Summer Vacations: Disneyland to Del Mar

by Natalie Keller Reinert

Real life? What's that? Summer vacations have me way too busy, running off my feet, to stop and think about real life. I'm just flitting between airports, train stations, hotel rooms, and my desk, catching up on all the work I've missed while on vacation. The bonus of this is that my apartment is nearly always clean, because I'm hardly ever anywhere in it but my office.

Now, most horsepeople do not get to go on vacations, so let me explain how they work. In short, a vacation is when you go somewhere without your horses and immediately seek out other people's horses to look at/pet/mentally compose careful conformation critiques of/take pictures of.

In the early part of our summer, we went to California, where we found horses in all the right places: in theme parks and at racetracks. You know, where anyone can find them. I am a working horse's biggest fan, especially when they are in places where non-horsepeople can get up close and personal and be taken with a horse's startling mixture of strength and gentleness (something that we tend to take for granted after years working alongside them).

Here are some of my summer vacation OPH (Other People's Horses) snaps:

This gorgeous roan Clydesdale at Disneyland had just finished a big slobbery drink from a bucket and was getting ready to head back to Sleeping Beauty Castle.

A lovely Belgian walking the horse-drawn trolley around the Hub and towards Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland.

A close-up of the Clydesdale to prove the rumor... Disneyland horses are barefoot! How amazing is that!

Del Mar Racing on the turf. This track makes great use of its infield, allowing for some amazing views like this.

And of course for the perfect selfie. New author photo?

A schoolie in the gorgeous paddock at Del Mar.

I am obsessed with Del Mar's palm trees. What a racetrack. A palace for racehorses.

PALM TREES.

This gorgeous reproduction of a cavalry recruitment poster is hidden away on the walkway between Frontierland and Fantasyland in Disneyland.

That was Summer Vacation Part 1. Summer Vacation Part 2 starts in a little less than two weeks when Cory and I hop a train for Saratoga. We missed Saratoga last year and I can't wait to get back to the Spa!

So before I sign off and get back to the mountains of work that taking vacations saddles one with, don't forget... you have a few more days to enter to win a signed paperback of Ambition. I'm so happy that Ambition has been hanging on tight to that top three position in horse books at Amazon (right now it's number one!) and that it has been resonating with horsepeople -- because that's who I wrote it for, after all! Please go over to Goodreads and enter to win -- there are four copies up for grabs!

And now... I have to get back to writing!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Ambition

by Natalie Keller Reinert

Giveaway ends August 11, 2014.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

St. Patrick's Day with Mounted Police Horses

by Natalie Keller Reinert

St. Patrick's Day... so that just happened.

I just finished a breakfast of warm buttered soda bread (and I'm about to have second breakfast, of more of the same) and thinking about my St. Patrick's Day past. A lot of snow, for some reason, despite the fact that I've lived most of my life in Florida. Snow at horse shows, snow at work, snow when we all thought we could reasonably expect something more like spring. And last year's snow, at the New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade.

Riding home on Apollo with Sgt. Besom (on Teddy, left).  Central Park, St. Patrick's Day 2013

Always snowing. An Earstagram view.

Readers might remember that this time last year, I was working for the New York City Parks Department's Mounted unit. Here's something readers might not have known: St. Patrick's Day is apparently also the annual New York City Regional Suburban Teenager Day of Public Drinking. 

I don't think this holiday is recognized by any municipal laws, but it's definitely observed. It seemed like every teenager from every bedroom community in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut hopped a train with a 64-oz Gatorade bottle filled with liquor-cabinet contraband, and came to Central Park to get drunk and puke in public. Like you do.

And it's the charming job of the Mounted unit to chase the drunken teenagers out of the park! 

A rare snow-less view of the Pond, Central Park

So there I was, on the back of a spotted draft horse, snow flying in my face, using my horse to move a group of about a hundred inebriated high school students out of a charming rustic gazebo along Central Park South, listening to glass shatter and what were essentially children screaming obscenities, all to the soundtrack of bagpipes and drums and brass bands, and all I could think was, "Thank God for this horse."

Perfectly adorable Apollo.

I was riding a truly amazing horse. His name is Apollo, and his stoic gaze and striped forelock are still a fixture in the mounted unit. Massive, spotted, and resembling nothing so much as a pinto army tank, Apollo might be the most wonderful horse in the world. Solid and bombproof, he also has a naughty side, and when he decides to play a trick on his rider and spook at a squirrel or start a quarrel with his partner on patrol, he'll do it so covertly that you'll never be able to blame him for it. 

Mounted police horses are truly the most amazing of horses, right up there with hippotherapy and therapeutic riding horses on my equine deity list. Last night, I read this article at The Atlantic Cities: "Are Police Horses a Dying Breed?" Despite its negative, click-bait title, the writer points out many of the ways in which police horses are not anachronistic, and are being reintroduced in some departments which had previously phased them out. It's worth a read, and a share, to support our working horses.

Oh look. Snow. Central Park 2013

I'm endlessly thankful for my year with the Parks Mounted unit, for the experiences, the people, and the amazing horses I met there. Working horses are a breed of their own, to be treasured. I hope someday to write about mounted police work in my fiction.

And before I sign off, let me share a few things. I have a new Facebook page: Natalie Keller Reinert: Horse Books for Grown-Ups, where I will be sharing lines and sneak peeks at my upcoming eventing novel, Ambition. Come and like that if you are so inclined! 

Gina McKnight was nice enough to post an interview with me at her blog Riding & Writing. In this interview, I discuss scintillating topics such as the use of butter in mashed potatoes, and being boring and making outlines of your work. You should totally read it. 

And finally, I'd like to publicly thank Castleton Lyons for continuing to sponsor the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award. Other People's Horses was a semi-finalist in the 2013 book competition, which honors horse racing in full-length literary works. To have my book selected as the only fiction semi-finalist was an incredible honor. I wish the finalists all the best, and hope to see them again with a new horse racing novel in the future!