The Has Been

                                                by Laura Crum

            Yes, I once used to be a pretty handy cowgirl. And my good horse, Gunner, would really watch a cow. Looking through my old albums yesterday, I came upon these photos. They made me smile, remembering.

Gunner and I cutting cattle at the family ranch. Do we look determined or what?

Roping on Gunner at my uncle Todd’s arena.

Gunner winning the cutting at the county fair.

            But these photos were taken maybe twenty years ago. Today Gunner is grazing peacefully on the lawn, as I rub his neck and scratch his withers. And we’re both happy in our has been status.

Gunner at 32 years.

            Gunner put in ten solid years as a competitive horse. I broke and trained him myself. I’m pretty proud of what we accomplished together. But what does it mean now?

            When I talk to my various horse friends, both in real life and on the internet, they are mostly pushing towards some goal. A competition they want to enter, a clinic they want to take…etc. Whether it be dressage, endurance, cowhorse, roping or just horse training skills, they want to progress as horsemen. And me? I don’t.

            Alone, it sometimes seems to me, among the horse people I know, I am content to putter down the trail on my solid horse, riding with my kid, knowing that my skills are, oh, about one-tenth what they were back in the days when I was training and competing. I still have the thoughts and opinions I developed over those years, and my ability to read a horse is as good as it ever was, but my ability to execute—not so much.

            I don’t train horses any more. I don’t even ride young, green horses any more. I don’t compete. I don’t cut cattle or rope cattle these days (though I still gather cattle and move them from here to there on horseback). I only ride solid horses. I am, in fact, quite happy to ride what my friends teasingly call my “plug.” And Sunny is, in fact, a laid back little plug of a trail horse. Guess what? I like it like that.

            I enjoy the relaxed tranquility of my horse life today. I delight in the freedom from anxiety and pressure, in the peace of it all. I ride two or three days a week and enjoy it very much, but if I had to choose my favorite aspect of horses now, it would be having them with me here at home, taking care of them, seeing them many times a day, turning them out to graze. Just what I do with my retired horses. The sight of a horse’s pricked ears at dawn means as much to me as anything.

            Don’t get me wrong—I love my trail rides on Sunny, riding along with my son on Henry. But my absolute favorite thing is just living with horses. And I take endless pleasure in the fact that I don’t feel any pressure or anxiety surrounding the horses any more, something that I wasn’t aware that I once felt until after it was gone. I still remember the day, not so many years ago, when it dawned on me that an inevitable tension, that had always accompanied my interactions with horses, had disappeared. After some thought, I realized that the tension had been a product of underlying anxiety. No matter how much I loved what I was doing, there was a basic anxiety composed of the stress of training unpredictable young horses, and the desire to do well at various events. With that removed, I found a whole new level of peace and joy with horses.

            Nowadays I ride without goals, other than to enjoy the ride. I don’t put much pressure on myself or my horse—we’re both relaxed. And it makes me happy. I think my horse is happy, too. Just looking at the beauty of nature from a horse’s back is more than enough for me.

            Sometimes I can’t help comparing myself to others and I always laugh ruefully. I’m the has-been. I’m not accomplishing much of anything. Then I think back to the twenty-plus years in which I trained and competed relentlessly, and I shrug. Been there, done that. Got the T-shirt, or rather, belt buckle. I’m happy I spent those years achieving my goals. It leaves me free. If I hadn’t done all that, I think I would always wonder what if? What if I had pursued my goals?

            But I did pursue those goals, and achieved the things I set out to do. And now I don’t need to do those things any more.

            I’m not sure how this appears to others. At some level, I don’t really care. I’m doing what I want to do and it makes me happy. Maybe it seems as if a has-been shouldn’t be giving advice about horses (of course, when I do, you are all free to ignore it). Maybe I seem as if I’ve given up, or am just lazy. That I ought to try harder. Some have said that my life seems enviable, though I don’t mean to cause envy. In fact, my life with horses would be pretty boring for many of my friends.

