My History with Horses

I really wish I had a picture of me taking riding lessons to add to this post. Maybe somewhere hidden away in stored boxes in my parent's barn there might be one. I know before then I had done pony rides here and there, but my lessons were my first real experiences with horses.

I was young when my parents divorced, and all I remember is moving around a lot with my mom. A total of 7 states I believe we lived in on the East Coast. One of those states was New York, for 5 years. We were poor, we were always poor, and yet for my birthday one year my mom got me lessons. I'm not sure for how long, but it felt like forever...maybe a year's worth? I rode a grey horse, whose breed I don't even know. I remember thinking she was so big, but I saw a picture years later and realized how small she really was. I have a lot of memories from back then, most good, a couple bad. Like the time I went to fetch her out in the pasture and another horse decided

to be a jerk and did a drive-by bite, square between my shoulder blades. Man that hurt.

I was good in my lessons, although I can't remember a whole lot from back then, so you'd have to ask my mom what my instructor thought of me. But I had a good seat, still do actually. I never learned past a trot though. About the time I was to learn a canter, we were trail riding out in the woods behind my instructor's place when some moron fired a gun. Spooked the horses and my little mare bolted. Scared me for a long time to dare anything past a trot, and we moved before I ever got a chance to learn. Job market crashed in NC (where we moved to) and my mom could never afford to put me back in lessons.

I did do a show once before we moved. I remember it being rediculously hot. And this is where I saw my first draft horse. A little girl riding a big ol Clydesdale, and I commented how if I rode it I'd be doing the splits!

Now let's jump a few years to middle school. I think we can all agree we know of the Budweiser Clydesdales. Those were the only drafts I knew of. And once at a fair I did get to see a set of preforming Clydesdales (not Budweiser ones). Their size (especially hoof size) really impressed me. Being the horse crazed girl I was, I made friends with a girl who owned a horse, an arabian X quater horse cross mare. And most of her stories made her horse seem like a nightmare, but I still dreamed of having one someday. I also read any horse books I could get my hands on.

One morning during homeroom, I came across a tiny little horse encyclopedia book on my teacher's book shelves. I gobbled it up, seeing if there were any breeds I didn't know, and there was. The Shire. The book didn't say much and at first I was a bit put off....clydesdale look alikes. Surely the writers had just gotten confused, but nope. And they averaged a full hand taller than the clydesdale! The Tallest Horse in the World the book touted. I was hooked, never forgetting the breed.... I mean, the higher up the better for me when I'm riding.

In high school I took lessons on my friend's crazy mare from before as part of my senior project. I loved it, but it was too short. Then I was off to college. At Appalachian State University I joined the Equestrian Club...and it was a nightmare.

I thought it'd be great to be around other horse people and to be taking lessons again. But my schedule was hectic, and I didn't have my own car at the college. Finding time I could fit in lessons during offered times was tough, made even harder because I had to carpool. My Marching Band schedule didn't help a lick either. Turns out the girls I was taking lessons with were complete snobs. The stables were an hour away, and we rarely made it on time to get the full hour's worth of lesson....if the bus to the school parkinglot wasn't too full and just skipped us over. I missed some lessons and they would always say "You can make them up later." But the simple fact was, the hour I went to my usual lessons was the only time I could get out there, if I missed the lesson I wasn't making it up. I ended up paying ahead for a few lessons and was out 2 lessons that I missed and couldn't make up. The instructor wasn't sympathetic to our mad rush to get to the stables on time either, nor did she seem to have any real interest to teach us, especially me. It was almost 2 months before she learned I couldn't canter, and she only gave me a 1 time 5 minute lesson on it (which I did not understand) and never again bothered with it. The next semester the instructor/stable owner wanted us to pay for the entire semester's worth of lessons upfront (again touting that if you missed lessons you could make them up at another time). As a poor college student who was sick and tired of the snobs, I proptly left the club.

