Elise blogs at Cody and Axel Live Here!

My usual winter look now that the snow is around the corner-lots of sweatshirts and cheap coveralls from the hardware store. This must have been a fairly pleasant day last year as I don't see my usual hat.

~ Elise

Are you a Barn Babe?

Enter the Barn Babe Contest! (What do you wear when you're doing barn chores? Come on, let's be at our most err... glamorous!) Deadline November 15, 2006. A fabulous horsey prize will be awarded to the Barn Babe with the most votes. I Gallop On readers will vote on-line for their favorite Barn Babe after the contest closes. Check out our goddess-like contestants (maybe god-like too if any of you guys get brave and send me a photo)!

Posted by Kimberly at October 30, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Deva blogs over at Devolution.

I have attached two lovely photos for your viewing pleasure. They are 2 versions of the same basic outfit - otherwise known as "Summer in the barn in Sacramento is really frigging unreasonably hot!" - and I have only varied them so that you can see how handsome and sexy my quarter horse, Mojo, really is, despite the company in which he finds himself.

~ Deva

Are you a Barn Babe?

Enter the Barn Babe Contest! (What do you wear when you're doing barn chores? Come on, let's be at our most err... glamorous!) Deadline November 15, 2006. A fabulous horsey prize will be awarded to the Barn Babe with the most votes. I Gallop On readers will vote on-line for their favorite Barn Babe after the contest closes. Check out our goddess-like contestants (maybe god-like too if any of you guys get brave and send me a photo)!

Posted by Kimberly at October 30, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

You are The Lovers

Motive, power, and action, arising from Inspiration and Impulse.

The Lovers represents intuition and inspiration. Very often a choice needs to be made.

Hat tip: OmegaMom. Originally, this card was called just LOVE. And that's actually more apt than "Lovers." Love follows in this sequence of growth and maturity. And, coming after the Emperor, who is about control, it is a radical change in perspective. LOVE is a force that makes you choose and decide for reasons you often can't understand; it makes you surrender control to a higher power. And that is what this card is all about. Finding something or someone who is so much a part of yourself, so perfectly attuned to you and you to them, that you cannot, dare not resist. This card indicates that the you have or will come across a person, career, challenge or thing that you will fall in love with. You will know instinctively that you must have this, even if it means diverging from your chosen path. No matter the difficulties, without it you will never be complete.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Posted by Kimberly at October 29, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

The combined "A" team of F.A.C.E and Mt. Eden (F.A.M.E.) performs their world-qualifying routine at the American Vaulting Association Region II Woodside Spring Fest at Spring Down Equestrian Center in Portola Valley, CA on June 4, 2006.

Equestrian vaulting. The most beautiful sport. Period.

Update: Learn more at the American Vaulting Association

Posted by Kimberly at October 29, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

What do you wear when you are in the barn doing your every day chores, and no one else is looking? (Except your horse, of course.) I am particularly fond of my Carhartt coveralls and my hat with the big snuggly warm earflaps.

Enter the I Gallop On Barn Babe Contest! Deadline: November 15, 2006. Email your best Barn Babe photo to me (72 dpi and 300 pixels wide or less if possible, please.). Or, if you want to really get creative, make a video, post it on YouTube, and send me the URL.

Now this is sort of a family-friendly type of site, so don't go getting risque on me (clothing is not optional) or I won't be able to accept your entry.

I'll post entries on the website. Readers will vote online.

And may the best Barn Babe win! I'll post the winner here. There is, of course, a fabulous prize. A sterling silver celtic horse pin from Dover Saddlery.

Oh, and in the spirit of equal opportunity, you guys can most certainly be Barn Babes too.

Posted by Kimberly at October 29, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Kathy's recent post on horse art has opened up an old wound—

I used to get into some terrible trouble with my third-grade teacher Miss Kelly, because I literally filled the margins of my notebooks with drawings of horses.

And ladies. Sporting elaborate hairdos. Wearing beautiful gowns. Bedecked in flowers and ribbons and jewelery.

And so were the horses I scrawled across the navy blue lines next to the addition and subtraction and the verb conjugation. They galloped in and out of the three binder rings in their tutus and tiaras. Their long braided manes were tied up in bows. Some reared to stand up on their hind legs, holding a cup of tea in a dainty, silver-plated hoof. Their dresses were special made to allow their lustrous, combed-out tails to tumble in waves down the satin and the lace.

