Ever since Leilani was allowed to ride Cookie last year in Ohio she has been talking about wanting to ride a real horsie again.
For a while, the desire (asking and not too much begging) was channeled into the kiddie rides outside of stores (she knows them all: horse at Walmart but it’s broken and we don’t shop there often, fire truck at KMart, even the merry-go-round in ‘Ele’ele from camping nearby twice), and we’ve shamelessly used it as a bribe to make our shopping more pleasant. Ever since we’ve been back in Austria, she’s wanted to ride the horse on the main street, which she remembered the first day we went there. When the jet lag was causing her to wake up cranky and crying in the middle of the night, we used that horse ride to bribe her into going back to sleep. But she must’ve remembered Cookie because she started saying that it was a pretend horse, not a real horse (she really is talking a lot, and talking about her own thoughts, which is really amazing to us parents used to having her only mimic or talk about topics that we introduce). Which led her to ask repeatedly if she could ride a real horse. Today her dream came true (Andy says that sounds like Mommy has been infected by Disney-speak).
Alexandra, a teacher and friend of Jutta has a (big) pony named Inka who does therapy with handicapped children. All of her horses are friendly, very well treated and so well behaved that it was hard to believe.
(Leilani thought she was still leading Inka)
Before one gets to ride, the horse has to be brushed…
…and lead out of the stable.
Then we all went for a walk in the woods. Leilani sat on Inka for at least 45 minutes.
Alexandra and her daughter Lea were very nice about having two crazy American(ized) parents (and one Oma) running around and ahead to take pictures and movies.
Leilani was all smiles at first. Then she got quiet and seemed to be bored—she was definitely tired because she skipped her nap again—but she said she was enjoying it. Towards the end, she got crabby for a second and said she wanted off, but as soon as Mommy was holding her and she realized the ride would be over, she begged to be put back on.
When she was done riding she helped to clean the horse and take the leg guards off and feed Inka some bread.
