Adventures for Rachel and Grandma and Arabian Horses at the St Jude's Children's Hospital Ride

You may remember that I mentioned in a post a while back that I was involved with the Daffodil Arabian Horse Association doing a fund raising ride for the St Jude's Children's Hospital
St Jude's focus these days is finding cures that don't compromise a patients quality of life.

With as badly as Lindsay has been affected by her treatment, this new goal is really important to me. So I have kind of been the driving force behind pushing Daffodil to do a fund raiser for St Jude's. That, of course, meant that I needed to help put the thing on.

My friend, Lilli Fletcher was in charge of the event. She and I have helped Daffodil put on a couple of poker rides. Those didn't turn out well for us. We put on a great ride but few people came. I think the horse community can't figure out what an Arabian club is doing sponsoring something that's not a horse show. But the people who did show up had a great time and won lots of prizes!

Anyway, back to this ride! It took place last Saturday, Sept 8 in the Capital Forrest outside of Olympia. We'd spent a couple of weeks working on making flags for the trails. Then Friday a group of us went and marked the trails for the ride the following day. Lilli took two of her neighbor children who are very horse crazy and ride Lilli's horses. I took Rachel and we rode Legs and Dandy, respectively. Then we had a couple who lived in the area as our guides.

I love trail rides. I would do it all the time except I'm geographically challenged. Can't find my way out of a wet paper bag. Get really turned around in the woods. Have nightmares about showing up on the evening news as the fool that couldn't find her way out of the woods even on horseback. Get the picture. Well, Lilli isn't much better!

So here are the two of us putting on a fundraiser on trails that are massive enough for endurance and competitive trail rides. So yes, the guides to mark the trails are necessary. What we do if we ever lost a rider, probably dial 911 and call the Backcountry Horsemen.

So Friday afternoon, a group of seven horses and riders headed out from the Evergreen Gun Club onto the Capital Forrest trails just north of Mima Falls to mark trail for the Daffodil ride. Most of the horses were seasoned trail horses.

Legs was the only exception. He's only been on a trail once before in his life. That was several years ago and he was a perfect gentleman. He did get freaked out about a trail that cut down sharply with high ridges on each side of it, but for a first time trail ride, he handled it just fine.

I knew that he would be good on this ride too. He's such a level headed horse. The only thing I was concerned about was others, particularly the young girls with Lilli forgetting he's a stallion and crowding him. I never expect him to be bad but still believe that there is a proper way to ride with stallions on the trail.

Dandy has been going on trails since I first started him under saddle. I used to ride him at least once a week on trails. That stopped when he had EPM but he's had enough trail experience, I don't even worry about him anymore. I knew Rachel would be fine.

WRONG!! Dandy was a jiggy mess! I have no idea what got under his skin but he was NOT the horse I know (and love). Rachel had her work cut out for her.


To be continued......

Part 2


Arabian horse arabian horses horses horse trail ride