Monthly Archives: October 2025

It’s a labored truism that after you’ve lived a certain number of years, time seems to speed up rather than slow down (mileage varies as to when that happens for each individual). Certainly, autumn seemed to sneak up on us this year, in part due to higher daytime temperatures. It doesn’t seem like it was that many days ago that I was still wearing T-shirts and no base layers to ride Marker. Now…while it’s the lightweight base layers, it’s still the beginning of five-six months with some sort of base layer underneath, sweater or sweatshirt on top.

Time passes, nonetheless. It’s weird to think that the husband and I are now in our eleventh year in retirement. Neither one of us really thought that we’d be living this life at this age—that was not the case for our parents. Medical advances, different jobs, not going through a world war makes a difference. That said, I know darned good and well I couldn’t keep up the pace of my younger years. Oh, the sustained effort can happen over a couple of days—and then I’m done. Not that I’m a lazybones or anything, it’s just—I get tired. The arthritis calls my name. And so on.

Part of this life is getting out into the forest to cut firewood. Yesterday, we went out for what might be the last load of this year. The chainsaw is complaining about eleven years of use, even with diligent maintenance, and while we might get one more session out of it, we might not, either. There was two inches of snow in our preferred cutting area, and the first of two controlled bull elk hunting seasons started today. We might get out again for woodcutting this year, or we might not. It all depends on our ambition and the weather.

In any case, for us, the wood harvest in fall is more about building a stockpile for next winter, not this winter. At some point we’ll stop getting out there because we’re just too old and tired for woodcutting.

Yesterday, however, was not that day. Even though we couldn’t find the one lodgepole pine we spotted at the end of our last cutting that would have made the perfect start for a big load, we still managed to find some good stuff. Nice lodgepole with pitch pockets that are good for starting fires; not so much white/grand fir. It was harder to see the good stuff on the ground because of the snow, but on the other hand, it was also easier to spot standing dead trees that we had overlooked before.

Fall is often a lot nicer for woodcutting than spring. It’s usually cooler, there’s less mud, and there are lots of opportunities for pretty pictures of autumn leaves. Yesterday was overcast with a sharp breeze that meant despite layering, we didn’t take off the layers. I took some shots with the artsy filters on my Canon Power Shot of golden tamarack against snow-covered firs and pines. Some turned out, some are…well, more material for book covers and promotions, I suppose.

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Along with fall comes my birthday. Sixty-eight this year. Some years linger lightly, others bear a weight. For some reason sixty-eight has that resonance for me. As I said to my husband this morning, “A year and eleven months more, and I’ll have outlived my mother.”

But it’s not just that. There are some days when I catch myself after fretting about not doing enough and I have to think—I’m in my late sixties now. Sixty-eight and today I schooled my Marker horse at various gaits, including an attempt at racking. Which…I think he is doing. Either that or an extended fox-trot. He was a wee bit sparky, a wee bit on the muscle, but—he also called for me and fretted at the gate because he heard me talking to Dez and he wanted me there. Now.

I never thought I’d still be riding an energetic young horse in my late sixties. Here I am, however. Granted, he’s a safe horse moving into his full maturity at whatever age he really is (vet said seven in the spring of 2024, which would make him eight. Hard to be sure, though. Horse physical and mental maturity is really an individual thing). But still—besides the racking, I asked him to stretch out and gallop a little bit. We’ve spent most of the summer working on a slow, rocking-horse canter). Boy can move when he wants to, and today he wanted to. Which was fine. And it’s good to know that I can still gallop a horse on my sixty-eighth birthday.

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Thinking about time passing also affects my writing, as well. I’m working on a high fantasy at the moment (yes, it will be a trilogy!) and one of the protagonists is an older man who has decided to step down from his leadership role because, well…his wives have died. One of the young women he helped raise as part of his extended family circle (in this world the terms Heartfather, Heartmother, and Heartsdaughter/Heartsson are common) has died and become a Goddess, while the other one has successfully overthrown the Big Bad Emperor (with the help of the woman who became Goddess). He has visions of the woman who is the heir to the new Empress, and…he not only wants to help his Heartsdaughter the Empress but he’s curious about this woman he keeps seeing in visions.

