Tag Archives: horses

Great Gifts for Horse Lovers, Part II: Personalization Strikes Back

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As a continuation of my previous post with some recommendations on gifts for the horse people in your life, I thought I’d do a follow-up since it’s now officially gift-buying season and let’s face it, horse people are simply not getting any easier to buy for. As per usual, my suggestions are handmade items, and I urge you to support artists and crafters directly, because they’re awesome and they could use your business. With this post, I’m going to concentrate specifically on the kinds of gifts you’re not likely to be able to buy from the equine catalogs: gifts that you can have customized or personalized to make them one of a kind. Horse people are seriously hard to shop for, but we also appreciate the personal touch… like when you remember our horse’s name. And let’s face it, we are delighted with anything at all that has our horse’s name on it. Below is my latest Etsy treasury of customizable horse gifts; you can also check out the treasury directly on Etsy if you’d prefer.


 Personalized Fine Silver Hor…
$88.00

Horse Gift Art Framed Print …
$38.00

Chalk board Stall Sign
$35.00

Custom Horse Portraits LOVIN…
$75.00

Personalized Horse Ornament …
$8.00

Personalized family ranch Na…
$54.99

Horse Necklace Custom Person…
$44.00

HORSE Ornament Personalized …
$8.50

Word of your Choice OR Your …
$4.25

Horses Personalized wall art…
$14.99

Personalized Christmas Cards…
$18.00

Personalized Silver Horse Je…
$92.00

15″ – Personalized Hand…
$37.00

Western Horse Christmas Stoc…
$29.00

Lariat Rope Necklace – Perso…
$46.00

Custom Ribbon Display
$45.00

Treasury tool supported by the dog house

And now for the shameless self-promotion:

Copper Wire Horse OrnamentsI make my own personalized or generic horse, donkey, and mule ornaments out of wire and sell them on Etsy; you can find my shop at Bright Strange Things on Etsy. I can customize ornaments to try to match specific horse colors and breeds, or to symbolize particular riding disciplines. I also sell photo prints and sometimes t-shirts, and am working on some new lines of products, so I hope you’ll also give my shop a look, and check out some of the sellers above when you’re shopping for Christmas, birthdays, horsiversaries, or any other equine-related gift-giving occasion.

Five Awesome and Unique Gifts for Horse Lovers

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If you ask me, having to buy a present for a horse person is a massive pain in the hindquarters. As a horse person myself, I understand the dilemma. Every horse-crazy individual probably has a massive wish list of tack, equipment, adorable knick-knacks and sassy barn signs that they’d like to add to their already equine-heavy lives, but it tends to be a very specific list, and even for a fellow horse person it can be impossible to get right. For somebody who doesn’t know a manure fork from a salad fork, buying anything horsey can be downright impossible. Tack is easy enough to rule out: it’s usually expensive, requires specific measurements, and isn’t worth bothering with as a gift if you don’t know exactly what you’re buying. The same problem crops up with more mundane items. Does your giftee prefer flat halters or rope halters? Does she use only one specific brand and shun all others? Is this muck bucket you found in the tack store the kind she loves because they last longer than a week, or the kind she’s always cursing because they break if you so much as look at them funny? Will his horse eat carrot-flavored treats or does he only like the peppermint ones? It all gets a bit fraught after awhile.

The obvious route, then, is horse-themed items of a less practical nature. Horse people seem to be pretty happy with any gift featuring an equine, and entering their homes you’re likely to see Breyer horses on the bookshelves and horse photos on the walls and pony silhouettes on the bedspreads. Even those get tiresome, though, when you notice that pretty much every horse equipment catalog carries exactly the same collection of apparel and home decor. (I do want to offer a brief tip of the hat, however, to Back in the Saddle, which tends to offer a wider and much more interesting selection of these sorts of goods than your standard everything-horses catalog. If you have other suggestions, please feel free to offer them up in the comments!)

For my own part, I no longer buy gifts for the horse lovers in my life through catalogs. In fact, I’ve taken to buying handmade items directly from artists, usually through Etsy.com. I have an Etsy shop of my own where I sell some pretty sweet little horsey items (I’ll get into a little shameless self-promotion later), but as a buyer I love Etsy purely because you can find something completely original, that your giftee didn’t even know existed, and you can directly support crafters and artists by buying from them. I’ll also highlight here a few services and whatnot that I think are highly underrated as gifts, but my aim here is entirely to expose you to some awesome new stuff that you might want to buy for your friends or for yourself. I’ll likely post a few more lists like this one as we draw nearer the holidays, so if you have a favorite seller of equine goods or are a seller yourself and you’d like me to check out your stuff, please feel free to offer it up in the comments.

I’d like to also point out that I don’t know any of the sellers mentioned, have not dealt with most of these vendors or products personally, and have received no freebies or anything else for my endorsements. I just think the items and services listed here are awesome. And now, without further ado:

Five Awesome and Unique Gifts for Horse Lovers, In No Particular Order

Membership to Giddyupflix.com

As services go, I think Giddyupflix is one of the coolest inventions of all time. As the name implies, it’s essentially Netflix for horse people, and their selection of available DVDs is so diverse that it doesn’t particularly matter which specific brands of horsemanship your giftee likes most, they’ll be able to find a staggering number of rentals to choose from. This is also a particularly thrifty gift since with horsemanship videos, a single disc can cost three or four times as much as you’d pay to buy your favorite new Hollywood release on DVD. This way your giftee can explore topics of interest to them specifically — whether they want to learn about horseshoeing or trick training, rawhide braiding or wild horse taming, showjumping or mounted shooting — without spending a fortune. Unfortunately the service is only available in the US and Canada, though, so if your giftee resides outside those countries, you might want to take a look at the rest of the list for some other suggestions.
Cost: From $10.95/month to rent one disc at a time to $26.95/month for four discs at a time. When purchasing a gift membership, you can decide what level of membership you’d like to gift and for how long a duration, so this is a great flexible gift as far as cost goes.

Hand-painted glass art by CaroligraphyHand-painted Glassware by Caroligraphy on Etsy

Store-bought etched glass has nothing on the beauty of Carol Koch’s hand-painted pieces. The first time I saw Carol’s work on Etsy I fell in love with the bright colors and the beautiful motion in her paintings. She has a wide range of different types of glassware available, from votive candle holders to wine glasses to Christmas ornaments and suncatchers. There’s also something for all kinds of breeds and disciplines, from Gypsy Vanners to show jumpers.
Cost: Prices range from about $15 for smaller and individual pieces to around $100 for larger pieces and matched sets of glassware.

