BTH Equestrian Enterprises

I am beyond thrilled to finally announce the sale of #castlekeep to @dutchess_rt BIG thank you to @debbietaymour and family for making this match happen!! We LOVE Castle and are sooo thrilled to be keeping him in the barn- I see great things ahead for this already successful pair @stammdvm @opportunity_acres @laurenmccullough23 #bthequestrians #matchmadeinheaven #unicornsdoexist #soexcited #thankyoutoeveryone #perfectpair

Farm work doesn’t make you stronger. It doesn’t make you anything. It reveals you. There’s gym strong and then there’s farm strong. They’re mutually exclusive. The toughest women you’ll ever meet spend their days on a farm.... There are more uses for twine than you can possibly imagine. You can tie up a hole in a slow feeder, fashion a tail strap for a horse’s blanket, mend a broken fence and use it as a belt. Well that certainly didn’t go as planned, is one thing you’ll say quite a bit. Control is a mere illusion. The thought that you have any, at any given time, is utterly false. Sometimes sleep is a luxury. So are lunch and dinner. And brushing your hair. If you’ve never felt your obliques contract, then you’ve never tried stopping an overly full wheelbarrow of horse manure from tipping over sideways. Trust me, you’ll find muscles that you never knew existed on the human skeleton to prevent this from happening. When one of the animals is ill, you’ll go to heroic lengths to minimize their discomfort. When you lose one of them, even though you know that day is inevitable, you still feel sadness, angst and emotional pain from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. And it’s a heaviness that lingers even though you must regroup and press on. You’ll cry a lot. But you’ll never live more fully. You’ll remain present no matter what because you must. There is no other option. You’ll ask for so many miracles and hold out hope until the very last. You will, at least once, face-plant in the manure pile. You’ll find yourself saying things like, we have maybe twenty minutes of daylight left to git ‘er done while gazing up at a nonspecific place in the sky. You’ll become weirdly obsessive about the weather. You’ll go out in public wearing filthy clothes and smelling of dirt, sweat and poop. People will look at you sideways and crinkle their noses but you won’t care. Your entire day can derail within ten seconds of the rising sun. You can wash your coveralls. They won’t look any cleaner, but they will smell much nicer. Farm work is difficult in its simplicity. You’ll always notice just how beautiful sunrises and sunsets really are. - unk

So I did some math, using a handy computer. It has been suggested that in order to become a "master" at some skill. task, profession, it may take somewhere around 10,000 hours of doing it. So let's just for the heck of it see how many hours of riding per week, or per day, it will take me to reach that magic 10,000 hour goal.... If I ride 3 hours per week, 52 weeks a year, I will hit ten thousand hours in 64 years. If I ride 4 hours a week, that drops to 48 years. 5 hours a week, 38 years. 6 hours a week, down to 32 years. 7 hours a week, a bit more than 27 years. But what if I look at this somewhat differently. I know it will take me around 27 years to get to 10,000 hours if I average one hour a day for 365 days, (one whole year), never missing a day. But what if, just suppose, I could ride for TWO hours a day, every single day of the year? Now I can get to 10,000 hours in 13 and a half years. At 3 hours a day, I reach 10,000 in 9 years. At 4 hours, 7 years. At 5 hours a day, like in some old fashioned horse culture, where they live on horseback, I am at that ten thousand hour mark in only 5 and a half years.So if I start at, say, 12, I hit the mark when I am 17 or 18. Now, let's just say, I am a raiding nomad, riding as an entire way of life, and, just somehow, I sit on a horse 7 hours every day, I have hit ten thousand hours of riding in just about four years. Do YOUR math---See where you fit into this--- Denny Emerson

What a stunning sunrise over the ranch this morning... love waking up and being able to walk out my front door to all of this natural beauty @opportunity_acres @laurenmccullough23 #bthequestrians #beautiful #sunrise #startthedayright #nofilterneeded

Huge thank you to the talented and generous @alexism_v for sharing her knowledge about rider biomechanics with us!! Learning about our bodies and how we influence and effect our horses is so important it is invaluable for me as an instructor to be able to have others insight and perspective to better help students progress!! Can’t wait to have her back very soon!! @opportunity_acres @alisfirefly @stammdvm @melissaroseander @gkosek1 @vickieblitle @bocklodi66 @_horserider572 @laurenmccullough23 #bthequestrians #learning #growth #progress #education #biomechanics #influence

The fog slowly crept in today and by 11am the farm was pretty much covered in a cold, damp cloud cover! Crazy as the day started beautiful and sunny if not a bit chilly Glad our horses and riders managed this brisk winter day so well, although there was definitely some wild antics @opportunity_acres @laurenmccullough23 #bthequestrians #chillyday #norcalwinter #foggy #coldweather #brrrr #

It was a trot set day for this magical unicorn @sara_orbs lovely #royalty we are so lucky to have 56 acres of terrain, groomed and maintained trails, cross country opportunities, banks, natural logs and all of the room we could possibly need to keep these horses mentally and physically happy 30 to 40 minutes of trotting on hills so amazing for these horses!! @opportunity_acres @laurenmccullough23 #bthequestrians #trotsetrainer #unicorns #luckyme #happy #grateful