Meet Molly

Molly is 18 and just graduated from High School.

In the fall Molly will be starting an Equine Science program at a Tech School in Iowa. How I wish they'd had a program like that when I was her age! She says she will learn to ride, train, AI a horse, collect from a stud, be present at the birth of a foal...and many other cool things. When finished with her program I hope she will be able get a great job.

A few weeks ago I was lying on the ground trying to clean grass gunk out from under the riding lawn mower. I was full of grass goo, dirty, hot sweaty, and frustrated. I'd just learned to change the oil in the simple little mower and had wet juicy grass to unclog under the large mower.

Molly came walking down the driveway. When she walked up to me, she smiled and stuck out her hand to introduce herself and let me know that she and her family had just moved in on the ridge to the house that had been empty since last spring.
I stuck out a gooey hand and we shook.

Molly explained that she'd heard there was two people on the ridge who owned horses was I one of them? I laughed and said I had one horse, but I owned mules.
She commented that she'd never met a mule and that her dad said they were stubborn and mean.

I laughed and immediately took her to my mules. She was surrounded by the red headed sisters and Siera, all who were curious and wanted to a pet.
I took an instant liking to this 18 year old and decided to ask her if she wanted to learn a bit more about equine before she went off to school in the fall.

Last week she came out and helped me curry some winter coats. I introduced her to some of my basic safety rules to have around the mules. We quickly went over body parts and I showed her how to saddle Siera.

Sunday morning she arrived along with my neighbor farmer Linda. Linda had been checking her field for planting above our place on the ridge when she'd seen Molly walking and offered her a lift.

We visited and then got to work.
Molly hadn't forgotten her saddling lessons, she did everything properly. I explained what a crupper was and why we used both a crupper and a breast-collar while riding in our hills. Most flat work doesn't require it, arena work doesn't require it... but we were not going to be on the flat or in an arena. I was going to show her a different aspect of riding.
Hill riding. We first worked in the relatively flat area of the pasture in front of the house.
Molly had learned mount and dismount and how to softly drop into the saddle. She had to combine that with making sure that Mica didn't walk off while she was mounting or dismounting.

Mica can be a 'creeper' when she wants to.

Her posture in the saddle was nearly perfect. And once we worked out all the commands, I took her on a small trail ride. Mica had been a roping mule at one time and she was a 'heeler'. She'd also been my husband's team penning mule as well as his speed event mule. 

I didn't take any photos of us down in the woods other than a view from the top of Sunshine...who really needs a trim on her mane! That will be one more job that I will inherit. Rich says he won't be able to do it.

We ended up doing a bit of brush busting so I could locate the path that takes me to the neighbor's ridge top and snowmobile trail. I hoped to take Molly on a ride through the neighbor's land one of these times.

I told her that what I was introducing her to would be a lot different than the riding she would do in school so I hoped I was not teaching her any bad habits.
I also told her that she can share her knowledge that she gains!

Since Molly works part time at a Dairy Farm, she will now have Fridays and Saturdays off. I know she has duties to be done at home but we are hoping to spend a bit of time each week to work with Sundance and some riding.

I'm pretty happy that Molly came walking down my driveway.

What a great young lady.