Would You Like A Little Thunder With Your Summer?

So today is the first day of summer. Today is also full of thunder, rain, and wicked lightening!




I am horse-sitting for a woman who lives about 2 miles away from me. She has three horses: an 11 year old Tennessee Walking Horse named MG, a 10 year old Puervian Fino named Miel, and a 31 year old Morgan named Coco. MG especially is such a character, he really is a stinker. He'll torment and pester the old mare Coco, resulting in horrid squeals and sounds as she tries her hardest to kick at him (I think she is too arthritic and stiff to do so successfully). Poor old girl! Anyway, as this storm was rolling in I decided to bring my pony Dale in out of the pasture since he has no shelter from the storm in his pasture. He was happy about this because I think he could sense the storm coming! I was trying to hold off a bit longer on the three stooges down the road since they do have somewhere to go to get out of the storm. But these horses are up on a huge hill wide open and let me tell you, the storms are scarier than hell from up on there. I decided to go over and get them in. So I'm trying to clean the stalls out as fast as I can, get their dinner and water situated, referee between MG and Coco, and try to get them in before the storm hits. Success! I ran around like a maniac getting all this done correctly before the storm hit and I did.



The last storm we had on Tuesday was not a success....
I was over at Pam's barn doing the same routine I always do...clean stalls and get their dinner all set up before I bring them in. Out of no where the sky is practically black and I think to myself "hmmm I think I should hurry up and try to get them in before the storm hits." Well I wasn't fast enough...the storm hits just after I get them all in their stalls. Huge crashes of thunder and cloud to ground lightening like mad. Its so creepy to see up on that hill! And I might sound crazy but...I was watering MG during the storm Tuesday and suddenly I feel an electrical feeling in my hand zip up and kind of pop me on top of my head! The watering system they have at their barn is really different. It runs underground and I think up onto their roof. Then each stall has a nozzle that points directly into the bucket. Its really neat and sophisticated, but I swear it shocked me from lightening that must have struck nearby! Okay, I might be crazy but I felt it and I kept feeling that feeling in my head for like an hour or so after.









P.S. These pictures are from the barn I horse-sit at. Isn't it gorgeous!? Its my dream barn, however, I would like more than 3 stalls :)

Horses and Clippers and Soap...Oh My!

Today was Bathing Day at the barn for the horse show this weekend. Bathing day is always an adventure in itself! There are eleven horses going to the show this time...which means eleven horses who needed four legs, two ears, and one head clipped. Eleven horses who needed four hooves scrubbed, one head wrestled with to bathe, and one body washed. Two of them were done yesterday which left us with nine today. For a while we were moving along rather quickly until the major storms swept through and we had to stop clipping/bathing for safety reasons! Most of the horses are pretty good for their clipping and bathing rituals. However, Dream (a beautiful young mare), does not enjoy this process. It took three of us to hold her steady and clip the inside of her ears. Now, most horses HATE having their ears clipped, which is understandable. But we couldn't even get near Dream's little ears! Finally after a long time of wrestling and some close calls we finally got her ears done and she looks gorgeous.

It was a long and damp day but a job well done. Many might wonder "why the heck would she do that and how much does she get for it?" I can answer the latter with much greater ease than the former, I don't get anything for it. I do this because its a passion. I've helped at nearly every bathing day for about ten years now. I love it, I love to work hard and I love to be with horses. Some day I will no longer be able to volunteer my time to help (which I think will be sooner than I want once I enter the "real world" and need to work all the time to afford the costs of living...) so I'm enjoying helping while I still can...


"The essential joy of being with horses is that it brings us in contact with the rare elements of grace, beauty, spirit, and fire."

~Sharon Ralls Lemon

The Beginning

So I have decided to jump on the bandwagon and begin my own personal blog. After being in a special topics communication writing course at The University of Pittsburgh for the past five weeks, which is studying nothing other than blogs, I've become rather intrigued by the idea of this new publicized self disclosure thing (apparently it's all the rage these days!)

This blog will probably be very uninteresting to everyone else who reads it! However, I think it feels good to "get things out and in the open"...I suppose this is what blogs can do. A lot of my blog will talk about school, work, family, horses (one of my passions in life), and my fiance in the military who will be deploying at the end of July. This will be our second deployment together, however, I'm dreading the separation. Last time was Iraq, this time he is on a ship with the Navy...which I think is better? Maybe this blog can aid in the maintenance of my sanity :)



"You got a dream, you gotta protect it. People can't do something themselves, they wanna tell you that you can't do it. You want something? Go get it. Period."

-Pursuit of Happyness