"HORSES SEE THE REAL YOU. BEING SEEN IS INCREDIBLY HEALING" ~ Meg Kirby
Silent Sunday; My Therapy!
Month: August 2023
Weekend Coffee Share; Anniversary And A Hurricane!
Welcome to my weekend coffee share, can I get you a cup of coffee or tea? I can’t even believe this weekend and how we had to change our plans because of Hurricane Hilary! This weekend is our 39th wedding anniversary and we had made plans to visit my daughter who lives about 3.5 hours north of us here in California. We drove up there last Thursday evening not even realizing there was a hurricane brewing very far south of us in the pacific ocean. We enjoyed dinner Thursday evening and had a wonderful day on Friday. One of the things I wanted to do visiting my daughter is to check out a local horse boarding facility. I had found one that looked promising online and the owner finally called me back while we were up there on Friday.
It was a wonderful place, reasonably priced and the owner was my age and my kind of horse woman. Her husband was the handyman improving the property which was a wonderful boarding facility. They own 10 acres and I was very impressed especially with the riding arena. She says there are a lot of ladies who board and ride the trails there and she hopes I will join them someday if we make a move north. This is something I wanted to find to make sure Murphy would have a great place to live too.
Honestly, I think I talk about moving closer to my daughter more than my husband does. I think he would be perfectly happy to stay where we are and just keep doing our day to day things, without planning a thing. We have done a ton of living (day to day) which I am so grateful for but not a whole lot of planning for the future. So as we are aging, I think it is important to think about where we want to retire and/or where is the best place to live as we age. It’s tough, because my family is spread apart and family is one of the most important things to me so I want us to be closer if possible. My daughter has said if we do not want to relocate close by, she totally understands. We still have a lot of homework to do… We will figure it all out eventually!
We had such a fun weekend even though it was cut a day short because of the crazy weather. We had great food on both Friday and Saturday. Saturday was our anniversary and we went to downtown SLO (San Luis Obispo) and ate breakfast in this cute Café. It was opened in 1939 and I’m sure has had many owners over the years. It is really cute inside and the food was delicious! I had stuffed French toast, yummy! Flora, my daughter’s girlfriend treated us to breakfast, thank you Flora! ❤ and my daughter treated us for a delicious dinner that evening. Thank you Linea! ❤
My daughter lives alone, well not all alone, she has 2 cats. They are so cute and keep her company and busy. She still has one guinea pig too. I always love helping her as much as we can when we come and visit. This is one reason why I wish we lived closer, so that I could pop over anytime to help say hang pictures or clean the backyard. Since we were coming she made a list of things she could use help with. We only accomplished a few things on her list but we were able to help her declutter her backyard from many leaves and dead branches we pruned. We helped with a few indoor items as well. We also visited and had yummy meals together. And we watched movies each night. A FUN WEEKEND!! 😀
This was our anniversary dinner at a local restaurant that wasn’t fancy but had great seafood! Haha, we asked my hubby, do you want fancy? or not too fancy? He chose not too fancy, my kinda guy! I didn’t bring any fancy clothes so the hometown feel and great food was my kind of dinner with my daughter and hubby. My heart was as full as my stomach!! 😀 ❤
AND A Hurricane! I would take a photo of the rain, but I know you can’t really make out rain in a photo. The Hurricane has turned into a tropical storm and is upon us as I write this. We are all fine and we have good drainage around our house and the barn where Murphy is has good drainage as well. We haven’t been hit with wind yet but the news says it is coming. The eye of the storm should be going right over us eventually which could mean why we haven’t gotten much wind. I am okay with that. It has been raining all day long and it will continue through the night and into tomorrow. I am so happy I am off today (Sunday) but I am suppose to work tomorrow but not until 2pm. I know the roads will be bad tomorrow, so I hope and pray my commute to work won’t be treacherous.
I’ll end with a couple of photos of my sweet boy from this last week. I have so much fun with him, he sure keeps me busy and actually is helping me keep in shape too. The riding workouts are aerobic for both of us as we walk, trot and canter around the arena. I also get a arm workout grooming him and I walk a lot around the barn with and without Murphy. 😀 I love it!!
Thank you for sharing a cup of coffee with me today as I shared my wonderful weekend with friends and family. The central coast where my daughter lives is absolutely beautiful and the weather is to die for in my opinion. The high’s barely reach 80F(27C) in the summer months and lows in the 50’sF(10C). Its even cooler throughout the year. She lives about 2 miles from the pacific ocean. It would be a great place to retire, maybe someday. 😀
Staying Safe and Dry,
~Diana ❤
Weekend Coffee Share; August Days!
