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Sasha L

Page history last edited by sliewen 13 years, 6 months ago

 

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          Sasha Liewen

August 26th, 2010

 

Summer of '09

It was last summer in June of 2009 at Summerhill Arabian horse farm, a quaint little horse farm just off the Rillito river.  Somewhere around late morning, the sun was already beating down my back.   I was taking horseback riding lessons, western saddle, but I had only ridden a few times previous to that day.

 

 

I was learning to ride on a beautiful bay horse, Sharo.   She has a small brown body with short black legs to match her jet black mane and tail.   She seems to be fast and I am nervous, especially after returning to Tucson from summer vacation.   I hadn't ridden in a week and since I was only a beginner back then I was still scared of going really fast.   I learned to ride in the round pen, a small circular arena.   My trainer, Abby, is in the middle of the round pen with me, giving me lessons as I ride Sharo around in a large circle.   Abby tells me I am going to learn how to lope, which is a smooth, faster-than-a-trot run.  I am really excited since I've never done it before, but I still have that feeling of insecurity in my stomach.   She tells me I will make a kissing sound with my mouth and apply pressure to her stomach with my outside facing leg.  We start from the trot and I use my leg and kiss.   Sharo takes a big step forward and starts to speed up, and in a split second she is loping.  Since then and the last time I had ridden her, I had been in San Diego.  I went on a big roller coaster for the first time and had a blast.  I imagined that loping on Sharo would feel as intense as the fast roller coaster.   At that moment my imagination had become reality.  We took off and before I knew it she was running perfectly smooth.  I rocked with her in sync, like a baby being rocked in his mothers arms.   I slightly rocked back and forth with her as she moved one, two, three.

 

 

I had realized that I was quite silly for being scared of that moment.  I had also decided that going faster was a lot more fun. I was proud of myself for getting over the fear of going fast on a horse, and that I was brave enough to even try it.   The funny part of the story is that Sharo is a very slow horse compared to the others I am currently riding.  It's been a life changing experience working with these 1, 200 pound animals, and learning that I shouldn't be afraid of them.                            

 

Comments (8)

Victoria said

at 11:21 am on Sep 10, 2010

I liked the comparison between how it felt to lope with Sharo and the roller coaster. It was a good way to show not tell when it came to feeling.

Aaron Warner said

at 7:39 pm on Sep 20, 2010

This was a very interesting story. It was exciting to read.

garrett said

at 4:06 pm on Sep 21, 2010

AWSOME, i loved the details, i cud feel your emotion. I felt like u really got into it when you wrote this, it has some slight grammer errors but what writing piece doesn't. I felt like i was there. Overall great story

mrosenberg@... said

at 8:14 pm on Sep 21, 2010

i enjoyed its description and its short but sweet length. :D nice work!

Jake Rogers said

at 8:41 pm on Sep 21, 2010

Great story! I like the music in the video its like one of my favorite songs and it made me really get into the video more. I liked the story too it was short but like others have said it had a lot of emotion which is always good.

Michael Delay said

at 9:14 pm on Sep 21, 2010

very good story very emotional awesome music to the video i love that song!

Natassja said

at 10:58 pm on Sep 21, 2010

The song for the video was perfect :). I liked your story...even more detail would have been perfect, but by itself it was still amazing. The horse is beautiful by the way.

Aarmstrong said

at 8:33 am on Sep 22, 2010

Wow! That was really good! I have never ridden Western Style on a horse! I loved the way you compared riding Sharo to riding a roller coaster! I really liked the way how you described how Sharo looked like! It painted a perfect picture in my head!

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