NOVELLA STONE
A few weeks ago I came across some old progress videos I had made with horses I loved. Lil. Wilz. Nigel. Vivian. They’re all gone now. The videos weren’t really meant to be love letters when I made them. I…
Street Brawler Bees
Around June, they’re civil. By late August, the nursery closes, the collective sugar crash hits, and thousands of unemployed yellowjackets start wandering the property like they just got kicked out of a dive bar at last call.
The Third Mule
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.
Confessions of an Oxytocin Addict
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.
The Mystery of the Trough-Dwelling “Rowboats”
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 Rosie Journal: Spring 2026
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.
From Oregon Rain to Arizona Sun: Studying with Buck Brannaman in 2026
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.
Worlds Within Cells: The Symphony of a Quadrillion Waterfalls
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.
Beyond the Transactional Ceiling: The Proposal of a Third Way
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.
The Ghost in the Machine: Why Your Wrench Can’t Find the Soul
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…