Thank Gawd I'm a Country Girl!

I have two very dear friends in California, Dominique and Michael. This past week they sent me a box of pink horse gear. They also sent a pink grooming kit, pink gloves, and a book entitled Connecting With Horses by Margrit Coates.


Here is Lilly wearing the halter they sent. Does she not look beautiful with those sparkles on her nose?


I almost didn't want to put her new stuff on her because she was covered with mud. But the new halter looked so smashing, I had to take a picture! Glamour Brum!

This weekend Christine and I were able to ride both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday the weather was perfect. Here is Brumby getting all ready to go. No, I haven't managed to find a pink toile saddle blanket yet. But I still am using the Big Horn saddle I got from Bill. The kind that isn't all leather. So it's nice and lightweight. It has been the best saddle ever. I don't even lust for a new saddle, because this one has been so good.

Lately I have started to bring the crop with me. I find a crop comes in unbelieveably handy. Lilly has much respect for the crop. This weekend, so much snow had melted that there are giant puddles (small ponds) in the trail. Yesterday we'd get in the middle of a few of them and Lilly would start to paw and I knew she was thinking about a stop, drop and roll. This crop foiled those plans! During last year's roll in a puddle, my camera was ruined. This year I know what to look for.

There's Christine getting a photo of me on my brumby. We are all quite camera happy at Bear River.

Of course, not all the pictures turn out so great. I don't know what I was trying to accomplish with this one. Other than to document the sheer cuteness of an equine ear.

We often go by this house en route to one of the trails. No people live there, but I guess a big family of wasps is calling it home. Do wasps swarm? I would hate to have my brumby stung by a wasp...especially when I am on her! On Saturday when we were on the trail, in a spot that is notorious for spooking Lilly anyway, a giant bird started flapping around in the boughs of the trees. It was this unmistakeable soft and furry fluffly flapping sound of a very large bird. Lilly and QTee started to make a run for it! At first I thought it was on owl, but after Lilly and QTee regained their composure, we saw it was a hawk. Later we saw a Common Nighthawk flying over the wasp house. A wildlife sighting makes a great trail ride even greater.

This is during a carrot break. QTee kept looking at me as though she wanted to be photographed. So I snapped her picture.

Then she hastily made her way to my pommel bag where the carrots live!

On our ride we had three dogs with us: Sally, Henry and Getty. Sometimes Lilly likes to act annoyed at all the dogs racing around her, scrambling through leaves and popping out over hillocks out of nowhere. Sometimes she actually tries to lunge at them. Such a naughty brumby, since she knows the dogs will never go away. By the end of our ride today, she didn't even seem to see them. I figure the dogs are just another great training tool. Because who's to say a coyote would not appear out of nowhere one day?

I thought I'd throw in a picture of three of some of my most favorite things to eat. Is that a toile saucer those olives are on? Yes, it is!!

My parting shot today is a video of Bill made of Lilly and me cantering. We haven't done this in months. We do not look polished and perfect, but that's what we have all summer for. I look like I am squirming all over in the saddle, but that was to keep her in the canter. She kept wanting to drop out of it. What I want to work on is keeping my body quieter, and also getting Lilly more collected.

Aaaah well, what is that Bill is always saying? Rome wasn't built in a day.