If you are over winter, like me, then here are some tips to stay motivated to ride and work with your horse! 

Many equestrians focus on the care of horses during cold and icy winter months, which leaves little time to rider. If you are fortunate enough to have a full-care facility the chances of riding are much greater. Still, waking up to ice on the ground and freezing temperatures make it difficult to leave the house and spend time exercising outdoors. 

For me, winter has always been the best time to ride. My bodywork clients are quieter because show season is suspended and my pony moves more forward. 

Remember, a longer warm up is not only good for your horse but for you as well. 

Get up, get dressed and get out.

Waking up in the cold and dark makes me want to hide under the covers. Still, I usually put my clothes out the evening before to make things a little easier. Shower, get dressed and ready for the day. The nicer I dress, the nicer I feel. During the time of COVID (ugh) it has been difficult to not wear my pajamas all day every day. Dress for the mood you want, not necessarily the mood you have. Save the pj’s for when you come back from the barn.

I know from experience, the hardest thing to do is make that first step into the biting air. How many of you regret ever going to the barn? Not me. But I do regret NOT going. The first step is the hardest but I always make the effort to at least leave the house. Once I do, it’s a no brainer to go to my favorite place .

Dress Yourself Appropriately

Dressing in layers is ideal. As you exercise you will increase your body temperature and begin to sweat. Make sure you have a moisture-wicking base layer so you don’t lose heat when you do. I work outside and there is a big difference when I come prepared.

Read more: How To Stay Motivated During the Winter

by Judith Martin Woodall

"In my opinion, from a physiological point of view, it would be immeasurably better for women to ride astride. This position, on horse[back] would, I think, render the exercise of much more benefit to women. The circulatory and muscular systems would receive the greater tonic effect from the riding in this symmetrical position.” Dr. Sarah A. French, M.D. ¹

In 1895 most horsemen and women would have answered the question with an emphatic, NO! But Dr. French was among 500 physicians in New York City who responded to an inquiry from Ernst Carl von Gillmann, the head riding master at Dickel's Riding Academy on West Fifty-sixth Street in New York in January of that year. The issue had been roiling for some time and was given added attention later in the year when the British actress, Dorothy Chestie, was arrested on a charge of disturbing the peace while riding astride in Central Park. She was apprehended wearing a knee-length fitted coat that draped across her upper thigh and back over the cantle of the saddle. To complete her habit, she sported a bowler hat, a high-necked white shirt, light-colored bloomers tucked into tall boots, and dark gloves. The actress, who was appearing in the play, The Newest Woman, a comedy satirizing the growing feminism of the era, declared that she always wore bloomers, always rode astride at home in England, and was herself a “new woman.”

Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt was asked to “interpret police duties in such a case.” The Commissioner frequently rode in the park where he could be seen in a top hat and frock coat, the complete opposite of his now prevalent rough rider image. He issued a statement that there was no law against women riding astride, provided they were riding “in a proper manner.” ² Based on existing photos, Chestie was not a polished rider, which may have been a factor in the mountie's decision to arrest her.

Gillmann confessed that he had never given much thought to women riding astride. The riding master found it difficult to obtain dispassionate views on the subject, especially regarding the female anatomy. It was an article of faith among naysayers that women could not ride astride safely because their cushioned derriéres prevented them from sitting deep in the saddle, and their legs from the hip to the knee were shorter and rounder than a man’s, making it difficult to "grip." Even if their thighs were not overly round, as "the weaker sex," they simply hadn't the strength to grip and needed the support of a sidesaddle. One horsewoman observed as late as 1912 that she might accept the "fraudulent notion" that women had insufficient gripping power if it were not for the numbers of men she saw falling off their horses in Central Park on a regular basis.

Read more: A Burning Question In The 1890s – Shall Women Ride Astride?

Take an inspiring look at horses through the lens of equine photographer Shelley Paulson. As you turn the pages of this beautifully illustrated book, you will experience the light and love that surrounds the special relationships we have with these majestic animals. You will also admire images that document the strength and unparalleled beauty of the horse throughout the four seasons, in action and at rest, with their humans, and on the ranch. Paulson also provides a stunning collection of portraits that show horses still living wild and free, untouched by human hands.

As you view Paulson’s storytelling, evocative photographs, you will read numerous stories that provide insight into the horses’ histories, characteristics, and unique personalities. Combining superb images, equestrian facts, and personal stories, this book provides readers young and old with a memorable and intimate look at a cherished part of American―and indeed, worldwide―culture

Read more: Horses: Portraits & Stories by Shelley Paulson

When I first began photographing wild horses, I knew very early on that I wanted to photograph the horses through the changing seasons, to show their character and their interactions through the changing weather and the changing colors and light.

I wanted to capture it all, even the life cycles of these magnificent animals: the tender newborns and their protective parents during the first buds of spring. The folly and growing rebelliousness of teens during the blazing heat of summer. The strength and swagger of maturing horses amidst the brilliant colors of fall. And even the resilience and dignity of the older horses in the crystal light and often brutal storms of winter.

