By Rachel Mimosa
I recently went away with my best friend Janine Holmes, to a horse clinic in Howell. Or Pinckney rather. There I met a lot of her colleagues and friends and a load of new people. We enjoyed the 2-day Balimo tm clinic taught by Nancy Baker and I was honoured to hear her personal accounts of her and her family's journey, struggles and successes through equestrian life that lead her to the 2010 World Equestrian Games - and her daughter representing the States in the para team! I was touched by her thoughts, emotions, openness and trust with the group around the bonfire on opening night. Saturday and Sunday held the clinic days and I was overwhelmed by Nancy's intellect and intuition with both horse and rider and her professionalism and personalised support while tutoring. Saturday night was a group dinner hosted by Jennifer Horvath at her beautiful home (and HQ of Pet Ritz) where we ate, drank, enjoyed some comedic entertainment (from me
) laughed, talked, debated, performed some reconnaissance work on Nancy and got to know each other. During this I gave my personal 'non-horsey person' opinion of Nancy's clinic and my impression of her from the riders POV beforehand, during and after their rides... and ended up using my verbashun method (see earlier post) by verbifying Nancy. I said that 'we'd all been Nancy'd. They enjoyed this and Nancy laughed out loud, long and lustrously! Quite unexpected to me, being quite used to verbashun (in my own word) in everyday conversation nowadays. What with Google and wikipedia being used over and over by myself and everyone I talk to I thought everyone was doing it?? Turns out some towns are safe from the new age English and the 'word germs' that rot old Shakespearean/Queen's English. Though they do have their own local version of English (see later post) that is very interesting between the States of America. We all learn from each other 
There have since been emails shot back and forth through horsetown and this verb has already been used! In a sentence! ha ha. Thank you everyone for a wonderful weekend. Nancy, Jennifer, Erin, Sally, Elaine, Dave, His Royal stables, Janine, Colleen, Marci, Kailey, Barb. My time in the U.S. is made more colourful and more memorable.
Peace and love
