Kirstin learns some valuable lessons

Kirstin's weekend was jam packed. It started out on Friday at 4:30 when her varsity softball team had to play a playoff game for the playoffs. Makes sense, right? Their team was tied for 3rd place & only the top 3 teams go on to playoffs, so they played a tie breaker game to determine which team would be going to playoffs. It was a heart wrenching game that went into overtime. They ended up losing by 1 point, so their season came to an end. The girls had played their hearts out & each of them really love playing softball. They are a very young team(no seniors) so they will only improve. Kirstin went into this softball season having never played the game-she was truly a newbie, but she put her heart & soul into learning the game and has improved leaps & bounds since the season began. Softball is definitely something that is now in her blood. This experience just reinforced what we have tried so hard to instill in all of our kids: give 110% of yourself no matter what you are doing and when you do that, only good can come from it. Kirstin never goes into something half-heartedly, she always puts in 110% no matter how big or small the task is.
It was with teary eyes that we left the softball field at 7:00pm only to drive an hour & half down the road to drill team practice. Drill team practice ended around 10:00pm-all went well with that. Saturday, Kirstin had her playday. She took Trigger, the drill was fantastic, the flag routine had some small errors. Kirstin & Trigger participated in the straight barrels placing 2nd, cloverleaf barrels placing 3rd, horse & cow placing 5th and poles with a no time because they broke the timer barrier. Trig always amazes us when it comes to these competitions-he loves to do them, but has never been trained to do them. We didn't get home until midnight.
Sunday, Kirstin devoted to Taz because she didn't take him to the playday and he needed the exercise. It was a very windy day, but Taz was behaving himself so Kirstin took him out to the big field to run him around. After riding Taz for about 30 minutes, she noticed something dangling around Taz's head and when she looked she noticed that it was his bit. The chicago screw fell out and Taz dropped the bit essentially meaning that Kirstin was riding bridleless in the big field at a lope. She of course got a little concerned, she had never rode him bridleless outside of the round pen & by big field I mean about 10 acres of open land. I wished I would have been out there to see this, but I wasn't. Kirstin comes into the house with her broken bridle and said look what happened while I was riding Taz! I asked her what she did when she realized that he didn't have the bridle on any longer & she said "I asked him to stop; I sat down in the saddle & he stopped." He stopped-he had the choice to keep going-nothing was there to prevent him from doing that & he chose to stop. When your horse chooses to do what is right than you know that he is trained very well. He had my baby girl(stop rolling your eyes, Kirstin-luv ya) on his back, no bridle in his mouth, running at a lope & he stops. Have I said how much I love this horse?
Kirstin has now learned that checking the equipment on a regular basis is very important.
I almost forgot, earlier while Kirstin was in the roundpen with Taz, I decided that it was WAY past time for me to give this horse a spin, so I climbed on top of him. I must say it was pretty amazing. Kirstin had to help me up, I'm a little challenged when it comes to height & Taz is so tall, I needed a boost up. I haven't ridden in a long time, not sure why, but I haven't. Needless to say, I am just a little sore today, but I enjoyed every minute of it.