Harper’s Lessons

Although we knew for months that sweet Moondo would not be with us much longer, I couldn’t face the prospect of looking for a new horse while he was alive.

I had no regrets about spending focused time with Moody in his final weeks, but if we were to continue to have horses in our lives, Jake would need a companion, so late July and early August were an unsettling mix. The raw emotions of loss were shadowed by brain-numbing online searches broken up with phone calls and emails punctuated by an occasional venture into the pandemic summer to look at prospects. I didn’t feel good about any of it. There could be no “replacing” Moondo, of course, but I’ve also never been a fan of getting on horses I don’t know. Then there’s the fact that looking for a horse is like the worst kind of blind dating, in which the one who turns out to be an asshole can dump you in the dirt.

Winter Pasture

There’s a distinct pleasure in being able to make someone else happy. Sometimes their pleasure persists even as your own memories of the effort involved in said happy-making fade, tipping the scales of your satisfaction even further toward the positive. In the spring of 2018, almost a year ago now, I was getting started on…

Moondo’s Project

Moondo, my little bay horse, is the most opinionated equine I’ve ever met. This isn’t to say that he’s mean or obstinate or flighty, just that he has strong ideas about how his universe should operate. Ego and a dainty appetite are behind a few of his more maddening behaviors, but his principal preoccupation is…