More than that, he grows to realize that he really, really wants to do something different with his life. He wants to matter—and it becomes clear that he wants to leave his position as Leader to his grandson, who is a rising star in his own right. He doesn’t have a reason to stay where he is, so…he’s moving on, to reinvent himself. And yeah, a lot is going to happen along the way.

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I find it interesting that while I did have older protagonists pop up here and there when I was writing in my fifties, I really didn’t do much with them until my sixties. Part of the original Martiniere Legacy series is driven by the fact that the protagonists Ruby and Gabe are older, with a lot of life experience, and that knowledge shapes a lot of their decisions. The final book of that quartet, plus the matching individual related standalone books, ends up taking a long look at what later life can mean for different situations—including a clone whose progenitor was in his seventies, and who has inherited a lot of that man’s aging physical problems.

I’m fascinated by the places that my thought process is taking me these days. It’s definitely different from when I was younger.

Well, we’ll see what this year brings.

Two horse blogs in a row…wow! Not to worry, I’m working on an essay about an Ernest Haycox Western that I hope to get up this week.

“Trust” is one of those big buzzwords in horse training. We’re supposed to be cultivating it in the horses we work with, so that we can ask them to do—whatever—and they’ll willingly do it, no matter how scary.

One aspect that doesn’t get talked about as much is building your own trust in a horse. I’ve found that trust is a two-way street. If you aren’t trusting a horse, how can the horse trust you? Which means—it doesn’t happen overnight, or even in a few months. Trust is an ongoing process of building up a relationship between horse and human.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this, especially after a couple of incidents with Marker that showed me the degree of trust I’ve developed with him. One thing we do—it’s a game my husband started with him, and something I’ve continued—is to slide a cookie across the tailgate for him to grab. Sometimes he misses and the cookie falls off. Since he’s tied to the truck (a trust relationship in itself), he can’t reach to the ground and pick it up. I bent over, my behind to his chest, and at that moment when I picked up the cookie I realized that I wouldn’t do this with just any horse. Marker has proven to me that he isn’t going to do anything more than stand there and wait for me to retrieve his treat.

It’s an unconscious assessment on my part, coupled with two years of experience with him. I wouldn’t have been this casual during our first months together, for good reason. Since then, he’s learned self-regulation skills and isn’t as pushy.

Another incident. I was working on tying a hay net to the fence while on the phone, when I felt the soft brush of a nose on my neck, from behind me. Again, allowing this behavior is an exercise in trust—and it was one of the first ways that Marker showed his trust in me. He first did this four months after I bought him, during a moment when I was yelling at another horse who was kicking at my old mare. Marker slipped in behind me and briefly rested his chin on my shoulder—reassurance to me, or seeking it from me? I’m not sure. In any case, it was just a light touch, and he moved away without running into either me or Mocha. Since then, he’ll often give me an unsolicited light touch on the neck or shoulder. Very light, sometimes a request to exchange breath, then move away. No squealing, no striking, just—checking in.

This contact around my face isn’t something I allow most horses to do, except those I’ve worked with for a while and know well, because without that trust relationship it’s not safe. Period. By four months, I knew that Marker wasn’t going to lunge at me to bite or strike. I wasn’t going to feel teeth on my face, neck, or shoulder. That moment marked a reaching out on his part to express confidence that I wasn’t going to smack him for presuming to show affection and concern. He’d already shown me that he was a very “touchy” horse—brushing a nostril against my hand for reassurance after we’d had a “discussion” (aka argument) over boundaries. He’d learned that I didn’t accept him lipping my hand (lipping leads to nibbling and nipping) but that a touch was fine. Letting him touch my neck was telling him that “yes, I trust you too.” That I knew he wasn’t going to knock me down or bite me. I was using my many years of experience to make a judgment call.

