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Showing posts from October, 2024

horses make you happy

"Horses make you happy." This is what my wife said to me when she looked at this photo of me with Noble Spirit [above], a local celebrity who was the inspiration for Joanne Anderson's book, A Noble Spirit (Perry Creek Publishing, 2012).  "Horses make you happy."  Indeed, they do.  I was raised in a horse family. My mother was a rider, an international show jumper, hunt master, trainer, breeder, and trader. By seven years of age, I had my own horse, was riding, and won my first ribbon in western class (photo below) in Colorado.  When I was nine, we moved to Virginia, and I began riding English and learned how to jump. Also, my summers especially were filled with grooming, braiding, mucking stalls, and cleaning tack as my mother's horse business grew. After a succession of three horses, I tapered off riding, until many years later I rode again with her on competitive trail rides with her beloved Appaloosas [photo].  As a teenager I didn't ride as much, bu...