Winter Life at Camp Evergreen’s Barn.

Hey all, it’s Julia again! Living here at camp is a treat in the winter time. It isn’t always easy to work at the barn in the middle of winter though. When it gets super cold outside, one doesn’t always feel like going outside and doing their work in the cold. However, some of the most exciting part of my job happens in winter. As people who come to the barn often know, horses don’t train themselves, and Camp Evergreen does have some horses that haven’t been broke to ride yet. We also have some horses that just need some riding time. When the weather isn’t too bone chillingly cold, you can find Jon and I out in the round pens and out on the trails working with these horses.

Currently we are working on three horses that haven’t had official rides on them, and we have one who has had only a couple rides. We also have a couple of horses that were started last winter that are mostly just getting time put on them. Munchkin, and Liberty are four year old sisters who are two of the horses we are just starting. We are also putting in some time with my three year old, Freedom. Finnegan is a horse who was started last year, but he still hasn’t been out on the trails. We are hoping to work with him again soon. Wolf and Stormie are our two horses that we are just putting lots of trail time on that we started last winter. It is interesting how different each horse is, and the different ways we have to adapt our training program to accommodate the needs of each individual horse. Each horse has their own character and set of traits that makes them different from the others. Even Munchkin and Liberty who were born the same year, and have had about the same amount of training, need their training programs adapted differently.

It is really cool sitting on the edge of the round pen as Jon is working with any of these horses. The round pen is a place where I tend to see lots of parallels between the relationship of horse and handler, and the relationship between us and God. The handler represents God, and the horse represents us as individuals. Sometimes Jon will be moving a horse in a round pen trying to get them to pay attention to him. For the most part, our horses are pretty willing to give Jon their attention. However, every once in a while a horse will decide that it doesn’t want to give him all its attention and will either stop or turn in the wrong direction. This causes Jon to have to either push the horse harder, or turn them back around. The horse chooses to make things difficult for it, when it could easily just do what Jon wants it to do. In our own lives, we choose to give God our attention, but every once in a while, we get distracted and we tend to make life more difficult for ourselves than it has to be.