Author Archives: Rebecca Berry

For the Love of Freelancing

I know I keep banging on about horse-related expressions and words that have made their way into everyday language, but it fascinates me. I had a list of words I...

The Racing Roots of Common Idioms

Since horse racing has been around for hundreds of years it makes sense that many of the expressions we use in our day-to-day life stem from the racehorse world. I’ve...

Horses of the Coronation

Saturday, May 6, 2023, was a big TV day for horse lovers, royalists, race enthusiasts and eventers. With Badminton Horse Trials, the Kentucky Derby and a King being crowned, the...

Shakespeare’s Hay Day

Never in a million years would I have thought I would voluntarily take on a Shakespeare quote to decode. Yet here I am, several decades from the perils of high school...

What is Setoning?

This week I’ll do away with discussing my higgledy-piggledy process of how these posts are created and focus, instead, on this setoning business I discovered last week. The word seton...

The #HorseWordNerd Writing Process

Last week I wrote about the hocks and subsequent ailments thereof. Whilst researching the words I came across a passage from Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew in which he lists...

Names of Fame

There are a lot of crazy horse names in this world and racehorses, for some reason, seem to have a monopoly on some of the strangest. There is a good...

Donkeys Differ

Why do donkeys have such big ears? The answer is painfully simple, and I suppose had I put any thought into it prior to beginning my research I might have...

Brought to You by the Letter S

Sometimes in our riding career, we elevate to the point where we’re required to wear a tailcoat. It’s a rarely worn riding jacket but when we get the chance to...

Bucephalus the Great

Bucephalus was Alexander the Great’s favourite horse, and apparently, according to many, one of the most famous horses in history. His story, surprisingly, is similar in nature to most horse...

A Bit About Bits

It was suggested to me the other day that I look into the names of certain bits, and I wondered how the thought had escaped me for so long. The...

Nightmares

My plan was to give a brief explanation as to how the word mare got tangled up with the word night to bring us the unpleasant experience of a nightmare....

Carriages to Cars

It isn’t surprising that the cars we see on the roads today are descendants of horse-drawn carriages. Nor is it surprising that parts of carriages found their way into the...

What Makes a Horse Gaited?

I rode a Paso Fino once. It was all rather embarrassing if I’m honest, but I wrote a story about it called, My Brief (and Accidental) Career as a Paso...

Hold Your Pommel Horses

I have referred to my long list of topic ideas before. I'm constantly adding to and reviewing said list for inspiration.  I've consistently passed over two items, pommel horse and...

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