Big Brown - What Could Have Been

Betty and I just finished watching the Belmont Stakes, the third crown of the Triple Crown in horse racing. Everyone in the whole world expected Big Brown, the winner of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, to win today and be the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed won it in 1978 - 30 years ago.

But, it was not to be. For some reason Big Brown didn't have it today. It was hot (about 94 degrees) and humid. The Belmont is also the longest of the three races - a mile and a half. To his credit, his jockey pulled him up when it was obvious (in his words) that "he didn't have a horse today." Initial reports are that Big Brown was not injured.

We know from our horses, Gletta and Morgunn, that some times they just have an off day - they're not at their best. That's something we accept as our horses are living, breathing beings with physical and emotional ups and downs just as we have.

Perhaps Big Brown just had an off day.

Today is June 7 and if your Birthday is today you share your day with: Anna Kournikova (professional tennis player), Prince (supposedly a singer), Ken Osmond (actor - Eddie Haskel in "Leave it to Beaver"), Liam Neeson (actor - "Schindler's List"), Tom Jones (singer), Dean Martin (singer/actor with Jerry Lewis), Jessica Tandy (actress - "Driving Miss Daisy"), and Paul Gauguin (painter).

Your Favorite Horse Movie

I added a poll (above) that will run for a couple of days to find out what your favorite horse movie is. I put in some of the classics, but you have the choice of "Other" and you can put your choice into the comments.

Let me know which horse movie you like the best.

Today is June 6 and if you today is your Birthday you share your day with: Jim Wade (Betty's younger brother), Bjorn Borg (champion tennis player), Max Casella (actor - Vinnie on "Doogie Howser, MD"), Dana Carvey (comic - "Saturday Night Live," " Wayne's World"), Robert Englund (actor - "Freddy Kruger"), and Pearl S. Buck (novelist).

Grace Really Does Gallop

One of the joys of my life is going to Galloping Grace Youth Ranch and helping out in any way that I can. Our friends, Max and Michelle Wade, run it as a place where kids can come FREE and experience the joy of horses. Check out their link on the left of this blog to read about what they're doing and enjoy Michelle's slightly twisted sense of humor (and I mean that as a compliment).

I try to go out on Thursdays to work with the horses or shovel manure or whatever. It was raining first thing this morning and I didn't think I would get to go. However, it stopped and I decided to go out. I'm really glad I did.

There is a program for girls that comes out on a regular basis and they bring some the girls who are experiencing various problems in their lives. Only two girls came out today. After lunch, Max worked with one girl in the arena as she rode Black, a gentle, experienced horse. I worked with the other girl in the round pen teaching her how horses communicate and how we can use groundwork to gain their respect and trust.

It was great to see these young girls get an 1,100 pound horse follow them around the round pen without any lead rope. The horse, through the ground work, had learned to respect and trust them which may be pretty rare in their lives.

Galloping Grace Youth Ranch is a place where kids can come to be loved and respected - both by Max and Michelle and also by the horses.

One of my favorite places.

Today is June 5 and if your Birthday is today you share you day with: Michael Winans (Gospel singer - "The Winans"), Kenny G. (saxophonist), William Boyd (Cowboy actor - "Hopalong Cassidy"), Igor Stravinsky (composer), and Pancho Villa (Mexican activist/bandit).

Another Book

Awhile back we shared Mark Rashid's books that we enjoyed and that influenced how we think about horses. Here's another book that has had an influence - "True Horsemanship Through Feel" by Bill Dorrance (told to Leslie Desmond).

First, a little about Bill. He was born near Enterprise, Orgegon on January 19, 1906. Bill spent 80 plus years working with horse, cattle and doing general ranching. He died at age 93, just before this book was published. Bill was still riding and teaching riding through feel at age 92.

The heart of this book is a quote from Bill, "I've always liked horses and I've always wanted to help them do their job better, whatever it is they had to do." He chose the title because he felt that 'feel' was the horse's true language. They communicate with each other through feel and, if we want to communicate with our horses, we need to do it through feel.

One of the difficulties of the book is Leslie Desmond wrote it as Bill spoke - with all of his ranch vocabulary and vernacular. Sometimes you have to read something more than once to fully understand what he's saying. Here's an example.

"There's some horses that will let you have all the chances you want. That kind of horse is just waiting for you to get things sorted out, and it's real helpful to be around a horse like this when you haven't got much experience. A fella's guesswork isn't a threat to a horse like this. And a horse like we're speaking about now isn't apt to bring your own feelings of self-preservation to the surface. The thing to remember is that there's all kinds of exceptions to anything that a person could say or show you about this."

Besides the concept of feel, one of the things I learned from this book is the importance of patience, or as Bill would say, "going slow."

"This approach has to be taught going real slow from the start and staying slow enough to where that slowness has some actual value. It can be done right or not, even if it's slow. But the chance of a horse remembering what he's supposed to be learning is a lot better when a person isn't trying to rush the results."

A good book if you have the time to read it - and sometimes re-read it again and again.

Today is June 4 and if today is your Birthday then you share your day with: Angelina Jolie (actress - "Laura Croft and the Tomb Raider"), Noah Wylie (actor - "ER"), Michelle Phillips (singer - "The Mamas and the Papas"), Dennis Weaver (actor - Chester on "Gunsmoke"), Rosalind Russell (actress - "Mame"), and George III (English king during American Revolution).

No Horses Today - Just a Cutie

Today has been a fairly busy day so nothing complicated or deep about us or our horses. However, we want to share a recent picture of our granddaughter Juliet that we received from our son and daughter-in-law.


Is that a great picture or what? See you tomorrow.

