I Wish That All Alcoholics Were Bad People

That would make it easy to blame them and feel that they are only getting what they deserve. But that is not how it is. The best person that I ever knew was an alcoholic. At my very best I was never as caring and compassionate as was he. He was a better student than am I and was a better teacher than am I.

I would like to be able to scorn and feel superior to the alcoholics and drug addicts that I prosecute in court. It would certainly make my job easier. But I cannot do so. I prosecute good people. I send good people to jail because they do horrible things while they are drunk.

I would give anything to be able to cause alcoholics to trade in their addiction for mine. You cannot run away from your problems on a bar stool, but I have no problems that can keep up with my horses. You cannot make the pain go away with a bottle but if I ride far enough I find that there is no room in the saddle for me and the feelings that make life hurt so badly. You cannot make that good "click" that you feel when the third beer hits last, but the click that comes in after about the fifth mile of cantering on a cool day lasts for days after I unsaddle. You can feel powerful and fearless after you drink about half of a bottle of tequila, but you can actually become powerful and fearless after you start a pen full of half wild colts.

I hate alcohol. I despise it and were it living I would kill it.

I would be justified in doing so. It would be self defense.

A Very Little Deal

My little riders spend entirely too much time talking about and thinking about getting thrown. As much as I stress to them that getting tossed is rarely a big deal and that on every single football game that I played in for ten years I got hit harder than even a serious tossing entails, they still talk on and on about the time they "got thrown". "Getting thrown" often means falling off of a horse simply because they were riding without focus.

I am just returning from getting thrown off three times in less than five minutes--most that I have been thrown in one training session in many years. Nothing is broken and I do not even see any bruises yet. I will likely be sore when I get up in the morning, but I am often sore in the morning anyway.

As much as I would like for some of the smallest riders to have seen me get tossed, I am afraid that they would have taken away the wrong lesson from the experience. In stead of learning that getting tossed is no big deal they could just as easily "learn" that that horse is a bad horse to be avoided at all costs.

In fact, I would likely still be working the horse this minute but for the fact that I was working her alone. This is not my preference. It is better to have someone there in the event things really go bad. I remember Lido standing outside the round pen as I mounted a few horses that were not pacifists with the phone in his hand having already dialed a "9" and a "1" and waiting only to dial that last "1."

"Ah,Ah,Ah got to be weddy, 'case you need da helicopta take you to da hospidal," he would explain.

I never needed the helicopter and I was never injured so badly that I could not be driven to the rescue squad to meet the ambulance.

Which all brings me back to my orginal point, even when training untrained horses, getting tossed is rarely a big deal.

Is There a Spiritual Connection? VI

"You ask if I believe that my horse can read my mind?, No I do not but I know that he can read my heart."

They Just Do Not Make Mao Suits In My Size

Got asked a question yesterday that was hard to answer. Worse yet, it appears that the answer is even harder for others to understand. Wayne asked me why I walked my boar hog on a leash. The answer was so clear to me that the question seemed absurd.

"Because no one else has a boar hog that they can walk on a leash," is the obvious answer.

Wayne rejoined that "no one else wants to walk a boar hog on a leash."

I cannot be held responsible for the rest of the world's intense desire to seek out the bland and the banal.

Perhaps I will be respected more in death. I mean, assuming that the taxidermist does a good job on me.

Now there will be a wall mount that will be both a real ice breaker and conversation piece.

Oh, They Tell Me of a Home Where My Friends Are All Gone

Good news normally comes with a, "but..." This one did not. This is pure good news and excitement. We provided some assistance to Boys Home in getting a natural horsemanship program started. Bonnie Wheatley has done a great job of working with the horses and the boys and the program is now well rooted.

They want to come back down soon and spend a weekend working horses and riding again. If there is a better way to spend a weekend I cannot think of it.

The best news of the good news is that Jimmy is doing great with his horse, Rain in The Face. Horses need more people like Jimmy and as Jimmy grows up I suspect that he will be a great teacher and mentor of kids that need a horse but just do not realize it yet.

This is a shot of the students when they visited last year.