Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: At What Age Should One First Swim on a Wild Horse?...

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: At What Age Should One First Swim on a Wild Horse?...: Sooner than other kids if you happen to be my granddaughter.

A Riding Program Of Your Own: Drifting Into Poor Management

There is more to be learned from my mistakes than from my successes. It is highly likely that anyone starting a program of riding and natural horsemanship will start small scale--likely with only one person doing all, or nearly all of the work.

That is how I operated for many years. The cost savings made the operation possible. It also caused me to make some poor decisions without even realizing that I was deciding anything.

The key to getting anything of a large scale done is to prioritize needs. There is nothing wrong with setting certain tasks well ahead of other tasks on a to do list. The problem comes in how one views that to do list.

One must look at preservation before growth. However, a program needs to be preserved while growing. The more the program grows the more there is to preserve. However, the number of hours in each day remains twenty four.

I began to see my most important tasks as pasture development to hold down costs, fence maintains to keep horses safe, and maintenance of riders in the program by keeping them interested.

Thee is nothing wrong with those priorities, per se. The problem is that there are many other things that needed attention, horse training, special program development, advertising, safety development, general up keep, publicity outside of advertising and paperwork.

One cannot give all of these tasks the attention they need. The result is that only the most important tasks receive sufficient attention.

That is not the problem. That is inevitable. Every single organization that has any innovation in it at all will have more tasks to do than resources to get them done. It is also inevitable that I would feel pressured to get more of these tasks done.

Again, that pressure was not the problem. The problem was more subtle and sinister. It was my subconscious reaction to that pressure. Without realizing it I came to believe that the top priorities must be done and that the others were not important.

There was never a time that I sat down and decided that developing a detailed safety program was not important. I never made that decision. But my defense mechanism was to come to only recognize the importance of the priorities that I could physically accomplish and to convince myself, without realizing that I was doing so, that the other things that I did not have time to do were not important.

That defense mechanism was the problem. It caused me to fail to accurately evaluate what needed to be done. There is a world of difference between "I cannot accomplish that right now" and "That is not important."

As we are converting to a non profit and the eyes, hands, and talents of others are coming into play I am finally in a position to evaluate priorities better. What I consider my top priorities have not changed. What I consider to be important priorities have radically changed.

As you develop your program don't slip slowly into the trap that I made for myself.

(These are two wonderful Corolla geldings that are eligible for adoption. Creed, the larger of the two has been ridden in the woods on many occasions. Rico is being trained by Abigail and is her first training effort. She is doing great and so is he. He recently had his first ride in the woods. For information about adopting these horses contact the Corolla Wild Horse Fund.)

The Rainy Season

Perhaps I notice it more because I am outside every single day, but it seems that we are falling into a pattern of dry summers and wet winters. I understand that our wettest month is February. Last summer we had sufficient rain but for most of the last fifteen years our summer rainfall has been a disappointment.

A trail horse really gets a chance to show his metal in a rain drenched woods trail. Yesterday Rachel went on her first trail ride. We rode for about two hours. The rain broke for the ride but the woods was inundated. Movement on saturated ground requires a tremendous amount of energy on the part of the horse. I have no doubt that it takes much more exertion than riding in sand.

The heavy winds bring down small limbs that the horses push themselves through. The branches tangle in their feet but because of the level of training our horses have they are less distracted by these obstacles than they are by the horse flies of summer. When the wind blows hard enough the deer and turkeys cannot hear us coming and they are much more likely to explode from the cover within a few yards of us in foul weather.

The commotion causes our horses to jump a few feet but they quickly come down to a complete stop. That is the result of despooking work with a series of monsters in the round pen.

The bottom line is that our horses are among the few in the region that can safely take on thee conditions, especially for night rides. Their calm Spanish temperaments, their training, and their experience in the woods all come together to make Corollas perfect trail horses.

Even in the Rainy Season.

(Porter and Samson, two experienced Corollas born in the wild are shown here as we prpare to hit the woods.)

The Sun Was Shining Five Years Ago Today

And now it is raining--raining hard. But tomorrow the sun will shine again.

In about twenty minutes it will be five years since Lido died. They have been five years of of watching scars grow. The thing about scars that so many people miss is that they are stronger than the skin around them.

Five years ago today my house was filled with my riders by the time I got home from my office. After I got the call I called first my wife and then Rebecca. Rebecca made all the other calls. Except that I called JK.

And today it is raining. And the house is empty. My grandchildren are heading back up to the mountains. Rebecca's family is headed back to Michigan.

Today was the first December 29 that I did not plan something to do. I had our regular Sunday afternoon ride scheduled for this afternoon. But it will be rained out. I may ride anyway. Ruthann, Emily, Lydia, Abby, and Brent taught me that you do not need good weather to ride, all you need is a good horse to ride.

I have made some mistakes in the last five years. Perhaps the biggest was to try to keep from getting too attached to new people in my life. No more loss from death or even just moving away. One cannot loose what one has never had.

"Lewis said to Delia
That's the sad thing about life
There's always some folks leaving
As other folks arrive" ("Folk Blood Bath" Josh Rither).

So, if I didn't let anyone else arrive in my life there would not be anyone there to be leaving.

It really seemed like a good plan.

But.....then Emily H. told me that she needed to ride her horse behind mine because she only felt safe when she rode close to me. Then Charlie said that riding in the woods was "awsome." Then Rebecca and Mark named their son's middle name after Lido. Then Ashley M. stuck her tongue out at me when I told her that her horse could not recognize her because she changed her hair color so often. Then Ashley N. told me that she was happy. Then Hailey started wearing her watch so she could help make sure that everything stayed on schedule. Then Liam said that the horse lot was his "favorite land."  Then Sara lin slipped a cherry tomato into my pocket at the funeral so I would "have something to smile about" when I got home.  Then Abigail asked if she could train a wild Corolla on her own. Then Austin got very serious with his autoharp and Jocylin became the second best three string wooden banjo player in eastern Virginia. Then Emily M. told me that she was coming home. Then Sadie decided to muster the energy to stand up when she played the fiddle. The Colten decided after a performance in the far off land of Suffolk, Virginia that we now qualified as "travelling musicians." Then Samantha became better than me at gentling scared horses.

Then Lydia looked over and nodded and said that "Yea, everything is going to work out."

And I probably could have fended them all off until Attila asked me if it would be alright if he came out early to water the hogs before riding.

So now it is raining and Lido died five years and twenty minutes ago.

And I feel better than I have on any December 29 in the past five years.

In fact, I feel pretty good.

All of you that think running this program is an entirely selfless act are quite naive.

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: What They Do Not Know Can Hurt Them..Badly

As we are working to develop stronger safety rules at the horse lot I cannot help but keep coming back to one central fact. The greatest threat to the safety of riders and horses is parents who refuse to recognize their duty to teach their children to confront and over come fear. This post from earlier in the year deals with that important truth. Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: What They Do Not Know Can Hurt Them..Badly: Parents that were not raised with horses should not be expected to understand horses or horsemanship. They cannot be expected to unders...