Fox Mask Novelty Fly Bonnet by EquiEars on Etsy

Normally I’m against this kind of thing. I particularly loathe the fly masks that are painted to look like sunglasses. It’s a thing I have. This, though? This is hilarious. This is one of the best things I have seen ever. It’s cute enough not to look totally humiliating and it’s also made in a great vibrant orange that makes it good safety-wear for hunting season. Mostly I just want to see every well-dressed foxhunting pair sporting this stylish ear covering. Just think! Foxhunters won’t even need dogs, they can sneak up on the foxes with cunning disguises! EquiEars also sells other custom fly bonnets and and they’ll even personalize with monogramming and appliques and whatnot, so be sure to check out the entire shop!
Cost: $40, plus shipping

Custom Horsehair Jewelry from Spirithorse DesignsCustom Horsehair Jewelry & Accessories by Spirithorse Designs

You can buy all sorts of pre-made horsehair designs, including bracelets, earrings, necklaces, zipper pulls, and keychains. You can also have items custom-made with your own horse’s hair, which is a particularly great memorial for a beloved companion who has passed on. There are a variety of different designs and different sorts of braids and knotwork available, with both intricate and simple options available, and you have your choice of different beads, ornaments, pendants, and colors to make your own piece truly unique. The artist sells gift certificates as well, which is a great option particularly if you aren’t able to order far enough in advance for Christmas or whatever gift-giving occasion you’re after.
Cost: Prices range from around $15-25 for something simple like a zipper pull, up to $50-90 for necklaces, bracelets and earrings.

Unique vinyl wall art by aluckyhorseshoeVinyl Wall Art by aluckyhorseshoe on Etsy

I’m a huge fan of vinyl wall art.  I love that it doesn’t damage your walls and it’s a great way to give a room a little extra decoration, especially if you’re a renter and you don’t want to deal with painting and repainting. It’s also great for people like me who like to change their lives by rearranging their rooms. Vinyl art is easy to apply and easy to remove, and you can do just about anything with it. There are a lot of vinyl artists on Etsy so there’s a pretty staggering array of vinyl available if you search for what you’re after, but one of my favorites is aluckyhorseshoe because this particular shop has a great variety of different horse-themed art available, some with customization options, and a portion of their proceeds goes to help support horse rescue.
Cost: About $20-40, depending on the size of the art.

And Now For The Shameless Self-Promotion!

Copper wire horse ornaments by Bright Strange ThingsWire Horse Ornaments by Bright Strange Things on Etsy

I’ve been working on my own line of products, mostly horse-related, which I sell in my own Etsy shop, Bright Strange Things. I have a bunch of new stuff in development, but at the moment my most popular products by far are the Christmas tree ornaments I make out of copper wire. They’re pretty awesome if I say so myself; I make them in a variety of colors and poses, and their little legs swing like they’re running when you touch them. They make great year-round decoration too, as a hanging ornament from your rear-view mirror or wherever else you can find to hang them. Maybe your ornate crystal chandelier, I don’t even know. They’re classy as hell, is what I’m saying. Check out my shop for pre-made ornaments, and the option to order a custom-made piece in your choice of colors and poses, or if you’re after something else, I also have a variety of photo prints and a few t-shirts on hand, so I hope you’ll take a look!

If you have favorite handmade sellers, if you make horse-themed items yourself, or if you just have really strong opinions about decoupage, please share your thoughts in the comments!

The Modern Pentathlon, And Why It Makes Me Want To Punch People

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By all rights, the modern pentathlon should be the most epic of all Olympic sports. It’s the sort of sport that a group of mustachioed Victorian gentlemen might have dreamed up over cognacs down at the club. In the modern pentathlon, competitors engage in five events: Pistol shooting, fencing, swimming, running, and show jumping. They’re exactly the sort of activities that a proper gentleman might engage in on a mounted hunt, especially if his horse chose to dump him in a river and he’s forced to duel with a passing bear. It’s the sort of sport that I imagine bored cavalry officers came up with during a lull in fighting on the battlefield. In short, victory in the modern pentathlon should be a lot like winning at manliness.

Unfortunately, the modern pentathlon has gone horribly awry, and as far as I can tell, it’s because the participants have failed to properly train for the whole thing. In looking into the modern pentathlon — which I’d never seen before, if I’m honest — I’m struck by the fact that, although none of these athletes would dream of entering the pentathlon if, for instance, they didn’t know how to swim, apparently they don’t see it as a problem at all that they don’t know how to ride.

Protip: Climbing on a living breathing animal and trying to ride it over jumps can, in fact, be just as deadly as drowning in the pool. Also, it makes you look like a complete tool.

It says in the pentathlon rules that the athletes must ride horses which are not familiar to them, but they seem to have taken that one step further by deciding that they should not be familiar with riding horses, period. After spending a few rage-inducing hours watching videos and looking at photos from past competitions, it seems that the average pentathlete’s strategy is to careen around the course at an uncontrolled gallop, while clinging like a monkey so as not to fall off the horse. (They seem to fall off a lot anyway, so I guess as strategies go it’s not a winning one.)

Hwang Woojin’s day did not go well. Click the image to watch the video.

Take for instance Korean athlete Hwang Woojin, whose horseback emergency management skills were not at all up to par when his horse immediately expressed his displeasure with being roped into this event in London 2012. Woojin reacted to his emergency in exactly the wrong way by basically pulling the horse over on top of himself. Apparently he was able to remount and ride the course with 464 penalty points for his troubles, though whether that means that he cowboyed up in spectacular fashion or whether it just makes him insane remains to be seen.

This Olympics saw the gold medal go to Czech David Svoboda; I can only assume that he had a better run this year than he did in Beijing, because this is what his ride looked like in China. As you can see in these other photos, in which the athletes display their mastery of show jumping and their impeccable jumping form, these are highly skilled horsemen who–

Sorry, I couldn’t keep typing all those blatant falsehoods. These fine people have learned to shoot and fence and swim and I suppose all human beings know how to run pretty instinctively. I can’t speak to how well they do any of those things (but it doesn’t seem like they’ve got the concept of fencing quite in hand either), but I can tell you that apparently actually knowing how to ride, before representing their respective countries on the world stage at the Olympics, hasn’t occurred to many of them.

