INTRODUCTION

My name is Lee. I’m a rural woman within hollering distance of sixty, just doing my thing, hanging out with the dogs and, sometimes, my husband. I’m a horse dealer. I buy unstarted colts and forgotten older animals, spending the next few years with them — loving, training and riding them. Eventually, my equine friends are sent on to my clients, people who need and appreciate good horses. It is an adventuresome life, yes, but it is not always easy.

One day, I took my old habit of journaling about my horsemanship and I put it online. I called my blog Keystone Equine, after my horse business and in honour of our family’s century-old brand. Each day that I came in from riding — either with a breakthrough; or black, blue and feeling beaten — I’d put the kettle on and I’d write it down. In the beginning, there were not many people hearing what I had to say. Eventually, they told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on. Today, my online diary has many followers worldwide. The Keystone horses and ponies are the main players in my stories. Their adventures are always received with love and encouragement, which means so much to me. You cheer when they finally get something with which they’ve struggled. You cry with me when they are hurt.

These horses, with all my memories of them, have sown the seeds for Love & Rules.

There was a period of adjustment, changing my writing from a personal diary — meant to be read by no one — to words that would be read by thousands of strangers. What I did was to simply imagine myself hosting a dinner party of diverse characters. I would sit people of widely-ranging interests side-by-side. I would pour the wine, serve the food, sit back, and hope for the best. Our conversation would most likely drift towards all the life lessons we have learned with horses.

You are at this party because you want to be. I am here because I believe that, more than ever, we need people who will tell their stories, real-life experiences about honest horsemanship. We need more willingness to openly educate, to build up, and to make the people who read these words feel empowered and understood. Today, more than ever, we need to share what we have learned.

I am mother to three grown children, all of whom rode well. I have made some very good horses and sadly, terribly, I have ruined a few. (Yes, that happens). I am a stroke survivor. I know what it’s like to be so frightened to put a leg over a horse, that you can no longer breathe. I have had to put my saddle on the high rack and leave my riding, so that I could raise children and help make a living, doing my best at a job that sure as heck wasn’t my dream. I’ve stayed awake nights, worrying about money. I have needed to sell my best horse, so that the furnace would be fixed and the car have safe tires. Like so many of you, I have come back, dusted myself off and got back in the game.

I, myself, am not discipline-specific. There are many horsemen and women who are better-suited to tell you how things should be done. The diverse camps I have spent time in have shown me one thing with clarity. The older I get and the more I see, I have this unshakeable feeling that we’re all riding down the same trail. We may climb into our dusty chaps, or halt and salute at ‘X’, read from our favourite chairs, follow the mountain trails, live for our Tuesday night lessons, lead the children on their ponies, drive a chore team, help with therapeutic riding, work the big pastures doctoring calves, teach in Pony Club or 4-H, count strides to the oxer, toil at the vet clinic, go down the fence, settle into the carriage, sit tall on our sidesaddles, or any of the myriad adventures these horses offer us. While the details are seemingly everything, in the end, none of them really matters.

I have learned that to study the ways of the horse is to be a keen student of life. The one is forever running parallel to the other. You and I are here for the horsemanship. Reading about it, dreaming about it, learning from it — this is where we belong.