| A Random Ramble of an update. |
[19 Mar 2010|10:58pm] |
as usual, I suck at updating this,
I intend not to continue as a hermit, or to disappear from the digital realm, but my focus is on what needs to be done, for what focus exists for me. And indeed much that is long been needed and delayed is being pushed towards. ... And thus, even pleasent, or restful company for my mind, e'en those most trusted, I can not partake of as oft as I wish for the reasons mentioned above. Though most have a # or e-mail or IM, so I can be reached, and visited, or stolen away to visit others, if anyone has the mind, and minds not the limited resources.
As for my plans the weekend next, y I'm staffing for my mom and Beky at I-Con. :)
This means If I'm in the Student Activities Center, I'm likely on-duty, and I've got no patience for Drama anymore, if anyone was tempted.
If you wish to try and hang out, message me outside of LJ comments, and I'll do my best to have a way to reach me during the festivites.
Thou hast spoken right, 'tis true;
The wheel is come full circle: I am here.
Sorry, I may repost this in a more linear form, with suitable clarity, tomorrow.
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[18 Mar 2010|11:04am] |
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| The wrong kind of before-and-after pictures |
[16 Mar 2010|04:54am] |
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http://www.fuglyblog.com/2010/the-wrong-kind-of-before-and-after-pictures/ http://www.fuglyblog.com/?p=1654 *sigh*
This time from Canada…and the owner is Jessica Canivet of Magik Meadows Sport Horses. Jessica has really missed her calling, trying to breed horses. She ought to be running a fat farm for ladies who would like to lose a few, since taking weight off of her victims at a rapid rate is clearly a talent of hers.
 Sunsational Review is a lovely APHA stallion who earned 7 halter points. Click here to see how he used to look.This is what poor Sunsational Review looks like now. A great big WTF! to Jessica because it’s not like this is a little skinny because you’re in Ontario and it’s midwinter and you weren’t paying attention enough. This is damn near dead.
When I first saw this picture, I was pretty sure he was going to BE dead and that was the next update I was going to hear. The story’s the same one we hear all the time. People called animal control. Animal control came out, tells Jessica to shape up, and she shaped up for a bit while they were watching. Case closed. Then things went right back to the way they were.
Jessica had another stallion, Eternal Tardee. Eternal Tardee also started out a happy, fat horse, and it looks like a very sweet-tempered one, too as, can be seen in this picture at his former owner’s. He was a HYPP N/N son of Superior Halter Horse Eternal Impressive, and he was a decent sire himself, siring several halter ROM’s and performance point earners.
Then Jessica got him.
This was taken last fall. I’m told he’s dead now. Lying there in her barn, still, covered with a tarp. Apparently the meadows weren’t magik and you actually needed to buy hay, too! I’m also curious what “sport” they do when they’re 400 lbs. underweight. The sideways starvation paddle isn’t an Olympic event, Jessica.
 Thanks to a small group of concerned citizens who ignored Jessica’s threats and started a Facebook page and bugged the SPCA repeatedly to take action, finally we have it! Two horses, Sunsational Review and CJ’s Image, were removed on March 9th by the SPCA. I am told they are doing well, eating and perking up and it looks like they are going to make it! But many of the other horses have gone poof and no one knows for sure where they are.
RUMOR HAS IT that some of Jessica’s horses may be hauled to an auction this Saturday at Carson’s in Listowel, Ontario. So if you want to stop by and see if you can pick up a high quality, low weight horse, you might want to check it out!
The SPCA does need help caring for the severely emaciated Sunsational Review and CJ’s Image. If you’d like to help, the process for making donations for the care of these horses is to call the provincial office of the SPCA toll free # which is 1-888-668-7722, punch in extension 322 and advise the donations administrator that you want to make a donation for the Latchford horses. All money donated will go directly to their care. I will definitely update when they become available for adoption. I’d love to see Sunsational Review restored to his former condition and get a good, safe home. It makes me so angry that she blew money BUYING him but not FEEDING him!
