A Horse and Her Girl: Backstory

"There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man." -Winston Churchill

After posting Part One, I suddenly realized that a good deal more backstory was needed to fill in the gaps, explaining exactly how horse crazy I was (and still am), and why I am suddenly thinking about the story of my horse (which is, in essence, not just the story of that one horse, but of me and horses).  So a little bit of background, before I continue on chronologically.

As I mentioned before, "horse" was among the first handful of words that I learned; what I didn't mention was that I was crazy about them from the first introduction, playing with replicas, pretending to ride, etc.  And when I say crazy, I mean truly, head-over-heels, crazy.  Aside from a well-loved Cabbage Patch doll, the first present I can really remember receiving was a My Little Pony, and by the age of 8, my herd at grown to 40.  Later on, Breyer horses replaced the My Little Ponies, and my dad built a lovely functional stable for me.  There was no Barbie dream house; it was Brenda Breyer all the way, and my imaginary play didn't involve romance, but rather cleaning stalls, watering, feeding, and riding.

Back then, my favorite moment of the year was at the fair, when I'd get to go on the pony rides.  I still remember that it cost $5, which seemed like a lot of money, and I would absolutely savor those few minutes of walking around the circle on a bored pony with its lamentably shaved mane (oh, if only $5 could buy so much happiness now!).  Even better than the pony rides were the few times that I was allowed to sit on one of my aunt's horses; on Winakee Furka, her gentle-as-could-be stallion, or one of the yearlings who were still pony-size.  My family started raising sheep around the time I was 4, and I did get to occasionally "ride" the sheep - even jumping my ewe Rosemary over the ditch in our pasture.  Sheep don't have long necks like horses, and aside from the wool, there isn't much to hang on to; I credit those early sheep rides with laying the foundation for my future ability to stay on a horse despite some pretty wild unseating tactics.

By the time I was twelve, when I wasn't reading the Black Stallion, The Island Stallion, Misty of Chincoteague, King of the Wind, Summer Pony, or some other horse-related fiction, I could most likely be found pouring over the latest StateLine tack catalogue, or setting up jump courses for myself to run through outdoors.  I was that weird girl that you'll sometimes see from the window of your car as you zip by - that one who appears to be "cantering" around her yard, jumping a course made of buckets and sticks, perhaps with a branch of a tree in her hand as a "crop".  When I went on hikes, walks, or bike rides, I didn't do so as a human in my mind; always there was an imaginary horse involved.  I even named these various imaginary equines, with bold names like Commander, Crusader, and SunStar for the stallions, and gentler ones like Secret and Shadow for the mares ("Chestnut Brown," which my cousin came up with, was just not a good enough moniker for the grand Arabian steeds in my head).  I practiced breeds of the horse flashcards; built a model of the "visible horse"; once tried to mail "horse dust" to the aforementioned cousin... you get the picture.

Perhaps I would have imagined less, and even been less invested in the idea of myself as a future equestrian, if I'd actually been able to spend more time with horses; if my aunt had allowed a pony, or my family had been rich enough to afford riding lessons earlier and more often.  But I count myself highly fortunate, because my aunt did own and breed horses, and thus, when Eclipse was born, I was able to realize a dream that for an awful lot of horse crazy girls only ever stays a dream: that of actually owning and training my own horse.  The end of the story might be a sad one - but still, for seventeen years, I was blessed.

Aside from merely reminiscing due to the various reasons that this time of year awakens the equine passion in my blood, I found myself thinking about all of this, and wanting to post about it, because it so highly shaped who I was as a teenager, and who I am today.  At some point, I'll have to tell the story of the sheep, too, because raising sheep quite definitely has shaped my views about how the world works, at least from a biological perspective.  But horses are and always have been special to me, and as my husband and I have been thinking about purchasing a house at some point, and where that might be, along with what our needs and wants are in that area, I've found myself pondering what role I want horses to play in our future.

I tell this story to remind myself of the past; perhaps to show my own path into a territory that all those equine novels didn't really cover.  It's all well and good for the teenager to ride off into the sunset, but what happens when she grows up?  When other dreams begin to compete for time and space in her finite life?  This story is an attempt to remember that sunset, and then see through it to the middle of the next day, when the same horse-crazy girl is asking, "How can horses find a role in a homemaker's life?"

