title: Relaxed & Forward: Relationship Advice from Your Horse
author:  Anna M Blake 
description: Anna Blake's writing brings the plains of Colorado alive like a rainstorm after a long drought. She possesses a freshness and wit that makes any subject--whether it be donkeys or death, llamas or love--interesting, funny, and a little bit scary. --Peter Schuyler, Playwright, Screenwriter, Novelist The Portal, Common Sense, You'll Just Love My Dad Anna Blake uses words the way a watercolor painter uses her brush: strong strokes and delicate touches entwine in the same image. The reader is soon enveloped by the seemingly effortless originality of her writing. --Diane Alexander, Freelance Copy Editor. Anna Blake writes with a vivid ad compelling voice. She shares her life with a powerful grace; her experience becomes ours, her journey becomes ours...and we are lucky enough to go along for the ride. --Melanie Sue Bowles Founder, Proud Spirit Horse Sanctuary, and author of Hoof Prints: Stories from Proud Spirit. Anna Blake is the Anne Lamott of ranching, caring for animals and life on the prairie: a passionate storyteller combining the wit and wisdom that comes from hard work and harder knocks, but with a common sense and compassion that not only makes a great writer, but also a great neighbor. You'll want to move next door. --Emily Polis Gibson, Barnstorming blog, American Haflinger Registry Board Excitement and delight surge through me every time I see Anna Blake's name as an author. Her writing is filled with deep understanding and heart connection, seasoned with a lively dash of humor. Reading her work is like giving myself a gift...one I can open again and again. --Kim Walnes, winning USET Three Day Eventer, Riding Instructor/Trainer, and Life Coach.
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  “No, I’m fine,” I said.
  
  
  But Yuigahama was still examining me in a seeming attempt to diagnose what was
  wrong with me.
  
  
  …Well, I was acting different from normal. I was being guarded with her. Or
  maybe it would be most accurate to say that, after we’d reset our
  relationship, I didn’t know how to keep my distance from her anymore. In a bid
  to converse like I used to, I tried to be as casual as possible. “…I get like
  this when it’s hot. You just kinda…slack off? Like how train rails get softer
  and stretchier in the heat, and, like, so do dogs. Do you know about thermal
  expansion?”
  
  
  “What do dogs have to do with this?” she asked. “Oh, mine does like to
  stretch, though.”
  
  
  “Then dogs _do_ have something to do with this, don’t they? What was your dog
  called again? It was, like…something th