Love Nothing That Has No Pulse

Love nothing that has no pulse, and love but a few that eat no hay. Wealth, fame, prestige, and power have no pulse. Their pursuit, as the wise man wrote is but, "striving after the wind."

Such pursuits, at best, lead to a shallow, vacuous life. Lives that are entangled with those of other people can have meaning, but cannot escape being filled with pain. Simply put, when one meets a potential life long friend, throw down a pad of hay. If your potential friend does not eat the hay, be very careful about intertwining your life with his.

Humans hurt. Horses heal. Humans break spirits. Horses only break bones.

Some breeders call it "good temperament," but it is much more than that. I want to breed horses that are loyal and reliable. I want to breed horses that can take me deeper and deeper into the woods, where house lights are not seen and automobile engines not heard. I want to breed horses that reduce suffering.

I have succeeded in doing so, though it was no great feat. I have allowed my horses to be horses, have trained them gently and firmly, and did not lock them up in stables, fill them with sugar, allow them to become fat and sour, or cripple them with unnecessary horse shoes.

Now I want to put these horses together with people who need them. Unwanted horses, juvenile angst and despair, adult loneliness--all of these problems have the same solution. We need to get horses into the hands of more people. We need to encourage the development of an entirely new horse market, that of the eager novice.

Perhaps in the past this could not be done. It can be done now. The study of natural horsemanship can turn a novice into a responsible horseman in a matter of months.

Across this nation we must develop more programs to teach natural horsemanship to kids and to older adults. It can be done and it can be done successfully. We do it and their is nothing magical about our program.

If I were driven to make money off of this concept perhaps I could market myself with the same vigor that one sees in the most famous clinicians. I could do so if only I loved money. But money, like a slaughtered, "unwanted" horse, has no pulse.


(My Shackleford Spanish mustang Holland, shown above, must have a pulse like a bass drum)