Horrible college experience aside, I was not dissuaded. When my parents moved to Missouri at the beginning of my sophomore year to take care of my step dad's sick mother after the passing of his father, they started looking around for animals that they couldn't have before. Then suddenly one day I get a call from my mom with questions about horses....a creature she'd never actually been interested in. A few weeks later they bought two mares, 4 and 5 years old. A big ol paint mare named Sadie (who would turn out to be the bane of our exisistance) and a grey Missouri Foxtrotter mare named Rosie, who my parent's said was mine. Yes I went on an excited spending spree to spoil my horse I had never met. I flew out for Thanksgiving that semester and met my new horse for the first time. She was skittish and stand off-ish and really didn't like to be approtched. But once you got up to her, she loved being scratched and leaded like a dream.

At some point when she didn't show fear of a saddle pad nor saddle, I tried to ride her (we didn't know how much training she had) and I was bucked off. Bucked like a rodeo horse, and I stayed on for a long time with only one foot in the stirrup. I was proud when I realized she made sure to buck away from people, and stopped and listened calmly when I jumped up to hobble over to her as she got her lines tangled around a hoof. I came away with a nasty looking bruise and what was likely a sprained wrist.

After that semester, as my dad was deployed to Okinawa Japan, I moved to Missouri and transfered to Missouri State University to be near family that had all moved away, dragging my then boyfriend along with me. (future husband). I still lived 2 hours from my parents but I went out to see Rosie as much as I could. She only got worse with her skittishness though, which we soon realized was due to the paint mare Sadie, whose sever separation anxiety spread to any other horse like the plague.

My mother later rescued 2 more horses, Major and Sophie (and why not, they were living with my grandmother on 40 acres with no animals on it). Turned out Major, the gelding, wasn't a gelding. Sophie passed away from a genetic condition at the trainers that we couldn't have possibly known about, and a few months later (despite me insisting my horse be separated from the others for training purposes and to prevent pregnancy) both my mare and the paint mare were pregnant. Long story short, we didn't know about fescue grass, and the pregnancies costed us 3 lives. My mare and her filly, and the paint mare's colt. My mare went over a month, causing her filly to grow too big to come out of the birth cannal(she continued to cycle even after being bred making knowing her due date impossible) and the mare later died from tetanus, despite spending 4 days at the vets. The paint mare couldn't produce milk, and despite working with a vet with them as well, we lost the colt. My mother aquired more horses, sold Major who was gelded and became an excellent riding horse, sold Saddie to a man who now uses her at sale barns to sort livestock, and eventually just got rid of all the horses.

When I moved to Missouri, we found out we were expecting. And sometime about then I decided that if I was going to own a horse of my choosing, I really needed to choose a breed. At some point I decided as long as I bought the tall ones, (considering I didn't want anything under 16 hands) Gypsy Horses/Vanners were the horse I wanted. And I really started paying attention to them, learning bloodlines, and etc. But they were expensive! And even if people did offer payment plans, they were usually until weaning (average of 4 months old)....12,000 in 4 months....not possible.

Then at some point about 2 years later I started looking into Shires. I'm not sure what sparked my reinterest in them. Maybe it was that they were one of 3 breeds being used to create Drum Horses? Or maybe it was me finding them on the critically endangered list of the American Livestock Concervancy. They were much bigger, and fit well into my growing interests of agriculture, and they were a lot cheaper (usually) than Gypsies.

At first my husband still said absolutely not, and I couldn't really blame him. Another year rolled around, and another foal crop passed my screen. And then something magical happened. A Nation Grand Champion mare came up for sale at the incredibly low price of $5,000. She was breeding age, and a heck of a deal....but we didn't have $5,000 sitting around, and the bank wouldn't give us a loan for her, and I was pretty sure the sellers weren't the type to do payment plans. So I had to sit and watch with a broken heart as her ad remained up and I couldn't snatch her up. Then a cute little gangly legged filly passed my screen. Her name: Elsa. (Which was pretty much my favorite movie character at that moment in time). She was bred my Kohler Farms (look her up on facebook) and was up for sale on payments because she believes in letting her foals wean naturally in their own time, which usually takes around a year.

I turned and made giant puppy dog eyes at my husband. After a few weeks he was walking through the living room and asked. "How much was that filly? And you said she would take payments for a year?" Trying not to get my hopes up too high, I told him the price of $4,000 and that yes, she was up for payments. A few days later I was in contact with Dayla Kohler, whom I'd already been dreamly messaging with) and told her I'd buy Elsa. And this is where the story of my life with draft horses really begins. :)