Friday, May 22, 2015
A few posts ago I talked about doing epic things with very non-epic steps on a very regular basis. Today marks just about 10 months since I brought Khaleesi home and in less than a year we’ve gone from barely halter broke to a real riding horse on her way to being an endurance athlete.
In a way it is a full-circle kind of day. End of July 2014 we loaded her (kicking and rearing) onto my little trailer and brought her to the farm to begin a journey. Now, end of May 2015 I loaded her by myself (for the first time!) willingly onto that same little trailer and brought her home again from a few weeks on vacation in Big Valley after trail riding her alone for the first time.
In between those very different trailer rides I’ve gone from a green horse-crazy girl with many doubts about my ability to lead this journey to a more confident, and hopefully more experienced horse-crazy girl who is coming out of my first year of EQUUS university a better horse person and a better person person too.
During those 10 months there were a million tiny steps. We tried to have one new, even if incremental and tiny, step every session. In early mornings in the late summer, when I’d take my coffee and portable chair out to sit in the pen with her and completely ignore her in hopes eventually she would just come near me- I couldn’t imagine that in less than a year I would ride her alone. I wasn’t sure I would ever ride her period at that point. Thankfully she’s been a great sport and a good teacher and she was a good first horse for me to work with.
So now we continue onward to get better communication on the trail, more fine tuning, and solid conditioning. Not only does she need cardio strength (that is going well), but her muscles and tendons will take more time to set. Steady, reasonable, work (without over-doing it) will be our goal so that she is not prone to injury as we push on in her future.
During the time of graduations and end of school year activities, I feel that Khaleesi and I can celebrate that our first “school year” is coming to an end, and we have a graduation of sorts as well. We are moving on to the next chapter (grad school) She has the basics and I hope she might enter her first AERC (Limited Distance) ride in the Fall. We are far from finished with our studies, but we made it through our undergrad and are ready to continue! We’ll keep you posted as we keep moving toward the 100!
green to 100 