Me, Alex, Doris and Karen |
While I was on vacation this summer I spent several days at a beautiful ranch in Oklahoma. Besides having a great time with these lovely ladies, I rather fell in love with the idea of owning a horse. Even though it was a pipe dream, I rather thought that even despite my life-long fear of horses I might be able to overcome some of that and at least I might learn how to "show" them. Fancy that...me a Horsewoman. I laughed at myself at the time, but the ever so slight remains of my pipe dream must still linger...
Sometime last night...
"It's about a horse...I can't figure out how to work the whipping thingie...I take it out of its fancy foam lined case and it looks like a fly rod with an electric knife handle that releases the whipping thingie string... I can't find my horse in the vast barn and they point me to the quarter horse section and when I do, she's being mounted by a stallion...and I am frantically trying to figure out how I am ever going to learn how to "show" my horse in just a few hours...I've obviously given her too many chunks of raw potato because they are telling me she has a belly ache (she's on the ground)...I'm barefoot walking through the barn which has a nice squishy red mud floor, I'm not dressed properly...all the other ladies have perfectly coiffed hair, colorful cowgirl shirts and bright red lipstick and look like Patsy Cline...and it's late and almost showtime...and I see that my young horse doesn't have regular hooves, just weird abalone shaped feet with suction cups. I'm wondering if they require shoes.. Meanwhile, I have somehow tangled up my whipping thingie in a cleaning bag and my Horsewoman mentor is already adeptly casting her whipping thingie with great accuracy into a tiny square on the ground, and I notice that my whipping thingie must be defective as it doesn't have the giant hooks and shiny lures that her has...and I can't even get it untangled from the cleaning bag...all of a sudden I realize that I don't even know how to halter the horse and perhaps I'll have to have someone else "show" her..."
I wake defeated...not a Horsewoman at all...and reality check: perhaps there's more to it that I thought and I am 71.
Sisters and Horsewomen, for sure...Karen Torrice and Alex Strom, with Steve. |
I guess I'll stick with chickens...
Laurel. Egg Fryer.