Back on the horse

If you have been stalking me and my blog since it’s early days, you may remember me mentioning my horse Daisy a few times. But I doubt both, so I’ll be glad to tell the whole story again. I also daresay my writing skills have become less immature since I last wrote about my childhood passion: horses. Yep, I used to be one of those obnoxious horse-fanatic girls who regularly read trashy horse magazines (thankfully I got tired of them pretty early and read a “real” adult horse magazine, Cavallo in this case, instead).

I wonder where my fascination for horses came from. I distinctly remember being fascinated by goats when I was 4 or 5, and at one point my parents must have taken me someplace that had goats and ponies, and I was even more enchanted by the ponies. A while after that, my mother started taking me to riding lessons. I learned riding English-style when I was six years old on a Fjord gelding. First I learned only at the longe, and I was always very scared of galloping. But I had to learn galloping at some point, and when the time came I wondered what took me long. It’s the best thing ever!

“I WANT A PONY!” was what I kept annoying my parents with afterwards, and when I was six years old, I was granted my wish with my Shetland pony “Flörchen”. We named her after the horse my father’s family had during his childhood “Flora”, only we cutified it with a -chen because Flörchen is so much smaller. Flörchen was untrained when we got her and as any Shetland pony, she had a lot of character. So I took on the task of breaking her (how cruel that sounds in English) to make her a somewhat rideable pony. I did a lot of it bareback, but also with a Western saddle (it was the only one that fit her and wouldn’t slip off) with the rest of the attire English-style. I guess I succeeded more or less, but she still was the same bullheaded pony she was before. I mainly rode her regularly for two or three years and continued later on, but less often, until I outgrew her.

My parents got interested in horses as well, especially in horse driving (with a carriage). I have absolutely no clue why, but they decided to buy two horses, Daisy and Dorte (we didn’t name them), and a carriage for driving. Yay me! Well, they were not technically horses because they where only 1,42m and 1,46m. But my parents bought them specifically because Daisy, the smaller of them, was a very calm, childproof horse also very good for riding. She was a year older then me, so she was 8 or 9 when I got her. She was a bit lazy most of the time, as I always noticed when my mother send me to competitions and we were always among the last few. As I later found out she was probably just not keen on my riding style back then…

My parents continued driving Daisy & Dorte and they even did a couple of competitions themselves, which they usually finished better than I did the riding stuff. Daisy loved pulling the carriage with Dorte, they were always very excited when they were being prepared and realized this’ll be a carriage round. Unfortunately their luck didn’t last more than a few years, because when I was in fifth grade Dorte was gravely injured in her ankle joint while on the meadow (we still don’t know how, but foul play doesn’t seem unlikely here). Sadly, she had to be put down. I didn’t have a relationship with her as close as with Daisy, but naturally I was sad. These days I’m mostly sad because my parents never let me ride her because she was supposedly “too wild”. She did bite me once when I fed her for no real apparent reason, but I think she would have been very happy if I’d’ve had given her more attention, and I’m sure I could have handled riding her without too much trouble.

After Dorte’s death, Daisy mourned the loss of her best friend as well as the loss of being able to pull the carriage (our carriage was a little heavy for only one horse). My parents didn’t want to replace Dorte, probably because they lost interest in anything they shared because they were getting divorced. So it was just Daisy and me from then on, and Flörchen, who became Daisy’s new best friend. Around that time, I discovered Western riding somewhere (I probably read a lot about it in Cavallo), and I thought this casual style would be much cooler than stiff English-style riding. I begged my mother to let me take lessons, and I did on a “Ranch” four villages from ours. It was only partially successful, because the teacher was an American who only spoke 3 words of German, and my English back then was limited to what the horrible old hag of “I <3 Oxford" teacher taught me in 6th grade. I didn't take Daisy to those lessons, because she didn't have the typical Western training (at least we suspected so). I took lessons on Appaloosa, Quarter and Paint Horses from the "Ranch". My first one was a completely unmotivated Appaloosa gelding, creatively nicknamed "Appy". He seemed to hate giving lessons, because it was nigh impossible to get him to move forward. Or maybe he was masochistic and liked being kicked, who knows. In one lesson I got the cruelest and the only spurs I ever wore, and it was still hard to move him.