Look, I don’t like to make fun. These are Olympic athletes. They are in better physical condition than I will ever be in in my life, and I wouldn’t want to play against any one of them in a game of laser tag. I’m not a show jumper by any stretch of the imagination, so I’ll just give you all this video of World Cup men’s riding highlights, and you can tell me what you think of their form. Personally, I watched these horses flying over (and sometimes through) these fences and wanted to have myself a little cry.

I have no doubt that there are pentathletes who are fantastic horse riders. I also have no doubt that all of them ought to be. Because the thing is, this is not an individual performance. The moment you get the horse involved, you’re part of a team. And most of these riders don’t seem to realize it.

If you skip to 15:45 in the video, you can watch Egypt’s Omar el Geziry both completely stuff up the course and be a total berk to his horse! Click on this image and you will be treated to his atrociously bad ride and even worse sportsmanship.

I was going to continue telling you about the pentathlon history and stuff, but I kept watching that video and found that Omar el Geziry was far surpassed by the 2010 world champion, Russia’s Serguei Karyakin, who not only rides a horrible round (see it here at 27:31) but also apparently blames his horse for it, considering the way he gratuitously beats the poor animal and snatches at its face as punishment for the bad ride.

Go ahead, Serguei. Beat your horse some more. That will totally help when the problem is your shitty riding.

You will also undoubtedly find the commentators’ remarks infuriating, as one of them is a pentathlete himself and also likes to talk about what the horse did wrong. I will tell you what these poor horses did wrong: they allowed their grooms to catch them this morning. I have never seen so many rails go down in a single event. Their jump crew must have enormous muscles from picking up a million and one downed rails per day. I have never seen so many horses display the patience of saints as they sailed half out of control and completely ungracefully over a series of jumps. And lest you think it’s just the men, you can watch the women’s competition “highlights,” too. I put highlights in quotations there, of course, because I’m not sure highlights is the right word.

Riders are accustomed to being told by our friends that we aren’t doing any work when we ride, that the effort is all on the horse’s part. We all know that’s not true, of course, that riding well takes a lot of effort from the rider, too; the best riding is a result of partnership. But in the case of the modern pentathlon, apparently, it’s true that the rider doesn’t need to do much at all, because these horses are pointed at the fences and then left to do their jobs not only with no help from their rider, but with active interference.

Apparently the modern pentathlon has been an endangered event at several times in the past, with Olympic planners wanting to drop the event, which is costly to put on and not particularly popular. It’s been granted a stay of execution several times, with Princess Anne and Prince Albert coming to its defense, and apparently some completely clueless individual described it as the “sport that most accurately conveys the ideals of Olympism.” If so, that doesn’t say much for the Olympics. And I’m not sure “ideals” is really the word.

Unlike many sports in the modern Olympics, the modern pentathlon is truly amateur. As this great piece in The Atlantic points out:

In a culture where we celebrate our biggest sports stars as often as they celebrate themselves, maybe there’s something to be said for the Modern Pentathlon. Maybe it’s because of sports like these—so pointless, so non-remunerative, so culturally irrelevant—that we care so much about the Olympics. We care because of the real amateurs who toil in obscurity for little more than the purity of the pursuit.

I can absolutely get behind that, but not at the expense of the horses, who don’t get much choice about competing and who don’t even get the benefit of experienced handling like the rest of the Olympic horses do. (Putting aside, of course, the rampant practice of rollkur among dressage elites, because that’s a whole other rant that we don’t have time for.)

Here’s my idea: Remove the show jumping round, because the competitors apparently don’t have the resources to learn how to show jump. Replace it with, I don’t know… a BMX biking round or a unicycle-riding round or a jumping round where instead of a horse they ride a motorized pogo stick. I don’t see how any of those things would be considered less legitimate as Olympic pursuits than things that are already included in the games, like trampoline and racewalking (which are both modern Olympic sports featured in the current games). Let the athletes show their own physical abilities and leave the horses out of it, and we’ll all be better off. The horses can have a nice lie-in, the athletes are less likely to be killed by their runaway unicycles, and it’ll definitely be a beneficial move for my blood pressure.

Edit: The Guardian has a fantastic photo collection from the London 2012 pentathlon riding, which features heavily on some truly spectacular falls, and also offers some pretty funny captions to help you enjoy the action. The New York Times also had a good article about the horses and how they are selected and paired with riders, and which discusses some of the difficulties in sourcing appropriate mounts at various competitions (but which, I think, overlooks the fact that the athletes aren’t exactly holding up their end either). There’s also a hilarious thread over on Chronicle of the Horse in which posters shared their own feedback about the event as they watched.

For US viewers, if you’d like to check out the replay you can find it online here, with both the complete coverage of the men’s riding and the women’s riding. If you watch you will have the distinct pleasure — or displeasure, whichever way you want to look at it — of seeing some truly phenomenal horses attempt to save the collective bacon of their amazingly unprepared riders. The horses of the London games, and the people responsible for their selection, really ought to be the ones walking away with medals. I could not be more impressed with the caliber of horses offered at these Olympics and the effort those animals put in; the people of Britain should be justifiably proud.

Horses! Kilts! OMG Horses! (Or, Why The Renaissance Faire Is Awesome.)

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The title of this post might be a little bit misleading. Not because there aren’t horses and kilts — I didn’t take pictures of said kilts, though, I’m sorry, I was too busy ogling the men in them — but because I have my reservations about Ren Faires. When I turn up at one I kind of feel like a Trekkie at a Furry convention. I might appreciate and understand the enthusiasm and extreme fannishness of those present, but I am not One Of Them. While I enjoy A Game of Thrones as much as the next girl (Peter Dinklage, how are you so awesome?) and am actually a medieval history fan from way back, I mostly just find Ren Faires kind of awkward. My default reaction in these sort of cosplay situations is to find an appropriate huddle and start talking Doctor Who while pretending that nobody in the conversation is actually dressed up as a Stormtrooper, but when everybody who greets me calls me “my lady” (or more frequently, “my lord,” which is great for my self-esteem, thanks a lot), and when sometimes people say things like “doth” in a serious and straight-faced way, it just makes me realize that I am in the wrong crowd. I begin yearning for the fjords regular old Highland Games events that are much more in my wheelhouse. (There are several of those coming up in the area over the next few months, though, so expect plenty of photographs of kilts in this blog’s future.)

