting his teacher Gauranga Das. As I was driving home from a lovely Thanksgiving with my daughter and her husband, I received an email abruptly ordering Dorian and I to vacate the barn where he was stabled by the end of December--no explanation. There ensued some quite vile verbal as ..read more

I've been running across some great quotes lately. To whit: "Not everything can be changed, but until you face it nothing can be changed." James Baldwin. When Dorian was at the rescue, I remember one day he escaped from his pasture. His was right next to the road to the rescue and only slightly back from the busy road that ran past it. https://video.wixstatic.com/video/4dcb06_7296e749edb143fea4dda37b5ce23c4f/720p/mp4/file.mp4 A horse racing around at full speed is not something you want to stand in front of. And even if I'd wanted to, I couldn't have caught up to him. So I had to stand very s ..read more

I started writing about my experience with Dorian, because the journey we’ve taken together is so different from how many of the trainers, equine-assisted learning experts, and riders I know relate to horses. Many people still don’t understand horses as emotional, wise beings and that to get anywhere with them, a relationship is essential. Trust, respect, genuine communication, even love, I think, is the basis of any real connection, no matter the species. Most essential to that relationship is that we come to them in our own, most authentic selves. And sometimes, that’s no easy task. I was s ..read more

What I love most about this photo is Simon's cocked right rear leg. He's relaxed, content, and happy just hanging out in the sun with his best friend, Dorian. And look at him! You can hardly tell there's horse under there! Fly sheet, mega fly mask, fly boots, bell boots . . . because of his sun sensitivity, the poor guy gets dressed from head to toe to go outside in the summer. But he has no complaints. When I go to the pasture to get Dorian, Simon is always a congenial presence. Not a shred of crabby "This isn't fair!" He generally raises his head from grazing, sometimes trots next to Dorian ..read more

These are my friend Judit Kovacs' beautiful Hungarian Furioso-North Star mares. Judit is pictured here between them, holding them on the last day of the year in Hungary, 2014. This was her "Happy New Year" photo to friends that year. "In the picture at the left is my mare, Carmen," wrote Judit recently,"who is full of inner fire, . . and was 24 years-old then and still full of temperament and to the right is her daughter, Csellengő, who was 19 then. Csellengő means "the little one who is hanging out" because when she was a foal and I rode her mother she always ran away into woods and I had to ..read more

Today was so beautiful at the barn--huge blue sky and fluffy clouds, Dorian and Simon contentedly grazing in the sun. The grass is getting sparse, but they don't care! I am so glad to be back in close communication with Dorian. I've gone through a lot of changes lately and I now see how off balance I've been, not present and as tuned in as normal. Often I don't notice those sorts of things as they're happening. I get it only in retrospect, but I guess that's better than not at all! I know I've spoken about this before--how I communicate with Dorian and how he communicates with me--distance do ..read more

Dorian has just been cleared by Dr. Olivia to resume his normal routine after getting kicked in the stifle that was so injured last winter and again going through rehab. This was pretty short-lived I'm grateful to say, just a few weeks rather than 4 1/2 months. Still, the swelling was impressive, right at first . . . :( And I've been dealing with a lot on my own, as we all are enduring this pandemic and the political turmoil our country seems loathe to let go of, or remedy. The overload has sometimes seemed too much to handle. I've been practicing tuning into what I really desire, something ..read more

Dorian and I are trying out a new saddle and I'm full of worries! Is the sweat pattern ok? Is it rubbing him somewhere that will cause soreness? Is there enough padding? Is the padding in the right places? So with that in my thought, what do you think our ride yesterday was like? Right. Dorian was an anxious little boy beneath me. He hung in there, though, as we first headed into the indoor arena where there were new, interesting things to find. And then out to the trails to meet up with friends. We got down to the walnut grove and Dorian hoofed around quickly, always pointing his nose back ..read more

This is a post about letting go. That phrase has been haunting me for weeks and I've been struggling to do it consistently. In a book about structure called The Path of Least Resistance, Robert Fritz recounts how, at 40, D.H. Lawrence discovered he could view himself as a blank canvas and make a new picture of himself. He refused to be stuck in an unalterable self, but began literally re-creating himself as he wished. But he had to first let go of one version, I think--hence the "blank slate"--before he could create another. The salient ingredient, Lawrence noted, is courage. About a week ago ..read more

This is a follow-up post on the recovery Dorian and I have been working through. We had a series of freaky, weird, and--to Dorian--very frightening things happen recently in quick succession. We had to back up, sort out some leadership and confidence issues and then we were good to go again. We went from doing extensive groundwork to riding, focusing our outings to those places where the scary things had occurred, approaching them one at a time. For instance, we spent several days on the large outdoor arena where the saddle had slipped to his underside sending him charging mindlessly around t ..read more