Today is June 3 and if today is your Birthday you share your day with: Colleen Dewhurst (actress), Tony Curtis (actor - "Some Like It Hot"), Tom Arnold (actor), Larry McMurtry (author - "Lonesome Dove"), and Jefferson Davis (Confederate President during the Civil War).

Horse Addiction

I found this and thought I would share it with all of you who, like us, find that your horses have an undue effect upon your lives...

The Twelve Steps of Horse Addiction

1. We admit we are powerless under the rule of our horses - that our lives have become periods of servitude interspersed with occasional chances to purchase new play things for the horses that "own" us.

2. We have come to believe that there is no power greater than our horses that will keep us sane and happy.

3. We made a conscious decision that we have turned our will and our lives over to the care and entertainment of our horses.

4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our barn and still think we might have room for just one more horse.

5. We admitted to God, ourselves and our friends that our shoes will always be muddy and there will be horsehair and horse snot on our clothes.

6. We were entirely ready to remove all these defects of character, but decided against it when our horse nickered and nuzzled us.

7. We humbly asked for removal of our shortcomings - so we could have more time to spend with our horses.

8. We made a list of all persons we had slighted when we were late because of chores or a long trail ride and became willing to make amends to them all - even though they still didn't want to hear about our horses.

9. We made direct amends to these people wherever possible, except when they didn't want to help us unload the feed bags or 100 bales of hay.

10. We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it to our horse... who knew it from the start and had been telling us that all along.

11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with our horses as we understood them, praying only for knowledge of their will for us and the power to carry that will out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we will carry this message to those faced with Horse Addiction and practice these principles in all our affairs.

Take it one day at a time, folks!

Today is June 2 and if it's your Birthday you share your day with: Wayne Brady (comic, TV host), Dana Carvey (comic - "Saturday Night Live"), Jerry Mathers (actor - The Beaver on "Leave It To Beaver"), Sally Kellerman (actress - Hot Lips in "M.A.S.H."), Johnny Weismuller (actor - Tarzan), and Henry VIII (King of England - notorious beheader of his wives).

Changing Dreams

I was born in 1945 at the end of the Second World War. My childhood years were in the late 40's and early to mid 50's. Me and my childhood friends played four games -baseball, football, army, and cowboys. The baseball and football were pick up games in the neighborhood. Playing army was influenced by our closeness to the end of the war. My father had a war dependent job so he didn't serve, but many of our family friends did. Conversations about Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge were common. However, my favorite games had to do with cowboys.

Wanting to be a cowboy came from those Saturday afternoon matinees where for a quarter you could see two of the old (late 30's to early 50's) Westerns and several cartoons. I never wanted to be Daffy Duck, but I did want to be Roy Rogers when I grew up.

There were many great movie cowboys during those days - Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, Lash Larue, Bob Steel, Randolph Scott, Harry Carey (Sr. and Jr.), the Cisco Kid, the Lone Ranger, Red Ryder, and, of course, John Wayne.

But, to my boyish imagination there was only one King of the Cowboys and that was Roy Rogers with his magnificent horse, Trigger. This was before the TV series when Dale Evans became his partner.

I don't remember if I had all the outfit, but I do remember getting a Roy Rogers gun and holster (cap gun of course) for Christmas when I was about 6 years old (1951).

A little Roy Rogers triva: Question: What was Roy Rogers real name? Answer: Leonard Slye. Question: Where was he born? Answer: Cincinnati, Ohio. His boyhood home is right about where the Cincinnati Reds baseball stadium now stands along the Ohio River. Question: What was Trigger's original name? Answer: Golden Cloud. Question: What movie was Golden Cloud in before he became Trigger? Answer: Robin Hood with Errol Flynn. Golden Cloud/Trigger was Maid Marian's horse. Question: How much did Roy pay for Trigger? Answer: $2,500. He later spent $5,000 for a saddle and tack with gold and silver appointments. In today's dollars that would be like spending $22,000 for Trigger and $44,000 for his saddle and tack. Question: Was Trigger a Tennessee Walking Horse? Answer: No. This is a common myth. His sire was a Thoroughbred and his dam a Quarter Horse.

Roy Rogers had several side kicks in his movies and Pat Buttram in the TV show with his jeep, Nellie Belle. However, one sidekick was with him more than others and that was George "Gabby"Hayes. I actually met Gabby Hayes when I was about 7 years old. Our neighbor owned a furniture store in Nashville, Tennessee and was an early local sponsor of the Gabby Hayes TV show which aired from 1950 to 1954. Gabby Hayes came to Nashville to shoot a local TV promotion and I got to go to the TV studio to watch and meet him. Quite a thrill for a 7 year old boy of that era.

I don't think I grew out of those early cowboy days, but the entertainment industry did away with cowboy movies and TV shows as I grew out of childhood. Over the years, I have learned that I still had that deep dream of being a cowboy, even if I finally realized that I would never be Roy Rogers. So, when Betty and I took up horseback riding about 13 years ago at age 50, my dream of becoming a cowboy seemed to be coming true.

However, as I learned more about horses and we eventually got our own horses, Gletta and Morgunn, I realized this dream would never come true. A hard fact that I have learned and come to accept is that cowboys are people on horseback who make their living by moving and working cows. I have 'played' working cows on horseback several times, but that's the extent of my being a play cowboy.

The good news is that as I have had to give up the dream of becoming a cowboy, a new dream is taking it's place - one that is realistic. My dream now is to become the best horseman that I can be. I still have a long way to go, but I know this dream is attainable. I will never be really good, but I am a better horseman than I was last year and I'm working to be a better horseman next year.

All in all, not a bad dream to have in the latter part of my life.

Today is June 1 and if your birthday is today you share you day with: Morgan Freeman (actor), Pat Boone (singer), Andy Griffith (actor), and Marilyn Monroe (actress).