            And there are days when I do question myself. I wonder WHY I don’t want to do more with horses now. I have many friends my age and older who are still competing. And some days I feel a bit lonely and isolated, disconnected from my horse friends who are still caught up in the passionate striving to improve as horsemen—whether it be for competition or for its own sake. I can no longer share in that camaraderie to any great degree.

            So, I sometimes wonder…are there other horsemen like me? People who have accomplished a fair amount with horses in their life, and are now content just to enjoy a relaxed ride from here on out. Or am I some sort of aberration? The truth is I don’t much worry over this—I’m happy with my life as it is. And I am very grateful to have (so far) survived a life spent very much on horseback with no serious injuries…and a continued joy in riding and horses. Not to mention the immense delight of sharing my horseback time with my son for about eleven and a half years now (yes, his first ride was at six months old, in front of me on my great old horse, Flanigan). So I’m Ok with being a has-been in the eyes of others (and for that matter, myself). But I am curious. Any other lazy has-been horsemen out there? Anybody else happy to just putter down the trail?

            

Don't You Miss It?

by Laura Crum


The other day a friend was visiting and I pointed out a silk tree in my garden. “I grew that tree from a seed that was taken from a tree at the Oakdale Rodeo Grounds,” I said. “Back when I used to rope there a lot.”

The friend, who rides but does not rope, looked at me. “Don’t you miss it?” she said.

“Miss what?”

“Oh, the roping, the competition, hanging out with the cowboys, the whole thing. Don’t you miss it?”

My immediate impulse was to say no, but instead I gave the question some thought. Because no, I don’t miss it, in the sense of wanting to do it again. But I do think of that period of my life (my thirties) fondly, and I certainly am glad that I had that experience.

I’ve written before on this blog of the distaste I eventually acquired for competition, and the love I re-acquired for quietly cruising down the trail. At the present moment no horse event draws me as much as gentle, non-competitive trail riding, either solo, or with my son, or with a friend. But certainly there were many years when I just lived to go team roping—I practiced several days a week and competed every weekend. I was never more than a just-competent low level roper, but I hung out with some good ropers. I was actually better at training horses to be rope horses than I was at winning ropings. But it was all great fun.

I think back to some of the big ropings I went to, with hundreds of competitors and their talented (and not) horses milling about. In those days I was thrilled just to be there, to be part of the whole thing. I always tried to do my best and I was tickled if I placed, but I think the greatest thrill for me came from simply participating in this grand western scene.

And now? Well, I won’t belabor the various negative aspects of competition that eventually drove me away. I’ve talked about this before on the blog. I will say that though I don’t wish to compete, I still retain a fondness for the grand western scene, and I’ve chosen to take my young son up to our local practice roping arena twice a week ever since he was six months old. At first I just watched, with my baby in a backpack, when he was two till five I rode around with him in front of me in the saddle, five to seven he rode his pony, first on the leadline, then independently, and seven to ten he’s been riding his retired rope horse, Henry, gathering cattle and bringing them up the alley, occasionally chasing a slow steer down the arena.
“Are you trying to raise him up to be a team roper?” the same friend asks.

Well, no. But I am trying to give him the part of the experience that I loved and still enjoy—that being together with a group of “cowboys”, all mounted on their shiny cowhorses, ready to go do a job of work. And yes, I’ve worked on commercial cattle ranches with real ranch cowboys and know the difference between them and team ropers, but it’s the best way I can think of to convey what, to me, is really a poetic image. Its an image that always resonated for me, and I want to give it to my son.

So, no, I don’t “miss” being a roper, and no, I don’t so much want my son to become one. I do want him to feel the thrill of the group gathered to work cattle on all their pretty horses—the comraderie and the love of horses and the western spirit that underlies it all. Are these two things in conflict? I’m not sure.

Have any of you ever experienced this sort of paradox? Loving some elements of a horse activity and not others, and not sure how to reconcile them? Any solutions that have worked for you?


