If you like looking thru odds and ends trying to figure out what they were used for and admiring the ingenuity and creativity of the past, visiting Rabbit Hash and Burlington will be the perfect “cup of tea” to sweeten even the dreariest drizzly day regardless of the season.

On the other hand, if your idea of great fun is standing in line on steaming asphalt at King’s Island with 100 other people, Western Boone County won’t suit you.

 “Rabbit Hash is a state of mind” says a bumper sticker laying right next to a postcard of Lucy Lu, the Australian Shepherd who became the new mayor in the Nov. 08 election, defeating Travis the cat.  A very busy girl, Lucy is so zealous about stick fetching that she’ll even carry a stick to you inside the little odds and ends shops whose doors are propped open.  She brought a 4’ long one up the stairs to the art gallery above the barn too!

            You never know what you’ll find at Rabbit Hash – fresh creative art, flowers and plants, things you remember from your grandparents’ homes, Harley Davidson riders, live music, a checkers game by the wood stove, natural foods, hand-made crafts, garden tools and more. http://www.rabbithash.com/

            The drive from First Farm Inn to Rabbit Hash follows a “Kentucky Scenic Byway” known as Petersburg Road or KY 20.  You’ll overlook the Ohio River most of the way, winding down through tiny Petersburg where the 100-year-old Opera House is now a private home and the old hotels sit empty next to the river.  Be sure to pay attention to the speed limit signs on the curves – they’re legit.

Turn right to stay on Kentucky 20 when KY 18 forks left.  Watch for wild turkeys and deer.  Take Lower River Road to continue your river view then loop back on Upper River Road if you’re heading north or east to Dinsmore Homestead or Burlington. 

            Turn right on KY 18 to go to the historic Dinsmore farm or Burlington.  You’ll see Dinsmore on the left with it’s white picket fence and outbuildings. http://www.dinsmorefarm.org/  Tours are offered by volunteers several days a week, so you can stop in (or call ahead) and see if you’re in luck.  The Dinsmore family, headed by five generations of women who always seemed to wed men who didn’t live very long, was very well connected.  A moose shot by Teddy Roosevelt hangs in the front hall.  One Dinsmore was the first Congresswoman every elected in Arizona some years ago.  Hike to the family cemetery up the hill.  Peek in the windows at the carriages.  Check out the log cookhouse.

            Back on Ky 18 go to “downtown” Burlington where Western Boone County’s stoplight resides.   The café on the corner serves homemade soups, salads and sandwiches surrounded by memorabilia from the county high schools.  Turn left to get to the Opinionated Bookseller, a delightful place to peruse odds and ends.  Across the street is great (and cheap) antiquing at Burlington Antiques and its adjoining shops.

            For elegant dining at reasonable prices, regardless of how you’re dressed, try Tousey House http://www.touseyhouse.com   One group of Canadians returned there every night of their three night stay, offering raves each morning!

            Continue your Western Boone County adventure taking KY 338 back to First Farm Inn.  As you wind around the curves and up and down the hills, relax and recognize that it’s only six miles. 

Growing up on a farm and raising animals has helped me parent, at least as much as the volumes of parenting books and magazines I’ve perused in the last three years. 

The youngest of all the cousins on both sides of the family, I wasn’t around babies.  Living on a farm, neighbors with kids weren’t nearby.  I didn’t baby-sit.  I was never around kids younger than my sister, who is just 18 months my junior.  Yet I was surrounded by baby animals –cats, pigs, calves, rabbits, chickens and one spring, even a pair of orphaned raccoons.  From each experience, I learned things that have been of value in the first two years with my daughter.

From “helping” many dairy calves enter the world, I had an awareness of the birth process, signs of eminent birth and what can go wrong.  Knowing that, when I realized my breasts were leaking colostrum within a week of my daughter’s birth, I hoped the doctors would be wrong and she would come on the date we’d expected.  They were and she did.  

From feeding young dairy calves from the time I was six, I learned the necessity of hydration, frequent feedings to keep fluid levels high in the young.  Too sick and miserable to pump milk from the bucket, I’d work the nipple for them, waiting for it to trickle down their throats.

From mixing eggs into cow’s milk to feed orphaned baby pigs, I learned that the smaller the animal, the more protein it needs to survive.  With patience, I returned to the barn many times throughout the first days, coaxing the less-than-month-old pink piglets to drink from a tin pie pan. 

