I want to say it was mid-March when our horse adventures began, but I could be wrong about the time line. For the sake of the story let’s go with March. My sister and I were anxiously waiting outside for our parents. They were bringing home horses – two of them – and my sister and I couldn’t wait to ride them! We had been reading books about how to properly take care of horses and felt prepared and confident for this new adventure to begin!
Our parents arrived and we eagerly ran to meet them. We helped fix the horses sweet feed and watched them eat it – it was so exciting to have horses to ride! I remember being rather surprised that we weren’t all set to ride them that first day. They were horses – they were expecting to be ridden, right? But no, we were told that we would need to let them get settled and get to know us.
This getting to know us stage seemed lengthy – at least to a 13-year-old who was eager to ride. We would go out to feed them and brush them and talk to them. They had not been groomed regularly by their previous owner and it took some work to get them to behave and not fight the attention and care. I still laugh a little to myself when I think of how worried I was that they would kick me. I remember I would carefully walk in a large circle behind them – leaving enough room so that I would be safe even if they might side step to try to kick me. In hindsight, I don’t think I was ever in any danger! I think they were probably too lazy too kick me, let alone move to get better aim!
The larger of the two horses was a brown Quarter horse and the smaller black horse was an Arabian. I distinctly liked the Arabian better. He was smaller – more my size! He held his head in a distinguished, alert way …. when he wasn’t busy being startled and frightened by the bizarre, such as a leaf blowing in the wind. The personalities that these horses had was so funny!
The brown horse acted dreadfully lazy. We would ride them around our twenty acre open field a time or two each day, and like clockwork, shortly after beginning the not-so-lengthy trek, the brown horse would begin tripping. You would have thought that he was aging and this effort of walking might be too much for him. But alas, every time we would get within view of where we fed them, he would take off at a run, young and spry again! It was ridiculous! And a bit startling if you were the one on him and not prepared for it! We soon learned that with some encouragement our brown horse could walk without tripping. He also learned that running towards the feed buckets was not acceptable.
As time went on and we gained experience and trained the horses, we began taking them for rides down the sand back roads near our home. It was fun to get out and take them on new routes. Unfortunately, the stately black horse had his own set of quirks. He would not/could not walk through puddles. And certain blowing leaves frightened him to flight. Sometimes after a good rain, our road would have small puddles. Small as in tiny. But our poor black horse could not stand to get his feet wet. And the noise that his feet made walking though the puddles was more than he could handle. Our animals have always had the funniest personalities!
I remember one day my sister and I decided to go explore my brothers wooded property and take a picnic lunch. We enjoyed taking cut paths and making our own throughout the property. At one point the black horse I was riding got concerned – a small log covered the path in front of us. I urged him forward over-simplifying the whole just-step-over-it thing. The horse danced around a bit nervously, and then proceeded to jump the log! It startled me, but thankfully I didn’t fall off! I turned to watch my sister come past the same log while riding the brown horse – he stepped over it effortlessly.
We had quite a few adventures with our horses! I remember throwing hay to them in the winter – I would break up a bundle and do my best to throw it over the field fence to them. They would stand with their heads over the fence, eager to eat! Perhaps they thought they were helping me get it over, but in fact they blocked my efforts!
When we sold our horses, one of them was bought by a horse instructor. She told us that they our horse was one of the best behaved horses she had ever worked with! Humorously, I remember talking with her on the phone before she bought him. She was asking about how he acted. I told her that he was quite well-behaved, but if he acted up, he just needed a smack to be reminded to straighten up! She was quite startled at this philosophy! She asked me explain what I meant by this. I told her that when the brown horse got bored with walking, he would start tripping. But you could just smack his shoulder with your hand and tell him to walk nicely and he would! She had never heard of making a horse behave like this – and I had never thought to question it!
We really enjoyed working with and training our horses. We even trained them to stand at the step so that I could climb on to ride! Everyone in the family chipped in. Even my little two-year-old niece got to ride at least one of them!
It is fun to look back on adventures such as these, isn’t it? Though my attitude wasn’t always exceptional, I did truly enjoy the adventure of having our own horses!
Until Next Time!
Hope.
PS. I love to view life experiences as adventures – read more about adventures here! https://www.theamericanlady.com/2018/06/13/five-tips-to-living-an-adventurous-life/