Untouchable

Here's the horse that was almost untouchable 3 days ago.

Oh, hello.  Isn't my tiny hourglass snip adorable?

She now readily comes up to me to check in, wants to stay by me, doesn't crowd but is very friendly.

This photo pretty much sums it up: cautious but interested.

She is wearing my dear Ben's beautiful old leather halter.  I kept it in memory of him, but I didn't know when I'd ever have a horse again with a delicate little head for it to fit on.  It was actually pretty emotional taking it out and remembering him and when I first bought him the halter--I saved to get it, I wanted the best I could buy, something that looked as lovely as he did.  He had the perfect teacup muzzle and such a beautiful face.

It's funny how one piece of equipment can have some many memories.  So many times I put it on him to take him out for grazing, spending time with him, how many hundreds of times he wore it over the years when we were together.

Ben in June 2007, wearing his new halter at age 23

It's painful to remember.  In a strange way, passing the halter down to tiny horse helps me to let go...to move on a little bit, and to let part of him be in the world again, instead of just in my memories. 

Ironically, tiny horse's head is so tiny that the halter looks huge on her.  But I think she'll grow into it fine.

I also got her to eat a carrot today.  Finally gave it a try and discovered they are pretty good.  She still prefers hay though.

Dinnertime!

 

Don't worry Chev, the blog hasn't forgotten about you.

 I have a snip tooooo

Hi Grandma & Grandpa! I have news.

It has been a joke in my family for many years that I would never have children.  I remember I decided this shortly after the birth of my little brother, which happened when I was 3.  Now that we're grown ups, I love him dearly.  Apparently I didn't feel that way when he first arrived.  My parents haven't given up all hope on me--yet.

So Mom and Dad, this post is for you.

I want to preface this with an acknowledgement of just how much trouble I am going to be in when you read this.  I want to also mention that I have been literally dreading phoning you for days and having this conversation.

It's not an attempt to suck up (it's probably a little late for that), but I truly, truly have the best parents in the world.  They are so kind, loving, and supportive, and though they don't really understand my equine or artistic endeavors they understand that both are really important to me.  It's not the life they would have chosen--and probably not the life they would have chosen for me--but they understand that it is my life, and they love me anyway.

Or...they did before this post, anyway.  Mom and Dad--call me as soon as you're done reading this, okay?  I'll be right by the phone.

Are you sitting down?  Presumably you are, since you're reading this on a computer...

Then let me introduce you to your second equine grandchild...

She doesn't have a name yet.  Will you help me name her?

This is the filly I fell head over heels for 3 months ago down in La Salle, CO.  Her registered name is Hollywoods Lil Sugar.  I went down to see her--twice--absolutely tried to talk myself out of it, tried to out-do her by looking at approximately 100,000 horse ads online...and nothing even came close.

Horses like this don't just pop up everywhere.  She is exactly what I've been looking for over the last year.  Except maybe the color...but I'll admit, the palomino look is growing on me.

It's been 2 years since I lost my old guy to cancer...and I am finally ready to have two horses again.

For a while there I even had 3, remember, Mom and Dad?  

Who am I kidding.  There is no way to really justify this to a non-horse person (read: a SANE person or persons, i.e. your parents, who already think you're nuts for moving one horse across the country).

Now I have 2 to move back home.  But I will do it, even if I have to stay here through another winter to raise the funds to make it happen.

But there are certain advantages to having 2 equines...

The major one being they can be kept in a pasture together with minimal worry that fences will be crashed through as lone horse tries desperately to get in with the herd down the road.

They have each other for companionship.

I've had 1 horse for 3 years, 2 horses for 4 years (3 for close to a year while I rehabbed a little black mare--more on her another time).  I know how much work, time and money they are already.

And if she wasn't just what I was looking for, I would have passed.  Believe me.  The 100,000 horse ads is probably not that much of an exaggeration.  I am very picky.

See, the deal is:  this is the first time I've had enough experience with ownership to know exactly what I'm looking for in a horse.

Ben was my first.  And bless his heart, he was the best first horse I could have asked for.  He was just what I needed and I still miss him like crazy.