Still, it’s nice to get out and mix with those outside your social circle and specific niche of geekdom, and events like this are a jolly good time. The Utah Renaissance Festival and Fantasy Faire (click that at your own risk, because it will play music at you whether you like it or not) has been on for the past couple of weeks here, so I decided to give it a go, primarily because of The Knights of Mayhem, a full-contact jousting troupe I had last seen a few years ago in Arcata… I blogged about that over here, in case you missed it and/or wish to look at pictures of pretty horses again. They also have a show on National Geographic Channel, though I’ve never seen it on account of not getting that channel. Sadness.

Anyway, I really thought the jousting was the best part, so here are some fun jousting photos. What I notably did not get are shots of the actual impacts, though you can see a few of those on that previous blog I mentioned. I had a great idea to try this time standing in a spot where I could look down the list to get photos of the horses charging right at me, but completely failed to factor in that there would be squires at the ends of the lists to help stop the horses after each charge. Good going, me. Anyway, here are some guys on horses.

You guys, I have a serious crush on this horse. SERIOUS. I mean the guy’s okay and all, but LOOK AT THAT HORSE. LOOK AT IT.

I quite liked this one too, but not with the kind of burning passion that I liked the other one. This horse is Daisy (her full name, we are told, is “Daisy the Destroyer, because her opponents will be pushing up daisies!” har de har har), and she is clearly a Belgian, and that guy riding her is Jason Armstrong, and he is clearly a Canadian. You can tell because even when he’s talking smack he’s polite about it.

A little love for the ponies. You might notice that the bay shire in the background (I think they called her Lady Chaos?) is being ridden by two different guys in these photos. The armored guy pictured riding her is “Sir” Edward, and this guy is one of their knights in training, who also wanted to have a go when they were playing their skill-at-arms games with the spear-throwing and whatnot.

They all had pretty decent aim with their spear target practice. I can guarantee you that I would miss. And probably fall off the horse. Look, they run REALLY FAST, okay?

Daisy is new to jousting and was not very keen on setting herself up in the list. Actually, she tried to take down the list several times. And thought about taking down some spectators, too. I was marveling at how the crowd wasn’t moving out of her way until suddenly they all scrambled for cover, and then I lol’ed. Is that bad?

OMG THIS HORSE. She’s a Shire, by the way. In case you were wondering. And considering forming her fan club.

The way these huge horses just ROCKET themselves down the list, I would probably soil myself. I’m man enough to admit it, I’m just not man enough to do anything this insane. Look at this horse, she’s just like, “Screw this, I AM GOING TO RUN NOW OKAY.”

Daisy the Destroyer seems to be aware that she’s very photogenic.

This is seriously the only shot I got in the vein of what I wanted, which was pictures of the horses charging RIGHT AT ME. Don’t worry, I had a really big zoom lens, I wasn’t going to get anywhere close enough to be actually charged at.

I have some more photos of the festival, including some snaps of the Oak Hills Vaulters kicking ass and taking names; you can find those over here on Facebook (and you don’t have to be a Facebook user to see them).

Free to a Good Home: The Best Horse in the World

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There isn’t a sale ad, as such, just a Facebook post and later a note that’s titled, “FREE TO THE RIGHT HOME: 18yo Mustang Mare.” The title fails to encompass everything that that sentence means. It could just as easily say, “Free to a good home: my best friend” or “Free to a good home: life-changing equine” or “Free to a good home, because I can’t do this anymore.”

Posting the finished ad feels like giving up. It feels like abandonment. It feels like breathing again after drowning. And that’s all well before a single possible home has presented itself.

When it comes to the subject of finding a new home for my horse, my Juno, I’m about out of words. I didn’t have many to begin with. It might seem melodramatic to be so wound up over the sort of transaction that happens every day, but Juno and I have always had a relationship that runs down to the bone, at least from my side of the equation. There were days when the only thing that got me out of bed was having to drag myself down to the hay barn to serve her breakfast. She’s been the catalyst of a tremendous amount of personal growth for me, and I honestly can’t imagine the person I’d be right now without her.

So now that I’m facing the prospect — the reality — of a future without her after eight years with her, and I can’t really imagine what it looks like. Sometimes I think the idea of not being able to drive down to the barn and see her will drag me deeper into the depression that I’ve fought all my life. And some days I can’t help but guiltily think that once she’s making her home in someone else’s barn, I’ll be able to breathe more freely than I have in eight years. There’s no way to know, really, until it’s done.

Of course, finding a home is in itself a challenge. The list of people wanting an 18-year-old, green-broke, undeniably beautiful mustang mare is remarkably short, and shortened further still by the fact that I’m picky about where she goes. On the other side of the equation is the list of exhaustively trained, child-safe, experienced, excellent saddle horses under ten who are being given away or sold cheap in the face of a truly awful horse market. Factored together, these things add up to what can only be described as a really crappy situation.

I can’t afford to keep my horse — have, in fact, never been able to afford my horse, and have been steadily digging myself deeper and deeper into debt to keep her. The end of all this is both sudden and inevitable. So it figures that right now, at a point where I could be looking forward to a summer season of riding for the first time in our partnership, instead I’m looking for a new partnership in an impossible economy. She might have a place with a friend in Oregon, a really ideal placement with a great person in a place with abundant pastures and relatively affordable hay supplies. I wouldn’t have to worry about her.

I want more time.

I want it over with.

I don’t want to talk about it anymore.

So I’m spending what time we have left enjoying Juno’s company, and I’m making an effort at moving on, pre-emptively. I’m changing my blog and my shop and every other piece of me — well, except the tattoos — so that every minute of living my life isn’t a reminder of a face I’ll miss like mad. I felt I should probably also do something to reflect the fact that, although I’ll still be driving a carriage and probably eventually be getting into riding lessons or something else, it’ll probably be quite a very, very long time before I own a horse again.

So, you’ll shortly find this blog continued in all its random glory at BrightStrangeThings.com, and from there you’ll be able to find my art, photos and other endeavors. It’ll take a little time, but hopefully it’ll be more organized this time around. Thanks for reading so far, and for following my chronicles with Juno, and I hope you’ll continue to read. I solemnly promise that I won’t usually be this maudlin.

An Interesting Idiom: “I’ll Be There With Bells On”

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As I’ve previously mentioned, I’m working these days as a carriage driver, and with the holiday season in full swing, I’ve been looking for ways to trick out my horse and carriage. These days I’m feeling like Christmas trees are completely passé and if you’re looking for some true thrills in holiday decorating, you need to look into the art and science of attempting to decorate a live animal. It’s a little complicated when you consider that the thing you’re decorating will likely do its best to eat your decorations, but you also have to contend with the possibility (okay, high probability) of blizzard conditions or just general moisture followed by sub-zero temperatures for hours on end. Your average decorations probably just aren’t going to hold up.

