Drifter 'n' Me

It's hard to believe it, but nearly a year and a half has passed since I first started my horse-riding experiment and that I've been either leasing or taking lessons at Sage Meadows for 15 months! As is to be expected with my health in general and the trials--foot/back injury, stomach woes--of the last year in particular, I was only able to be with the horses about half of the time, but the horses have proved to be powerful medicine even on a part-time basis.

I was at the park where I took my first lessons the other day and spied Lacey, the horse who gave me my first lessons, on the far right. Drifter is both much larger and a much better teacher, but she did help me figure out that riding and being with horses was something that I wanted to do.

My guy.

The benefits of hanging around equines in general and Drifter in particular have been numerous. One of the most valuable has been that my weekly horse fix has given me something to look forward to. Weeks or sometimes even months will go by when I do not leave the house except for medical appointments--or to be with the horses. When I'm at the stable, I cease to feel like I have any kind of disability. I get to exist in the moment, whether it is brushing Drifter in a meditative state on a winter afternoon or trying to perfect my posture while riding him around the arena on a sunny spring day. I love the act of grooming itself, so the winter months when I was leasing and not riding were no hardship. I love the solidity of Drifter's massive warm bulk and the pleasure he gets from a thorough grooming. One of my favorite things is when he stands in the cross-ties, nose against my chest, and descends into a drowsy, trancelike state of pleasure as I brush and caress his face. I know that Drifter has taught hundreds of students during his 20-odd years as a school horse and that there are several other students currently riding him, but Drifter feels like MY horse. I like to think that I am the very best groomer of all the students and that therefore he likes me best!

The tree-lined arena is a beautiful place to be on a sunny day.

Bear, one of the other school horses, looks up to see who is interrupting his grazing session.

Drifter's grooming tools.

This is rather silly, but I was delighted to learn that Drifter and I have something unusual in common: we both turned 32 in June! Yes, good ol' Drifter really is OLD. The average lifespan for a horse is 25-30 years, but Drifter is still plugging away and I think the good care he receives and the fact that he's still working (part-time) at a job he loves helps keep him young. He's been switched, much to his pleasure, to a pure alfalfa diet to help him keep weight on his old bones. I intend to keep learning from him and giving him excellent grooming session for as long as he's around.

So when I looked like this...

....Drifter must have looked like this!

(These are not actual pictures of Drifter as a baby, but I searched for images of a sorrel quarter
horse foal with a white face, so they are probably pretty close to how he looked in June of 1981!)

The two of us looking good together at 32.

Halters hung on pasture
fenceposts.

Other benefits from my association with the horses include building up my strength and a sense of mastery. As someone who can no longer do many activities that I once excelled at and whose life is such that even the ability to do chores or run errands is a luxury, it's nice to get a sense of accomplishment from something! It turns out that I'm good at riding a horse. Missing lessons due to not feeling well and fatigue often limiting what I can do when I can show up has slowed my progress, but even so, I have something of a feel for it. By the end of each lesson, I always feel that I'm a little bit more skilled than when I began. The progress may be small, but I have so little progress elsewhere in my life that it makes a big difference. I also like the sense of mastery I get from making a large animal ten times my weight do as I say. Drifter, of course, is as obliging as they come, but he is a little bit fussy about having his feet picked sometimes and, like with dogs, it's important with horses that the animal listens to you. That means if I say we are going to clean hooves, I can't give up until all the hooves are cleaned. The last thing you need is a giant animal who thinks he can walk all over you--especially when there's the possibility that he could do so literally as well as figuratively! So having the gumption and stubbornness not to give up on those days when Drifter is feeling lazy during lessons or fussy about his feet is very rewarding for me, especially given the size of the payoff. I also like that working with Drifter helps me build up my physical strength. My spindly arms now have muscles in them from all that intensive grooming and my legs have been regaining the strength they lost during those months when I was on crutches and then going through physical therapy to get my back stabilized. I also love that riding well requires using exactly the same core muscles that I was working on strengthening in physical therapy. It also demands a certain looseness that is beneficial to my hips and my shoulders when I'm out of the saddle, too. Riding has turned out to be a natural extension of what I was striving to accomplish in physical therapy and now that I've been discharged from PT, I'm pleased that I'll continue building on what I learned there, resulting, as I continue to ride, in a strong, stable, but flexible core that provides equally strong signals to both of my legs. Talk about a bonus!

Syd, another Sage Meadows horses, heads off for a lesson with an advanced student.

Bear.