You should have seen Miss Kelly's fire-engine-red lips squish together in a thin line of disapproval each time she stalked by my desk, raising an artfully plucked and penciled-in eyebrow above her cat-eyed glasses.

I drew on, undaunted.

At the parent/teacher conference, she told my parents that I was "Obsessed With Horses". (An affliction otherwise known as OWH and about which public school educators apparently could speak only in guarded whispers.) I don't recall much mention of the fact that I was an A and B+ student.

I quit doodling in the margins.

May I submit for the record—

Hasbro's My Little Pony

My Little Pony: Dress Up Ponies

My Little Pony Crystal Rainbow Castle Playset

The My Little Pony TV Show with The Princess Promenade and other episodes on VHS.

Little girl's My Little Pony twin bed coverlets, My Little Pony t-shirts, My Little Pony comic books, My Little Pony breakfast cereal ... ? What else!? What ELSE is there?

Apparently, I was a frickin', third-grade marketing genius.

Wherever you may be, and with all due respect—Stuff it, Miss Kelly.

I must...

Let....

This.....

Go......

Child's Horse Drawing: The Saddle Club

Posted by Kimberly at October 27, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Improving the riders' tone and feel for the correct position is an essential part of the first two years' training at the Spanish Riding School, Vienna. (check out Classical Dressage)

Riding on the longe line teaches balance and the correct seat. It also inspires confidence, especially in the beginning rider. This is a very safe approach to teaching children. (And way fun.) It's excellent for the rider whose been overhorsed in the past (many kids fit into this category) and have had a bad experience. Riding on the longe provides a safe environment in which to help heal the fearful rider.

You need a solid horse (temperament, temperament, temperament), a good longer, an arena with soft footing (mine is pretty poor), a simple vaulting surcingle (you can use a saddle too), and a longe whip. (We weren't using a cavesson, bridle, and side reins here, since we're just starting with this horse and this was kind of an impromptu check-it-out session.)

This is quarterhorse Piñon's first experience on the longe since we've had her! I think she had been longed before, but I suspect in mindless circles just cantering around and around to blow off extra energy. Prior to putting the kids on her, it didn't take long to get her calmed down and help her to realize that she didn't have to go fast and that I wasn't going to chase her down with the whip. She is so gentle and agreeable, and settled pretty quickly into the idea that she can indeed just walk on the longe and it's OK. (In fact, it's very good.) I had her fairly relaxed with good control of her gaits and speed with just a halter and longe line.

Posted by Kimberly at October 26, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some mornings I take the long route to work. Just so I can
drive by the Forked Lightning Ranch.

I indulge in a good amount of Forked Lightning envy. I like to imagine me and my percheron horse Toby sailing across 5,000 acres of gold grass beneath a sky like this.

The beautiful Greer Garson once lived in the fine house beyond these gates. I wonder what lucky equines lived in this horse heaven and grazed these high mountain pastures?

When I cross the bridge, I never fail to look for the beaver who built this dam. But have yet to see one.

I suppose there's a whole long lineage of beavers who've called this creek home. Do you suppose they have a name? You know, like La Familia De Los Beaverados or something? Can they trace themselves back to Coronado and beyond? Do they remember the grizzly bear? Are they snug in their pine twig house when the creek freezes solid? Are they peering at me from behind the cattails?

OK. I've got my fill.

For now.

Posted by Kimberly at October 25, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our second horse trick training session. This was the best one out of about 10 tries yesterday afternoon.

Teaching this shaking hands trick is tiring! (Although Toby never seems any worse for the wear.) A lot of fun too.

Posted by Kimberly at October 24, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

This morning. My son's greedy mare Piñon does not come as I toss hay into the feeder one heavy half a bale at a time, already steaming hot in my coveralls zipped up over pajamas. Usually the long-legged quarterhorse trots down from the top of the pasture nose to tail with our even greedier percheron Toby, whickering the dismal state of her empty stomach in the dark chill of what can barely be called dawn these days.

