Mouthy Mondays

This post is from the Shanster, it is a little sad and she told me she is worried about becoming whiny....I didn't see it at all.

I had a regular blogger and contributor say she has fun with the open discussions. If you guys think it's a good idea I'll get one started once in a while on Mouthy Monday.
I'll throw out a topic and we'll all run with it. What do you think?
Anyway, here's Shanster....

My first horse experiences were really solitary. My parents were divorced and my mom moved to CO after custody was awarded to my Dad in NE. That was a really weird thing in the 70s especially because my sister and I were 3 and 5 yrs old respectively. It was a particularly bitter and angry divorce and we lived in two different foster homes while it was decided which parent we'd live with.

We were in suburbia and I was a horse crazy. I watched The Lone Ranger religiously every Sunday and I loved Silver. I checked each and every book from the library that had anything to do with horses over and over and over and over. Reading and re-reading and re-reading again. Horses were my escape.

No one I knew had horses or rode horses or even liked horses all that much. It was a very, very rare treat to be near horses, see horses or touch horses. I had mostly books, pictures and my imagination. I didn't have a bike but I had my legs for "riding" all through the neighborhood.

Mom promised me a horse when I turned 13. I was hopeful but not at all sure it would happen.

Miracles can happen as it turns out. I was 13 and I found myself with a palomino paint pony named Pal. Mom somehow found him, bought him unseen and boarded him at a stable, also unseen in NE because she lived in CO.He was a GREAT first horse and a GREAT escape from the anger and violence that filled my childhood. Dad would grudgingly drive me out to this stable 40 minutes away once a week and leave me there for the day. I brought food, drank out of the hose and hung out all day.No one taught me how to ride. I just did. It was enough to climb on and go! I learned the very basics from a group horse class with other kids I went to when I visited Mom in CO over the summer.

No one in my family could do anything to me when I was with my horse and no one would dare hurt my horse, he was too big! Which makes me laugh now because he was small, but to my Dad, he was big enough. Horses offered me safety. They offered me escape. Even in the cold NE winters, I would still spend the day at the stable where I would hunker under the heat lamp hanging by baling twine in the tack shed with several barn cats while I waited for my ride home. I was happy.I couldn't talk about my horse at home because it was a huge sore spot between two warring parents. None of my friends understood why all I wanted to talk about was this horse either. They made fun of me for it in grade school and complained how boring I was because my horse was all I ever talked about. I'd bring friends to ride with me every once and awhile but it didn't always go very well. Horses are big and scary to other people, even the small ones! No one ever seemed to have as much fun as I did. They would fall off and instead of getting back on, they cried and told their parents. I was terrified Pal would be taken away from me.

I didn't understand why nobody else didn't want to ride them or how they didn't enjoy everything about them like I did. The furry coats in winter, the smell or Repel-X in the summer, the manure, the hay, the leather, the soft noses full of whiskers....

I learned to guard my horse habit like a little jewel in my heart. Or maybe like gollum with his ring.... yessssss my precious!It was against the norm in NE to ride English where my horse was stabled. There were a lot of older men who rode Western and gave me a hard time about riding English. I'm not sure why I decided to ride English? The very first lessons I took were on my second horse, an Appaloosa named Macintosh, with the money I earned from a paper route. I had outgrown Pal. My legs were too long and it was out of the question to own two horses.

I would ride Macintosh over the dirt country roads to a saddle seat barn I found miles away from the stable. I learned about leads and diagonals and posting. I bet the instructor was wondering what in the world this girl in a hunt seat saddle on an Appaloosa was doing in her barn full of Saddlebred horses! I didn't know Saddle Seat was a different kind of English riding at the time. I thought English was English.

As I got older, I earned money from an after school job and I could drive. I paid for lessons from this woman named Nancy who was from WV and had studied under Danny Emerson. I'm not sure what she was doing in NE or how I found her? She didn't stick around that long and moved back East after a year. She worked with me teaching hunter/jumper lessons and a teensy bit of cross country jumping.While she was around, I basked in her knowledge and my riding improved. She was of the school that didn't use artificial means to make you or your horse correct - it was you, the saddle and the bridle. You worked it out. No artificial training devices allowed. I practiced jumping cavelletis piled together in a corn field with stubbly corn stalks sticking out of the ground over and over and over.I went to a few local NE shows with Nancy. I did well. I won ribbons and I was even complimented! It was wonderful.I broke my leg in a bad car accident just before going on an organized mock fox hunt with Nancy so I never really did officially get to experience cross country jumping. It was a Sunday when I broke my leg. I remember because I was busting my hump to get home from the barn in time for church when a drunk driver ran a stop sign behind a hill. I didn't have a stop sign and I hit them head on. I was flown in a Flight for Life to the hospital. I woke up in a hospital bed naked with an oxygen mask, a neck brace and a cast from my left foot to the middle of my upper thigh. I had no recollection of the accident. My clothes had been literally cut away from me and were resting on a chair next to my bed. My first thought was "Oh! They cut my boots!" The tall, black boots I'd just finished lay away payments for. They cut them right down the side... not even on the seam!

I was in the hospital for 4 or 5 days and I was desperately trying to figure out exactly how one might ride in a full leg cast. If I could just figure it out, maybe I could still go on the mock fox hunt? I left NE and moved to CO when I graduated high school to be closer to Mom and to go to college. CSU had an Equine Science program and I was wild with the disbelief there could be such a thing and my Dad was allowing me to go.

By then, the habit of hiding my horse love was ingrained. I would bring one or two college friends who were more horse oriented out to see or ride my gelding occasionally. (He's the gelding I still have who is now 30+ yrs old.) Mostly I listened to their stories of pony club, and about all the horses they rode, the shows they'd been in, the lessons they'd had since they were tiny, their family ranches full of horses, their friends with horses who they'd ride with, the ribbons they won and the knowledge they had. They all knew so MUCH! I knew so little. Each person told me how I should be riding. Then they'd get up on my horse and ride him the way they thought he should be ridden and it wasn't always right.... but I wanted people to like me and I came from a home where you did NOT voice your opinion, you were NOT contrary and you simply did NOT EVER rock the boat. EVER. shrug. Sometimes I had a lot of fun and other times I wished I hadn't brought anyone out to see my horse.
I met a woman I'd heard was a good trainer when I came to college. She taught Dressage. I sort of knew was Dressage was ... the more I learned, the more I really enjoyed it. There were no artificial training tools, she helped to increase the natural ability of each particular horse. Never mind what type of horse you rode... you didn't need an expensive horse or a fancy horse. You worked with what you had and she let me clean stalls in exchange for lessons. Today, I'm 38 and I train with the daughter of the woman I first found in college. I have horse-y friends and we go to local shows together. We support each other. We console each other when a horse is injured. We meet to watch horse videos and talk horses while we drink Colorado microbrews. We go to clinics together. We cheer each other on in our victories. I'm married and my husband unconditionally and completely supports my horse habit. He doesn't ride but he is always, always ready to help from the ground. I have a big, wonderful, supportive, horse-loving family!

Riding and Dressage was always more of a private goal for me. Even now I compete against myself and I try to improve my riding for myself and my horse more than any other reason. I suppose I'm not very competitive because of my solitary start, but I'm absolutely giddy and grateful to be a part of this happy horse filled life I'm in now. I wouldn't have it any other way.

My horses bring me joy. When I have a bad day, they sooth my soul. I don't know what I would do without horses. Even now, I worry about a day when I am too old to ride. What will I do when I'm in my 80s?!