Atta Girl!

It’s no secret that I have a love for animals. I’ve got two bird-brained-dogs that keep me constantly amused. Not only are they goofy but I just love how excited they are when we all wake up in the morning. They act as if they haven’t seen us for days and jump around and lickity-lick-lick everyone.

I have, and have always had, a tremendous love for horses. I am of the opinion that they are just like big dogs. I love they way they nicker-whinny-neigh when they see you comin’. I always nicker-whinny-neigh back at them. This usually starts an entire nicker-whinny-neigh conversation which leaves my lips numb.

I don’t follow horse racing and, in general, do not like what the sport represents. All too many times, I’ve heard/read stories of neglect, injurious tragedies, and slaughter house demise. I can remember being really little and my dad took me behind the scenes at the racetrack. I have an awful memory of a handler beating a horse upside her head with a bridle. He kept hitting her, over and over, until finally jerking on the halter, pulling her head down, and forcefully shoving the headstall on while she danced on her hooves in protest. Not a pretty picture in my memory download.

However…

Yesterday I found myself silently cheering a little “You Go Girl!” to the tenth degree of Girl Power when I found out that Rags to Riches won the Belmont race. She’s a gorgeous lil’ filly and I hoped she wouldn’t be run into the ground, broken, faltered, etc… and suffer the same demise as Ruffian. I cried and cried when Barbaro was put down and I just couldn’t handle the thought of another shattered leg, career, and life. I couldn’t even stand to watch, “The Horse Whisperer” and cried through most of the movie. I could not get over the scene of Pilgrim under the bridge, standing there shivering and bleeding with half of his shoulder hanging off in a horrible, horrible moment of the film. Ugh.

But win she did and what a magnificent animal!

I began cruising around the internet looking for pictures and stories of famous horses. I’ve always been partial to cutting horses and, at one point, came across information about famous cutting horse and stud, Poco Bueno. I once owned a horse and she was out of the Poco Bueno line. (She looked just like him, too.) I had no idea that he was the link to Hereditary Equine Regional Dermal Asthenia (HERDA) in today’s stock horses. Breeding is a funny thing. My horse, Penny, was a Quarter Horse brood mare and I had planned on breeding her. Now that I know this information, I’m glad I never did. She was a beauty and an absolute sweetheart. I have several writings that I did on another blog about how I got Penny. I think I’ll post those over the next several days.

In my quest for horse information, I found a horse rescue ranch in the Edgewood area. That’s only about 45 minutes from here. They do great things out there and one of them is that they are having a “Hug a Horse Day” for Father’s Day. I emailed them and asked if this event was solely for Dads or whether S and I could attend as we are both moms and dad to these boys. We’ve been invited and I can hardly wait to take the boys out for the day.

If you get a chance, stop by my buddy, Karen Fayeth’s blog, Oh Fair New Mexico. She has a post about her excitement over a local author’s new book about horses. Check it out.

Here’s an old photo (Thanks to S for cleaning it up as best as she could!) of Penny and me. I was much younger and she was, at the time, 18years old. I miss lots of things about her but most of all… I miss her smell. She was a great smellin’ horse. You horse lovers out there probably know exactly what I mean.

Ain’t she a beauty?

 

 

This was taken just after Penny had been wormed and she was not too happy to have me runnin’ her around the paddock. I usually rode her with just a bareback pad and hackamore. She was rein and leg trained and very well behaved. Except in our intial days when she was terribly barn sour.