(this is not something that I recommend anyone do casually due to the risk of injury)

We’ve come a long ways since then. Oh, we’ve had our moments—the yak incident was one, but between the yak coming off of a mound of dirt, dogs barking at the same time, and me falling down when he dragged me as part of his spook (I had dismounted), the combination of Scary Things Happening was enough to send him running off. But we recovered. I realized after a second incident when I tripped over a mat and almost fell that he finds me falling down to be very frightening (something to work on with a horse owned by an elder). Plus I realized that while dismounting was a good strategy with my old Mocha mare in a similar situation, Marker feels more confident if I’m in the saddle when we encounter something scary.

Live and learn.

Building trust is an ongoing situation. From the human side, one builds trust from the horse by being consistent and predictable in handling behaviors, including reprimands. The horse in turn builds trust from the human by being responsive to the human’s handling behaviors.

One trust area I really work on (besides being consistent and structured when training a horse) is dealing with scary stuff. Too many people have a “one size fits all” attitude when it comes to their horse being afraid. I remember a young wannabe trainer telling me I had to force my rather reactive Mocha mare past something that worried her. That was Young Trainer’s take on what you did when your horse spooked.

Well, that approach worked for a couple of school horses in that barn who tended to be reactive and jumpy but would settle if pushed past the scary places. However, by this point I had been working with Mocha for several years and knew that this was the wrong approach for that mare. I let Mocha stand, look, then asked her to move past it. Which she did, then had no problems the next time we passed it. I explained my reasoning to this person afterward (this was an unsolicited piece of advice on her part, and not only was she not working with me, she had less experience than I did).

Taking this approach really helped several years later when Mocha developed a cataract in one eye that impaired her vision to the rear. Over the course of one summer riding the roads, I taught Mocha to slow, turn her head so that she could see the problematic item better, and relax. Forcing her to go by something she couldn’t see well would have just created more issues. Mocha was still a rather reactive horse at that age, but because she had learned to trust me, she knew that she could ask for more rein to turn her head so she could see better. In return, I knew that I could trust her with that much rein, and that when she asked for it, she wanted to look at something.

Marker is much the same way, though my voice works as a soothing agent more than it ever did with Mocha. Early on, I taught him the “go touch” command for something that worried him and was touchable. “Go touch”—then allow him to take his time sniffing and touching it to confirm it’s nothing scary. He’s learned that when I give him that command, it really isn’t something to be afraid of, but that I will give him time to make that decision for himself. Sometimes, though, touching isn’t a good idea. “Go look” works for those cases.

Would establishing such routines with those reactive school horses have worked? Possibly, but because they had multiple riders, perhaps not, either. Not every rider is ready to trust a reactive horse in that manner. Not every rider has the skills to handle that situation should it not work.

Which circles back around to trust being a mutual relationship between horse and human. It’s not something that gets built overnight. Like any relationship, it grows and develops with time and experience with each other. And, most importantly, if the human doesn’t develop trust with a horse, the horse is going to be slow to trust the human.

Remember that young trainer I mentioned above? She hadn’t learned—yet—how to develop trust in the horses she worked with. Therefore, her toolkit was based on force, not cooperation and trust. I lost contact with her when she moved to another barn, but I hope she learned that lesson.

Trust is built in everyday interactions and observations. Trust is built in horse and human understanding each other and how we react to each other. It is not a simple thing—but if you want a horse to trust you, then…you have to learn how to trust that horse. And that is not something achieved in a few short weeks.

It’s been a little over a month now since that late afternoon when I went to Mocha’s field and discovered…she could barely walk. That moment when it became The Time I Knew Was Coming Far Too Soon.

I’ve finally stopped thinking about dividing the apple slices for horse grain. Noticed how slowly both grain and supplements are getting used, now that I’m down to one horse, especially one who just gets the bare minimum of grain to make his supplement palatable because he’s such an easy keeper (for those who are curious, it’s ¼ lbs grain, ½ lbs supplement. He still does well on that and on hay).

