Sent: Tuesday,
January 12, 2010
Subject: Prince Alerion
Hello,
I bought Larry as a
present to myself after I had finished 9 months of chemotherapy for
stage 4 Hodgkins Lymphoma. I sent in my
deposit check exactly one month after my last treatment and it was
the best decision I ever made! I would never
buy a horse sight
unseen but I very strongly felt that somehow this horse was supposed
to be mine and I really needed him. I decided to send a blurb about
Larry back to his home because just a few weeks ago was my 5 year
cancer free anniversary, and Larry is now a beautiful and very
accomplished and well traveled 6 year old.
I have been meaning to write for years about Prince Alerion but
we've been having too much fun! I call him Larry because he is so
playful, he reminds me of the Three Stooges. His other nicknames are
Moose and Giraffe because he stands at 17.1 hands now. We have shown
walk trot classes hunters and dressage in local schooling shows, but
our favorite thing to do is go on long trail rides and adventures.
He went barefoot till he was five but now he has full shoes because
we do a lot of distance riding over very rocky terrain.
He gets a lot of attention on rides
because he is 17.1 hands, flashy, and dolled up western, and he is
always looking at something! We have been competing in ETI trail
trials where over the course of 2-5 hour ride you are judged at how
you maneuver through designated natural and man made obstacles. They
could be anything from opening and closing a gate without letting
go, crossing a river, walking over a bridge or tarps, backing down a
hill, or even pulling a very heavy tire.
Our latest accomplishment however was completing a
130 mile, 5-day ride through Death Valley National Park. It was the
first time we have done an overnight trip together. There were about
65 horses on the ride together, mostly quarter horses, arabs and
mules, and all had to tied to a tie line at night. Which I am sure
you can imagine could be very dramatic with all those horses
attached to one line! One of the cowboys joked that it would always
be easy to spot Larry on the tie line because all you had to do was
look for the dark spot in the sky. They also asked if I had a ladder
in my saddlebags...
The horses have to endure intense heat during the day
with temperature sometimes dropping 30 degrees at night. We could
spend 10 miles crossing a plain with heavy sand and brush and then
have to conquer a 6 hour rocky climb to get over a ridge and down
the other side to the next plain. We trained for about 6 months
climbing hills and marching up fire roads in the San Gabriel
Mountains of Los Angeles. And I am very proud to say we had no
fitness, dehydration, lameness or soreness issues. At the closing
ceremony when I was presented with a belt buckle I was told that no
horse of his breeding (Friesian X) has ever survived the trip. I am
glad they did not tell me that before the ride!
Larry is truly an amazing horse and my best buddy! I
really enjoy having a horse that I can do anything with. He is
capable of anything I decide to train him for. I cant wait to take
dressage lessons on him and do some serious showing, but first we
are going to do another 100 mile ride in April (from the Mojave
Desert in CA across the boarder to Nevada). And however he is
dressed, English or Western and covered in sweat and trail burrs and
trail dust he is always nice to look at. This weekend we are going
to Arlington Arizona to camp out and ride through some historic
landmarks. So we got our coggins test today and are headed back into
the wilderness!
Cheers,
Lizzy and Larry
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