Like millions of other businesses across the country, Micky Colton, owner of Horse Sense Equine business in Prince Edward Country in Ontario, has been a bust because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Normally, Colten, who is from Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory and now lives in nearby Picton, is working with clients, who come to her farm to interact with her horses.
With so much time on her hands, the retired air force pilot has taken on a new venture.
She came up with the plan after participating in a program called Kwe-Biz, which helps Indigenous women in business succeed.
“My mentor Shyra said to me, you tell stories all the time and they’re such good stories, I think you should share them, so why don’t you write a book about your horses and I thought OK that’s not actually, didn’t sound like a bad idea,” Colten told APTN News.
So, she did. Her first published children’s book is all about Riley.
“Riley’s the horse that I’ve had the longest, so he’s been with me since he was 11, he just turned 27, so and he’s given me so much stuff over the years, it was worth writing about.”
Colton said the story Riley and the Road Cones came together rather quickly. It tells about how smart and funny Riley is and how he learned to touch road cones on command.
“I went back to school after I retired from the military, I went to take my veterinary assistant course and one of the one of the lessons we had to do was to teach a pet a trick with a clicker,” she said.
“So, I decided that I would use him as my pet you know so to speak. The teacher was very surprised when I turned in the video of course, because she was expecting a cat or a dog not a 1,200 lb horse.”
The book is the first of a series of four stories, each one tells a story on a horse on the Horse Sense Equine Farm.
Riley and the Road Cones can be purchased on Amazon.
