The Horse Phase: Sometimes, It Never Ends
I remember when I was a child, my parents (mostly my father) would ask when I was going to grow up and “get over horses”. I first fell in love with horses when I was four-years-old because of an Australian movie called “The Rogue Stallion” (1990) my mother bought when a Christian catalog had a sale on VHS’s. The movie follows Anna, a teenager, whose father works with horses and is accidentally killed by a spooked horse one day. Anna’s mother wants her daughter to have nothing to do with horses, especially the wild Brumby stallion her father’s old rival is set on destroying.
What drew me in? I’m not sure if it was Anna’s defiance and fierce love for the horse, or that horses could bring people together. Really, I think what captured my attention was that the horse could trust one human, but not others.
When I asked for riding lessons, my mother made it very clear there was no money for such an activity. From a young age, I knew I would have to persevere and wait for the things I wanted the most: to learn to ride and to have a horse of my own. Instead, I buried myself into anything horse related I could: books, writing, movies, documentaries, drawing, collecting model horses and any other horse products I could get. It was my desire to hear stories about horses that helped me cultivate a love of reading and writing.
Now, some girls might have started to develop different interests as they became teenagers. I did not. If anything, weekly visits to an old man’s horse farm that fueled my passion even more to be around horses. His name was Joseph Heaney, and he was both a journalist and horseman. He never minded that my parents brought me and my autistic sister to see the horses. It was these weekly visits, which I continued after I was 17 and had a car of my own, that allowed horses to be a part of my life. Being able to be with horses kept me going, especially when things sucked in other areas of my life.
Finally, during my senior year of high school, I began taking riding lessons which I paid for myself. I found horses to free lease during college and ride in exchange for working around the stable or pet sitting their other pets when they went out of town. I wasn’t always riding in college, but I always had my dream to ride regularly and have a horse of my own in the back of my mind.
The summer between graduating with my Bachelors and starting graduate school, I was looking for horses to ride. A lady in neighboring town needed help training two young horses because she wanted to sell them. One was solid black American Paint with white face marking and bi-colored eyes. Her left eye was brown, but her right eye was partially brown and the rest was blue. Her name was Skye, and the more I worked with her, the more I felt connected to her.
I decided to buy her even though common sense told me “no” and my non-horse friends felt I was crazy. They even asked why I wanted to take on such an expense when I was working retail. I told myself, buy the horse and look back with no regrets no matter what happens.
I’ve had Skye for 8 years. Right now, while I write this, she is on a trailer headed to Texas where my husband and I moved for his new job.
Over the years, I had plenty of opportunities to get “over horses” or as some people might say, get out of horses. I lived in Japan for around 9 months, I did not sell Skye but left her in the care people I could trust. When I was having financial problems, I figured out a way to keep her. I sacrificed a better apartment for a studio when my husband moved from India to the USA and I was the only one working. I made it clear, wherever we go, Skye goes with us.
So, if you have a daughter or a friend who loves horses, and you just don’t understand it, that’s okay. But don’t discourage them. Don’t tell them to get over it and forget about it. Loving horses are a part of who they are and it can lead them down life paths they will be grateful for.
