Thursday - 9/17/09

I did get to the barn last night.  Wednesday A took the chain saw to the path to KOW.  Now we can ride directly off the farm to KOW and it's miles and miles of trails!!  I'm terribly excited!!

I sort of adopted a kid last winter.  Her family doesn't have much money but she's horse crazy.  So I took her under my wing so to speak.  I gave her lessons on Dusty then later on some of A's horses.  A gave her her older mare, Misty.  Misty is an awesome babysitter but she's 26 and has had a hard life.  We've taken her to shows with Misty and she's got her own saddle and stuff.  Late this summer, Misty started going down hill.  She's just not capable of doing the things a 12 year old girl wants to do.  The other girls run barrels and stuff and Misty just can't do it.  She got a little thin so we made the girl quit riding her.  I tried and tried to get her to tell me what she wants to do.  The other girls run barrels.  A shows her walking horses.  And we all trail ride.  She said she wanted to run barrels.  So we hooked her up with one of A's horses.  He's a bit of a nut but for the most part he's good.  He scared her pretty bad and she decided she wanted to ride gaited horses.  So A let her ride Bonnie.  Bonnie is a super, super nice twh/ssh mare.  A was even talking about taking her to Shelbyville for the ssh celebration.  But it takes some effort to ride Bonnie well.  The kid really wasn't interested in that either.  Then school started.  All of a sudden, the kid had another way to get out of doing chores.  It'd been nearly a month since she'd been out.  So last night, I brought her to the barn.  One of the other girls has moved up barrel horses so Twister is currently riderless.  The kids were going to practise on barrels and we adults were going to ride out the back.  I asked the kid what she wanted to do.  She said she wanted to come with us.  So I had her ride Dusty.  That didn't suit either.  Dusty isn't smooth when you don't make him jog.  That hurt her butt so she doesn't want to ride him either.  I really don't know what to do.  She's not my kid.  I'm not going to tell her what she's going to do.  But then I might.  I may tell her that she can ride Dusty until he sells or she can ride Twister but either way she's going to have to ride and learn to ride that horse.  I'm frustrated and I don't know if maybe I'm interferring where I shouldn't. 

So A rode Bonnie, the kid rode Dusty, C rode Sammy and I rode Murray into KOW last night.  We had to ride along a couple bean fields to get there.  With all the rain we've had, the ground was very, very rough.  It's all flat, but rutted.  I was sooo proud of Murray.  My biggest fear is falling.  He was so surefooted!!  He didn't stumble even once.  He was just sauntering along.  We saw a couple deer and he barely pricked his ears at them.  Apparently Dusty spooked a couple times but Murray never did. 

We're headed to the Shawnee National Forest this weekend.  I'm nervous!!  I've only ridden there once and that was on Dusty and it scared the crap out of me.  This time I'm taking Murray.  I just worry that the steps and stuff will be too hard on him with packing me.  I may yet chicken out ....  We'll see.  I may take Dusty .....