
What feeds your soul?
Do you have something in your life that feeds your soul? Something that helps to keep you centered, gives you joy, allows you to truly be “in the moment”?
I’m very lucky – I have had something in my life that does that for me, and has done it all my life since I can remember; horses.
And for the last 21 years, that has been one particular horse, my Quarter Horse, Chips.
The thing is, for the last few years, I have not been feeling about the whole horse thing the way I used to. A few “health issues” (gosh, I hate that term!) like a broken foot and a bout of vertigo put a stop to my riding for almost a year — and then a fall (not off my horse; I tripped over my dog!) where I did something really painful to my back has now kept me out of the saddle, probably permanently
I certainly won’t be riding Vhips again – he’s 30 years old now, and almost three years of no work have resulted in an unavoidable decline in his muscles, and he’ll never bear my weight again. When I realized this, my heart cracked. I wish I had known this when I last rode him. I would have paid more attention to how it felt, rather than what I was trying to accomplish.
We’re still carrying on. I do groundwork with him, both in the arena and in his paddock, keeping up his manners and keeping his brain working. He has to take medication daily for his Cushing’s; there’s no cure, but it has been controlling the symptoms very well.