Saturday, August 13, 2016

All the pretty little horses

   There has always been a thing about little girls and horses. I seem to remember all little girls in my school going through a horse crazy stage. They want a horse or a pony. Seems like it is just naturally ingrained into girl DNA. Not me. My mom had horses growing up. They were ok, I enjoyed riding but I remember them being a lot of work. Might have something to do with the fact that my mom was one of those people who was always correcting my riding posture too. Now we have a farm and a little girl who has hit the stereotypical horse crazy phase. 

  My daughter's therapist also suggested a horse. Well, not quite suggested buying a horse but suggested riding lessons or horse riding because her core muscles are very weak and riding will help develop those skills as well as balance. Brushing a horse also would help her build arm control that she needs to work on. To be fair there are other ways she could build those skills and we do use them. I am just trying to help my little girl in every way possible so it actually makes me want to indulge her a bit. We are in no way ready for horses. 

  We don't have a barn! What kind of rinky dink good for nothing farm doesn't have a barn? This one. Right here. Plus fencing. Poor Hubs is always doing fencing. Tightening, fixing, or putting new stuff up. His work is never done. We came up with a little compromise instead, that we would take our kiddos to a horse clinic at a horse rescue and see how they liked it. The best part is that it wouldn't just be about petting and riding but it would also focus on care of the horses and the amount of work that goes into having them. 

  The kids had a blast. All the kids got to ride and pet horses. The older kids learned a lot about horses and Cap would like to do riding lessons. The younger too had fun but didn't listen to the teacher as well but they loved feeding the horses jelly beans and riding. I enjoyed getting to know more about a local horse rescue. This particular one saves horses from slaughter auctions and rehabilitates them for adoption. They even had a horse that they tried to send home with us...

   They had an older gelding that was looking for a retirement home. He's great with kids but can't really do too much hard riding. What he really needs is a place that he can call home and take it easy for his golden years. They said that what they would do is a free lease. We could take him home for free and keep him as long as we want but if he ever became too much for us or the kids lost interest they'd take him back. Pretty sweet deal but once again we have no barn and only have sheep and goat fencing up so we had to say no. 

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