A good ride this morning, although I had to put up with unwanted advice from my sig other about how I should handle my horse.  I really dont know where he got the idea that his advice would be helpful, since my horse behaves wayyyy better than his already.  And heaven forbid I should give HIM any advice.  Last time I did that, he was foaming at the mouth when he got through  telling me how insulting it was for me to think I could tell him anything about horses. It is odd, since I was quite successful at competitive trail riding AND rode professionally AND ran a boarding stable when I met him.  Not to mention working first for an Arab breeder, then for a Thoroughbred breeder before having the boarding stable with my ex.
My horse is broke but not really trained, and I am feeling my way back to knowledge of what to do and when to do it to produce the desired result.
One of the presenters at the Southern Arizona Horse Expo last weekend, I forget which, said that you should pay attention to the advice of people whose horse's behavior you admire, and ignore those with skanky horses, no matter how much said people spent on them. Good advice, I think.

Oh well. This morning we rode together, but I have made it clear that I am going for a ride this evening by myself.  After all, he gets to ride by himself any day I go to work, and that is when you and your horse really learn about each other. Western this morning, English this evening.  I looked at an Aussie saddle on Saturday that I would really like to have but cant really justify owning 3 saddles with only one horse.  Maybe if I get another horse???

Sam

It has been a week now since we nearly lost our Sam and it still makes
me shiver.
We went for a ride together, with both dogs running along. We moved
at a pretty long trot for a ways down a dirt road and Sam must have
stopped off to roll in something nasty because when we pulled up, he
was not with us any more.
We didnt worry too much, not then, as we still had Pete, we were only
a couple of miles from home, and Sam knows his way home anyway. But
we never saw him again on the ride, even though we passed pretty close
to the way out on the return trip, and I called him a couple of times.
We thought he had just gone home after realizing we were moving
faster than he wanted to.
So Bill got in the Jeep and went back along our route, calling Sam
periodically. Nothing.
He came back and got me, and we went again in the Liberty (Sam's
favorite vehicle) and went again. Finally, when we stopped on a hill
to call, he came blasting across the desert to us as fast as he could
go, from the direction of a group of houses. He wasnt thirsty, but
his front feet were all torn up and wet and dirty and the nails were
raw. He must have had to dig or climb a wire fence to get away from
whoever took him.
Sam is a very friendly dog, and probably the politest dog you will
ever meet. If somebody called him, or asked him to come into a pen,
he would have done it. THEN. I doubt if he will ever do it again.

Arthritis

One of the worst things about having arthritis in my hands is that it
is SO hard to clean my glasses. That movement back and forth, with
the hand folded over the lens, is just excruciating. I hate it. I
had to give up knitting completely because of the pain, but one can
hardly give up cleaning her glasses.

Wine

I worry sometimes, that I will end up an old lush. I find that I
really like my glass of wine in the evening, after many years of
refusing to drink any alcohol at all. I didnt like the way my father
acted, and drank, and drank, and whined about his pain, so I just
didnt drink, not even socially. I say now if I ever find myself
getting maudlin and telling people the same stories over and over, I
will stop drinking again and that will be that.

I have been trying to find information about trail rides, NATRC, AERC, clubs, etc, since we got the horses, but things have REALLY changed while we were away from horses.  This is going to take more digging, but I DO plan to enter an ACTHA ride at Estrella Park in January for sure.

When I visited my mother last year, I made mild fun of her for drinking box wine.  Well, guess what!  I have started drinking box wine myself.  It just sits there in the fridge and waits for you to drink it, with no bottles to recycle, no damn cork to take in and out, and the wine stays fresh tasting.  Arthritis definitely enters into it too, as sometimes it was hard to hold the bottle to pour the wine, and what a mess if you drop and break it.

Bill went over to the neighbors' to play horseshoes the other night so I saddled up and went for a ride by myself (with the dogs of course).  It was hot, sure, but less so the later it got, and all we did was walk with a little trotting.  I enjoyed it, Deva enjoyed it, the dogs enjoyed it.  It is a good thing to ride alone sometimes, good for the horse's attitude and good for mine. 
ALl is good, right?

Its been a long time

And much has happened.  We now have 2 horses and I will post pictures and details when at home, since I am at work now and need to get back to it.  I am so tired of Facebook, seems like everything is taken over by peoples rants and politics and I need to write longer posts sometimes to find out how I really feel about things.

Pete at one year