For a long time now, I’ve been wanting to do a virtual trail ride post.  Until now, it’s never happened….mostly because I could never get it together enough to remember my camera, remember to charge my camera, or remember to actually take the photos.  Well, the planets aligned for me today and here are some photos of my Sunday fun and trail ride….sans Emma, but still amazing!  Enjoy…

Tiny and her girls

Keeping an eye on the cows

Me and my shadow

Ciao, Tiny! Until next time....

Once again, it’s time for Thankful Thursday! I hope this post inspires you to consider the things in your life that you are grateful for. If you have a blog, consider posting about it there and link back here. If you don’t have a blog, please feel welcome to comment here on what you are grateful for in your own life. If you don’t feel comfortable sharing, then just take a few moments to reflect on all that you have. If you’d like to tag other bloggers that participate, feel free to do that.

This past Sunday I headed to the barn after a relaxing morning.  It was one of those technicolor days where life had an extra brilliant glow and the breeze hinted at fall, although the sun beat down on us relentlessly.  I saddled Tiny and we headed into the arena for a workout.  The farm was all ours for the morning.  Silence echoed around us and the only other activities were the chickens pecking around the barn and Grady keeping watch from his post in the grass.  I started off our workout with some bending and a slow warm up, just enjoying spending time with my girl.  After we warmed up, I asked Tiny to canter and something magical happened.  She cantered off as always, but I had the most overwhelming sense of wanting to run.  I could feel her muscles taut and strong beneath me, just the slightest hint of spring in her step.  I leaned forward the tiniest bit, urging her on with my seat.  She instantly responded and surged off into a gallop around the arena, her neck stretched long and low, nostrils flared.  We rode like this around and around the arena and for just an instant I was a child again, racing up the hills surrounding our old Pennsylvania farm without a care in the world.  Another lap and I was invincible and powerful, hair whipping around me and tears streaming from my eyes while I laughed joyfully.  We ran until Tiny was lathered and I was exhausted and panting.  I haven’t had so much fun on my little mare in a long, long time.   

Happy Thursday to all and please visit these other sites that frequently participate in Thankful Thursday:

Akal Ranch, Enlightened Horsemanship Through Touch, and Tired Dog Ranch.

Photo courtesy of Dee Q8, Flickr

As September rolls on, I have observed a great deal of excitement about the fall season.  Excitement about fall traditions, like cider and local festivals, is contagious.  Mother Nature is giving us her own signs:  lower humidity and cooler nights, just the slightest tinge of red in some of our leaves, fall produce starting to hit the market stalls.  While most of the country is rejoicing with the arrival of fall and all it brings, I have some bittersweet feelings about it.  For me, this season isn’t represented by typical fall customs.  For many years, fall was the season of horses and preparation for the Appaloosa World Championship show.  This prestigious event is held every year in late October in Fort Worth, Texas and the months of September and October were always dedicated to training and preparation for the show, which has a qualification deadline of  August 31.  As most of you know, my horse show adventures pretty much came to an end 5 years ago when I started graduate school but this year I was able to get back into the scene a bit, and even briefly entertained hopes that I might be able to attend the World Show this year.  Unfortunately, as the year evolved I realized I wouldn’t be attending the show this time either.  However, last week I received something very special in the mail:  my World Show qualification information. 

 For many people, this might not be a big deal.  In fact, it wasn’t really a big deal for me 10 years ago – it was a given.  I’d worked hard all year, attended many shows, and was generally well over the number of points required to participate.  This year was different:  my horse and I  haven’t worked with a trainer in over 5 years, we attended very few shows, and we haven’t had the opportunity to make practice runs.  We pretty much winged it, doing groundwork and suppling exercises at home and working the barrels and poles at the shows.  Qualification became even more difficult because the game classes at the Appaloosa shows have been very small, making it challenging to get points – we pretty much had to win 1st or 2nd in a class to accrue points.  Combine all that with the extremely limited number of events that we’ve done (4 shows in the past year) and you can understand my pride at qualifiying for the Appaloosa World Championships in 8 events – we actually qualified in every single event that we show in.  It’s a bittersweet pill, because it’s a reminder of how my time competing with Tiny is winding down.  She’s 15 this year and who knows how many more competitive years she’ll have?  While I’m excited and proud to have been able to achieve qualification status, it hurts that I can’t participate with her while she’s still healthy and strong.  So for this fall, at least, I will have to join the masses of “regular” people enjoying their fall season at the arts festival sipping on cider, but I’ll be doing it with a twinkle in my eye as I think of the hundreds of Apps preparing for the World Show next month.

How bad is it to laugh at my horse?  I mean really laugh at her, like a belly laugh kinda thing?  I’m not sure how I didn’t notice this before, as Emma even called me to point it out (OK, it’s true – she laughed at Tiny too!).  I guess it was the light or something, I don’t know.  But this week I noticed for sure that my horse has a farmer tan.  Like a serious, hard core tan line.  I’m actually kind of impressed…I wouldn’t mind having such a nice tan line to wrap up the summer with.  But as is typical in the world of horses, my butt is stuck indoors all day trying to make enough money so she can continue sunning herself.  Such is the life…. 

Anyway, enjoy and hope you get a giggle out of her too!  I can’t recall ever having a horse with a tan line before…oh, and I wish my full body photos had turned out better.   She actually has strap lines from her fly sheet on her rib cage! 

After almost two weeks of packing, moving, and settling into my new place, I was itching to get back to my regular riding routine.  So I was thrilled when I got home from work on Friday to find the weather clear and my animals comfortably settled into our new place.  Off I went to the barn to see my girl.  It was a bit of a questionable start to the afternoon – I arrived and no more than got out of the car to a sudden downpour of showers.  Okaaaayyyyy…. alrighty, well I’m tough and I won’t melt, right?  So I went to the back pasture and started calling Tiny.  Of course she had suddenly become deaf and refused to even turn her head.  Guess she didn’t miss me much over the last two weeks.  Ok, so off I went into the pasture through the rain to fetch her (she had just been turned out and was in no way coming in on her own terms).  When I finally reached her, I saw a sight I certainly wasn’t prepared for:  my normally water-phobic mare standing in an enormous puddle of 5 inch deep rainwater, wildly munching at the submerged grass .  There was NO WAY she was coming to me, and she called my bluff.  There was NO WAY I was going to trek through shin high water to get her.  We had a standoff, I won, and eventually I finally got to ride for what felt like the first time in ages.  In the end, it was a good ride.  It felt so good to be back in the saddle again.  There is nothing in the world quite like the view from a horse’s back.