Happy trails, Don West 

March 15, 2009

I'm sitting at the computer, looking out the window. One of my fifteen Paso Pleasure Horses, "Dancer", is banging on a feeder. He's got a real steady rhythm going. Maybe he's going to provide the music for the others to start a dance. I'd like to be out there with them, going riding. But, at least for a few more weeks, that cannot be. You see, last week I went into the hospital and had my prostate reamed out, the remedy for TB (tiny bladder) another of the almost inevitable afflictions that come to men in the process of getting old. So, for the moment, I am practicing patience, but I 'm not sitting easy. Good thing that the weather isn't very pretty. If it was, I'd really be going crazy.

It's been a long, hard winter here at West Gait Equine Learning Center. We've had more snow this year than we've had in the past seventeen years that we've been living here. Maria hasn't been feeling well since she did a ten day hitch in the hospital back in late August, and so I've been hanging around the cabin, keeping an eye on her, doing the shopping and housekeeping chores, and feeding the horses, dogs, cats, and fish. The result? Well, for one thing, I've watched more TV this winter than in the past ten years put together. Now, as the days are getting longer, I'm ready for Spring!

As I mentioned, we still have fifteen of our own home bred Paso Pleasure Horses (see my horses for sale list). Last Fall we sold off all of our remaining pure blood, registered Peruvian Paso mares, except for Maria's palomino mare, Fantasia, who I had bred to Big Red, right before we had him gelded for his new owner. We were really looking forward to her having one more foal for us, but a few months ago she aborted; a chestnut colt. It's interesting how I first realized the mare was about to abort. When I went out in the morning to do the first feeding, while I was still a long way from the front paddock, I smelt something "dead" in the wind. My mind immediately turned to the mare. I expected to see the foal lying somewhere on the ground. But no, it was still inside her, with only a little bit of a bubble of the placenta showing. Of course I rushed her right over to the vet, but I knew that the foal was dead (remember, the smell), and she couldn't shed it, so we had to pull it out. So, no foals for us this Spring. And, no more foals for us ever. Thirty years of looking forward to bringing horsey babies into the World, coming along with the warmer weather, has come to an end...forever. It has been a labor of love, and if the results are to be judged by the quality of the product produced, it's been a great success. But, it's also been a great financial failure, and an expense that we can no longer sustain.

Our hay price has gone from $3.00 per bale, delivered and stacked, last year, to $6.50 a bale; and that's if you come and get it. Given the price of gas, that probably adds another fifty cents to each bale. How's the hay price in your area? What ever it is, I doubt that we can expect to see it get better given the state of our economy.

January 1, 2008

This morning, I woke up and looked at my watch in udder disbelief. It wasn't the time of day that jarred my senses...it was the date! Can it really be? Are we really already into the month of January? This past year hasn't flown by. "Flown" wouldn't even begin to be the right description. No, this past year just sort of sneaked by, almost without being noticed. Like a ghost that comes in the night when you are sleeping and is gone as soon as you open your eyes, this year has slipped by me, almost without me noticing.

And yet, as I look back and try to remember various individual events that punctuated my planning calendar, I realize that many significant changes took place this year that will have a profound effect on my life for years to come, and influence the next segment of my life's journey. It has been a year of giving up on old goals and ambitions, letting go of the old game plans, coming to grips with and adapting to new circumstances, and accepting a new reality.

Tomorrow the horse transport people will come here and pick up my last three Peruvian Paso mares. They will take them to their new home in Wisconsin. When they are gone, for the first time in twenty seven years  I will own no Peruvian Paso horses. Their departure will end my thirty plus year career as a professional Peruvian Paso horse breeder. I will not cry when they leave. In fact, I will feel relieved. The mares are going to a good, loving home. And, they will be staying together. That is good for them, because they have lived together all their lives, and are such good friends. On top of that, they are going to be with one of their sisters who I sold to the same folks a few years ago.

I have been working my way out of the "horse breeding business" for a few years now. Tomorrow, that goal will finally be met, and become a reality. I am no longer a "horse breeder". That portion of my career as a professional horseman is over and done with. I am sad, of course. I will miss my wonderful stallion, "Big Red", and the spring time, when the foals hit the ground. But, I am glad, too. Given the nationwide state of the pleasure horse market today, this is probably the best I could have hoped for, for me, and for my beloved horses. And, I still have sixteen Paso Pleasure Horses, the offspring of these and other Peruvian Paso mares that I have already relocated into new homes, here at West Gait Equine Learning Center to keep me, and my "Come Ride With Me!" students busy for years to come.

