I fell in love with horses sometime around age six. They said it was a stage. I vowed it would not be a stage.
I was right.
Took me four more years to start riding, with a great lady in Michigan who had shown and bred and judged American Paint horses for years. Learned Western there, developed that all-important foundation, and fell hopelessly in love with English riding (most especially jumping) while watching the cross-country day of Richland Park Horse Trials!
We moved South and I spent two-plus years with two different instructors, trying to learn jumping and some elements of dressage, succeeding to a degree. However, I ended up losing confidence majorly and quit riding for two and a half years before a service project at a therapeutic riding center put me in touch with a bunch of people who rode at another stable, and eventually with one of the instructors at that other barn, a highly-experienced coach with experience primarily in hunters, eventing, and training (known as "Coach" on this blog!).
I took lessons from Coach about a year at that barn before she had to leave, but continued on for a few months riding horses and doing some basic training on the Arabian ex-racehorses who had been bred there at the farm and were returning from the track. It was an amazing opportunity, but differences of philosophy and opinion between myself and others at the barn eventually became too great, and I left.
I am now the proud (and sometimes nervous) owner of a beautiful off-track Thoroughbred known as River! For a girl who loves Arabs, Thoroughbreds, and mustangs, this is half (or should I say, a third) of a dream come true!
A few other somewhat pertinent facts about me: I'm a Christian, I'm a college student living at home and studying elementary education, I also love training and working with dogs, and if I could find a way to just train animals the rest of my life, I'd do it in a heartbeat!
This story's just going to continue . . .
