I have always been a fan of horses, any kind of horses. I would watch those westerns on television and always take note of the kind of horse the cowboys were riding.

I always liked and rode Quarter Horses until I met Diana, the lady who became my wife. Then my opinion changed. She was a horse crazy woman from San Dimas, California, who liked to ride only gaited horses like Missouri Fox Trotters or Tennessee Walkers. She was relentless in her adamant choice that gait was better than no gait.

After purchasing a big black Missouri Fox Trotter and having her shipped from Oklahoma to Nevada, I started appreciating the nice ride they were.

So after feeling the foxtrot glide I started buying only gaited horses and started going to clinics to learn what I could about the gait. I also got online and learned all about how Fox Trotters and Tennessee Walkers got their start. We joined a gaited horse club which provided us with a wealth of knowledge because people owned every kind of gaited horse from Rocky Mountain to Paso Finos.

Being an amateur writer at the time, I also started penning some horse poems, which I started sending to magazines and newspapers. Quite a few of them were published, and thus began my literary journey of stories and poems, mostly about the magnificent horse. I kept acquiring horses until I was horse-poor and I never bought the same color twice. I tried to sell some occasionally but that was hard on the heart. The horse would give me a look like he had been betrayed, and it would really bother me some. But of course it inspired more poems and stories. It was a natural progression from writing to reciting these horse poems on stage, and I found myself trail riding one day and driving to a cowboy poetry gathering the next. This still continues today.

I love to write, and I love horses. But I will only own gaited equines. I have two tiger horses, which are gaited Appaloosas, and I am of the mind these horses are some of the smartest going.

My riding is for pleasure only. Now I tried my hand a raising cattle and such, but I realized that horses were what really inspired my creative side and my wife did not have a love affair with cows, anyway. We are also wild horse advocates, so horses are a cynosure in our life now, and we have no inclination to change it. So far, it's been a "good ride."

Here is a horse poem that is a favorite at poetry gatherings.

For The Horses’ Sake

We could never get a divorce;
We couldn’t decide who gets which horse.
It’s hard enough to lose your spouse,
Split the furniture and sell the house,
But if I lost my gelding or mare,
It’d be an agony I could not bear.
Because of the enormity of the loss,
I would surely start hitting the sauce.
So we will avoid a divorce mistake
And stay together, for the horses’ sake.

Share your horsing life
Would you like to be considered as a featured horseperson in My Horsing Life? Jot down brief responses to the following statements:
1. How I got into horses
2. How horses have enhanced my life
3. Activities I'm currently involved in
4. My future plans

Snap a high-resolution photo of yourself, and e-mail your responses along with your attached photo to Kathleen at editor@ridepublishing.com. Type "My Horsing Life" in the subject line. We reserve the right to edit your writing for clarity and space restrictions.