When I was a child I rode with no fear. I would always ride without a saddle and sometimes even with just a halter. When I was a child I could ride with no hands. I rode with the wind. I would jump anything in my way. I was one with my best friend, my horse. With him I found my peace through the ups and downs of childhood and adolescence.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. It seems so unfair, as we age, no matter how often or how much we ride, that our confidence starts to wane, our joy is a bit dulled by the realities of adult responsibility, the loss of youthful athleticism, and the development of worrying about what other people think. Nor do our horses seem so perfectly well behaved as they were back then. Or is it that maybe now we just know too much and expect more?

This all came to my mind as I was driving down a country road the other day. As usual, I was lost in my cares of all the things I had to get done on my never-ending to-do list, the stress washing over me. And then, all of a sudden, my peripheral vision caught a glimpse, on this surprisingly sunny February morning, of a child riding her small horse down her driveway. My eyes were momentarily taken from the road as I watched her and it seemed I could feel exactly what she was feeling, as she rode towards me. I even found myself beginning to feel a bit of envy until my own childhood whooshed back upon me.

My stress fell away. Those childhood memories blurred though my mind as they were replayed in fast motion: how I couldn’t wait to get home from school and jump on my horse for another adventure on the trails right outside my back door.  The elation of once again being freed of the constraints of school and home, and ready to explore my world by horseback - running away as fast as we could go. Carefree. Just my horse and me.

The week before this epiphany, I had attended the Washington Horse Expo, where Craig Cameron’s Extreme Cowboy competition required competitors to remove their saddles and ride around the arena at a canter (or faster) as part of the event. The eldest competitor was a 67 year old cowboy - galloping his round. Also speaking at the expo was national clinician, Julie Goodnight, who told the audience that she has gone back to riding bareback again. Like me, she had not done it in quite a few years. She says it was surprisingly hard the first day, but each day she did, it got a little easier. We are of a similar age. If she can do it, I think I can too I found myself perusing bareback saddle pads in a vendor booth right afterwards. Maybe I am not too old to have that amazing feeling of easy balance and confidence once again.  

I want to not just remember that carefree joy, I want to relive moments of it. Sometimes responsibilities and cares need to be purposefully set aside. Training and lessons can go by the way, just for a little while, too. While not throwing caution absolutely to the wind, feeling that uncontainable thrill of just riding and being can be the only goal, if only for a little while.

Do I want to relive my childhood? Never. Do I want to ride like a child again?  Absolutely. Don’t you?

Book Review: The Eighty-Dollar Champion

Snowman, the Horse that Inspired a Nation

By Elizabeth Letts  336 pages (includes notes, bibliography and index), 2012 Ballantine Books.  

Much in the fashion of Secretariat and Seabiscuit, The Eighty Dollar Champion is a well documented historical non-fiction novel, this one written by an equestrienne.

I had originally read the original children’s book many years ago, Snowman by Rutherford Montgomery published in 1962.  So while I was familiar with the story, this adult version tells the comprehensive tale of the symbiotic relationship between a horse and a man with extensive detail of current events pertaining to the times.

Harry de Leyer, a Dutch immigrant to the United States after his homeland had been devastated by World War II, comes to America to embrace the hopes and dreams promised here, especially in regaining his career as a horseman.  “The special bond between Harry and Snowman was the bond of survivors: a horse so beat up that nobody thought his life was worth saving, and a man who, his life destroyed by war, had had to start fresh in a country where he did not speak the language and had no capital except that of his own two hands, his love for his family, and his personal dignity”.  This is a man who truly loved his horse.  When Harry was offered more than ten times his annual salary for the rescued horse, more than Snowman could possibly ever earn for him in the horse’s lifetime, Harry displays absolute loyalty, choosing his beloved horse over material wealth.

Frankly, I would have bought the book just for the photographs - they are really that good.

