My plan is to excavate old blog posts and cut and paste them here for posterity’s sake, but am excited to post on my own blog on my own website.
Next stop, Oprah!
It has been an exciting spring for us. I am presently staring down a rapidly slowing work schedule for the summer — a blessing and a curse, as it is every year at this time. Clients prefer not to schedule training during the summer months, when employees are vacationing, which allows me a break, but also a period of time with lower income.
This summer’s plan is chock-full:
- Work on query letters in the hopes of wrangling a publisher for my book (more on this later)
- Get myself as fit as possible (I’ve fallen off the wagon a bit in the past month or so)
- Spend quality time with my niecelets, who are 10, 12 and coming 14 this year — I am well aware they will be too cool to spend time with Mean Aunt Patti in short order (the fact that they have a POOL is absolutely NO reason that I like spending time with them during the summer)
- Get the horses fit as fiddles, and hopefully get Ace and Sarge through a hundred this season
- Take good care of Richard, who is facing some health challenges recently
One development that tickles me no end is the stellar way my veteran horse, Ned, has come back to fitness this year. At sixteen, and with a challenging temperament and conformation, he’s managed to accrue 2000 or so miles, he doesn’t owe me a thing. (It’s a mantra of sorts when I talk about managing Ned. “He doesn’t owe me a thing.”)
However, from the moment he got re-shod in April after the winter off, he has clearly viewed himself the equine version of all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips.
The timing of his joie de vivre has inversely matched the soundness issues of the competition horses of our friend, Rachel Lodder. Both her gelding and her mare are struggling with on/off lamenesses, so I offered to let her ride one of my two boys as she is able. (It’s often said that the way to keep your primary horse sound is to have a back-up horse, and it’s been true for me. Both Ace and Ned plugging along without issue. <knocking wood, saying a fervent Hail Mary>)
A few weekends ago, Rachel met Rich and me at Allegany State Park so that she could try out each of the boys for several miles on trail.
It was classic.
She rode Ace first, and he was his earnest self. Straightforward and rateable and “up” but charmingly well behaved.
I took the initial spin on Ned, who despite having only a half dozen or so hacks under his belt this season, was uber-charged. Leaping and bucking and cantankerous, trotting roughly six inches off the earth’s surface while simultaneously contemplating complete airborne take-off, Rachel glanced back at us and wondered aloud if “something was bothering him.”
Errrr. No. The better Ned feels, the bigger a punk he is, I explained. To get to know Ned is to realize he’s been blessed with adequate personality for several equines. If Ned is being a complete jackass, fear not — well, except perhaps for your safety and well-being — but fear not for him; all is well in Ned World. If he’s subdued and submissive, it’s time to worry.
After five miles, we swapped horses and saddles, and almost immediately headed up a long climb, cantering and then walking in intervals. Offering up baptism by fire, Ned plunged and bucked his way up the hill, matching the other two far-fitter horses stride-for-stride.
Ned is back. Step aside, lesser beings.
And all the while, my little anal-retentive-control-freak wheels were spinning … Just a month or so I had lamented to Rich that what we really needed for Ned was a junior rider, who weighed about 100 pounds and was an expert equestrian. Ned has some sacro-iliac issues, suspected to be kissing spine, and I am no featherweight. (And back to the mantra, he doesn’t owe me a thing.) I refuse to ask him to do anything that might cause him harm.
Rachel, while a decade or two beyond being a junior, is a tiny little sprite and an extremely capable rider.
Mayhap we have formed a love match?
As fate would have it, my dressage instructor, Dorothy, who had been slated to pilot Ned around the 25 mile LD (limited distace) ride at Hornswaggle last weekend, had to stick close to home to keep her eye on two foaling mares. So Rachel accepted the ride on Ned.
Ned likes Rachel. How can I tell? Well, he dragged her delightedly around camp when we took the boys for a hand graze. He tried to nip both of us as we tacked him up for the start. And every single time I saw them in camp or on trail, Ned had that look of eagles, fresh as a daisy and clearly delighted about carrying virtually HALF the usual weight. All he needed was a cape to confirm his identity as Super Ned.
Rachel reported that he attempted to pull a few hijinks on trail, but that a quick arret or a firm word put him back in his place. He ate like a pig at the hold, and I warned Rachel that Ned not eating was a serious reason for concern, and then headed back out cheerfully, accompanying our friend Sylvia and her young mare, Alouette, through the LD.
Richard and Sarge were amongst the first to finish the LD ride, looking grand.
Rachel and Ned were amongst the last, looking similarly grand.
I couldn’t be more proud of all of them.
Rachel and I are scheming Ned’s return to a 100, planning to toodle around the Canadian 100 on July 1st. Me and Ace (hopefully finishing his first one-day 100) and Rachel and Ned (getting around her first 100, and his sixth).
Fingers crossed, conditioning rides hitting the calendar, and this chick is completely and totally amped.
–Patti