Taking him for granted

Sometimes I feel like I take my horse for granted. I know he is a super nice horse all around and dont over look that at all but I don't realize just how MUCH better he is than your average horse. Not that im tooting my own horn over here (okay maybe a little!) but wow my next horse, when the time comes, will have HUGE shoes to fill. Recently with riding some other horses, riding my training horse, watching at horse shows, etc
 I went and watched some friends compete at their IHSA competition today (Im not on the team...Not a fan of riding a bunch of less then pleasurable horses without warm up time) and all I can say is that it was interesting. Some of the horses are complete saints. They pack different riders around in back to back to back classes all day long without breaks and manage not to throw them off like I would if I were a horse. They stand patiently in line and really are solid citizens, even if their under saddle work isnt up to par in my mind. But then you have the flip side. People who allow their green broke, completely nervous wreck horses come. You know the ones where they say "oh yeah the horse is great just dont take up any contact at all" during your english class while the horse freaks out if you take up any amount (like really any. If there wasnt a loop in the reins it was too much) of contact but then tries to go running off once the riders give the horse its head completely. Then there is the horse that almost rears straight up in the air because it didnt want to leave the side of the arena where everyone was standing and dumps its rider. Oh yeah... and the one that double barrel kicked me in my stomach. I got extremely lucky and was far enough away that I only caught the tail end of it so it wasn't bad. I also held onto a couple horses that would just run right over the top of me to get where they wanted to go.

I could go on and on about why I am so thankful to have such a nice horse not only on the ground but under saddle. I am one lucky girl :)