As the first post of my new blog, I thought I'd start with my story.  It will likely be a shortened story, but I'll at least try to hit the highlights of how I came to be here and how.

My name is Elly and I am a third year veterinary student. I was born in Canberra, Australia when my Dad taught at a university there.  I have two siblings--a brother who's 16 months younger than me and a sister that's 12 years younger.  I'm married to a wonderful man named Wayne who is an engineer for a big company in Boise, ID, which is where we own our house.  We've been married for 3 1/2 years, and all of them have been lovely and mostly separated by the 300 (almost exactly!) miles between my temporary home in Pullman and our permanent home in Boise.  (The picture at left is Wayne on Christmas day, 2007)

I've always been proud of the fact that my parents never just bought me a pony, even though it was on every single Christmas list (and still is).  From the time I was 12, I learned that I could volunteer in exchange for riding lessons, and did so quite religiously until I turned 16 and began my very first job.  I had only paid for a few lessons myself before I was offered a working student position at my local barn, and held that position until I finally left for University as a sophomore.  I learned horses from the ground up, which seems to be backwards for many riding students these days.  I rode hunter/jumper, which had always been my dream since I was a little girl.  When I left for college, it was horseless, and it remained so until just before I started veterinary school in 2006.  But, I digress...

In 2005, prior to beginning veterinary school, I received an email that a semi-local ride manager was looking for volunteers to help at a ride.  I had only marginally heard of endurance, and thought it was a lot like long-distance running, but on horseback (so a lot funner!).  I emailed the manager back and said I'd love to come, and did a little preliminary research on the sport and what it was that was going to be required of me.  I left for the ride with a warning to my husband that he might be in big trouble, and that I might come back with a new love.  

I was right.

From then on, it was the only thing I could think about.  When Wayne and I had originally talked about him moving to Boise to support me in vet school, he made one promise to me:  If I was going to be all alone in Pullman, I was going to need a "real" horse.  I set about finding the perfect mate, which is when I learned that the Draft Horse Club at the vet school was looking to sell their younger draft horse.  I learned that "Kate" had broken someone's leg, run away with the cart (twice!), and taken out a corner of the alumni building.  I had to have her!  I thought we'd be able to do some of the shorter distances for endurance, and she'd probably be a much calmer mount that the crazy arabs I'd grown to fear so much.  A price was negotiated, and we brought her home.  I decided to rename her, as she had such a bad reputation I figured she needed a new name.  We decided on "Callebaut" or "Callie" for short, which is a Belgian chocolate, and would be very appropriate for my sweet Belgian girl.  I quickly learned that "broke for riding" and "tolerates humans on her back" were two very different things, and set about retraining her to un-learn the harness and listen to little me on her back. 

We spent all summer conditioning for our first ride, which was set to take place at the end of July.  I had been keeping Callie barefoot and using boots, and the only thing we had left to do before our ride was get her feet trimmed.  Well, the farrier nipped her too short and she was too sore to go.  It was probably a good thing, as the ride was very hot and very hilly, and I'm not entirely convinced we would have finished.  When cold weather set in that winter, I noticed Callie was a little off-loo

king at the trot, which is when I discovered she had been diagnosed with ringbone in both front legs.  I asked my husband if there would be any way I could get a second horse--a REAL endurance horse to ride.  He agreed, and I found Cricket, a 4-year-old Arab/Appaloosa cross.

Cricket proved to be a real stinker, and he and I have a very sordid past.  I bought him in the spring with the idea that I'd spend all summer starting him, and we'd hit the trails and maybe do our first ride together in the fall of that year or the spring of the following year.  Well, work got away with me, and I didn't have nearly as much time as I had fantasized.  It didn't help that our boarding place has no facilities for such an undertaking, and so it didn't happen.  I ended up sending him to a trainer in the fall, who probably should have admitted she'd rather stick to Quarter Horses, and ended up likely sitting on him for 5 months.  When I got him back in February, he was good, but nowhere near "broke."  He and I did well together despite this, until I left for spring break.  When I came back, it was like he'd completely forgotten all of his training.  Suddenly, everything was scary (REALLY scary!), and I quickly became frustrated.  Instead of listening to my inner voices, I forced myself to get on one day, and ended up paying the price. Cricket bolted for no reason almost as soon as my butt hit the saddle, and I ended up bailing off of him while he was at a full, hell-bent, gallop across the arena.  I'd never eaten dirt before, but did that day.  I smashed my glasses, broke my helmet in almost two pieces, and got road rash from my right forearm down to my right knee.  Thank God I had thought to put on my crash vest, without which I surely would have broken ribs...or worse.  I ended up in the ER, and missed a few precious days of school in the meantime. 

Afterwards, I struggled with the decision to sell him.  Things had been so good with him before I had left for a week, but I was at the end of my knowledge base for how to deal with him.  I finally decided to sell him, and talked to the barn manager at our boarding facility in Pullman.  She said she liked the "difficult" ones, and agreed to keep him in training there and sell him for me.  I hoped and prayed he'd sell over summer, but he didn't.  They ended up doing really well together, and I think she proved to be the best thing that happened to him.  I credit her with his current state.  But we'll get to that later.

I spent the first part of the summer wailing to Wayne that I had no endurance mount.  Callie is terrific on the trails, but just not what I wanted to spend the summer doing.  I like having goals, and not having something to work towards with my horses was killing me.  I figured it was as good a time as any to spend some time going back to the basics, and both Wayne and I enrolled in a few riding lessons.  I quickly realized my confidence wasn't as smashed as my brand new glasses, and that I wasn't afraid of riding in general--just riding Cricket.  It didn't help that Wayne absolutely wouldn't budge that I couldn't get another horse until we sold Cricket, so I was left crossing my fingers and volunteering at rides.

Out of the blue, a friend of a friend called and said she had an offer for me.  (No, it wasn't a pyramid scheme!)  She and her husband have a few endurance horses, and the summer before, I'd gone out on a training ride with them and rode their "third wheel" horse.  His name was Strike, and he is an NSH with the biggest trot I'd ever experienced.  After their three hour trotting "training ride" the summer before, I wasn't able to walk for three days.  Anways, she said they were looking for a home for Strike, and learned I was in the market.  She said she'd be willing to let me use him for the summer, and if I wanted to buy him, I'd get first chance.  Bingo!  I had a summer project!  She dropped him off the next day, where he and Callie became instant best friends.  Strike and I spent the summer riding together, and I completed my first two LD rides on him in July, ironically, at the very same ride I would have ridden Callie in two years prior.

At the end of the summer, Cricket still didn't sell, and I had to tell them I just couldn't buy Strike.  It was very sad, but with the economy the way it is, I didn't want to end up with more mouths that we could feed.  I had made a commitment to Cricket, no matter how disappointed and angry I felt about it, I needed to keep it.  Well, Wayne had come to my first endurance ride and had caught the bug, and proposed the idea of bringing Cricket down to Boise for him to ride.  I scoffed at the idea--if I couldn't ride him, there'd be no way that Wayne-with-no-experience would be able to handle him! Right?  Wrong.  Wayne moved me back up to Pullman and took a few lessons on Cricket, where they got along beautifully.  I'm now proud to report Wayne and Cricket are hitting the trails together in Boise, and he's promised to get me a "replacement" horse once I'm ready.

I think that's just about everything...I'll have to add more later.