Now that I have some mastery of the basics of riding a horse, my growing skills are being channeled into the discipline of dressage. It makes sense for me to go this direction because a) I'm not going to be riding Western for anything other than pleasure and b) Drifter is the only horse at Sage Meadows trained in Western riding, so switching to the English disciplines in general and dressage in particular creates a framework for perfecting my control even after Drifter passes away or I grow skilled enough to graduate to a more advanced horse. Dressage is best known at its highest level, where the rider guides the horse through a series of dance-like steps, but entry-level dressage is quite different. It involves riding the horse in a variety of formations at different paces. The most important part is for the rider to maintain steady speed at each pace during the maneuvers. The other important skill is riding in perfect circles. Horses naturally slow down while being ridden in a circle, making the task of maintaining a constant speed more of a challenge. I'm pretty good at executing circles, but Drifter and I are still working on the steady pace aspect.

This diagram shows steps involved in an entry-level test. After riding down the center of the arena, stopping at the exact center to salute the judges, the rider then turns to the left, executes a 20 m circle with the center point of the circle being the center point of the arena, continues around the outside of the arena and does another circle starting at the point opposite to the first, crosses the arena at a diagonal and repeats the maneuvers going in the opposite direction, and then rides down the center of the arena to the center point for a final salute to the judges.

The ears of Beacon, Drifter's stable buddy.

Drifter with an English saddle.

Since I was starting to work some dressage skills into my lessons, it was only right that I switch over to an English saddle. It just felt wrong to be saluting an imaginary dressage judge while wearing jeans and riding Western! I made the switch over to the English saddle about a month and a half ago and I love it! Because it is smaller, lighter, and less stiff, I've found that the English saddle gives me a better feel for what Drifter is doing. This has made posting (rising and falling with the rhythm of the trot) much easier! I really believe I'm going to make tons of progress this summer now that I'm in the different saddle.

It's always nice to have the right outfit for whatever your task at hand may be, so once I had switched saddles, I wasted little time in ditching the jeans. I now have full seat breeches, paddock boots, and half chaps! While it may seem slightly silly to have such an official get-up when my ambitions are minimal, the breeches and half chaps (what the rest of the world would call gaiters) do serve practical purposes. The breeches, in addition to being comfortable and flexible for riding, are lined inside the legs and on the seat for better grip on the smooth English saddle. And I quickly learned the benefit of half chaps when I wore breeches inside my Western boots: everything I picked out of Drifter's hooves dropped straight into my boots and pebbles jumped in as well as we did our warm-up walk around the arena. But the whole get-up--boots and breeches--looks so official and there's no harm to getting a psychological boost from your clothes when you're trying to make a thousand pound animal trot when you say so and stop when you say stop!

Decked out in breeches and half chaps, I guide Drifter around the arena on beautiful summer day.

Me and my guy. Look how big his head is in comparison to my torso! And yet, this good-natured horse does my bidding--as long as I ask him in the correct manner. This is why he's a great beginner's horse: he's just particular enough that you've got to get your signals mostly right, but not so particular that he'll refuse to obey unless you perform them perfectly.

There's always more to be done. On days when I'm feeling strong enough, I work on posting, but even on the days when I'm more tired, I'm always working on my form and I'm learning how to tell him what to do simply by changing how I sit in the saddle. Riding requires a subtle balance of looseness and control, so I'm always having to remind myself to keep the elbows bent at a particular angle but not rigid, to have my pelvis rotated just so, to have my heels down and my legs back, to pull my shoulders back but not too far or too stiffly, to be moving my hips with the horse but keep the shoulders still and even, to arch my back just so, to have my fingers closed on the reins, to not unconsciously pull up on the reins, to keep my hands down and forward when posting while keeping the elbows loose, to try to lift from the inner thighs when posting and not from the stirrups (I'm not quite strong enough to do this yet, but am working on it), to keep my eyes up and looking ahead (sometimes I forget to do this because I am admiring the passing scenery), etc., etc., not to mention all the particulars that go along with the tack. Of course, all of the riding works best when you're not thinking TOO hard about it, so until it becomes second nature, you have to figure out how to remind yourself of all the particulars at the same time as not thinking about them at all. I find that it works best if I concentrate 90% of my focus on getting my hands in the right place and letting my body naturally (more or less) follow the information I'm getting from Drifter. I love the challenge of it, though, and it's why even slight progress can feel like a satisfying accomplishment.

Getting better all the time! Best of all, I don't look or feel like a largely housebound chronic migraineur when I'm proudly mounted on a horse. 