Coleman lantern in hand, I go looking, my impossibly long-legged shadow leading the way like some otherwordly harbinger of what? I don't know. But I could work myself up into a few good and increasingly bone-chilling scenarios given a few more minutes of no horse in sight. I call her name. "Penny!" Start huffing and puffing along the perimeter of the fence. "Piñon!" Thinking about the time she got that dead branch impaled in the back of her leg, right behind the knee. "Pin-Yon-aaaaaaaah!" I stop to catch my breath. Sometimes this inky morning air is almost too thin for human consumption. Scramble through moss rocks and scrub oak, relieved that I don't find her tangled in the wire fence.

Gold and red leaves appear inch-by-inch from the darkness as the sun rises much too slowly over the horizon, along with the skeletal remains of scrub oak eaten over the years by a herd of horses with way too much time on their hands. A few leaves cling to the stumps of scrub oak that jut up out of the rocks and boulders. You can't kill the stuff. Although my husband has tried. But he gave up waging that war several years ago.

Sunday. The kids and I climb with our two tenacious heeler puppies up the mesa to the place where boulders so big that surely they were put there by giants rise up out of the earth and form a rough circle. Not exactly Stonehenge, we call it simply—Rock Circle. I settle into a kind of slouch in a crunchy heap of scrub oak leaves that have collected on the ground near the center over a slew of seasons. J. scales to the top of a big rock, removes her heavy leather boots and wool socks, and wriggles her bare toes on the sun-warmed stone and moss, arms outstretched towards the Pecos, looking infinitely happy. C. splays out on the flattest boulder, the one he always claims, walking stick in hand. His nose, and chin, and blonde double-fringed eyelashes turn up towards the blue dome. Hot and tired, and this being their first big hike and all, the heeler pups dig thenselves a nice cool dirt bed beneath a rock shelf.

From where I lay, I compare the veins on the backs of my hands to the sun-embossed nervures of the red and orange scrub oak leaves dangling in the breeze just above my head.

"Look, Mom!" J. is doing a little jig on the top of one of the boulders before hopping to the next. C. joins in. The puppies bark and jump on top of me. They are all teeth.

Tomorrow, J. and C. go back to their dad's for a week. They told me this week (And I did not ask. I do not pry.), during my official State-Sanctioned Period of Responsibility (that's POR for you uninitiated ones), that their dad and his wife sleep all weekend, nearly every weekend, when the kids are with them. I'd like to call him up and ask him very politely to please (goddamit) just try and stay awake, at least while J. and C. are there. I worry about the kids being left pretty much up to their own devices in a big suburban house with a postage-stamp-sized yard. From what they say, I gather my children are, more often than not, not paid all that much attention to. Stepmom is jealous of my daughter, vying for what little shred of attention her dad can muster for anyone. I do feel bad for the woman. But she chose what she chose. And I will always choose my daughter and my son.

I usually don't allow myself to feel these things. Maybe I need to feel them more. Because then they won't get stopped up inside like a log jam. I am mad. And I am angry. I am sad. For all of their fleeting childhood, I will see my own son and my own daughter only half of that time. The thought of that separation, of that many years missed with these precious two, hurts. More than I care to fully explain here except to say that tomorrow afternoon I will be unraveled. All at loose ends and sixes and sevens. I will be sitting with the pain for a while tomorrow afternoon until it passes through me and goes on its way.

But this is today.

I toss a handful of scrub oak leaves at J. Then more at C. He tosses me an impish grin amidst a shower of red and yellow.

"Can we stay a little longer?" he asks.

"Sure." I say. One of the puppies whines and licks my hand.

I think I could stay up here for eternity. In a bed of scrub oak leaves, surrounded by stones. The high, sweet voices of my children filling up the empty air.

This morning. Piñon's thin white blaze appears like a spectre from out of a tangle of branches, a mess of scrub oak leaves. She comes ambling at me through the early morning light, brown eyes blinking. Apparently not all that hungry this morning.

I pull a dead leaf from her forelock.

What's lost is found.

Check out these beautiful Flickr photos by: koenigNazgul, roarksfork, Alix King, Rebecca Ellen

Posted by Kimberly at October 24, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I love the gentle demeanor of the drafts.

There's something soothing about being in the quiet company of one of these big boys. Here Toby and I are working on our circle, some lateral longing, and on halting straight on the circle, with Toby not turning in towards me.

Sometimes the Percheron reminds me of one of those big, strapping cowboys you see two-stepping around the sawdust dance floor with a petite partner scooped up in his arms. And sometimes, of the freight train with a couple of behemoth engines that roars by the ranch at 11:00 AM.

