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When my friend Holly called me to tell me her beloved child was the new Miss June in a calendar, I knew immediately it wasn’t her daughter Alex she was talking about. Well, at least that is what I was hoping!

The new Miss June is Betiske V, or Bibi, as Holly’s beautiful Friesen mare is called, and she is the June picture in The Spirit of Horses calendar by Lesley Harrison. I was really excited to hear that Bibi would go down in history as a calendar centerfold, because I have always been a fan of taking lots and lots of photos of my horses and being memorialized in a calendar is defnitely one step better. Bibi’s calendar picture is a painting that Lesley Harrison did from a photo taken by Cally Matherly. In the photo, Bibi is galloping along the beach, splashing in the surf on Hutchinson Island in Florida. I have always wanted to know how beach photos are done, because I know if I would have taken any of my horses out to the beach, turned them loose and tried to take photos, I would have captured only one type of photo. Yes, I would have taken plenty of photos of my horse’s rump as they disappeared down the beach, never to be seen again.

I asked Holly to divulge the secret of beach photos and wasn’t too surprised to fnd that photoshopping played a part in the experience. “We put Bibi on the lunge line and lunged her at the edge of the beach and Cally took the photos,” Holly said. “Then the lunge line was taken out of the picture and when Lesley painted the picture she took the halter out also. Lesley also took creative license and added more mane and a fowing tail and crashing waves behind Bibi.”

Bibi’s calendar debut reminded me of the time we made a calendar for my farm, using photos we had taken throughout the year. We came up with eleven photos easily, but couldn’t fnd a twelfth photo to make the cut. So we decided to stage a photo with our miniature

horse, Twix. Thank goodness for digital cameras, because we had to shoot countless photos of Twix pulling his little cart with a variety of kids from the barn.

We fnally ended up with a photo of Twix with his eyes closed, but at least his ears were pricked forward and the kids in the photo were smiling. Needless to say, my calendar wasn’t a bestseller and I don’t think any of them remain or anyone saved them as collector’s items. If I had to do it again I would have photoshopped Twix’s eyes open and added some crashing waves behind him just for fun. The calendar with Bibi, however, is defnitely a keeper and I have it proudly displayed in my kitchen. While Bibi is Holly’s dream horse (she had been wanting a Friesian for 20 years) she is lucky that now her dream horse will live on in calendar form. Thanks to Lesley’s painting and Cally’s photograph, the rest of us can also enjoy the beauty of Bibi as she gallops along the beach, with or without her halter.

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