HORSE TALK

My father and I had a long talk the other night. I am now grown and out of the house, but we reminisced about when I was a horse crazy little kid. I will always thank my dad for giving me the opportunities that he did. We lived beyond our means and struggled in order to afford it all. Horses are darn expensive, but what they give back to us is priceless.

Dad grew up in England. He exercised racehorses as a teenager, so I guess you could say that horses are in my blood. It wasn’t until I begged for riding lessons when I was nine years old that he was able to reenter the horse world. It all started with four horseback riding lessons for my birthday, “and that’s it.” Well, those four lessons eventually turned into weekly lessons and two horses of our own.

As my father and I sat there talking about the past, I allowed myself the satisfaction of going back in time to remember those early horse-filled days. It can be hard for me to do, considering I am now twenty-two years old and had to make the very difficult decision to take a break from riding and focus on school and building a career. But as I sat there with my dad and remembered what it was like to be a young kid in that crazy world of horses, I couldn’t help but smile. I remembered what it was like to walk around on a horse’s back for the first time. I remembered being eleven and getting my first horse. I remembered sneaking out on midnight rides, and endless summer days at the barn. Those were the best years of my life, and they bring me tears and fond memories.

There was a certain innocence to it all. My entire life focused on horses. If I wasn’t at the barn then I was reading about horses, or writing about them, or dreaming about them. I was a human encyclopedia when it came to spouting off horse facts. I thought I’d ride in the Olympics some day, or own a barn and turn fuzzy little foals into high caliber show horses. I never doubted myself for a second.

As I grew older, I also grew more realistic. I began having to pay for things myself. I worked at the barn to afford things like farrier bills and show entries. I babysat my instructor’s kids in exchange for riding lessons. But I still had big plans for myself. If I had to, I’d be a working student for a big trainer somewhere, and work my way to the top.

Over time, I realized that I just didn’t have the skills or the finances on my side. I eventually gave up on those dreams, and focused on “real life.” I am going to school full time, and now I hope that I’ll some day be able to afford having a horse again. I sure miss being immersed in such an amazing world.

My dad made a comment that night that really stuck with me: I will never, for the rest of my life, be as passionate about anything as I was when I was in that stage of my life. That’s a bitter pill to swallow, but the more I think about it the more I know he was right. I love writing. I want to write a novel (or ten) and articles and short stories and fill my shelves with pieces of published work. But in the back of my mind, there will be other worries. I will have a mortgage and car insurance and diapers and groceries. I’ve lost a bit of that innocence that I had when I was thirteen and smitten with the idea of cleaning tack and mucking stalls. I miss that. I wish I could go back and tell that younger version of me to be grateful for every second that I had in that world. To never take a single bareback trail ride for granted, and to realize how amazing it was to build forts in the hayloft and sleep in your horse’s stall.

I hope I can give my own children that same gift that my father gave to me. The horse world is utterly amazing, and until you have lived it and breathed it then you cannot do justice by explaining it to anybody else. It is pure magic, especially when you are young and untainted by the rest of the world.

Click to visit sponsor website