Our carriage company does most of the actual decorating of vehicles — and particularly for us new drivers, we never know which carriage we’re going to end up driving anyway, so it’s best not to get too invested — but drivers can help boost their business with a little bling. The veteran drivers all an incredible assortment of decorating tricks (Scooter’s Santa dummy, mounted over his horse’s back, is a hit with the kids while simultaneously giving me the willies) but for my part I mostly intend to spend my hard-earned cash on endless layers of thermals, snow pants, rain gear and chemical toe-warmers. Still, I’d like to have a little something to dress up the horses I’ll be driving for the occasion, so I have a few strings of battery-operated lights and I’ve been looking into sleigh bells.

My esteemed colleague Jim seems to find my efforts with Christmas lights laughable -- and routinely does his best to fling them off -- but passersby certainly love them. And when it really gets dark, the lights look like little stars against the black of Jim's mane. <3

I bought a few bags of craft-store bells that I’ll be giving a go, though I’d be kind of surprised if they lasted longer than a week. And because I like to live in a land of delusion, I also searched the Internet for real harness bells. I found quite a few places still producing beautiful, high-quality bells of all kinds for use on harnesses (I will take one of each, please), but alas, poverty and other priorities prevent me from actually purchasing any.

My quest did yield a potential origin for an interesting idiom, however. (That’s what I love about the Internet: you might be just shopping for something, but you learn some vocab instead.) You’ve probably heard the phrase “I’ll be there with bells on,” and it’s generally accepted to mean, “I will be attending the aforementioned function in my finest of finery.” Presumably there was a point in time where one might attend a party with literal bells on. (In the UK apparently the equivalent phrase is “with knobs on” instead, but honestly, I don’t want to even know what knobs are. If anyone tells me I will hear it in Graham Norton’s voice and all seriousness will be gone from this conversation.)

One possible origin of the phrase, however, comes from the days of horsedrawn transportation, when bells were often worn on a horse’s harness not just for the holiday festiveness of it but to ensure that other travelers on the road could hear you coming. If a partygoer arrived “with bells on,” it meant that they arrived safely having suffered no collisions or misfortunes. Or, somewhat more mundanely and assuming that everybody back then didn’t travel around with a large cacophony of bells at all times, simply that carriage horses were outfitted with bells for particularly festive occasions, the same way a partygoer would dress themselves to the nines for a special event.

The Phrase Finder offers an even more charming and detailed possible explanation for the idiom:

The settlement of US immigrants in Pennsylvania and other states. Their preferred means of transport were large, sturdy wooden carts, called Conestoga wagons. These were drawn by teams of horses or mules whose collars were fitted with headdresses of bells. George Stumway, in Conestoga Wagon 1750-1850, states that the wagoners personalised the bells to tunings of their liking and took great pride in them. If a wagon became stuck, a teamster who came to the rescue often asked for a set of bells as reward. Arriving at a destination without one’s bells hurt a driver’s professional pride, whereas getting there ‘with bells on’ was a source of satisfaction.

As I’m sure you can imagine, I will forthwith be demanding a set of bells as payment every time I perform a favor for a fellow motorist. Should’ve made the demand of the last person I gave a jumpstart to. “No sir, I shall not furnish forth the jumper cables until you reward me with bells! I demand that they be gleaming, sir! Gleaming!”

Of course, the phrase is pretty antiquated either way, but as a person who drives a horse and carriage, I suppose I can’t really point the finger at anything for being old-fashioned. If you’re more into the modern conveniences and highfalutin technology, perhaps you should take Nathan Bradley’s advice and replace “with bells on” with the much more practical “with sandwich in tow.” I think it could be the next big thing. As for myself, I’m now experiencing an intense urge to research the etymology of the word “highfalutin.” So maybe it’s best to just leave things there.

I can stop anytime I want. It’s just that I don’t want to. Ever. Please, don’t make me!

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I want to make a confession, because I feel like it’s going to be cathartic. So here it goes: I have a slight addiction. To shopping.

It’s not what you’re thinking. I don’t have a thing for shoes or a complete inability to resist a bargain in general. It’s mostly just… well… art supplies. I am completely psychologically incapable of going into a store full of art supplies and coming out with the same amount of cash in my wallet that I had going in.

You might think that’s not a bad thing for an artist, considering we do tend to burn through art supplies rather rapidly. I’ve made three runs for additional supplies (the actual necessary kind, not the “I must have that because it is there” kind) just this week. The trouble with art supplies as a consumer product is that when you’re wandering through the art store you’re not just looking at products on a shelf, you’re looking at the potential for genius. Or at very least the potential for a good time. You can be looking at a tube of paint or a block of clay or a pair of round-nosed pliers, but what you’re actually seeing is the finished product.

This is the problem with artists. We have vivid and sometimes detailed imaginations. We can see that finished piece in our mind’s eye, and we simply must have those components that are necessary for the creation of whatever it is we think we’re going to create. And if we haven’t worked in that medium before and really don’t have the first idea how we might turn that collection of raw materials and tools into the thing we see in our heads, well… in my case, at least, reality rarely gets in my way.

Which is why, as you might imagine, my work space consists of a desk, a lamp, and a bunch of bins and containers full of things that I haven’t figured out how to use yet. When I was a kid things came very easily to me and I’m still in the process of training myself to embrace the learning curve… to understand that when I try a new medium for the first time, what I produce probably isn’t going to be a great work of art or the vision I see in my head or even necessarily something that’s going to make decent kindling. So while I’m always excited by all the possibilities of a new art form — and perhaps too excited over all the associated equipment you can buy in shiny, promise-filled packages from the art supply store — I often find myself incredibly intimidated by the same things once I get them home. Sometimes I give them a try and give up for awhile in frustration. Sometimes I don’t even get around to the trying part and they just sit, still neatly packaged, waiting for me to work through my neuroses.

