Birthday day for Zoe

Day after Ground Hog day.. back in 1979, Zoe was born.

This morning, I woke up early to feed - finding a light sparkly snowfall and a rainbow !! First time I have ever seen a rainbow created from snowflakes. It was faint and difficult to photograph .. but special.

I guess because I have operated a farm for so long.. my life and the life of others is marked by animals - recalling milestones by who we were riding at that time. :) Zoe has ridden a lot of horses - and plenty of mares.. but most of her favorites were geldings.




Zoe has accomplished a lot in these years... this past year, she set quite a few goals for herself as a rider and worked diligently with Elektra in the show ring. She attained pretty much what she set out to do -- and won the Horse of the Year in both the Curly Sporthorse International and the ICHO. She improved her riding skills dramatically. And I believe she had a lot of fun doing it. I reaped some of the benefit of her desires and aims.. as I got some great work done with my horses ! :)

Zoe's first horse was Sunshine Alec-Xander, who arrived at Top O' The Hill Farm as a nursling alongside his Mom, Sunshine Tiarra. Tiarra stayed with us until her sale to a family at age 21 years. She was one of my personal favorite mounts - and Keri's mom !! I trained Alex, rode him a bit and handed him off to Zoe. - and Zoe as a 12-13 year old rode him everywhere. She did many 3 and 4 day camping trips and many 15 and 25 mile competitive rides. He was a super horse but did dump Zoe quite a few times.. he had a tricky little spin that we still refer to as the Alex spin. That was a few years ago and here I am riding his sister :)

Alex was sold .. and Zoe began riding Mel's Bathtub Gin - who was our herd sire, but became a gelding at age 12. I rode Tuff 'Nuff then for the most part and the two of us left most everyone in the dust with those two. We had a blast and still reminisce about those rides... a great duo. We logged many fast miles of rough country and really found a lot of the trails we ride today with those two extra-ordinary mounts.

Her next favorite gelding was Ollie - out of Col's Pasqualie Kid and a Suffolk Punch mare. This was also around the time that I started to ride Keri more. In addition to continuing our expeditions.. we did some showing, started to drive quite a bit, and every other weekend we rode in Judged Pleasure rides together, usually of 25 miles or more.


Here's the two of us together with Keri and Ollie. We each have boxes of ribbons to show but it was the time in the saddle that is most memorable.

Zoe drove with me often - but I am not so sure she really loved it. Although she was young, I had some high expectations and perhaps burdened her with a tad too much responsiblity at times. We still laugh about the time we were out with this mare, who was usually "spook-free"... until she saw a very glimmering shiny bunch of balloons tied to a mail box on the curve down the back road. She balked, so I exited the cart to lead her. The milisecond she knew I was out of the cart - she spun around for home at a good extended road trot.. and I am yelling instructions to Zoe on bringing her under control. It turned out, thankfully, to be a good laugh we'll share for a lifetime. One of many we have had on horseback or in the cart.

I think the only mare Zoe truly was fond of was OYY Yemaya.. and I am not sure she has totally forgiven me for selling this one out from under her.

But now we have Keri and Teasel... what a great pair for tootling about town.

And Zoe has her sights set on training a Chip son - OYY Buster Brown - this guy is going to be awesome.

He's already a superb driving horse (with his background it's a natural for him). It's not going to take much to get him out and about.

This past year Zoe has taken a greater interest in driving too.. even after all the wrecks she has witnessed, she still wants to learn.

She might even do some driven dressage this summer with OYY Nimue.

So Happy Birthday Zoe -- a great year for you with many goals met. Hopefully this rainbow is a sign of more greatness!!

Enjoy ~