I've made lots of progress on my posting in recent weeks.

It's been an amazing journey so far and I hope that Drifter, despite his advanced age, will remain in good health long enough to teach me everything he knows. I will forever be indebted to his calm, patient, and willing demeanor long after I have graduated to more advanced horses and he has departed from this life. I know that with him (and with my great instructor), I am laying a foundation to make me a competent horsewoman that will serve me well no matter where this newfound passion takes me. Dogs, photography, and maintaining a sense of wonder and curiosity about the world all play a role in helping me remain positive despite my significant health challenges, but adding horses to that mix has proved beneficial beyond my wildest dreams.

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Gotcha!: Celebrating Eight Years of Abbey

Last Wednesday, I sat down to begin work on a blogpost that I intended to make public on the 12th. I was only able to get the following amount of work done before I had to stop because I was finally experiencing the backlash of my exertions of my Florida trip:

***

The little whippersnapper back in 2004, two months after we brought her home.

Today is Abbey's "Gotcha! Day," her "adoptiversary." It's hard to believe it, but eight years ago on a sunny Tuesday, my mother and I showed up at the Seattle Animal Shelter before it opened to make sure we'd be first in line in order to adopt a sweet brindle stray we'd looked at over the weekend. Her shelter name was Keta; we'd already settled on calling her Abbey. We didn't bring her home until the 13th because she had to be spayed, but today's the day when she became ours. Or, more specifically, she became mine and I became hers.

She has brought us so much joy over these last eight years.

In these last few months, the first gray hairs have appeared in Abbey's eyebrows.

Since she was brought into the shelter as a stray, no one knew anything about her, including her age. The best guess that anyone could give was that she was 1.5-2 years old. That means she's somewhere in the vicinity of ten years old now and her age is beginning to show. Her eyes have acquired the bluish cast caused by lenticular sclerosis as her aging lenses densify. She's developed a couple of fatty tumors and I've found several sebaceous adenomas--benign fleshy tumors of oil glands in the skin often referred to as "old dog warts"--around her face. During her last physical, the vet noticed that she's displaying symptoms of sciatica in one of her back paws; just like her owner, she's not getting full information from her nerves in one of her feet! And that darling little Border Collie muzzle of hers has suddenly gotten quite gray. I've even spotted a few gray hairs in her eyebrows, evidence that a full "sugar face" (my favorite term for an elderly dog displaying a lot of gray/white facial hair) is on its way. She lost a tooth earlier this year and she no longer wants as long of a game. I've also had to reduce her food to not quite half of what it was in her prime because her metabolism has slowed down so much. As hard as it is to believe, my girl is getting old.

Her muzzle in 2008...

...and her muzzle in 2012.

***

My Abbey-just-planted-a-kiss face

So after writing those paragraphs, I decided to lie down and read for a while and Abbey, of course, was delighted that I was in bed because that meant we could have a nice cuddle together. Jumping up on the bed at my invitation, she came over to lick my face. That's when I smelled ammonia on her breath.

I'd noticed the day before that her breath had been unusually rank and had made a mental note that I really needed to recommit to brushing her teeth, but the ammonia odor took the concept of halitosis to a whole new level of ghastly. It also just didn't seem RIGHT. So I got out of bed again and did a Google search on "dog breath ammonia" and learned that it could be the sign of kidney trouble.

I have to say, I was rattled. I'd noticed, over the last couple of weeks, that sometimes the inside of her mouth and her tongue seemed a bit pale. Pale mucus membranes in a dog are never a very good thing, so when combined with the observation that she'd been drinking just a bit more water (I was refilling her bowl more often during the day), that her poop had looked slightly different recently, and then that awful breath, I was worried that she might be showing the first signs of some kind of serious health problem involving her organs. I wasn't able to get her into see the vet until the 12th, so Abbey spent her "Gotcha Day" being a good girl, first in the waiting room for half an hour, and then for another twenty minutes or so while the vet did a thorough exam that turned up nothing (and of course her gums were as pink as pink can be), and then while getting her blood drawn. Both of us were pretty tired by the time we got home. And then we had to wait all weekend for the lab results.

Pensive girl.

The vet called me Monday with the very good news that all of her blood work came back looking great. Her organs, her thyroid, her blood count, and everything else looked perfect. Why her gums are still occasionally pale remains a mystery, but I was very relieved to hear that her organs are all okay! The vet and I agreed to simply watch and wait. If she exhibits any other changes in health or behavior, we'll reevaluate, but as long as she is acting like her normal self, life can go back to normal.