I’ll still glance off at that field on the way back from the ranch, somewhat of a habit from the summer when it was Mocha in that field and I wanted to check on her (and noticed that she knew when Her Truck drove by the field. Of course she knew. She knew the sound of my car when I pulled up at Gregg’s place, and would often be standing in the middle of her stall, where she could see me coming through the door. Sometimes she whinnied at me, but she was always, always looking for me).

Haven’t catalogued her ribbons yet, though that day is approaching.

And…it’s moving on with the Boi. A week ago he had the honor of carrying Miss Rodeo Oregon 2025, Mary Makenna Olney, as part of her Miss Rodeo America 50 Horse Challenge, where they have to ride 50 different horses within a set time period. Despite not having anyone besides me on his back since I bought him in August, 2023, he did well by her. I had a brief regret that Mocha never had this opportunity, but oh well. Marker’s path is different from Mocha’s.

I finally tossed the brushes I have been using on both horses. Surprise, surprise, they wear out faster when using them on two horses. I got a marvelous tail tamer brush and had a brief regret that I hadn’t discovered this one for Mocha’s lush mane and tail. But it was one of those moments when I’m aware things are moving on. That said, I’m holding onto one Mocha brush from Gregg’s day, because it still has a tooth mark from one of his dogs who I was fond of—the Bernese-Great Swiss Mountain Dog cross Cowboy. Two memories to cherish when I see that brush. Right now I have two braids, that brush, a custom bar shoe, a chunk of tooth, and several bits that were Mocha’s and Mocha’s only to remember her by.

But. New brushes, not worn out. I also finally found the right snaffle bit for Marker, a three-piece smooth ring snaffle with a dogbone center and a copper roller. He likes playing with the roller, just like he does with the curb bit. I put it on the old snaffle headstall I got over twenty years ago for Mocha, along with the seven-foot latigo leather reins, and the cavasson from Mocha’s early training. It seems to work for him.

Moving on. Our work this summer has made his canter smoother and more consistent. It’s a lovely rocking-horse type of canter that is easy to sit. Now we’re working on all three types of canter lead changes—simple (walk or trot before asking for the change of lead), interrupted (whoa, then pick up the new lead), and flying (change the lead at the canter). He’s starting to get them.

One thing I really appreciate about the training options this time around (as compared to Mocha at the same age) is that we aren’t locked into an arena. Both going down the road or riding in the hayfield allows for simple, straight-line work, just to build up muscle and provide a mental break from arena work. I’m not sure if that is why it seems easier to teach him things or if it’s tied to conformation and mental differences between the two horses. Or a combination of both. Nonetheless, he really settles into covering a lot of ground at the fox trot, which he seems to like doing.

There are some things I haven’t touched on much in our training, but may do this fall now that I have the snaffle. He’s solid in round pen and lunging work, though when I deviate from a pattern he expects he gets worried (well, we’re doing more of that variation stuff so he adapts). The injury to my shoulder earlier this summer means I’m not working on ground driving. Maybe that will be a winter thing. It’s possible.

He also needs a lot more work with ground poles in box and L backing/sidepassing. Again, probably best done in the snaffle, not the curb. It’s the kind of detail work that is best laid down in a non-leverage bit with some horses, and I think he’s one of them. But oh, he is really getting decent at gates. Not crowding my knee into them, either.

I’ve found that lunging or round penning him before I tighten the cinch eliminates a lot of the tension he’s had around saddling. And getting him to settle into the snaffle means I tie the reins loosely to the saddle while he works, then adding the cavasson after he’s had a few minutes to mouth the bit and settle into it.

So we’re settling into fall. For some reason his fall coat seems to be heavier than in past years—maybe due to the supplement he’s getting. He seems to be more relaxed, and…shows signs of becoming a fully mature horse. Oh, he’s still playful and mouthy, but there’s just that filling in of the front end, and a certain calmness that comes with maturity.

And, perhaps, knowing that he is now the Only Horse.

I miss the old mare, but…he’s doing a decent job of filling her horseshoes, in his own way.