Spring Sessions Begin March 22

The sun is shining, the grass is beginning to grow, and the horses are just starting to shed their fluffy winter coats. With the improvement in the weather, I will now be offering riding lessons again. Our first session begins Tuesday, March 22. Please review the information below for details and feel free to call/text me with any questions. I'm looking forward to seeing you here again!

Future Mothers [Photo Blog]

Thanks for a great Summer!

We had an incredible few months getting back into lessons here on Shenango Way Farm after Pablo and My year long mission trip around the world. I want to say a huge thank you to all the students who made my comeback a success! You all are the best!

Our 2015 season is now ended, but we are already looking forward to an exciting riding season in 2016! Our riding program will begin again in March, 2016, date pending. Check back periodically to keep up with the farm and horses over the Holidays and the winter. Merry Christmas everyone!

Some memories from this summer/fall:

Penny joins Shenango Way Farm

Rapunzel introduced several kiddos to horses this summer

A new toy for the farm

See you next year!

Shenango's Great-Grandsire Revealed!

My mom loves family research. Hardly a week goes by without her sharing some neat discovery of a distant ancestor who did something cool. Well, I get a kick out of it too - just a different kind of family history. My horse's family history! 

Me & Shenango Way ~ 1997

While going through some old paperwork last week I made an interesting discovery about my dear old thoroughbred, Shenango; our first horse and the namesake of our farm. It turns out that he was a great-grandson of non other than Secretariat! 

Maybe you can see his resemblance to the incredible athlete below, or maybe not. I can't say Shenango exactly took after his great grand sire. Those who knew Shenango know that he was slow as molasses and chronically "lacked impulsion". But he was a sweet guy and an amazing horse to both me and my sister, and everyone who had the privilege of riding him loved him. Its just cool to know where he came from and that he's a descended from one of America's greatest thoroughbreds. It makes me want to go watch the movie!

Secretariat, winner of the 1973 Triple Crown and Shenango's great-grandsire

Look at that face!

Honey was quite enthusiastic about getting her grain back today after her 48 hour fast. This face was priceless. 

Hot off the presses!

This just happened, a hot and steamy and beautiful gift from God! Who knew I would ever be so excited about poop? 

Waiting on the Poop to Drop (horses, trials and other things God uses)

Honey, sporting her self-inflicted wounds

Last night this beautiful creature suffered through one of the most violent cases of colic I have ever experienced in my many years of owning horses, and I have experienced plenty. I have never felt so hopeless as I did walking her, Honey, in circles, trying everything I could to keep her from dropping to the ground in pain and rolling in a futile and potentially dangerous attempt to relieve her pain. 

Colic, a general term used for many illnesses that cause the horse stomach pains, is only dangerous because the horse has no effective way to relieve the pain on her own.  So she lies down and rolls… again and again and again, often violently. This can cause a fold of the horse’s intestine to twist around on itself, like a balloon animal made by folding and twisting it into sections. Unless a very costly surgery to locate and remove the twisted portion is in the budget, this twist usually results in death for the horse. There is no other way to correct it.

Refusing to stand

At 11:00 last night I was standing over my horse who was laying on her back with all four legs in the air thrashing out wildly. Pablo pulled on her head by the lead in effort to encourage her to her feet. Through tears I begged her, smacked her, yelled at her and hit her with a whip until I left welts, knowing that if I could not get her to her feet she would quite literally kill herself. But she did nothing. No smacking, no yelling, no whip cracking in the air or on her rump would budge her. It was then that I began preparing myself to say goodbye to my redheaded friend.  Aside from some kind of miracle, she would not make it through the night.

You should know that I am not overly attached to most of my horses. Each one (for the most part) came to my farm to work and be productive and (for the most part) will only be here as long as that holds true. I care for each one, give them affection and correction and I enjoy the fulfillment they bring to my life, but I do not think of them as pets nor do I consider myself their “mom”. However, I see the horses that God has place in my hands as charges. It is a privilege to own them and care for them. I invest training into each one so that when the time comes that it leaves my farm I have added value to it. These guys are completely dependent upon me for their every need. Food, shelter, safety…. And health. So the next thought I prepared myself for was the reality that I had somehow caused this.

