Love

Seth says Jedi is napping by the wood-burning stove, and Leslie’s got the horses and guinea pigs taken care of, and I’m about to hit the sack, and I realized that I needed the ritual of horseblogging to relax enough to get to sleep.

I’m out here in Raleigh for my day job and I don’t even have time to set up a lesson with Mariah, one of the up-and-coming, soon-to-be-a-Parelli-Professional young women I met in the Savvy Club forum. She lives around here somewhere and I’d love to meet her … ah well, next trip, when I’m here out of my own travel funds and not on the client’s budget.

This will be the longest time away from my horses since January. I’ve truly become a homebody. I used to commute six hours each way, between home base and client sites, staying for a week at a time, and not think much of it. One year I did the math and discovered I lived in Los Angeles about 65% of the time and San Francisco about 30% of the time and on the road in other cities the other 5%. The San Francisco was mostly ‘day job’ client work and the rest was mostly conferences, media appearances, book readings, and speaking engagements related to my column and books.

How far away that life seems now, though I have not let the brand die out entirely, and have lately been feeling the bug to get back to it. It’s been more than a year since I replaced my column with horsemanship, and I’ve kept my promise not to pitch any books in 2009 (though I have two proposals in the works for 2010, yikes).

Jan and I played with Salsa and needle simulations on Sunday and he did spectacularly. He was way more interested in the cookies than in the toothpick, and I was able to poke him all over both sides of his neck (to simulate intramuscular injections and intravenous injections). At first I took the toothpick away when he bent his nose to me, but by the end I was leaving it there and letting him find his own relaxation response. Except he didn’t entirely relax because he was too busy gobbling cookies and demanding more.

Hopefully he will have no problem with the equine dentist when Erin brings him to his appointment.

All that foot play we’ve been doing paid off today, when Salsa held each foot up in turn for the farrier to trim. No resistance and just a little bit of suspicion about the hoofstand (which turned out to be too high anyway, so Scott used his shin instead). I wanted to take a picture but as usual, ran into that problem of documenting and experiencing at the same time. You’ll just have to look at this one and imagine him getting trimmed.

(A note about the mane: it took 1.5 hours to get the excess hacked off to produce this, and we had run out of time to finish the mohawk — stay tuned, because we’re going to try to finish up this weekend.)

(And yes, he’s on a diet now.)

On an afternoon break from work, I wandered out to the Back 40 and Rock came over to meet me and then stuck to me. Erin and Kim were visiting their horses, Centella and Riley, and it ended up that the three of us stood around and chatted while scratching and stroking our horses.

Who would have thought I’d ever get to this place in my life? And that Rock was noodging me when I stopped and then leaning into the scratches — it’s that dang oak tree sap stuff that’s got him so itchy but I’ll take it, he’s usually so meh about being touched.

So, yeah, I’m sad about the right front soreness and our many interruptions in our progress as riding partners. But whatever. I’ve got two Appaloosas and both of them want to be with me, and anything more than that is just bonus, right? Right.

I am so full up with love for both of them right now that I might have to wander out there with apples, even though it’s midnight and I have been drinking wine as I play my computer game …