I have finally found "The One"! Her name is Maggie Mae and she is a beautiful bay 10 year old Appendix Quarter Horse mare. Maggie Mae is gentle, sweet, level headed, respectful, smart and pretty much everything I was looking for in my dream horse. My Peruvian Paso, Tango, passed away suddenly right before Christmas in 2007 and I wasn't sure whether or not I wanted to get another horse. I even debated selling our Arabian mare, Jazz (who is hubby Jim's horse even though he bought her for me - Jazz and I don't see eye to eye since I don't put up with her Diva BS!) and not having any horses except for our 29 year old POA mare who has earned her right to a forever home here, but that's a story for another post! Over the past year I have browsed the on-line horse selling sites, the main one being AgDirect where I signed up to be notified any time a horse matching my search criteria was listed. So far, nothing looked even remotely interesting and certainly all far from my "perfect horse". I had a budget to stick to, too, which made my search even more difficult. Long story short(er) I finally stumbled on to CraigsList for Colorado Springs and found an ad for a trail horse and clicked through to the CL ad which had another link for Equine Partnership where I then found two horses - one of which was Maggie Mae. I showed the link to Jim and after he watched the videos of Maggie he told me to call them right away and ask if she was still available (this was Super Bowl Sunday mind you). I called Erin and made arrangements to head down to her place right away - turns out she only lives an hour south of us. We spent over 3 hours visiting with Erin and getting to know Maggie Mae. I had not ridden Tango since October 2004 when I took a really bad fall that sent me to ER and then I was on crutches and hobbling for weeks - with a sprained butt (who sprains their butt for heaven's sake?!) I was very nervous on Maggie Mae but she was a perfect little lady - did I mention she can be ridden with nothing but a halter?! We made the decision that Maggie Mae was indeed "The One" and put a deposit on her that day and picked her up the next weekend.
I can highly recommend Erin Howell of Equine Partnership if you're looking for a horse (Erin acts as a broker for others wanting to find new homes for their horses) or if you're looking for a riding instructor. Erin is a Certified Therapeutic Riding Instructor who believes in building a partnership with your equine friend. She very graciously offered me a free lesson on her horse, Jude, the day we went to pick Maggie Mae up. She helped me to get past that mental block I had after suffering the injuries on my last ride and feel comfortable in the saddle again. I still need to work on building my confidence but Erin told me " You are a good rider, with impeccable balance and position" which made me feel so good about my basic riding abilities. Her beliefs and training methods are so similar to what I use myself when working with our horses and llamas, I was immediately drawn to her. Here is a link to her website, you should check her out: http://www.equinepartnershiperin.com/ So, I will be sharing more pics of Maggie Mae and updates on her and our journey together. I'm even thinking of starting a new blog just for Maggie Mae - Me and Maggie Mae's Magnificent Journey - or something to that effect. I have no plans for competing or doing anything amazing with Maggie Mae, I just wanted a horse that I could love and trust and ride without fear of being dumped and injured. And Maggie Mae fits the bill...perfectly.
Look what we woke up to this morning! Obviously we had very high humidity last night, coming from the south, which is rare, but that always brings the monsoonal moisture from the Gulf Coast. The trees, and everything else, are heavily coated with white frost. Above is the tree growing out of the split rock.
