The Gift

OK, so the hiatus has been short but I am about to take part in a new project with the Corollas and I have something on my mind.

Just because one intends a statement to be a compliment does not make it so,(e.g. "You don't sweat much for a fat girl.") When people tell me that they could never handle horses like I do, never have the patience with the kids that I do, never find the time to do everything that I do, etc such talk is intended as a compliment.

It is not. It is a way of saying that in the long run everything that we do with our program is all for naught because what we do is only possible because I am so special, so talented, so gifted. Implicit in that message is that others cannot develop a program like ours.

The opposite is true. Anyone that cares about kids and horses and is willing to work and learn can do what we do and nothing would make me happier than to see the program spread like kudzu.

Please do not suggest that I have the "gift" of being a "Horse Whisperer." It gives me indigestion when people do so. I have the gift of being able to work hard at things that I believe in. I have the gift of having no compunction in telling the established horse world that it is wrong and that I view its judgments, rules, and opinions as being no more meaningful than the braying of a donkey.

Before I had a corps of little riders Lido was the first person to mount the wild mustangs that he and I trained. He got on every wild horse before I did. He started doing so when he was about ten years old. He worked. He struggled. He learned.

He did so even though he had the gift of cerebral palsy.

Get out of the chair. Go train a horse. Go find a broken kid. Put her back together. The real gift is the gift that you give the kids and the horses, and yourself when you do so.

Go give yourself a gift like that. You deserve it.