Often the horses I work with teach me more than I do them. The difficult lessons of patience and humility are best learned through experience and training and riding horses is full of experiences both positive and negative. There is the elation when we are both on the same page, moving as the same unit, […]
So You Wanna Be A Rancher?
As I was standing on the back of the hay wagon today, forking off 2 tons of hay to the mama cows and their calves, I happened to look up at May Mountain. It looked like Mount Everest. Granted, May’s 11,000 some feet are a pittance compared to Everest’s 29,000, but it looked just as inhospitable […]
Range Riders
Before we load the horses, we always tack them up instead of packing our saddles and headstalls along in the back of the truck. We have a stock trailer made for hauling cattle, so we don’t have a tack room built in. The horses are currently out in the big pasture behind our house, so […]
Remuda
To start the year out, we had about fourteen horses. I think. Then, I found an orphan mustang colts in the hills, left behind after a round up. And we also found craigslist. So now we have twenty horses. Since it’s winter in the Pahsimeroi and this valley makes snow look pretty good, I decided […]
Breaking the Wild Cayuses
A while ago, one of our friends got engaged. Since she was going to be married, she could no longer keep her two horses. They were both Arabians, although only the mare had official papers. The mare was seventeen and cute, with a coat that was long and soft even during the summer. She […]
My Horse April
This is the story of my beloved horse, April. I will tell the tale as I remember it. I was eight years old when our neighbor’s son came to sell us two horses: Shippie and April. I think it was even my eighth birthday, and I had just received a horse blanket. Dad tried her […]