On November 10, 2009, in our first blog post, What’s This All About – Part 1 of 2, you got to meet the official horse nut of Soulful Equine, Stephanie Krahl. I have been friends with Stephanie for many years. Over those years, I have watched her passion for horses push her to find ways to solve many of the problems that domestication has created. She has lovingly applied those concepts to her own horses and has had some amazing results.
As an observer, I have often thought how wonderful it would be if she could find a way to share her knowledge with other people who are like-minded and experiencing similar issues. Then, during the first week of November 2009, that thought materialized when we finally launched the Soulful Equine website. It was hard to believe that something we had talked about for so long was finally a reality.
So here I am today, Sharon Tousley, telling you how excited and grateful I am to play a part in helping to get that information out there. I know many of you who have read the About Us page are probably asking how, exactly, can an accountant help spread the Soulful word? Below are my plans on just how I intend to accomplish that.
First, I am Soulful Equine’s videographer. I love everything about movies… watching them, quoting from them, critiquing them, and now I get to make them! We plan to put out several educational videos in the future that will be packed with information and I consider it my responsibility to see that they are not only educational, but entertaining as well.
Second, I have a passion for health and nutrition. I took an interest in the subject about 15 years ago and have been hooked ever since. I spend hours researching health concerns and looking for non-toxic solutions. I even tried to make a living for a short time as a sales person for a supplement company that I thoroughly believed in. I failed miserably at it. I am the ultimate introvert, and selling anything was about as comfortable for me as that dream where you show up at work and realize you forgot to put on any clothes before you left the house.
So, you ask, what else do I bring to the table besides the fear of nudity in large groups of people? Well I’m pretty good at organization and bookkeeping type stuff. I love detailed work and being the ultimate introvert, I LOVE to sit at my computer and work on almost anything. Spreadsheets, graphic art, writing… just sitting there in my little world with my dog and cat by my side, soft music playing and me creating in one form or another is truly Heaven to me.
I know, you extroverts out there are saying “just shoot me now and get it over with… I can’t imagine anything more boring.” But that’s what makes good teams, isn’t it? People with complimentary skills working together to help make a vision a reality. Stephanie and I are a good team. She’s the extrovert and the optimist. I’m the introvert and the realist. She has the vision and sees the big picture and I see, well, lots of trees… the forest is obscured by my focus on the detail. So Stephanie has the vision and I just try my best to keep the windshield bug-free, and together we make a fantastic team.
The other thing that I bring to the table is the view from the cheap seats. Although I am an animal lover to the core, I am not what I call a “horse nut”. So I get to be Soulful Equine’s voice of the non-nut. As friends and family of all you horse nuts, we find ourselves scratching our heads and wondering what exactly drives you obsessed creatures. What makes the person who doesn’t have time to pick up her clothes spend hours out in the barn placing the hay bales just so? Is there a horse nut gene? Something in the DNA? A mutation perhaps? Where does this stuff come from? These are things that I plan to dig into.
I will apply my analytical abilities to the equine eccentric. Dissect them and look at them from every angle. Try to figure out what it is that makes them tick. It’s a scary proposition, I know, but I will do it for the benefit of you non-nuts. I’ll dare to go where so few have gone before. I’ll try to get into the mind of the mounted maniac and the filly fanatic and every second of it will be done with love and total support.
There is truly no creature more regal than the horse, and anyone who has chosen to devote their lives to a cause as noble as helping that animal deserves understanding (or at the very least, a true attempt at understanding). So if I, as an animal lover and self-proclaimed non-horse-nut, can help bring a smile to the face of all you horse lovers and lovers of horse lovers, then I will have done a small part to indirectly enhance the lives of horses and their companions… and that will bring a smile to MY face.
About Sharon Tousley