So, what now? Well, I still have a few years left as "an equine success coach" before it is time for me to hang up my cowboy hat, and really retire. My hope is that this year I will have many people "Come Ride With Me" in my Training and Trail Riding Intensive here at West Gait. If you are interested, please, look up my website www.donwest.net, and click on the Latest News Bottom. Happy holidays, and Happy Trails,  Your amigo in horses, Don West

Every day, when I'm at home, part of my daily routine is to take the dogs for their walk down to the river.  We have a standard, circular route that we travel; one that we have walked together so often that it has become a well worn trail, our private path through the sage brush, rabbit bush, prickly pear cactus, salt bush, and the vast array of desert wildflowers that bloom in profusion at their appropriate times during the spring and summer seasons, giving the broad, open landscape an ever changing pastoral hue, noticeable even to the eye of the most casual observer.  

By repeating this journey so often over the fifteen years that we have lived here, I have become intimately acquainted with even the smallest, least conspicuous grasses and wild flowers, those that come and go, year by year, without the approval or recognition of the general populous, marking their own time and keeping their own council. Some, I now know by name.  But many have become my friends without revealing their human given identity. I like them all the better that way.  So often we just name things so that we can comfortably dismiss them, and, that way, do not have to really get to know them, and can dismiss them categorically, out of hand...out of mind.

There are only two large plants that grow along my path: two mammoth, ancient cottonwood trees. I presume they are husband and wife. They stand side by side in the moist bottom land along the river's edge, a protected little flood plane enclave that's hemmed in on three sides by the steep alluvial river bank, almost a vertical cliff actually, about eighty feet high.  I often sit at its edge, taking in the quiet scene below, looking up and down the river as my dogs take their turn coming up to me and getting their special hugs, scratches, and strokes. Usually, we turn west there and follow the path that runs along the top of this ridge.  At this time of the year, the stunted tops of these two grand old behemoths are covered by a lush green canopy that mimics the height of the escarpment I stand on, their growth halted by the powerful winds that occasionally blow across the open land, uninterrupted. 

Upon occasion, when the spirit moves me, I take a longer side trail, around and down, that brings me under the roof of these massive old-timers. Viewed from above, in full leaf, these stately trees look serene and free from strife, only slightly agitated, on occasion, by the breeze.  But viewed from their base they reveal their true life stories, telling a tale of the violent storms they've weathered, sicknesses they've endured, and their major appendages that have been broken or lost.  Just standing below them in the shaded helter-skelter rubble of their huge dead limbs, some lying rotting on the ground, and others carelessly propped against the huge trunks, or still dangling lifelessly from the branches they broke from, gives the observer a sense of their determination to endure their trials through time; those they now so majestically bear witness to. 

Eagles, both bald and golden, and herons too use the tops of these tall sentinels as a vantage point, or a place to rest. Sometimes I am able to walk up close on them,  we being almost at eye level, to where I could count the feathers on their wings. Sometimes, if I get too close, they take flight, slowly, deliberately, seeming more annoyed than alarmed.  But sometimes, under the same conditions, they are apparently feeling more lazy (or trusting), and simply watch me as I go by, a temporary, harmless intruder on their tree top turf. It gives me great satisfaction to know that they see me as no threat.  My only fear is that they will confuse me with other men.

My cottonwood friends talk to me.  They tell me of the seasons just as surely as the calendar that hangs on my wall. In the winter their branches are bare, their twigs empty, with only the shinny, sticky buds at their ends giving a hint of the exuberant life that lies dormant within, awaiting the warmth of longer days and stronger sun to prompt them to burst fourth, revealing the new growth of leaf or flower that they have held onto and protected through the cold months, so tightly. In the spring I watch as their leaves unfold and grow to full size, shiny and dark on the top, lighter and dull on the bottom. Suspended, as they are, at the end of flattened petioles, these leaves shake back and forth in the wind, making a rattling sound that can make me shiver, even on the warmest days.

Today we witnessed the first yellow leaves on these season forecasters, scattered here and there among the top most canopy,  harbingers of the full array of fall colors that are soon to luxuriate the shorter, cooler days that fall is sure to bring. If I had to pick, I guess I'd say that fall is my favorite season.  It always feels like the reward that finally comes for enduring the disempowering heat of summer that always seems to go on, and on forever, wearing out my patience, and sapping my energy.  Yes, I love fall.  Even though the bright red and yellow colors are the result of a dying process, they seem to be so glorious in death that they fortify my heart against the cold of winter that I know must come.  This is a good season to go out and ride your horse.  So, saddle up. Let's ride!

Last updated November, 2009