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I'm sitting here after a long day, wondering what to write in this post to sum up the very best parts of my day to share on CowgirlDiary.com, and I'm not coming up with a whole lot of words.  I went for a horseback ride this evening with JoAnn.  It was a beautiful, windy, fall day...the kind of…

I love reading about horses, especially horse headlines in the news. No matter how serious the story is, there is almost always some humor in it. Either that, or it's a heartwarming story, like the woman who stayed with her horse that was stuck in the quicksand along an Australian beach, until both were rescued after 3 hours.…

If you're looking for me these days, I'm probably out riding.  The weather is unbelievably sweet, the horses are nothing short of amiable, and horseback riding is my number one favorite thing to do in the whole world, so I'm a happy girl.  I've been averaging a trail ride a week for the past month, and am loving…

Our horse herd has changed.  Over the summer, I decided to put up a few of our horses for sale because it is always a financial strain for us to feed five horses through the winter and I hate having skinny horses fighting over the hay.  (Last winter was hard--we ran low on hay and hay quadrupled in cost…

My horse friend and I went riding again this week, this time to some new equestrian trails that are being developed five miles northeast of Shenandoah, Iowa.  The Pierce Creek Recreation Area is a beautifully serene park with ten miles of well-developed trails for horseback riding.  Some of the local riders have done a lot…

We did it!  My new horse friend and I went trail riding.  It might be difficult for the casual reader to understand my exuberance.  But I so seldom get to ride, especially not on actual trails in a new place, nor with a new-found fellow horse enthusiast, so I'm thrilled.  My husband agreed to watch…

I told a customer at work yesterday that I have "Horse Radar".  He looked at me funny...and I explained that I had seen his wife out trail riding the other day along a road, and wondered if he was riding with her.  He said, "No, that was her daughter and a friend.  Why?"  I said,…

Not every horse story is a happy one.  I talked to someone yesterday who told me about a filly that was causing trouble, fighting with other horses, and when tied up would pull back hard and break halters every time.  So they tied her with a log chain around her neck, trying to break her…

In June we traveled out to Idaho to visit my folks.  It's been almost a year since we've seen them, as we didn't make it out there for Christmas.  So we were really looking forward to the making the trip, getting some fresh mountain air, spending time with family, and going on some adventures.  Our…

I got a phone call from my dad in Idaho the other day...that doesn't happen very often, but he had an important request.  Being internet-deprived, he asked me to post an advertisement for him to hire a couple of cowboys or "riders", as they call them, for the summer months.  So I put a Help…

When I was a teenager, this time of year was so exciting.  School was ended and we were free to ride horses all day, which was pretty much all that was on my agenda.  While Dad finished up the spring planting, we kids would be putting cattle out to pasture and checking on the late-calvers…

It's been awhile since I've worked cattle on horseback (well, almost a year to be exact!), but I used to do it every day when I was a teenager.  I learned so much about cattle when I was working alongside my dad.  His approach to working cattle was very practical and methodical; my dad is a very…

I've taken a break from the ridin' My saddle is gatherin' dust. It's not that I'm done With the work or the fun, But I'm takin' some time to adjust. My horses, they're all just free-loaders. Ain't none of 'em worked in a year. I got three I should sell, They just stand in the…

It is my pleasure to offer another great horse story to my readers by way of a book giveaway!  This book is uniquely written in the voice of the horse himself, named Pie, an old brown cowhorse.  It's very interesting to look at the world through the eyes of a horse, and this book lays…

Walking through water can be one of the hardest things for a horse to accept, and his fear is often based on his past experiences.  If he's never seen it before, or if he's been forced into it or struggled with by a rider over crossing water, then it's going to be a big obstacle for him to…

A common scenario in horse ownership goes something like this:  "We were shopping for a horse for our teenage daughter and found the perfect gelding.  A seasoned show horse with a willing attitude...his owner assured us he would fulfill all of our expectations.  Two months after bringing him home, he became headstrong, barn sour, started…

I attended a training clinic several years ago, put on by a good friend of mine, Kevin Wescott, a horse trainer from west-central Nebraska.  It was a general horsemanship clinic, where local people brought their own horses and asked Kevin to help them through issues they were having, or give advice on their riding, and so…

I have said before---and been quoted as saying---that a horse is born with it's disposition.  Good or bad, that horse can only be one way the rest of its life, and any amount of training is merely a slight modification of the true nature of the horse.  But I think I have to change that statement slightly…

This season has come along so suddenly, I am struck with the startling realization that fall is almost over and those harvest-colored sunshine days that I used to love to go riding on are almost past.  Winter is coming.  The pessimistic side of me is dreading the frozen water tanks, fierce winds, sub-zero temperatures, and the aching…

I grew up in the country, but I wasn't born in a barn.  More like a cornfield.  We had a barn, but it was not your typical horse stable, and the horses never slept in it.  It had a room we kept the saddles in and a heat lamp for baby calves that were chilled…