This photo gives you a sense of Abbey's imperfect mutt proportions: long for her height and with very small head! She looks particularly silly in this picture because she's gotten distracted and forgotten to put her hind paw--the one that's exhibiting signs of sciatica--down.

This was my first major scare with Abbey. I hadn't been worried at all about the mast cell tumor that was removed from her flank last year, to the point that I was taken by surprise when it turned out to be cancerous. I've been sure to regularly remind myself over these last eight years that Abbey is mortal, that she will die, and that it's going to hurt when it happens, but it will also be okay. It's such a different thing to THINK something than to FEEL it, though, and the idea that something might be terribly wrong inside my dog was a horrible feeling. She's not my "fur baby," I don't equate her with a child or think of myself as her "mom," but I do take care of her, look after her welfare, spend most of my time with her, and love her deeply, so it was a new (and difficult) feeling to look at this vulnerable creature that I love so much and to know she might be sick. It made me realize, too, that one of the things that scares me about her death is not that it WILL happen, but I don't know HOW it will happen. I hope I'll be given enough time given enough time, when the end draws near, to see it approaching.

But the end is not yet here.

(Abbey is barking in her sleep as I write this. The sound of a dog barking in its sleep is one of the cutest sounds known to man, in my opinion!)

My mellow pup in her typical one-paw-up lounging pose.

And thus we can resume our routine of mutual pleasure. Abbey has slept in my room since my concussion last summer and for a while, due to her concern for my welfare and an unwillingness to be separated from me, managed to undo seven and a half years of perfect crate-training. I'm pleased to report with intensive training and the use of the Holy Grail of treats, peanut butter, she is back to submitting without argument to being crated while we are gone, snoozing in her downstairs crate when she's looking for a cozy retreat while I'm reading on the couch, and voluntarily sleeping in her crate at night, preferring it, in fact, to sleeping on my bed. We'd never given her many treats in the past, since she has a sensitive stomach, but she's demonstrated that she's highly food-motivated, and perhaps because she hasn't had many treats, she views individual pieces of cereal, like Cheerios, to be a powerful incentive! I've harnessed that willingness to work for paltry snacks into teaching her a new command, "Look," as well as upping the stakes on previously learned commands, like asking her to remain in a down-stay while I leave the room and walk around the house. She's a pretty smart cookie, that Abbey! The treat motivation has also worked really well in neutralizing that bad habit she'd developed of barking ferociously at people and dogs outside the car. I mention in this blogpost from a few weeks ago the intensive training session I did while we were waiting for a ferry and I'm pleased to report that it's practically cured her already! So don't listen to that old saying, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks!"

"I can has peanut butter?"

But most of our days are oriented toward leisure over labor. I invite her up on my bed in the morning for a couple of hours of snuggling and snoozing, then, when I repair to my study, she either joins me, and sleeps on her pillow, or remains on my bed and sleeps there. She takes an interest in my various comings and goings, though sometimes only by opening her eyes and wagging the tip of her tail, but always offers some kind of response when I talk to her (and I talk to her a great deal). She comes alive in the evenings when my parents come home, yodeling with joy as they arrive and thumping the kitchen cabinets with her wagging tail. After dinner she likes to play a jolly game and then it's back upstairs to snooze on the pillow in my study until it's time to go to bed.

She takes an active interest in everything I do. In this photo, she's watching me photograph crocuses by our front door. 

There's nothing more special than being greeted with a yodel! Abbey is singing out her delight in my return with a happy "woo-woo-woo!"

It's a very simple life, interrupted by occasional variations in routine such as car rides and, when I'm well enough, short walks, but the wonderful thing about living with a dog is that you learn to recognize that simple pleasures are enough. From her perspective, she gets a selection of wonderful cozy places to sleep, she gets to spend nearly all of her days with the most precious object in the world (me) and have frequent affectionate exchanges with me throughout the day, she has a larger pack that she loves that reunites each evening, she gets dinner (hurrah!), and a game, and then she can fall asleep each night in the vicinity of her beloved. Why on earth would anyone or anything want more than that?

So Abbey's a great example of living in the moment and finding tremendous pleasure in simple things, but she also makes my family laugh. We love her exuberance while playing games, the way she snuggles with her rope bones but will not not chew them, her eagerness to perform tricks in return for a measly Cheerio, her spins of delight on hearing that a car ride is in the offing, and her funny habit of hanging her tail--or her whole rear end--outside of her bed while chewing on her weekly rawhide stick.