On a happier note, for those of you in Maryland, mark your calendars for some fun and a chance to help out Angel Acres!
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| When it Rains it Friggen Pours |
[15 Mar 2010|08:18pm] |
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Every Time it Rains Ace of Base and others |
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I have been putting this off for a bit now, too damned bla to care I guess. No bla is not the word that I am looking for...guilt, remorse, grieving and some such other. Regret has found its willing victim and that seems to be me. Funk oh yes...with a capital F. Three weeks ago I lost a friend, my first friend that I had when I moved back north. My first friend that told me to "get my shit together" and possibly saved my life. He died from liver/kidney failure due to illness and some bad life choices.
The funeral was rough, was beyond rough, only four years older than me; leaving behind a wife and two little guys. That got me to thinking what would I be leaving behind if death was to call my number. I am not scared of dieing but of leaving my friends and family behind with these feelings of regret. What would my sisters say? My husband? My ex-husband? My children? My friends? Would they say that I lived my life or would they hang their heads and say I had gone too soon. Would they regret the lost time, the distance that we had put between us by living our lives. This is not like the other deaths that have fallen upon me. This was my age group, this was my friend.
I sit in the comfort of the darkness, wrapping it around me like a shield. I know what I am doing but almost helpless to stop it. To much, I have seen to many coffins hit the cold earth in the last little while not to reveal in my dark side. I am Gothic by nature, but even the goth in me cringes at the sound of the falling tears that I refuse to shed. It is not that I am to cold to give a shit...it is just that I know that its coming and I am afraid that if they start they may not stop.
Memories assault me, they come unbidden to my mind's eye and scream at me to see. I hear the laughter of times past, of friends past. We all got together after wards and promised each other that we would not loose touch again. We lied to ourselves and to each other. Life doesn't work that way. I see a gray where there was once a light, I cringe within the light and avoid the laughter. Do I give a shit that this might make me seem winy and needy, not not at all...because I could really care less what others on the outside of my world would think. There is a reason why they stay upon the outside. For when the dark comes to consume them they will not have the protection of one that has walked it.
I have thought long and hard about this concept of light and dark. It was never about good and evil...for evil can walk the light and stare you right in the face. That lesson I learned last summer. No I believe that it is within each person to be the dark (pessimistic) or light (optimistic), but there comes a time when you decide which way to go, which will pull your personality. I am dark .... and if I try and change that I loose my way. I am the memories, I am the grief, I am the one that reminds. One can not exist without the other. Those that try to be both are fooling themselves ... you can not have dark without the light and light without the darkness... if you are both you are a fake... you are either faking your happiness to cover something or you are faking your darkness to bring forth an idea that you don't understand. To be one or the other is not easy...it is not easy to be light or dark...it is just something we are.
My friend was my light, as most of my closest friends are. They are attracted to me as I am to them. There is fewer of them now as I have gotten older and learned my lesson on human nature. That is what happens when you screw the darkness over...it closes the door on you. There is no redemption in the darkness, only silence. I am the silence, the one that will wait. I will be there when you least expect me, arriving out of the blue to say... "here I am, offering you my hand" if you are of my circle. But if you are not then I will be the one to stand there and watch the darkness swallow you whole as the python does the mouse. I will whisper nothing and offer no hand.
As depressing as the dark may be (as I have been told many many times at how much of a kill joy I am ) we are still needed. We give the reason to smile and to laugh, you must face us to combat us. A true goth knows these lessons. It is not about the clothes and vampire crap...which had not a damned thing to do with it; it was about being comfortable where the light would not be. Death doesn't scare us, as we live with regret...and mine has finally found me.
So I say good bye to my friend and protect the others from the thresh hold... to those who remain with me..I am your darkness and I will defend you. For those that are not ... flick the light switch cause that is close as your gonna get.
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| Are you illiterate, or just asshats? |
[15 Mar 2010|03:12pm] |
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http://www.fuglyblog.com/2010/are-you-illiterate-or-just-asshats/ http://www.fuglyblog.com/?p=1671 I was at another schooling show this weekend. It drew a large crowd and most classes had over 20 participants. It was your typical mix of trainers on green horses and youth/adult amateur riders getting practice for the show season ahead with a smattering of true beginners (some frighteningly overmounted) on their shaggy backyard beasts. However, there was one thing that really got my goat and I’m going to talk about it today.
