When Casey’s owner found a permanent retirement situation for her, she left us in the Spring. That summer we bought a horse trailer and a tractor.
Then, over the next two years I added two more horses to my collection One was a Thoroughbred mare, who I named Starfire, bought as a project horse from a rescue ranch and the other was a registered Appaloosa gelding who I bought because he was well trained and sound for riding. He was called Jim.
Working with a trainer specializing in eventing, I first rode her Hanoverian to improve my equitation and prepare to learn how to jump and traverse the patterns of the dressage arena. Later I turned to riding Jim. A second dressage instructor came to have her influence and tutelage over me, too. I joined a local dressage club.
My concentrated education in how to trim hooves also got underway and I became fully responsible for the hoof care of our four, and in a short time I was offering my services professionally.
Horsemanship and riding clinics, horse shows that I watched, and daily life with the horses had a certain momentum that carried me toward my original goal of competitive riding. I was excited and enamored, improving, I thought, with everything just about to click at the next ride or training session.
In the shadows lurked signs of the demise of this future, but I denied noticing them because I didn’t want to lose this equestrian identity.
It was our trainer who actually found Jim, which ended a search started months before. My first prospect was suggested by one of the dressage club members. Her gelding didn’t seem happy with the arena work of dressage and she thought something that included jumping would be great for him. During my trial I fell off after a jump and broke my wrist. It cracked my confidence, too, though I pretended it didn’t. Light shined on how unskilled I still was for what I had wanted to do. No one discouraged me to keep going at the pace I had set.
Had I not been so eager to claim my happiness as a bold equestrian I would have slowed down, concentrated on training Starfire, spent more time on basics and learning to ride her. Instead, I kept shopping for jumping horses, with my trainer or another of her more experienced students riding them instead of me while my injury healed. I would learn on the horse when he was mine.
My first attempts at riding and jumping with Jim, who I decided to call Valentino, were stilted. Was the magical ease I felt on my first jump with Stealth, my trainer’s Hanoverian, a fluke? Was Jim not as good as I had expected? Was I unteachable or talentless?
I retreated into only dressage for a while, hoping to get better at riding generally and revisit the jumping course later. Again, I was excited and enamored, improving, I thought. Twice a week I trailered Jim to a local arena for lessons or slightly further away for special clinics. With an instructor telling me every move to make I could come into the zone, but on my own I was often frustrated and less united with the horse.
My wardrobe of breeches and boots and other recognizable equestrian gear was worn like a uniform of status, special in its deviation from the more common western wear of our county, though no different than cowboy boots adorned with jingling spurs displayed by others as they too shopped for groceries, made deposits in the bank or put gas in their trucks signaling that we were horse people. The equestrian identity made me feel elevated, purposeful, righteous. No one ever gave the attention I thought might come of it.
I don’t think my husband, Kitt, suffered the identity crisis that I did when he decided to get a horse. I think he was finding a common ground with me. My craving was coming out of a desperately neurotic mind, but I didn’t understand that then.
Nevertheless he similarly was working on developing his young horse and advancing their riding partnership for the trail, though he came to the sad conclusion that he and Robert couldn’t forge the kind of relationship that he had imagined. He hadn’t been able to devote the time and attention Robert really needed to forge the relationship, and young Robert wasn’t seasoned enough or of such a temperament to take up the slack. Kitt’s lack of overall horse experience and Robert’s overall lack of human experience left them starting over almost every time.
The painful decision to sell the horse was reached. A deal was struck with our trainer that she would teach him some jumping and dressage skills and then handle a sale. Robert went to live at her place.
This emotional wave crashed around the same time the Great Recession pulled back the high tide of our home economy. Every dollar we spent now was pulled through a tight fist. Lessons and clinics were cut from my budget. What I had wanted from horses was looking farther away, receding.
Had I banked enough knowledge to carry on with my horses alone? Did I really know what I needed to know?
When our trainer took a job in another state as her own response to the economic downturn, before the sales ad for Robert had received any attention, the deal was off. We had to come pick Robert up, bring him home. He surprised me by leaping into the trailer with hardly a prompt. He must have been dying to leave. I had gone regularly to trim his hooves and supply his feed. That he seemed unhappy there wasn’t a consideration for concern. This was how the equestrian world worked.
When we had taken Robert to the training facility, the other three horses seemed unmoved. They neither called out nor appeared to have noticed his absence. The day we pulled the trailer back into the yard with Robert aboard, they called enthusiastically in greeting without even seeing him. Robert trumpeted his return before his feet hit the ground. We were surprised by this display of fraternity, not having realized his attachment to them, and them to him.
Thus the wheel of life turned, bringing me forward to an unknown that I didn’t know I didn’t know.