I've been wanting to get back into riding horses again after taking a year long break for school, job searching, etc. I don't want to just take lessons once a week. In fact, I'd rather not have to pay to ride at all. I actually posted an ad on CL stating that I would like to work on a horse farm in exchange for being able to ride. I never got any responses, but last Saturday or Sunday I saw an ad about a lady who owned a horse farm that had broken her ankle. She was looking for an experienced rider to ride two of her Thoroughbreds.
I sent her an email about my experience with horses, but wasn't really expecting anything since I hadn't ridden in a year. Well she responded and we exchanged a few emails until she gave me her number. The next day I called her and we set it up so that on Wednesday afternoon I would come out to her farm and ride her schooling horse, so we could see how I was doing before riding the more spirited ones.
Wednesday came and it was so nice being in the saddle again. Once I asked the horse to trot and starting posting I could definitely tell that I wasn't in that good of shape anymore. I rode that horse for a little bit until they brought the calmer of the two Thoroughbreds out. She told me prior about the "bad" things the horses would do on their off days, but it was really nothing compared to what I had dealt with before.
I mounted the horse and rode about the same amount of time as the first. This was definitely more of a "get up and go" type of horse, but I like that since they don't take much encouraging to change their gaits. I rode the horse at a walk, trot, and canter. The only time the horse got over excited was when I asked him to canter one of the times and he took off at first. He was very easy to bring back down to a walk again though.
Overall I really enjoyed it and am hoping to go back out there tomorrow. When I first left the farm I wasn't sore at all, but a few hours after I got home I was definitely feeling the burn. It's not Saturday and I am still a little sore in some spots from it. It's definitely worth it to be doing something I love again though.
Now is where I think I want to put in the Postcards I've received. Putting the pictures in the middle of the post seems like a good thing to do. These first cards are from Postcrossing:
From Canada
Karleby, Finland
England
U.S.
Minsk, Belarus
I really like this card. It looks like it was done with watercolors.
These next two PC's are from Swap-bot and the Fall Leaves PC Swap:
I really love this card. It was handmade and it's laminated, so it's all shiny. Haha. I'm not sure if that's the way it goes, but it's how I prefer it. I really have no idea why I like it so much, but I do.
Ok. Now is when the sad stuff that's happened comes out. I think I'm going to copy and paste most of it since I've told the story several times now. Here it is:
I got home from class yesterday at a bit after noon and was informed by my grandma that one of our three cats, Jack (female), has been missing for around an hour. All of my cats are indoor cats and most of the time they are in plain sight. They are really friendly and mainly sleep on the couches or our beds. If Jack ever is hiding and I want to pet her or whatever I just call her name and she'll appear.
I was feeding one of my other cats when my grandma told me, so I grabbed the treat bag and started to shake it and called for Jack. Nothing. I tried upstairs. Nothing. I thought it was odd that she wasn't coming out of hiding, but didn't think much of it then. About an hour later I start looking for her since I'm getting a little bit worried. I spent a few hours going through every single place in my house several times trying to find her. Still nothing.
At this point it's about 4 in the afternoon. Jack has never been out of sight for this long, so of course I'm getting even more worried. I ask my grandpa, who is always working on stuff outside, if he left a door open or anything to where Jack could have gotten outside. He doesn't know for sure, but he thinks the door might have been open a little bit, but that he was working right next to it all day.
Now Jack has only been outside several times and that's only because my dad's stupid and let her out. When she was outside she would go right into the garage and just wander in there since she seemed pretty scared about being outside of the house. So it really makes no sense to me that she would go outside in the first place, let alone run away.
I went outside though and walked around and called her name. Our backyard is a ravine, so I spent a lot of time over there listening for any movement and stuff. Nothing still. We also live right next to a busy road, so that has me extra worried since she could very easily get hit by a car.
It's now 8:10 P.M. the next day and there's still no sign of her. I've posted an ad on Craigslist stating that she's missing and put a few pictures up on there as well. I really don't know what else to do since we've looked everywhere around here. On Monday I'll probably check some animal shelters and places like that for her. Another thing that has me really worried is the weather. It's been really cold and rainy all day, so I want her here and in the warm house. Everything about this situation just sucks. Here's two pictures of her:
I just really hope everything turns out ok. I don't need more stress and craziness right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment