On Thursday, November 5, 2009, just a few minutes before midnight, we launched our first release of the Soulful Equine website. The feeling of accomplishing something that has been in the back of my mind for many, many years is almost indescribable. There was a huge feeling of accomplishment, relief, pride and excitement as well as fear. What a wide range of feelings!
At this time, the content of Soulful Equine is not yet providing much value to it’s small following; however, the foundation that was laid by the launch of this website is intended to last and expand for years to come. A good foundation in anything is key to its longevity. I take this approach in all areas of my life including my horse-man-ship, nutrition, software development, etc.
The intent of our first release was to establish a strong foundation and give people a chance to “get to know” Soulful Equine and its creators while we work on our next release of the website. We plan to keep our content fresh and strive to add value for you who decide to stick around and see what’s next.
If you have not had a chance to read through the About Us sections of the Soulful Equine website, I would suggest you start there to get a feel for who we are and why we decided to create Soulful Equine. I would also recommend that you go through our FAQ section of the website.
Now that we have all that stuff out of the way, I’m sure you are saying… who is Stephanie Krahl? Well, you can read more about me in the About Stephanie section on our website. There is plenty there for you to get a feel for my background. One thing I would like to point out is that I do not claim to be an “expert” on any subject. Quite frankly, I do not like the word “expert”.
Let’s just look at that definition for a minute. There are many different variations of the word “expert” but the one I’m going to use today is from the dictionary.com website: “Expert – a person who has special skill or knowledge in some particular field; specialist”. Actually we could write an entire blog post series evolving around the word “expert”. In my mind, we all have some kind of “special skill or knowledge in some field”. We are all “experts” in our own lives.
Even though we each may have experienced “similar” events and/or feelings, i.e. relationship breakups, loss of a loved one, fear, excitement, frustration, the struggle of learning something new, the list goes on and on. We each experience events and feelings in our lives differently and no two experiences are identical. This is why I feel more people need to become empowered to share their experiences… so they can help add value to other people’s lives as well as adding fulfillment to their own lives.
I plan to bring to the table the “expert” knowledge I have from MY OWN experiences in relation to horses and my beliefs around those experiences. I will also share from a self-development standpoint as well.
One thing I would like to bring up at this point is that if I could re-wind about 10 years back, I would have changed a few things when it comes to relationships with others. Over the last 8 or 9 years, I have established many connections with people in the horse industry who have played a huge part in helping me to grow and become much more knowledgeable in many different areas related to horses. I had some wonderful connections, and still do; however, I wasn’t nurturing those relationships.
How this appears to those who do not know me well is that I just showed up as someone NEW on the “horse care block”. In reality, I have been around for more than 10 years. I have been lurking, evolving, learning and applying my knowledge. I finally got to the point where I could not just “lurk” anymore and I had to start voicing what I feel I have to offer. I knew it would help people who love their horses as much as I do and who want to learn and develop themselves as individuals.
I would now like to take this opportunity to share with you some of the plans for the future of Soulful Equine. After the “What’s This All About” blog series is complete, I plan to start out with a series of posts that are related to that one word we all dread… “FEAR”. I’m going to share with you the battle I had with that feeling when I first started down the “non-traditional” route with my horses. I hope this series of posts will again help lay a foundation for those who are not so familiar with the concepts of combining the true power of “non-traditional” with SOME traditional approaches (when necessary) to horse care. Again, if you have read our About Us section, you know that a big part of Soulful Equine is about “quality and longevity” of life.
From there I will ask our readers what subjects they would like to hear about. The purpose of this blog is to add value for others and is not intended to “tell” people what to do. One thing Soulful Equine will strive to do is to keep things in a “positive light”. We are not about downgrading other people’s approaches to horse care, but we are here to help people become more aware of the possibilities. We believe that the power of setting good examples is stronger than any teaching method. If a person is not open to learning about something new to them, then there is no use in making them mad by “telling them what and how” to do something. That just drives people away and is not a good approach if you want to help cause change.
As far as post content, I will be sure to send out newsletter updates on upcoming post ideas and ask for your feedback. This blog is not for Soulful Equine; it’s for you. You will help us to evolve. We have laid the foundation, now it is up to you to help us to build on top of that foundation. We fully expect lots of interaction. To ensure that you will not miss out on any updates, please take a moment to sign up for our email newsletter: click here. For everyone who signs up, you will receive a free write-up on “Salt – Is There A Difference?” You will be sent the download link when the write-up is complete. There are just a few more finishing touches we are adding to it. If you have already signed up, the download link to this write-up will be sent to you once the final version is completed. This free report is for newsletter subscribers only, so please take this opportunity to subscribe to our mailing list.
Thank you for taking the time to read my first post to Soulful Equine. I’m glad you’re here and hope you plan to stick around.
Non-traditionally yours,
Stephanie Krahl
About Stephanie Krahl
