Full disclosure: I spent an entire therapy session yesterday talking about how I love to travel and I hate to travel. How I love adventure, but I’m always worried sick about my horses the entire time I’m gone. The blessing of horse ownership. The curse of horse ownership. This duality plagues the crap out of me.

Periodically, my long-suffering non-horsey husband applies for an overseas job. For about five minutes I get excited about living and working in, Finland, for example, or Tuscany, or the Pyrenees (French side or Spanish, it matters not). And then it passes. I’d be homesick the entire time. I’d miss my horses, I’d worry about them, I’d have a miserable time. I’d make him miserable. It would all end in divorce, and I’d be here, on the farm, alone. My therapist calls this “awfulizing.”

The compromise is our annual exotic trips (check out my blog from Vietnam) and the occasional work trip to Germany. And during those trips I spend a lot of time meditating about how everyone is just fine, well cared for, and will live to see the next day, and the next, and the next.

So last night at bed check: Things are just not right. Belle is sweating—it’s not hot. It’s a pleasant 60-something. Perfect horse sleeping weather. She’s so wet I wonder if I’d missed a freak rain shower. I take her temperature and she’s below normal. She is eager for her carrot and ready to munch hay when we pass the hay pile.

This morning the sweating has subsided quite a bit, but she’s still wet over her loins. This is quite mysterious, since she appears absolutely fine otherwise. She eats her hay and grain and paces the fence when she’s done as per normal.

So what gives? Is my sensitive mare just having a moment? Is she reacting to a new weed? The fly spray I used on her Sunday? Is it skin or systemic? And here is where the Internet is NOT my friend: She could have, in order: EPM, EEE, West Nile (even though she’s vaccinated), Grass Fever. I’m pretty convinced she’s about ready to keel over dead, thanks to Google. Oh, how I long for the days when information wasn’t so readily available.

I have a vague fantasy about calling the horse communicator, but I call the vet instead. He’s not too worried. Give her a bath, he says. Call back if she starts sweating again.

Of course because I am leaving, every anxiety is magnified 100 times.

I consider taking a horse tranquilizer myself. I consider changing or canceling my trip, even though this is a big event I’ve planned for months and is important to my employer.

This is where I wish I was a more religious person. Then I could have faith in a higher power that whatever is meant to happen, will happen and it will be okay.

And maybe that’s the key: Looking out the window now, I can see Belle doing her usual morning things: Bugging the stall cleaner, irritating Baleno (who sometime soon will turn around and bite her as usual), basically acting like a four-year-old filly. Now if I could just accept that and flush the anxiety down the drain with my uneaten breakfast, I’d be able to get on with the business of the day: packing.

In this event, every single rail counted. And the Americans, went squeaky clean in the jump-off, even the very small Cedric, who at 15.2 hands jumps like he has springs on his hind end. Beezie Madden, the cleanup hitter for the team after an uncharacteristically botched run, didn’t even have to jump in the final round. So the USA won the gold, but you have to reach out and hug our neighbors to the north for their incredible silver-medal performance.

For all the whining on various blogs about NBC not covering equestrian sports enough, I have to protest. The Internet coverage has been complete. Every ride, every event. On TV, you’re lucky if you get to see the American rounds, let alone any of the other sport greats, like Ludgar Beerbaum (not such a great run this time), or, for the dressage, the wonderful Bernadette Pujals from Mexico—a fantastic rider not yet a household dressage name but soon to be, after her impressive rides here and in Aachen at the 2006 World Equestrian Games. So I have absolutely no complains about NBC’s coverage. I’ve been more than satisfied. Putting the riders in bikinis, as one blogger commented, might help get the sport on primetime, but I prefer watching each and every ride without the inane commentary and chopped up editing.

And now for some updates on my equine family. I’m happy to report that Belle will be competing in the 2012 Olympics. What a super star! The youngster went on her first real outing late last week. I loaded her up and drove her to my friend Katy’s place, a particularly young-horse-friendly environment.