When I am tacking Toby up with bridle, cavesson, surcingle, side reins, and he stands patiently (he's not tied here), even putting his head down for me so I can wrangle with and adjust and re-adjust that heavy-duty, nearly-Medieval, Mad-Max-Thunderdome-ish cavesson (I forgot I'd used it earlier on my daughter's Andalusian), I'm afforded a fleeting glance of what it might have been like to work with a team of drafts on a farm at the turn of the century. (Although I'm sure putting on a harness is much more complicated.) I read somewhere recently that the death of a working draft horse on a farm was reason for a child to stay out of school for a family day of mourning. That's how close these horses and humans were.

I understand.

Posted by Kimberly at October 23, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

My passion for the circus didn't ignite until four or five years ago. I'm still surprised by it.

I started vaulting, and met a young woman who'd performed for several years as a vaulter in Ringling Brothers. At the time, she was doing fire-twirling/juggling/dancing. For fun. A woman at my children's school was a trick rider in her twenties. Our vaulting club had a clinic with a member of the Cirque de Soleil-inspired equestrian extravaganza Cavalia. The married propietors of our local western saddlery met and fell in love at Disney World in Paris doing stunt riding. (She's a red-headed Parisian. He's a cowboy and a bronc rider.) My kids have attended circus camp at Wise Fool NM for two summers in a row, and one of the highlights of the season for me is getting to paint the faces of the little circus performers at their end-of-camp show or volunteering to spot kids during a stilts-walking lesson. I endeavor to teach my big Percheron Toby circus tricks. (If nothing else, one of these days, you will be able to catch our act in my rusting round pen.) I would love to join Wise Fool's women's circus one of these days (They travel to the little, tiny, out-of-the way villages in rural New Mexico and perform for children), although I don't know if they have room for a mountain-sized Percheron!

Anyway, you've got to read this marvelous poem by Paintbrushpoet. It's about ... you guessed it ... a woman ... and the circus. Actually, I think I may have actually seen the woman about whom she writes. Right here in Santa Fe.

I am always in awe of someone who can speak volumes and paint such a larger-than-life picture in a few artfully chosen words. Read it all.

Posted by Kimberly at October 22, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Charlotte Gray, the only elusive barn cat that I managed to not get the vet's to get spayed, gave us quite a surprise yesterday morning. Dennis had been telling me she was getting as round as a bowling ball and that he was pretty sure she we were going to have kittens here pretty soon. Well, he was right ...

Four little black and white kitties.

I'm reading up on when I can safely take them from Charlotte and raise them up somewhat civilized so I can find them nice homes. I'll be waging a big, splashy kitten adoption campaign in the lobby of the kids' school here in the future.

Any readers living in the Santa Fe, New Mexico area who'd like to adopt one after they're weaned, I'd be happy to hear from you!

Posted by Kimberly at October 22, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I think these tribal Celtic tattoos are gorgeous.

Maybe after a couple of glasses of really good red wine on my 45th birthday next month ... After all, you know, my people fought the Romans. I imagine they were a fairly decorative bunch.

Would you ever? Do you? (I don't!)

UPDATE: Just noticed this. Are those tenacious heeler dogs on my ancestral Robertson family crest? How fitting.

Posted by Kimberly at October 20, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's the movie in my mind—

Oprah flashing her brilliant smile and cooing, "You can look like me when you're in your fifties too!" and then announcing some other bit of wisdom from her sizeable tome in her best, down-home, I'm-no-different-than-the-rest-of-ya'll voice. "Own the Number, Girlfriend," she drawls. That is, the one on the scale—when, damn, she's a woman who has a whole team of fitness trainers, her own private chef, a driver, a bevy of assistants, an army of housecleaners, and who knows what all else. I hate her sometimes. I briefly consider killing my TV.

The rail-thin models in Vogue magazine posed as artfully as mannequins. The photo frames click by in a flurry. Are they alive? Or are they dead? I wonder while gaping at their skeletal limbs and hollow chests.

The stories about the dangerously thin starlets that I feel strangely compelled to read in the Hollywood gossip mags while I wait in the grocery store line, secretly gloating about the fact that I guess they really aren't so perfect after all. Tee-hee-hee. Or those candid photos that show Keira Knightley's cellulite-riddled behind. I vow to never look at a beauty magazine again.

