It is something to think about. No two horses ride the same --well you know that. Did you train Penny? I have a safety helmet and a safety vest but neither one would have done me a bit of good had I been wearing them. The older we get the slower our reflexes BUT we make up for that with the skills we have learned along the way..
You'll know when Penny is ready to retire Sandy,your soul mates. Nice short trail rides and a little glade where she can graze and you can sit out there and enjoy the beauty around you does a lot for both of your souls.
I have an 18h Perchie that moves so slow he makes a turtle look like a speed demon. No way I can ever ride him,not ever now but Turk and I go on hikes sometimes. My pelvis didn't heal right and when we go up a steep hill he will get behind me and put his big head against my back for support.I didn't train him to do that and it humbles me that this big guy loves me enough to do that. So you still have a lot of quality time with Penny and if you do decide to get another horse later you don't have to ride to enjoy them.
Yes, I trained Penny. I was the first one to get on her back, and she's the first horse I ever got on that had never been ridden before. I had help along the way because I had never trained a horse from scratch before. I had a wonderful trainer for years who would go to the barn and give me weekly dressage/Centered Riding lessons and help me with Penny's training. This woman is still a friend, though about 10 years ago she decided to stop giving riding lessons and get a "real job" and raise her son. But for the first 6 months or so, when I first got Penny, I did it all myself, then found an instructor when I realized I'd need help to do more, go further. Since that instructor, i've taken lessons fairly regularly from others, always learning something new. But it's to Karen that I owe Penny's training. Besides dressage, I had a western trainer who worked mostly on using my seat and bridleless riding, then someone who taught me natural horsemanship ground work and gave me bareback longe lessons to improve my seat, and after some time away from lessons, I have an instructor who knows less about dressage than I do, but she can correct my position, which has slid downhill badly, and anyway, Penny can only walk except for short stints of trotting. I was teaching some of the barn owner's kids to ride, mainly Heather, but though Penny is an excellent schoolmaster, I think lessons are hard on her, so I'd like to put Heather and her brother on one of the barn owner's horses next lesson. Right now, Heather can't ride. She recently got an autoimmune disease, immune thrombocytopenia, which sounds pretty serious. I looked it up on the Internet to learn more about it, since I had
never heard of it before:
What Is Immune Thrombocytopenia? - NHLBI, NIH Send get-well vibes to Heather, everyone.
Meanwhile, I trail ride and take walking lessons, where we work on my position and getting Penny more together -- she has become slack, too, with trail riding and teaching beginners -- and needs some brushing up, though I wonder if I should just let her be, since she isn't capable of much dressage these days. Still, we can do a lot at a walk, and getting her to shift more weight to the rear may help the front-end lameness. So I vacillate between the temptation to just slop along on the trails and wanting to work and improve, even though we can't do a lot and maybe asking Penny to do it at this point is unfair.
Penny sure wouldn't mind just being out at pasture, never being ridden, and brought in only for hand-grazing on the good grass of the lawn and grooming. I think she's a horse that would revel in retirement, though maybe the trail rides are good for her -- or maybe I'm selfishly pushing her, trying to get the last little bit out of her that I can. I've been thinking a lot about all that lately.
Ah yes, room cleaning. I gave up on that eventually, and put Crime Scene tape across my son's bedroom door.
