Good Ride

I can't believe it's already been 30 days tomorrow that little Onyx has been at the trainer's. I'm excited to bring him home and am looking very forward to getting him out on the trail. He hasn't had his first actual trail ride yet, only the one road ride. However, I'm confident it will be no big deal like everything else and he'll soon be up and running as an up-and-coming endurance mount. My plan is not to use him for an actual ride until he is AT LEAST 7, which is three years from now. I may even wait an additional year after that, depending on how well Jasper is going by that point (he'll be going fine, because Jasper will compete soundly into his 20's when he will take over as a junior mount for my kidlets that will be old enough to ride by that point).

Jasper and I had a wonderful ride on Saturday with Paul, Ron-G, Heidi and George. Heidi will be going to her first endurance ride on March 27th at the Home on the Range ride in Washtucna. She's very excited and I'm happy we were both able to convince Paul (PJ) to come along and ride Ron-G. PJ and Ron-G have only ever done ride-and-ties, so this will be their first foray into endurance as well. PJ's excited because he's only ever horse-camped in the back of his truck or in a tent and claims we'll be "living like kings" with my LQ and stove access.

During our ride on Saturday we got in a couple of tight situations involving ever-increasing snow depth and horses that thought they should CANTER through it. Yikes. No harm done, though. It was a wonderful day--temps in the high 50's and the sun beating down on our smiling faces. We chatted and laughed a lot, and PJ commented how lucky he was to be able to ride with two young ladies at his age. About a mile from home, Paul pulled us in close with a very serious look on his face and told us we were about to undertake the ULTIMATE Moscow Mountain challenge. He pulled three beers out of his packs and said we had to ride with one hand and drink with the other without spilling a drop. It was a wonderful challenge, and none of us spilled a thing. When we got back, he told us to remember this day for the rest of our lives and one day when we were sixty we had to look back and realize what PJ has to go through riding at his age. He's so full of baloney--that man runs 8-12 miles every single day. I'm going to miss PJ and our mountain rides.

In other news, I've come to the difficult decision to look for a new home for Callie, our Belgian mare. She's been an incredible companion and friend these past five years, but I feel like it's unfair to have her just sitting around while the endurance horses require so much time. If we had a place of our own in Boise to keep her, things would be different. But our regular place has decided she doesn't want Callie around any more (claims she damaged her barn--we think it may have been like that before). We'd have to board her somewhere else, and it would be far away and I just don't like the idea. I have a few potential new owners already, and will have them sign a first right of refusal contract so that I can get her back if anything goes wrong.