Keelan bought Chevelle at auction as a 2 1/2 year old.  She had been handled, saddled, and could be sat on--she taught me a lot, especially that I could bring a horse up from not much training (especially since she was thrown out to pasture for 6 months before I did much with her), when to ask for help, and how to have the confidence to figure things out myself.  She has been very forgiving of the many training mistakes I've made over the years.  I love her dearly, but she is unregistered, very tall, and not built correctly for a lot of the horse sports I'm interested in.

Little black mare was a horse in desperate need.  I found her while horse shopping for a friend of mine.  She was a great little mare, auction-bound, owned by a clueless family, exceedingly overweight, very reactive, had probably been gamed & cowboy'd all over the place--I took her on the spot--and with proper exercise and consistent, calm training, she was a dynamite little horse with a killer stop.  She went to a lady who wanted to use her for trail riding, and it was a perfect fit.

So this horse is the first horse after Ben that I really get to choose for ME.  I wanted something small, reining-bred with the best bloodlines I could find, REGISTERED, show quality, highly trainable, kind, young, and not overly handled--and I knew I wanted a filly.  I wanted something with a big, kind eye.  I wanted plenty of time to work with the youngun before it was time to start saddle training, so I knew I wanted a 2 year old.  Of course looks up the wazoo didn't hurt anything.  She really fit the bill.

Not to mention, Chev is absolutely thrilled to not be alone in her pasture anymore--especially since the neighbors she did have moved up the road and out of sight--although for now, little filly is still in a pen while she learns easy catching, haltering, leading well, and picking up one's feet for the farrier.

The complication to this story is--after I had bought the filly (but before I had her hauled up here), the SO informed me that he intends to take an interview offered to him for a foreman position in Vancouver, WA.  They fly him out on June 11th.  I thought I had several months to save up the funds for horse transport, but if they want him (and I would just about KILL to live near Portland, my family, and my friends again, so that would be fine by me!) then we could be moving fast, fast, fast.  I'm looking into horse contacts coming out this way in the summer for the breed & World shows, and with a little luck should be able to hitch them a ride back with someone.  Anyone with barn recommendations in the Vancouver area (especially pasture board!), let me know!  I will be forever grateful to you.  (I'm lookin' at you, Mona!)

So...pictures.  Lots more pictures.

Big doe eyes and the tiniest, cutest snip I have ever seen.

Tiny horse

Tiny horse is ravenous

Tiny horse is tiny compared to monster horse

"Oh, hello.  Your hair is really messed up."

 "Who are you?  We are friends?"

 Ladies on alert

So that's my update--talk to you soon, Mom and Dad.

(Footnote:  SCENE: Kitchen of lovingly remodeled ranch-style 1970s home.  It is mid-morning.  The is an orange cat meandering around yowling even though he's already been fed.  Megan's father is reading the newspaper at the kitchen table next to his coffee cup which is half full.  Her mother is seated at the computer.  She is browsing a horse blog.  Suddenly she gasps, and exclaims

Megan's Mom:  "Oh my God--Alan!  Megan HAS ANOTHER HORSE!"

Megan's Dad:  "You're kidding!"

                                                                            ~FIN~                                                                          )

Loss & the horse

In my moments of anguish, I turn to horses.

I think I've always been this way, in my heart.  I remember some nights dragging my melancholy self down to the barn just so I could put my arms around Ben, lean into his neck and have him support my weight.  He was such a calming presence.  He didn't ask me what was wrong, or try to pat me on the shoulder.  He was just there, always.

I learned tonight that an old riding friend of mine's mother just passed away from cancer.  I remember her as a cheerful woman, so kind, obviously very supportive of her daughter's interest in horses.  She never had a problem picking her daughter up from a freezing barn at 7:00 in the evening on a school night.  They were very close, and my heart just breaks for her and her family.  I wonder if she has any horses in her life now.

It reminds me of another mother.  When I was so young, too young, I was in love with a boy who went away to school in California.  I was very close with his mother, Maureen.  She was a special lady, and I felt comfortable with her from the first minute we met, which is something for me, being the nervous sort.  I remember we visited her in the hospital on prom night, clip clopping down the big white hallways in our fancy shoes, with the smell of hospital air all around us.  I remember him telling me that he knew she would be all right because she was such a strong lady.  I believed him.  He left for school, with his mother's blessing.

She rapidly worsened.  She died in February of my senior year, only a few months into her son's first year away at school.  He returned in time to see her before she went, but I don't think he ever got over the guilt of leaving her.  I remember sitting in the back row of the church at her memorial service, and I remember I couldn't stop all the tears that were coming out of my head.  I just couldn't stop them.  My heart broke for him and came out my eyes.  He didn't even know I was there that day.

