May Resources

I've been spending a lot more of my spare time at the barn and in the garden, so my media consumption is less than normal. Still, I have to do something on those long ferry rides every week so no worries about me breaking the habit completely!

This month I was watching:

- The Event Rider Masters. I really like the short recap shows, but they post video of the entire event too if you don't want to miss anything.

- Badminton Horse Trails. Believe it or not, the dressage coverage is a highlight almost as much as the cross country and kind of a gold mine of learning due to the commentary.

- Elphick.Event.Ponies She's got a 14.1 Welsh D she events at BE100. I'm sold!

- USEF Learning Center. Thanks for the tip, LWilliams! I haven't explored this one too deeply, but there is a ton of good content just waiting for me to have the time to view.

Text break, only because I love this picture of S

Reading:

- Forward by Natalie Keller Reinert.  It's free on Kindle Unlimited and is about a couple of eventers in Florida getting started in the professional side of the business . In the same vein, Down The Centreline by Hazel Beecroft. Also free. I'm grouping these together because they were well written (for books with horses in them :) and suited for adults, both feature some pretty flawed characters trying to be better, and both were centered around eventing. I'm not going to give either a rave review, but they are both a pretty solid choice if you like light fiction with horses in it and served me well enough for passing time on my ferry commute.

- Smoky The Cowhorse. I was wondering if this one would hold up over time for me. My childhood self loved it. Yep, my adult self still likes it too. Some of the terms used might not be socially acceptable today, but it's a book about a cowboy and his horse written in 1927, so if anything that makes it feel authentic for the time. This part stuck out to me, because these days you do hear a lot about how the old ways were 'bad' and the new 'natural' ones are good. Seems that discussion has been going on for a very long time:

"There's folks that's read some on how horses are broke on the range, and from that reading they get the idea that the cowboy breaks the horses' spirit, that it's the only way a wild horse can be tamed. What I've got to say on the subject if that's what's believed, is that either them folks read something that's mighty wrong, or else they got the wrong impression and misunderstood what they read; and breaking a horse the way he's broke on the range is about the same on the animal as schooling is to the human youngster. The spirit of the wild horse is the same after years of riding as it was before he ever felt a rope, and there's no human in the world wants to preserve that spirit in the horse like the cowboy does;--he's the one what knows better than anybody else that a horse with a broken spirit is no horse at all"

That's it for this month...it's a beautiful day out, so back to the barn I go :)