01/16/2025
If youāre looking for a good inspirational/educational read on anything equestrian, be sure to give these guys a follow!
DID YOU KNOW?
ā¢ Keystone has been posting, mostly daily, for twelve-and-a-half years. Thatās a lot of original content that Iāve written and youāve read, so hooray for us!
ā¢ Keystone was a āponies onlyā operation for many yearsā¦ until one too many would-be clients commented, āGee, I wish you trained and sold real horses, too!ā This used to drive me nuts. I stayed the courseāwhich is code for staying stubbornly specializedāuntil I listened to the keynote speaker at a small business course, one day.
That man would change my life's path.
The very first thing he asked the audience was, āWhat is the one thing your customers tell you, over and over, that you just canāt stand? Because that is the first thing you need to change!ā Keystone Ponies became Keystone Equine the next day. Horses were made welcome and gotta say, we havenāt looked back.
I still really love a good pony.
ā¢ I decided early on that this wouldnāt be a sales page, or a place for training tips. Nope. Instead, it would be based on the fifty years Iāve kept a riding diary, faithfully recording the lessons I was in, the wrecks Iāve had, the horse show wins and losses, daily notes on the training horsesā¦ and all the other stuff that makes up this riding life.
Iām still keeping those diaries and in the basement storage room, there are shelves of the darned things. Keystone Equine is still made of my journal entries, shared with all of you and so far, there are no signs of me getting stopped.
ā¢ If youāre so inclined, you can click on our photos, then albums, and read from what I think are ninety or so, all grouped in hundreds. If youāre not tech savvy, Iāll share the links that will get you there, below.
You can choose from the early āPony Pointersā, all the way to the nine āHorsemanshipā albums! Visit āJust for Laughsā or āKeystone Starsā. You can get to know quite a few of the sale horses and ponies that have appeared here, over the years.
ā¢ Keystone has always been open to all the disciplines, to achieving with all breeds of horses and ponies and to just enjoying the chance to be with them. The stories about horses are always more popular, than are the more technical horsemanship posts. I'm keeping on with those, for I am a teacher in real life, too.
We discuss what happens when life gets lifey, so there are the āLiving Well, Riding Betterā albums to scroll through, days you want to dig deep.
ā¢ There is a regular column called āA Reader Writesā and these are actual questions emailed to me from real people who are having some sort of an issue with their horses. Iāve obtained their permission to write publicly, without using real names or places, of course and there have been some great questions sent in over the years.
ā¢ Keystone Equine is one of the few public horse pages where the comments are always kindā¦ or they magically go āmissingā. Itās a safe place to ask questions and to share vulnerabilities. We regularly go to the shadow side and we celebrate one anotherās victories, too.
Weāre real people, with real horses, real worries and real memories. Weāve real hopes for the future. We want to ride this life to a standstill, with everything weāve got. All of this, without doing harm to these beautiful animals in our care.
Hereās the link, if youād like to get started leafing through our albums. Weāre still adding to them, every single day:
https://www.facebook.com/livingwellridingbetter/photos_albums
And here are all the Keystone videos, throughout the years:
https://www.facebook.com/livingwellridingbetter/videos
The picture shown here is of me and my beautiful Welsh pony, Peter, at the big All Pony Show at Millarville, Alberta, Canada. It was taken in August, 1973 and appeared here, as Keystoneās very first public post, in May, 2012. My grandmother made my riding jacket and it hangs, in the far corner of my closet, still.
Thereās been a lot of water gone under the olā bridge, since then...
In the comments, tell us how long you've been following Keystone! I'm so glad you're here with us, today.
