Happy Fluffy Things
| May 3, 2023 | Posted by Melinda under Uncategorized |
I named this post “Happy Fluffy Things”, sat down to write it, and realized after banging out 900 words that perhaps it wasn’t quite as fluffy as I had thought. But, I’m letting the title ride. (heh heh heh. “ride”)
Looks like I get a second chance at *something again.
You know Farley?
That brown horse that that appeared semi-regularly here on the blog for over a decade?
Who self-retired herself a while back because of a string of bad luck injuries and rider life-circumstances?
She might..just might…be back.
*polo was my other “second chance” at something. Maybe as I get older more second chances happen? But right now second chances seem like an incredible stroke of unbelievable luck.
A few months ago a friend said she wanted to do a ride a tie and maybe get into endurance. She’s from the polo world but is dreaming of seeing pretty trails between a set of ears.
I offered myself and Farley. Ride and Ties are perfect for creaky old endurance horses that have a few more miles to get in before the run across the rainbow, and Farley was looking far too fit and sound running around her paddock at 24 years old. If she wasn’t going to look retired, then she could be not-retired.
Plus, a ride and tie had the bonus of me not having to ride the incredibly jack-hammer rough pony for longer than it was required to find my partner and make her climb on it, AND, if I ran really really really fast, maybe she wouldn’t catch me again and I wouldn’t have to climb back onto it.
It was a good plan.
But then we realized that this friend needed an introduction to endurance style trail riding. So, I signed them up for the Cache Creek Intro Ride, 12.5 miles of fun and hills.
It’s been about 5 years since Farley was asked to do anything but low level arena rides and since she’s been quite Miss Sassy Pants on the trail, I decided that I was old enough not to deal with her BS and someone *else* could deal with that first month of legging up so I shipped her little hiney to my local friend and trainer and said “good luck. She’s 24. If she drops over dead of an aneurysm or strangulating lipoma, it’s not your fault.”
I picked her up yesterday.
I wasn’t sure what to expect.
This is a horse that I’ve owned and ridden for 16+ years. We’ve done a lot of things, been a lot of places, and ridden a lot of miles.
I’m going to be completely honest. I wanted Amber to like her. I think she’s something pretty darn special but what if I was all wrong? What if, like they say about your own children, she’s not as talented or as special as I thought? Beyond a few catch rides here and there, I’ve been her only rider. What if she’s actually terrible because I was doing it all wrong?
What if I don’t actually know what I’m talking about, or what I’m doing, and I’m completely wrong about EVERYTHING.
It seems silly to gush over something like this in a 700-1000 word post (my average word length on a post). There’s no lesson learned. There’s not really even a story. There’s just this.
Amber said she was clone-able.
She validated every single thing I’ve ever said about Farley.
She’s a beast. She’s incredibly intelligent. She’s solid, and trustworthy, and a talented endurance horse. Even at 24 years of age and 5-6 years off, Amber never found her bottom on a trail ride. She doesn’t ride or act like a 24 year old horse and if I didn’t have the papers and was friends with the breeder, you might be tempted say she was still in her mid teens. She’s a beginner safe, confident kid level horse in the arena, but she is a no nonsense professional on the trail. “Bring her back whenever you don’t have time to ride and need her tuned up,” she called to me as I loaded Farley into the trailer. This horse may have some miles left in her after all.
I can’t take credit for any of those things really. Because she has always been who she is. But here’s something I’m incredibly proud of.
She’s sound.
She just spent a month legging up and she’s still sound.
All that other stuff? That’s all on her.
The fact that at 24 years old she’s still sound enough to pass without question at an endurance ride vet in is a little bit of her, and a little bit of me. <3. I think we both get to take some credit, along with Lady Luck.
She may not stay sound. She may die tomorrow of some stupid horse thing. She may crash and burn at Cache Creek this weekend. But right now, today….that little brown mare that has a lot more grey on her this season than when I bought her is going to ride again.
I didn’t realize how much I missed her.
She’s ruined me for other endurance horses and I didn’t know much the validation from someone I trusted that I got to ride one of the “good ones” would mean to me. I got to experience endurance from the back of a really good horse and I’m content if my involvement as a rider in the sport of endurance ends for me with her.
I have a second chance for a few more rides before we say goodbye. How cool is that?
