Day Five
Trail ride day. We load the horses in trailers for a short, but steep haul up the mesa.
Sasha gets off the trailer drenched in sweat. He has banged his head. Blood is seeping around his stitches and he is shaking like an aspen leaf. This is not a promising start for his first trail ride. He's done a lot and I really don't want either of us to have a bad experience now. Brandi is helping another rider. I ask John for advice. John watches him for a few minutes. He evidently sees something I do not.
"Take him. It'll do him good."
I really don't want to do this.
"Saddle him up, but do not do it while he's tied to the fence."
More truth: My other major hospitalization came during a trail ride-at the walk. Another big, black horse slipped, went down and my head played "crack the whip" with a road in Ireland. This was another incident where I couldn't "get back on" from a hospital bed. By the time I recovered, I was an ocean away from that particular horse.
Nickie helped me saddle Sasha, because I'm now as nervous as my horse, and he's picking up on that, big time. John rides over on Preacher and ponies Sasha a little bit at the walk. Sasha doesn't really have a lot of choice about tagging along with confident Preacher and calms down enormously. John has me get on Sasha and ponies us both for a few more minutes until I get so interested in how my horse is responding that I relax.
Hmm. This is beginning to feel a whole lot like what I was doing at the ladder yesterday-only it's directed at me as much as the horse.
John tosses me the reins and I get to work. Walk three steps. Stop. Walk three steps. Stop. Hips-over just to make sure it still works. It does.
Our group assembled, we hit the trail with Mike acting as trail boss, leading the way. The ladies who spend most of their riding time on trails support those who have never much been away from the arena. Brandi moves front to back along the line, encouraging and instructing riders.
Sasha is concentrating on balancing himself and me while going up and down the steep climbs. I'm falling in love with my horse.
All too soon, we are back down the mesa, putting up the horses and adjourning to the campfire to swap e-mail addresses, receive our certificates, exchange photos, and eat cake.
The plan is to go to a rodeo after barn chores, but rain pours down. We go to dinner together instead and fit in a last batch of laughing. ("It was either a bunch of cowgirls or a pack of really noisy coyotes.")
Going Home
On Saturday morning, we clean stalls, load up, and say goodbye to wonderful women who have become supportive friends.
So what did we take away from our week in Parachute?
Working under supervision for five to seven hours a day, five days straight can make a remarkable difference for many horses and riders.
"I didn't just work on what my horse and I already know," says Lisa. "I actually taught him some new things. For me, that's huge, because I don't normally think of myself as someone capable of teaching a horse."
"I came home and immediately everyone noticed my lightness of spirit," shares Vicki. "My energy level had risen, and I put into practice the lessons I had learned from the retreat on every horse in the barn, including the rescue horses."
Peggy not only got her horse to stand still to be mounted, she summed it up for most of us when she said, "If laughter is really the best medicine, then all of us went home very healthy."
As for me, do I consider Sasha to be truly broke? Heck, no. That will take years. But I'm smiling because I've got a new
favorite riding horse. He's big, black, and 9 years old-and ready to build on the foundation we began together at a women's retreat in Parachute.
