Greetings. I promised myself when Scout became mine that I would start a blog. Well, delay, delay and now almost two and half years later I am finally starting...but let me start at the beginning.
In October 2010 I stared at the closed front door that my ex-fiance had just locked.
We had been together for over ten years and one morning around ten he said, "I'm going..." I said, "Going where, we don't need anything, do we?" He said, "I m leaving us."
Okay, enough dialogue! The short story is he left and it took me months if not years to move forward. But that's another story. This is the story of Scout and Me.
After my fiancé left I was sitting in a psychologist's office and was told, "You need to do three (3) things you have never done before or that you always wanted to do." Not sure why three or the reasoning behind it other then to distract me from the pain I wore not only on my shoulder but my entire self. So my first choice was horse back riding.
I contacted a few people I knew rode or new about local stables and finally someone said, "Go over to Huntington Beach there is a huge stable there." And so I did and thus begins my relationship with my horse, Scout.
I called the stables and made an appointment for a riding lesson (February 1, 2011). When I arrived, after signing waivers: like should I fall and die they were not to blame, I met my first trainer, Amy and a horse named Scout.
The lesson horses were a mix group of adopted horses and all had various backgrounds from abused and abandoned to privately owned and donated when their owners tired of them or could not afford them. As luck would have it Scout was pre-selected for me. After my first lesson, I never wanted to ride another horse but there were times when Scout was busy or had an injury and another horse was mine for an hour.
I loved the stables, the horses and wanted to spend as much time there as I could.
While taking lessons I heard about an internship program set up mostly for teens and college students. I asked what qualifications were needed to be part of the program? There was only one: you had to be over sixteen years old! Well, at fifty-nine I qualified several times over. :-). So I signed up and started the eight week internship program. There were four of us in the group, two teenagers and a gal in her mid thirties. Our instructor was a beautiful and very talented rider, Stephanie. She took us through the basics of what I call Horse 101. Everything you needed to know about horses including hands on experiences. I remember the first time I picked up a horse hoof and was told not to be nervous because the horse would know...what an experience. Scared to death but pretending to be calm the horse I was working with turned his head and looked at me. He seemed to know how "green" I was and probably took pity on me because he was very cooperative. Thank goodness! And so begins my blog of Scout and Me and my first horse at Sixty.
I will write more later but I need to get chores done and then out to the stables to take care of Scout who became mine in April of 2012 (he was purchased as a gift for me by a wonderful person). Below is a photo of Scout and me during one of our "Barn Walks..."
