It makes me happy that people look for answers on my blog, and I hope that they find what they’re looking for (and you do, too).
As my platform, WordPress tells me some of the search terms that people use to find me. Some of those search terms surprise me. Some gratify me. Some bewilder me. And some make me laugh out loud.
Questioning horsemen on their laptops or desktops or phones or iPads, take the time to carefully choose their words and type them in the boxes in the search engines of their choice, in hopes of finding the answer they’e looking for somewhere on what used to be known as the World Wide Web.
Just yesterday, people came here wanting to know more about:
cavaletti spacing
how far up should a bit be in a horse’s mouth
pulling shoes for winter thoroughbred
bruising to bars in horse’s mouth
All great things to be thinking about. All things that have interested me and which I’ve sought out reasons and solutions for, and which I’ve had a chance to share here on the blog. All things that great horsemen who preceded me taught me, as did the horses I’ve been privileged to know.
I’ve learned through the last twelve months (the first anniversary of my blog is less than a week away) that lots of people want to know what Buck Brannaman has to say (245 people came here to find out)…that people want to know more about the artist Franz Marc and his extraordinary paintings of horses (“Franz Marc” is the eighth most common search term leading to my blog)…and that there’s a great interest in horse skulls. In fact, there’s a deep and abiding interest in horse skulls, as evidenced by the following search terms and their frequency:
horse skull (61)
horse head (60)
horse skull anatomy (18)
horse heads (16)
horse head skulls (6)
horse head side (6)
horse head-on (2)
anatomy of the horse head (2)
Who would have thunk it? (To me, this horse head business is as surprising as the intimate moment that led Pokey to utter the same words in Mary McCarthy’s wonderful novel, The Group, which are repeated in the equally marvelous movie of the book, with Candice Bergen.)
There are also search terms that make me appreciate the diversity and creativity of Googlers everywhere. Search terms like these:
how hard it is to keep calm and walk in integrity
soft fisting horses
muscles feel like ball bearings
snakes climbing shawna quakes
field full of horse poop
The last phrase tells it like it is. I know as I write this that a field of horse poop will soon await me. Luckily, it won’t be full of horse poop, since I’m an obsessive poop picker.
For those interested in the posts that cover some of the topics above, I can direct you here:
Another look at the two-finger rule
Notes & quotes from a clinic junkie: Buck Brannaman
Buck Brannaman on timing and tact (and cows)
Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t tell me which post someone viewed after searching for “snakes climbing shawna quakes.” I wish I knew. Instead, I’m adding it my list of life’s wonders.
Reflections on Riding 
It’s funny you should write about search engines. Just yesterday I was doing a search for an old book. I had read it at 14 while on vacation with my family on Nantucket Island; what a gorgeous place it used to be before the uber rich decided it was their’s and their’s alone. We would bike the entire island all by ourselves, 3 young girls, and come back with dog ticks covering our cotton socks from going through the marshes.. I loved the cobbled stone main street and there, in a little old book store, I found my first Edgar Rice Burrough’s “Tarzan”. From that moment on my nose did not come out of that book (which infuriated my mother) But I digress, because it wasn’t in that book store that I found ” The Scapegoat”. We had rented a lovely old house on the far end of the beach. The woman who owned it had a collection of books which I explored and I found several to my liking. But Dapne DuMaurier;s ” The Scapegoat” was my favorite. I went to the library yesterday, thinking to re read it during that rainy morning, only to discover the only copy available was in Canaan and it would be a week before ti would arrive at the Bethlehem library. By now you are wondering how this ties into your post. Well I could not remember the name of the novel or the author and I must have spent a good hour Googling and Yahooing everthing I could remember about the book. I came up with all this useless detritus before finally I typed “boring” into my search sentence and bingo! …… there is was. The internet search engine is a wonderful thing for us baby boomers looking to re live some of our most beloved memories. Now if I could only find that obscure black & white ” Alice in Wonderland” movie I have been looking for the last 52 years!
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What a great story to share. Thanks so much. That’s too funny that adding the word “boring” to your search query is how you got the information you wanted. There certainly is an art to Googling, isn’t there? I’ve never read “The Scapegoat,” but now I have to, so thanks for that recommendation, too.
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I made the mistake of referring to the monthly arrival of my horse magazines as horse p * r n on my blog once.
Stupid – I know. Well, that’s what my horse friends and I call them! I wasn’t thinking.
You definitely shouldn’t ever write that word on your blog unintentionally. On your horse blog that is.
Lots of traffic from individuals I’m sure I don’t ever want to know…
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Thanks for the tip! I wouldn’t have thought about it either, if that’s what I wanted to say. Now I won’t. I don’t want to know those people either…
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