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| (Blue-eyed Buddy after class.) |
I was that girl who dreamed about horses. Not just owning a horse, or simply riding, but mucking out stalls, taking care of them. I was that girl who would have worked my ass off to have a little time to spend with them.
There came a point in my life as I entered college that I thought that I would have to just stick with their plastic counterparts. I couldn't get my foot in the door, much less find someone who would let me work with them.
Then it all changed.
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| (Dan the Morgan at the end of our ride.) |
I have a Bachelor's Degree in Agribusiness and a minor in Entrepreneurship. I am weeks away from finishing my Associates in Equine Applied Science, and I still want to finish my certification in Equine Massage (though I will be moving to a new job so that's temporarily on hold).
It's not easy living in a small town/rural area. It has its perks, but job wise, it's not an easy thing to deal with. Jobs are few and far between and qualified candidates can boil down to a simple fact: who you know.
Well...I didn't know anybody. While qualified, I was an outsider.
So back to studying I went in the field I loved even more than just agriculture. But even before this moment, I met a man who was beyond kind in letting a horse crazy girl like me work with his horses. We are good friends now, and the horses from last post all belong(ed) to him. He taught me the basics of groundwork and riding, schooling has refined it.
My two teachers at the equestrian center have also become good friends. It is through them that I got my newest job/even knew of the opportunity. They have taught me so much more than I would have dared to ever dream only a few years ago.
But it's the horses' were interested in. For while the teachers' can teach us theory, the horses genuinely show the how and the why.
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| (A pleasant ride in the arena with Dreamer.) |
Piper, an old bay Arabian gelding, was the first horse I learned how to trot and canter on. Due to being unbalanced in the saddle, I took a tumble out the first time we cantered. Good ol' Piper slowed to a stop and looked back at me with an expression that said "Now why would you go and do that? We were doing great!" He could be a bit grumpy while being saddled, trying to nip at you as the girth was tightened, but I never held that against him. I don't like tightening my own belts. He was ever patient, ever kind, and always a joy to see at the barn. It was with a sudden, cruel swiftness that we lost him last summer during the kids camp. I saw him only a couple hours before his death, saying I'd see him tomorrow. Little did I know. He left a legacy of people behind who loved him and appreciated that he was the horse that they learned to ride on.
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| (Me and Hale) |
Next came Cue. A grouchy, bay Paso Fino who thought he was in charge 24/7. It was through Cue that I learned how to be firm with a horse. Horses weigh roughly 1,000+ lbs. compared to our measly weights. They are muscular, swift and while they might not necessarily mean to hurt someone most of the time, they can do it accidentally. Bad behaviors can soon become dangerous or "cute" behaviors when they were foals can turn into terrifying behaviors when they are adults. Cue taught me how to communicate with a horse using their language.
Horses are generally quite animals. Domestic horses, of course, are louder than their wild counterparts. That being said, if you ever watch a herd of horses, be they domestic or wild, you will see them communicating. Ears, eyes, tails, legs, teeth and really the whole body are used to communicate on how they are feeling. Kicks, nips and bites are used to communicate displeasure and/or dominance. Cue in his herd of three that included two other Paso Finos demonstrated this to our class as we watched. While working with dominant Cue, I had to learn how to be dominant over HIM so that I could keep not only myself safe, but him too as we worked on ground manners/handling.
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| (Hale wanting a treat) |
From here we hit the "giant" era of my schooling. I would be riding and handling the draft horses of the barn. First came Hale, a black Percheron who was coming back from a neck injury and had been sitting for several months. He was my horse in Training I. Our first day, he bucked me off (not that it took a lot back then to do it either). The next time I rode him, he broke his girth on the saddle in his attempt to unseat me. I would be lying if I said that I wasn't afraid of him. It was on Hale, however, that my riding and my communication to any horse while riding, started to improve. Believe it or not, Hale is now one of my favorites to ride, as he and I get along great, and he is a willing horse, he just needed a small refresher and for me to understand how I was sitting in the saddle, how I was holding the reins, what I was telling him to do with my kicks, rein pressure and body. I would be riding lots of other draft horses from than on, including Rohan a chestnut Belgian/Quarter Horse cross, Soa a dark bay Percheron mare, and Stone a bay Clydesdale. I would ride them for my Riding II class as I continued to hone my skills, and while they didn't necessarily stand out as much as Hale, they still assisted in bringing him the points he'd taught me.
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| (Dreamer after our ride for the day.) |
Two falls ago, I met Dreamer a young chestnut blanket Appaloosa. He is the last lesson horse who really stood out in my schooling. He was a stallion until the semester before I took my class, and while he is a sweetheart, he likes to bluff, and those bluffs can be downright intimidating. Thankfully, what I learned from Cue made Handling II with Dreamer fairly easy. It was that summer that Dreamer started to show me more. The horses I'd ridden before helped me to learn how to ride. Dreamer MADE me ride. He still does. He likes to buck out of excitement, irritation or just to test me. He is still young and learning, and while I am not his trainer, I am the in-between rider between the trainer and owner (who is handicapped). I am competent enough to know how to ride and what Dreamer needs work on, while still being inexperienced enough that he and I are learning together.
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| (Dreamer was a bit sassy after our short ride Thursday.) |
I am grateful that even once the summer ended I could still come and ride Dreamer, and while there would be more horses for me to ride and learn from including Buddy a chestnut Paint gelding, my Training II horse, Morgan a black Morgan gelding, Athens, a chestnut Arabian I have lunged and ridden for my teacher, Riesling (Reese) a bay Arabian/warmblood mare, and Lacey, a Fleabitten grey Arabian mare that I have only lunged on a couple of occasions.
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| (Buddy being silly and standing in his tire-hay feeder.) |
Which brings us to the last part, and it's that-you never stop learning. My Stress Points I class massaged Lacey last week as we reviewed stress points. I have only lunged Lacey 2-3 times before that. I've never ridden her, and I have only interacted with her one to two times outside of that. I do not know this horse. The only reason I stress this is that out of the four of us there that night (teacher and two other students) when I led her up to the arena to let her run around-I know her enough to know that she has quite a bit of energy so that it was likely she'd run around in the arena feeling good after her massage-she followed me. Without a halter or lead rope. She followed me even when I started to jog. It was quite the experience, and a good reminder that I will have more to learn, be it about horses or in life, there is always more to learn, more that will surprise me, and more that will make me cherish life.
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| (Lacey following at a trot as I jog. She even stopped when I stopped, not going ahead or away.) |
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