I can do that....

Over the years I have accumulated some talents. Most were acquired after I had kids. If we wanted to do something or have something and there wasn't the money, you figured out how to make it. It probably started with the ugly paper dolls. One was Martha Washington from a coloring page from school. She was adhered carefully to cardboard, cut out and a stand was made for her. Martha was with us for quite a few years. There was the humongous Barbie dollhouse that was in the dining room made of cardboard boxes. That was followed by a real dollhouse that we made ourselves and all the Maple Town animals lived in that one. The Barbies were stuck in the cardboard tenement until dining room urban renewal was imposed. Let's see there was the go-cart, though we had a lot of trouble with the front wheels. We planted the tree for the tree house. We ran into a snafu when the tree had to be cut down thus putting the project back by decades.

In the meantime, I was also learning to hang drywall, electrical wiring, shingling and various and sundry workaday skills. After a bit of that a person needs some personal enrichment. So I learned to quilt. That was long enough ago that no one had started to machine quilt yet. I learned to do ceramics. Though not content with that I also learned how to pour and make molds and also moved into porcelain and to sculpting. I was not the best at sculpting, which makes me sad. But then I was closer to the top of the class then the bottom, so that's a bit of a relief. I still want to do some sculpting of faces for architectural elements. It's on a to-do list somewhere.

So when the opportunity finally came about for me to have a horse, my reaction was" I can do this". The advice was that green on green equals black and blue. I priced the been there and done that horses....even the twenty year olds were expensive. Started to look at less expensive young stock. I was given many warnings and I DO heed them daily, but I CAN DO THIS. I had, in my advanced years, become a quivering mass of fear. I STILL knew I could do it if I could just get my fear back into the box.

So here I sit with my four year old domesticated/wild horse. She has an excellent mind and I have an over developed sense of fear. In my mind I feel that the most difficult task I will ever face is the willing acceptance of the halter. It is the lifeline, the support tool for everything we will do together until we get to liberty work. The halter is the biggest trust hurdle the horse will ever go over. It is one of the biggest holes in many people's horsemanship. The halter is absolutely huge to me and last night I put it on Pip. It wasn't pretty but we did it. Once we get really comfortable with the haltering then we will be on our way! Pip and I .... we can do this!

louie