Faithfulness
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We had been looking for a small gentle horse to help us with our kids program for quite a while. We also wanted my horse crazy two year old son to have one to call his own. Ultimately, we ended up with a sweet 13 hand haflinger named Daisy. We love her. Daisy came to us from an adoring owner who could no longer care for her. When Daisy first arrived she was like a fish out of water. The poor girl was not expecting to be ambushed by four half wild horses who wanted to “jump her into their gang”. Though tensions were high the first week, Daisy was…
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Be Thou Prepared
Before hopping on your horse, it is very important to make sure that you are ready. How can you be ready to ride a horse? Well if you have any intention on riding a horse, you better make sure you have some kind of connection with her. This connection can come from years of hanging out together, or from simply spending some very intentional time together prior to riding. This usually means grooming, groundwork, etc. You cannot ride a horse whose spirit is intact without first making a connection, trust me. Now if you have a connection with the horse you intend to ride, but your mind is elsewhere, you…
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Fear of Falling
This was one of the last times that I rode my horse, Zoey without a helmet. It was one of many blissfully free rides. I would pop over to the field with nothing but a rope, hop aboard Zoey and take off. Free as the wind. To be completely honest, I treasure these rides in my memory and understand why people don’t always ride with helmets. Heck, I don’t even like to ride with shoes most of the time. As wonderfully primal as it felt to meet my horse in her natural habitat and ride her with nothing but total faith, something was bound to go wrong at some point.…
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Humbled
Since my mom first put me on her comfortable horsey back, my horse Zoey and i have had many ups and downs. All those years ago i was a disillusioned young adult, tainted by the world and the poor choices i had made. My mom put me on her back that fall day, after news of a dear friend’s death by drug overdose. She put me on Zoey’s back because she knew that this small act would be balm for my hurting heart. I didn’t yet know the saving grace of Jesus Christ, but i did shortly after. Since this first moment with my now beloved chestnut mare, i have…
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Training the Trainer
This is one of our volunteers, Alyssa, with our mustang, Pepper. You could say that both Pepper and Alyssa are green. Green is a term that is used in the horse world to describe horses that are barely trained, or not trained at all. One thing that my mom and i have been working on is training Alyssa to train Pepper. As you can imagine, this is a tall order. For us, it is very important for our volunteers to understand the heart of our style of horsemanship which is relationship. As long as the concept of relationship is kept at the forefront of our volunteers’ minds, all other aspects…
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The Mark
Recently my mom, Jules, has begun a new form of liberty training with our horses, utilizing a raised square object that we call a mark. Out of our four horses, Pepper might be considered our most mischievous and stubborn horse. However, he is the only one of our horses who willingly, and readily walks right up onto the mark, whenever we ask, without a second thought. Any chance to step up onto his precious mark is happily taken by Pepper, in fact, my mom has actually begun rewarding him with the mark! The mark is Pepper’s happy place. It is the only place where we can get him to stand…