Meet Stella

We have a new member of our family - Stella, This is a photo taken after her very long ride up to New England from Tennessee. Her mama is a Welsh Springer Spaniel named Zoe and her papa is a Black Labrador Retriever named Rocky. They are both great dogs. And Stella is 100 % wonderful! You may remember that our beloved Pepper was the same mix only her mom was a black lab and her dad was a Springer. It took us two years to find another dog with that good combo. My daughter is going to train Stella to be a therapy dog and take her to children's hospitals and nursing homes. We can tell that she's got the personality for it. She loves everyone and is a snuggle expert even at this early age.

That's all for now, but you'll be hearing and seeing more of this little angel soon. She's full of joy and just what we needed.

Go See "Buck" Now!

Go see “Buck” right now. It’s in over 200 movie theatres around the country and it will make you feel so good. Director Cindy Meehl has never made a movie but after her second clinic with Buck Brannaman, she decided that she had to share what he taught her with as many people as she could. It's about people and their hopes and fears and anger and how the horses are wise enough to be able to heal them.

I hope that Cindy does incredibly well with this movie because it will help enormously to change people's views about horses and about not being ruled or tormented by what has happened in the past - allowing us all to move on.

I am so impressed by Guy Mossman, who is one of the cinematographers, and also shot the video I made up in Vermont a couple of summers ago about the family farm and Eco Apples. His work on “Buck” is breathtaking, allowing you to feel that you are right in the middle of what is happening. I was fortunate that Cindy Meehl's local movie theatre is also mine, so I was able to meet her and listen to her talk about making the movie. It is something that she can really be proud of accomplishing after many years of work.

In my own little corner of the world, things are really good around here right now - please don’t let me jinx anything! I can’t believe it’s been a month since I wrote a blog post, but I was getting tired of complaining and telling you about hoof and leg problems. So, at last, both horses are healed, and I am gradually getting over my back injury. I pinched a nerve when I was bailing out the barn after one of our Spring floods, but let’s not go back there anymore.

I will be blogging more frequently, I’m sure, since we are about to have something very exciting happen this Wednesday. So, I’ll be filling you in on that later in the week.

In the meanwhile, I’ll leave you with this thought from Buck Brannaman:

“Over the years, I’ve come across plenty of people who criticize me because they subscribed to the old-school methods of dominating a horse. They worked a horse as if they were going to war with it. And they were. If that’s the way you deal with your horses, it’s the way you deal with your fellow man as well. I just can’t subscribe to that primitive notion of forcing your will on a horse or a human…”
- From “Believe” by Buck Brannaman