Belle got out of the trailer and looked around. In her usual very social way (no one sneaks onto my property without Belle announcing their presence with a bellowing whinny—we call her the “watch horse”). She loudly said “Hiya!!!” to every horse on the property. Otherwise, she settled down and paid attention, mostly. I even got her to trot around the arena on the bit even though Katy’s neighbor was on his roof.

Baleno’s massage regimen is paying dividends. For the last few rides, he’s been much loser and had a more flowing gait. I didn’t feel him getting “stuck” in the left lead canter or hesitating to cross over in his lateral movements. I’m very pleased that it looks like we’ll be able to avoid an expensive diagnostic trip to Colorado State.

That’s all for this week: Catch the last two equestrian events Tuesday am (5:45 am MT) and Thursday am (5:45 MT) at www.nbcolympics.com (click on the little “equestrian” button on the left hand navigation bar to launch the media player.

But last night I was glued to the computer. And I wasn’t working. I was watching four glorious, mostly commercial-free hours of cross country jumping. Saturday I’d gotten up earlier than usual to watch the last rounds of eventing dressage, and I plan to set the alarm for 5:15 tomorrow and for the next five days so I can watch all the rest of the Olympic equestrian coverage.

In the past, Olympic equestrian coverage has been miniscule at best and confined to whatever the network edited into the larger broadcast. Maybe a 20-second highlight segment if we were lucky; about the same amount as, say, badminton. It was nowhere near what I thought it deserved, and forget about the thrill-a-minute-if-you-like-watching-the-grass-grow discipline of dressage. That got as much coverage as water polo. Or maybe less.

And worse still, they often showed a lot of ugly wrecks in the cross country rather than the incredibly skilled riding that was taking place between the accidents. And the commentators? Don’t even get me started. Inane wouldn’t be an inappropriate description.

But this time around, NBC is rocking! The online site is showing everything, complete and uninterrupted in streaming video. And the cameras are well placed so viewers actually get to see the whole darn thing rather than the same three shots over and over. And the commentary is optional, typewritten as the action unfolds. Click and it’s there. Click again and it’s gone.

I’ve got a nice big monitor and high-speed connection so it’s almost like watching TV. So thanks, NBC, for using 21st century technology to honor sports enthusiasts everywhere, no matter how obscure the discipline.

And if you’d like to watch, go to www.nbcolympics.com. Click on “online schedules” to see when you’re favorite events are on. Hint: the equestrian stuff is on early in the morning for the next six or seven days. Go, horses, go!

And admittedly when it comes to horses and horse equipment, I’m just a girl who can’t say no. That’s me. And the bad part is, for the past few years, I’ve been lucky enough to be able to buy a lot of my horse gear at wholesale. Believe me, I’ve taken advantage of this delicious little benefit of my sometimes frustrating day job.

When I left for this particular trade show, my husband asked what my budget is. I told him that I’m pretty well set for horse gear. Everyone has pads and bridles and brushes. I have supplements and medications and linament and shampoos and whatever else you can think of. So I told him I wasn’t going to buy anything at all. Not a darn thing.

What’s that saying? Best laid plans of mice and men? Yup, not only did I blow my nonexistent budget, but I blew it big time. I bought a saddle. Not just any old saddle, but a very nice, supremely comfortable imported German saddle. For about a third of the retail price.

Colleagues on this business trip who listened to me lament the spending of my hard-earned dollars reminded me that I can sell the saddle on eBay for just under retail and still make a whopping profit if it doesn’t work out for Belle. Somehow I have a feeling it will fit her. And if it doesn’t, no harm done.

A life coach once told me to stop worrying and enjoy my success. She gave me a mantra—to love my money spend it on what I love (within reason) and stop beating myself up. After all, I’ve earned it. Belle will have a nifty new outfit to wear, and I’m a little poorer. But as my friend Kent used to say, no one died regretting they didn’t pay off their Master Card bill.