Oh my God, I killed my horse. She depended on me to care for her, and I failed her.

I felt so hopeless. And responsible for all this. I suppose it didn’t help that it was now past midnight and my emotions were wearing down from watching her suffer. And doesn’t everything seem

more dire in the middle of the night?

When I had done everything I knew to do to save my horse and nothing worked, I began to cry out to God. It went something like this:

Tifi keeping us company

God, this sucks! Colic sucks. Walking in circles sucks. Staying up all night sucks. This heavy feeling that I am responsible for this sucks. If she dies, that will suck too. This sucks!

I don’t think I had any other thoughts for the next hour or so, but it felt really good to let God in on it all. Then comes the guilt.

I should have checked on her sooner. I shouldn’t have separated her from the herd. This wouldn’t have happened if I had just done… If only I would have…. I never should have…

Sound familiar? Don’t we all have those “oh crap, I screwed up” moments? I seem to have them ALL THE TIME. How bout when you know you should do something, but you don’t do it and get burned? How bout when your best, honest attempts at something blows up in your face anyway? If it hasn’t happened to you before, you haven’t lived very long. My next prayer went like this:

God, I really messed this up here. I’ve done everything I can do, and I can’t fix this. It’s in your hands now. I don’t even know if you care enough about one horse to spare her life, (don’t judge my theology here, I’m just being real about how I felt in the moment) but I know you care about me. Spare her for me. No matter what you do, I know you won’t leave me alone in this. Whether she lives or dies, I’m still going to hold onto you.

            That was it. That was my simple prayer of faith that allowed God to step in and begin his work. By “his work”, I do not mean his miracles or his magical power to make everything ok. No, Honey did not stand right up and immediately feel better.  At this point we still had a long night ahead of us. By “his work” I mean his redeeming work. I’m talking about his magical power to do something good in every situation, no matter how crappy it is. That’s my Jesus! He takes every situation and uses it to show us a bit of who he is, a bit of how he loves us, a bit of his power. He redeems our mistakes, he buys back our crappiest days, he even takes back our guiltiest, most shameful moments.

In that moment the Holy Spirit began to speak to my heart and encourage me. God sees this pain I’m going through, he feels it too. But instead of just allowing pain to touch my life needlessly, he uses it to show me part of himself. If I never felt pain, would I ever feel the comfort of the overwhelming love of my heavenly father? If I never felt fear, would I ever know the security that I have in the arms of my savior? If I never experienced loss, would I be able to know the fullness I feel in Christ? If I were never faced with the shame of my own failures, would I ever be able to see how utterly GOOD he is? Through this awful experience, I have gained a new understanding of my Redeemer. He takes every opportunity – all kinds of situations – to speak to his children. He is eager for us to hear him.

feeling better

Honey made it through the night, and it looks as if she has avoided the dreadful twist and will make a full recovery. I haven’t slept and wont get much sleep until we see the sign that will tell us that he intestines are truly back to normal – poop. The vet has given her a good prognosis, filled her belly with laxatives, oil and plenty of water, and given us instructions to wait for the poop, which will show that everything has moved through and returned to proper functionality.  While we have hope for her, we have no proof until that poop drops, and so we wait.

We live in a broken, fallen world that is full of pain and suffering. God doesn’t want to isolate you from it. Instead he wants you to bring it to him, so he can buy it back, and make something beautiful come from it. My God is in the business of redeeming. Redeeming mistakes, missed opportunities, failures, brokenness. My prayer is that as you wait for the poop to drop in your life – that place between receiving Gods promise and seeing it fulfilled – that you would trust that God is at work, redeeming all situations for your good and working toward the day when he once and for all finishes his redemption of mankind and there will be no more pain. None!