Swimming

It turns out that Erika's finger wasn't that badly hurt and although she's got a splint on it she was up for riding. She trailered her horse White Heart over to my place and I took her on some of the little roads through our tiny historic town, the cemetery where the founder of the town is buried and down to the Mississippi for a swim =)

We had a wonderful time and Erika was impressed by how beautiful our town is, actually I still am too =) I rode Jackson, Lauren's horse, because Sora is still terrified of cars to the point of being dangerous and I just didn't want to undo all the hard work of the last couple of months. Jackson is a blast to ride though, very forward but smooth and beautiful under saddle so I wasn't too disappointed. Other than being attacked by mosquitoes we had a near perfect trail ride. Unfortunatly I think Java's Mom's bad camera luck is catching as I just lost my second camera in only a year and a half. Because of that and since my mom had her camera with her on a road trip I have no pictures of our beautiful day.

Something that surprised me was that Erika, against perhaps my better judgment, brought her two well behaved dogs and they came with us on the ride. I'm used to dogs jumping out of brush and scaring horses but Jackson never once acted nervous even with the dogs leaping out right in front of him. In fact he was calmer than normal and far less reactive than he's ever been. One dog would even see cars coming up fast and walk out happily onto the road to slow them down. We probably had some unhappy motorists but we certainly had safe and happy horses. Overall I was extremely impressed and it felt nice to have them along. They even diffused one nervous and growly dog by going up to it and getting it to play.

Now I just need two of my own lol