| March 30, 2001 | |
| As her reward for being the first Missouri Fox Trotter to pass the Parelli level 2 test, I gave Sage almost a two year break. She got to be the step mommy to JR and raise him. I rode Velvet in the meantime.Unfortunately, Sage chose to fill her stomach about three times as large as it should be. She got terribly fat on the lush Missouri grass. It’s time for me to reclaim Sage back as a great pal and riding horse. Accordingly, in the spring of 2001, Sage went to Pine Dell and has become a pasture horse. It’s my goal to ride her almost daily for fun and to substitute that triple stomach with hard lean muscle.I rode her in a group lesson one night. One of our goals was to jump over two orange traffic barrels laid end to end. Well, Sage has never really enjoyed jumping. She will jump barrels and poles while I’m on the ground directing her. Now that she is fat and out of shape, she really doesn’t want to jump barrels. However, the goal during the lesson was to jump. Sage and I ran over to the barrels and screeched to a halt. She daintily tried to pick her way through the barrels. I sat and urged her on. I urged her on. Again, I urged her on. I looked down at the barrel…one of them had disappeared. I could see small orange patches sticking out from under her legs. I looked around at the rest of the group. They all were staring at me with expressions of great concern. It was then that I realized that I must have a problem. I didn’t know what it was. Jenny was starting to ask me how to get out of my predicament. I said, go forward! Jenny quickly said, “Don’t ask her to go forward!” I took a quick look at the group’s collective low level alarmed expression. At the other end of the arena taking a lesson were green riders. Before Jenny could say, “Don’t touch the BARREL” three times, one of the helpful green riders RAN over to SAGE and PULLED the barrel out from underneath her! I frowned, the group expression became one of horror. After the green rider got the barrel out, she finally “heard” Jenny say, “don’t touch the barrel”! She was alarmed and quickly PUSHED the BARREL back under SAGE! At this moment, everyone in my lesson, Jenny and myself had an open mouth, astonished look of horror. However, Sage the Brave just stood there, not twitching a muscle. If this would have happened to most of the other horses in the group lesson, the horse and rider would have gone straight to the ceiling! Jenny then told me that Sage had moved the barrel until it lay lengthwise between her front and back legs. When she tried to walk forward, her back legs kept walking into the open end of the barrel!!! SCREAM!!!! I’m happy to report several days later that Sage and I are jumping over the barrels. |
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