buying enough of those $45 magic training sticks to keep every horse whispering clinician with a DVD and a website from here to Missoula in business? That's us - the women who decide, often to our husband's' consternation, that after working all our lives at age 45 we'd rather spend our money on horses than bless ourselves with another pair of fancy shoes.

But what are horses good for? They eat. They sleep. They go backwards, forwards and sideways - and not always, when you are a greying newbie rider, in the order that you intend. They create mountains of manure that no farmer wants. Their feet need more maintenance than our own tootsies, no matter how pampered by pedicures. This one doesn't like his ears touched. That one won't stand for his tail being lifted.  How many plastic bags does a horse need to see before he realizes that it's not a horse killing ghost? They've had too much of the wrong training or not enough of the right training or they'd simply rather not - every horse is a Bartleby! (I can prove that point with one word- Ivermectin.)

One of those clinicians that we old ladies keep afloat once wrote, "The first year after someone starts up with horses eighty percent of them drop out.  During the second year eighty percent of those twenty percent that were left also hit the road." And I guess he should have added that those dwindling twenty percenters in year three become certifiable horse nuts and maybe, just maybe, that's when they decide, with their hearts full of oblivious joy - "Maybe it's time to get my own horse!" Even if, in spite of your borderline lunatic horse obsession, you still have the rational side of your mind working enough to signal danger, danger to the crazy, cantering girl you have become, a horse will inevitably appear and make his claim on you. After all, this world is full of horses. In fact (and how did you never notice this before?) the world is overstuffed with millions and zillions of horses - horses young and old, horses large and small, horses who need homes.

That's how I ended up with my yearling mustang. I'm on a mailing list for local trail riders and one of the members sent an email around about him. From that first contact I had a feeling that didn't make any sense. "He's only 11 odd hands. Is he going to be good for something?" "You don't have any experience training a horse! What good is that?" "Do you know how much it costs to keep a horse in the Bay area? That money could be put to some good use!"  But it was as clear to some part of me as the sunshine rising up over the morning hills that this horse was worth keeping and that yes, he would be good for something. Whatever that something was he and I would someday figure it out.

Just about then by some miracle a whole support system appeared of horse people and barn friends who were eager to help. Suddenly the impossible seemed doable. And just maybe this is one of the greatest and most wonderful and wholly unexpected things I've ever learned during my short time on this earth with horses. All things are good for something, even those things that on first glance might appear that they are not. You just need to follow your inner horse.