Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
This is A Horse Blog and I’m Teri Rehkopf. AHorseBlog.com is my personal blog and a companion to HorsesintheSouth.com, an equine news publisher.
A Horse Blog will tap into my Horse Girl Energy to tell you about my horse-back riding adventures, experiences with horse ownership, and horse shows. Also there will be more writings, tangents, musings about dogs, cats and other animals, survival prepping, and general stuff. Oh, and I love plants, so you’ll hear about that topic, too.
I currently hail from Keystone Heights, Florida living on five acres that requires a lot of mowing… luckily, I love to mow! I get in the pool and get wet with my soaking wet pony-tail hanging down my back keeping me cool.
Life is short. Ride a horse.
I’m Doin’ It Now
I have been wanting to make this blog since 2009 but never had time. HorsesintheSouth.com took too much time. Riding and caring for my own horse took a lot of time. I’ve had health issues – shoulder replacement (done twice), bad back, and migraines – arrgh! Add living way out in the country, yard work, landscaping, gardening, mowing — need I say more?
But now I’m retired (or semi-retired) and have a bit more time, yea! So here goes …
The Plan of Attack – Tapping in to My Horse Girl Energy
I’ll be writing blog posts starting off with my early life with horses. I have always been a true horse-fanatic with a ton of Horse Girl Energy morphing later into Equestrian Lady Energy.
“Growing up as a horse girl, it’s not uncommon to spend all day in the barn then coming home covered in hay, mud, or manure.”
“Identifying a horse girl is simple. If someone’s life revolves around horses, they are a horse girl.”
Horse Girl Energy
It started very young with these little plastic or rubber horses that fit in your palm. They were up to about 12 inches tall model horses like they had back in the 50s when I was just a yout’ as my German uncle (Syd) by marriage would say. He also called me Harriet the Holocaust cuz I was a somewhat hyper kid, lol. He teased me for getting a huge stuffed horse, almost as big as I was, at 9 years old.
My Name
I digress and I know I need to explain the Harriet, which is my real name. I hated my name so much that in my early teens, I changed it. I spelled Harriet backwards and got Teirrah, which I shortened to Teri and voila.
Experiences Boating and Sailing
I’ll be writing about my experiences with horses, dogs, cats, other animals, boating, camping and sailing. My husband Jerry and I had a J30 foot racing sailboat that we also cruised in.
I grew up boating. We had an 18 foot Old Town wooden canoe that we took to most of the clear, natural springs in north/central Florida. We would camp out and go canoeing the next morning. My favorite was to go to Ichetucknee Springs and River for the gorgeous shades of aqua blues and emerald greens. The pristine setting makes you want to be enveloped in it except for the fact it is so cold! The water stays a freezing-to-me 70 degrees.
Canoeing the Springs of Florida
My mom, dad, and brother would start off with the canoe at the beginning of the springs and I would dive in to follow for a while swimming behind them. I would look down where it was maybe 20 feet deep, to see alligators sleeping(?) on the bottom. When the water got brown and brackish from the leaves and I couldn’t see the bottom, I would get in the canoe for the rest of the trip. I loved to paddle the canoe, too. Backwatering is fun!
Our Home-made Pontoon Boat
Later, my father built a pontoon boat using airplane pontoons as the floating base for a wooden house boat. The whole family went for weekend boat trips on the St. Johns river in Jacksonville, FL, on the ocean, and using the Inland Waterway to get to St. Augustine. He also rebuilt a boat trailer for it. We caught some tasty crabs and cooked on board.
Sailboats and Sailing
Later in my mid teens my father got a mid-size sailboat. He got a 56 foot sailboat to live on when my parents divorced. I got to go on it when I came home from college tom visit. I truly love sailing! It trained me to be able to race sailboats later in life. When I got my horse, I had to make the difficult decision to go to sailboat races or go to horse shows.
For more of our Horse Girl Energy, I will also include horse-back riding ownership, adventures and horse show participation. I was a member of a local Dressage club (NFDA) and hunter/jumper club (FCHJA) and did their initial websites for them.
We’ll start the blogging with my mare, Glenord’s Rocket Dancer aka Rocki. She sadly went over the rainbow bridge, September, 2020.
