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Updated 3/06/08

2008 Best Friend of Bishop!
Bishop Mule Days Honors Meredith Hodges
By Helen T. Hertz

The Bishop Mule Days Executive Board has named Meredith Hodges the 2008 Best Friend of Bishop. As the honoree Meredith will receive an award, ride in the Mule Days Celebration Parade and attend a special luncheon in her honor. For Meredith, who’s been a Mule Days regular for nearly three decades, it’s a thrill and an honor to be chosen. But more than that, it’s another opportunity to acknowledge an event that has helped shape her career and her life.

It seems no coincidence that Meredith is being recognized for outstanding friendship. After all, she’s spent the last 35 years making friends with mules and donkeys and teaching others how to do the same. At the core of her award-winning, correspondence training series is the conviction that in order to train a mule you must befriend him. Trust, respect, compassion and understanding—the hallmarks of friendship—are also imperative when you’re working with longears.

“Once a mule recognizes that you have his best interest at heart, he’ll do anything for you,” she says. “It takes patience and consistency but the rewards are huge.”

For Meredith the best reward is, of course, her relationship with her treasured companions, but there are others. In the years that Meredith competed at Bishop she and her mules captured several World Championships in events such as Driving, Jumping, Sidesaddle and Dressage. In exhibition her champion jack Little Jack Horner jumped a record four feet, and in 2006 her mule Lucky Three Mae Bea C.T. was inducted into the Mule Days Hall of Fame.

Win or lose, each time Meredith competed, she gained new insight into her training and greater respect for her fellow riders. Since attending her first Mule Days in 1979, she’s returned year after year to see old friends, test her skills and, in the last few years, capture the excitement of the event on film. Meredith has produced half a dozen Bishop-themed shows and five of those will air on RFD-TV between now and Memorial Day (see listing below).

Meredith’s RFD-TV series Training Mules and Donkeys has become so much more than a show about training. With more than 50 shows completed or in the works, she’s covering topics such as therapeutic riding and athletic conditioning and expanding her Jasper the Mule animated programs to include adaptations of all five books in the children’s series.

Jasper, himself, has become one of Bishop’s best buddies. After serving as Grand Marshal of the Mule Days parade in 2005, he has returned each year to entertain the crowd and thrill the kids. If you’re going to Bishop this year look for him in front of the Souvenir Building on Saturday and Sunday. Meredith will be there, too, as well her pal and Jasper illustrator Tennessee Mule Artist Bonnie Shields. For them, each Mule Days Celebration is a homecoming of sorts.

“Bishop is all about fun, friends and good mulemanship,” says Meredith. “I’m always honored to be a part of it—I guess you could say Bishop’s one of my best friends, too.”

For more information about Bishop Mule Days, visit www.muledays.org. For more information about Meredith Hodges and Training Mules and Donkeys, visit www.luckythreeranch.com. or call 800-816-7566.

Info Box
Don’t miss these Bishop Mule Days specials on Training Mules and Donkeys with Meredith Hodges on RFD-TV

The Road to Bishop – Encore presentation – April 16
Bishop All-Stars, Part One – April 23
Bishop All-Stars, Part Two – April 30
The Bishop Experience, Part One – May 7
The Bishop Experience, Part Two – May 14

Check local listings for times.

Kids love Jasper the Mule!

Bishop Mule Days
Bishop, California, May 24, 25, 2008
Be sure to watch him at the
Entrance to the Souvenir Building
Saturday, 2-3pm, and Sunday, 12-1:30pm

See Schedule of Events, Autographs
and photos available.

Family Friendly Stories with a heart!

New Shows Premier on RFD-TV

Watch for new programming from Lucky Three Productions coming to RFD-TV this Spring and Summer. Our new shows include “The Bishop Experience,” a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to put on Bishop Mule Days, featuring event highlights, interviews and commentary from Meredith. Also watch for Bishop All-Stars, which will spotlight many of the great people and animals that have made Bishop Mule Days the biggest mule show on earth.

Then this summer, we’ll begin work on a special, multi-part program on Athletic Conditioning. These shows will offer viewers a deeper understanding of the training process. This critically important supplement to Meredith’s award-winning training series Training Mules and Donkeys explains exactly how and why you should do these training exercises correctly. This material will enhance your relationship with your equine by showing how to tend to the details and take time to enjoy the journey.

Show dates for all of these programs will be posted on www.luckythreeranch.com. In the meantime, if you would like more information about Athletic Conditioning for your equine, please submit your request to info@luckythreeranch.com.

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For more information, click here. To buy an ad simply select and purchase the ad size you want, submit your artwork, and we’ll take it from there.

TMD on DVD
When Meredith first produced her groundbreaking training series on video, nothing like it was available. Now Training Mules and Donkeys is out on DVD and still it stands alone as the only comprehensive, correspondence equine training course on the market.

Ideal for beginning through advanced students, mule and donkey fans and horse fanciers, competitors and pleasure riders, this series offers safe, resistance-free techniques delivered in a logical, step-by-step sequence. Detailed explanation, accompanied by easy-to-follow demonstrations, simplify the training process, and if a question does come up, Meredith is available to you by e-mail or phone. It’s like having your own private coach!

Regardless of your experience or your animal’s age and ability, Meredith recommends that everyone begin with DVDs #1 and #8. These lessons will help you build a proper foundation for training and care that will ensure success for both you and your equine. Take your time (the material on each DVD will take six months to a year to master) and heed the details—they make all the difference!

Each DVD includes 40-50 minutes of detailed instruction, a print-ready version of the corresponding work book, and special features including interviews from Bishop Mule Days, music montages and more. For more information about this amazing 10-DVD series, please call 800-816-7566 or visit www.luckythreeranch.com.

Jasper: A Turkey Tale, the latest adventure in the Jasper the Mule Series, makes a wonderful gift.

Meredith created the Jasper the Mule children’s series in order to introduce young people to mules and donkeys and dispel some of the old myths about these wonderful animals. From the beginning, Meredith was committed to creating family-friendly stories that were both entertaining and meaningful and producing quality books that could be passed down from one generation to the next.

The original Jasper: the Story of the Mule and all the holiday-themed sequels that follow tell an on-going story of Jasper and his friends and the adventures and challenges life hands them.

This latest holiday adventure, Jasper: A Turkey Tale, finds Jasper, Moxie and the gang preparing for Thanksgiving. But near disaster threatens their plans, and Jasper and Moxie are stumped by a mysterious visitor. Join in the fun as the two friends try to solve the mystery and along the way, learn the true meaning of Thanksgiving.

Written by Meredith Hodges, with full-color illustration by Tennessee Mule Artist Bonnie Shields.

To find out more about Jasper: A Turkey Tale and the Jasper the Mule series, please visit www.jasperthemule.com or www.luckythreeranch.com, or call 800-816-7566.