Recently I decided that I was going to start working my way through those supplies. I decided to start with the box I’d labeled “WIRE,” which was filled with little spools of wire in different gauges and pliers (mostly of the wrong sort). I checked out a few books on wire-wrapped jewelry from the library so I could figure out the essential skills, determined that I’d need to make one last fortifying trip to the craft store to get a couple more pairs of pliers that every book seemed to agree I would need, and then I sat myself down at the table and decided that I would create something. I would create something that would probably just go straight into the garbage, but what the hell, the wire hadn’t been that expensive (at some point I’d extended my shopaholicness to the hardware store, where they had wire galore). And it’d just mean that I had less art supplies sitting around, making me feel guilty for my non-use of them and for my shopping addiction problem. So I cut a few lengths of wire and attempted to make a few basic shapes and loops and mostly ended up with mangled chunks of wire that couldn’t even be called “abstract.” (One of them did sort of look like a sea urchin, though.)

Normally at that point I’d be experiencing a strong urge to browse for something more cooperative at the art supply store. But what the hell, I was comfortable, I had some Doctor Who on the telly (you have to say “on the telly” when you’re watching British television, it’s required) and bending wire is actually kind of fun as random activities go. Plus I had that image in my head. The finished product. And by all that was good and holy, I was going to create that thing I’d envisioned. So I took my pliers and that copper wire and I bent and twisted and turned and cursed and pricked myself so hard with the end of a wire that I bled kind of profusely and then… then I had this.

It was a little rough. And it was also awesome. It was just what I wanted. It was kind of better than I’d originally planned for. It was a first effort but I figured somebody out there might want it, so I put it up on my Etsy shop and pointed to it from Facebook and asked my friends whether I had created something they would enjoy. I haven’t sold that original quite yet (you can remedy this by buying it, lolz!), but I have sold quite a few others, both one at a time and in large orders. I suddenly seem to be spending a lot of my time making little wire horses. And finally, finally, I have an excuse to go shopping for art supplies. It’s not a compulsion, it’s just that I genuinely need more colors of wire! It’s not my fault!

If you’d like to get a little wire pony to decorate your Christmas tree (or rearview mirror, or whatever other things you like to hang decorative items from, I do not even want to know) please feel free to drop by my Etsy store and order one! I also do custom work that’s made to order, and am working on some designs for cats, dogs and other adorableness. (Perhaps an echidna! Or a capybara with a little wire monocle!) Honestly, the more I can move this wire out of here the sooner I can move on to some other stack of art supplies that I’ve been neglecting… maybe I’ll try the scratchboard next. Or the linocuts. Or the watercolors. Or the acrylics.

Help.

And that was when the bride and groom engaged in fisticuffs…

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My new job is awesome. And when I say “awesome,” I am understating matters. For a couple of weeks now I’ve been driving a carriage in downtown Salt Lake City, and I’m having a singularly good time. Sure, I make basically nothing, I work on commission and tips (neither of which are currently abundant), and it is part of my job description to shovel manure and clean up horse pee, but when you’re a horse person, you actually list that sort of thing on the “pro” side of your list instead of the “con” side. Plus, you can’t beat the company, and by that I mean both the four-legged and the two-legged kind. The horses are great and the people are… well, you have to be a certain sort of person to be happy about all of the things I’ve just mentioned, which means they are truly My People.

The best thing about it, though, is seeing the city from another angle. I grew up in Salt Lake and though I’m familiar with many of the sights and attractions of the area, I can’t claim to have ever known the downtown area at all. I’d come down occasionally for the mall (which isn’t there anymore), but I’d never have dreamed of being on the streets down there at one o’clock in the morning. That sort of thing is generally reserved for people who have a social life.

We get a pretty nice view from our usual staging area at the south gate to Temple Square.

Since I started driving carriages though, I’ve been having a Salt Lake renaissance. (That’s a Sports Night reference, by the way. If you haven’t seen Sports Night, I feel sad for you. Please acquire it and enrich your life.) There’s so much going on downtown and so much to do that I hardly know where to begin. (I can’t really begin anyway, since as I mentioned I don’t really make much money, which means I have no money, which means I can’t actually patronize any of those fabulous restaurants I keep seeing.) And the city at night — which is mostly the state I see it in, since it gets dark pretty early now — is gorgeous. I really just enjoy everything about it. I enjoy meeting random people and taking them on carriage rides, sharing what I know about the various sights on our tours and the stories behind them. I enjoy watching the light shine through the yellow fall leaves outside of Temple Square and seeing the colors change in Memory Grove and watching the lights come on in the beautiful buildings downtown as night falls. I enjoy the fact that I’m not sitting behind a computer for a living, even if my brilliant alternative involves standing around outdoors freezing my bits off.

And sure, I don’t get to see much of that because mostly I stand around asking passersby if they’d like to take a carriage ride tonight, and mostly they say no, so my evenings are generally spent standing around dying of boredom, but maybe that’s part of why I’ve learned to appreciate the little things. Being a carriage driver gives you a fascinating glimpse into other people’s lives, like the guy who proposed to his girlfriend on my first-ever ride as a trainee, or the drunk guy who I spotted tonight pissing outside the entrance of an upscale restaurant in full view of dozens of passengers on the light rail train, not to mention everybody else on the street. It’s a seriously diverse slice of life out there.

My esteemed colleague Ace, on the other hand, does not care about human drama. He is busy having a nap. Please come take a ride with us and alleviate his boredom.

And sometimes, the unrelenting boredom is relieved temporarily by a good old-fashioned dash of drama. My fellow drivers have some completely insane stories, and while I’ve not been on the job long enough to have collected any interesting ones of my own yet, I did get to experience some soap opera-worthy drama second-hand by radio tonight.

Another of our drivers had gone to pick up a bride and groom from a reception hall and ferry them to their hotel. This is a pretty common sort of job for us and from what I’ve heard it usually goes pretty smoothly; the biggest problem is usually the bride and groom being late for their appointed pick-up time because they’re trying to escape from all of their relatives at the reception. This ride seemed to start out just fine; the driver radioed in to let the barn know that he’d picked up the bride and groom and was enroute to the hotel. Awhile later, he came on the radio again. It took a bit of back and forth before any of us really understood exactly what he was saying and what on earth was going on.

The bride and groom had both rather abruptly exited the carriage, and they weren’t anywhere near the hotel yet. She’d gone off in one direction, he’d gone off in another, and the carriage driver was sitting at the side of the road, absolutely bewildered and wondering what he should do. Apparently the couple had been bickering since the first moment, had already exited the carriage once and come back again, started fighting again, exchanged blows (she slapped him; he slapped her back), and finally both just jumped out of the carriage and left. (One or both parties were drunk; I’m not real clear on the particulars.) Another of our drivers was on the case before we knew it, tracking down the bride and making sure she was alright, hanging around to make sure she was safe until a car arrived to pick her up. Nobody knew where the groom had gone. It was like Days of Our Lives live and in person. Just hearing it all unfold over the radio was a truly marvelous and mind-boggling experience.