She may not need as long of a game as she gets older, but this playful gal still loves her toys!

Abbey's "Booda Bank," her collection of rope bones that she considers too precious to chew on. "Did you grow up during the Depression, Abbey?" we tease her. "Was there a shortage of Boodas?"

Look at that silly mutt hanging her rump outside her bed while working on a stick!

And why be dignified when you can get belly rubs?

We love her expressiveness, too, the attentive way she listens, moving her eyes and ears and wagging her tail every time you speak or even look at her. It's so gratifying that we are in the habit of jokingly including her in conversations, pausing in discussions on topics such as current events, say, to ask, "So, Ab, are you running for office?" We like how she can use those eyes and ears and that tail to communicate with us, how she can clearly say, "Follow me!" by looking over her shoulder or request a tricks-for-treats session by looking meaningfully at my mother (Abbey regards my mother as the distributor of treats even though I do much of the training), perhaps poking her with her nose, and pricking her ears in a certain way. I love the way that she'll sometimes check in with me by gently bumping my leg with her nose, the way she'll lick my toes with delight when I get up in the morning, and how she'll quietly line herself up beside me as I prepare to transition to a different place, waiting for me to make my move. Our whole family loves to look at her and admire her brindle stripes ("Hey, Abbey, are you a tiger?") and her beautiful brown eyes. We like the way she lines herself up parallel to the carpet in the family room ("So, Ab, are you a mathematician? Do you study geometry?") or how she'll lie down with all her legs and her tail tucked completely out of sight beneath her. ("Hey, Ab, are you a seal?") And of course, we love to pet her, to stroke her wonderfully soft, thick, odorless fur and fondle her exquisitely velvety little ears. Without a doubt, Abbey makes our lives better.

Abbey patiently waits at my side in her "where to next?" position.

Her warm brown eyes are both beautiful and expressive.

Our beloved brindle animal on the move in our backyard jungle!

No words can properly describe the extraordinary softness of her darling ears!

It's hard to believe, in many ways, that eight years have passed (that's enough time for a child to be born and enter the third grade!) since Abbey came to live with us. They've been incredibly tough years for me as I struggled to gain control of my bipolar disorder, went through years of terrible withdrawal thanks to a problematic medication, and then was laid low by the disabling migraines. But every step of the way, Abbey has proved to be exactly the dog I've needed. She made me feel urgently essential to her existance when I was at my sickest, which helped me conquer my fears of being overcome by suicidal thoughts and allowed me to start getting better. Becoming a better pack leader for her so she wouldn't have to be so stressed out about trying to take care of me was instrumental in helping me uncover a confident and assertive side I never knew I had. She offered quiet comfort and companionship when I felt wretchedly nauseated or in pain during the withdrawal years and was my eager sidekick on walks when I finally was able to start regaining my strength. And her presence has proved invaluable once again as I've had to retreat from the world due to the demands of my migraines. I never feel lonely because she makes an amiable companion, happy to communicate with me and partake in my pleasures while making nary a sound. She likes nothing better than cuddling up against me if I'm too sick to get out of bed and that becomes a source of happiness for me on days when otherwise it would be easy to feel down. When Abbey is around, I never feel lonely. The way her eyes light up and her tail wags when I look at her is enough to brighten my days. Her love--pure, unswerving, instinctual, and total--has carried me through eight years of hard times. I will have many dogs in my life, but I have been so fortunate to have stumbled upon, in Abbey--who was chosen largely because of the patient way she was waiting in her kennel at the shelter--exactly the dog I've needed.

I am hers and she is mine.

I love the photograph below because Abbey is gazing at me a soft look of love in her eyes. She is waiting for me to follow her up the stairs and is holding still because I've pointed my camera at her. It sums up so much of what is wonderful about the two of us together.

It's been a joy to have you at my side these past eight years, sweetie. I hope we have many, many more.

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Horsing Around: Equine Therapy Part II

Drifter, the new man in my life.

