Other LA Cowboys In LA - NYT On Horses In LA!

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/fashion/sundaystyles/04horse.html?8hpib

In an article by Mireya Navarro, the New York Times looks into the lifestyles of those who keep horses in LA. She also covers the convenience of being able to ride right outside your own back door, the cost of keeping a horse, the problems with non-horse owning neighbors, the cost of keeping a horse, the horse as a status symbol, the cost of keeping a horse, running into mountain bikers on horse trails and... did I mention?... the cost of keeping a horse.

In few places in the country are horses more surprising, yet more sought after, than in Los Angeles. The horse is an almost mythic element in an area that grew out of ranches and citrus groves and burnished its image in part as a setting for Hollywood westerns. Horsemanship traces back to Mexican vaquero culture, and to own horses feeds into the dream of the West's unrestricted freedom the way a boat and private dock feed into the image of aquatic glamour in Miami - and can be as much a status symbol.

Los Angeles County may now contain 10 million or so people locked in daily urban rituals, but modern-day cowboys are found in unexpected places, in horse communities in the manicured byways of Brentwood as well as in the urban grit of Compton.

Alas, it has been years since this cowboy was owned by a horse. The last time I saw the inestimable Mr. D was the day after we buried my best friend, the person who had given me Mr. D as my introduction to their world ten years before he was killed.

I groomed D for a last time after our final ride together. I then got in my pick-up and drove off. I was not aware that I was shutting the door on that period of my life and that I never was to set foot on the ranch again. But from the sounds that came from Mr. D - he must have known that we were never to see each other again.