It Is Hot and Dry!!

August 29, 2011


Another hot day in Utopia, TX!! 106° YIKES!! I hope we get some rain pretty soon. Or at least some cooler weather!!

We have had a pretty busy week. We mowed (which doesn’t take long with no rain). Then we did some watering. We can’t water much because, like everyone else who is on a city water system, we are on restrictions. I am keeping the trees alive and some of my more expensive plants and that is all.

It is interesting which plants are doing well. The Lantana is growing quite a little, but not blooming much. The Plumbago is going crazy with beautiful blooms, and has not been watered much at all. The poor Knock Out Roses that were blooming so beautifully are decimated by the deer. The deer are not supposed to like them, but when there isn’t much else to eat, they really go after them. Most everything else but the Vitex trees are getting ate or dying. I also have a couple of little paper magnolia trees, and they sure are having a hard time, even with us giving them much more water than anything else.

The garden, which was so prolific at the start of summer is not doing so well, not because of lack of water, but because of the heat. The tomatoes gave us a lot at the first of the summer but then the heat started working on them. I am going to take up 2 or 3 of them and put them in pots on the shaded porch. We will see how they do there.

This heat sure makes it hard to get all the riding done that we want to. We get up pretty early and try to get all the clients horses ridden, and then around 2 or 3 p.m. we go in and do catch up work. We would like to ride a couple of our own horses, but it is impossible. But if we can just be patient, we will get cool weather here pretty soon. It is already cool in the mornings. Hard to believe it can get from 75° to 110° in one day.

Well, stay inside as much as you can. And bring in as many pets as you can. It is too hot for them outside.

Horse Personality

August 22, 2011
No rain for us this week either.  Guess we aren't doing something right.  But life goes on, even though we are in one of the worst drouths in history.  Here is a little about our life. 


I got the Newsletter out last week. It is a pretty good sized job (or at least it is for me) to get these little five pages written. But it is well worth it when I get back e-mails saying something in it has helped someone. I got back two e-mails like that today. Advertising is one of the hardest things for me and Jere to do. We even have trouble getting our brochure and business cards put out in feed stores and vet offices!! I would like to hire someone to just do publicity and promotions, but can’t justify it yet. So back to the drawing board for me. Our publicity depends on booths at various horse events, our brochures and cards distributed in stores, the newsletter and blog I write, face book and our web page and the thing that is the best advertising, word of mouth. We have done some print advertising, but felt it didn’t really pan out.

The Blog is another hard one to do, because it takes so much time, but I have recently bought a little book that shows how to produce ideas to write, by putting some word that you want to write about in a circle, and then brainstorming words that seem to go with it. As I get older, I find it harder to think of things to write about and this little technique seems to help a lot. One thing I like about the blog is that it flows better, because I know I can write about what I want.

On to Horsemanship….We believe one of the best things that ever happened in the horse world was for Linda Parelli to wake up at 2:30 in the morning and start writing the Horse Personalities out. Before, we knew that horses were somewhat different, but we didn’t know what to do for each personality or what characteristics each horse had. We think this will change the horse world the world over. Many people have started using this program to figure horses out and while some people are doing a little different system, it is still helping the horse to learn. Think what it would be like for schools to use a system something like this on kids. They would learn according to how their personalities are. I know that sure would have helped me in school!!

We have four geldings here now in for training. We try not to put more than two horses in the smaller pastures we have, so there are two geldings in each pasture.

The first is named Gully. He is a 3 year old and is Cully’s horse. He is a left brained extrovert and if he doesn’t get enough work or things to keep him active, he will tear stuff down, get into the fences and skin himself up and so on, generally making a nuisance of himself. His pasture mate is an older horse named Willie. Willie is about 10 and has seen it all. He has all sorts of scars on his front legs, so we aren’t sure what his life was like before.  But Willie is a left brained introvert, who gets along no matter what. When we first put Gully and Willie together, Gully tried to dominate Willie. But soon, Willie had enough of that and started backing up to Gully and kicking him! A couple of days of this and they both get along by staying away from each other. Sort of like a truce. They really don’t like each other, they just get along.

We have two more geldings in another pasture. The first is Lucky, a young paint. He is left brained extrovert, but he is very non-confrontational. Lucky just wants a playmate, but he is always the low man on the totem pole. He is a very sweet, easy to get along with colt.

The gelding we have in with Lucky is Choco. He is brand new, but he seems to be a left brained extrovert too, with dominance issues. He and Lucky started out fighting like crazy and we thought maybe poor old Lucky would get to be the boss of somebody, finally. But it was not to be. Chaco pushes Lucky off his feed, and Lucky knows his place and moves to another pile of hay. They seem to really like each other now, and will play “bite face” all day.

It is really interesting to watch these horses and the other horses we have here in their herd. Sometimes they change from being one horse personality to being another in the same day and sometimes even when we are working them in a round pen session. The best way to figure out what your horse is, is to sit and watch what they do with other horses.

I hope you all have a very profitable and worthwhile week. We have a couple of private lessons and lots of regular lessons. Cully’s brother-in-law is also coming down to stay a while and work some horses. We are looking forward to that. Hopefully, I will get some pictures into the blog next week.

New Blogging Going On

August 15, 2011

I guess it is never going to rain again. Every morning we wake up to hazy wet looking skies and then about 10 a.m. the sun comes out and fry’s us!! We are getting tired of hot weather and drought!! But I guess we better get used to it, because it might last longer. I have noticed it looking more fall-y in the evenings though, so maybe we will get some relief soon.

This blog is an add on to our Mustang Blog. It is going to be about the life of a horse clinician and his wife. But it will be from the viewpoint of the wife. Because that is what I am. Sometimes I love it and sometimes I don’t like it so well. Jere and I have worked so many low paying and difficult jobs, that we are thankful for anything like this where we can make a decent living.

When I decided to write this Blog, I wanted to do four things. First, I want to try to give you an idea of what we do in our lives on a day to day basis. Second, I want to keep all our students and students to be apprised of the dates and times of the events we are having. Three, I would like to entertain so that you will read my blog!! And fourth, I would like to educate about Natural Horsemanship.

Here is a little background on us. We are Jere and Cathy Johnson. Jere was born in Colorado and his Dad was a horse trader. I also was born and raised in Colorado as a dairyman’s daughter, who was nuts about horses from the time I was a little girl. We both had four siblings and we both were raised in rural areas. We met at Otero Junior College in La Junta, Colorado and married. We have three children, Cully, who lives here, Cory who lives in Waller, TX, and Jereny who lives in Burnet, TX . All of them are in the horse business of one type or another and we consider ourselves very lucky in that way.

We have been able to stay close to the horse business through the 46 years of our marriage. Jere and I both worked in feed lots, for veterinarians and on ranches. We have taken a few jobs out of our field, like working in a warehouse, working landscaping, and a few things like that. But mostly we have worked with and around horses.

This week was a pretty busy week for us at the Center. We have had 2 new horses come in and we need to get these owners, who don’t know much about Natural Horsemanship going on understanding the program and why their horses do what they do. We train the owners along with the horses. There is no use working with the horse and sending him home and then the owner can’t get the horse to do anything. We always say a horse is not like a motorcycle. You can take the motorcycle to the garage and have it overhauled and take it home and park it in the garage. The next time you want to ride it, you just put the key in and off you go. A horse is not like that. They are living, breathing, thinking animals and you have to have a relationship with them, make some time for them, and want to put them first.

Well, that is enough for now.  I am going to try to blog every week, so next Sunday will be my day again.  Thank you for reading it!!