A Horse and Her Girl: Part One

This time of year, with the crunching leaves and crisp edge to the wind, always makes me think of horseback riding.   And this year, it's reminding me of my horse, Eclipse, in an extra way, because it was right around this time last year that we had to say goodbye.   My mom wrote about this at the time, but for me there wasn't a lot to say. Now, however, over a year has passed, enough time to want to, and be able to, tell the story of the horse that grew with me from a child of ten, to a wife with a child of my own.  However, it's a longish story, encompassing seventeen years, so even a brief telling of the tale will take a couple of parts.

Part One

Eclipse was technically an accident, the product of an escaped stallion, a late night rendezvous, a moment of unbridled equine passion.  Her mother was, at the time, my absolute favorite animal on the planet, a thoroughly patient, devoted, loving mare named after my grandmother Norma.  N.R., as she was referred to, was never formally trained, but she was still the safest horse in the pasture on whom to learn to ride.  The stallion, Praise Song, was a fiery young stud who, shortly after the rendezvous in question, picked my father up by the hood of his sweatshirt and actually shook him (my dad later liked to show us the sweatshirt with the teeth marks, evidence of a close brush with death).  Needless to say, Praise Song didn't get to stay a stallion long after that incident - he was actually gelded the very next day.

So Eclipse was a one-and-only from the moment of conception.  Then came the night of her birth.  If you search for June 15, 1992, you'll find that there was a partial lunar eclipse on that night; that night she was born, with her forehead marked with the crescent moon.

She was essentially mine from birth; my aunt, who owned all the horses, had promised each of her nieces and nephews a horse of their own choosing at their 13th birthday, which they could either sell (reaping the proceeds), or keep and train.  Horse-crazy basically from childhood ("see! see!" was my early word for horse), I of course chose the latter, and the only filly born in years from my favorite mare was an obvious choice. But, at 10 years old (and not yet weighing the sixty lbs that my elders has arbitrarily deemed the weight at which I could ride alone), there wasn't a lot I could do with her.  I halter trained her, of course, and when she escaped her pasture, I was the only one who could catch her to get her back in.  I have a shadowy memory of a young, dark filly on a sunny lawn, friendly ears pricked towards me as I confidently walked up and put a lead around her neck.  And another memory of then weaving, with my mom, a "baling twine barrier" all up and down the fence, so that she couldn't escape again.  Hours of work, a complete visual eye-sore, but effective enough that it stayed for probably a decade after we put it up.

Over the next three years, she and I both grew, and the storms of adolescence hit.  She began to exhibit a temper much like her father's; I was rather broody, melancholy, and while becoming an accomplished rider, still very green and uncertain.  Probably as with any horse trained by a young teenager, she developed some quirks right from the beginning that took years to go away: spinning into the circle on the lunge, rearing to get out of things, tossing her head at bridling.  If things had continued in that vein, I might not have had much luck ever riding her, but fate, and illicit rendezvous of her own with another escaped stallion (this is a trend on our farm.  Stallions, rams, "I don't think anything happened" and then several months later, offspring; great for reproductive education but not so great for keeping herd size down), intervened.  Over the course of a few months, her mood inexplicably mellowed, until one day, as I was brushing her, I felt something move.

Unbridled Passion, as I named the foal, was born a few months later.  Before he was born, I took great advantage of Eclipse's more mellow disposition, and the weight of the foal inside her kept her a lot slower and easy to work with (having now experienced the last trimester of pregnancy, I now realize it was awfully unfair to take advantage of her condition, but it did help).  Of course, the whole situation was far from ideal; if she'd been a human instead of a horse, she'd have been starring in the movie Juno, because age-wise she wasn't out of horse-high school yet.  The stallion in question was a cousin of hers, so the genetics weren't great, and the foal never amounted to much (he actually had to be put down after he broke his leg in a pasture accident when he was two).  But the time allowed Eclipse and I to grow much closer, and for the first time in my life I was riding on a daily basis.  Riding - to this day, there's still nothing quite like it, and back then, I was riding my equine best friend.

If there's any interest in part two, I'll continue soon.. :)