NEW: There's a new photo essay called "Pop Quiz" under the Photo Essays section.

ALSO: I've launched a new website on sport, horse and tradition in Virginia. Please check it out at: www.VirginiaHorseCountry.com

“Everyone should have a horse like Stan, just once in their life.”

So announced my vet as she stood in the barn aisle, giving my horse an acupuncture treatment.

Loristan. The guy was born perfect. Handsome, funny and generous to a fault, even to those without a carrot in their hand, he’s carried this lifelong amateur rider through a lifetime of experiences, shouldering her beyond her comfort zone straight into Elysian Fields, and with characteristic patience and grace. What a ride he’s given me—they’ve all given me.

I’ve been horsing around all my life, having written about horses, edited books about horses, helped start up magazines and organizations about horses, worked for associations dedicated to horses, lived around horses, ridden horses, befriended horses and been lucky enough to call some awfully nice horse people, friend. And yet, I hesitate to call myself an equestrienne, just as I hesitate to call myself an equine writer, having stumbled entirely upon the threshold against all odds and without any personal intention.

How was I to know that horses would keep turning up in my career like an innocent copper penny, coining my life lucky with each visit to some great trainer’s doorstep, gaping slacked jawed at the horses being worked inside imperial cathedrals of training and within simple bank barns, marveling at the dedication and honest, hard work quietly baptizing the highest ideals of equestrian sport. All in all, not a bad way to spend a life.

Thank you for stopping by my site, which I update regularly with new content. Please, feel free to take a peek at some of the work featured here, which will soon include an exclusive on the Queen’s Cavalry—an in-depth, behind the scenes look at the mounted regiments of Queen Elizabeth’s Household Cavalry, showcasing a 350-year-old, British tradition and its ongoing, equestrian operations in the modern era. (That's me interviewing a British Army captain during a behind-the-scenes visit to the Hyde Park Barracks in London.)