Country Living - 100th Post!

Well, things have once again gotten away from me and I haven't had much time to sit down and write...write things other than my senior paper and case write-ups every night, that is.  

Rental house in the country (with Sam in the foreground).  This side of the house is "mine"--my bedroom window looks through the sunporch on the first floor, and my desk is in front of the window upstairs.  If you were standing here, the pasture(s) are behind your left shoulder and behind your right shoulder, with the driveway directly behind you.

This is directly behind the picture before.  I've got a temporary electric fence set up on the right for Jasper to eat down some of the grass that grows on either side of the driveway, and I'll move it as he eats down each section.

I'm back in Pullman and moved into the house in the country.  I can't describe how wonderful it is to wake up in the morning and feed my horse.  I can look out my bedroom window and see him, and my desk is in front of a window upstairs overlooking his pasture.  I love it, and cannot wait for us to be able to move into a house with property in Boise.  Jasper is doing OK with being alone, although he was pretty stressed for the first few days.  He's starting to settle in a lot better now, and I'm not worrying about him as much.  He whinnies when anyone comes out of the house or drives up the driveway, so I'm picking up some sheep friends for him to live out the rest of the month in his pasture and keep him company.

I've been so busy with life he's been a little neglected lately.  I was only able to ride him once in Boise since our ride, and it was in the arena (and he was HOT!).  Last night, however, I ended up getting done on time with a solid head start on my write-up, and so I zoomed home and changed and saddled him up (in our back yard!!).  Just as we were about to leave, a deer came crashing down the hill and disappeared into the little thicket of small trees and brush at the side of our house.  Jasper looked with interest, but as I've mentioned before, he is not afraid of deer.

Jasper on his first night in the new house, helping keep down the grass that's everywhere.

We mounted and set off down the driveway, and Jasper was moving out and seemed happy to finally be getting out on the road again.  Despite the fact he was a little excited, he behaved himself superbly.  We walked down the road and I dismounted at the mailboxes about a 1/4 mile down the road to pick up the mail while Jasper watched a small flock of sheep with interest.  I remounted and continued down the road, figuring we'd just do some exploring.  We ended up finding a fabulous dirt road that I've never seen before that goes up and down and weaves through the beautiful wheat fields.  We did some trotting and cantering on this, but didn't follow it for far, as I knew my roommate was making dinner and didn't want to stay out too late.  We turned for home and had an extremely nice ride back.  Instead of turning right into our driveway, I pushed Jasper on up the gradual dirt road incline just past and let him canter and gallop to work out any kinks he's formed in the past few weeks.  We had such a wonderful time.  Sigh.