Green Pastures

April 23, 2016

Green Pastures

I wasn’t sure I was going to write about this.

One thing I’ve learnt over the past year is that people’s ideas of what is good for animals vary from person to person. I guess it’s the same thing about what’s good for people, what’s good for kids etc. Since right now the horse is my world, I am surrounded with raging debated about what, really, is the best thing for a horse.

For these reasons I usually try to steer clear of potentially sensitive issues like those. But a week ago we visited a place that seemed so fabulous (if a group of 10 horse freaks can agree on that it must have done something right) that I thought I ought to mention it.

As many of you know, California is the land of cowboys (among many other things) and that includes rodeo. I don’t want to get into the issue of whether rodeo is cruel or not but I want to tell you about this 10,000 acre farm among the hills in the heart of California. In this farm, horses roam free for the vast majority of their lives. Foals are born in this wilderness and grow up undisturbed by humans. They are left alone until they are about 4 years old at which point they are rounded up to see whether they are a ‘good bucking horse’. If they don’t buck high enough they are sold to get domesticated and become ‘normal’ horses. The ones who make the cut live their lives on the estate except for about two weeks every year where they go to rodeos.

It was magical to drive and walk through the place, to see the mares with their babies and the herd of free horses.