Shortly after that I lost my faith in horses.  I stopped taking lessons, I avoided barns and horse people, and I sought out my comforts in other things.  I threw myself into school, my new boyfriend, and my college plans.

I, too, went away--even if it was just the university in town.  I lost my beloved childhood cat that year, and my paternal grandmother.

I didn't really find my way back to horses until my sophomore year in college.  I started taking lessons again and riding with the IHSA team.  I remembered how much I had missed them, their smell, and the weak feeling in my legs after a challenging ride.  I purposely formed "anti-relationships" with them.  I didn't want to get attached.  I came, I rode, I left.  I went, I showed, I left.

At the beginning of my senior year, I made perhaps the most foolish purchase of my life.

I bought Ben.

Ben was everything, absolutely everything to me.  I boarded him at my childhood stable, and every time I saw him he was more beautiful, more healthy, more vibrant than the day before.  I brought him back from the brink, and I think in no small way, he returned the favor.

I loved him recklessly all the days I knew him for the rest of his life.  Despite chiropractic work and careful saddle fitting, he had an annoying head flip and a one-leaded canter--but I didn't care.  I could throw my saddle on him and we could go anywhere.  Along the trail in the warm summer sun I picked one blackberry for him, one for me, one for him, one for me...the summer he returned fully to health is one of my most treasured summers.  When I wasn't working to pay his board and feed bills, I spent all the time I could at the barn with him.

He was the healing my soul needed after I lost my cat.  He let me love him with all I had, and we understood each other.

I think I understand as well as most people how it hurts to lose someone you love.  If I'm sure of anything, it's that we have all lost.  I quake to think of losing a parent, as my old riding friend just did--I really don't think about it because I can't bare to.  But I have lost grandparents, uncles, friends, cats and my Ben.  I understand that deep hurt is the price that life exacts for love.

And it is worth it. 

When a good friend of mine was going through a catatonic breakup recently (I tried everything to get her off the couch), I tried to persuade her to come out to the barn with me, to just be in the open air around horses again.  She wouldn't.  I understand horses aren't therapy for everyone--but they are for me.

And Chev is my only horse baby now.  She enjoys a position of privilege, but I'll never allow my heart to be quite as free with her as it was with Ben. 

Still, I'll always remember her and how she was on the day of Ben's death. 

When I led her over to his body so that she could see he was gone, she ate the spring grass around him, and went over to him with her nose.  I worried that she might try to hurt him--an irrational fear!--that she might paw at him and damage him, my boy, gone forever.  But she just calmly whuffed him, smelled his face and his mane.  She went back to him four or five times, in between mouthfuls of grass.  She accepted that he was gone.

And when I saw her, and I stood with the SO, and we looked at her together, I felt like I had lost one of my children.  And I knew that somehow she would be my healing from the loss of him.  She was living proof that life goes on.  I pledged that I would make sure she had everything that he had lacked for in his life before me, that she would never know hunger or ill-treatment or neglect.  She gave me a mission.

So I put great stock in the healing powers of horses.  She isn't as patient with me as Ben was, but I'm older now.  I am wiser now.  I understand her as a unique being, one who loves deeply but in a different way.

And I can't help thinking that somehow, no matter what, horses turn out to be just what I need.

 2008:  Ben at 24; Chev, 3

Brands

What would you do if your horse was lost or stolen?

Do you have paperwork that proves you are the owner without a shadow of a doubt?

I don't.

Baby Chev with her dam, 2005

Chev's story is, for me, pretty heartbreaking.  She is by Classical Hancock, who apparently stood at the Turkey Track Ranch in TX, and also near Creswell, OR at some point.  My attempts at finding him over the years have failed.

She is out of a mare with a name something like Diamond Skip.  That can't be quite right though, because that registered name belongs to a stud.  She was a buckskin with a thin blaze, and supposedly a Doc O'Lena bred mare.

The girl who brought her to the auction had purchased the dam already bred.  They tried to get the papers on the mare for the sake of the foal, but the man who sold her to them wouldn't hand them over.

Eventually he admitted to switching the papers on another mare he had sold.

