By Ed Kemmick/Last Best News

I don’t know the first thing about riding a horse, but Brenda Wahler evidently does, and she was not impressed with Ryan Zinke’s horsemanship.

I had never heard of Wahler until today, but she is, according to her blog, an attorney and equine consultant who lives in Helena. In a blog post published on Sunday, Wahler closely analyzed several photos of Zinke riding a horse to his first day on the job as the new Interior secretary.

The whole thing is worth reading—including the conclusion, where she also analyzes a photo of Zinke out fly-fishing—but here’s the gist of her argument:

“Being a Montanan doesn’t always mean you are born on horseback, and Zinke is a self-admitted son of a plumber. I don’t expect championship equitation from a casual outdoorsman, but Zinke looks like the guy who hires an outfitter once a year to take him into the mountains. More to the point, the guy who is packed onto the biggest, most unflappable horse in the string is the dude who doesn’t know which end to face, won’t take advice, and needs a horse who is wiser than the passenger.”

If any readers who also know horses would like to express a contrary point of view, have at it.

Ed Kemmick has been a newspaper reporter, editor and columnist since 1980. Except for four years in his home state of Minnesota, he has spent his entire journalism career in Montana, working in Missoula, Anaconda, Butte and Billings. "The Big Sky, By and By," a collection of some of his newspaper stories and columns, plus a few essays and one short story, was published in 2011.

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