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Our lesson began in a dark indoor riding arena, with a leaky roof and sliding doors that rattled unpredictably with the wind.    The school horse was a pretty palomino Arab-Quarter Horse cross, called Marin.   Marin was put on a lunge line, a long rope that/… Read full post »

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Now, to call them horses was generous.     They were more like pot-bellied ponies that spent their days sunk to their knees in a mixture of manure, urine and mud eating from a 7 foot tall hay bale.   That is to say, they ate and ate all day.  Still/… Read full post »

Missing part of a finger wasn’t uncommon in the factory and farming town I grow up in.      What made Jeri special was that she was missing three, had broken teeth and couldn’t lift her arms higher than her chest.   All of these injuries, she would later/… Read full post »