Besides that being incredibly illegal--somewhere out there is a buckskin mare being bred on with papers that aren't hers--it breaks my heart knowing I have a talented, lovely, pure-bred quarter horse and no way of obtaining her the papers she deserves.

It has closed off her ancestry to me forever.

It eliminates her from showing at any quarter horse shows, and, of course, renders her unable to be bred (even if she had the front legs and the show record to support that notion).  I'm certainly okay with the no-breeding thing--Lord knows there are plenty of nice horses in the world already--but not being able to paper her really annoys me.

Likely she'll carry the stigma of being a grade horse the rest of her life.

To counter her lack of papers, I've felt like she needs all the more training.  She needs to have something to fall back on--something you can only get through hard work and education.

In the meantime, she is a totally sorrel mare, with a nondescript star and snip.

Could I prove she was mine?  No.

I don't have a shred of paper to prove it, aside from the auction slip that's in my friend's name.

And that's why I'm going ahead with branding.

I've been combing through the huge, 196-page CD of abandoned Wyoming brands.  There are a few I like, but I think I might take a shot at designing my own.

 Available abandoned brands, page 1

It seems like a good use of most of my tax return this year.  Wyoming is a "brand state", so their laws are very strict regarding the transfer of animals with brands.  You can even get your truck and trailer impounded for transporting animals with brands for which you have no documentation.

Since I'm not stealing livestock, this is all very comforting for me.

Available abandoned brands, page 2

I've spent months researching branding procedure.  I've found a company in Texas to fabricate the freeze branding iron out of copper alloy to increase the chance that it will come out well.  I have a local vet lined up with many years of experience freeze branding who can dose out sedatives to help her stand still.

I'm ready.  Now all I need is a brand registered with the state of Wyoming.

Possible brand design--Crown Cee Bar

I've had a lot of people ask me why I'm wanting to brand my horse.

I have a few reasons, but these are the major ones:

1. A brand is a permanent form of ID that is not easily altered or removed.

2. A registered brand is prima facie evidence of ownership--it's like a title for your horse.

3. Brands deter theft.

4. Auctions and feedlots are required to check paperwork and ownership if a horse carries a brand.

I'm not considering microchipping at this point for a few reasons.  Microchips for horses aren't standard--very few large animal vets, stock yards, and auction houses have or use a chip scanner.  Also, there isn't a set location for chip placement, and a horse is a large animal.  During my 3 year stint at the veterinary hospital, I saw chips migrate everywhere.  Standard chip location for dogs and cats is in the scruff, at the base of the neck.  One ended up way down a dog's leg.  Imagine the subdermal surface area on a horse.  And lastly, if a chip is located, it's just a quick local-anesthesia nip to remove it.

All my kitties are chipped, though!

My gelding's freeze brand was the only way I was able to track down his history.  His papers were lost.  But his brand restored his identity, and I'll be forever grateful to his breeder for branding him.

Even at 25, his Arabian breed freeze brand, birth year and ID 

number were still clearly visable

So...what would you do if your horse was lost or stolen?  Could you prove ownership?  Would he be able to find his way back to you?

Ben

Ben was my first horse.  In so many ways, he was my great love.  I remember so well the rock of his canter, the fearless way he pushed through branches on the trail, and how much he loved to eat blackberry leaves.

Unfortunately for Ben, he wasn't always loved.  He came to me starved, dull, and hopeless.

Ben's life before me is mostly a mystery.  I took these photos of him the first week I had him, when the life was just starting to come back into his eyes.

He had an AHA freezebrand on the right side of his neck, and I was able to track down his lost history and his lost name.  He was bred by Clark and Nancy Hickman and registered as Baskovia, son of Segovia (Cal-O-Bask x Ellise) and Brass Button (Shurfix x El Nimrah).  He was born in 1984, the same year as me.  He had a show record and placed well as a breeding stallion in AHA rated halter shows throughout the Pacific Northwest.  He was gelded at 4 and trained for English Pleasure, but his show record went cold and his trail stopped the year he turned 7.

Then, in 2005, as a 21 year old, skin and bones with a split hoof and a tail cropped to the bone--the mark of a "slaughter only" horse--he resurfaced in a feedlot in Yakima, Washington, awaiting transport to slaughter in Canada.

But that wasn't to be his fate, and by September he was mine.

First week home in 2005: skin and bones.

