My Graduation gift to Kathy.

My Kathy is  a horse woman. She has been drawn to these animals all her life. I know the feeling as I had it too. I decided I would give her the opportunity to learn to ride, some how , some way.

Money was tight, so her early years with horses were YMCA horse camp kind of things.
When she was in 6th grade I learned about a program here in our home town. Ride On Therapeutic Horsemanship. Ride On needed volunteers to help muck out stalls, clean tack, tack up and un-tack horses for the disabled children, lead the horses or walk along beside to assist the disabled kids should they need help.  We signed her up.

Last Summer Kathy was awarded an embroider saddle pad awarded to volunteers who put in over 1500 hours of work.

For her graduation present I created for her, an altered book.

I found a copy of Black Beauty  at a used book store for $5.00, for the base of her book.

I glued pages together and whip stitched the edges with embroidery floss to make the pages sturdy enough to hold the acrylic paint and other embellishments I would be adding.

This copy of Black Beauty had wonderful illustrations.Pages needed to be removed as the book grew...I kept all pages with illustrations. I found horse quotes on line and cut pictures of horses out of Kathy's tack magazines. I love this quote, click on the photo to enlarge...

I emailed the wonderful people at Ride On. They sent me pictures such as this one of Kathy working.

Kathy and Bjorn, working, Kathy schooling one of ride On's horses at a show, to make sure the horse would be good for the kids to ride in a show setting.

I emailed her Ride On friends and asked for a written memento from them to Kathy. I included the notes to Kathy along with  picture of the friend who wrote it.

I was really hoping Kathy would like this book. When she opened it up and began to look through it...I could tell...she loves it.

I entitled this post my Graduation gift to Kathy. Really, what it is is a summation of Ride On's gift to Kathy. Expertise in horse care, friends, riding lessons, a career goal of becoming a Physical Therapist.

I am grateful to Ride On for all it has added to my daughters life.