After the ordeal of Appy, I got another horse from the Ranch, alas I forget it's name and everything else about it, so it must have been pretty average. Later on, I got Rosie. Rosie was a bay Quarter Horse mare and she was CRAZY. She didn't have a bit, only a hackamore and she was probably the most sensitive and eager horse I've ever ridden. I only needed to THINK about going right, and she went right. The slightest bit a movement made her go faster or slower, and when I made a mistake she was gone. One time I didn't pay attention and shifted my weight and she almost ran over the teacher in full gallop. I was completely drenched in sweat after my lessons on her. After the lessons, the teacher let her loose in the hall and she was still galloping around like crazy.

Naturally I wanted to test my newly acquired skills in Western riding on Daisy, and to my surprise she absolutely loved this more casual style of riding. She even started responding to the slightest commands, so I suspect that she might have had another Western rider in her past. Or maybe we just knew each other so well after our long time together that we didn't need a lot of communication. Unfortunately our friendship was put to an abrupt end on September 8th, 1998. My mother and I were just coming home from the graveyard because it was my grandmother's 10th death day when we noticed that Flörchen and Fee (our other Shetland pony which we got a few years before) were running around the meadow all agitated. Then we realized that we couldn't spot Daisy at first, up until we saw that she was lying in the meadow. We ran to her and it was obvious that she was dead. There was no movement and no pulse. We called the vet, who needed 20 minutes to get there, but he told us what we already knew – she was dead. It was a bit of a comfort that he told us that she didn't suffer or colic, she just plain dropped dead. In the weeks before her death I noticed that the white of her eyes was unusually red and told my mother, but she didn't think much of it. The knacker's yard / rendering plant / Tierkörperverwertungsanstalt told us that she had a cardiac defect, her heart swell up twice its size, turned yellow and that's when she dropped dead.

Having a 15 year old horse, which is young for a horse, just drop dead without warning is a big shock. It took me a while to get over it, because technically Daisy had been my only friend. The kids in school always hated me and nowadays I’m happy I didn’t have much to do with that insular folk anyway. Similar to how I feel about Dorte, I now mostly regret that my parents never allowed me to go for rides outside of our meadows. They were paranoid that I could get lost in the forest or that something would happen to me, but they were just being silly. Daisy was bombproof and she knew the area and the forests by heart from her carriage days. She would probably have found the way easier than I would have and I know she would have enjoyed it a lot more than going in circles in our meadows.

For many reasons I didn’t get a replacement for Daisy, I think the biggest was of financial nature. My parents were divorced by now and stopped running their vacation apartment business. I was a 14 year old teenager and I had to fight my way through school (no exaggeration). I had neither the money, the time nor the logistic means to find a foster horse, horse sharing option or to take lessons. This continued throughout my high school and apprenticeship years, which accumulated to no less then 10 years of never having been on the back of a horse again. Every once in a while I looked up Western Ranches in my area, but every time I realized that it would be impossible to get there without a car I had to give up the thought of starting to ride again. Two years ago a friend recommended me a Ranch in Düsseldorf which is only ten minutes by foot from the S-Bahn stop. I considered it, even wrote an email, but I never quite found the motivation to actually do it. The financial aspect might play a big role in that, because a lesson costs 30€. Back in the old days it was 20 DM, which is 10€.

After two years of being an employee, I think I can finally afford an insanely expensive hobby like that again, at least every second or third week. So I finally, finally had the guts to actually make an appointment for a lesson. And it was time to mount a horse again last Sunday, 12 years, 6 months and 26 days after Daisy died. My lesson was with Badge (Western horses have such silly names), a Paint Horse mare who reminded me a bit of Appy, though not quite so extreme.

I realized that I have forgotten A LOT. Probably even almost everything. It was really tough to get into it again and I never realized how many different things at once you have to pay attention to up there… I definitely remember things having been easier back in the old days. So I’m not quite sure how I feel about it. It sure was fun to be riding again, but it was also really hard work which I’m still reminded of right now due to how insanely sore my hips are. I think it’ll be a lot more hard work until I’ll be able to enjoy some casual riding again. And what will happen after that? I haven’t really figured out how I could possibly continue this hobby without taking insanely expensive lessons (well, there are group lessons for 15€, so that would be an option). The stable I’ve been to offers rides through the area, but also for another 30€ for 3 hours. I might be able to get a horse sharing option, but those usually require you to take care of the horse 2-4 times a week, and I’ll definitely not have the time and energy to do that, especially not after working until 6pm every day. That’s also a good reason why owning a horse would not be an option, plus the cost of upkeep, which would be somewhere around 600€ per month. If one thing’s for sure, it’s that keeping horses is a hobby for rich people.

I think I’ll take a couple more lessons and then decide if I want to continue this, or if my childhood nostalgia has painted a romanticized picture and it’s saner to save the money for something else.