No one can talk to a horse of course

This scene is not from Florida's premier horse country up near Ocala (where Jacob of Ocala Daily Photo calls home) or out in Central Florida on one of our many working cattle ranches. Nor is it a scene from Lori's wonderful Skoog Farm Journal up in western New York State. This is a good 'ole working saddle horse in a very typical wooden corral that is quite common in Florida - we do have more than half a million horses in the state. The industry, according to Florida Horse.Com, has a total economic impact on the state in the range of $7 billion each year. That's a lot of revenue we owe to this fine animals. Almost 250,000 Floridians are involved in the horse industry and there are 900 horse farms in Florida with over 72,000 employees.

I owned a big gelding years ago, named Gigolo. He was a great riding horse, English or Western, and it seemed he could eat his weight in sweet feed and hay every day. Good disposition and work ethic...he thought he was supposed to be cutting cattle, why I don't know. He might have had an early career on a ranch with his previous owner and he liked to be put through his paces on occasion. He was spoken to very often and pretty much told me where I could go.

This friendly American Paint was trying to find some shade under a wide canopy of oak trees and might have been hoping someone would saddle him up for a few minutes on the nearby hundreds of acres. So typical is the loose sand that he spends his days in and the extreme heat, humidity, moss, flies and mosquitoes he has to put up with. But, all-in-all, life is good and you can talk to a horse. OF COURSE you can. I did and asked him to pose. Can't you see the twinkle in his eye...yes, I did have a sugar cube and a carrot ready for him. He clearly spoke to me and said that's what he prefers.