Helping your children fufil their dreams

Have you ever been blessed to see one of your child’s dreams come true in front of your eyes? DD and I were up at the horse rescue brushing one of the horses when the owner of the shelter asked DD if she would like to help bring in one of the new horses. Bringing in a new horse at a rescue is not as easy as it sounds. The poor things have been horribly abused and come with various different issues. Buckaroo has only been at the rescue for about a week. He is a beautifully mixed breed pony (FYI – pony does not mean young hours, but describes the height of a full grown horse. . . In case any of you are as horse illiterate as I am.), but is very skittish. Vicki, the owner of the shelter, has had a very difficult time getting his lead line on him so that she can bring him to his stall and believes that this is a tell for some of what this poor horse has experienced.

Dd went out to the coral with Vicki. Vicki explained about not squaring off to the horse and about stopping before he was spooked to “take off the pressure”. If he bolted, she explained they needed to shoo him so the horse thought that it was their idea and not the horses. Vicki worked with the horse first and then had DD try. It took quite awhile and several restarts, but they accomplished it. And then to what would seem crazy, Vicky released the horse again. She explained that she wanted him to feel safe and to that the lead line meant being caged. So then she let DD not just help her, but take the lead and try on her own. It was like watching magic. Souls coming together. Vicki encouraged DD to bed over and breathe into the horses nostrils in a replica of how horses greet each other. DD did a wonderful job and the horse was put to bed without issue. DD was easily able to lead the horse from the coral to her stable for the evening. I felt blessed to see this and can’t even imagine what it must have felt like to be her having her dream of not just caring for horses, but truly becoming one with them come true.

Right now I can hear her playing her keyboard upstairs . . .Life is good. . .I think she is starting to see some of the benefits of continuing to homeschool, which, by the way, is what she has chosen to do : )