Nature In It's Finest Form

Pat Parelli, my horsemanship guru, says that horses are "nature in it's finest form", and of course I totally agree.


Today I took my 4 year old colt, Phoenix - of the barrel rolling fame - to live in my friend, Linda's, pasture for a month. Because frankly, he's bored here at home - the barrels just aren't cutting it anymore. I should be giving him a job - namely, learning to pack me around - but we're not going to have time in the next few weeks, so I thought he might as well go and torment Linda's three pastured horses for a while.


That's him on the left.

Running for his life.

Well, not really, they actually got along much better than I'd expected.

I for sure wasn't going to leave my camera at home because anytime you introduce new horses into a group you're bound to wind up with lots of exciting horse photo opportunities. Like this....


(notice all 4 feet off the ground on both Phoenix and Bo - wahooo!)


Linda has been wanting me to take pictures of her horses for a couple of years now, so it was fun to get a few shots of her "kids" - Whitty and Slurpee and Bo.

Linda, I hope you're reading my blog! (She never reads my blog.)


Isn't this one fun?! That Bo is such a handsome feller - and he's a really good boy too, which makes him even handsomer. You know, handsome is as handsome does.


And the girls aren't bad either....


That big girl on the left is Slurpee - Linda adopted her from the Sanctuary where we work. When she first came in and I found out her name was Slurpee I immediately wanted to change it. And then I got to know her. And she is such a big Twerpee Lurpee Glurpee that Slurpee is the perfect name for her.

And she is HUGE! Last time we officially measured her she was 17.1 hands high. And she may very well have grown a little since then. For those of you who don't understand horse speak, 17.1 hh translates to 69" tall at her withers - or the base of her neck where it joins into her back. That's a big horse, people.

Especially when she's galloping straight toward you and doesn't look like she's going to swerve. I was buzzed by a giant Slurpee 4 times today! Whew, I'm sure it took at least 16 hours off my life.

She doesn't look that big in the pictures because all three of these other horses are actually quite tall. My little Phoenix baby boy is 16.1 or 16.2 hh, which is like 5 and a half feet tall at his withers. I'm talking a long way to fall off when he's doing things like this:


And especially this:

(Can you spot the Giant Slurpee moose in the photo? Whitty is the one in the middle, she's a large, Thoroughbred ex-racehorse. And there's my sexy truck!)

It went well, thank goodness, nobody got mangled. It didn't hurt that the girls were in heat and thought Pheenie was there to see them. (That last photo reminds me a little of the old Pepe Le Pew cartoons - only more pursuers and a gender role reversal.)

And here's one last one for Linda (although she probably won't see it) - good ol' Bo Bo.

I'm tellin' ya, there's nothing lovlier than a horse.