December 21 Blog Ian Miller and Big Ben: Throwback to My Childhood Heroes horse, hero, olympics, riding, shpwjumping I recently came across a few of the horse books I had when I was younger. My family recently moved and in that process we uncovered a bunch of old items and junk, which had been tucked away in our basement or garage untouched for many years. This included many horse encyclopedias and picture books, the Walter Farley “Black Stallion” series (as you all might remember from a previous post) and of course a little biography on Big Ben, one of my favorite reads. He was a big chestnut horse ...
December 18 Blog Holiday Grief horse, barn, church, comfort, coping, horse friend, memorial, national tragedy, sandy hook, sandy hook elementary, shooting, tragedy, tribute, victims In the wake of another national tragedy, one that shook us to our very core in that it involved innocent children, there is never a clear, definite answer on how to cope. The families who were at the heart of this devastating loss of life most definitely deserve our prayers, sympathy, and kind thoughts, but how should the general populace cope in the light of the terrible and senseless events that transpired on Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary? If you are related to or personally know ...
December 5 Blog Wranglin' Wednesdays - Go Against The Grain! horses, colorado dude ranch, horsemanship, western riding, equestrian, horse, wranglin' wednesdays How's it going, audience? Good? Good. Me, I'm sitting here on my living room couch, procrastinating on packing my room up until the last minute, as usual. As I sat, I thought of something: hey, wouldn't my blog readers like to read about how to catch a difficult horse in the pasture? I don't know, do you? Too late! Right about now, y'all are probably going "Katie, you don't know anything about horses, do you? All you need is some grain!", but everybody knows I like to do ...
November 28 Blog Wranglin' Wednesdays - Sack Your Horse! Dude Ranch, horses, horseback riding, horsemanship, western riding, equestrian, horse, equitation Oh no, it's that time again! Time for Katie to tell y'all some ridiculous fact, or rant about why you should, or shouldn't, do that whatever it is with your horse. What I wanna' discuss this week is sacking out your horse. Maybe not so ridiculous after all? Sacking out, in essence, is desensitizing a horse to stimulus; loud noises, cars, gunfire, and other things. It is imperative to the safety of you, your horse, and others around you, but best of all, it's really ...
November 21 Blog Wranglin' Wednesdays - Sour Horses horses, horsemanship, western riding, equestrian, horse, ranch Hey readers! Hope you're having a good week, filled with plenty of horsey goodness. Today, I want to talk about why the terms "buddy sour" or "herd sour" are ridiculous words coined by the traditional equestrian world. If you're particularly attached to those phrases, now might be a good time not to be. For those of you who aren't sure what herd sour means, it's just a term to describe a horse that's anxious and distracted when he's away from his pasture mates, and the term buddy ...