The classes included a Novice Walk-Trot pleasure class, which was very clearly marked as being for horses who have never won a blue ribbon. This information was not buried in the fine print of the show’s rules – it was actually written out in plain English directly after the title of the class in the class list. Imagine my surprise when I saw a girl entering the ring that I myself had just seen win classes at the last show just a few weeks ago, a girl on a beautiful Appaloosa who was clearly broke to death and then some, sideways lope, wringing tail and all.
(Actually, it wasn’t wringing this show. Clearly someone had had their little shot! This show, it was dead as a doornail.)
Is she lost, I wondered? Surely her trainer will see that she has entered the wrong class and signal her out. Maybe she’s schooling? But she was wearing her number.
Yep. Ms. Breed Show Appy proceeded to win yet another blue ribbon, taking a chance for a ribbon away from the kids in nylon bridles, the genuinely green horses and the adult riders who were in there for the very first time. So you know what we’re gonna do today? We’re gonna talk about how much that sucks on this blog! 
This particularly offender is a client of Capstone Farm. (You really shouldn’t wear your barn jacket while do unethical stuff like this, just a hint). Although you can always recognize the riders from this farm with or without their jackets, as they are endlessly violently snatching on their poor horses’ faces. The horse’s name is Too Good To Pass and the rider is Kim Dyberg. The trainer is Sarah Aron. Sarah, Kim, are you two illiterate so that you can’t read a show bill, or are you just jerks? Which is it? I’m curious. I don’t really think you’re illiterate, because it’d be hard for illiterate people to afford a horse like this one. I’m sure he cost a lot! And I am pretty sure at least one of you had a show bill in your possession, and from your web site, you are not color blind and do understand what a blue ribbon is, and that this horse already has many of them. So what the fuck is your excuse for going in Novice Walk-Trot with that horse? I notice you do not mention “good sportsmanship” in your expansive list of qualities training at your barn will teach a child. At least you are not hypocrites, I guess I gotta give you that!
Just for fun, I googled “Too Good To Pass” to see what I could see about his prior accomplishments. Well, let’s see. He got a 6th at the Reichert Celebration, OK, I guess that’s not a blue ribbon but common sense should tell you right there that’s not a horse you should be going up against 4-H kids with. Next thing I found was that he was all-around high point senior exhibitor Appaloosa at the Lope On In open shows…LAST YEAR! Yes, I had a feeling that the blues I saw him win before were pretty typical for the horse. Oooh, here’s a good one. He was the 2007 World Champion ApPHA Non Pro Youth 5 and Under Pleasure Maturity Winner! Kim, Sarah, did you REALLY put a WORLD CHAMPION PLEASURE HORSE in a class that was for horses who have NEVER won a blue ribbon? Yes, yes you did. WOW.
Gosh, I hope that blue ribbon was worth it!
So let’s talk about this in general today. How do we make this crap stop? I’ve worked in a show office and told people they couldn’t go in the class if I knew their horse had won blues. But I think a lot of times the show offices are staffed by volunteers who don’t recognize the names and know what’s up. So my take on this is that it’s the TRAINER’S job to ensure this doesn’t happen. You know what’s in your barn and you know what it’s won. It’s your job to be honest and ethical and not put it into classes it’s already won its way out of.
Thoughts?
OK, we have an update! Sarah says the judge told Kym it was ok for her to show in Novice! So now we get to play “who is lying.” I’m dying to hear from the judge whether she said it was ok to ignore the printed rules of the show. Sarah is claiming they donated the ribbons back to the show and that makes it ok. No, it doesn’t. If you were schooling and did not care about the ribbons, you should have flipped your number and not taken the ribbons in the first place. You still took a ribbon away from a deserving person who actually qualified to go in the class. I honestly don’t care if the judge did say that (which I bet they deny but we’ll see how this develops). YOU should know better. Common sense should tell you it is not fair to put your World Champion in the Novice Horse Not to Have Ever Won a Blue Ribbon class.