Here we are in August! How fast this year has gone by, which makes me try and slow down and enjoy each day the best I can. Can I get you a cup of coffee or tea as we chat? Or while I share my days with you and please share yours with me in the comments if you’d like. I always love to hear from my readers! 😀
Welcome to my weekend coffee share where we meet up with old friends and new. It is so fun to share the happenings in our lives and mine always entails my horsey adventures. I also share the happenings of my life as well, nothing too exciting to report. Work each week is fine. I work in a veterinary laboratory where we run blood work on animals that are taken to the vet. The vets then send the blood into the lab for testing. I have been in the laboratory industry for 40 years now, so I know it in my sleep. The more important thing for me is I love the hours I work which is swing shift 2pm – 10:30pm. I am free to take care of my horse and my little garden in the mornings. I am also free to take care of any other needs that pop up from time to time. I am a happy camper. 😀
Speaking of happy, I am going to jump right into the horsey stuff as Mr. Murphy is so much FUN! We are having a ton of fun riding and one of these days soon I will need to have someone take a new video of the two of us together. Today I worked in the arena desensitizing Murphy with a plastic shopping bag! I want him to learn that scary crinkly bags are nothing to worry about. I may never get rid of the little spooks they do when a bag fly’s around in the wind, its more that he comes back from the spook and stands quite again. That he isn’t spooked so badly that he turns to flight and runs like a maniac, believe me I have seen some really spooky, sensitive horses that can just lose their minds! Murphy is not that kind of horse and is very sensible. He is just SO MUCH FUN!!
I let him sniff the bag at the end of my lunge whip before I make the video, and I expected nothing less than for him to jump as I shook the bag and waved it around like it was flying in the air. He jumped off when I wanted him to trot around – he needed to do some exercise while out lose and why I asked him to trot around. But as you can see he went around one circle and he came to a stop himself. He looked at me wondering what was next, but I let him settle and stand quietly. My intention wasn’t to “spook” the living daylights out of him with the plastic bag. That just isn’t how it’s done, and I want him to come back and stand nicely. I love his curiosity, he has such a personality!
I like how he eventually wandered off and ignored the bag when I let it lie in the dirt. He wasn’t concerned about it at all which is what we want. I picked up the bag after this and attempted to touch him with it and with it out opened up big, he kept turning his body and kept facing it and would not let me touch him. So I just kept my patience and walked around with it, he followed me around too!
As I scratched at his withers, one of his favorite scratch places he lowered his head and decided to check out the bag now laying lifeless on the ground. I am so proud of him! He is very smart and calm and you can see him trying to figure things out! This is what I call a good brain workout. This is excellent to do with any horse to keep them thinking and learning!
I have one more video I want to share and I ended up making the bag smaller in order to touch him with it. I actually did things backwards in a way as many trainers would start with the bag all wadded up tight in a ball and desensitize with it like that and touch them with it and then slowly making the bag bigger and bigger until they let the full big bag touch them. (I didn’t think about this until I started writing this today, haha!) They also do this with a halter and lead rope so that they can’t run away. I was working with him at liberty which means he is free to move around at will lose in the arena. I didn’t exactly have a plan when I started, so I ended up doing it all a little backwards but in the end I don’t think it hurt anything as I still got to touch him with him free to stand there. I am okay that the “bigger” bag didn’t touch him, as he is a sensible horse and it was super fun being out there working with him today. I like not having an agenda on training, I rather just decide to try things as they pop up on any given day. The spontaneity is what the adventures are all about in my book! ❤
It was a little tough to make that last video trying to hold the phone and show the bag as I rubbed it on his shoulder! He likes to put everything in his mouth, silly guy and he is shaking his head and stuff because of the fly’s, haha, they are always out in abundance in the summer! It is almost noon as we were working in the arena and it was pretty hot. So I took him out and hosed him off and let him graze, his favorite thing! ❤
I will wrap this up and I thank you for visiting and spending time reading about my horsey adventures. I was so hoping a breeze would have arrived today and it didn’t show up until later in the afternoon. That makes the heat so much more bearable! I hope there is a breeze tomorrow, and I hope to get in a short ride with Murphy.
I have to thank Natalie who hosts the #weekendcoffeeshare link up each week. It is always fun to join when I can and I am so happy to share my horse adventures. I hope it is fun to see some video’s as I know I enjoy them and I try and not have them be too long. Have a wonderful weekend and week ahead!
Horse Crazy Gal,
~Diana ❤
Mylife-and-Horsestories 