Category Archives: kids

Compassion

Last weekend, I wrote about the North Stonington 5k, but I left out the details of something that happened.  During Vicki’s 1/4 mile race (which was 2 laps around a field), she ran by Madison.  Madison is 5 and goes to church with us.  Vicki noticed Madison was crying and not at all happy about racing around the field.  Vicki stopped and put her arm around Madison’s shoulder, walking the second half of the first lap until Madison got back to her parents.  Then, with a smile on her face, she ran her second lap, well behind the main group.

On Monday, we cooked 2 freshly harvested roosters on the rotisserie.  Alex and Vicki pulled the wishbones, and Alex won twice.  Since Vicki didn’t win, he gave her one of the two wishes.

As I think about both of these events, I consider that my children are much more compassionate than I am, and can only conclude they learn it from their loving mother, and my beautiful wife.

Musical horses?

This week has involved a number of horse rides, but few on the normal mount pairings. On Monday, I did a trail ride with the kids – Alex on Devil, Vicki on Precious, and Amanda with me on King. Tonight, I went for a run with Amanda in the jogging stroller and came home to Vicki trotting around bareback, Alex riding King, and Anna on Precious. Amanda actually is happy riding with anyone that will let her up, and Alex thinks it is tons of fun to ride with his little sister. When they were on King together, no matter how much Alex kicked, King wouldn’t move until I let him know it was OK to walk around.

I guess it’s good to build confidence on different horses!

Relaxing trail ride

This afternoon the temps were in the low 50s so I saddled up King, Alex got Precious, and Vicki prepped Devil. The 3 of us went out for a 45min trail ride. What made this ride different is we went exploring on new trails the horses had not seen and to get there, we have to walk 1/2 mile of road.

The ponies did great along the road. Vicki was a little nervous during the ride, but Devil wasn’t. Better than the other way around.

Along the trail, we came to a water crossing. After a little initial refusal, King finally decided it was safe to cross. Both ponies crossed without a care.

Then we rode around some open fields. King was full of spunk, so we did some cantering circles and a little galloping across the fields while the ponies walked the edges. Alex and Precious did a little trot work, but Vicki decided to just walk (Devil was fine with that).

In the end, it was a great confidence booster for the kids and reaffirms that we have excellent ponies.

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