From handling fierce and fiery wild barn kittens, I learned gentleness and patience makes a loving, receptive creature.  Hours of lying on the barn floor twitching a straw brought curious kittens out to tussle with the toy and gradually submit to more and more petting and cuddling.

From breeding Chinchilla rabbits with California rabbits, I learned the flukes and variations of crossbreeding.  Their colors ranged from all white or all black to spotted, but never the mottled gray Chinchilla color.

From raising the raccoons, I learned that regardless of my beliefs, some traits are sex linked.  Although they were treated identically, the female raccoon became friendly and enjoyed playing with us, the male consistently bit anyone who handled him.  After they were released, only one came back to visit.

From watching white rats grow in a fifth-grade, I learned the value of nutrition.  The one fed milk, vegetables and fruits, with a few treats mixed in, grew big and sleek.  The one fed chips, candy, soda and other junk food (donated from school lunches) grew mean, angry, thin and ratty looking.

From the turtle my brother carved his name into in 1966, I learned most creatures stay close to home.  An outdoorsman brought the turtle back to visit, with the name and date still clearly evident, nearly 20 years later.  It had been found less than a mile away.

From my two Australian Shepherd dogs, I learned that the breed doesn’t make the dog and to be cautious of in-breeding.  One, a farm dog from a local family, was bright and sharp with many untapped skills.  The beautiful one, probably bred for her color, was sweet but an absolute dingbat, barely able to come when she was called.

From watching a friend teach my dog to roll over by feeding her chunks of apple pie, I learned the value of rewards to reinforce desired behaviors. 

From showing pigs in 4-H, I learned the value of hybridizing.  A pig with purebred parents of two different breeds won reserve grand champion, over 300 other pigs.  The judge described it as nearly perfect in conformation, just about ten pound overweight.  Later in a college class, I learned about the genetic superiority of crossbreeding, getting the best characteristics of both parents while leaving the undesirable characteristics behind.

Raising foals from Quarter Horse and part Arabian mares taught me that personality traits are, at least to some degree, inherited.  Though treated identically, never scared, injured or roughed up, the part Arabian stud colt fought, bucked, whirled and reared when mounted.  The Quarter Horse colt merely continued his stroll through his pasture with the rider up. 

From training a young Appaloosa as a teen, I learned attention spans are short.  A well-researched article proved true when I began a riding session by repeating old skills for about ten minutes, to introduce one new skill in the next ten, and then to practice for a few more minutes – and quit before either of us was too tired or too frustrated. 

From that same horse, I learned that correction must be immediate to have an effect.  Before working with a profession trainer, the gelding pretty much did whatever he wanted when my 14-year-old body was in his saddle.  At the time, I thought whips were cruel and I didn’t want to hurt him by pulling on his snaffle bit.  The trainer’s instruction never to ride without a whip served me well with him and all subsequent horses I’ve trained.  A whip is not to beat an animal, but simply to remind it of its manners, immediately (within three seconds) of its misbehaviors.  The more often it’s carried, the more seldom it’s needed.

Particularly from horses, dogs and cats, I learned the value – for me as much as for them – of talking openly.  They became more comfortable with me and better understood what I wanted or needed from them – as well as when my patience was thin.  When asked verbally to trot, my horse responded without any other aids.  When I apologized for leaving for the weekend, my cats seemed to accept it.

From all of the animals, I learned the comforting value of touch.  Grooming seems to bond horses to their riders.  Dogs show their obvious love of any kind of touch.  In 1996, I held my 15-year old part Siamese cat, in misery from the sudden onset of diabetes, as the vet injected him with an overdose of painkillers.  He fell asleep knowing he was loved.  He had used his soft warm body to comfort me through a very difficult decade and a half.

Now that my daughter is nearly two, she reflects the value in my carefully balanced prenatal diet.  The raves she receives about her vocabulary and other abilities seem to indicate the high-protein diet I forced myself to eat during the last trimester did help build brain cells, as promised.

Although it wasn’t modeled for me, I know cuddling, positive feedback and telling her that I love her daily is very important.  And in return, she is as snugly as my cats have ever been.

I occasionally catch myself being inconsistent in setting limits and think, “If she were a horse, she could kill me doing that.”  So, I return to the previous restriction and catch myself quicker the next time I vacillate.