Carriage drivers see a lot of different relationships from our seat on the box. We’re often around for the big moments and celebrations — the proposal, the wedding, the anniversary, the birthday, whatever. Sometimes when a guy proposes, the girl says yes. Sometimes she doesn’t. Sometimes the bride and groom enjoy the best night of their lives. Sometimes they don’t. Hopefully, somewhere out there, this particular pair are patching things up right now, if it is right that they should do so. I hate to see a good honeymoon suite go to waste.

Trusting the Process

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If there’s one piece of advice I’ve heard most often lately, it’s probably this one: Trust the process.

As a chronic worrier and control enthusiast, trusting anything in particular doesn’t come easily to me. I recognize that I have a tendency to give up on things when I can’t jump directly from “starting out” to “end result.” And since I stepped out of the world of more traditional horsemanship and into the world of natural horsemanship, I’ve had to adjust to some pretty major shifts in thinking. Like, for instance, I would’ve never dreamed that I’d take my third ride on my green-broke horse as a half-day trail ride. Up a mountain. In a rope hackamore. But after having been through the process of training her myself in her groundwork, and then watching 3-Star Parelli Professional Terry Wilson start her under saddle, and having seen techniques that were sometimes counter-intuitive to me turn her into a different, more confident horse… I was finally ready to trust to process.

Sure, I might not know what I'm doing, but my horse looks awfully good!

Terry is a big believer in the power of the trail ride. He’d only put a handful of rides on Juno before taking her out on the trails near his property, and it was plain even to me what a positive effect it had on her development. After my first two rides on Juno, both in Terry’s round pen and neither of them terribly inspiring for me — in the sense that they revealed to me what an awful rider I am — I was certainly ready for something different. Terry thought a day on the trail would be just the thing; he’d ride Juno to begin with while I rode one of his lease horses, Jane, and if all went well we’d switch and I could ride my own horse. Terry’s wife Lvonne and our friends Laura and Bridgette joined us with their own horses, so we had a pretty decent-sized group, and the weather was beautiful, cool and overcast.

Terry and Juno leading the way

We hauled in to West Fork, scraped the previous day’s mud off the horses and got everyone tacked up, then we headed right out on the trail. You wouldn’t have known that Juno had only done all of this once before — and on that occasion they’d had to turn back after only a mile or so, because Juno’s unshod feet were a bit sore on all the rock. This time, Terry and Juno went right out in the lead, and she didn’t flinch away from tight horse-high vegetation, bridges, or even the singing cowboy on her back. (Hey, everybody likes a good Canadian sea shanty.) In short order, Terry proposed that we switch and I get up on my own horse for our first trail riding outing together.

We covered eight miles and six bridge crossings. We rode near the front of the pack, in the middle, and all the way in the back, but it was all the same to Juno. She naturally prefers to give the other horses plenty of room, so there was no need to constantly remind her to keep her distance from the horse in front of her, and she didn’t feel the slightest urge to rush home when we turned back. She was, in short, the perfect trail horse, and gave me the gift of the most enjoyable trail ride I’d ever experienced. And though I’ve suffered all kinds of confidence and fear issues when it comes to riding horses, when I was out there on the back of my own horse, in the middle of the wilderness, I didn’t feel even a moment’s worth of fear or doubt. Even though I’d had a bit of an emotional explosion just a few days earlier, I trusted Terry, I trusted my horse, and I trusted the process that had brought us to where we were. I trusted that it would keep taking us further.

Me and Juno, trailblazing!

Progress is often an uncomfortable thing. You don’t know yet what to do, or how to do it, or whether you’ll ever get it. You’re outside of your comfort zone — sometimes way outside of it — and sometimes you’re compelled to take risks to keep moving forward. That doesn’t mean you have to take up daredevil riding or do something that’s unsafe for you: it just means that you might need to put your pride on the line or sacrifice your usually zen-like emotional state for awhile. But with the right knowledge, the right attitude and the right support you can do things you never dreamed you’d do — even if it’s just taking your horse on a trail ride.

Terry Wilson is a 3-Star Parelli instructor living in Pagosa Springs. He teaches lessons and clinics all over the US and Canada, and I strongly encourage you to take advantage of his knowledge and general awesomeness by booking him for a clinic. Also check out his website and his Facebook page! This post is a follow-up to The Long, Dark Horseback Ride of the Soul; if you haven’t read that post yet, you might want to have a look. You know, just to see what I’m like when I’m a bit less emotionally balanced.

The Long, Dark Horseback Ride of the Soul

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My horse Juno and I don’t really share a typical horse/human history. For a start, she’s in her late teens, and she’s spent more years in the wild than she has in the paddock. She’s the first horse I’ve ever owned. Oh, and by the way, I have no idea what I’m doing half the time. It’s not really what you’d call a recipe for success, but somehow Juno and I have muddled along, with a harmony that comes of being kindred introverted spirits. I’ve mentioned before the particular challenges of moving beyond where we’ve been and into the exciting world of saddle training, which for a horse of Juno’s age isn’t necessarily an easy proposition. But I’ve always known that it was possible, and in recent years we’d reached a point where the only thing standing between Juno and a truly spectacular future was me.

Years ago when I first began to admit to myself that I wasn’t qualified to start my horse myself — which admittedly wasn’t until I’d taken my third ride on her, which ended with a spectacular unscheduled dismount — I didn’t really know what to expect. What I discovered was that there are some trainers who, when you say the word “mustang,” will immediately say no without hearing anything else. There are quite a few who won’t even bother to think about starting a horse as old as Juno is. (Horses can live into their thirties or even forties so she’s really kind of middle-aged, but younger horses are without a doubt easier to train, and a lot of equestrians would consider her practically over the hill.) And there are some trainers who, when you tell them the horse you want started is both teenaged and a mustang, will laugh until they’re red in the face and then offer to loan you a gun so you can just kill yourself since you’re apparently intent on dying anyway. (Cowboys are secret drama queens, apparently.) And it usually didn’t matter anyway what many of those rough and tumble trainers of the American west thought, because watching most of them work with horses was enough to convince me that I never wanted them to touch mine.

