We Can Ride started up again this week. Because of a glut of Monday volunteers, I was moved to Tuesdays.
Whoa.
Tuesdays are one of the days when the kids from the Hennepin Co. Home School come and help out. This means extra people — a couple counselors, one or two security guys, and a handful (maybe six?) of "observer" kids who will rotate in as they complete certification. And there's an instructor-in-training shadowing the instructor. And three barn aides. Also on Tuesdays, none of the horses are used in both sessions. So instead of 8 or 9 horses, there are 12. (Granted, still only 6 in the ring at a time.) And 12 full sets of tack to deal with before and after.
Monday nights, if you include the riders, parents, instructors and volunteers, there were about 35 people in the barn, and that always felt hectic and crowded. Tuesday nights? Closer to 50.
Also, I'm now a sidewalker instead of a horse leader. My first kid is really young, and pretty severely physically disabled. As in, at this point not really able to balance on the horse without assistance, and mostly unable to hang on to anything.
It's a little scary. I'm still really excited to be doing this, don't get me wrong. It's just crowded, chaotic and overwhelming. I'm being pushed outside my comfort zone. I recognize that that's probably a good thing.
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So, we have: juvenile deliquents, small children you don't know, and large hooved animals. I think we'll just go ahead and waive your third miracle, Push, because you're a damn saint.
Heh. Except for the part where I find the large hooved animals reassuring, the juvenile delinquents so far seem pretty great, and it's really the small children I don't know that are stressing me out. How ass-backward is that???
Really, it's mostly the crowd. I know our horses are well-trained and half-dead, but they're still animals, so there's always the chance of something going wrong. And it just seems like that "something wrong" is much harder to deal with and keep contained when there are that many people around. I always hated getting the horses from the barn to the arena at the State Fair, too, on the same principle.
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