This is Doranna Durgin’s WordPlay Blog. Theoretically, it’s all about my books. In practice, it’s more about life, dog training, horses, and reading. On Fridays, The Write Horse usually stops by to offer a peek into the horse training life, written by Patty Wilber. Welcome, and I hope you come back!
By Patty Wilber
We are probably all familiar with horses shedding in the spring. Equines also undergo a shed in the fall to allow the growth of their winter coats.
By Patty Wilber
A while back, I sent a horse home with lethargy, a snotty nose, and swollen lymph nodes. Some of those nodes eventually burst and drained (gross), and that is typical of the disease, strangles. Strangles killed the red pony in a novel of the same name by John Steinbeck. Fortunately, most horses have much milder cases and recover completely.
By Patty Wilber
We got back from Sweden, but I guess we were not done vacationing, so we were home for four days, in which I rode…including 9 miles starting on Road Noise, a trail head about 3 miles from my house with Mary Ann, and I started back to teaching at the college.
By Patty Wilber
We had a really nice trip to Stockholm, Sweden! It’s a bit of a long flight! We flew from Albuquerque to Denver to Munich to Stockholm!
By Patty Wilber
One of the fun things about horse training, in addition to working with horses in training, is teaching the riders ways to best help their mounts.
This past weekend, I got to coach Faith at the NM Paint Show in Stanley, NM. We do regular lessons, but shows are special because there are judges and an audience!
By Patty Wilber
Well, after recalling that Penny was out in the mountains as a two year old, I figured Gette might as well start her group riding mountain career as a two year old, as well.
Three big things I consider when deciding whether to take a green horse out in a group are 1. The temperament of the horse. 2. Whether or not the group is supportive of the needs of a green horse. 3. The difficulty of the trail.
By Patty Wilber
Penny is 16 this year. She did her first Back County Horseman trip when she was two. She was ponied part of the time and ridden part of the time! That means she has been been a champ on the trails for 14 years! (She has also has over 200 show points, but that is another story.)
By Patty Wilber
The Land of the Two Year Olds is actually not a very good title, because one two year old went home to recover from a respiratory thing, and another horse I want to talk about is five…but I put 30 days on her when she was two and then stuff happened and she is back for training just now. Thus, training-wise, she is two. That’s my story and I am sticking to it.
By Patty Wilber
The plan was to meet at Jack’s Creek at 9 am on 7/26 so members of the Pecos Chapter of the Back Country Horsemen could pack an ACE (American Conservation Experience) crew in about nine miles to Rito Azul in the Pecos Wilderness.
By Patty Wilber
One of the things that many horse trainers do is facilitate the sale of horses. While I have sold some horses, this has never been a big strength of mine, so when it became clear Judith needed sell Beauty (because she is retiring from the horse business), I did not really know how I was going to effectively help her.