Photographing in the wild requires great patience and readiness, but it’s often the unexpected actions I find intensely rewarding.

I feel at peace in the wilderness among all these wild things. Open spaces, no fences, together amongst the wild horses I feel like an explorer; like the photographer William Henry Jackson [1843-1942] first witnessing the American West through the lens of his view camera.

Read more: Deborah Kalas, The Wild Herd Excerpt

by Brittney Joy

IT WAS FOUR minutes past noon and I was chasing a two hundred pound steer down the barn aisle. At three minutes past the hour I had my butt planted on the long wooden bench in the tack room and was halfway through my turkey-mayo sandwich. My first swig of Dr. Pepper fizzled down my throat and I closed my eyes, reveling in the cold, wet gulp. The cool air in the tack room reeked of worn leather and dirt.

Amidst my gulping, I’m not sure which came first: the frustrated hollers from Marilynn or a chocolate-brown blaze of fur and hooves flying past the open door. Either way, I dropped my pop can and scrambled out into the barn aisle, looking from one end to the other. Marilynn stood with her hands on her hips in the barn doorway. Her five foot, petite frame didn’t make much of a silhouette against the sun, but her voice made up for it. She pointed at the steer trotting down the aisle. “Get that little bugger,” she yelled, and I turned, racing straight for him.

I ran like I knew what I was doing, but I didn’t. I pumped my arms and tried to lengthen my stride, but cowboy boots do not make great running shoes. Their slick leather soles slid against the concrete floor instead of gripping it. Trying not to twist an ankle, I steadied my long legs into a safer speed, but the steer didn’t slow a bit. In fact, he picked up his pace. With his tail flagged high over his back, his hooves clipped against the floor as he darted out the opposite end of the barn. Marilynn had spent the morning showing me the ropes. Mucking stalls, grooming horses, packing hay bales around—those were all going to be part of my job. I didn’t recall her saying anything about tackling cattle, but I didn’t want to let her down. Not on my first day. So I ran.

Read more: An Excerpt from "Red Rock Ranch: Lucy's Chance" by Brittney Joy

by Brittney Joy

IT WAS FOUR minutes past noon and I was chasing a two hundred pound steer down the barn aisle. At three minutes past the hour I had my butt planted on the long wooden bench in the tack room and was halfway through my turkey-mayo sandwich. My first swig of Dr. Pepper fizzled down my throat and I closed my eyes, reveling in the cold, wet gulp. The cool air in the tack room reeked of worn leather and dirt.

Amidst my gulping, I’m not sure which came first: the frustrated hollers from Marilynn or a chocolate-brown blaze of fur and hooves flying past the open door. Either way, I dropped my pop can and scrambled out into the barn aisle, looking from one end to the other. Marilynn stood with her hands on her hips in the barn doorway. Her five foot, petite frame didn’t make much of a silhouette against the sun, but her voice made up for it. She pointed at the steer trotting down the aisle. “Get that little bugger,” she yelled, and I turned, racing straight for him.

I ran like I knew what I was doing, but I didn’t. I pumped my arms and tried to lengthen my stride, but cowboy boots do not make great running shoes. Their slick leather soles slid against the concrete floor instead of gripping it. Trying not to twist an ankle, I steadied my long legs into a safer speed, but the steer didn’t slow a bit. In fact, he picked up his pace. With his tail flagged high over his back, his hooves clipped against the floor as he darted out the opposite end of the barn. Marilynn had spent the morning showing me the ropes. Mucking stalls, grooming horses, packing hay bales around—those were all going to be part of my job. I didn’t recall her saying anything about tackling cattle, but I didn’t want to let her down. Not on my first day. So I ran.

Read more: An Excerpt from "Red Rock Ranch: Lucy's Chance" by Brittney Joy

by Patrick Smithwick

Chapter 2 "In Its Own Orbit"

It’s late-June. It’s early-July. It’s late-July. The race is coming up. The A. P. Smithwick Memorial. Every year the date nears, the pressure increases, the excitement builds, post time is in minutes, gamblers rush to the windows, the tape is dropped and the horses are off and running. August—Thoroughbred racing at Saratoga Springs, New York. The best racing in the world. Each decade ushers in a fresh generation of riders. A few veteran trainers fade away; their sons pick up the trade. New, fresh horses run. New owners with new money stand in the paddock. And the A. P. Smithwick—a bulkhead against the roiling whitewater of time, a celebration of my father “Paddy,” Racing Hall of Fame steeplechase legend—remains the same: 2 1/16 miles over hurdles, fast.

Time flows differently at Saratoga. It passes in an unreal, dreamlike state—the town, the lakes, the majestic trees; the horses, Oklahoma training track, the barns, the beauty of the main track and the irreplaceable century-old clubhouse; the betting, the Bentleys, the wads of twenty and hundred dollar bills; the bars, the restaurants, the late nights dancing; the early morning screwdrivers and fresh melons; the early evening scotch, roast beef, perfectly ripened tomatoes and just-picked corn on the cob all remaining consistent, unchanging, pooled in a deep reservoir, while friends, relatives and I launch ourselves, incrementally changed each year, into the current: we marry, have children, introduce them to the Spa, develop careers, leave racing, return to racing, lose the youthful money-making ability to pick winners through hunches, lose the endurance to get by on a few hours sleep per night, gain the wisdom to savor every moment.

