#offtrackthoroughbred

MUST BRAG ABOUT HEKATE. I think I have finally turned her into a trusty steed. We went for an evening ride last night and the time escaped us so we didn’t make it back to the barn before dark. She did soooo well, I am so proud of her. She spooked at a coyote but she didn’t come completely unglued. I don’t want her to be afraid of spooking, its deeply embedded in equine’s psyche; how they survive. I allow her to spook but maintain her composure and she did just that. Feeling her giant heart rate between me and the saddle is a little unnerving but also amazing. If this had happened a year ago I would have been on my ass with a concussion in the desert and no mount. We ended up in a wash we’ve never been through before right along Ironwood Hills. Unfortunately this took us up to Silverbell and Goret which is still under a lot of construction. I had to get off Hek and show her the newly paved road wasn’t an abyss of darkness and pain and just a road. ‘TIS FIRM!!!!! Riding North on Silverbell with construction in the dark plus traffic sounds like a catastrophe, but she actually did AMAZING. Listened to all my cues and received lots of encouragement.  Unfortunately, Zack’s horse not so much. She spooked, ran across the street into oncoming traffic and completely ignored his cues. She reared up and popped him in the head. He busted his lip pretty good. He thought he needed to go to the ER at first. Nah son, cowgirl up, you’re fine. He was fine. Good day at work, not much to do with my principle investigator gone, but I basically get paid to watch Netflix all day. We had an incident with the cannabinoid study. Connie euthanized a good portion of the heterozygous mice we needed for the seizure data. Luckily I wasn’t there that day so I had nothing to do with it. This project has been my baby though and now we only have 39 mice we can use data on. Grr. We start dosing the dams July 30th which I’m pretty excited about.

Honey has really been settling in at the new farm. She loves her new horsey friends and human friends too! I don't usually bother posting pictures of myself, I'm not photogenic at all but my Mom took the best photo ever of Honey and I...so I'm posting it.