A girl and her horse. That was me circa 1968 or 1969, looking very tiny and trim. You can't tell it in the photo, but my hair was red then too. Most people don't know that about me-seeing as I have been graying since thirty.  I haven't looked at this photograph in a lot of years. The impetus for digging through my drawers and dragging it out was this photograph:

  This is my daughter and a horse that she is currently involved with.  Back when she was young, well, young...er, young being a relative term, she began a journey to follow in my horsie footsteps. Her path to equestrienne excellence was cut short by her exraordinary abilty at another sport-softball.

  Now, with her serious softball playing days behind her she has returned to her earlier interest, horses. Perhaps this is a genetic thing, I'm not sure. I never overly encouraged her or discouraged her. I thought I preferred her interest in softball as a more economical pursuit than riding. She is a competitive individual-a characteristic I noted early on-when she was seven or eight years of age. If her team didn't win she was highly annoyed and ready to go out and find another team that wanted to win. Translating this competitive spirit to horseback riding means competitve horse showing, which logically rolls into expensive riding clothes, lessons with ever more expensive instructors, and ultimately acquiring yet more expensive horseflesh to achieve the desired results.  The economics of the situation seemed to make softball the more desirable of the two sports. HAH! What did I know? Soon I learned that $300 bats, mitts, and the cost of travel to far flung softball diamonds all over the country probably were just as big an expense as the horses would have been. But the softball paved the way for her college education, horseback riding? Probably not so much.

  So when she called and announced that she had decided to take up riding lessons again I was secretly pleased. I am very glad she had the experience of extreme team sport. She learned life lessons that she might not have learned otherwise and was more than prepared for the academic and personal challenges she has encountered since.

 Horseback riding, unlike many other sports, is often a solitary in nature. Alone but not alone; as there is someone else involved of course, the horse. In it's most perfect form it is the seamless meld of human and animal, a centaur being of one mind and one body. It can be that way. I experienced that once or twice over the thirteen years I rode. That is the Holy Grail of horsemanship-to find the horse that can provide you that perfect experience.

  Eddie Macken and Boomerang, Secretariat and Ron Turcott, Sea Biscuit and Red Pollard. Yup the synergy can exist, and when it does it is breathtaking.

 But for those of us who don't have the time or money to audition endless mounts to find that chemistry, well, we have to make do with what we get.

 And I got a little dun half Arab/quarterhorse cross, registered in the official half Arab registry as Mr. Snips. It was love at first sight. I picked him out from a group of horses for sale at a local stable. The rest were bay, chestnut, black and gray. Boring colors all. He stood out. And cooincidentally he cost the amount of money that I had. $250.00.

I loved that horse. And he loved me, at feeding time anyway. He was my favorite companion during my high school years. We spent hours and hours together, sometimes I would bring a book and swing onto his broad back far out in the pasture as he grazed under the trees; the summer days endless, no worries but turning up at home in time for dinner. 

  As we bonded over books and summer vacations, I worked with my riding instructor to shape him into a horse that I could ride competitively. Of course the dream was to one day ride in the Three Day Event at the Olympic Games. Our small town actually produced two equestrians who were on the Olympic team-young men a few years older than I was who had somehow achieved those centaur like qualities with their mounts. Hard work and desire can get you a lot of places, but in sport, ultimate athletic ability has the final say.

 I was good, but good ain't great and you have to be great to be allowed to play at the Olympic Games.  To further impede my dreams of Olympic greatness I had a horse with a sense of humor. He liked nothing more than to be heading across an open field at a full gallop, me on board, loving the feel of the wind, the speed, and the freedom of what seemed like flight.  And then he would see a fence post, an old stump, or a rock that we had passed a thousand times before, decide that he had never seen such a thing and the headlong straighline gallop would end with a twist and flip that sent me flying into space, resulting in being artfully draped over that same fence  or bush in the immediate vicinity.  (Perhaps I should have gone to the Olympics as a gymnast, all the summersaulting I did in mid air.) As I gingerly picked myself up out of wherever I had landed, he would mosey over and stick his nose in my face as if to say, " Did you see that? Boy, that was a close one. Hey,what the heck are  you doing there?"

 He taught me the language of horses, communicating with the movements of tear drop shaped, black tipped ears. If those ears were facing forward, he was alert and paying attention to me and the situation. If they were pinned back, close to his head, there was a storm brewing. The best thing for me to do was sit down on him hard, take control of the situtation and wait it out. And then there was the one ear forward one ear back as if interested in something else but keeping an ear tuned to me and my to my concerns.

  He had a brilliance for rushing pell mell for spaces that he could manuever his fat body through but with my knees wrapped around his barrel, it didn't always end well for me. I was often a mass of bruises during those years.

 Having been trained in the western style, the hunting mode of riding was new to him. He learned to jump and did it well, his quarterhorse parts giving him a good spring off the ground to clear three and four foot hurdles.

                               carmelrowly.com

  In the end he became a decent gamer and usually was on his best behavior when we would truck him to the local horse shows. I could ride him in the show ring on the buckle of the reins and that bit of show business razzle dazzle resulted in a respectable size box of ribbons and trophies. 

Eventually my passion for horses dissapated into other areas-boys, college studies, and the cost of keeping a horse in hay with my part time income became too much. So my high school buddy was sold to finance a car; ironically a mustang. (1967, red with black interior)

Periodically I passed by the farm where he subsequently lived and could see him out in the pasture among other horses, grazing peacefully, his cream coat standing out among the bays and blacks that inhabited the field with him.

I have been asked from time to time if I ever missed those days, having spent so much time on horseback. The answer is no, not really. The emotional spaces my horse filled have been taken up by others, human beings, that ultimately and rightly mean more than the horse did. Once in awhile I think maybe I should take it up again, before I am too old to throw a leg over. I have ridden a few times since and discovered it is kind of like riding a bike-you don't forget the motion, the balance, the unique blend of two beings.  But I don't bounce like I used to and by now I am no doubt much more brittle than I was when I was sixteen. So I will do what I did during the years my daughter played softball, live vicariously through her horsie experiences knowing that having been there done that I can relate.