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| It’s time to geld the humans… |
[12 Mar 2010|06:24am] |
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http://www.fuglyblog.com/2010/its-time-to-geld-the-humans/ http://www.fuglyblog.com/?p=1667 I know I’ve asked this before, but why do you have children when you aren’t going to make the slightest effort to ensure they live to adulthood? What is the point?
An alert reader sent me this Youtube video. I warn you, if you watch it, it depicts a child suffering an incident that could easily have ended her life. The person who posted the video states she was “fine” but I have no way of verifying that, obviously. And before you say it – yes I DID have the thought that they are attention whores and that I should not even feature it because it’s flat out disgusting all the way around and they don’t deserve any attention for it. But I decided to show it because someone may read this who thinks horses are like big stuffed animals and that there isn’t anything wrong with a little kid running around the horse pasture. And if posting this scares them into keeping their little kid out of the horse pasture, then it’s worth posting.
I am not sure which question I want answered more:
1. Where the hell were her parents?
2. Who the hell was the moron operating the camera?
(Yes, I am scared that it was either her sperm donor or egg donor operating the camera. Very, very scared.)
I am not sure what relationship the person who posted this has to any of it — he posts a lot of videos, and does not seem to be a horseperson. I am guessing it was given to him by someone he knew, but that’s only a guess. He seems to know the outcome of the situation, which is why I say that. Anyway, In answer to HIS question:
Yes, the horse did it deliberately and no, he is not a bad horse. He is a horse who was being annoyed by a small and noisy thing. I doubt it registered on him that the small, noisy thing was a human. It seemed to him to be a small, noisy animal, and when it kept coming after him after he had told it very clearly in horse-ese that he did not wish to be disturbed, he smooshed it to make it stop. He didn’t stumble, and I don’t see that the other horse threatened him. He smooshed it to make it stop which was a perfectly normal reaction for a herd animal being attacked by a small, noisy animal that might be something like a dog that could bite him.
This is why we don’t let four year olds out in the pasture with the horses. I really shouldn’t have to be telling this to anyone with an IQ larger than their belt size, but clearly I have to.
Disgusting. Like I say, I’m only posting it in the hope that someone will see it and go, wow, it never occurred to me that could happen, I’ll keep my four year old out of the horse pasture from now on. Oh, and if you need any practice in reading horse body language – this is a valuable tutorial. I didn’t see that specifically coming, I figured he was going to double-barrel her, but I knew something was coming.</p>
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| It’s a good time to repost this… |
[11 Mar 2010|01:27am] |
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http://www.fuglyblog.com/2010/its-a-good-time-to-repost-this/ http://www.fuglyblog.com/?p=1663 OK, after the train wreck we had to watch with Linda Parelli…here is a video of a much younger but far more talented horsewoman working with horses who are ACTUALLY dangerous. I will tell you right now, a million bucks wouldn’t get me on any of these horses in their “before” incarnations. I have the utmost respect for her willingness to take on the truly tough cases, that without a courageous young trainer to help them, would surely be heading down an inevitable path to slaughter.
Holy crap, can this girl ride!
This is a great learning exercise for you beginners. Watch this one. Watch how she insists that the horses go forward, DOES NOT EVER GET ANGRY, disciplines when appropriate and then MOVES ON. Note how soft she is with her reins! She always gives the horse a clear “out” – he can do the right thing and the pressure will be completely off.
Watch the results. Watch how bright and happy and relaxed the horses look in the “after” shots. Do you think for a moment those horses don’t love her? I know that they do. Look at the LACK of pissy behaviors you see after she’s gotten them sorted out.
I’ve posted this numerous times before and it’s still one of my favorites.
Linda, this is how it’s done. Maybe you can take some lessons from her, although I wouldn’t blame her if she had less patience with you than she does with these horses.
