The Beautiful Kranich – Count Anton Günther’s Favorite Oldenburg- July 2006
kip mistral The driving force for a writer is curiosity. One minute we’re minding our own business, and the next we’re experiencing something like whiplash when our attention is suddenly diverted by something fascinating and mysterious. And then we can’t rest until we explore it, wherever it leads… I had inspected the wonders of Rosenberg […]
Heart to Heart – A quantitative approach to measuring the emotional bond between horses and humans – August 2007
Kip Mistral We have all heard that overused quotation from Sir Winston Churchill “There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.” Who can argue with the thought? It is why, perhaps selfishly, we love horses so much. But if you […]
Stal El Paradiso – A quest for grace in classical Equitation – August 2006
kip mistral In Arthurian legend, the sacred cup known as “The Grail” was sought by the Knights of the Round Table as the object of an extended or difficult quest. The story of the quest for the Grail has become a metaphor for an idealistic, intellectual or […]
Here Lies L’Ame – The struggle to save Russia’s imperial equine cemetery – April 2006
kip mistral We have all experienced it…we are going along, minding our own affairs, looking neither to the right nor to the left, when suddenly there appears before us something we can’t ignore, something we realize later seemed to have been put into our lives to change them. So it happened the day that Frenchman […]
Routing Inertia – February 2007
kip mistral The day her destiny quietly set her down at a rural horse fair in Nagaur, India, Francesca Kelly was vacationing in Rajasthan, on an equestrian tour with her husband James. She wandered casually through lines of tethered horses for sale, marveling at the […]
The Secret Life of Stallions – Fathers and Husbands – February 2006
kip mistral How often do we humans assume we understand the value or meaning of something and not realize until much later that we didn’t understand it at all? Perhaps we accept such assumptions on our part because it is simple to accept longstanding notions and myths though our instinct might be warning us differently, […]