March 16, 2026 
The week the paparazzi descended upon Eyecandyland…
Eyecandyland is what we call the farm here in Wellington, Florida—center of the horse world and home of Eye Candy Jumpers.
I live my life kinda like that movie with Jim Carrey where he isn’t allowed to say no to anything. It’s a personal philosophy—say yes until no becomes the too-obvious answer.
If you ask me if I like ham, I don’t just like ham, I LOVE ham. If I were a vegan (I’m not), I would still LOVE ham, because for me food rules (unless a verifiable allergy, of which I have none) do not exist when you are a guest in someone else’s house. The chicken is already dead, the goose is already cooked.
Always saying yes has a lot of benefits. First, it makes life easier because you don’t have to ponder what your answer will be. Second, it brings loads of novelty and new friends into your life.
This week it’s brought the paparazzi, 15 equine-canine-feline photographers workshopping with the famed best-in-the-world equine photographer Shelley Paulson. They spread out across the field, they pop up in the stables, they gather around the pool and lounge stylishly in the pavilion. I absolutely love them all.
I am always falling back on the idea that animal people are a kinder, gentler, more sensitive version of a human, a version of a human I don’t have to feel quite so afraid of.
The most scary thing to me of all scary things is the human, the most dangerous animal in the world.
If you google it, you’ll be told that the most dangerous animal in the world is the mosquito, which causes around one million deaths a year by spreading things like malaria and dengue fever. Humans are considered the second most-dangerous animal.
(And I’m down the rabbit hole. “Do we need mosquitos?” “Yes, they provide food for bats.” “Do we need bats?” “Yes, they eat pests like mosquitos.”)
This season, Eye Candy has partnered with Horse Grooms (check them out at horsegrooms.com), an organization started and run by a groom. (It should be noted that for years I’ve argued that “Horse Care Specialist” was better nomenclature as it more accurately labeled the high level of knowledge and skill needed in the job). Of all the people who’ve ended up here at Eyecandyland, the founder of Horse Grooms, Dinette Neuteboom, is one of the most passionate and motivated we’ve come across, a person who is a true joy to work with.
Earlier in the week, Horse Grooms had welcomed Myrelis Aponte, neuropsychologist and mental health coach, a dynamic speaker who also runs a therapeutic riding program (kinda a perfect human really). She was teaching us about the amygdala and about learning to calm it down and not get roped into repetitive, destructive thought patterns.
I usually hesitate to name names in my column, for the sake of the innocent, and this might be a case where I should have remained silent, for it is not at all the fault of Dinette or Dr. Myrelis that when a crisis came and my amygdala was shooting off whatever neurotransmitters it shoots off and I tried to utilize the tools given, which included the acronym BRAIN, it went like this:
“B: Breathe. Done.
“R: Reset body. Done.
“A: What is A? What is A?? I can’t remember A!!!”
I started texting: “What is A? What is A? I can’t remember A! Is A Ass? A can’t be Ass, go get some! Is it???”
And then I texted: “I! What is I? I can’t remember I! Is it Inject? I can’t be Inject sedative, can it???”
I knew it couldn’t. Dr. Aponte was very firm that she does not believe in the quick, pharmacological fix. She believes in training the brain and learning emotional regulation.
At least I knew N, which is Notice limits, something I’ve been forced to do this season, where I had intentions of doing 10x more than what Eye Candy achieved. Eye Candy, this beautiful project of ours, this horse-loving, sport-loving, good-people-loving project of ours.
Here’s another person done wrong. Here’s another person with an aching wound inflicted by this thing we call “the horse world.” She tells me her story, she tells a room of us her story. She has decades in the sport, she’s nearly that thing, that horrible thing I call a cynic.
I cannot abide the cynic, the one who is so sure that everything is sh-t and nothing can be fixed. The one that coolly leans back and crosses her arms over her chest and with a small, knowing smile and eyes that have seen it all says, “What do you expect?”
So I ask, almost in desperation, when she is done with her story, “What do we do? Do we give up?”
And she says the words I’m waiting to hear: “No, we never give up!”
Ha. The cynic shrinks and shrivels and goes desiccated like those small dead lizards you find down here in Florida under your bed or in corners when you finally get around to sweeping the floor.
And so we continue on, despite difficulties, and continue to build our little world of philanthropy, education, community, and, as our Event and Marketing Coordinator says, “a bit of a party.”
And never forget art. For when Truth and Goodness seem fleeting, Beauty is always available. This morning, a cloud climbed into the sky like a tower, hiding the rising sun, so its rays peaked out from behind it, shooting pastel pink into the sky, and I shouted to the gathered paparazzi, “Where is the cloud photographer?”
In that moment, no one picked up their camera, they just looked into the sky and saw the cloud and we were together in that moment and someone said, like a sigh of pleasure, “It’s an ever-changing vista.”
And not a cynic in sight.