Luckily for both Juno and I, we wound up in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, where I’d taken a job with Parelli Natural Horsemanship and suddenly found myself surrounded by both experienced horsemen and fellow students who were on the same horsemanship track and speaking the same language that I was. And when I asked around about who might be able to start Juno under saddle for me, pretty much everyone I met recommended 3-Star Parelli Professional Terry Wilson. When I ran into Terry and asked him about training my horse, he was a little surprised at her age, but he was game to give it a go. He warned me that Juno might never work out as a saddle horse, but he was willing to try.

In deference to her age and introversion, he started off slow — compared to what he’d do with a young colt, anyway — with plenty of groundwork, filling in the holes I’d inadvertently left in her ground training and helping to get her accustomed to saddles and cinches, which was something I’d always had trouble with.

Wearing a western riding saddle

Ponying out onto the road with a pack saddle on

He was mounting bareback in the middle of their first session; by the end of the first week, they were out on the trails.

Riding out on Terry’s acreage on day 3

I knew that all of Juno’s groundwork, and her inherent good nature, would make things easier than Terry likely expected, but I had no idea how quickly they’d progress. I’ve had the very good fortune, with Terry’s kind cooperation, to be able to watch nearly every session he’s had with my horse. I’ve accompanied them out on trails and learned a remarkable amount just from watching everything that Terry does. It’s been amazing to see how much my horse is really capable of, and how much more I should be doing with her. And of course, the more I watched her progress under Terry’s tutelage, the clearer it became to me that one day, very soon, it was going to be up to me to ride her, to keep her moving forward both literally and metaphorically, to be the leader in our herd of two.

To put it succinctly, I was petrified.

The day of reckoning arrived today — Terry had suggested that after his session with her, I should get on and ride for a bit — and it would be fair to say that I spent most of the day at work vacillating wildly between excited and scared as hell. Not scared of Juno, or of getting hurt — even green as she is, I know her, and feel quite confident in her and in Terry’s work with her — but rather scared that I wouldn’t be able to be the leader she needed. Scared that I wouldn’t know what to do or how to do it. Scared that I’d set Terry back in his progress with her, and that I’d never be the rider she needs me to be.

So I sat and watched Terry work with her, as he ran her through the basics again and made sure she’d be okay with a rider that bounced on her back and flailed at random, which she was… though it was more than a little humbling to realize exactly how necessary that would be before I could get on. Then Terry asked if I was ready to ride, and I said yes, because no wasn’t even an option, no didn’t occur to me, no was not in my lexicon. So I went into the round pen, and I got on.

I wish I could give this story some sort of Disney finale where as I rode, I realized that I could be a leader, that I did know what to do, that I wouldn’t be setting my horse back at all. Rather, the experience was quite the opposite. On the one hand, it was incredibly thrilling after all these years to be sitting on my horse, feeling all in all calm and confident about being there (but slightly panicked about being able to follow Terry’s directions, because my mind was stuck on a bit of an endless loop that went, “Holy s***, I’m riding my horse!”). On the other hand, I discovered that I hadn’t been worried enough. I thought I’d be bad, and I was worse.

Everything I’d ever known about riding — which I can’t say was much — I suddenly forgot. Fine motor control was a thing of the past, as was language comprehension. When I asked her to walk forward, Juno kept diving nose-first toward the fence and sidepassing, which was awfully fancy, but would’ve been even more impressive if I’d been aware of asking for it. When I posted the trot she thought it meant I was about to go flying out of the saddle, and obligingly slowed down to save me from myself. Whenever I asked her for something, it was more of a timid suggestion than a confidently worded direction. When Terry asked me for simple maneuvers it felt like he was demanding rocket science.

After I’d managed to somewhat laboriously grasp a few basic concepts, I asked her for a bit of trot so we could end on something I could actually accomplish, and then I unsaddled her (and started training her to stand with her nose at the tie rail, even when she’s not tied, because by God if there’s one thing I can accomplish it’s training my horse to stand still and not move). I got her a dish of grain and held it for her while she calmly chowed down, undoubtedly secure in the knowledge that of the two of us, she’s by far the cleverer one. Terry left me to put her away, and headed up to the house (probably to pour a stiff drink, poor guy).

I watched Juno eat and relished the way that she’d occasionally turn her head into my hand for a rub, with a confidence and self-assurance that even a few months ago she didn’t possess. I reminded myself that nobody starts this journey knowing everything — or even necessarily anything — that they need to know. I gave myself credit for being proactive, trying to get more time in the saddle before bringing Juno home and even working on enrolling in some formal lessons in addition to all the DVD studying I could do at home.

And then I buried my face in my horse’s neck and had a complete emotional meltdown.

Horses are good for things like that, though. Juno just stood and curled her neck around me a little (I suspect she was giving me a “wtf?” look behind my back, or maybe just subtly inspecting my pockets for cookies) and waited for me to stop weeping like a little girl, which I’m only slightly ashamed to say took quite a long while. I apologized to her profusely and repeatedly for not having worked harder to be the partner and leader she needs me to be, and I promised to do better if she’d just try really hard to keep me out of the hospital while I tried to catch up. I pretended for awhile that she understands English, which clearly she doesn’t (otherwise, you’d think she’d respond a bit faster when I say things like, “Hey Juno, it’s dinner time!”).

I know it’s not necessarily anything to be ashamed about, having a moment of complete mental break and just absolutely losing it. I know it was about more than one lousy ride, and that I’d piled work stress onto personal stress with a shaky foundation of overall uncertainty about life, but as I drove back to town, still sniffling, it was hard to even begin to gather the scattered shreds of my dignity, much less think about putting myself through the same wringer again tomorrow. It isn’t the riding that’s a hardship, it’s more that when you’re in the saddle, you have to face yourself.

The moment I walked in the door, my friend and temporary house-guest Gina wanted to know how the ride went.

I told her, in all honesty, that it had been simultaneously awesome and horrific.

“Good,” she said. “That means you’re learning.”

I’ve been keeping an album of photos from Terry’s sessions with Juno on Facebook; if you have any interest in seeing a great many pictures of the process, along with occasionally-helpful commentary from me, check out the first album and the second album on Facebook. You don’t need a Facebook account to access these public albums! And if you’re on Facebook and would like to friend me, please feel free!

Edit: Wow, this blog sure has gotten a lot of attention! My thanks to the WordPress gods for Freshly Pressing this entry, and to my colleagues at Parelli for finding it interesting enough to post the link on our official Facebook page. If you’d like to continue following the saga of Juno and I, please check out my follow-up entry, Trusting the Process, wherein we go on a trail ride and nobody dies.