Balance.

Horsemanship.

This is the path that led to my healing. The turning point that changed my life.

I am who I am today because of it.

So that brings us to the fun story of yesterday.

One of my teachers once quipped, "bareback riding is for children and porn stars."

Well, dangit, there's a child still inside my heart and I used to ride my old arab bareback all over the hills of Murrieta when I was a teen.

So yesterday, I rode in the shadow of mockery and found that it is sometimes utterly worth it to hop on my horse in his leather (bosal) hackamore, and dink around riding without a saddle.

In riding Drifter around cones placed in close proximity to one another (maybe 3 or 4 feet), I found an exercise that will be fun to try to accomplish with a little more feel, timing, and balance.

While carrying a soft feel, with accurate flexion,
can you jog a tight circle around the cones in both directions? 

If you can, then can you change directions 

through the cones while maintaining a jog? 

I couldn't do it. Not today. But I'm going to keep trying and plan to slow down first and get an arc going to the left. Drifter is slightly straight or even bent to the right while making a left circle. His ribcage bulges left. The good news is, the right arc feels nice and it will tighten up to make the turn before the change of directions.

Balance. I am currently lacking. But awareness is a good start.

And the herd gets bigger

The incredible, incomparable Bob

EQUU8's beloved 38-year-old therapy horse Bob is recovering from yet another proud-flesh-infested sore. As much as we all are hoping and praying that Bob will live another 38 years, his semi-retirement is precious and we cannot take his generosity for granted. So Scotty will be heading down to Murrieta to fill in for Bob, which might be better for him this winter with the forecasted killer El Niño season.

Introducing Malibu. She will be on trial for about 90 days, and we are hoping that life as a walk/trot therapeutic riding horse will best suit her needs.

Malibu: EQUU8's new horse on trial

The little rescue transfer has a few stories and a few scars in her short life. She's estimated to be about 6 years old. She's been treated for a tapeworm and has a splint on her front right leg and a scar above her hind right coronet band (potentially from a rope or wire). 

When I rode her last week, she was content to walk on a fairly loose rein and made a big deal when asked to trot. As pressure to accelerate increased, her complaints increased...where I assume most people might have relinquished their requests and she has learned to get her way. However, I slowly built on my request and she finally complied with a cute little crooked trot before quickly requesting that we walk again. 

This is why she has flunked out of being a barrel racer and why she came to us.

On my drive to pick her up, I made a phone call to a city councilman who was less interested about lies in the name of charity and more interested in motivating me on how EQUU8 can get better about getting our message out there, turning that message into donations, and finding alternative ways to make money for our charity.

He's probably right.

Yet I'm sad that the thousands of volunteer teaching hours, thousands of dollars in gas, thousands of dedicated volunteer hours, a dedicated board member who has donated her property, and hundreds of driving hours from one county to the next—all for an incredible group of individuals at EQUU8 Murrieta—doesn't equate to a grant. And it might never. It's hard to hear because that means we might need to make some new business decisions.

I suppose there's something to learn from Malibu. Just because you complain doesn't mean you're going to get your way. And maybe your way isn't the only way.

A Blogger's Journey...A Journal

The writer in me needs to write more. Hennybird is 400 pages into a book about her personal journey through kidney transplants and addiction. "Every Pill Has A Story".

So does every day. 

I'm not sure if anyone comes around here anymore, but my intention is to let my heart empty itself here. It could be a good place for self reflections as an instructor and as a student. The writer in me says I could be prolific. The sloth in me says it will be months before my next blog entry.

This journey with EQUU8 has been challenging to say the least. My inner Pollyanna wishes to share only the good things, while secretly hoping the bad things and near misses disappear in the darkness at the end of each day.

Tuesday was our fourth grant rejection and second rejection from the city of Murrieta. It's not because what EQUU8 is doing isn't worthwhile or worthy of a grant. There was only $40,000 to distribute between charities. $15,000 goes to the food pantry every year. City Council is pretty stuck on keeping monies going to the same charities year after year. Last year, we were too new. This year, we lost to a newer program. It's a very good program. We are all deserving of funding. But stretching the truth really scrambles my brain. 

Maybe EQUU8 is a hard sell. It's not easy to explain how healing horses are (except maybe to our participants who experience this healing), or how to convince city councilmembers that our relatively small program can double or triple in size in the next year and how their grant could help us achieve accreditation and apply for grants elsewhere. But maybe we were meant to stay small a little longer. I've always valued quality over quantity. 

Either way, it's challenging for me to abide by one of my mantras: everything happens for a reason.

Which brings me to the fall of the day. A talented pair of pre-teens take occasional lessons and I'll just call them Bema and Hapa. 

Bema fell off her own horse today while my back was turned. My attention was on Hapa riding Cherry, as my focus was on building confidence with her since she'd been spooked by a runaway horse. Bema has plenty of confidence and has never fallen off, but Tiny took to bucking and by the time I looked over my shoulder, her horse leapt over her body after it hit the sand. I called to Hapa to put Cherry into a one-rein stop as Tiny barreled across the arena.  You just never get over seeing a student fall off a horse. 

Once we'd determined that Bema was OK, other than a sore finger, and Hapa had handled the scary situation with full control over Cherry, we redirected the lesson to a roundpen session, where we were going to get back to the basics with Tiny. He's a pretty broke horse, meaning he gets along pretty well in the bridle and knows his job. However, he's a little rude and disrespectful and doesn't follow much of a feel. Foundation work, it is for these girls. 

As an instructor, each fall leaves a whipmark. This year, I've had a few falls and so have my students...and they never feel good. Most of the time, the falls come from doing too much too fast. A couple of times, reins are too long or the rider forgot the one-rein stop that could have saved them...even though my voice is straining for them to hear me. Sometimes, there are just plain accidents. And sometimes fear takes over. 

Every time, there is something to learn. 

And learning leads to healing.