Do You Show? How'd It Go?

With the show season winding down in most parts of the country, I thought I'd check in with those of you who enjoy that sort of competition, just to see how your year in the show pen's gone.

Did you reach some goals? Suffer setbacks? Partner with a new horse? Brush up with your old one and kick some butt? Branch out into a new class or division? Endure a few crying-towel episodes?

I sat this year out, with a too-busy schedule, a horse with a torn-suspensory problem, and emerging other interests (like a new grandson, for one). But it's not my first year of having to get my show fix through the efforts of other people, and probably won't be the last. Life needs have bucked me off before when it comes to showing, and I eventually find a way to dust off and get back on.

So in the meantime, how about it--got some results to share?

Horse Decor--Gotta Have It!

OK, let's admit it--it is virtually impossible to be a horseperson without expressing that passion, somehow, in your home decor. Sometimes, as with my friend Chatty's collection of antique painted carrousel horses, the expression is quite grand. Other times...well, let's just say the expression isn't quite so grand.

Take my house, for instance. I'm big on paint-by-number horse pictures--the kind we got as Christmas gifts in the '50s and '60s. Nothing grand about those slices of Americana...colorful, yes, but grand, not even! I also love old cowboy boots, and don't even care if they fit me. Consequently, my house tends to look as though the boys from the bunkhouse moved in, and never left.

I don't have any horse-motif bedding or sofa pillows, but know plenty of people who do. Ditto on horse figurines, stuffed horses, horsey fridge magnets, or furniture made from old horseshoes. To each her own--because heaven forbid that someone should come to the door, and not KNOW, for sure, that a horseperson dwells within!

I Still Dream About...

...some of the things I haven't yet done with horses. On the Yet-To-Do List (maybe you'll start yours as you read this):

* Visit an Arabian barn and sneek a ride on a well-trained Western pleasure horse.

* Go on a pack trip into the Canadian Rockies.

* Take a second horse-camping trip to the Oregon coast--it's been 15 years since my last one.

* Tour the British Isles on horseback.

* Hunt down the perfect pony for my grandson (he's not even 1, so it's a bit too early to start this project).

* Buy back one of my many young horses, to enjoy him/her as an older horse.

Care to chime in on this one?

The Horse World's Good News

A colleague and I were just talking about the many issues of concern in today's horse world--the slaughter debate, the downturned horse market, loss of riding land to development, rising feed prices, drought-plagued hay lands, and so forth--and reminded ourselves that it's easy to get so caught up in the negative news that the good news goes unheralded. So with that as my inspiration, here's a question for you:

What's a horse-world positive that you'd like to see brought into brighter light? Where do you see the glass being half full instead of half empty?