This week was full and a blast. We started the week with 11 young girls wanting to spend time with their horses (whether they owned the horse or had borrowed one for the week didn’t seem to matter).
Each day we started with the girls learning to groom their horses. The horses made it challenging for some by rolling in fox tails, or wood chips. We also found several ticks on horses (according to our vet, tick season is suppose to be over. Someone should have told the ticks.).
We then spent some time riding in the arena learning to walk, stop, back and turn. Some were more advanced than others but many had ridden fewer than 5 times before this week. To make it a little more challenging we worked wtih some to learn side passing (where the horse crosses their feet to walk sideways and slightly forward).
To keep things interesting we also had a trail course area where the girls could learn to maneuver obstacles.
The cowboy curtain can be a challenge especially on windy days like this one. The curtain becomes a horse eating monster in the eyes of some horses.
Another challenge on this windy day was the pin-wheel flowers on the tires. These brave horses and riders figured out that the "flowers" posed no real threat.
The water box (aka mud pit) has been rumored among the horses to swallow them in just one step. That is why they cross as quickly as possible or not at all. The girls learned how to be confident and lead their horses through anyway.
Then there is the one show off in every crowd. This horse wanted to show everyone that she could stand on the mounting block. We didn't have any girls willing to give her a ride though. Around lunch time each day the girls took off the saddles and put their horses away for the day, making sure to brush them first. Then they learned to care for the horses’ stalls and runs. (yep you guessed it, they had to poop-scoop. Surprisingly very few complained and most helped each other to make the jobs go faster.)
After lunch we would walk down to the river and the girls went tubing and swimming. One young lady made herself a “hot tub” by blocking off the river with the large rocks around. The river itself is very cold but once it was allowed to stand still the sun warmed it up quite nicely.
The day always ended with a nice cool treat and good-byes to the girls’ horses.
We sure had a great week with these ladies.
1 comment:
That looked like a lot of fun! That would have been my dream when I was their age. I really love the obstacles they had to do in the arena. I would like to have those in my arena to practice on!
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