Today’s horse training success story came in a trilogy. No small wonder, God kinda favors threes 🙂
Got the kind of call midday every trainer dreams of: “you probably don’t remember me but…” “Of COURSE I remember you, you’re Cassidy’s dad!” Cassidy was our first student when we incorporated KinderRide into our lesson program: offering horseback riding instruction to the 2-4 year olds as a preamble to our “big kid’s” program. Cassidy progressed on through the Big Kid program until we sold the farm and went our disparate ways. Cassidy’s dad tracked us down via Google. Turned out Cassidy had just won the National Junior Morgan Dressage Championship. And it turns out that my mom, who was Cassidy’s first leadline instructor, was visitiing and out on the tractor at that very moment. Congratulations Cassidy! All the best of luck at World’s this fall!
Part two: a typo in the Valley Trader had us calling on a 4 month old colt. Turns out he is the son of a mare I fell in love with while training many years ago on a Friesian farm in VA. I’m still under the spell of that electric shock. More to follow….
Last and most…. They say to find the answer you need to ask a question three times. Long after Mom and I should have gone to sleep I was pestering her with questions. We were talking about the Thoroughbred Rescue Foundation, a charity near and dear to both of our hearts. We’ve both volunteered time and skills. Mom was multi day a week regular for several years.
It came out that several years ago she had fallen in love with Lake, whom everyone claimed was incorrigable, yet he pressed his face deep against her belly for comfort in the face of vets and chiropracters and Things That Go Bump In The Night. Shortly after that, he had been returned to the prison sytem, because no-one wanted to adopt him. “Mom,” I told her, “if you love him, find him! We’ll bring him home”
She went to sleep, I hopped in the shower. A while later she showed up with the look of a kid at Christmas. “Did you mean it? I’m gonna look for him, I’m gonna find him!”
And when you do, he’s gonna have a happily ever after home in Almost Heaven….