Blog Post

So This is Love

  • By Rebecca
  • 08 Feb, 2017

On Falling in Love with Horses

When I was little, I saw an ad in the paper: write an essay on your best summer adventure and win a week of pony camp. Well, I probably wrote the most predictable piece, ever, on ponies and trail riding, and of course, I wasn’t selected. Not to be deterred, I marched right up to my parents and all but demanded a week of pony camp. Denied. Incidentally I was also denied my pleas for boarding school where horseback riding was a key component… Rethinking my tactic, I did what any desperate and longing little girl would do; I asked my grandparents.

Now, my grandmother, was an ingenious woman. She had read in a Reader’s Digest of all places about someone who went an entire year without television for some heroic purpose. So she made me an offer. She and my grandfather would send me to pony camp the following summer, IF, I gave up television immediately for an entire year… She subsequently bought me my first library card. I still have zero interest in television.

My dad tells it a little differently. While he jokes about the little girl who at five went on her first pony ride and was forever besotted, it is quite a different story he holds in his heart. My dad and I loved spending time together when I was a child, and one memorable day, he took me to Heritage Park, a living historical museum in Calgary, AB. As we beelined for the farm, there was a paddock with two of the heavy horses used for wagon rides beckoning me to pet them. I did, and hand fed them grass over the fence. When it was time to leave, I ran down the hill and the horses, both of them, ran along beside me. All the way. My dad says that in that moment, he knew there was something special between me and horses. Something so sacred he would help nurture that relationship forever.

I bought my first horse, Amber, on my 16th Birthday. Surprised the heck out of my mum..! I learned to ride, learned how to work with horses scarred by unfavorable human-horse interactions, fell even deeper in love. Tyfaari came to me a month before my 23rd Birthday, right off the racetrack and in between heats, retiring from racing at the ripe old age of 3. I wish all retired racehorses were so lucky. Jenny came to me three days before my 29th Birthday, and Sammy, a little over a week before my 33rd Birthday.

There’s a part of me that measures my life in horses; noticing how different they are in personality and temperament. They are certainly symbolic of where I was in my life, what lessons I was learning, and how I was shaping my life to revolve evermore around horses and equine assisted therapy. Incidentally, in the summer I became a stepmom, Sammy, pregnant at the time, joined my herd. Coincidence? I think not! Even Gus, who decided to be ours in July (my Birthday month) came into our herd not just to participate in equine assisted therapy, but to teach my youngest son how to ride. Perhaps symbolic also that Gus is the first permanent male member of my herd.

The horses and our relationships with them tell stories. Mine is in a personal evolution which transformed my definition and experience of love. Of purpose too, but isn’t that synonymous with following your heart? I think so, and horses are certainly in mine.

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