I boarded him at the small stable I grew up riding in, up a windy, forested road in South Eugene, Oregon.

His eyes became bright again and his weight returned.  That first summer, he shed out into a beautiful, bright shiny bay.  I took this picture of him in 2007, just before his 23rd birthday: finally his weight was where it should be, and he was his happy and calm self, secure in knowing he wasn't going anywhere without me.

I couldn't believe how lucky I was.  For me, he was the perfect horse: sensitive, willing, brave, and incredibly loving.  

I'll have many stories to tell of our time together throughout this blog.  Some of my fondest memories are of him resting his velvet muzzle against my face, braiding his mane while he grazed outside, and cantering him down the riverside trails he loved so much.

 Our first schooling show, in April of 2006.

He left this world in my arms, and I couldn't have asked for a more perfect horse.  He was my life, and he left it looking like a million bucks, just shy of his 26th birthday.

A sunny day in the pasture with Chev, 2007.

Chev and I miss you, Binner.  But you live on in my memories.  And there are so many stories to tell.

His last evening on pasture with his love, Chev. June 13, 2010.

Lightness, or how your horse knows not to dump you in your moment of vulnerability

So, mugwump brought up a great point today.

She said she has one moment where she is completely vulnerable to her horse.  The moment when she swings into the saddle.

For some reason, over all the years she had trained and worked with rank youngsters, no horse to date had taken advantage of it.

I loved this post, because like most of hers it got me thinking a little about my relationship with horses.

We all have our vulnerable moments in the saddle.  (and out, for that matter.)

I feel like it's a bad idea even mentioning this, but it's been a long time since I've fallen off.

A really long time.

The more time that passes, the more nervous it makes me.

The last time I fell off was shortly after I got my gelding, Ben.

I remember I was schooling him in German sliding side reins in the lower arena.  We had just finished our workout.  You know the saying, "a tired horse is a safe horse"?  That saying doesn't really apply to the hot breeds.  About half the time, Arabs are just as amped at the end of a workout.  Especially when you are just getting to know each other.

I remember picking at something on the saddle, and Ben skittering out from under me at the noise I was making with my fingernail.  I stuck with him just fine.  I distinctly remember thinking it would be a good idea to continue making the noise, so that he would understand it was nothing to fear.

Next I know I'm the victim of Arabian horse teleporting ability, and I'm on my ass in the shavings.  He's come over and is giving me the usual sheepish look horses give you when you unexpectedly end up on the ground.

But I think in some ways, I was giving him permission to dump me.

If you can call it that.

I guess it would be more appropriate to say I was giving myself permission to fall off.

Of course, I didn't think that would happen.  It had been a couple years before that since I'd hit the dirt.  You may remember from my earlier post that I grew up riding young Arabians, I fell off a lot as a kid and eventually developed sticking ability and a sixth sense for spooks.  I considered myself pretty hot shit for sitting spooks.

I totally did not see this one coming. 

But at the same time, it was okay.  Ben was not going anywhere.  I was completely in love, and nothing he could do would change my love for him.

I didn't have another fall off him before the end of his life, 5 years later, even though I did plenty of stupid things.  He never behaved in any way but exactly as I expected him to.  Steady, steady, steady.

But that first and only time, it was almost as if he needed to know what I would do if I fell off.

I'll never know what landed him at the feedlot a few hundred miles from the Canadian slaughterhouses, but I would be damned if he ever had another day of his life where he felt scared, starved or alone.

And I never let him down.  I held him in my arms when he breathed his last breath, when the vet and I were unable to save him.  I was able to give him peace, and to be there every step of the way, to tell him he was loved.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is we had an unspoken understanding.

From the day when I picked my butt up off the sawdust of the lower arena, gathered his reins, and swung up on his back without any fear or anger, we were bonded to each other.  I would do whatever I could to make sure he knew he was loved and respected, and he did the same for me.  Although he was an Arabian, he was never a spooky horse after that.  I think he trusted me with his whole being, and something in him relaxed.

He became the best trail horse I could have hoped for--he was fearless and went anywhere I pointed him.

Though it's been near two years since his passing, I still miss him every day and the bond we had with one another.  I gave my whole heart to him, and he did the same for me.  I think it's hard to ever love as freely as you do with the first horse you lose.  But the hole in my heart is the proof I carry for the love I had for him.