And like rewarding a dog with treats to repeat a trick, I realize when I reward her with attention or affection, she will continue that behavior.  We used that to encourage singing the Barney song, counting to 15 at 21 months old, saying the alphabet, using good manners and more.

I know “punishment” must be immediate.  Going through a stage when she likes to pound her skull against my breastbone when I’m holding her, I thought about what she wants to get out of it (attention, usually when I’m reading or otherwise distracted) and what “punishment” would get it to stop.  The punishment is immediately putting her down off my lap.  She cries.  I know it’s made an impression, without damaging her self esteem, without causing me to do something I find inappropriate, without responding in like by hurting her.  The first few times after I realized the problem and the solution, I gave her a warning.  Inevitably she did it again, so I put her down.  Now, I know better than to issue a warning if it happens again.

As Tatiana began eating solid foods, she has maintained a balanced diet with plenty of protein while she’s growing quickly.  Also from the animals, I know that most creatures eat what they need, if food hasn’t become a punishment or reward or otherwise an emotionally linked experience.  So, on days she seems to eat primarily protein, I encourage some fruits and vegetables, but don’t worry unduly about it.  Now she gets tastes of everything we eat, but meals never include junk foods.  She’ll get enough of that when other kids begin to influence her eating habits.  She loves ice cream and yogurt, but seldom eats a whole cookie.

Recognizing her attention span is short, I fill a diaper bag with puzzles, books and small toys when we go out for dinner.  On long car rides, often eight hours, she looks at book after book from the huge stash behind the driver’s seat, when that wears out, Cheerios and raisins maintain the calm temporarily until sleep overcomes her.

When I see a mood coming on that isn’t prompted by hunger or tiredness, I pick her up, cuddle and change the scenery. 

From remembering that as a six-year-old, I was capable of measuring milk replacer and whisking it into the right temperature and amount of water before carrying two buckets to the calf shed, I hope that – like most American parents – I don’t underestimate my daughter’s abilities and expect little from her when she is capable of so much.

And to help ensure that, our family is moving to our own – albeit small and outside a large city where mom and dad will work – but a farm nonetheless, yet this year.

I never set out to offer a horsey B&B.  First Farm Inn Kentucky was to be a bed breakfast and home for horses for me, my husband and daughter (who was not yet 2 when we started).  I’d never given riding lessons, only taken a few at a park 20 years ago.  I just wanted to have my horse as my own lawn ornament after a dozen years of working in high-rise cubicles and to find a couple companions for him.

But my first bed and breakfast guests saw my growing collection of elderly rescue equines and begged to ride.  Everyone told me they knew how to ride horses.

            Having interviewed hundreds of small business owners in my previous job, I knew the capital rule of business success is “listen to your customers.”  So I posted a copy of Kentucky’s Farm Animal Liability Act and let some guests ride with me. 

            I was appalled. 

            People think they “know how to ride” if they sat on a pony when they were six, if they got a Girl Scout badge at eight, if they whomped around on a mule in the Grand Canyon.  Never mind that they’ve put on quite a few pounds since then, haven’t exercised more than lifting their fork in years and don’t know which direction the horn goes when you sit the saddle on the horse.

            But guests kept asking to ride.  I didn’t want them to hurt my horses – tho most were animal lovers who had no idea the pain and frustration they were creating as they jerked, kicked and gave contradictory cues.

            So, I started researching how to teach riding.  Like most sports, there are zillions of approaches, many people who cast themselves as experts and a relative few who honestly know what they’re doing and are willing to share their knowledge.  I read. I attended seminars. I joined the Certified Horsemanship Association and taught business marketing seminars in exchange for attending workshops. I rode and was critiqued by various instructors.  

            I took what I knew worked and followed those who were focused on logical riding “bio-mechanics.”  I watched my students.  I limited the size of my rides.  Soon I limited the weight of my riders to protect my horses.  I asked for advice.  I followed everything that made sense. I met and studied under my riding heroes – Julie Goodnight from Colorado and Aussie Colleen Kelly.

            I noticed people’s fears, lack of balance and difficulty in understanding posture.  I figured out ways to make them practice in the barn when the horses were still tied to the rail so they’d get the “feel” of sitting correctly – before they panicked when the horse started moving.  I tried to use all three learning styles to teach – visual (tho looking at my 20+ lb too heavy body in riding tights is embarrassing), hearing (repeating my explanations in different ways), and feeling (practice your posture against a door so you know what straight and balanced is).  “Turn your lower half into water and slosh around on top the horse.”  

