Equestrian Ink

Felice--The Happy Jumper
I started taking dressage lessons in my college years. I didn't own a horse at the time, but a friend of a friend of my sister's had a horse she wanted to find a good home. It had some soundness issues but could do dressage. We checked out this pinto, and I immediately wanted the horse. A day later the person backed out and the horse was no longer available. I was bummed. The friend knew of another horse, so we checked her out. Felice was a six-year-old Anglo-Arab mare, gray, over sixteen hands. I lived with my sister that summer. She had access to a barn and pasture next to her house. So Felice came to live with us.Looking back, I'd have to say Felice

A Thanksgiving Story
By Laura Crum First of all, I wanted to let you all know that I'm not the only writer left on this blog. My fellow authors have had some health problems--themselves, their family, their horses (and I hope your mare is doing well, Jami)and/or they are very busy right now and unable to post. As a group, we've all agreed that we need to prioritize the important things (family, health, horses...etc) over writing blog posts. So, currently I'm holding down the fort. But I'm sure the others will be back as they feel able. Anyway, today I wanted to share a story about something I'm thankful for, in honor of Thanksgiving.Awhile ago I wrote a post about a horse named Har

Sitting in the Barn
By Laura Crum Today I want to write in praise of a simple pleasure. Sitting in the barn, watching your horses. Perhaps watching them munch hay, or just watching them be horses. Swishing their tails, playing “bite face” with each other, nibbling grass. Seeing that all are healthy and relatively content. Just enjoying being near them, not needing to do more. Is there anything nicer than this?Not that having a good ride isn't wonderful, too, as I wrote about last time. But there is a unique, subtle pleasure in just being with our horses when we aren't trying to accomplish anything that I think is valuable, and we miss it if we are always busy trying to get som

A Nice Ride
By Laura Crum Don’t you just love it when once in awhile you have one of those idyllic rides that make you realize why you fell in love with riding to begin with? Yesterday was one of those days for me. I have been riding very sporadically, between being busy and the weather…etc. Two days a week is about my average. And I actually haven’t been feeling very motivated to do that. But yesterday was sunny and in the 70’s and my friends were going to gather the cattle and do some practice team roping. For the first time in awhile, we loaded Sunny and Henry and went along. And it was glorious. My son pushed cattle on Henry and I helped run the ch

Goodbye to Howie
These past few weeks have been stressful for me horse wise. My mare is suffering from cellulites, as you probably know from my last post. It’s a slow healing process, but she’s on the road to recovery.A week after my mare contracted cellulites, another horse in my barn also got it. Silhouette in Time, aka Howie, was a wonderful old gentlemen, a Thoroughbred schoolmaster, who’d been successfully competed by his owner to Intermediare. In his early twenties, he was teaching a new generation of riders. One rider won her first blue ribbon on Howie this past summer. He taught his riders the upper level moves with the patience of a saint, never giving anything for free, maki