Penland School of Crafts sweatshirt – $39;
Jes MaHarry handcrafted heart ring – barter/swap for many handmade books;
Keen ‘Chuck Taylor’ lookalike shoes – a virtual song via EBay;
Riding a horse for the first time in more than 40 years – PRICELESS.
wOw! A few weeks ago my friend Tony gave me the opportunity to ride his beautiful appaloosa, King. I am NOT a horse person. Don’t get me wrong – I love horses. I’ve just never had much of a chance to be around them.
I learned so much in the short time I shared with King.
Here’s SOME of what I hearned:
1. Horses really are BIG. I know, “Duh…” – I just has to state this obvious point. It reminded me of all the times I THINK I’m bigger (stronger/more UNneeding) than I really am.
2. Horses need a lot of tending. Humans do too. Many aren’t quite as effective as horses at letting other creatures know it though.
3. Horses like to be approached from the same side each time. Hmmmmm… wouldn’t life be a lot easier for us humans if we all knew ahead of time how to best approach each other?
4. Horses will usually go where we want them to go – if we let them know. Again, hmmmmmmmmm… and we humans can even use our words.
5. And even though some might seem as big as one – no horse is an island. Us neither. We really are all in THIS together.
I know many of you are very experienced with horses and their special sense. What have they taught you that you’re willing to share with us?
Lisa’s Cheap Therapy blog 
They also like to run away when you least expect it! That always happened with me until I learned to control them. I loved your descriptions!
Wonderful to see you riding a horse again after all these years. And I guess the biggest thing I learn from horses is…..they’re bigger than we are and can do anything they want. But they just go with the flow and tolerate whatever we want to do. By just “letting it all happen”, they end up with a great place to live, plenty of food, and nothing much to worry about. Hmmm…who wins the most in this deal??
lisa dear~ i am so happy for today’s subject matter: this will be a long story, because i’ve never been asked before…
when i was 7 and until i was 14 years old, my parents sent me to “joy camp” for 8 weeks every summer. it was a “family reprieve” which we all enjoyed. daily horseback riding was one of our activities at “joy camp.” every year i was assigned the same old horse (the slowest one in the stable) named “frannie.” frannie and i never looked really pleased to see each other, but we never gave up, either… frannie was a big horse, big/wide, elderly and reasonable.
just straddling frannie’s saddle made my legs feel like they were being ripped from my hip sockets, and frannie’s back sweat (which came
up through her blanket and saddle, permanantly lodging in my jeans) smelled like gym socks rolled up in limburger cheese, and it was damp…
frannie chewed sideways with the most enormous wooden looking teeth i’d seen in my life and she made this grating sound as she knashed her teeth sideways, so it sounded like she was grinding a slab of 80 year old cement she’d picked up somewhere from an ancient cracked sidewalk in the woods.
every single year of my adventures in the woods riding frannie, she chose the same 2 foot wide creek to jump over (from a standstill) 3 feet straight into the air, landing at least 3 feet in, from the “opposite shore” of the creek. this would happen a couple of miles into the horse trails in the woods and i’d never quite see the creek before it happened. this was as “lively” as frannie ever got, when ridden. it never failed to terrify me and amaze me, at the same exact time. it was like expecting to be catapoulted 3 feet into the air by some giant rock you were standing on…
the lessons i took home from this “frannie girl” (the first and last 7 year horse-riding experience of my life:
* no animal should have to put up with someone climbing on their back and not only having the person pull on straps hooked to the inside of the animals’
mouth, but nudging it on both sides of its’ stomach with their shoes and maybe slapping their butt occasionally~ all this and the person expecting transportation as well. i can understand horse travel before cars were invented but this isn’t the case now… and why would we imagine a horse would walk around just waiting for the chance to have someone want to “go for a horse ride?” it just doesn’t seem reasonable to me, besides the other thing frannie would do is step on my foot as i’d be attempting to climb on her back~ a sure sign she wasn’t in the mood for carting someone around on her back.
love, jstone
ps your horse story was beautiful lisa~ thank you for teaching me what you know about “horse sense!”
Corrine, how wonderful to hear from you and with SUCH a sage tip!
Tom, hmmmmmmm i wonder too .
Jane, (happy birthday – btw) ohhhhhhhhhh what a treasure Frannie was and IS in your world. and may we all be freed of people who want to simply want to stake us for a ride – LOVE that lesson!
deep and humble THANKS to you all. next?
Lisa,
Don’t know if you remember, but I took English riding lessons at Cherry Point for years. All the horses at the stable were males. I’ve been bit, kicked, thrown, road bareback and have had the time of my life. What lessons do you think these “strong men” were trying to tell me about my future? Beasts that they are, I still love them all.
Linda