Stop!

This is an old story. At least a couple of generations' worth. For me, personally, nearly 30 years ...

Why am I beating myself up for this extra 15-20 pounds? (I'm pinching the extra inch-plus around my middle.) After all, I'm not obese. I'm reasonably healthy. I'm fairly active, and upping the activity level will help me shed some of the ... er ... "extra". I can do a lot of things that a lot of women my age or younger can't. (Or just simply don't have an interest in doing, which is totally cool.)

After battling an eating disorder since I discovered the dangerously intoxicating power of "thin" at age 16 and then wrangling with it all through my college years and into my late twenties, I've finally realized that it doesn't matter how much I weigh or what the scale says. I will never like what I see in the mirror. I will never be good enough.

And for whom, I wonder?

And here's what's funny and wonderful and sad at the same time. My husband thinks I'm a real beauty. That's what the darling man calls me sometimes, simply—Beauty.

Though I rarely believe it. Silly woman that I can be.

It's the movie in my mind—

I'm standing in the pasture in my coveralls and barn boots. My eyes are closed, and Toby, my percheron horse, is looming behind me.

The wide, silent screen behind my eyes is embued with hues of burnt umbre, the blood red of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. The big equine nudges me with his nose, but I stay where I am, basking in the warmth of the sun on my face and all over my body as it sinks lower into the horizon, and I descend with it. My nostrils are quivering at the scent of piñon until it fills me up and I am no longer flesh and blood and bone.

I wade into the bold, underground river that runs beneath and through everything, where I am dashed against rocks and stones into something other. Spirit? I don't know. I'm not going to get all metaphysical on you here. Call it him, her, it, whatever you will. The great, ineffable, unknowable one sets me free. I am no longer separate and alone inside this skin. And when I draw the curtains of my own private theater open wide, I am surprised beyond words to see a blue sky framing a gold hawk who pitches and dives above me and Toby. Really.

I am not a flat image on a glossy page or so many pixels on a television screen. I am a mother, sister, daughter, wife, lover, friend. I am a horsewoman. I give Toby's neck a good scratch. The black horse noodges me back. Someone who speaks the language of impending rain, thunder, waving grass, grain, wind, snow, lightning bolts, and that bend around the mountain path. The syntax of here and now.

I am a beauty.

We all are.

UPDATE: Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. Check out Dove's short film Evolution.

Speaking of getting active... Equestrian vaulting practice is starting soon!

Posted by Kimberly at October 19, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Check out this gorgeous Flickr photoset by jennerator.

I have an audience. And assistants.

The tenacious heeler sisters sit on their haunches by the gate. Caprichosa and Teyla peer at us over the fence, having caught a whiff of the goodies that 9-year-old C. guards in his jacket. 10-year-old J. reads aloud from page 46 of Carole Fletcher's book Trickonometry: The Secrets of Teaching Your Horse Tricks.

HOW DO YOU DO? Shaking Hands. Equipment needed: halter, lead rope, soft cotton lead rope with snap, whip, carrots.

My percheron horse Toby eyes me expectantly, standing next to me in companionable silence, interrupted by a tail swish or two. I have a soft cotton rope tied around his right ankle. Which doesn't seem to bother him a bit. (In fact, I can lead the big buffalo with a rope tied around his leg. Prep work for hobbling.) This is a draft horse who loves to be fiddled with, and he is eating up all of this attention while keeping an eye on C., knowing there are carrots hidden somewhere on that little boy.

I've read this section on teaching your horse to shake hands several times (a prelude to my goal of teaching Toby to bow), but ask J. to read it to me again. Just once more for good measure. She takes a deep breath and dives in.

It is customary for people to shake hands when greeting. When you greet a horse, the only difference is that you shake a hoof instead. With dogs, shaking a paw is an oldie but a goodie, a real—

My assistants make up with their zeal what they lack in experience. Knowing this introduction to be several paragraphs long, I say, "No, no, J! Just read me Step 1, please."

She frowns at me as if it offends her delicate sensibilites to skip ahead in the text, then hesitates for a moment while C. blurts, "Do you need the treat yet?" He stops rummaging through his pockets when I toss him an emphatic nod NO. Meanwhile, my fifth-grade purist finds the place further down on the page, and reads aloud the words above her index finger.

