I love Rusty!

I guess I really didn't realize how much I had missed being on the back of my horse until I sat on him tonight. Rusty is my gelding, he is blind. He lives in a large stall in the barn and gets to go out in the round pen for exercise. He is about 14 years old and I believe to be a Missouri Foxtrotter (which is what I guessed from photos and confirmation of Missouri Foxtrotters). We have special fencing to build him a pasture to go out in, Ramm Flex Fence that is 5.25 inches wide. I can't wait until it is up and I can let him out every day, he LOVES to be outside. I used to spend a lot of time with him. I even had taught him special vocal commands to help him when we would walk around. He is a very trusting horse and doesn't have a mean bone in his body. I have NEVER seen him kick or bite another horse or a person, it is just not in him to be nasty. He is easy to deworm and he is easy to give shots. His only vice is his feet, he doesn't like to pick up his feet, but who could blame him, if you stood up, closed your eyes and tried to pick up your feet, wouldn't you be a little off balance? You probably wouldn't like it either. I rode Rusty outside the two weeks before I found out I was pregnant with Big Sister... that was in October 2008. Tonight was the first night since then that I had been on his back. In all truth, being on his back is one of my most favorite places to be in the whole world. I like to lay out on his back, stretching my legs to his rump and stretching my arms around his chest, it feels like I am really hugging him that way. I like to think that Rusty and I have a special bond, he is mine and I am his to love. Now I'm not talking about a romantic love like the love I have for my husband or the motherly love I have for my baby, but a different sort of understood love that doesn't need anything else, it just is. I told him when I got pregnant to hang in there I would be back, he just had to wait for me. He did. I think he had a bout with depression, yes horses get depressed, but he hung in there for me. When I get on his back, I usually stand on a gate and he comes up next to the gate, if he doesn't want me on him he won't get close to the gate, he KNOWS when I'm up on a gate. He can't see with his eyes, but his hearing is extreme. His world revolves around his ears and his nose. I love to sit and watch him figure things out, we take sight for granted Well, he was a little upset at me for taking so long and turned his butt to me and wouldn't come to the gate. He was telling me that I shouldn't have waited so long and that he had missed me. I rubbed his rump for a while and sweet talked him and eventually he caved in and came up to the gate and stood for me to get on. I think I was drawn to him because growing up my grandparents had a blind horse that we rode as kids. She was just as sweet as my Rusty, her name was "Bea", Bea A Tear. She was a bay Quarter Horse, which as a dime a dozen. She was special. She would go where ever to ask even if you ran her into something she still took you where you asked, and I'm sad to say that I wasn't paying attention once and ran her into the ride of the barn. Luckily, it was only at a walk, but I still felt bad. I loved riding horses at Grandpa's house, it was like Heaven to me. I used to pray, asking God for a horse... little did I know that for every prayer I prayed for a horse God was going to answer them when I was older. My family takes in horses and rehabilitates them then adopts them... but for a while, they are mine. They become mine, just like my Project Pete, who was snoozing tonight when I went to feed him. He jumped up ready for his dinner though. But then after they don't need me any more they go to someone who needs them. It isn't always easy for me, sometimes I get attached more than I'd like to. Rusty actually left me for a brief time, he went out on a permanent foster and his foster mom would email me photos and how he was doing... I missed him terribly while he was gone. Well, when she had to move, she couldn't take him with her and I was SO happy, not that she couldn't take him with her but because he was coming back to me. I vowed that day that he would never leave me again, I was going to be selfish and keep him with me. I knew his foster mom's trailer well and when it came down the drive I felt such happiness and relief that tears just poured from my face. Rusty was home and we were together again. And tonight being on his back bought back all the memories I had of him and I and I missed that, I missed him.

Good night my dear followers! Hug your horse tonight and if you don't have a horse just hug someone that is special to you!

Kelsey