I originally answered the writer of this question privately, but since
everyone else seems to be sending their experiences to all, so shall
I.
I loved horses from my first memory. I pined for a horse during the
years when the national economy did not permit most people to afford
anything as luxurious and unnecessary for survival as a horse. Finally,
after the Great Depression and WW2 were over, my parents were able to afford a
horse for me. My father had bought an old apple-packing shed, dismantled
it piece by piece, removing all the nails, and sold the lumber. This
bought me my first horse. My father was sure that I would become tired of
the horse and within a few months he would have to find a new home for it.
How little he knew of my life-long passion, but my mother had persuaded him that
"Barbara NEEDS a horse.....to love and to be responsible for." I lived
some distance from other children, and that hors, a Morgan or Morgan cross
mare, gave me companionship that I sorely needed. She, and my
brother's dog.
I started out at age 10 riding bareback on our neighbor's plow horse, but
at 12, I had my very own horse!
(Below is the story I sent to the original writer of the question.)
"I started riding when I was 12. My husband started when he was a
kid, riding a neighbor's pony. When he was a teen, he bought his own
horse and kept going from there. When we married, we each had a horse
and we used them on the ranch, primarily for gathering cattle. In
1969, an acquaintance who was organizing an endurance ride needed a staging
area, which we were able to provide. We were interested observers, and
the next year one of our daughters gave it a try. The year after that,
both the daughter and I tried. By 1972, the whole family was involved
and we've been at it ever since. We started on Quarter Horses and
switched to Arabs in 1975, although one of our best endurance horses was a
Morgan/Percheron cross. At one time, the five of us had 13 horses
amongst us, but now we've pretty much leveled out at one per person.
All three of our daughters and their husbands and their children (12-16
years old) ride; all of the adults have done endurance and Ride & Tie,
half of the kids have done some endurance and a little bit of R &
T. The grandkids are really anxious to get into endurance more; we
just have to do some rearranging of the horses. All of us,
collectively, have some horses that are either too old or not 100% sound for
endurance, so there needs to be some placing of the older horses in
different careers and new horses acquired and conditioned. Volunteering
to help someone who manages an endurance ride is a good way to learn.
You'll learn about taking pulse, about feeding, about soundness, pacing a
ride and a lot of other things. Most of us would agree that we all
have learned more about horse physiology from endurance riding than from any
other source."
Barbara On the CA coast, 60 miles south of San
Francisco
