Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Travel

Today I conquered one of my fears,  I got on a horse.  I was filled with excitement and anxiety when we were picked up this morning.  Arriving at the stables I took a deep breath,  I could smell the hay and horse manure, it felt comforting somehow, sounds strange as I write it but that is what is was, comforting.  There was eight of us and we had five wonderful young horse trainers accompany us.  Three from Sweden, one from France and just one from Ireland.  They introduce me to my horse Monty.  I liked his name was Monty,  I would trust my Monty back home with my life so I took this as a very good sign.
Time to mount my horse.  They had a stool for us but I could not get my foot high enough. Poor Monty I was leaning on his neck, pulling his mane, and then I remind myself this is a living being you are getting on so calm down.  The young lady helping me was great, she lowered the stirrup and up I went.
There -I was on a horse, OMG I was on top of a horse.   We were given a quick lesson on how to let your horse know what you want and off we went.  Monty was pretty good to me,  he basically knew what to do.
We got out of the barn and around the corner and What!!! There is a road, a real road with cars and everything.  I look at the leader as he tells us were are going to cross the road to the park so stay close.  Well my heart had been pounding since I got on Monty , now I was going to take him across the road. Much to my relief  one of the other horse trailers pulled up and stopped the traffic, like the school safety patrols.  I really started concentrating on my breathe, trying to feel connected to Monty.  It took about 15 minutes before I realized I had not taken my eyes off the Jimmy's butt in front of me (Jimmy would be Donna's horse).
I really started to relax and enjoy our ride,  there was a lake to the right with islands in the middle, huge trees all around, we pasted a pasture with what they called Irish Deer, they looked like Reindeer to me.
So I'm relaxed, enjoying  myself, getting into the grove, feeling free.  One of the trainers comes up by me and says ok hang on to this strap here, get ready to stand and we are going to trot.  WHAT. No one said anything about trotting,  I am pretty sure I am not ready for trotting. But Monty wanted to trot , there would be no stopping him so I hung on tight.  It turned out. It not so bad, it actually was pretty good.  Monty did not like to follow the leader either I think he really wanted to lead but I learned pretty quickly how to let him know where he was supposed to go.

Monty was a wonderful horse for my first ride.  We had a great afternoon.

1 comment:

  1. I had no idea you had a fear of riding horses! And again... Monty. What are the odds?!

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