8 Things You Didn’t Know About Me – Mikki
We were tagged by Show Your Pony to share eight things you might not know about us. Since there are two of us, we’ll both go. (Do we only have to do 4 each? 🙂 Just kidding…) But after a year and a half on this blog, I can’t imagine there are eight things you don’t know about me already that you’d want to. But here goes:
- One of my first horseback rides was at Girl Scout camp. They asked whether I was an experienced rider, and either out of pride or naiveté, I said I was and got a horse named Charlie Brown. He proceeded to take me under every tree on the trail going after grass to graze, because of course I couldn’t control him. I got a good chewing out by the camp counselor for misrepresenting my riding skill.
- Another memorable ride – although I don’t remember this horse’s name or even who I was riding with – was a ride from the woman’s home to a nearby park. To get there, we had to ride across Phoenix city streets (there were almost no cars). That mare was pretty well-behaved, until we got to an intersection that had recently been painted. There was nothing I could do to convince her to walk across the bright white “right turn only” arrow. That thing completely freaked her out.
- I’m going to write a novel next month. Wow, does that sound awe-inspiring or what? It’s not as cool as it sounds, but I should just let people think it is. November is National Novel Writing Month; check out www.nanowrimo.org for details. Basically, people all over the world try to churn out a 50,000 page novel in 30 days. No one else reads it, unless you want them to. It doesn’t have to be any good. It’s just kind of a challenge to yourself. If you succeed, you get a cool certificate. If you don’t, you tell yourself that next year, you’ll do it, by crikey!
- I have a tattoo. It’s a rose, and says “Bill.” That’s only shocking if you really know me. People who know me in person are always shocked. I guess I don’t appear to be a tattoo kind of girl. Anyway, just play along and say, “No way!” in your head.
- When I was a kid, I wanted to be a psychologist when I grew up. Then when I grew up, I wanted to be a lawyer. Then I worked for lawyers for 18 years and decided that wasn’t such a cool job anymore. Now I think I just want to be a cowgirl. 😉
- When I was growing up, my grandma’s nickname for me was Grace. I don’t think she meant it as a compliment. I do, however, think it was fitting.
- The first time I rode my horse, Valentine, I fell off. Well, not exactly while riding him; when I got off, my foot caught in the stirrup and I kinda fell out and landed on my back. Nothing was hurt but my pride – but Bill did get the whole thing on video. And no, we will not be posting that footage. Ever.
- I met and had my picture taken with Patrick Swayze at the Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show in 1992. I’ll have to dig that photo up and post it here.
So, I guess you’re supposed to tag some more blogs here, but I think everybody we know that’s animal-related has already been tagged. Except for these (and I think it’s fair that Bill and I share these, don’t you, since we know all the same blogs?):
A friend of ours called us the other day to relay a story that happened on her street a few days ago. A local girl was out riding her horse on this small country road not far from here. She put a blanket on the horse and went for a ride using a lead rope as reigns. I bet you can guess this didn’t end well. Her horse spooked, dumping her onto the paved road where she was found some time later, bleeding from her ears. Her horse was standing nearby. She was airlifted to a hospital an hour away and is recovering. But it could have been far worse. I don’t have the statistics on head injuries handy but most of the serious injuries I hear of involve head trauma. Yet on trail rides and at events, I rarely see anyone wearing a helmet. Why is that?
Yesterday, our horse friend Shari (I know we talk a lot about her, but if it weren’t for her, we may have given up on this horse thing by now) decided that Sunday would be the day that we rode our horses again. So after a trip to a local festival, we came back to our barn and saddled up our horses. It was great! We took them in turns up to the round pen, first Valentine and then Moonshine. Shari used the longe line and whip to get a feel for how they were going to behave (or not!), then hopped on and rode around the arena. She even took Valentine out and rode around our pasture. He was so good! Then I rode Valentine, first around the arena, then outside. He was good for me too! Then Bill rode him, in the arena and out. Guess what? He was good for Bill too! I’m beginning to think he’s not just decorative after all.
You can get some really good information from infomercials. You just have to exercise self control when it comes to the signing on the dotted line (or picking up the phone to order) part. We’ve attended Purina Mills’ Horse Owners Workshop events twice in the past, and enjoyed them very much. They presented good information about horse ownership in general, had a great guest speaker (Sam Powell both times), had free samples of various products (not just Purina), and fed us dinner for free!
I was making my way through the October 2007 issue of Horse and Rider magazine this week when I came across what I thought was a great premise for an article. It’s called “Barn Names” and it discusses something near and dear to my heart – the names we actually call our horses on a regular basis. For those of you newer to horses than I am, the official or fancy name (as I call it) given to a horse is typically derived using a combination of the names of the mama (dam) and daddy (sire) horse. So if Mitsy’s Goober and Trackside Smooch decided it was time to have a baby horse, the foal could quite possibly be referred to as Goober Smooch, Goober’s Smooch or Smooche’s Goober. That’s actually a cool name but usually it’s something like “YR All Dun Playin”, a real life example given in the article. I can’t imagine many people go around calling their horse by their fancy name (“here YR All Dun Playin. Who’se a good YR All Dun Playin?”). That’s why most of us have come up with cutesy, easy to say barn names like…well…Moonshine and Valentine.
We’ve been toying with the idea of getting another horse. We have two now and our barn is setup with three completed stalls. Here’s our reasoning: we could use a practice horse, one that’s well broken (bulletproof, as they say). Our horses are awesome but they need work. Sometimes one of us just wants to go for a ride. A third horse would let us do that. Also, once we whip our horses into shape for trail riding, what’s the kid going to do? We can’t just leave him home. He needs a horse to ride, too. And speaking of the kid, he’s a little afraid of our two horses. They’re young and energetic. He’s heard of my fall on Moonshine and Mikki’s wild ride on Valentine. If we had an old, broken horse for him to ride maybe it would increase his confidence. Plus, we’d love for him to have the experience of owning a horse as a kid. Not many kids get to do that. I know I wasn’t able to but I would have loved it.