Love.

Very tired today, so this really is just pictures of sweetness rather than any words. I did get one of the loveliest emails this morning, from the old friends, full of compliments for my mighty mare. It makes me smile still.

Here are the only words I have today: I love my horse. Love her, love her, love her, love her. I need new words for love. The love bursts out of my heart and goes crazy in the feed shed and I wave my arms about like windmills and say to my friend who owns the Paint: ‘I don’t know what to do with the love. I can hardly even express the love.’ I am quite cross about this, and may have started shouting. All the time the red mare is standing in the doorway, most unimpressed, her ears akimbo, a quizzical and faintly resigned expression on her dear face. My friend looks at her. ‘Yes,’ she says, dry as a bone. ‘I think what she’s saying is that the love is all very well but where is breakfast?’

I shout with laughter, doubling over, slapping my thigh like a friend of the Prince Regent who is about to go and visit him at the Brighton Pavilion for a game of faro. I walk over and give the duchess a good scratch on her neck. She regards me with fatalism. Yes, she is thinking, WHAT SHE SAID. The thing about breakfast.

By that time I am so full of love and laughter I can hardly make the breakfast. The mare observes me sternly, making sure I am putting in enough seaweed and rosehips for her hooves.

I think then, I think now, I’ll go on thinking for the rest of the day – love, love, love, love, love, love.

That is all.

 

Today’s pictures:

Some more of yesterday’s sweetness:

As if all that goodness yesterday were not enough, she did some magnificent Spanish Riding School of Vienna snorty trots whilst I was free-schooling her on the ground this morning, and threw in some rodeo bucks just to show that the clever Paint is not the only one with that skill set. Then, having got the twinkles out of her toes and sternly reminded me that she is descended from lines of heroic champions, she settled down to her dowager duchess collection, changing direction from a mere point of my finger. When I got on, she gave me an easy canter in the Western manner, a real proper lope, on a loose rein. Yes, she seemed to be saying, I really can do any damn thing.

Ha, I said, out loud; did the dressage squirrels come in the night?

Yes, she said, with dignity. They most certainly did.