Like many of you out there, as a kid, I can't remember NOT
wanting a horse. I played with hobby horses, not dolls.
Here I am at age 3 on my very first horse, 'Goldie'.
I remember every single time I got the opportunity to ride;
whether it was on a friend's or relative's horse,
the pony rides at the fair (shown here with my brother and cousin),
or renting for an hour at a stable.
(This is me on my eleventh birthday in the Rocky Mountains.)
At the age of 16 , when I had a job and could seemingly 'afford' to
buy & board my very own horse . . . I opted for a ' 56 CHEVY instead!
Sound familiar??
Then, 25 years later, my husband, Gary and I bought four acres in
the Sierra Nevada foothills in order to have our own horses.
Here's my first (live) horse, 'Magnum', Aka 'Uptown Saturday Nite', at
5 1/2 years old, right after we brought him home.
A year later, on Gary's 50th birthday,
we got 'Aspen the Wonder Horse',
our perdy Appaloosa mare pictured below. (She was anywhere from 11 to 16
years old when we got her!)
I had NO idea what made a horse 'tick', or how to
get them to do much of anything they didn't want to. I thought
all you needed to do was hop on & ride.Period.Off into the sunset.
Just like Roy & Dale, the Lone Ranger, and Zorro on TV.
I'd read books and magazine articles and asked different people to
show me what they knew, but I was getting nowhere.
I could barely get Magnum to turn in our arena, and out on the trail,
if the horses started running, we couldn't stop them!
(In our arena, I couldn't get Magnum to lope!)
Gary & I both became
frustrated and down right AFRAID to ride outside of our own pasture.
After 2 years of this, we pretty much decided to 'give-it-up' and
simply have a couple of 'pets' in the backyard.
