Horses and horsemanship pretty much dominate my life these days, even though I didn’t know one end of a horse from another when I began. I started with horses from scratch, at age 42. It’s been a process, to put it lightly.
Here is a very quick rundown of what happened to me, as introduction for stories of equestrian adventures you may soon be privy to.
2005: about the first thing I did when we arrived in our new country home was obtain a horse, the obliging yet deceiving Jack.
I didn’t want Jack to be lonely on our place, so I sauntered down to a local horse rescue and adopted the cutest thing they had, almost without question. Game-changer. Life-changer. Too bad he didn’t have his real eyes showing at the rescue, I could have been saved. It’s Danny.
After a few years of frolicking around with those two,
I decided I needed a new horse, one that didn’t have a lot of baggage and bad habits. I wound up with Bridger, a really, really new horse.
Without a broken bone yet, Bridger and I have progressed, as follows:
There, 9 years of intense initiation, grindingly hard work, intermittent terror, cyclical discouragement and a hell of a lot of joy, all encapsulated in a comic strip.
On Elk Meadow Road 