Love and Respect

Everyone dreams of having a beautiful and loving relationship with thier horse. I recently saw a post by a very renowned horse trainer regarding "touching your horse's soul" and not basing the relationship on merely respect.  

I have seen many horse owners (in and out of my barn) attempt this and then at the end have a horse that they are affectionately bonded to and is overly anthropomorphisized but has utter disrespect for their owner and other humans (not vicious, just disrespectful). 

When push comes to shove a human is a human, a dog is a dog and a horse is a horse. If I treat a dog like a horse and then a horse like a human it is bound to be just as disrespectful to the animal as if I treat a human like a dog. We all have unique needs as species. 

A relationship with a horse is more like a marriage than a teenage romance. Young romance is merely puppy love - they touch each other's souls as first loves but they have no respect for the person or the bigger picture. A marriage is 30% adoration, love and soul searching, 60% respect and the ability to accomplish goals together and 10% the inability to live without the other. 

Love can grow out of respect but respect cannot grow out of love. 

... and when it comes to horses, the absence of respect (whether horse or human) is incredibly dangerous.

Be careful just how idealistic you are because the best of dreams can easily become nightmares.

SmartPak Ultimate Turnout Blanket

New blankets arrived!!! We purchased 10 of the SmartPak Ultimate Turnout Blankets to put them through their paces and try out this 10 year unlimited warrantee. 

Keep in mind I turnout in a herd of 30 complete with yearlings and two year olds! So this will be a FINE test of the durability of these blankets. In the past blankets have only lasted one season before they needed major repairs, two if we were really lucky. I've spent a lot of time sewing blankets back together and a lot of money purchasing new ones. 

Since these blankets only come in one color, we had to forego our usual tradition of each size having an assigned color. And as we don't want to jeopardize the warrantee we can't sew patches either... So we took scraps from our cannibalized blankets and tied them to the blankets. 

Pink/Purple = 72"

Navy/Grey = 75"

Maroon/Red = 78"

Blaze Orange = 81"

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