Known By Their Fruits

As rare as Colonial Spanish horses are, those who work to preserve and care for them are even rarer. One of those families in another state has faced a recent tragedy and they need our help to assist with their horses.

A future post will give the details so keep your eyes on the blog for next few days. We have each been given the opportunity to help out in this crisis. That opportunity is a gift in itself.

Each tree is known by its fruit. This is our opportunity to be an orchard.

Done Lost My Cookie Cutter

Having never once even whiffed, much less breathed deeply, of the chloroform of conformity, I do not reflexively consider the word "different" to be a criticism. Several years ago a mother told me that she was looking for a "conventional riding lesson program" for her child.

As that great sage from the 1970's, Mr. T, would say, "I pity the fool that would call me conventional!"

The differences between our program and conventional riding programs can best be viewed by comparing a brief summary of the week's activities at a conventional riding program and the last week at Mill Swamp Indian Horses.

Kids in conventional riding programs across this nation spent the week:
1. Riding in a circle in a sandy arena
2. On a nearly lame 32 year old Warm blood cross
3. Around an embittered, middle aged instructor
4. Who on each third lap snapped, "Sit Up Straight!"

Kids in our program spent the week:
1. With the opportunity for a five mile canter before school
2. A two hour night ride through the woods on Monday in total darkness
3. Trimming hooves and worming difficult horses
4. Joining in for portions of a fifty mile ride on Friday,(or completing another fifty mile in a day ride the way Lydia did, on her own horse that she trained herself, from a colt to an experienced trail horse, all by the ripe old age of 15, (Lydia, not the horse)
5. Painting in Kay's great art class in which some of our riders produce beautiful paintings that are sold at the gift shops of the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, the proceeds of which go entirely to the Corolla Wild Horse Fund.
6. Mending fences and sowing pastures.
7. Riding through the woods to a Mountain man Rendezvous where they showed the participants the kind of Spanish Colonial and American Indian Horses that mountain men actually rode. (Our youngest rider on that expedition is six years old.)

Except for that, we are just like every other conventional riding instruction program across this nation.

Now sit up straight and ride a circle around me while I yell for you to sit up straight.

Shinin' Times

My little riders and I have demonstrated Corollas, Shacklefords, mustangs, and other Indian Horses in parades, at clinics, at fairs, and festivals, but Saturday will be a first for us. We are going to show living, historic horses to a group of living history enthusiasts.

We will be riding through the woods into a neighboring county for a mountain man Rendezvous put on by the Old Virginia Primitive Riflemen. We will not be in period costume, but we will be riding horses that are in period costume twenty four hours of every day.

I Ride, Therefore I Am

Hannah has learned to ride with her ears--She listens. She seeks direction, follows instructions, and applies what she is taught. She is only one of my new crop of little riders that will become the backbone of our program over the next several years. Jenny, Matthew, Hannah, Samantha, Andrew, Ashley, Emily W., and Emily F. will be teaching new little riders in a few more years. Jessica, who is too old to be a very little rider, is a promising young teen who will become not just a rider, but a trainer and a teacher.

More leaven for the future. And is it a good thing, because, as Hannah pointed out to Emily M, soon I will be too old to keep all of this up.

Following the Crowd Over a Cliff

Training wild horses is easier than raising healthy children. Forty years ago in rural cultures in every corner of America being a good parent meant to work to raise children who developed solid values, a good work ethic, and concern for their neighbors. Kids worked hard and played hard. Scrapes and bruises were signs of an active, healthy life, not evidence of abuse.

In today's parenting ethos, being a good parent means to shelter children from physical challenges and to demonstrate one's love for a child by purchasing the latest expensive electronic gadget at the child's whim. The result is a pandemic of adolescent obesity and panic disorders, particularly among boys.

Ashley was not raised to cower back from physical challenges. Unfortunately she is part of an ever shrinking minority of kids. We recognize what a threat cigarettes are to a kid's health and as a result no parent would buy a carton of Camels for a kid. We pretend not to recognize what a threat the sedentary lifestyle that video games are to a kid's health and as a result parents contribute to the wasting away of their kid's health with computer games and a soft lifestyle.

I have no doubt that there are horse's in Heaven and computer games in Hell.