06/11/07 Count Your Horses!

Count all the horse trailers traveling our highways and it is easy to see that there are a lot of people, like myself into horses. There are even more horses today than there were in the horse and buggy era, a fact that sheds an interestingly light on human nature. As Ronald Reagan liked to quote, "there is nothing so good for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse." And I might add& good for the economy as well. While the number of horse owners climb, the cost of horse ownership is simply skyrocketing and a recent American Horse Council study found that recreational horse owners now contribute 32 billion to our gross domestic product. As Marguret Henry the author once said. "It excites me that no matter how much machinery replaces the horse, the work it can do is still measured in horsepower.....even in this space age. And although a riding horse often weighs half a ton, and a big drafter a full ton, either can be led about by a piece of string if he has been wisely trained. This to me is a constant source of wonder, and challenge" . It is pretty obvious that thousands of Americans share her sentiments.