PS-I wrote this piece a week ago, and my son and I watched the cutting class at the County Fair yesterday—the same class that I won twenty-one years ago on Gunner. It was a little odd for me to sit there watching it, explaining the rules of cutting for my kid. I was able to accurately pick the horse which scored the highest, so I haven’t totally lost my feel for it.

At the end of the class my son said he’d like to try cutting and could Henry do it? I explained that Henry was a rope horse, not a cutter, and we would have to teach him how to hold a cow.

“Gunner is a cutter,” my son said. “Maybe I could use him.”

“Gunner is thirty years old,” I said. “He’s really too old and stiff to go back to work.”

And I reflected that I had neither the time nor the skill any more to train a cutter, and I certainly didn’t have the money to buy one, or a place to put another horse.

So, another potential dilemma. If my son retains his interest in cutting, shall I try to find a way to plunge back into it? I’m sure I could borrow a horse if I combed the ground thoroughly enough. But just the thought of the hauling, the endless cattle needed for practice, the entry fees, the constant politicking among the trainers and just interacting with all those trainers and their oh-so-wealthy non-pros again makes me cringe. I do not relish the thought of dealing with that world.

At the same time, watching people lope their horses around the warm up pen and walk into the herd brought back a rush of memories. I could almost see myself out there in that same pen on Gunner, all those years ago, and the buckle we won is still in my closet. If my son really wants to do this, surely I should support him?

I’ve got to admit, I really hope my son stays happy with trail riding. But perhaps I’ve sowed the seeds of my own demise by introducing him to these other (competitive) aspects of horsemanship—roping and cutting—all in the interests of sharing the “grand western scene” with him—that world I loved so well and pursued so long. How should I handle his new interest? Any thoughts?

Winning

by Laura Crum


Last week I did a post on the reasons I gave up showing horses and looking back on it I find it very incomplete. I mentioned the political aspect of it as a judged event and the cost. These things did have a lot to do with why I quit, but there were other reasons, too.

Kate mentioned seeing too many “servicably sound” horses in her hunter/jumper world, and I had to agree. Competition of all sorts in the horse world seems to result in so many horses pushed to keep working despite being sore, and then thrown away like used sporting equipment when they just can’t go any more. I think all of us have seen this and been affected by it. Some of us quit competing because we don’t want to be around it any more or support it in any way. However, I didn’t get to that place until I quit competing at team roping, the last competitive event I practiced.

Today I want to revisit cutting, particularly the last cutting where I competed. This would be our local county fair, twenty years ago this past fall. My horse, Gunner, was nine, and I had been competing on him at cuttings since he was four. I'd gotten a little jaded on the political element and the whole horse trainer shtick (see my post “Once Upon A Time”), and was starting to go team roping and liking it. But I decided to show Gunner one more time at the fair. I didn’t know it would be my last show, but I wondered.

In order to get ready for the cutting I practiced a bit and then hauled my horse over to a friend of mine, who was a local trainer.

“I want you to watch me cut a cow and tell me what you see,” I said. “I want to know what I should work on.”

So I walked Gunner into the herd and cut a cow. The cow tried him hard and Gunner worked well. Clean and crisp, not too long or too short, he was spot on; I never had to touch his face; he held that tough cow right in the middle and never missed a beat. I was very proud of him. When the cow turned away I touched Gunner’s withers to let him know we were done and walked back out of the herd and said to Bob, “Well?”

“He did fine,” he said.

Now even for trainer speak that was pretty laconic. I’m not particularly patient with trainer speak, anyway.“What do you mean he did fine? Is he as good as the horses that win?”

Bob shrugged.

“How is he different? What are they doing he isn’t doing?"

Bob shrugged again. “They’re a little fancier. He’s not doing anything wrong. They’re just flashier.”

