Horse camping with Kyle

It’s been a great day with my son. Kyle turns 17 tomorrow and his request was to go camping with me alone. First of all, how cool is that? How many 17 yr olds want to spend their birthday in the woods with their mom? I’m so glad we have the relationship we do.

Secondly, he wanted to ride on this camping trip. Now, I know that was about making it more fun for me, and I appreciate that. I love to take my horses away, to the trail to enjoy nature and spend time asking them for nothing after a nice trail ride. To make it even more fun for me, we brought my favorite dog Deuce. I thought it would be nice to have him in case we ran into any trouble. At a minimum, he could serve as our sentry.

Well, we got a late start. I had a ton of chores to do and Kyle slept in. I just had to get a horse’s feet trimmed. I’m behind on feet and my wrists have been sore. I’m not wearing my wrist braces when I sleep and I really need to. I decided to work on Nina’s feet, since I’m paid to do hers. Mine can wait another day or so.

Nina is a little tough to trim. She’s better all the time and we’re coming to some nice agreements, but today she had some good ideas to give herself releases from the trim process and we had to come together. It was great for me as a horsewoman to use what I know works and let Nina make the choice to act like a partner in the process or to take the hard road. It didn’t take long for her to chose the partner route. And once she did, things went swimmingly. We got it all sorted on the first hoof, so the following 3 were a breeze. Summer is nearing and the temperature is warm. I was pretty hot in my trimming apron and gloves. Gotta find some summer trimmer gloves.

Her feet look quite nice. She was due for a trim, but I’m super happy with the shape of things and the hinds are self-trimming very well. For the hinds, it’s just frog management and touching up the horn for cosmetic purposes. Pretty cool. Gemini and Cowboy are very due for their turn with the rasp and I’ll get to them by the end of the week.

Ok, back to the camping trip. So, we didn’t get to the trailhead until 3:30 or so. Which is fine, the time getting organized and on the road is part of the adventure. And with the long days, we knew we’d have light until 9pm or so. However, even though we’d crossed our fingers and sent out positive mojo, we still got the rain. Grrr…

We rode for about 2 hours and the rain wasn’t letting up so we headed back. I was bummed, Kyle was just fine with it.  He rides for me, I know this. We got back, started our fire using the makeshift lighter fluid consisting of an aluminum can bottom (about 2” tall), filled with small rocks and rubbing alcohol. We’d gone and rounded up kindling and firewood with ease and we had charcoal to cook our dinner. I was quite impressed with us and it was fun. The fire started up beautifully and the charcoal did it’s thing. About 45 mins later, we had lemon chicken, baked beans and red potatoes ready to go. Aluminum foil is such a great thing. It’s about 8:45 now, Kyle’s asleep already (did I mention he’s 17?) and I’m watching the rain kill the fire. Doh! It was a nice fire…

Deuce is out on my sleeping bag and I’m wishing I’d done a better job of managing to be out of work tomorrow. I should have canceled my meetings and taken the whole day off. Instead, I thought I’d be home by noon and didn’t want to take the day. Dumb. I have no cell service so I can’t call in now and explain that I’d had truck trouble or something like that causing me to miss a day. I’ll have to drive to cell service in the morning and throw in the white flag for the day so Kyle and I can spend more time out here. I love it!! It’s quiet and peaceful, thick forest of trees, green from the spring rains everywhere. The trail we rode has lots of water crossings and Deuce can lay down and get a break in the water. He’s a water dog through and through.

Looking forward to tomorrow. I’ll manage my responsibilities quickly and efficiently and we’ll have the day to play. I deserve a day off.