I wish we had been allowed more time together.  I wish I had found him sooner.  But I wouldn't trade the five years I had with him for anything in the world.

So what is it about horses that allows them to trust us?  How can they see our weaknesses, and decide not to take advantage of them?

Chevelle can buck like a bronco.  She is Hancock, after all.  The bucks and twists she throws loose in the arena or at the end of a lunge line are awesome to behold.  Sixteen hands and 1200 pounds of baby sorrel fury.  Any time she stumbled, she'd come out of it bucking like a maniac.  (this has improved a little with age and balance, thankfully.)

So needless to say, combined with my lack of fall experience in the last many years, I am pretty scared of falling off.

I have had her going under saddle for three years.  I had a lovely, sensitive-minded girl just starting out her training biz work with her for 30 days as a 3 year old, while I watched proudly from the sidelines, trying to learn something.  Chev didn't know much, but she was honest.  If she stumbled, she'd toss a few half-hearted bucks out the back while she tried to find her feet again.

I think the fear I have of her going into a hard buck frenzy is palpable.  I must communicate that somehow, because she's never thrown any more than a little dolphin hop with me in the saddle, and not even that for the past year or so.

So how does she know?  And even more strangely--why doesn't she take advantage of my fear?

Sounds like I've got some more questions to ponder.

A little about me

I, like so many of you, have been in love with horses since I was a little girl.

I could outdraw my mom at age 4.

And just about all those doodles were horses.

My uncle was a showjumper who owned and leased some pretty nice Thoroughbreds.  My first ride was in front of him in the saddle, on his leased mare, dam of his jumper, Top Secret.  I was 3.

I was hooked.

For as long as I could remember, when in the backseat of my parent's car, I used to imagine I was outside, racing a fast horse along the car.  Jumping over any fence that got in our way.

Unfortunately for me, aside from my uncle I was the only one in my family bitten by the horse bug.  I saved all my birthday money and started in English lessons when I was 9.  At 10, I met my dear friend Mo, who was horse nutty like me.  She lived out of town and had several horses.

I remember so clearly packing up sandwiches in her old saddlebags, running down to the barn, and riding the horses all day.  We meandered through the creek, over slippery meadows and up logging roads.  We were gone for hours at a time.  It was heaven.  It was also my introduction to how sweet the quarter horse could be, and how unpredictable the mustang could be.

I took lessons weekly with several instructors and trainers for many years, and I learned the basics of huntseat, dressage, and jumping.  All my lesson horses were Arabians, and when I began riding, most were 6 or 7 years old.  Seems like I fell off weekly.  They would spook so rapidly, it was all I could do to stay in the saddle.  But I learned the art of velcro-butt, and the emergency dismount.  I learned a lot in those years.  Maybe the most valuable lesson I learned was to be light.

Arabians don't trouble with a heavy hand or a heavy leg.  They just dump you.  And I love them for that.

I showed in the IHSA circuit for two years in college, and that was a great experience.  Showing a horse you've never ridden taught me to be a quick study.  You had about 4 seconds to figure them out on the way into the ring.

There I rode warmbloods, quarter horses, paints, polo ponies, green horses, and broncos.  I even showed in a western class when we were short a person.

It was my first introduction to western riding.

When I was in my last year of college, I adopted my first horse, Baskovia.  I called him Ben.  He was 21 at the time, the same age as me.  He was a lost prince.  I had him for five wonderful years.  Part of my heart went with him the day I laid him to rest.

He was an ex-English Pleasure horse, and I doubt he'd ever seen a trail before he was mine.  He was fearless in the woods, and I rode him all over the place.  As long as we had each other, he would go anywhere.

In 2007, I brought home my filly, Chevelle.  Ben loved her and finally had a companion with him in the pasture.  She loved him and was always gentle and kind to him, though she was only 2, she was already nearly twice his size.

I began working with Chev when she turned 3 in 2008.

It was obvious her desire was to be a western pleasure horse.  I was able to get some excellent western instruction from a trainer who worked briefly with Chev in 2010.

I moved her with me halfway across the country in 2011, to Wyoming.  I'm continuing her physical training by myself, but I know enough to know I don't know much at all--and I rely heavily on books, other horsemen, and horsemanship theory that has been passed down through the years.

I look forward to every day of our journey together.  And she is turning in to a handy little horse, in spite of me.