A Horse and His Girl
Posted by Danielle Bean in Family on Thursday, July 24, 2008 11:12 PM
This is Indy. He is one of Kateri’s pet projects this summer.
Though Indy was once a fine riding pony for even the littlest of riders, an unfortunate close call with a speeding UPS truck a few years ago left him skittish and unpredictable. Not so good for 5-year-olds.
As a result, he was ridden less and less and ... as a result of that became less and less safe for riding.
Until this summer, that is.
Kateri has the advantage of being both an experienced rider and a small person. This combination, according to her boss at the barn, makes her the perfect person to work with Indy. She has been assigned the job of gently nudging him toward 1) enjoying human attention again 2) not freaking out at the sight of his bridle and 3) being ridden regularly.
“It’s working!” Kateri grinned at me at the end of a recent day at the barn. “I rode him today!”
She jumped into in back seat of the car and beamed with satisfaction. As the two of us drove toward home, past rolling green fields and over dusty country roads, she chattered on about her day.
“He listens to me and he does what I say. He let me ride him and I knew he wouldn’t be bad—I just knew he would be good ...”
My daughter has a way with a horse. I like to pat them on their noses now and then, but I do not have a way with horses of any kind—not by a long shot. But my daughter does.
As foreign as the idea of that is, what’s not foreign to me is the idea that this is what we parents do. We prepare our kids to enter the world and do things we never would—because these are their things. We can love them and encourage them along the way, but ours is not to do what they do.
Ours is to watch, to listen, to support, to cheer, and eventually, when they are good and ready, to let them shine all on their own.
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