Blurred Vision

Maintaining focus is one of the most important aspects of riding...and living. Distractions abound.

Recently a spring time cough has gone through several of our horses. I know that it is a reaction to pollen and the spores that become active as the ground warms up. I know that for some horses it can lead to a secondary infection that must be treated.

I also know that it comes every single year, sometimes worse than others, but never with any long term impact on the health of any horse. Yet it still hits me hard to hear a horse cough. I will never understand how after all of these years I am shocked every single spring at how green everything becomes. How could my mind not accurately remember this? The same way that part of my mind can not accurately remember that the cough comes, and it goes.

Still it wears on me.

Exhaustion comes with each changing of the clock. In the winter I generally wake up between two and three am. In the spring that means that I am waking up between three and four am. And when I wake up at four am there is not sufficient time to do the things that need to be done each morning without rushing. Few things are more exhausting than rushing. It does not help that in addition to being Deputy prosecutor for Isle of Wight county I am serving as a special prosecutor in a neighboring jurisdiction. Every year, as is happening now, I fall very far behind on answering emails and making blog posts. Eventually things start to fall together and by summer I have gotten back on top of things.

Still it wears on me.

More and more I find my self wondering if I have finally gotten this program on sound enough ground to turn it over to someone else, or to several others jointly, to run without me. The lure of being responsible for only a handful of horses and no other people is strong. To get up on a Saturday morning and to only have to be concerned with the tacking of my horse and my own safety in the saddle is a thought that sometimes actually makes me giddy. I realize that when it is all boiled away, the success of the program depends on me--not because of any talent or virtue that I have but simply because there is no one else on the scene who is in a position to give up everything else in their lives to do the things that keep us together. I also recognize that my big girls are not yet old enough to exert the kind of leadership by benign neglect that is necessary to maintain harmony among such a diverse group of program participants.

But still it wears on me.

But then I recognize that we have had a tremendous number of successes recently with which I have had to do nearly nothing--great teamwork on a monstrously successful fund raiser,garden going in, a significant number of horses trained well enough to be ridden in the woods, new horses being picked up and delivered completely without me having to do anything to get it done, and Jen and Elise are taking care of nearly all of the morning chores. And our program is growing. We have more participants than we have ever had. Our facebook group page grows weekly and through our program scores of people are introduced to nearly extinct strains of Colonial Spanish horses.

And these things restore me

The Dog Days Of Summer

These three beagle puppies will join their mother in the woods in a few more months. They are being raised to live as she does, outside, no kennel, free as the deer and rabbits all around them.

Nothing makes a beagle happier than to follow the scent of a deer. The deer bound along ahead of the hounds, never to be caught by the short legged dogs and only hunted by the eyes of my riders who have ridden ahead of the hounds in hopes of catching a glimpse of the deer as they slip nearly silently though the woods.

Though I once lived to hunt, I have not hunted in about fifteen years. But I still love the sound of the chase. Even towards my final years of hunting I got much more pleasure out of listening to my hounds run a deer than I got from killing a deer.

Listening hard to the hounds, interpreting the meaning of the various barks, yips and howls, pinning their direction and speed, moving hard to get in front of the hounds close to the spot where the deer is most likely to cross a clearing and then...riding hard to get out in front of the deer again...not to get a shot, but merely to get in as close to the chase as possible---more fun than can be explained or understood.

The deer do not careen through the woods in blind terror. Since the dogs are not penned, they go into the woods at least once a day and follow the scent of the deer. The deer are as accustomed to the sound of the hounds as they are to the smell of the pines. They bounce along in front of the pack, anywhere from fifty yards to a mile ahead of the dogs.

The dogs being dogs and the deer being deer---each just simply doing the job that their genes program them to do. And sometimes you and your horse get to join in on the bloodless chase.

For many of us, the best way to enjoy the wild is to be part of it--even if only a few hours a week.

Corolla Half Breeds

One of the reasons that we work so hard to prevent the extinction of the Corolla Colonial Spanish mustang is in this picture. When crossed with other breeds Corollas produce offspring with smooth gaits, incredible endurance, and, most importantly, a gentle sweet nature.

Corolla temperament in an Arabian, Corolla endurance in a Thoroughbred, Corolla smooth gaits in a quarter horse--these crosses can all be registered with the American Indian Horse Registry.

Werowance is the son of Croatoan, the famous subject Kay Kerr's children's book. His mother is a quarter horse/walking horse cross.

Spring Is The Best Time To Join Our Program

We are about to begin our most exciting spring ever. Learn riding, natural horsemanship, horse training, music, history, and help preserve and promote nearly extinct strains of Colonial Spanish horses. Mill Swamp Indian Horses is a program of Gwaltney Frontier Farm. We are a non-profit 501 (c) 5 organization. We are all volunteers--no paid staff--just a lot of experienced horse people dedicated to producing better horses, but even more importantly, better people.

We are located outside of Smithfield, Virginia. To learn more about Mill Swamp Indian Horses see our website at www.msindianhorses.com and check out the Mill Swamp Indian Horses group page on Facebook.

For more information e mail us at msindianhorses@aol.com.

When You Give Your Child The Gift Of Peace

Things have really turned upside down when well meaning parents concern and compassion ends up creating children who grow up to suffer from anxiety disorders, depression, and poor self esteem.

Perhaps the two greatest gifts that parents can give children is to teach them to ignore personal comfort and to get on the stage and get the job done. The obsession with personal comfort--(e.g. "you need a coat on," "stay inside it is too cold/hot/wet out there", "where are your gloves? It is freezing out there") causes kids to chase an illusion that can rarely be caught.

Life often is not comfortable. The pursuit of comfort causes paralyzing frustration.

On the other hand, a child that is oblivious to the minor discomforts inherent in living an active life will actually live that life--instead of watching it pass by.

I am not a great athlete. I have never been a great rider. I have certainly fallen from horses hundreds of times.

But for the life of me I can only recall less than ten such falls. That is not from amnesia. That is because from the time I began riding at age two I was taught that falling off was such a nothing event that it was not worth remembering. One would fall, check for blood, and remount. Falling was of no more moment than putting on a shirt or drinking ice tea.

There are exceptions. I remember the times that resulted in hospitalizations or required other medical interventions, but I do not recall the result of the simple application of gravity to movement inherent in most falls.

That is not because I am tough. That is not because of any macho world view. That is because I was raised to ignore personal comfort. Even now, every time someone asks me if I think that the room we are in is too hot or too cold I am till taken aback. The truthful answer in all but the most extreme cases is that I have not noticed. In fact, it has not occurred to me to spend a moment being uncomfortable.

Most of the credit for being able to simply take things as they are goes to my mother. Unlike today's kids who are so often begged to reveal just exactly what it is they want to eat and how they want it prepared and where they want to sit at the table and what they want to drink with their meal, I faced no such inquiries.

When I was a preschooler and would complain about something Momma had cooked she would simply tell me to shut up and get used to it because when I got big and went to Viet Nam the food would really taste bad. That approach has made my adult life so much easier compared to those around me who were raise to expect life to conform to their wishes.

 To be taught to conquer the stage is nearly as important for a child's confidence as it is to be taught to ignore personal comfort. The earlier a child learns to be comfortable on stage the better. Stage presence is an aspect of leadership that is rarely taught today. Stage presence allows a child to become an effective communicator. Stage presence teaches a child to listen closely to the audience. Most importantly, stage presence allows a child to feel that he is worth listening to. Stage presence causes a child to feel that he deserves to be listened to.

And it teaches him to say things worth hearing.

(This is a picture of my granddaughter  at age two playing the spoons and performing with a group of my riders at Bethany Church.)