Greetings Barn Buddies!

I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season with your friends and families. I get so excited for this time of the year. It’s time to reflect on the past and look forward to the future. As for looking back on 2006, wow! What a great year we had at MM Training and Consulting. First of all, I am always so amazed at you, our clients. You all are the best! I love the way you stretch yourselves and continually look for opportunities to learn and grow.

I just recently talked to a client/friend of mine. She had just attended the World AQHA show. She shared her thoughts with me about the decline in overall horsemanship she witnessed at the show. I told her that I thought that was odd, that in my small world, I believed that the overall horsemanship had greatly improved. One testimony to that is the progress our clients are making while training their own horses with the MM Training Program. I am so impressed! You all inspire me! I am seeing clients successfully training their own horses like I have never seen before. It is so fun to watch!

Speaking of fun – last spring, many of us attended a Lynn Palm clinic together. It was so interesting for me to be a part of the learning experience as a participant instead of as the teacher. During that clinic, I think many of you learned the real meaning of intensity. Don’t I seem like a marshmallow compared to Lynn? In all seriousness though, I think Lynn is an awesome instructor. She challenges her students and takes such a special interest in the success of each one of them. I want to make sure that all our clients who participated knew that Lynn congratulated me on such a great group of riders. I certainly don’t take the credit for all of your hard work, but way to make me look good, barn buddies!

Another area where I see great progress is our clients’ ability to critically look at the information they are consuming. I believe each of us needs to look at things with a critical eye. It helps us form our own opinions and define who we are and what we stand for. One of our goals at MM Training is to work our way out of a job. We strive to have our clients leave our barn with high standards and a strong set of principles by which to govern their horsemanship. We want to give them a basis for critiquing information, horses, trainers, instructors, etc. And, please remember that a critical eye doesn’t mean that we are being negative. Think of it as Davalee says, “We are just being high maintenance consumers.”

Now on to the present. I am so thrilled about this year’s newsletter. It’s packed full of what makes MM Training and Consulting different from the rest. It’s all about taking what we know and learning from working with the horse and using it in other areas of our life such as emotional healing, leadership in the work force and solving people/relationship problems. I was once told that the ability to take what we know in one area and put into another area in our lives is called a higher form of learning. I know many of you do this already, and we can’t wait to get your feedback.

In closing, I am so grateful for having so many good, inspiring people in my life. Our barn crew feels so blessed to have you all come over to our barn to play, to learn and to grow. Let’s set some new goals, and let us help you make your goals your reality. I’m truly amazed at what can happen in one short year, when we put our prayers, our intentions and our efforts in a single direction!

On a personal note, many of you already know that last January I set a goal to make room in my life to start dating. Not only did I start dating, but in the same year, God brought me a wonderful new husband. His name is Joe Harrison; he loves the barn and what it stands for. I can’t wait for you all to meet and get to know him! Please come and join us for all the fun we have planned for you in 2007!