Well, OK then. I knew what he meant. I was down to the root problem. There were two reasons that Gunner was not as fancy as the horses that won a lot. One was that he was big for a cutter. Gunner was 15.3, with good solid bone. He probably weighed 1200. Most successful cutting horses are smaller and lighter, which makes it easier for them to be quick and catty. I still remembered the initial reaction of the first cutting trainer I worked for when I unloaded Gunner from my trailer. This guy took one look at the horse, shrugged, and said, “Sell him and get another one.”

“What do you mean?” I said. “You haven’t even seen him work. He’s a nice horse.”

“I don’t care,” he said. “You want one that’s little and cute and catty. He’s too big. He looks like a rope horse.”

However, Gunner really was a good horse. He was quick and cowy and moved well and he had a lot of intensity and snap. He made a pretty darn good cutter. And now we came to problem number two, and it was the real stopper.

I had trained Gunner to be an effective cutter. What I had not done was train him to be flashy. So, what did this mean?

In the cutting horse world at that time, the horses that won regularly did a lot of “extra stuff”. If a cow moved slowly to the left and then paused, these horses did not mirror the cow, moving to the left and pausing, as I had taught Gunner to do. Nope. These horses did a whole lot more. They jumped to the left, to the right, back to the middle, pattered their front feet and back to the left, even if the cow was just hesitating there, doing nothing much. It was very flashy.
So what’s wrong with that, you ask. That’s what’s cool about cutting horses, all those fancy moves. Well, yeah. And again, not so much. Because these horses weren’t dancing around because they wanted to, nor was there much point in it. They were dancing like this because they had been spurred good and hard, over and over again, and they knew better than to simply mirror the cow and do what a cutting horse is supposed to do. No, they needed to move and dance constantly, and be “over the top” in every way, or they’d be punished.

Don’t get me wrong. Good cowhorses do some of this “dancing” on their own, because they love to work cows. Gunner did it, to some degree. It is part of what’s cool about cutters and all cowhorses. But these winning horses did it every time a cow slowed down enough to let them, and I knew very few (well, I personally didn’t know any) who were not taught to do this with an awful lot of spur.

I’m not saying I didn’t spur Gunner to teach him to be a cutter. I did. I don’t know anyone who trains cutting horses and never uses spurs. But I wasn’t willing to spur him over and over again when, by my lights, he was doing his job correctly, holding his cow, moving crisply, mirroring the cow’s every move, and working exactly as I had taught him to work. I wasn’t willing to torture him to make him fancier.

I also wasn’t willing to sell him and get one who was more the right “type”. At that time, I could have sold Gunner for a lot of money (by my standards, anyway). Even though he wasn’t ultra fancy, he was a solid, reliable cutting horse who was completely gentle and sound and he would pack anyone. Many trainers looked at him and thought they could “tune him up” and he’d be perfect for their beginning non-pro. I was offered ten thousand for him several times, which was a good price for an entry level cutting horse (at that time).

But I didn’t want to sell Gunner. I’d trained him myself, and I was proud of him. More than that, I loved him. I wasn’t going to dump him and get something I could win more on. And that was that.

As for the option of letting an accomplished trainer keep Gunner in training and make him flashier, well, I knew just what that would entail. I’d been around long enough to be sure that I didn’t want anyone else beating up my good horse. So many “horse stories” look very pretty when you see the horse placing at the big show with rider and trainer grinning at each other. Its only when you know the true underpinnings of such a story, all the abuse dealt out to horses and all the hatefulness between people, that you realize that the fairytale façade that’s presented is a very long way from reality. Unfortunately abusive treatment of horses, and trainers who start out charming and humble only to reveal themselves as passive aggressive sociopaths only interested in protecting their fragile egos—this is pretty much a routine tale in the professional horse business. Such trainers are often talented at training and winning—its compassion towards horses and forgiveness towards people that’s lacking. I’d learned enough by now to want nothing to do with all that. Also, for me, part of the point was that I wanted to be the one riding, training, and showing my horse. I didn’t own a horse for someone else to be riding him. Let alone that I couldn’t afford to keep Gunner in training, I had no interest in that idea.

