Y’all. Tonight I did something I’ve never done before. I galloped a thoroughbred.

You know me. I grew up on horses. I’ve ridden every kind of mean pony and crappy attitude horse in the world. I’ve broke and trained and been launched into orbit from the best. But until January, I’d never ridden a thoroughbred.

We’ve been focused on keeping her calm and lazy gaited, to some degree, to fit with our learning curve. And most days, her rider and horse do fine.

But this evening I needed to intervene to keep the horse from getting some bad habits.

So I hopped on. She was snorty and swervey and wanting her way and going to be huffy. So I gently but firmly rode all that out and let her know we weren’t going to behave that way. She’s a good girl. She doesn’t fight long.

But as we had our come to Jesus, I realized she needed to just get some of her energy out and that would help. So, now that I’m out of kidney stone pain, and cleared to ride post surgery...I decided to let her have some fun.

I walked her around to the end of the arena and deepened my seat, gripped with my knees, got a good hold on my reins and leaned forward and said “ok, old gal. Let’s do this.”

And I gave her her head.

She launched like out of a starting gate. One stride into a full gallop. If I hadn’t been 110% ready, I’d still be eating dirt.

This fat, lazy, beautiful, calm, wonderful horse still remembers what she was bred to do. And I’m in breathtaking awe of it. I’ve never ridden anything that felt like that, and I’ve galloped horses all over EKY, Ohio, and WKY.

I let her gallop a couple more times this evening, and then she was back to being her fine, loose-reined, easy going self.

I understand, Fearless. Sometimes you just have to RUN...

I can’t stop smiling, every time I think of how that felt. It was so...powerful. I had to have been flying. And if that arena hadn’t been so small, we would have flown for as long as she wanted to go.

If I had had a horse like that when I was 12, well, I may have still been running.

I’m not kidding. I can’t stop smiling. I’m amazed at how it felt. I’m amazed at how much she wanted to do it. I’m amazed that my old self was still enough of a rider to ride it. I feel like I’ve had a full body workout.

Y’all need to go get you a thoroughbred.