STEP 1: With a halter and lead rope on your horse, and standing your horse next to a fence or wall by his right side, stand directly in front of him, facing him with the long, soft cotton lead rope tied around his right ankle by the snap.

"Got it," I say, like an airplane pilot going through the pre-flight checklist.

Make sure the snap or rope is padded enough not to hurt him. Holding the lead rope in your right hand, say, "SHAKE," gently pulling your horse's right leg up. Catch his right foot wtih your right hand and "shake hands." Reward him with a piece of carrot.

I give the rope a gentle tug. Ask, "Shake?" Toby stares at me, immobile as Mt. Everest.

"You've got to do it harder than that, Mom," advises C, who is at the same time covertly reaching into his pocket in preparation for the treat portion of the exercise.

"It says here that you've got to 'say your commands like commands,'" adds J, holding up the book to illustrate that she's not just making this stuff up off the top of her head.

I steel myself for the second try. Tug the rope again, a little harder this time. The word "Shake" goes from my lips through the evening air into Toby's very large and fuzzy ears and makes its way to his brain, where big equine synapses begin firing, and all of a sudden he is offering a pie-plate hoof, muscled leg outstretched like a dancer's, then lets it fall back to earth before I have a chance to do any actual hoof shaking.

"Well, that was a try," I announce to audience and assistants. The heeler sisters wriggle in bob-tailed excitement. I nod approvingly at C. who is already coming at us with a single baby carrot. Take it from his hand and offer it to Toby, who rarely gets treats, and who cranks his entire mouth open wide, apparently to chomp off my arm at the elbow or beyond so he won't miss a single morsel. I push my hand up and against his muzzle, kind of squooooooshing the whiskery jaws back together, and he plucks the carrot from my hand with his lips, just tickling my palm with his teeth. "Good Boy!" I tell him.

J. reads on.

Repeat several times, giving him a carrot every time his foot is pulled up.

She puts a finger on her cheek, clearly deep in thought. "I think that means, like, 6 or 7 times," she finally says. "So this next try is #1."

"No, it's #2," declares C, waving the bag of carrots.

Toby looks at him with longing. Caprichosa whickers from across the fence and licks her lips.

I pull on the rope again, and say, "SHAKE, Toby." This time the big hoof snaps way off of the ground and I reach forward to hold it. Toby is rather surprised when I shake it up and down a few times energetically as if he is an oversized Black Lab. (The tenacious heeler sisters can't even do this yet.) He gobbles another carrot. No teeth this time. His coal eyes soften beneath a fringe of jet lashes when I say, "Good. Good!"

We repeat five six more times.

Posted by Kimberly at October 18, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

With silver bells and cockleshells,

And tenacious blue heeler pups all in a row?

And here I thought the growing season had ended ...

Posted by Kimberly at October 14, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

No kidding. This ad is really in the Santa Fe Thrifty Nickel this a.m.

Funny, I have been hoping to work with Toby this weekend on exactly the same thing!

I'm 5' 7". Maybe I should give this lady a call ...

Posted by Kimberly at October 14, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Where my ten-year-old daughter and friend ride Piñon for something like a hundred miles in the course of one rainy afternoon trailed by me and the cranky appaloosa camera horse.

J.'s horse Caprichosa is still recuperating from an injury, or they would have had her out here too!

Ah ... remember being 10?

I didn't have a horse. Just a hot-pink banana seat bicycle and a vivid imagination.

I rode around and around the cul-de-sac of our suburban Cleveland-area neighborhood and convinced myself it was a dressage arena and the pink bike a fabulous high-stepping, neck-arched, chomping-at-the-bit, midnight-black, warmblood stallion. As I recall, several of the little neighborhood girls had similar steeds, and we went for rousing gallops together down the asphalt.

Posted by Kimberly at October 13, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

How's your morning going?

Dennis is still in Nevada on business. So I did not sleep well.

My old percolator perked and gurgled its final death throes at 6AM, leaving me with a pot of anemic coffee and no alternative but Folgers Instant Crystals (how did that get in my pantry?). Instant coffee is one of the most uncivilized beverages on earth, no matter what that lying Swedish bitch Mrs. Olsen says.

And my kitchen is beseiged by big-eared imps who are all teeth and claws and smell of horse manure.

Cheers.

Update: Lots of Mrs. Olsen here.

