A Little Background

My equestrian career began as a child. I was around 8 or 9 when I started taking lessons. I loved it. I was only taking lessons for about a year when my parents encouraged me to try something else as a hobby. There had been an accident at a neighboring stable and the young rider took a nasty fall and was left paralyzed. My parents didn’t tell me this but they were scared I could suffer a similar fate, so bye bye horses, and hello clarinet.

Fast forward about 33 years. I stumbled upon a Groupon for a discounted trail ride. So I signed up myself and my husband…my extremely allergic husband (didn’t realize his allergy was going to be a severe one) for this trail ride. Despite my husband breaking out into hives and needing 2 doses of Benadryl, we both enjoyed it. And that was it, I was hooked. I started taking lessons at a stable that was much closer to me than where we had the trail ride and 4 months into lessons, I bought my Alfie.

My Alfie. We really didn’t know much about him except he came from a farm in Virginia. We weren’t even sure exactly how old he was. All we knew was he was a trained ranch horse that was very safe, and very cute.

What I would find out over these last 4 years based on vets and an equine dentist, Alfie is most likely in his mid 20’s. How does one figure out the age of a horse, by their teeth. And Alfie, well, he has old man teeth. They are all accounted for, but totally smooth which makes eating hay a challenge for him.

Because of his age and some physical issues with his legs and feet, our weekly lessons are just done at a walk and trot. I ride my trainer’s horse Martini who is younger and doesn’t have the physical challenges Alfie has to do the more advanced stuff. So this blog will feature entries about both Alfie and Martini.