Sage was the first horse. I learned a lot from her. We came from negative 7 to passing the Parelli original level 2 test. The original level 2 task list was so difficult and complex, I had no idea what the tasks were…after I read them. I put the test away and just continued my lessons with Jenny Vaught. Years later, we passed all the tasks.
During the long years it took to get my horses to do four consecutive flying lead changes, I switched over to doing the L2 tasks with Velvet. I thought she might be better than Sage. But after about a year of trying, we decided to switch back to Sage. Sage started doing flying lead changes. A gaited horse doing flying lead changes is super amazing.
After Sage and I passed L2, I thought long and hard about taking Sage into L3. The riding bridleless part had me a bit nervous. I thought Velvet was a bit more agreeable, so I switched over to Velvet. That was a long journey and Sage got left behind. We decided Sage would make a great lesson horse at Pine Dell Farm and so she did. I bet over a period of 5-8 years, Sage must have given thousands of lessons to beginner beginners in an arena. Can you imagine how bored she might have gotten?
Later I took her down to live with Jenny and Tony Vaught at For the Horse Ranch. We thought perhaps Caitlyn and Sage would bond, but it didn’t work out. Sage became a lesson horse again. This time she got to ride a little bit outside as well as in the indoor arena. She had a good time with this and continued her string of teaching people how to understand and ride horses.
By this time I had moved beyond Velvet to JR. I rode JR for around 3-4 years and finally it was Sage’s daughter who was to become my next mount.
Nova had a year with Jenny and competed as a 4 year old at the World Show. She became my riding horse in October and we’ve been competing at the World Celebration every since…three years.
Tony Vaught has really like Nova. He liked her really well when I rode her last year in the reining class. He told me I did great on Nova and had the best lead changes of anyone and my spins and rollbacks were really good. He said he was Jealous and Wanted Nova for himself.
Tony got to ride Nova a couple times before the 2011 World Celebration. He remembered again how much he likes how Nova moves.
The story is that I’m back to riding Sage now. Tony and Nova are going to contend for the Open Versatility and Ranch Horse events in 2012!
It’s a long way around to tell you that Sage and I have started riding the trails again!