Share the Knowledge January 24, 2011

I was at a dressage club meeting yesterday and one of my friends came up with a very simple, but brilliant idea. She wants us to share a horse book or DVD and tell everyone why we liked it (or didn’t like it) and how we found it helpful. There is so much information out there we should share what we learn from each other. It’s so simple! Now certainly there is the element of subjectivity here, but among friends it’s easy to discuss what worked for you, what didn’t and why. Then she took it one step further and suggested we do the same thing with products. By sharing our wealth of knowledge we help each other and that’s what friends do. So I thought I would start this information sharing here. We’ll start with book or DVD.

Unfortunately I haven’t taken the time to read much recently so I’ll fall back onto an old standby. The book “Stretch Exercises for Your Horse” by Karin Blignault is one that I come back to again and again. It has great static and riding exercises to target specific muscle groups. There are wonderful photos and excellent illustrations. Now some of the exercises (both on the ground and under saddle) are for experienced horse people and caution needs to be taken because it’s easy to do more harm than good. So if you are uncertain have someone more knowledgeable work with you and your horse.

As for a product, I’m going very simple here. I found a Thinsulate athletic hat with an opening for a pony tail. I think this was probably created with runners or bikers in mind, but I love it. It has the perfect opening for pulling my hair through, and it is thin enough to wear under my helmet. It keeps my head toasty warm in what has been a really, really cold winter. Best of all I found it on a clearance rack for about $9.00.

So what about you? What books and products would you like to share?

Let’s try this blogging thing again January 15, 2011

I blogged for a while on my own website, but then I fell off the blogging bandwagon and haven’t posted since August. It got pushed aside for income producing activities, but I was reminded last week that there were people who actually read my blog on a regular basis. Well if there were already a few people reading it, maybe if I put some effort into it, got it on a site like WordPress and remained dedicated to it perhaps there would be more people reading it.

So I will endeavor to blog once a week (more if I’m inspired) – probably on the weekends when my work time is focused more on “my” stuff and less on work for others. I will keep with the horses, writing and children’s themes for now and I’ll probably bring back a few of my old blog posts. If you’d like me to write about something specific, feel free to comment. I’m always looking for new ideas. Until then, thanks for reading!