Grandma's surprise

I take care of my elderly mother who is eighty six. In the last year mom has become bed ridden, and helpless. She has dementia as well and possibly Alzheimer's. As you can imagine other than her family and the day to day routine just being alive she has very little that brings her joy these days. Well...ice cream. She loves ice cream.

She no longer will eat a regular meal and has to get her nutrition via a formula I have to administer through a stomach tube. She has several wonderful home health nurses that come to the house and watch over her, and requests the tests needed to keep her doing as well as can be expected. The whole family does what we can to make things as pleasant as we can for her.

In this photo my daughter Shelby walked our mini horse into the house and into grandma's room. She talked for a minute or so before mom noticed there was a horse in the room! The wide eyed look of surprise when she did was priceless. The joy on her face getting to pet the pony's nose was worth sharing.

All I can say is WOW

Last night 9-10-11 I took the girls to a local horse show. Its county fair time here and some of the saddle clubs are having extra shows to fund raise for next year. The young lady in the photo is my 18 yr old daughter Cody. She is riding her new horse Fonzie in a speed event called Dash For Cash. Its a one barrel turn at the end of the arena and the fastest time wins.I bought this horse only 4 days earlier and she had only had a chance to ride him twice before this event. So in all honesty and knowing very little about how Fonz would act  at a horse show, she was for all practical purposes as they say "winging it"

Most times when you take a new horse into a new environment and the two of you are not yet a "team" you are more than happy to just get through the day and learn a little more about your new mount. Many times you might find the horse is nervous away from home and you spend most of your time just getting them comfortable. As it was Cody felt Fonz was ok with his surroundings so she had me enter her in several events so she could get a feel for how he is inside the arena. 

The amazing part of this story is how well they did. She ran a very passable barrel race for her first time in the arena with this horse with a 24 second run. 21 seconds were winning. I was impressed! but not as impressed as I was going to be. Her next class was a dash for cash where one barrel is set up that you must run around with the fastest time winning. This is where the horses can and do really open up and go. Cody with a new horse ( who had lost a back shoe) with only 2 previous hours in the saddle on this horse, and their first time together at a horse show ran a blazing fast time in the race and finished 4th out of 34 entries! 

To say the least that was certainly nothing we expected when we left out from home for our evening out with the horses. Our minds were geared up just to acclimate the new horse to the show grounds, and have a bit of fun. Which we did indeed do, but never in a million years did I expect Cody to place in a large speed event against riders that have been running all year. Wow.