The universe is fond of doing whatever it wants. Meet Cindy: a very special molly mule who floated into my life this summer, bringing plenty of smiles, an unmistakable bray, and a sweet adventure in building a partnership from the inside out.
It was past eight o’clock, the daylight was dripping out of the treeline. Novella had powered down right at my feet like an 850-pound sleeping fawn, and a half our later, walking back through the dark barn, a simpler truth finally hit me: I am a stone-cold oxytocin addict.
If you’re a horse person like me, you’ve probably spent more time than we’d all like to add up filling water troughs. It’s one of those quiet, rhythmic chores that gives you just enough time to let your mind wander…
The $10 Mare and the Cul-de-Sac
“Rosie is a little bit like a prism. If you look at her one way, you see a ‘$10 mare’…fractious, sensitive, and standing at the bottom of the global horse stack. But if you shift your perspective just a few degrees, she looks like a million bucks, with a mahogany coat and a chocolatey nicker that is honestly good for the soul.
There is a specific kind of perspective that only comes from fifteen years of showing up to the first Buck Brannaman clinic of the year. This March, I traded the Willamette Valley mud for the dry, electric gold of an Arizona sunrise to go horsemanship hunting in the desert. It was a week spent in the shade of the speakers—watching my teacher ride his bridlehorses, catching up with old friends over fresh lemonade, and remembering why, above all else, I am a student and a horse lover first.
Ever wonder what is actually happening when you feel that perfect walk-canter departure? Beyond the hide and the muscle lies a massive cellular empire—approximately 70 to 100 trillion individual “islands,” each powered by quadrillions of tiny mitochondrial waterfalls. In this post, I explore the biological “Source Code” of horsemanship: how the chemical release of ATP is the literal permission for movement, and why true “Life Without Trouble” is only possible when we clear the metabolic static from ourselves and our horses. From the wildflower scale of Novella to the “heavy metal” mountain of bigger horses, we dive into the magnificent, high-fidelity symphony of the cell an how it relates to chasing life without trouble in our horses.
Most horsemanship is stuck in a binary loop: Pressure/Release or Positive Reinforcement. While functional, these are Transactions. If your horse feels mechanically correct but “shrink-wrapped,” or hyper-focused on payouts but distracted from the partnership, you’ve hit the transactional ceiling. I want to propose a Third Way—the graduation from “bookkeeping” to a volumetric state where the horse finally turns loose. Is your intuition telling you there is a gap in the map? Let’s look at the “Source Code” of the thaw.
Most of us got into horses because of a ghost. Not the rattling-chains kind, but the 6D essence of a creature that seems to move between worlds. We’ve all had that one moment—maybe it lasted three seconds, maybe three minutes—where…
In every great story, there is a character who sits on the edge of the room—misunderstood beings like Mary Lennox or Elsa who don’t give their trust for free. This is Novella. Discover how a ‘reluctant’ 13.3-hand Lipizzan taught me the true love language of peace and the disciplined restraint of the horsemanship pursuit.
In the pursuit of horsemanship, “it worked” is a dangerous metric. Are you relying on “Penny Tactics” that fail when life gets loud, or are you investing in “Million Dollar Skills” that compound into a lifetime of partnership? Stop collecting shortcuts and start building the source code.