I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want a horse of my own. When I was about five, I picked out a mare named Blondie from my dad’s bunch of horses, and claimed she was mine. I don’t know where she came from, but she was a registered Quarter Horse named Sporty Lana Lee, and was a beautiful palomino, about 2 years old when we got her. She became my first horse.
I remember petting Blondie’s face and the feeling of proud possession I got from thinking of having my very own horse. My oldest sister started training her to ride, and I remember watching and helping and learning everything I could because I wanted to be just like her. I don’t think her training went very far, because she became a broodmare and was turned out to pasture with the older mares, but in my mind she was always mine.
A few years later I still wanted a horse to train by myself. I read the classifieds listings in the farm newspapers we received, and I composed my own ad that I wanted to place. It read something like this, remember I was only about seven years old at the time:
Every day I stop to pray
For a horse, small and gray.
He must be tame and gentle, though,
And mustn’t cost very much dough.
His age should be from two to five,
Maybe an Arab, spirited and live.
If you have one, please call me
547-2433.
It is so funny looking back on it, but I was fiercely proud of that little poem and never shared it with anyone, afraid they would laugh at me. The horse fever was so strong in me at that age, nothing was more important than having a horse of my own.
I remember helping my sister in the barn one time, as she was saddling Blondie for another training session. She lifted me up onto her back, and I felt the thrill of sitting on a colt for the first time, unsure of what might happen next, and so excited to be a part of Blondie’s training. That feeling has never left me, even twenty-five years and a hundred horses later. I still feel a deep excitement whenever I go out to saddle a horse.