I am extremely pleased to report that after taking off the month of April because of various appointments crowding my calendar (I try not to have more than one a week), I am once again hanging out with horses! I did a fair amount of research to find a stable that seemed like a good match for me and after first trying to get things set up with a stable that couldn't seem to call me back, I found Sage Meadows, a small riding school just down the street from my high school. I liked that while the school teaches all kinds of competitive riding, the instructor has a background in therapeutic riding, too. I sent an email asking if what I was looking for--needing to take it slow, no greater ambition than learning to ride well--might be a good fit and she said absolutely, that she already knew what horse she would put me on. The thing was, she wouldn't have room for afternoon lessons until June. I emailed back, asking if it would be too weird to ask if I could come groom a horse now and then and was thrilled to learn it wasn't a weird request at all, that I could lease a horse for $35 a day to groom all I wanted! After I've had lessons with her and she knows I have the skill to handle riding a horse on my own, I could potentially lease the horse to ride on days when I didn't have lessons, but I was more than welcome, since I had some experience handling a horse, to come by now to get to know my future mount, Drifter!

Drifter is a very sweet old gentleman who is starting to show his age but still makes a great lesson horse!

Drifter's shedding his winter coat. You
can see how much hair I groomed off him!

And so yesterday I made my way over to the stable to meet Katie, the instructor, and Drifter, the sweet, mellow Quarter Horse who will be my horse companion. I'm pleased to report that I liked both of them. Katie seemed knowledgable, friendly, and was capable of imparting instruction with just the perfect tone. I can tell she'll be a great riding instructor. I also liked that she trusted me! And Drifter is lovely. He's considered "bombproof," industry-speak for a horse that is startled by nothing and is therefore safe for beginners and children. He's been a school horse all of his long life: he's 29, which is a very ripe old age for a horse! Katie had known him from when she was in college; she boarded her horse at the stable where he was a beloved lesson horse, so when she saw that he was up for sale a few years ago, she bought him, knowing he was a wonderful starter horse for beginners. I liked him very much. He's substantially larger than Lacey: he's 16.2 hands high, which means he's 5'6" at the withers, which is where the back and the neck come together. That translates into substantial acreage to groom! Drifter seemed very patient and friendly, though was slightly restless (in a non-threatening way) because he's having an allergy flare-up. He loooooooves having his belly rubbed and would stretch out his neck, his lips quivering with ecstasy! He also loves having his face groomed. I felt completely safe and confident of both my ability to handle him and to make him happy, so it was delightful to spend two whole hours grooming him! Then I got to feed him two carrots and an apple as a treat (another delightful experience) and gave him a dish of special feed (Katie is trying to fatten him up because he's getting bonier in his old age) that made all the other horses jealous. It was a fabulous experience all around.

Drifter loved having the hollows above his eyes rubbed!

Bear and Syd, two of the other school horses,
touch noses over the fence.

I met three of the other school horses, too, and was impressed by how friendly and interested in people they were. I thought that seemed like a good sign. Bear and Beacon were nice, but it's Syd that has stolen my heart. Don't get me wrong, Drifter's clearly a wonderful horse, but my goodness, that Syd is gorgeous! My new goal for my lessons is to get skillful enough to ride Syd! He's a monster of a horse, 17.2 H (that means a whopping 5'10" at the withers!), but friendly and acquisitive. He's a young 'un, just turning eight (most horses are not ridden until the age of four), and when not being "a labrador retriever puppy of a horse" (to quote the instructor), he's proving himself as a dressage and jumping horse. I am not interested in dressage or jumping, but I am decidedly interested in mastering whatever it takes to get me on his handsome, Hanoverian back!

Syndicate, or Syd

This is what Syd looks like in action.

This is what Syd looks like when trying to determine if my camera is edible.

I had an absolutely wonderful time during my hours grooming Drifter and ogling Syd and greeting Beacon and Bear. I can't fully explain how whole and quiet it makes me feel to stand before a large horse, his nose is brushing my chest and his eyes closed in pleasure as I caress his face or how competent, purposeful, and satisfied I feel as I briskly brush the loose hair out of a horse's coat. When I'm with a horse, I cease to feel sick and disabled, I forget I have limitations, my mind does not ramble away to think of other things: I am entirely present in the moment, just a human and a horse enjoying each other's company. There is no other time, ever, that I forget about the migraines. But being in the stable with Drifter--large, itchy, patient, friendly Drifter--frees me from the confines of myself so that I can simply be.

Syd 'n' me. He's nuzzling and nibbling on my shoulder!

From here on out, I can come by any day except Mondays or Wednesdays (Drifter gives lessons on those days) and spend as much time with Drifter as I want. I'm to remember to turn out the lights in the tack room when I'm done and leave the check for my lease payment on the desk in the office, but other than that, what I do is up to me. I can guarantee that Drifter is going to be enjoying Thursday afternoons from here on out and will be quite the well-groomed horse! I will be enjoying Thursdays, too, and look forward to those hours in his company being free of all thought of my disabilities.