Horses – First Installment

Okay folks, it’s finally arrived, the Long Awaited, Much Anticipated Post(s) about….. Horses!!  Are you as excited as me?  You should be.  I have many stories, pictures, AAAAND I even made a special playlist so that the experience is complete.  Go down and push play then come back up to read and indulge your fondness for horses.  Because who doesn’t have a fondness for horses?  (And if you’re really strange and don’t have a fondness for horses, weirdo, indulge my fondness for horses.)

I was lucky enough to get to enjoy horses from a young age (this is me behind Kami when we were…I don’t know.  Young.).   I believe I have a picture of myself on a horse when I was much younger even, a baby, but alas, the picture is in my baby book which is across the ocean, yadda yadda (you’ve heard this particular whine before).Now, don’t think that I'm a horse pro, because I’m not—we just had horses on and off when I was growing up.  But I can saddle a horse, and I’d like to believe I do at least a little better than the average City Slicker.

When we moved to the States (from Canada), we didn’t have horses for awhile, but we always went to visit grandparents and relatives there every summer and we always rode horses a time or two.  My Grandpa Walburger had a horse named Brownie that we begged him to saddle pretty much as soon as we pulled in the driveway.  When we were allowed out of the corral, Wyatt and I would go behind the barn where we couldn’t be seen from the house and lope verrrry slowly and jump over the tiny creek over and over and over again.  Loved it.

The picture below was in Canada, from left to right is my mom, Kami, Wyatt, me, Lindsay, and Ethan.  I remember having a good time on that ride.  Just our family, we went up through some fields, ate lunch in a little grove of trees, and listened to my mom and dad talk about who’s land this used to be.  :)When I was about 9 I think, we moved out of the city into a small town and we had some land and brought a couple of our horses down from Canada.  So I started getting more exposure.  One time Wyatt and I were out in the field with the horses and I got up on Fahselle (best horse ever—oh I love her) just to sit there with no bridle or saddle or anything.  Well, we had a neighbor’s horse that was staying in the field with our horses then, and we didn’t like her, so Wyatt would always throw a rock at it when it came near (I’ve told you he has a great likeness to Arliss in Old Yeller).  Well, when he threw the rock this time, it scared Fahselle, and she took off like crazy, and I was holding on like crazy.  Oh yeah, and I screamed.  :)  She went down a little hill and then there was the fence in front of her, so she stopped abruptly.  Luckily I didn’t go flying over her head (okay, she wasn’t actually going that fast), I just fell in a heap at her feet.  That’s the only time I’ve been dumped from a horse.  (There have been other times I’ve chosen to dismount quickly because I believed it to be the superior alternative...  such as when I –stupidly- got on Wally bareback right after someone had been riding him and had just taken the saddle off.  Of course Wally laid down to roll around and scratch his sweaty back in the dirt and I had to make a quick jump to keep from getting squished between him and the ground.  Good thing I was quick.)

Then we moved to North Dakota and we brought our horses along.  I liked to ride FahsElle when we lived in Des Lacs along the highway up to the old cemetery and sing loudly.  When we moved into town Dad kept his horses with some people who lived out of town a ways, so I didn’t ride as much then, having a job and lots of homework and parties to go to, etc.  But Kami and I did bring out some friends a few times, including a guy I was hanging out with (why can I never bring myself to say “boyfriend” ?  I just don’t like the word.).  Anyhow, brought him out so he could ride behind me and hold onto me, cause he was a City Slicker and didn’t know how to ride.  :)

Then I got engaged to Brett.  Awww.  (In the picture below the mountain behind us is called Old Chief, and you’ll see it several times in the Horses posts.)  The first time I went to Vernal to meet the family and all that good stuff, Brett and I saddled up some of their horses, and we went up behind his Grandpa’s house and totally ran around- running up and down the hill and jumping over sagebrush and I remember at one point when I was running behind Brett there were snow clods flying up from his horse’s hooves and they were hitting me in the head.  And I was soooooo happy riding with the awesome man I loved so much and he told me how impressed he was with my riding and that made me feel all warm and happy.  Yeah, it was a good time.  :) These few pictures of Brett and I were at a family reunion we went to in Canada the summer after we got married.  I don’t remember talking to any of my relatives much (we were newlyweds, remember) but I do remember that we had to drive through a stream and go up the steepest hill EVER (so steep that my Aunt LaVerle chose to get out of the car and walk it rather than stay in the car and go down my Uncle Larry) to get to the campsite and Brett was so stoked to drive Pinky, which he called his Rally Car, through all that.  Also, we got to ride horses a lot. Old Chief again.  Awww.In our married student ward in Logan, we had a bishop who took us on trail rides in the canyon with him quite a few times.  It was so much fun and I loved him for taking us.  I wish I had the picture, but we went on one trailride with him when I was pregnant with Jethro about 7 months along, and after he went home his wife got mad at him for taking me, and he was like, “I didn’t know she was pregnant!”  Ha ha.Now my riding consists of what I can do when visiting my mom and dad.  (Well, not really now.  Now I do no riding.)  Which is a pretty sweet deal.  FahsElle is still my favorite horse to ride.  Lovely, isn’t she?

And that’s Part 1.  But don’t worry my friends, for there is more, MUCH more to come.  I’m excited!!!