I Love Horses

Somehow, I never thought of our middle class family as being one who would be involved with horses. To me, horses were “elitist”, and people who were involved with horses would be wealthy, not ordinary people. Then, in 1981 our beautiful daughter was born, and she was crazy about horses from the moment she began to talk.

I thought she’d outgrow this infatuation with horses, certainly before I’d have to deal with worrying about how to afford a horse, or riding lessons and equestrian clothing, etc.

When our daughter began school, she did not do well. Her teachers and the professionals we consulted said that she was mentally slow. They told my husband and me that we needn’t worry about college for her. But, we knew our daughter, and we knew they were wrong. So we set out to prove that our daughter was fine, and it was their assessment that was incorrect.

When she was ten years old, we started allowing her to take horseback riding lessons. She took to them like ducks take to water, and her infatuation with everything about horses continued to grow. When she was riding, the shy and introverted child that she appeared to be in school was transformed. On that horse, she presented as the self assured champion we knew her to be.

But, oh, the expense of it all. Keeping her on that horse became almost unmanageable for us over that next year, and we suffered trying to pay the costs of this “horse habit”.

But when she was in sixth grade, we were offered a deal. In exchange for riding lessons, she could work at the stables doing everything necessary, including grooming horses and helping less experienced riders.

By the time six more years had passed, the new self confidence that her horseback riding skills brought her helped her to excel in other areas of her life as well. She had top grades in all her subjects, and won a full scholarship to a top college. She was growing up, and at seventeen, her school notebook sported a picture of her first boyfriend instead of her old standby of the past years, her first love, an old horse named Merlin. However, the boyfriend had to realize that he only got that place of honor on the front of her notebook because he was so supportive of her passion for horses.

From the time she was in the sixth grade, she worked steadily at that stable, and received her 3.8 grade point average in college and graduated, without costing us any money at all.

We are sure that our daughter’s love for anything involving horses was the key to her success academically as well as in life. Because she was willing to work to earn her lessons beginning at such an early age, she developed an excellent work ethic, which is the envy of many a parent.

We are so glad that we didn’t allow our belief that horses were not for our daughter because it was just too expensive a habit to be maintained on a middle class income. We feel so fortunate that we took the plunge and started to try to provide those lessons. Horses did teaching that no experts in any field could do, and they did it without saying a word.

Want to read more about horses and the many benefits of being near them? Visit our website and learn how to take care of horses through feeding, health care, exercise, and even horse bedding