As of Nov. 19, 2019, the U.S. Center for SafeSport ruled that celebrated equestrian, coach and clinician George Morris (USA) is "permanently ineligible" from participation in United States Equestrian Federation...
In 2014, Buzzfeed published a quiz titled “How Privileged Are You?” In the five years since it came out, I often think about that quiz and the strange ways it...
Free Spirits: Saving America’s Wild Horses opens with chaos. Short clips and sound bites from Bureau of Land Management officials, animal rights activists, news anchors, ranch owners, and horse trainers...
If there were horses born for a life in front of the camera, it would be the horses of Spain. Andalusians, Lusitanos, and others that hail from this peninsula country...
Tom Lloyd’s documentary Romany Rai isn’t really a horse movie. Instead, horses are the film’s lifeblood, flowing in and out of every scene. Stout Cobs pull brightly colored flat carts...
August is county fair time here in the Midwest—the time of year when urban and rural life collide. This year, whilst perusing pop up barn aisles at the local fair,...
I have never competed on the hunter/jumper circuit, yet even I can quote former Olympic trainer George Morris. His clever quips and biting witticisms have a precision that is hard...
Not long ago, I stumbled upon an article about how women with horses should be avoided at all costs. There are multiple like this particular missive online, posts espousing horse...
Much of my life with horses has been defined by the dirt in my fingernails and the hay bits in my socks. It is a life punctuated by weather reports...
Horse husbands have been all over my social media lately. On a Facebook group, one horse owner left a desperate plea about how her boyfriend tried to sell her horse...
The best part of the 2019 Midwest Horse Fair’s dressage competition was the variety in the ring. In the strangely plush seats of the Coliseum, I watched fancy purebreds and...
I was swing dancing one night, and the concept of tension kept spinning around in my brain. Not chick-flick tension, but the rubber-band-like feeling between partners that lets them communicate...
For my 24th birthday, my friend Katie bought me three riding lessons with a hunter-jumper trainer she trusted named Cayla Stone. On the third lesson, I flew headfirst over my...
Right now, I am greeted in the barn by a pair cream-colored ears perked through the bars of a stall. The ears belong to Flower, a Gypsy Horse from Feathered...
A vote on a proposed ban on carriage horses in Chicago was postponed earlier in October. The Committee on License and Consumer Protection chairwoman said she believed that there needed...
“What if what we experience close up is real, and what we hear on the news from the mouths of those jockeying for power needs to be questioned? It is...
The day before Poetry sold she broke my phone. I asked her to transition up to a canter, and instead, I hit the hard-packed dirt. The phone made a crunching...
On Sunday, season three of Masterpiece’s Swashbuckling series, Poldark, thunders back onto tiny screens across the United States. This 18th-century drama stars Aiden Turner as Ross Poldark, a roguishly handsome,...
Almost everything I've ever posted, I published under a pen name. Gretchen is my real first name, and Lida is the first name of my great-grandmother. I am a big...
When I teach horse riding to friends and family, I use like and as like trailer hitches: they pull my students into different concepts while they are in the saddle. “Hold...