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| This is almost too easy |
[09 Mar 2010|10:02pm] |
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http://www.fuglyblog.com/2010/this-is-almost-too-easy/ http://www.fuglyblog.com/?p=1659 NOTE: I apologize for this morning’s technical difficulties. I still do not know WHY they happened, nor does my web host. I complained at 7 AM and my complaint was routed to the wrong department, which my web host admits to as their error. They fixed it very quickly when I called again. Linda Parelli does NOT have the power to take this blog down. If my web hosts were wimps, it would have gone down three years ago. In the event that they do ever get scared off of hosting the blog, there are many “free speech” web hosts including offshore ones to help me out. The blog is backed up in full daily and there will NEVER be ANY way to make it disappear forever.
Deal.
Now, again, this is a video of Linda Parelli working with a horse. Which I am now going to leave up for at least one extra day just on the off chance that some asshat disciple of hers hacked me! I will note that this is also a horse who is blind in one eye.
Heck, where do I even begin? Her body’s in the wrong place most of the time. Why the fuck is she turning her back to the horse like that? And the ducking thing? If she had a longe whip and an actual longe line she wouldn’t have a horse nearly on top of her. Why do these morons do all those constant rollbacks on the longe line? Let the poor horse go forward for a while and maybe it wouldn’t be so pissed off and confused. Why is the longe line LYING on the ground like that? That is an accident waiting to happen! Why are you flapping your elbows like a brain damaged chicken, you twit?
“Humane Horseman of the Year” – sorry, HSUS, that was a HUGE fail. HUGE. This is nothing more than someone really fucking up a horse to the point where someone competent is going to have one hell of a time ever fixing it.
Shit, I could do a whole blog on the plague that is Parelli. It just never ends.
Linda, you suck. Seriously, seriously, seriously suck. You trying to teach other people about good horsemanship is like Tiger Woods trying to teach other people about monogamy.
It just popped into my head that someone could have taken video of me longeing the VLC in public recently. And you know what, I’d be perfectly fine if that video showed up on the Internet. You would have seen a calm, well behaved young horse longeing quietly in a very crowded warm-up ring. A time or two he got distracted by all the activity and stopped. I just gave him the noise – you know the noise, the you’re-doing-something-wrong noise – stepped meaningfully toward his hip and he got going again.
Oh, wait, that’s why my horse likes me…
Really, Linda, it is not that damn hard to longe without pissing off and confusing the horse. Did you need some lessons? Come on by, maybe I can help you and Pat out with it!
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| MLIA. |
[08 Mar 2010|08:36pm] |
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Aerosmith - Walk on Water |
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I was wearing this shirt today...
I looked down and saw "OX". I thought it was an abbreviation for John Entwistle...Then realized it was actually "XO". MLIA.
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| What’s in a word? |
[08 Mar 2010|07:21am] |
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http://www.fuglyblog.com/2010/whats-in-a-word/ http://www.fuglyblog.com/?p=1657 Great article and very thought-provoking!
Selling the Unwanted Horse
The article contains a quote from pro-slaughter veterinarian Dr. Tom Lenz: “Unwanted horses are defined as those no longer wanted by their current owner because they are old; injured; sick; unmanageable; fail to meet their owner’s expectations; or the owner can no longer afford to keep them”.
Using Dr. Lenz’s logic, everyone who is single or in the middle of a breakup is an “unwanted person.” Are you unemployed? You must be an “unwanted employee.” I can see you all rolling your eyes at those comparisons because, as we all know, having one person or one company not want us is, well, part of life and something we all experience, and those unwanted statuses can change in the blink of an eye – the next thing we know, we’re in love with someone else or going off to start a great new job.
 It’s the same thing for horses, of course. Owner A cannot wait to get Horseykins out of the barn whereas the next owner acquires it and thinks Horseykins is their dream that they have been searching for all of their life. My favorite horse of all time – my 30 year old who I still own – was literally thrown at us in 1985 because she’d just broken someone’s collarbone and had become equus non grata in that barn! I loooooved that mare – played arena polo on her, jumped her, even ran barrels and poles on her. To label a horse as unwanted because one single individual, the current owner doesn’t want it, is ludicrous. But as John Holland observes in the article – it’s all semantics. It’s all to avoid the word I would use, surplus horses, which is about the same thing John says with “excess” horses.
