Sports are tough. The sport of show jumping is really, really tough. The combination of horse and rider working together as teammates to clear huge obstacles at blazing-fast speeds (while...
Five years ago, Jennifer Crooks gave up an international showjumping career to improve the lives of vulnerable children in Ethiopia. Today, what she’s accomplished is worthy of any podium. Some...
On a warm May afternoon in 2017, Amy Taylor nervously scanned the driveway at Shady Side Farm in Eads, TN. She was looking for a sign: a whiff of dust...
I’m a deputy probation officer for Riverside County, California, and work primarily in a city called Desert Hot Springs. I check in on gang members after they’re released from prison...
Remi is one of the most uncommonly complicated creatures I have come across so far. He is a big, beautiful, cherry bay, rabicano Thoroughbred with a skunk tail. I have...
"Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake."—Henry David Thoreau On a chilly Thanksgiving weekend, I chatted with my riding teacher and a few other friends on horseback...
“Lots of bugs this summer! That’s probably why this horse has glassy eyes,” was the diagnosis a local vet gave when I had a bony three-year-old inspected for sale. I...
I’m all in for “anything horse.” Riding, grooming, sharing a horse’s space, stroking a muzzle, emanating every fiber of love of my being for the creature, whispering sweet nothings into...
One of the questions I get asked most often is if I have any bear spray in my saddlebags. The answer is no: in part because it’d be hard to...
I started having anxiety attacks a couple of summers ago. I would drive to the barn after a good day at work, and swing on to my first horse. Shoulder...
I searched for you for two years before I bought you sight unseen off the internet. You were an older model Ford F150, nine years old to be exact. You...
Have you ever experienced a phenomenon where a number of seemingly unrelated chunks of time and events conspire to fall together in place, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle? Sort...
Ten years ago, I loaded up my one true love and sent him six hours north for his next adventure. He was my childhood horse, and he was a beautiful...
“But, this is the last one,” I reasoned with both my fiancé but mostly with myself. “Kennedy is tucked safely in the barn, Sail Maker is over at Lee’s, and...
My love of horses has always spanned year-long, but in childhood, summertime was a special season—filled with Monday morning trail rides and Saturday afternoon shows. I can still smell the...
Arthur and Helen were my parents. They lived good long lives and both passed in their eighties about six months apart. They were good parents, and we had little money...
Before the morning of July 28, 2001, I had never before awakened to the scene that was playing out although I had been seeing it over and over in my...
It's always something of a shock to the system: that first ride of the season after what felt like a repressively long winter. It had been a few months since...
This picture brings up so many memories of my first years as young professional. When I first started showing Pongo in the Pre Greens, people laughed. I did all of...
Dear Lola, I have a confession to make. The day after I brought you home from the auction, I was angry and resentful. Not toward you, but at the man...
