Mid-week critter: Lifetime achievement awards

One of the things I did to pimp my tackroom was to hang up a bunch of my old ribbons. As I was doing so, it occurred to me that the majority of the ribbons belonged to Cash, so I decided to take a picture of him with all his ribbons.

Quite the decorated hero, isn't he? 

In the grand scheme of things, it's not a lot of ribbons. Eventing is not like going to hunter/jumper shows or breed shows and coming home with half a dozen ribbons from half a dozen classes. For eventers, it's one ribbon per show if you have a good ride. When you ride at a USCTA event (now USEA, I'm showing my age) in Open Training with 40 people, that brown 8th place ribbon on the far right means a lot. 

Some of those ribbons carry a lot of memories. The small blue ribbon up by his eye (with the faded purple ribbons) is from the first time we ever evented together - we were at Pine Hill and went Beginner Novice. I remember it being especially sweet because someone laughed at us while we were walking down to the dressage arena, and commented on "how funny that horse looks" (Paints didn't event back then). Apparently funny-looking horses can do really well eventing! The big championship ribbon on the left is from a USDF adult dressage team I rode on when I was going to grad school at RPI, as is the USDF medal that's hanging off Cash's ear. My cousin came down from Maine to see that show, and somewhere I have a print photo of her making faces with Cash.  I wonder where that picture is. I wonder if my cousin remembers that day like I do.

Gosh, the more I look, the more I remember. I am so lucky that Cash carried me through so many amazing experiences - for me, he is one in a million.

I'm going to go hug my pony now.