If you read my Hello World post, then you know that I was inspired to continue this journey based on a friend of mine who has a gift for art. Since she inspired me to continue this journey, I wanted to make sure I shared that gift with everyone!
A little knowledge/insight into my background as well as my history with this amazing artist. We went to the same school growing up and both had a love of horses. She is not only great at art, but is also the greatest horse trainer that I know! While we were still in high school, she was also working to train horses! High School is hard enough, let alone coming home every night and every weekend to spend hours both caring for the animals on her farm, but also training horses that people would pay her to train!
Luckily for me, I was a good enough rider and I was over there enough that I was able to help her put some time on the horses that were “broke-out” and just needed a little trail riding time. We would spend hours riding horses, there were some days during the summer that we would ride from 8 am to 8pm. Sometimes this was just hours riding on the rode and other times it was riding through a woods near her house.
If you know anything about horses and training them, then you know that each horse has a different personality and each excursion has its own risks. I remember one of the horses that she trained, we were riding around the block and there was the scariest mailbox you ever could imagine. It took ALOT of urging and coaxing to get past that thing. Of course then we just rode past it a few more times until it wasn’t nearly as scary as he originally thought.
My all-time favorite story about riding with her though was a different horse. I loved riding this horse, and for the most part he was fairly calm. One day though we had the perfect timing of reaching the corner just as a dump truck from one of the local quarries came around it. My friend was almost to the side road and her horse didn’t bat an eye. My horse on the other hand must have thought that the devil was after him!
In an instant we spun 180 degrees around and took off faster than I knew that horse could move! Luckily I stayed on. As that dump truck shifted gears and sped up a little bit, it was already too late for both me to stop the horse and for the driver to stop. I swear as I was racing down the side of the road with that horse, I could have reached out and touched the side of the dump truck.
Now in all reality this probably took only a couple of seconds to happen, and once the dump truck was past us the horse came to almost an instant dead stop. By the time I turned around the horse, my friend looked like she was about to lose her friend. The little race didn’t bother me, but I am sure watching it happen to someone else would have been a whole lot scarier.
We finished the ride around the block and went and had lunch. To this day, that was probably the most exciting ride I ever had while I was at her house, or really anywhere. I still think about it as a day I could have died!
If you made it this far, you now know one of my most exciting stories, and you know a little bit more about the amazing artist! I hope that you find her art as amazing as I do!
