Notes From a Cowgirl

This is my boy, Wiley.  He's 6 years old, about 14.3 hands tall, and I've done everything with him. Wiley has given and constantly gives me the chance to apply what I know and learn even more (with help from a few people). I was the first person to touch him, first to halter him, first to get on him, and still the only one who has ridden him.  I used to want to be a horse trainer and Wiley was my experiment. I no longer want to train horses for a living, but Wiley will always be the first horse I started.  Wiley was the perfect training project because he's a mustang. I got him when I was 15, so my mom legally had to be the one to adopt him from the Bureau of Land Management.  The picture above is Wiley's BLM brand. The first large symbol that looks like a backwards, handwritten four means that he was captured by and property of the U.S. government. After the first, the other markings are Alpha Angle symbols. The second grouping of one...

I’m one of the lucky ones who got to grow up as a horse girl.  I started taking lessons just before I turned 8 and bought my first horse when I was 12. This horse, Zoee, is my pride and joy. When I bought her, she was a 14 year old Arabian mare who foaled several times and had barrel racing training (read about barrel racing here ). Zoee and I worked very hard at turning her into a horse that could run barrels and do well in pleasure (slow) classes. A few years ago we were in a discipline rail class with over 30 other horses (read about discipline rail  here ). Many of these horses were obviously show horses, not middle-aged-barrel-Arabian-turned-pleasure-horses. I rode in the first group of about 10 horses and Zoee was great. She listened to my commands without delay and was actually slow , in a good way! To my surprise, our performance stood out enough to make the cut and perform in the final group of horses. That class was one of the most nerve-wra...

I find beauty in all sorts of things. First of all, animals are beautiful. Watching wild or domestic animals interacting outside really is wonderful. Some say that you can’t attribute human characteristics to animals, but I beg to differ. I think that animals have unique personalities, all beautiful in their own ways. Trees and leaves and grass and crops are beautiful, too. Think about it, this thing starts out as a tiny seed, gets the right amount of water and nutrients, and before you know it, this thing is giving shade or being harvested for food.  Trees and leaves and grass and crops also provide us with brilliant colors. Nature is art. That, my friends, is beautiful. Smiles are beautiful. Some people underestimate their own beauty without realizing the power within a smile. Smiling is a beautifully contagious, friendly thing to do. We all ought to smile more. I often find beauty when I’m quiet and alone, like when I’m riding a horse through a fie...