Passion is what the equestrian industry is all about. You typically don't get involved with horses and the equestrian world without first having a deep love and passion for the animal. It doesn't matter what discipline you do, it's the way it is.

Maintaining our horses alone is an extremely costly venture, which people outside of the horse world can't understand why we do what we do and spend what we spend. All I can say is that when you pay your feed bill over your own grocery bill, you know you've got passion behind your decisions and a sense of responsibility, love, and care for your equine partner.

I've been around horse people all of my life, and not only are they passionate, but they are some of the bravest, compassionate, and most generous people in the world. Not to mention they tend to have a great sense of humor--I think if you don't have a sense of humor as a horseperson, you're going to wind up in trouble somewhere along the way because horses know how to make sure and play 'the joke on you,' game.

I love hearing stories about how people celebrate their horses.

Take Anissa who works in accounting here at Professional's Choice. She raises a handful of miniatures and has her old gelding who just celebrated his 32nd birthday. For his birthday, her family dressed him in a birthday hat and gave him an extra bucket of treats. My own trainer Terri plans to give her horse Pete next month when he turns 21 a Guinness mash. Yes--I suppose you could add to the list of what makes up a horse person--CRAZY. But crazy in a good way.

Oh and did I mention that most horse folks are quite opinionated--every one has an opinion it would seem, and every one thinks their opinion is the right one. I think most of us gently agree to disagree on many things in our opinionated world. However, the one thing I do believe we can all agree on is that we are all passionate individuals when it comes to the love of our horses.

We'd love to hear your stories and thoughts. In what way are you crazy, passionate, opinionated, etc for your horse(s)?

Have a great weekend.

Happy Trails!

Michele Scott