This is truly an inspirational story for even the non horseperson, but is certainly even more stirring for those of us with unconventional or rescued horses.  To quote Harry: “Horses are just like people: each one has some hidden potential.  What it takes to bring out the best in a horse, or in anyone, is to believe in him one hundred percent.  You don’t have to ‘make’ the horse.  The good Lord made the horse.  All you have to do is to go along with him and find out what he is good at, and the rest will take care of itself.  Champions are not necessarily the best, or the most beautiful, or the most expensive; champions are the ones with the biggest dreams and the heart to make those dreams come true.”  Could we all be so fortunate to see our world in that way.

To me, the only thing better than a good horse book to read, is a good horse to ride.   May we all ride like Harry de Leyer on horses just like Snowman.

His name was Jester.  Actually it was Chester when I got him, but he quickly earned the name Jester.  His perfect black and white markings, and his entertaining personality made me think of a court jester.

He came with the farm.  I didn’t want him, had too many cats already.  But the seller had to leave him behind.  He had come with the place when she bought it, and with her divorce, just one more thing she could not deal with.   She smoothed over my objections,  “He is just a barn cat, no trouble, doesn’t need any attention.  But don’t try to pick him up”  she cautioned, “he doesn’t like to be held.

I also was told that at one point they had found Jester in a blackberry thicket, mewing and in pain.  They took him to the vet who could not diagnose anything specifically wrong.  They brought him home and cared for him not knowing if he would recover, until talons started erupting from under his skin and they concluded that he narrowly escaped becoming dinner for a bird of prey.  Who knows how far he fell.  Well, I thought, he had lost one of his nine lives, eight to go.

And so, I acquiesced.  After all, I had been in the exact same predicament myself, years earlier, having to sell a farm due to a divorce and leaving the two cats that had come with that place, behind;  securing the stability of their lives with a line item on the sales agreement that the new owners would provide for their basic needs (upon which both husband and wife had to initial).

Jester quickly became my best barn buddy.  In some ways, more dog than cat, he would follow me from stall to stall as I cleaned every day.  He would find just the perfect clean corner to squat in, out of my way,  and quietly watch (and maybe critique) me as I vigorously cleaned each stall, and then on to the next.  He would listen intently as I described my hopes and plans for this new farm called Freestyle.  He became a great companion to talk to about my ideas, seemingly to always agree with them. 

One day, quite soon into our new relationship, I paused.   I wonder….  And then I did - I reached down and picked Jester up.  So far, so good.  I turned him in my arms and cradled him as a baby - he purred.  After that, each end-of-chores was celebrated in a moment with Jester enjoying his special time as a pet.

The years continued by, how quickly, until the day Jester decided not to eat his regular cat food.  That was the day that Jester became a house cat.  I wanted the last few days of his life to be the luxury he certainly deserved.  I tried feeding him everything that owners of beloved old cats try.  After a few more days, nothing suited him.  All he needed was water and a cat box.  Every night I would sit down and he would jump up in my lap for hours.  Nothing got done, but everything I needed at that moment was in my arms.  This went on and on.  I couldn’t believe he would live for several weeks like this: every night in my arms as if he wanted a long goodbye.  Finally, one night he didn’t jump up into my lap.  Instead he went to the door to go out.  I knew it was time.   We made the trip to the 24 hour vet clinic with him, of course, in my lap.  

The kind vet took him from me momentarily, to insert the catheter.  He handed him to me and walked away for a few minutes, to give me a little more time.  When he came back, tears were silently running down my face, unchecked because my hands were smoothing a beloved body one last time.  He asked gently if I was okay.  I said “Yes, it was just that he started purring after you put him back in my arms”.  Jester left me, as he deserved to, being cradled gently by the hands who knew him so well.

