Horsin Around

These are my two boys on horses at Langley 204.
It is run by this wonderful woman Teresa, who is a champion horse rider herself.
She saves good horses from an otherwise poor demise and she has other women with farms who help her if she ever needs a place to retire a horse to die in peace. That's what I call love.

While I was taking care of my Mom, we spent a lot of time there with the horses riding and helping Teresa keep them fed and clean and of course loved. My Mom would sit and enjoy the view and the horses.
There used to be a farmers' barn we passed along the way and they sold broken unsellable carrots, for horses. We always got 2 huge bags for these wonderful animals, who worked to earn their keep.
When they would see you with a bag, 40 horses would run to the fence post and God FORBID you didn't treat them fairly. lol They were like children and understood everything. lol

Teresa taught the kids , who came regularly, about horses. She made each person ride a different one, so as to learn , that it's not just a horse but an animal with feelings
and a character and pride. They were no different from people and expressed themselves accordingly.
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As I am writing this the Canucks scored 6 goals against San Jose who scored two.
My goodness are they on fire tonight!
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My favorite time was when Teresa would have these barrel races after a work day, for the kids.
The kids had to dress up their horses and wear a costume like for Halloween. She had the same things for Christmas and other times of the year. She made it like a club to thank the families for supporting her and her horses, by giving each child a horse to do with as they wished.
Even women riders would dress up as fancy Spanish LAdies and their horses were equally gorgeous.

Teresa had this pony and no one wanted to ride it because it was small. However, for barrel races, it always won because it had the extra touch of being small to make quick turn arounds and the area covered was not that big. A big horse needed more time to turn and could not gain speed this way to make up for the lost time. When the kids saw this they all wanted to ride the pony but Teresa refused because there was a weight limit.
Lots of disappointed kids was the result when they learned they were too big for the pony. lol
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Oh my God! They scored again 7-2. Geez! 3rd period.
San Jose must be pissed. They are a great team with Niemi as their goalie.
San Jose will not come back now. No time left.
They just put in a goal so its 7-3 . San Jose is not taking this very well and there are a lot of fights.
Will be a lot of disciplinarian stuff going on
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The young man on the gray horse is my son Alex. He really enjoyed going into the National Park with the horses. They ran fast and boys like thrills.
Behind him is little Nick who rode like he was glued to the horse. He was a natural.
But then Nick was a natural at everything he did. Even bike riding. He just got on and rode.
Alex would close his eyes and not realize he was alone and riding lol
Two boys, totally different, just like horses.
Alex careful and Nick a little confident risk taker.
I got into learning how to sew the face masks for the horses so the flies would not bother their eyes and thick blankets to place under the saddle as pads, to prevent chafing.
Blankets would need washing as they got dirty quickly but I would imagine it would be hard on the washing machine. Face masks were expensive to buy and sometimes during play the horses would rip them, so making them at home was much cheaper and easy. I made 40 to give Teresa that summer. The kids also learned about salve for the hooves, special brushes, and soaps to make the horse shiny. Needless to say, maintenance for one horse, was very expensive.Then there were the leads and the horse mouth bits.

Anyway. If anyone loves to ride horses, I recommend Langley 204 in British Columbia.
You will love Teresa and she deserves merit for saving so many horses.
:)