Striding Forward

I got Strider for an English saddle.

The same saddle would have gotten me maybe $60 at the auction. It was a really narrow close contact saddle and was the cause of a hip injury that gave me years of pain. It was also the first saddle I had ever owned. I bought it around the time I brought Pacem, my first horse, home.

Strider was a case of love at first sight. He was huge and shaggy, like a woolly mammoth, not a horse. He was so thin you could have hung horseshoes from his hip bones. His muscles were so deteriorated that he could barely move.

He was headed to slaughter the next day.

I fell in love with him. I had to have him. He was so special, so wonderful.

The broker let me have him for the price of a saddle. He assumed that Strider wouldn't survive the drive to the processor. Strider was, he said, about seventeen years old, and had spent the last several years penned in a tiny stall as the muck pile grew, never getting enough to eat.

He was so huge, he really didn't fit in our trailer, but he was so good and sweet that we got him home in one piece.

Strider was such a sweet boy. When the farrier came to pull his shoes and give him a trim, taking two vertical inches off each hoof, he was terrified. That huge horse buried his face in my chest and closed his eyes. He trusted that I wouldn't let anything happen to him.

Strider was the bottom of the pecking order. Even the tiny Shetland pony we had would boss him around. He was a ham. He would 'give up and die', lying on the ground with his tongue sticking out.

Getting muscle and fat at his age, with the way all his muscles had atrophied, was a huge task. Once he gobbled down his special vitamin and senior feed mix so quickly that he choked. I was frantic. I called twenty-three local vets that night. Not one would come out, not one bothered to tell me that horses won't choke to death. He was fine, eventually.

He improved. I would climb on a stack of hay bales to get into his saddle. I would just wander around with him. We trusted each other. I'm barely 5'2", he was 19hh of fuzzy Belgian... we must have seemed an odd pair, but we understood each other.

Eventually Strider was adopted by someone who fell in love with him as hard as I did. He took one look at my boy and whispered, "Who is THAT?"

It was meant to be.

Months later I got a call. Strider had a stroke. He was paralyzed. They had to euthanize him.

On the phone, this stranger and I wept together, me a twenty year old girl, him a man in his forties. Both of us had just loved this horse.

Sometimes I wonder if I will see him after I die. I was only part of his life for a few months. I hope I will get to see him healthy and happy.

He will bury his face in my chest and I will scratch under that thick golden mane. It will feel like home.

Finding My Courage

Me and Pacem, my first horse

In my books, Jessica is a bold and rather fearless rider. I, however, am not. In fact, when I was fifteen I had a riding 'accident' that resulted in me deciding that I wanted to own horses, but I would never ride again.

I did ride again, of course, but I stayed in my trotting comfort zone for years.

As a nervous rider, I actually had a huge calming effect on the horses I rode. Someone once said that I was so nervous, and spooked at everything so much, that a jumpy horse had to go bombproof in self defense.

With a series of falls an accidents in my past, it took a very special horse to help me get my nerve back.

A Clydesdale something cross of of a Navajo reservation, Atlas only topped off at about 14hh. He was stubborn, level-headed, smooth to ride, older, and he was very picky about his riders. If his rider didn't cue him impeccably he wouldn't do anything.

I didn't own Atlas, but he needed exercise and I loved him, so I got to ride him quite a bit. I would throw a bareback pad over his ultra-boney spine and we would go on little trail rides, along dirt roads and through the wash (a dry river bed). Before I knew it, he had given me wings. I was galloping around bareback on Atlas before I ever even cantered my own horse.

Atlas was that special horse that reached out and touched my heart. We bonded in a way that was unique to the pair of us. The confidence and courage he taught me, the ability to trust in my horse, carried me forward. There is something of him in every horse relationship I've had since.

First Horses

When I was sixteen I did what so many young horse-crazy girls do. I scraped together all my babysitting money and bought myself a horse I could afford. In my case, this horse was an almost three year old Arabian stallion from off of the range. I named him 'Dona Nobis Pacem', which is Latin for 'Give Us Peace'.

I had so many hopes and dreams tied up in Pacem. I had visions of us sweeping around the Arizona desert together. I knew he would be my soul mate forever. He would obey my every request and we would be magic together.

At sixteen, I was little more than a green rider. I had taken lessons off and on for four years, just enough to have my nerve thoroughly shattered by soured lesson horses. I had my spills, my scars, and I didn't even know how to canter a horse on purpose, while maintaining control.

Looking back, I had absolutely no business owning a horse that wasn't even halter trained.

I spent the first few months in bliss. I groomed Pacem for hours at a time, until he learned that it was best to just doze away when I brought out the brushes. He did more to train me, than I did to train him. I learned that he hated carrots, and that he would only eat apples if they were cut up first.

I never even attempted to introduce him to tack or anything, I just spent hours loving on him, and then turning him out into the arena, where he would bolt around like a wild flame.

I loved him.

Eventually, the woman who owned the barn where I boarded Pacem decided that we needed to be taken in hand. It was time for Pacem to earn his keep.

I still treasure all those days with Pacem. He was so much more than I ever bargained for. Like Jessica and Treasure, there were times with Pacem that I had my hands more than full. In one particular accident I ended up having my front two teeth put back into place after being on the receiving end of a hoof in the mouth.

First horses are like first loves. Sometimes they stay, sometimes they go, but you never forget your first horse.