That was about seven years ago and I still miss him.   I miss my childhood cats: Tiger and Rusty, the two cats I left behind:  Cream and ET, as well as my house cats: Doonesberry, and my once-in-a-lifetime cat Jinxx.  There were the barn cats:  Creamsicle and Raina, and the work cats:  Buddy and Gabby too.   I miss them all and surprisingly don’t even consider myself a “cat person”.

Just a barn cat?  To a pet lover,  no cat, dog, or horse is ever “just a” anything.

I am writing this as I make arrangements to have a feral cat taken in to be neutered that was unknowingly trapped in a warehouse next to my business for longer than I care to imagine.  Now “Gibbon” will spend a quiet weekend  locked in my warehouse - this time with food and water and a cat box, as he recovers from his surgery and bath, to be let free on Monday morning, and we will continue feeding him as long as he shows up at our door.  Please participate in spaying and neutering and feeding these poor ownerless animals in any way you can.

You might be interested in knowing that  I ran into the buyers of my old farm a couple of years after I sold it and had to leave my cats behind.  I asked them immediately “How are my cats?”   Their reply?  “Our cats are just fine”.   I left with a huge smile.

I absolutely love analogies, love them, couldn’t live without them. That which could take a novel to explain can be communicated quickly and simply with an analogy.

Definition: analogy (a-nal-o-gy /a’nalegee) Noun. Similarity in some respect between things that are otherwise dissimilar, a comparison based on such similarity. A resemblance, likeness or parallel.

So, I was having a lesson a few weeks ago and started describing the personalities of my herd (sigh, yes, a small herd, but still a herd) to my instructor.  And all of a sudden it came to me that I was describing the main characters in the Wizard of Oz!            

Nautilus found me first.  The Cowardly Lion, Nautilus is a 16.3h 1500 pound Dutch Warmblood that at seven years old, was afraid, literally afraid of his own shadow. 

So of course, I had to find his bravery for him, in the form of Ruffian, a la Toto.  Ruffian a tiny little donkey, fell into Freestyle Farm (well, not literally fell, but in some ways it sure seemed like it).  Ruffian and Nautilus became inseparable, and Nautilus became Ruffian’s protector from the other boisterous geldings I had back then.

Then Rio wandered in, well, kind of.  A desperate phone call from a complete stranger led me on a journey to pick up the Tin Man, in the form of a huge horse without a heart who needed a new home.  A big 17.2h, 13 year old, Selle Francais who was, what I call, a man-made Asperger horse.  He was stiff, worried, socially awkward, and couldn’t make eye contact or relate to human or horse.  I did the best I could in helping him become the horse he always should have been.  He quickly loved me and Nautilus.  Now his heart also belongs to Ruffian, so Toto is there to help him too.

Treasure, what can I say about Treasure.  The horse of every little girls dream - golden palomino, flaxen mane and tail, the color of straw.  Yep, Treasure was my Scarecrow, a gorgeous animal and the smallest horse in the barn with the biggest attitude.  An eight year old American Saddlebred who was exactly what I wanted, who popped up when I entered all my criteria into Dreamhorse.com.   Treasure, who thought he was a dumb blond surfer dude who only spoke slang.  He thought that was all he was.  Treasure came to Freestyle Farm to find his brain.  (There is actually a Helen Keller analogy in here, but that will have to wait for another time, after all, this is the Wizard of Oz.)

Finally, Denali.  Denali came to OZ (or OR)  from, well, to say Kansas would be stretching the truth a bit.  So actually he came from Kentucky, which is kind of close to Kansas.  He was the youngest and, in his opinion (and that of many others), the prettiest.  So in this analogy, Denali is Dorothy.  And like Dorothy, Denali was the leader by default who is loved and admired by everyone, because he believed Nautilus had courage, Rio had a heart and Treasure had a brain.

And me, oh I bet you were thinking I was going to play the part of the Wizard.  Nope, I am merely L. Frank Baum.  I am told there is a strong resemblance.  And as Dorothy would say, on behalf of the herd here at Freestyle Farm, there is no place like home.