I left Bob’s place feeling that I’d made a pretty nice horse and if I couldn’t succeed under the system, well, I’d leave that system behind.

So, I showed Gunner at the fair, feeling it would be my last show. It wasn’t a big class, maybe fifteen horses. I drew up fourth. Watching the first three go, I saw right away that the whole pen of cattle seemed to be runners. Nobody was able to cut some nice little pup that set up in the center and allowed their horse to “play”. Nope. Every cow wanted to run hard, driving across the pen in a strong attempt to get back to the herd.

This is actually the most challenging type of cow for a horse to hold, and, unfortunately, a horse doesn’t usually get marked for doing a good job of it. Judges wanted to see a cow set up in the middle and a horse get “fancy”. Running cattle were a big negative.

However, Gunner was quite good with tough cattle. He could run and stop and he stayed honest. When my turn came, I cut some cattle that ran (I couldn’t find a pup either) and Gunner held them really well. I didn’t make any mistakes. It was a solid go, but not very flashy. As I rode out, Bob, who was turning back for me, said, “Your horse ran across the pen real well.”

I knew just what he meant. We’d done a workmanlike job, but it wasn’t by any means a spectacular run. The judge marked me a 71, which was a fair mark for what I’d done.

I led Gunner away from the ring, feeling proud of him for a job well done, and mildly disgusted with the whole deal. Cuttings are, in case you don’t know, a long drawn out business, with lots of warm up and time spent settling the herd, and all of it, except one’s own run, and the occasional moments when one’s competition is doing something cool, is about like watching paint dry. I was pretty jaded by this time, as I said in my last post. I didn’t even watch the rest of the class.
I unsaddled Gunner and brushed him, completely sure that some of my fancy competition would outscore me. I hadn’t marked very high. I couldn’t hear the loudspeaker from where I was, so I had no idea how things were going.

It was only when a friend came dashing up to my trailer saying, “They’re looking for you,” that I found out.

I’d won the class. Apparently the fancy horses hadn’t been able to cut any easy cattle either, and everybody had either lost a cow and/or gotten out of shape. My 71 was the highest score.

Back I went, leading Gunner, to get my silver buckle and have my photo taken. It wasn’t the biggest show I ever won, or the highest score I ever marked, or my best run. Not even close. It was, however, my last show, and our local county fair, and for some reason it remains one of my favorite memories. I still have the buckle and the photo, which remind me of that happy moment. In an odd way, the fact that I won that last cutting seemed to validate all the time and money I’d spent on training Gunner to be a cutting horse.

I never regretted giving up cutting. I trained Gunner to be a team roping head horse and roped on him until he was fourteen. At fifteen I retired him to the pasture, and he is living a happy turned out life, sound, if peggy, at thirty years old this spring. He is still my horse, and I still love him and take care of him.

As for me, I competed at team roping for almost ten years, first on Gunner, and then on Flanigan, until the point where I realized I simply did not care about winning. I enjoyed roping, but I had gotten completely to the end of my tolerance for seeing horses crippled and people be unkind to each other, all in the interests of winning. Don’t get me wrong, lots of people were good to their horses and nice to each other, but plenty were not. At the end of my team roping career I would get to a roping and find myself fervently praying, “Don’t let any horses or people or cattle get hurt (yes, I cared about the cattle—so laugh at me), and let whoever needs to win, win.” It didn’t take too long after that for me to be sure I never wanted to see another horse get hurt again in pursuit of the almighty win. I never wanted to watch some poor mostly lame critter struggle on or see someone beat up a horse who had somehow failed to please the rider (though often the fault lay with the rider rather than the horse). All because people wanted to win. I didn’t even want to be around it.