Posted by Kimberly at October 12, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Blue Heeler. Red Heeler. Queensland Heeler. Australian Cattle Dog.

How about Tenacious and Tenacious?

Piss and Vinegar?

Dingo dawgz?

God help me ... two heeler pups.

Meet our new girls. Lila and Red.

Posted by Kimberly at October 11, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am so proud of these two.

Nine-year-old C. for venturing out there and wanting to ride another horse. He gets a lot of courage from his older sister, J. (She’s riding C.’s babysitter mare extraordinaire, Piñon (a.k.a. Miss Long Legs), here.)

And Teyla. Our little rescue horse. She’s come a long way from being the scared and distrustful mare we brought home almost a year ago. To be able to carry a little boy with such care, given her history of abuse and neglect, speaks volumes about the power of love and kindness to heal a wounded spirit. It’s been a joyful thing to watch this polka-dotted horse come to life.

Posted by Kimberly at October 10, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I lost one of my very best friends a couple of weeks ago. Matilda-the-tenacious-heeler got too big for her britches and went snuffling along the road, probably in pursuit of a big fat rabbit, or some delicious early autumn scent. She probably never even saw the car or truck coming. Dennis laid her to rest on the hill by the round pen where we used to watch the trains pass by. I have not even had the heart to go up there. Yet. And her green-cushioned chaise on the front porch is heart-achingly empty.

Matilda-the-tenacious-heeler kept an all-night vigil right beside me when my Percheron horseToby was sick, liked yoga and strawberries, refused to be left behind, was undaunted and courageous in the face of high country hailstorms and thunder, protected us from rattlesnakes and coyotes, loved a good rollicking gallop, was thrown out of the barn by a despot barn cat and managed to remain her dignity, guarded the ranch, teased Teyla who hates all dogs, loved Toby about more than anything in the world, and kept me some really excellent and very fine company every single day and night.

I miss that freckled dog. Still look for her when I head down to the barn and then remember why she's not trotting along at my heels.

Until we meet again, dear friend.

Posted by Kimberly at October 5, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Check out John's beautiful photos over at Flickr.

I arrive for my longing lesson. The Hungarian is "one of the best", my vaulting coach tells me, as I follow her to the arena. "You're going to learn a lot from him—"

I nod enthusiastically.

Then she stops, mid-thought, elegant in her tall gleaming boots, her German breeches and polo shirt, and presses a manicured finger to her cheek. "Only thing is..."

My eyes are drawn to the arena, where the copper-colored draft horse is already trotting in circles around the sylphlike septugenarian in khaki pants, boots, and a white pressed shirt unbuttoned rakishly at his throat.

"Just don't talk to him."

Before I can get my mouth open to tell her I don't think I've exchanged two whole sentences with the classical dressage trainer since I met him over a year ago (And not from lack of trying, until finally, after my friendly and way wordy overtures are met with several instances of highly uncomfortable and resounding silence, I am told by someone who knows that the man simply doesn't talk), she strides ahead, opens the arena gate, points to two folding chairs in the corner. Where we sit. Quietly.

I had hoped that today's lesson would be the exception to the rule, and steel my talkative self against what I dread as a terrifying hour of soundlessness.

I fold my hands in my lap, perched on my seat in an uncharacteristically demure attitude, intent on not speaking, thinking that I do always say thank you for the nice ride whenever The Hungarian longes the vaulting horse for me, to which he simply smiles enigmatically, grey eyes twinkiling, and bows his head as if we are standing not in a dirt arena in Northern New Mexico, but the great stone halls of Boldogkõ or Diósgyor. Each time I notice that his scalp is tanned beneath a shock of white hair as unruly as Albert Einstein's. Sometimes I think he might laughing at me because I am a beginning vaulter and in my forties and just some cowgirl who trail rides.

My coach tips her head at me, tacitly implying that the lesson to which I've been invited has begun.

When The Hungarian speaks to the horse, it is only in his native tongue, in a whisper, and even those words are rare. As over 1400 pounds of sinew, bone, and spirit canters in a light, collected circle, I find myself on the edge of my seat willing myself to understand it all by osmosis. As horse and man dance together in the deep, sandy arena, I discover that silence can be more eloquent than I've ever imagined.

I am amazed at what I learn.

And I decide that I wasn't being laughed at after all.

Posted by Kimberly at October 4, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)