Welcome to my Blog !
“Heaven is high, and earth is wide. If you rise three feet
higher above the ground than other men, you will forever
know what that means.”
–Rudolph G. Binding
My son Richard proudly posing for our blogs first Picture
I have been in love with horses since the first time, at
three years of age, I was placed on the back of one of the
old riding horses my grandparents kept on their ranch.
My mother had grown up with horses on that ranch, and
although, for nine months of every year we live three
thousand miles from it, with every June I returned there
for the entire summer, and learned, from being around,
caring for, and especially escaping into the outdoors
with, our horses, the greatest sense of freedom I have
ever known.
Our ranch was located on a bluff overlooking the Pacific,
and some of my greatest memories are of how we would
saddle up and either ride for miles over the hills looking
down on the vast expanses of ocean to the west, and views
of the coastal range to our east. Our horses included a
registered Quarter Horse mare, an Arabian gelding, two
Saddlebreds, and a mixed breed cow pony who was the
smartest horse I have ever seen.
So I developed an appreciation for the qualities of many
different breeds, and riding styles from Western to
English equitation to cowboy-and Indian bareback. I don’t
really have a favorite; just being on horseback is what is
important to me.
I would then return to my other life every fall, and spend
the next nine months with school friends who had not spent
their summers viewing the high heavens and the wide earth
from three feet higher above the ground than they normally
did, and had no understanding of why it meant so much to
me.
I have been fortunate to be able to study horse husbandry
in college, and work with horses as a professional trail
guide, and of course keep track of the happenings in the
world of horses, from the racetracks and breeding sheds of
the Thoroughbred, Quarter Horse, and Standardbred
industries, to the Show Jumping and Three-Day-Event world,
and have kept a keen interest in the advancements in horse
medicine.
There is, I truly believe, an unbridgeable gulf between
those who have been privileged to be around, and involved
with, horses, and those who have not. Fewer and fewer
people seem to appreciate that human history, without the
horse, would have been an entirely different affair.
There are many issues of importance facing the horse
world, from the question of the fate of North America’s wild
horse population as more and more of the its West is taken
over for residential and industrial development, to the
challenges Thoroughbred racing is seeing from other gaming
interests, to the issue of horse slaughter. None of these
things are pleasant for horse lovers to think about, but
they are realities in need of acceptable solutions, which
will most of all, protect the best interests of the
horses.
I hope this blog will be a place where other horse lovers
can join me to share a mutual love for, and understanding
of, our magical equine companions, and exchange stories
our own experiences with, and concerns about, them.
Welcome!
Vincent