For those of you who read this blog and who like to compete in some horse discipline, I am not suggesting that you don’t treat your horses well. It is totally possible to treat your horse well and compete on him, too—I know that. You cannot change the behavior of those around you, but you can decide what you yourself will do and not do. This blog post (and my previous post “Once Upon A Time”) were suggested to me by reading some blogs where it seemed to me that winning was glorified a bit and the path by which that win was achieved was not portrayed very honestly. When horses get trashed and there is much hatefulness between people along the way, winning isn’t worth it—not in my opinion.

The other reason I wanted to address this subject is that I think it is truly worth bringing up and talking about. I competed for many years and for a lot of that time I was really enjoying myself. Training my horse, improving, testing myself…all this meant a lot to me. When I got to the place where I was ready to leave it behind, well, I had got to that place, as this blog describes. One of my best friends, a woman who is a much more competitive team roper than I ever was, recently got to the same place and gave up competition. She and I trail ride together and we have a talked a lot (as you might imagine) about this process of letting go of the need to compete and why we needed to leave that world and how it has been for us. I don’t mean to suggest that I know some single answer that is right for all horse people. I just know that my friend and I have discussed this subject a lot lately as we mosey down the trail, and it is much on my mind.

Competition, and the desire to win, is driven by several factors. Money is one of them, and I haven’t even touched on this. But people who are in the horse business to make money need to win. To prove their stallion, or their training barn...etc. The need to make mony fuels the drive to win, in many cases. And a lot of abuse springs from this root. But many of us compete in order to prove ourselves…we’re not in it to make money. We train, and try to improve, and then compete to test ourselves. And in some cases this testing and proving of oneself can become an intense ego driven need to win that results in the sort of abuse that I have described. In the discussion following my last blog post several people, including Terri and stillearning, talked about what we can do to change this. I freely admit that I have no idea, though Terri had some great suggestions. Its true that I have just opted out, and I don’t know if this is an honorable solution or not. The bottom line is that I couldn’t stand to be around it any more.

I do know that horses and people get hurt trail riding, too. But in my experience the pressure we put on ourselves and our horses in the interests of competition is far more likely to lead to injury and breakdown than a relaxed ride “outside”, where winning is not a factor. So now I trail ride in the hills and on the beach with my son and my friends. And I visit Gunner in his pasture and pet him and tell him what a good horse he is. I’m having just as much fun as I did when I was cutting and team roping, somewhat to my own surprise.

That’s what I call a happy ending.

Feel free to tell me I’m nuts and competition is a good thing. My team roping friends who are still out there trying to win tell me this all the time. Cheers--Laura

One Woman's Path to Publication

I've recently been invited to join equestrianink and thought I'd begin by introducing myself and telling the story of the long trail that culminated in the sale of my equine mysteries to a major New York publisher. My name is Laura Crum and I write a mystery series about equine veterinarian Gail McCarthy. The books are set in California and revolve around the world of western horses. Each book deals with a different facet of western horsemanship, as well as a different stage in Gail's life, and all of the books arise out of my thirty years plus experience training and owning horses. Here's a condensed version of my history.

I grew up riding horses for my uncle (a part-time rodeo cowboy who competed at team roping and raised Quarter Horses), and was breaking and training colts for him by the time I was eighteen. In my twenties, I worked for a pack station in the Sierra Nevada Mts and for a large cattle operation in northern California. This was followed by a period where I worked for some prominent cutting and reining horse trainers and hauled my horse, Gunner, all over California and several other western states competing at reining and cutting events. Eventually I began competing at team roping, and continued to train horses, both for myself and others.

Right around the time I turned thirty I decided I was ready for a slightly less strenuous career. Since I had always been a big fan of Dick Francis (like so many others), I decided to try my hand at turning my background with western horses into mysteries, much as he had used his past as a steeple chasing jockey to create his own books.

