Skip to main content

Meet WhiteStar

WhiteStar
     Hello, all!  I would like you to meet WhiteStar.  She has been an amazing teacher of horsemanship.  I owe much of what I know about horses to her.
     Our relationship did not start out perfectly -- my fault, of course, and not hers.  I came for horse lessons with my mind full of the amazing things I could do someday.  I eyed the horses in the field and saw one attractive red Hanoverian mare.  Ah, yes, she would be a beautiful horse to work with.
     My human teacher brought the red beauty as well as an Appaloosa cross.  The Appaloosa cross, as you may guess, was WhiteStar.  She was a good horse for beginners: sweet, shy, submissive.  Her favorite 2 things to do are to stand still and to eat.  So she was not likely to go galloping across the field on a whim with a frightened beginner rider clinging to her neck.  This, I was told, would be a great horse for me to start on.
      I had to swallow my pride and admit that I was definitely a beginner.  The beginner's horse was probably the one for me.
     But, I told myself, I will learn on her as fast as I can so I can move on to a real horse.
     Ha!  I didn't know what a real horse was...
     As I have learned, one of the amazing things about horses is how well they can read humans.  And WhiteStar knew from our very first moment together that I was looking right past her, using her as a step stool.
     That's not the best way to start a relationship with anybody -- human or animal.  And, so, my horsemanship lessons began...
 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Short Story Break

via Pinterest     It has been a while since I penned a short story.  Usually it takes something like a "short story contest" to inspire me.  But I have noticed my writing skills improve with each contest so there is something to be said for writing short stories.      I say all this to lead into the fact that I am going to try another short story.  There is no contest looming on the horizon, but it has been so long that I think I am due to write a short piece.  Life cannot be entirely devoted to novel-length plots...      I am rolling around different ideas in my head.  There is no one to give me the first three words or a picture to base my story on.  There are no restrictions, no props, and no judges.      Methinks I will try something that is both epic and ordinary...something I have seen before.  After all, personal experience, great things, and the expression of the...

More Snippets from Snow White Rose Red

    One of the shadows moved.   “Were you just going to chuck it in there with no thought for the poor folks on the other side?”   Flip’s voice drawled out.   It was a deep voice and it made my heart skip a beat.      He moved away from the trees and came to stand in front of me.   “Some hard-working fellow is plowing his field and then – whop!   Out of nowhere, a poisoned apple flies out and hits him upside the head.”   He clucked his tongue reproachfully.

Goodbye and God Be With You

It's rather fitting that some things come to a close on this day -- the last day of the year. I submitted my last entry into the Rooglewood contest this morning.  I can hardly believe it took me until the day of the deadline to send it in because I'm usually earlier than that.  And, even with the extra time I took, I still felt a little bit like maybe I could have done better if I had more time. But there was no feeling of regret when I hit "send."  Mostly it was just a prayer that Rooglewood would hear the heart of the message when they read it and that maybe, if I win, they could help me bring the full potential out of my little story.  And there was also a feeling, after working on these stories for more than six months, that it felt good to close that chapter and move on to the next one. I did it.  I wrote them.  And I'm really proud of them. Last year, the act of hitting "send" on my contest entry catapulted me into an anticipatory state....