That pretty buckskin pictured is a classic example of an “unwanted” horse. She was a broodmare, got dumped to kill, “rescued” by CBER, off to a hoarder haven (remember that picture I posted a long time ago of the trashy chick’s myspace pic with all the guns? … that one), wound up back on the lot, re-rescued by Save A Forgotten Equine, who finally after a couple of tries found the right trainer for her and now here she is with her owner, who loves her. Happy ending. No longer “unwanted” but a happy, contributing member of equine society who now has a good home because of it. The difference was simple. Training.
As I’ve noted hundreds of times before, the reason we have a problem is that our supply of horses exceeds the demand for horses, and a contributing factor is that the demand is for trained horses, whereas much of the oversupply is untrained horses. It is like unemployment – it’s not that all of you who are without a job suck, it’s that the supply of employees currently vastly exceeds the demand for employees in many fields. As a result, some of you are going to have to go back to school and retrain for a field there’s more demand in. I know many people doing this already. Sometimes you gotta adapt. Horse breeders, you gotta adapt. STOP OVER-PRODUCING IN A DOWN ECONOMY. Instead of having 10 foals, have 2 that you train. Or buy back some of your previously produced horses that are in trouble somewhere, put training on them and take them to the shows so that people want to buy more horses from you.
Do you know who can drive your horses’ value up to pre-recession prices? YOU! Do you know how people who are still getting awesome prices for horses get it? Well, they show up at a horseshow or other competition with a good looking horse that kicks ass. It’s like magic – people clamor around trying to find out where they can get one just like it. Stop sitting around pouting and talking about “snobby horse show people.” The show horse people aren’t snobby, they’re using common sense, proven tactics to drive up the value of their horses. If you think western pleasure is stupid, you don’t have to do it. There are a lot of other events. There’s a vast variety of equine competitions out there – something for everybody. All of them, short of crazy shit like horse tripping, drive your horse’s value UP.
Now, are there some horses I would classify as unwanted? No, but there are some horses I would classify as difficult to place. These include unsound horses, older unbroke horses, and horses with some kind of major mental issue/vice. I do not think there is anything wrong with euthanasia, as most of you know, as a solution here. That said, I have seen everything from 35 year old toothless Appaloosas to bat-shit panel-jumping BLM mustangs find fabulous homes and be very much wanted. I myself have a particular liking for old ex-broodmares and have supported quite a few for the last few years of their lives. There is a not-so-small element of the horse world that truly enjoys having old coot horses to pet and spoil, and it’s a good thing because there’s also a not-so-small element of the horse world that likes to dump those horses.
All in all, I agree with John. Unwanted is a meaningless term and a way of putting a spin on the situation without having to admit that it’s time that everybody drastically reduced the number of horses they’re creating and put more emphasis on training the ones that are already here. But fewer horses means less work for the registries and, oh yeah, the veterinarians – so that does explain some of the very self-serving opinions here! Sheesh people, we can all follow the money and see what’s driving your remarks. Not a single one of you can or has effectively argued with my logic that fewer, higher quality and better trained horses would almost completely solve the problem here. There is no reason for not supporting that solution that is not self-serving and related to your own greed. When I hear that some of these ding-dongs with the registries are still encouraging people to breed, breed, breed, or some of these pro-slaughter state Horse Councils having incentive programs to breed, breed, breed, I want to fire up that Bitchslap World Tour Bus and get it on the road. And we’ll stop at the home of any breeder who wants to simply sit on her butt and pimp out her completely unaccomplished stallion(s) and put no training on the foals she creates. Ridiculous. And that’s a word that does apply!
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[07 Mar 2010|10:42pm] |
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Does anyone have any links to horse art work that could be used to get a idea for a simple horse tattoo? Google isn't being my friend! TIA!
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