So for the next few years I wrote. I continued to train horses for myself and competed at team roping, but my focus began to be on writing about it. I wrote longhand, in a spiral bound notebook, and I can remember writing away in the front seat of my pickup while I waited for my name to be called to compete at various ropings. I wrote in the barnyard while I watched my hosed-off horses dry in the sun. I wrote three book length manuscripts over a three year period before I was able to get an agent to represent me, and when she did agree to take me on she demanded numerous rewrites-this process lasting another year (she was a former editor and it showed). Once she was satisfied with the book, it took her over another year to sell my first novel, Cutter, to St Martin's Press. So the path to publication wasn't exactly easy nor was it a fast track. Still I have very much enjoyed the process of writing about the many aspects of the western horse world that I've been involved with, and I feel grateful that my mysteries have continued to be published regularly ever since that first book hit the shelves.

Cutter came out in 1994 and describes the world of cutting horses. It was followed by Hoofprints, which revolves around reined cowhorses. Roughstock features team roping and endurance riding, and Roped deals with ranching and roping. Slickrock is set in the course of a pack trip in the Sierra Nevada Mts and Breakaway involves Gail in riding the trails of coastal California. Hayburner describes breaking a colt and Forged takes Gail and her horses on a pack trip along the beaches of Monterey Bay. Moonblind features a Thoroughbred lay-up farm on the cliffs above that same bay, and Chasing Cans, my tenth book, which is just out this month, centers on a legendary barrel racing trainer.

I'm frequently asked by readers who want to become published authors what my advice would be to one who is getting started. Obviously you have to be willing to persevere with your writing even when success doesn't happen immediately. (Or doesn't happen for years, which was my own case.) I think this goes without saying. I have also found it helpful to write about things I know intimately. Almost all the facets of the western horse world that I explore in my books are areas that I have participated in for years and years. (The exceptions to this are endurance riding and Thoroughbred lay-up farms, on which my knowledge is second-hand-thank you Craig and Ginny!)

Since I have had horses all my life (currently I own eleven) the veterinary calls and emergencies that Gail deals with are based on things that have actually happened to me and my horses, or to my friends. And the horses in the books are all based on horses I have known (and mostly loved). This helps the books come alive (at least for me; I hope for others).

The books are set in California, primarily on the coast near Monterey Bay, where both Gail and I live, and where my family has been running a ranch for four generations. Though I know some authors can write about places after brief trips to research them (and do a good job of it, too), I don't posess that skill. In order to write effectively about the weather, landscape, and "feeling" of a place, I have to know it intimately.

When I first began writing these mysteries, inspired by Dick Francis as I was, I used a male protagonist. However it wasn't until I re-wrote my third manuscript, changing the male veterinarian into a female version, that an agent finally accepted my work. I believe this was in part due to the particular timing; female protagonists were just becoming very popular in the mystery genre, with a great many of us riding in on the heels of Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton. I have come to feel blessed by the chance that gave me a woman to write about; I found that my ability to give Gail life changes that I knew intimately (having been through them) contributed to my ability to keep her "alive" through many, many books (at least for me, again, I hope for readers, too). "Write what you know" has become my mantra.

One of the biggest thrills in my writing career has been to actually meet the man who was my inspiration-yes, I mean Dick Francis. Since our meeting we have had a regular correspondence for the last fourteen years. You can imagine how delighted I was when he read (and praised) my novels, but the the ultimate moment came when he asked to borrow some details of veterinary medicine that I used to further the plot in Slickrock. Of course I said yes. (!) "Borrow anything you like" (though I don't know if he really did). Praise from one's mentor is sweet indeed and I am never happier than when my books are likened to Dick Francis'. (See the comment on the back of Chasing Cans-I'm very touched by it.)

All in all its been a wonderful ride-both the books and the horses. I still ride my horses almost every day, and despite all the hours I've put in writing over the last twenty years (yes, its been twenty years-I started writing mysteries when I was thirty and I'm now fifty), it doesn't amount to half the hours I've spent on the back of a horse!

Happy trails, Laura and Gunner

PS-Gunner is twenty-eight this year, happily retired (still sound) and living in my sixty acre pasture.

Laura Crum
www.lauracrum.com