When I reflect on past experiences—whether riding my bike around town as an adolescent or riding races as a youth, whether arising at 5:15 and going to the barn with my father or thirty years later arising at 5:15 and going to the barn with my best friend, Hall of Fame trainer Tom Voss—they are recorded in a different manner from my outside-of-Saratoga memories. Most of the time in my life has seemed to have existed as if time were a steadily flowing river and I am with it, the river and I are one; we don’t change much day-to-day or year-to-year, and yet, as we surge and flood, slow and swirl, we see that life and people and places on shore are changing and before we know it, a birthday is coming up, a class reunion is planned, an anniversary is approaching, and it’s a big one—a decade has gone by. Two decades have gone by. In September of 2016, four decades will have gone by, and it will be Ansley’s and my fortieth anniversary.

But when I look back at Saratoga, I see the year as an oval, like a racetrack, much like the mile and an eighth main track at Saratoga. The oval is stretched out, with winter at the top—white and gray; summer on the bottom—faded green, yellow; spring on the left—a lush green; fall on the right—rust. August is an exception; it is red and it is shimmering, flickering. Down on the bottom, right before the track heads up into fall, it intensifies for four weeks: brighter, even more heat, faster paced, much faster, a daily lifestyle like no other, little sleep, much gaiety, go-go-go, action, meeting new people, seeing old friends, making incredible connections, spending money, dishing out twenty dollar bills like they’re ones, and racing—horses, fast horses, the fastest in the world, running day after day as Rolls Royces roll by, actors and millionaire investment bankers step up to the $100 betting window, jockeys head to the jocks’ room and the “hot box” to sweat off another three pounds, trainers stand outside their barns talking to owners.

Read more: Excerpt from "Racing Time, A Memoir of Love, Loss and Liberation"

This is an excerpt from Shaving the Beasts: Wild Horses and Ritual in Spain by John Hartigan Jr., a vivid first-person study of a notorious equine ritual—from the perspective of the wild horses who are its targets.

Roughly eleven thousand horses roam the mountainous terrain of Galicia, Spain, in the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula. They have inhabited these slopes for millennia and are one of the largest free-ranging populations in the world. Every summer in more than a dozen rural localities, many of these horses are rounded up in a ritual called rapa das bestas, or “shaving the beasts.” The earliest historical accounts of this ritual date to the 1500s, but archeologists argue that this tradition extends from the Neolithic era, based on petroglyphs fea-turing horses being driven into small rock enclosures. That is the heart of the rapa: wild horses, roaming communal lands in the mountains, are herded together and driven into curros—structures similar to rodeo corrals—where their manes and tails are systematically shaved. Their hair, which in the past had many folk uses, falls worthlessly to the ground.

Though they belong to Equus ferus, these animals are called bestas (beasts) or burras (asses), reflecting a widely held view that they are a de¬generate mountain breed. They are intensely disparaged and not con¬sidered “real” horses in comparison with the glorified Andalusians and other Spanish breeds. Smaller in stature than most of their conspecif¬ics, this population features a distinctive body type: they have relatively large bellies and short legs, some feature a distinctive gait, and a few sport a thick “mustache,” which is probably an adaptation to the thorny gorse they feed on extensively. These physical characteristics indicate that this population was certainly passed over by modern breeding re¬gimes, starting with royal projects in the 1400s. That is, rather than a degenerate strain, these are possibly a refuge population that survived when the last Ice Age decimated European horses. That would make them Equus ferus atlanticus, a distinct subspecies from Equus ferus caballus, the domesticated horse.

Read more: Shaving the Beasts: Wild Horses and Ritual in Spain

There is a long history of horses in films and TV, from spaghetti westerns to modern-day classics such as War Horse.

Sometimes, the actors and actresses look as comfortable in the saddle as anyone, whilst with others, their discomfort is plain to see. In some instances, the stars even have stunt doubles to perform their riding scenes, such is their inability to effectively control their mount.

In flicks such as Secretariat, a lot of basic handling seemingly goes out the window, whilst other low-budget movies and TV shows often cannot stretch to training riders for prolonged periods of time. With a larger budget, some excellent riding can be taught over time, and some stars are even good enough for experienced riders to spot and commend.

Viggo Mortensen, for instance, has been known to buy his horses after filming and is a well-known equine fan. He even purchased the horse who played Shadowfax in Lord of the Rings, and not for the first time.

"I bought the one [horse] in Lord of the Rings even though I wasn't with him all the time, I just developed a real good friendship with him,” said the star, who played Aragorn. “His name is Eurayus. He kind of came into the movie like the way I did. You know, did not have much preparation and was just thrown in and had to swim, basically. And it was rough on him and it took a while for us to kind of get in sync and for him to be comfortable around the set.”

Read more: Stars and Horses: The Accidents and the Naturals