Thursday, June 24, 2010

Blazing Saddles

Today contains scorching heat. I have suffered through three morning instructionals in the arena, and now that it is after lunch, I decided to take the time to finally write out my blog for last week in the comfort of the air-conditioned Counselor's Lounge. Lucky you!
Last week was very fun. My cabin was all ten year olds, and they had just barely turned ten, too. They were mostly space-cadets, and I had a hard time connecting with them. It was a bit of a struggle all week to stay involved with them. They all had good hearts and willingness to try new things, but they couldn't even remember my name or the names of the other girls in the cabin half-way through the week. Bad sign. In any case, I had plenty of other things happen to break up my week and make it fairly exciting and interesting. So, here they are:

  1. On Wednesday, we were getting ready to send out the third period trail ride, when a freak thunderstorm reared its ugly head and it began to pour. Luckily we didn't have any kids out yet, but all our horses were tied in the three arenas with their tack still on. And so began a crazed rescue of the horses, running down and bringing them back up to the barn. We brought up and tied 17 horses in under 4 minutes. We were pretty proud of ourselves.
  2. Then again that afternoon, the rain had cleared off and we had continued with trail rides. The last trail had left, when another storm came in. Those of us not on the trail prepared ourselves, and when the riders came in, it was all rescuing kids off the backs of horses to get them under cover from the storm. We were all soaked! We had to keep the kids there at the barn for over an hour, so we played some games and then put on the movie "Spirit" until a bus came to take them down to dinner.
  3. On Friday, I got to go to the horse vet with my boss, Penny. We took four horses in the trailer down to the town to get their teeth floated. Floating a horse's teeth involves sedating it, cranking its mouth open, then filing down the sides, which become sharp because of their chewing. So as the horses were drugged, I was allowed to put my hand in the horse's mouth and feel all their teeth both before and after the floating. It was fascinating! I had never realized just how big their mouths truly are and how many teeth they have. We were also getting one horse's vision checked, because he has been acting blind, and we found out that he has cataracts in his right eye. He is becoming fairly unresponsive to his rider, so we're thinking that the best option for him would to be for him to go to Horses for Healing, a therapeutic riding place where horses are lead around by lead ropes. He'd be perfect for it.

The rest of my week was pretty standard. I still love love love what I'm doing here. I'll be writing again this weekend to tell you about my week for this week and my new favorite camp pasttime.

2 comments:

  1. Did you hold yourself together while watching Spirit in the barn?

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  2. My vote for the next storm movie: Air Bud

    I love that your job caters to your addiction to horses. "Yuhuh hus-ahollc" (Which means "You're a horseaholic". I hope you're hearing the slur in my words)

    Besitos hermanita!

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