The Miracle of the White Stallion*, part 1 — guest post by Bratsche

 

Once upon a time, when I was a little girl, I wanted a horse.  I grew up on a small (10-acre) farm, so space was not an issue.  However, my parents decided that we would not get a horse.  Instead, as a compromise, we adopted a wild burro from the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) for me.  Little Guy and I had lots of fun goofing off together over the years.  I’m glad I had him (and a few subsequent burros) to play with; however, burros really aren’t horses, and my desire to have a horse never went away. I was able to ride horses occasionally as a kid, so I was not entirely horse deprived while growing up.

Many years later, as an adult, I decided it was finally time to see if I could scratch my horse itch. My plan/hope was to get a horse of my own eventually; but I figured that in the meantime I would start with riding lessons (after all, maybe I wouldn’t like riding as much I thought I would).  So, in 2000 I found a local riding instructor whom I liked and started taking riding lessons once a week.  It was so much fun!  I rode at her barn for the next twelve years.  She eventually allowed me to ride one of her horses as often as I wanted.  I was still planning to get my own horse someday, but I counted myself very blessed to have a wonderful mare to ride without needing to pay the day-to-day costs associated with owning a horse.

My initial goals for riding lessons were just to learn “basic” riding in an English saddle and get to spend time with horses.  For a long time, I was satisfied with getting to ride once or twice a week and fulfilled enough by simple riding in an arena.  Eventually, though, I started to think about what other challenges I could add to my riding.  The two new things I considered were jumping and dressage.  My final choice was influenced by my job (professional musician), which depends on me taking good care of my shoulders, arms, and hands.  Even though I would still like to try jumping some day (on a sane, experienced, forgiving horse), I discarded the idea of making jumping my new equestrian focus; since the odds of breaking or straining something while jumping are probably higher than some other activities with horses. Dressage was the other main type of riding that drew me.  I describe dressage as learning to communicate so clearly with your horse that you can influence any part of its body at any time to do whatever you want and then using that to help the horse carry itself well while riding complicated geometry in an arena.  There are LOTS of books out there with much more detailed descriptions of dressage.

Once I picked dressage, my next challenge turned out to be finding a dressage instructor who had a lesson horse; since I still didn’t have my own horse, and most dressage instructors in the area do not have lesson horses.  I started really looking in spring 2011 and was delighted to finally find my current instructor (whom I’ll call Rachel) in May of that year.  She is a fabulous instructor (and a warm, generous person, too), and I have been happily taking lessons with her ever since.  I had always felt very blessed by having access to the mare at my first barn; and I was blessed at my new barn by being able to ride another client’s horse (Addy), since Rachel decided I was advanced enough to start on Addy rather than Rachel’s lesson horse.  My goal continued to be to have a horse of my own some day.  I prayed and trusted that it would be clear when it was time to start looking for my own horse.

From May 2011 to August 2012, I learned a lot on Addy.  At that point, her owner moved her to a different barn.  For the next three months I rode Rachel’s lesson horse.  I definitely learned from him, but the “my own horse” itch started to become stronger.  During November 2012 the lesson horse started to have some back and leg problems, and Rachel finally decided to retire him.  I was in the thick of preparing for my next viola recital (in February 2013); so I figured my plan would be to focus on the recital until it was done, and then I would start the possibly very long process of looking for a horse of my own.  I didn’t know if Rachel and I would be able to come up with a plan for me riding during the interim, but I was actually very peaceful about the idea that I might have to pause in riding until I could get my own horse.

to be continued….

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*  A title borrowed from the Disney movie about the Lipizzans of the Spanish Riding School.