            Riding in circles in rings is boring.  Deadly boring.  That’s generally what a “riding lesson” is.   Standing in the middle of a circle “teaching” makes me dizzy – tho I do private lessons by request. 

But, doing a trail ride requires some degree of common sense or experience that most people don’t have – unless the horses are starved, drugged or have a rutted path to follow. 

            After cooking and serving breakfast, I didn’t have time to groom and tack up 4-6 horses by myself while my guests waited.  Most of my guests love animals and want to touch them.  They need some orientation.   

            So, we all groom as I talk about how horses think, how to steer and the importance of balance and “giving back.”  I like to ride too.  So I do, with every group I take out.

Because balance is crucial to safety and the most important part of riding, I fit the saddle and stirrup length to every rider.  It means I own a lot of saddles and get my fingers pinched a lot when people jam their feet into a stirrup while I’m adjusting the leather.

            Every rider mounts from a step to save the horse’s backs and make it easier for them too.   Then we go to the riding arena and work on steering and control.  We weave in and out of buckets.  We may try to follow patterns between letters in the ring.  Regular riders or those with more experience may do mailbox races (get their horse close enough to open a mailbox, take out a toy, close the box and come back to me).

            Once everyone has some mastery, we go out and tour the farm, visiting the neighbors’ goats and cows, sometimes seeing a coyote, fox, rabbits or deer.        

I carry a cell phone for emergencies and a lead rope for the young, fearful or clueless who need to “focus on their balance” while I steer their horse from the back of mine.  Every once in a while I ride three horses at once, mine and a lead rope in each hand to those who are having difficulty.  It’s an acquired skill – and it helps if you have huge hands!

            First Farm Inn bed and breakfast also offers overnight stabling.  As more and more people now travel with their horses, moving kids to college, going on trail rides, heading South for the winter or West for the summer, at First Farm Inn, we “overnight” horses and their owners. 

            Finding a comfortable place to stay on the grounds with their horses is a huge relief for horse owners, who often like to feed at particular times or go out to check and make sure a horse who doesn’t like to travel has drunk enough water to stay healthy.  Many board their horses away from their own homes and get a kick out of being able to visit with their buddy at any hour.

            In my efforts to listen to my customers, I meet as many requests as I can.  I’ve had a couple blind riders, who did fine on a horse attached by a lead rope to me.

            While I get requests for birthday parties and activities for very small children, I decline them.  The liability risk is too great and not covered by my insurance. Nor do I have the staff to handle very small children or special-needs riders.  I do birthday rides that fall within my parameters of four to six riders over the age of five.

This article was written for Pamela Lanier's innkeeping website.

    Yesterday, (April 8, 2011) Susan and I visited with Sally and Chance in Columbus before they competed in the "Versatile Horse and Rider Competition" that Equine Affair has designed to eliminate some of the "cowboy" antics of "Extreme Cowboy."  
    After winning the 2009 event in Columbus, Sally and Chance traveled to the East coast and won that Equine Affair event.  Then they trailered to California where they slept in their trailer along the way and took 3rd in that race.  While there, a representative of the Calgary Stampeed invited them to visit the great Canadian race, so they did!
        We wish them well in tomorrow's finals and bring to your attention that if she was 57 in '09 that means Sally's heading on to 60 now, setting a great example for all of us! 
        (Horses are unpredictable.  Chance took an odd step outside the line of a "keyhole" obstacle, didn't spin his turn as well as he could and bobled a little on another obstacle, putting them in a very respectable Fourth place in 2011 at Columbus.)

The winner of this 2009 national competition, before a coliseum packed with thousands of cheering, screaming, fans giving her a standing ovation, was 57-year-old Sally Addington, on Ghost, a grade paint gelding with one black ear and a spot on his hind.

She took the last of a four-bump jump series with no hands – her arms stretched straight out from her shoulders, reins dropped over the horn of her big Western saddle.

            A short, stocky mom on an unregistered horse she trained herself and rode bareback at a dead run winning a national event?  It was Craig Cameron’s “Extreme Cowboy Race” at Equine Affair in Columbus, Ohio.

