How to Live Like an Elite Endurance Rider
Explore the key habits, choices, and beliefs of an elite equestrian endurance rider (even if you aren’t one).
My Equestrian Journey
Finding Shared Purpose with a Retired Horse
We love our retired horses, but it can be hard to spend meaningful time with them. Here’s how I found shared purpose with my retired endurance horse.
The Golden Pony: A Horse Story
A little girl lives a quarter mile up my road, on a three-acre plot with a battered farmhouse and tumbledown fence. She runs to the mailbox when I ride by, and she calls me “Highness” when she thinks I cannot hear. It is embarrassing, but sweet. I have not been an adult too long to …
The Athletic Rider
I didn’t consider myself an athlete until I was nearly thirty…and even then, I questioned my qualifications. What makes an equestrian an athlete?
Ledger Sees a Ghost: Old Selam Day 2 & 3
Alrighty, then. Having survived Day 1, Ledger and I donned our tights and tack for Saturday’s LD. I’d made a tentative plan to ride with friends from the day before ~ the ones with the young Arab and the adorable mule ~ having first extracted a promise that they wouldn’t wait around for me if …
A Knight’s Tale: Ledger’s First Ride at Old Selam
Friday, September 3, 2021. In the forest near Centerville, Idaho. Early. Breakfast goes down on a queasy stomach. I slept some, between long bouts of tossing and turning. I’m not super nervous ~ Ledger has good training, I know these trails, and we’re only going 25 miles ~ but first rides are first rides, and …
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He Will Rock You
I have a new horse! Meet A Knight’s Tale, affectionately known as Ledger. (You’ve seen the movie, right?) I found him in southwest Oregon, having been nicely started by an owner who didn’t quite have the time to meet his demands for a high-energy job. He’s seven years old, 15.2 hh, kind, and a little …
On the Wings of a Storm
I paid less than $400 for Aaruba. His breeder wanted quiet Arabians, and Aaruba wasn’t. No, Aaruba was the plain gray, high-headed, wide-eyed, last straw that sent his sire to the vet for gelding. I first saw him on the kind of windy, muddy day that whipped his mind to wildness. Still a leggy four-year-old, he flashed about the makeshift …
The Waste that Wasn’t
Over a decade ago, when I had to unexpectedly retire a young endurance horse, I wrote this post on how to respond when a dream collapses.
Neighbors
There’s something about being on a horse that makes people want to say hello. I do most of my conditioning rides on the grid of agricultural roads surrounding my farm. Just about everyone who passes in a car, driving a tractor, or riding a motorcycle offers a wave. Once in a while, someone stops to …