HORSE ART AND HOME DECOR

Late last year we had a friend of ours create the stylized likeness of a Fjord Horse in steel for an outside wall of our house. We're pleased with the final result and would like to share it with you here.

SADDLES

Since the beginning of the year we've been adding to the Saddles section of Your-Guide-to-....

Saddles has proven to be a very popular subject judging from the traffic, surpassing Horse Art as our most visited section aside from our home page. We're attempting to provide lots of very useful information to anyone contemplating the purchase of a saddle.

SADDLERY AND BUCKING HORSES

While checking out some saddle making sources here in Montana I came across Miles City Saddlery. Miles City is probably a good 600 miles east of here, still in Montana. Don't know much about their product line but their web site is interesting viewing plus Miles City is home to the Annual Bucking Horse Sale and Auction which we are familiar with. You can check out the Saddlery and Bucking Horse activities on our Saddle Maker Page.

About the same time I took a look at an outfit also in eastern Montana sponsoring Cattle Drives for those of us who normally don't do that sort of thing but would like too. Haven't tried that yet, every time I think about it I think of the movie "City Slickers". In any event we'll add that to our list of Cool Ideas as a potential horseback riding vacation gift idea.

E-MAIL SCAM

A bit of advice I like to publish from time to time is to never ever give anyone your credit card number via e-mail. When you buy something over the Internet the transaction is always ( for a reputable merchant) over a secure path and quite safe. E-mail is not secure and a reputable merchant would never use it as a means of placing an order. They may confirm an order via e-mail and often do but do not show your credit card number ( expect perhaps a few digits) in the process.

Be aware that no bank would ever ask you to do this. In the first place they just don't misplace account numbers and if they did they certainly would never ask for your assistance via e-mail or the telephone.

If you get such a request, delete the message promptly so the scam artist doesn't end up with access to your credit card or funds.

Back to horses.

ARTICLE - EMERSON AND HORSEMANSHIP

For this month's article I had planned on something on the topic of saddles and saddlery but got sidetracked a bit and ended up writing about an essay of Ralph Waldo Emerson's. I know that seems a bit far afield but in reading the article you'll hopefully understand my reason for doing that.

Emerson didn't say much about horses. Of course in his day nearly every one was transported from place to place on the back of or behind one. Maybe somewhere in his writings he talks about horses - I'm not sure. But, in reading his essay "Compensation", I thought there's much about horsemanship here, even though Emerson doesn't mention horses specifically. It's a good essay for the horseman or horsewoman to read.

Horses seem to understand the laws of nature far better than we do. Being prey animals they aren't risk-takers. They're happier in the herd than being the "individual contributers" that we tend to prize so highly. To be an "average" horse is likely not shameful as far as the horse is concened, where for us to be satisfied with being "average" implies we have a bit of the "slacker" in us.

In halter training a foal we find that the best way to get it to initially follow a lead is to put a rope around it's hindquarters and gently tug, pushing the foal towards us. With this gentle pressure applied to its hindquarters, the foal yields to restore equilibrium.

If we try to pull the foal physically by the lead rope, it probably thinks it's being forced to heaven only knows where and it doesn't want to go there. Equilibrium is being upset and the horse isn't sure how to get back to normal except to resist.

What we've done is learned something - how to achieve equilibrium. Having taught the foal is almost a by-product of this exercise.

In the round ring, the horse responds to what I like to think of as visual pressure. Our location and movement in the center of the ring influences the actions of the horse, even though there is no physical force exerted. Again, the horse is responding to this pressure to get the situation to where it "should be" - that is, equilibrium.

In Compensation, Emerson states that if we do something (e.g. train a horse) poorly, we end up with a poor result (e.g., a poorly trained horse) because we've messed up equilibrium and will suffer the consequences as the world seeks to get back in order. We get our just rewards, our compensation, and have to live with it.

Deal with the horse harshly and you'll always have to deal with it harshly to get it to do anything. That's it's new state of equiibrium and it costs.

I encourage everyone to give Emerson a try. Recommending his writings on my equine-oriented website probably doesn't make much sense - unless I add a section titled "Other or Misc.".

I don't promise reading his essays would make you a better horseman or horsewoman - but it probably wouldn't hurt any either.

Thanks again for the visit. See you in a month.