After moving to the USA, I made a wonderful friend, Eta, and began teaching riding at Lionshare Farm in Connecticut - it was her ex-Olympic horse that I was riding every day.
I applied for the John Lyons Certification Program, and on acceptance, I was posted the list of things to bring. It included a few that had me rather perplexed!
- A cinch (and other bits of tack that I'd never heard the US name for) - turns out it's just a girth.
- A lariat - OK, so I'd never roped anything before!
- A tarp - now I knew this was a tarpaulin but had NO idea what it might be for. It turns out that it was for covering the stalls, made from round pen panels, that my horses were housed in.
The lovely Eta had helped me through the rest of the list and after I'd been in Colorado for a couple of weeks she eventually said, shyly, on the phone, "Kate, where do you go to the toilet?".
"In the apartment I'm renting, in the bathroom!" came my reply.
"Oh, that's good. I thought you were sleeping under the tarp!"
Seriously Eta, you've been talking to me for 2 weeks and thought I was sleeping under a tarp in the Colorado desert? Hysterical, I just loved the fact that she hadn't mentioned that earlier and still offered me her precious horse to take.