            To get to the finals, Sally and Ghost had done everything a cowboy and her horse might need to do in the wild West, including racing at a dead run, roping a cow, carrying a sick calf, jumping into and out of water, walking through thick brush and trash, spins, bending low to pick something up, dismounting and remounting bareback, changing canter leads looping though a complicated pattern – even standing in the saddle to reach up high.

            RFD TV viewers may have caught televised versions of this highly entertaining horsemanship extravaganza in the last three years.  Viewers become instant fans, upon exposure to this entertaining contest of mental and physical skills on and with horses that originated on Cameron’s Texas ranch. The only entrance requirement is to be over 18 and pay a $250 fee.

Cameron calls it “a judged race through an obstacle course that is designed not only to push horse and rider teams out of their traditional “comfort zones,” but also to test communication between horse and rider and the horsemanship skills and athletic abilities of each competitor.”

Picture this race:

The horses -- a 4-year-old spotted saddle horse, a couple of big bay Quarter Horse stallions, a Missouri Fox Trotter, a bulky Haflinger pony, a greying 21-year-old chestnut pony, a big blocky white horse with a black ear, a dun-colored mule, a couple sorrels with some Quarter Horse in them…   

The riders – varying from 98 to over 275 pounds – including a 20-year-old gymnast, a middle-aged woman just recovering from wrist surgery, a 65-year-old hearing aid salesman with a bad knee, and a bunch of cowboys and cowgirls whose ages and sizes fall somewhere in between.

The course:  When you hear “go” and the timer starts, run your horse around the arena as fast as it can run, heedless of the screaming, clapping crowd, odd obstacles, unhappy calves in gated enclosures and an impressive speaker system loudly describing the activities.

• Grab a lasso from a gate, rope the faux calf head affixed to hay bales.
• Pick up a full water bucket from the top of one barrel and carry it to the next where you empty it.
• Walk your horse between two pens of long-horned calves through wood and trash.
• Jump three small logs -- circling and changing leads three times.
• Run over to stop in a box, spin your horse one direction, then the other.
• Pick up a rope and drag a log through pylons.
• Dismount to pick up a 50-pound feed bag representing a sick calf.
• Remount and carry it on your horse to a marker where you set it down gently.
• Lope a figure eight -- staying within marked boundaries.
• Go through a simulated water crossing.
• Continue flying lead changes through a “daisy chain” of cones as spectators scream “Ole” with each lead change.
• Jump three rows of drums.
• Bend down to pick up a tennis ball off a cone about a foot tall.
• Carry the tennis ball to a gate where a bucket is affixed high enough that you must stand on top of your saddled horse to put the ball in.
• Go through the rattling pipe gates over and through a “log jumble.”
• Dismount, remove your saddle, remount. (There’s a hay bale if you need it.)
• Race your horse around the arena bareback.
• Stop at the far end, dismount, lead your trotting horse to the center, crossing the finish line as quickly as you can. 

While each of these skills was evaluated by experienced horse people on a 10-point scale, hot dogging garnered even more points. 

            Cracking a bullwhip during the race around the arena, picking up and swinging a tarp during the bareback run, picking up a dropped cowboy hat from the ground at a dead run, removing the bridle as well as saddle and racing the arena in a halter, the cowboy jumping the barrels as he raced to the finish line, mounting from the horse’s right, asking the horse to lay down to mount, sidepassing from one obstacle to the next, sliding stops – all added points and demonstrated the level of training and communication between horse and rider.

            Competitors are evaluated by a panel of three experienced horse trainers. Judges award 1-10 points based on: horsemanship, cadence, control, horse’s attitude, and overall execution. Horses and riders must complete each obstacle within a set time to receive points. Uncompleted tasks are left behind as the contestant moves on to the next obstacle. Times are translated into points.  The highest score wins.  The top three finishers get cash and prizes.

            Ready to try it? Submit an application explaining why you’d like to compete with a check for $250 and you may end up at one of the half dozen competitions held around the country each year. 

            Created by Cameron and Ryan Dohrn of HorseCity.com, the first races were held at Cameron’s ranch in Bluff Dale, Texas, in 2005.  The Extreme Cowboy Race™ airs on RFD-TV and is also available on HorseCity.com for those who do not get RFD-TV.  For more information:  http://www.craigcameron.com/extreme.shtml