It all started when I was a mere nine years old. After repeatedly begging my mom, she agreed to let me get 'riding lessons' at the Circle T ranch. All they really consisted of was a hundred dollars a month to get on an old tired horse for an hour each week and force the poor thing to run around barrels.
One day, waiting for my lesson, my Mom looked up and saw a horse her mother had owned before she had died of cancer, forcing the family to sell the horse almost 15 years earlier. We bought Tonka, and that was the start.
I rode Tonka all the time. After about two years of my mom hardly having a horse, because I was with him all the time, we got Golden. We found her almost completly untrained, left two years in the field. She was mine.
Golden and I were lucky. We were both rough, but she wanted companionship, and I loved her to death. My first horse!! My dream. I trained her, and trust me it was rough. Neither one of us really knew what we were doing, although I did read all of the time and I did my best. But I wanted to show, and we needed to learn.
Last year, I began getting lessons again. This time from a incredible rider and trainer, Dawn. She taught us so much! I learned what all the terms I had read in the magazines really meant, like 'giving to the bit', things I couldn't understand just by reading them. Since she came along, Golden and I have come miles from where we were. We still have a lot to learn from eachother, but now we know what we want to learn... And that is the end of our story.
I currently ride hunt seat, although on the equestrian team this year I also showed western and saddleseat, placing in both. I still don't have western tack, but that may change..
I am on the equestrian team, and most likely joining a 4-h group again this year too. My goal/hope is to bu another horse next summer that I can train to jump and maybe do some dressage with.
I feel a deep connection to horses. I love to work with them, to be around them, even just to look at them. They are magnificant animals, and almost all of them have issues with people. That is what I love, working with and retraining horses that can't trust people or just don't know what is expected of them. It is my passion.
