After a tough weekend, with a much appreciated but sad visit, and culminating in my hard drive crashing . . . I drove out to the horse ranch Monday morning . . . feeling rather melancholy. I wasn't there too long, and I was walking down the way between horse areas, and I was beaming. It suddenly occurred to me that here . . . here among the horses . . . this is where I find my emotional center. This place, these horses, settle me. I am reading a book called Centered Riding. It's the way you have your body while you're on the horse . . . centered. Anyway, that came to mind and it made me realize that horses create in me . . . kind of a centered living . . . a centered life. What could be better than that?!!
Just wanted to document a couple horsey things that had a lot of meaning for me. The first one, Alicia was going to ride Jeeter . . . a green stallion. Jennifer was going along to keep him company . . . green horses and horses in training often need that. But, since this was Jeeter's first time outside the barn area, someone had to have a lead rope on Jeeter while Alicia rode him. I got elected. It was a huge responsibility . . . and an incredible compliment, as I saw it. That they should trust me with this. In fact during the ride . . . well, I walked . . . on the trail, where Jeeter saw all kinds of new things that he wasn't used to . . . Jennifer said to me, "Well, Jerri, Alicia's life is in your hands." Wow wow wow. I did it. Jeeter was fine. I was fine. We got back fine. Mission accomplished.
The next cool thing that happened was in the same week. Alicia has been training Mud, another green horse . . . he's a gelding, though . . . not as potentially volatile as a stallion. Anyway, I had held him for her before. She had a Western saddle on him (about the only time a horse around here gets a Western saddle . . . they are primarily English), and I had held him while she leaned over the saddle, and I would lead Mud on to take a step or two, so he could get the feel of having weight on his back. Then, Alicia would get off and I would walk Mud around and bring him back, and we would do it again. But, today, the day I'm speaking of, Alicia wanted to actually sit in the saddle, which is a huge step, because once you're up there it's a lot harder to slip off if the horse misbehaves than when you're just leaning on the saddle and you can slip right off. So, it was a little scary, but Mud did great. And Alicia gave me the greatest compliment! There is another woman, about my age, who sometimes comes out to help. She's been coming for a few years, I think. Anyway, Alicia told me that she felt much better with me holding the lead rope than the other woman, because she was always so nervous doing it! And me, I'm not! Is that awesome, or what! My fears, which used to be huge, are almost completely gone! Jennifer was such a great teacher getting me to this point! I owe her a million dollars or something!!
When Alicia first brought Mud out, he broke away from her. I was just about to bring Bo, one of the stallions, into the arena. I didn't know what to do. First I tried to get Mud to stop . . . I stood in front of the gate while he raced toward me at top speed. He didn't look like he was going to stop. I lost my nerve right before he got to me and he raced past me. I still didn't know what to do. Luckily, Jennifer was in the barn and stuck her head out and told me to get Bo back into his stall. We walked into the barn, where Mud had run to, and then Mud was in the way of Bo getting to his stall. Mud was pretty worked up, too. But, luckily, nothing happened and I managed to get past him and put Bo away. Bo was awesome. Not all stallions would have been that "gracious." And, for me . . . another lesson learned. When a horse gets loose, your only responsibility is to the horse that you're with at the time. Let the other person handle the loose horse.
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