Loss

Yndi, my retired broodmare, has been a challenge. I remember a time when I was overcoming and progressing, I remember that I loved her deeply and she loved me back. I loved to drive her groom her and touch her and just be with her. I remember her affectionate gestures. I had Janow from the time he was 4 until he was 22, and thinking as he aged that I had waited for years for this horse to age and become this great, settled, easy to be around guy. With Yndi, I felt that I had skipped ahead to the good part.

It all fell apart a year ago.

My husband and I are living the dream, in a way  that we hadn't really planned. It's hard to say that we bought acreage in the mountains and built a house by accident, but it sort of kind of happened. Last summer, we finished(lots of sweat equity,we couldn't have pulled it off otherwise). The ponies came, both of them. The actual move was not well planned or executed. There was a problem with my 20 year old son that involved yelling and threats and the police, the safety of my bunnies and me, spending the night on the floor with them to keep them safe and getting them out the next morning. I had chest pains from the stress. I crashed a U-Haul into a tree.

There was a perfect storm: connectivity to cell towers and internet problems, communicating with the rattlesnake removal guy and the potential rattlesnake den next to the level spot for the round pen, no roundpen, no arena, a road too steep to drive far on with ponies not yet conditioned for it. A barn with a design problem due to  a misplaced door and rerouting the fence because of a rock, a huge rock. This worked with the personalities of my two ponies now cohabiting for the first time to make stressed out ponies. I tried to keep driving, I was determined. I should have quit and said it should take a year to get the kinks out and settle in. And I had an experience with Yndi that was scary and made me want to sell her, sell Pepper, sell the harness and carriages, retire from horses, make art and kiss bunnies.

Does it help to know that Yndi is a hot potato? She comes from Swedish harness racing bloodlines. Her dam has been awarded elite status by the Swedish registry. Yndi was foaled in Stockholm and imported as a yearling.

Swedish Registry

I knew I needed professional help. The driven dressage instructor is 4.5 hours trailer ride from here.

Yndi with me, in a lesson with Merrie Morgan

But the Holidays came, and then we had a horrible winter, and then the road washed out. Not really washed out as much as fell 200 yards down the mountain. I couldn't get my ponies out for three months. Then it was hot and the trainer was busy with horses in full training until 100 am when the temp passed 105F. Now we are waiting for fall.

My big excuse: The road washed out, I can't get to lessons. Excuse? Or reason?

Harry Councel of Gilroy, Yndi hooked on the right, Pepper left.

Harry and me, Yndi right, Pepper left. Gilroy

I tried ground driving and long lining Yndi. She is dangerous. Its scary. I have become better at long lining very fast, but no longer want to do it.

So there is a Clydesdale breeder/driving instructor in Gilroy, 2.5 hours trailer away. His client/competition schedule is less demanding.  Possibly, with the driven dressage trainer, I have let her teach me that I need her and only her to progress correctly. I have always disagreed with trainers who teach dependence on their lessons. Have I fallen victim?

So I email the Clyde guy, I've had lessons with him before, so he knows me. Sadly, it is hot in Gilroy too and he is booked in the mornings. Waiting for fall again,but his emails are encouraging. Yndi and I are back to the roundpen, patching holes. I found a big one. New fencing has been added so the girls are not cohabiting anymore. (Hubby dug twenty fence post holes by hand for me!)  I am getting the relationship back. To me, that was more of a loss than the driving.

With Yndi, at the Milpitas boarding stable.