Cowgirl Up!

Today the wranglers did the first "running in" of the horses, which is when they run them down the road from the pasture to the corral. Bekah let us stop work for a minute to go out on the porch and watch. They did it during the busy holiday time last winter, and it was always so beautiful and stirring, like watching the scene at the end of Hidalgo when they set all the wild horses free.

The horses started coming by, wranglers stationed along the road to urge them on. We watched as they galloped into the corral. Suddenly a pack of about ten of them broke loose and started looping back around the other way to the road. Bekah yelled, "Come on!" and started running. We blindly followed her. We ran to a fork in the road, where she said, "Some of you stay here, and someone come with me down here to keep them from running over the cattle guard." I followed her, still acting on instinct. "What do we do?" I asked Bekah, and she said, "Yell at them and wave your arms. They won't run over you."

I'm still slightly nervous around horses just because they're so big and could hurt me without meaning to. But they thundered around the corner, and Bekah shouted and waved her arms, and there was nothing to do but yell "Hey! Hey! Go the other way!" at the top of my lungs and wave my arms like a mad woman. And somehow it worked. Thankfully the horses don't care what you yell. Even though the wranglers were giving cowboy cries of "Hi-yup!" apparently "Hey, go the other way" works just as well.

It was actually a lot of fun. I felt like I was in a cowboy movie. As we walked back inside, we shared high fives with the housekeepers, who had blocked off another branch of the road with their truck. Servers and housekeepers save the day!

We've been reweaving the backs of the dining room chairs. The chairs were actually made in a prison in Indiana, which is amusing to me. We have to patch the parts that are broken or falling out. I thought it would be like a fun craft, but it's actually super frustrating. Once you start pulling out a piece, you pretty much have to reweave the whole chair. If you try to use little short pieces, they pull out when they dry. I was ready to throw mine out the window by the end of today. But we are splitting it up with fun activities, like making espressos and a treasure hunt to learn where things are kept. It's sooo helpful to have worked here before. I feel much less incompetent. Tonight is our practice barn dance, so that should be fun, too.