More on my travels and tribulations...

It was a week crammed with must-do's and must-finish's. I completed a group of commissions (posted on my September Studio site) and I was juried into a new gallery center which meant delivering works and attending the first opening reception. I also began to be "trained up" for the resident artist position at the Heritage Center which means justifying the cash/sales at end of day. Somehow I still squeezed in over thirty hours at my canvassing job for the Census Bureau, but I am tired - and just wishing for some downtime.

Careworn and weathered kittens... left sitting in the yard of an abandoned home. It's as if they await the owner's return...













Another casualty of an abandoned homestead..



















Yellow jasmine in bloom - and a bird's nest inside a mailbox.















Just a cutie I met in a parking lot during a lunch break... Notice he has "camouflage" dog tags...







And lastly - a heartbreaker...

The two horses pictured above look just the way well-cared for equine should. They are sleek and healthy and in excellent condition. Those collars they wear are only to prevent them from "cribbing" (chewing on wood/sucking air) - nervous or bored habit.

Compare them to the horse in the last photograph. This is what a starved horse looks like.


I turned into a long drive through a wooded area and came upon a lovely home sitting up above a fenced half acre or so. I glimpsed a leggy horse from a distance but could only see the horses head and hooves.

I had a lovely conversation with the owner - a very young woman with a 13 month old baby - and we discussed children, dogs and feeding hay. I asked her if I could photograph her horse and she said "why, certainly" - though he'd "not been brushed or groomed lately." I had no idea of his poor condition until I drove down to the gate. I nearly threw up as the sight of his ribs and backbone made my stomach roll over. This not just thin - this is critical - and criminal.

This is not an old horse. She never mentioned him being ill or made any excuse for his condition. I started to go back up to speak to her when someone else arrived - and I decided to just go ahead and report it to the authorities. Either this woman is completely ignorant of horse care - or she's so preoccupied with her child that she's completely neglected this once-beautiful Thoroughbred. His feet were in poor shape as well - and his mane was a tangled mess. My conclusion was that since there was some green stuff in the lot, no one bothered to feed the horse.

Sadly, this is all too common...