Girls And Their Horses

My love for horses started when I was around 5 years old.  I am not sure from where the love grew because I grew up on a farm where my dad milked dairy cows twice a day and cash cropped until I was about 7 years old and horses were not included; tractors were cheaper to keep and the milk cows didn't need herding in for milking.  On the farm, unless it earned it's keep, it was an unnecessary expense, therefore would have been a luxury.  Since my parents did not grow up with horses, they didn't see a need for them.  But I wanted one all the same.  Perhaps the desire was fed when I started reading.  Little Black, A Pony by Walter Farley, was a book I remember reading a thousand times, crying at the sad moment when the little black pony got his leg hung up in a downed tree.

I don't remember asking for a horse, but I must have expressed my wish for one to my dad, because one day he drove into our drive in a grain truck, after having been at the sale barn and in the back of that big truck was a red and white Shetland pony.  Since my parents had no experience with horses, they didn't know that a Shetland is probably about the meanest and stubbornest pony you can buy a kid; but I wasn't discouraged.  I was bit at, kicked at and got pitched in more wheat stubble and sand burrs then I care to remember; but I was not discouraged.  I would greet Francis, the milk man who picked up our milk, with pony and gear in the ready, to have him saddle Sonny for me.

Even when we left the farm for town living and I had to give up my ornery pony, my love for this majestic creature was nurtured with more stories from Walter Farley.

I could envision myself as Alec, riding bareback on 'The Black' with my hands wrapped tight within his mane, running wildly through the fields of the farm.  I read all 21 books in the Black Stallion series.  These stories and others like King of the Wind and Justin Morgan Had a Horse by Marguerite Henry, Smoky the Cow Horse by Will James kept the fires burning for me, until I could once again be atop a horse.

Finally, again living in the country, I was 10 years old, my parents got us our first real horse, a quarter horse mare.  My brother, Brian and I would saddle her up after school, and after homework.  Teaming up together, we would lead Sugar under a tree and with a wash tub turned upside down near the tree, we would lift the heavy saddle up and drop it to her back from the lowest tree limb, then stand on the tub to tighten up the cinch (we were too short to reach her from the ground).  Then off we would go!

Throughout my teenage and early adult years, horses were the center of my world.  My parents hauled me and my horses to every rodeo and horse show throughout Southeast Kansas and then some.  My parents even got the bug and started raising colts to run on the race track.  Even after I started having children of my own, horses were still central to my life.  I read those wondrous Walter Farley stories to my girls (four of them in total) hoping to plant that the seed of horse fever within their souls.  While the girls all enjoyed riding and competing when they were younger, they have taken different paths as adults and horses have not been central to their lives.  This is ok with me.  I feel that they gained a great deal by having horses in their lives when younger.  Now I get to attempt to spread the fever amid my grandchildren!

Why do some of us girls love horses?  I think it is genetic, something we are just born to love.  I am now 58 years old and still ride with passion.  I still ride despite a broken collar bone from being up ended while atop a crazy mare 8 years ago.  I still ride despite being pitched and left afoot to walk home by my newest crazy horse (no broken bones) in this last two years.  I will continue to ride until my decrepit old bones refuse to raise my body into a saddle.  It's in the genes and the soul.