Mission Impossible

I flipped the switch.   I gave myself permission to horse shop.  I searched, I visited, I tried.  A 3 year old black Percheron who was greenbroke (What was I thinking? Helloooo, I wanted to JUMP!).  A beautifully built tri-coloured Appy (and I don't even go for Appies usually) who had learned to rear to dethrone his rider.  A conformational trainwreck of a TB with uneven heels, mile-long pasterns & a limp but the heart of a saint.

Frustrated.

A few months earlier, I had coincidentally started dating this guy (yeah, you know who you are!).  This guy who in about four days I knew would change my life forever.  And it turned out that this guy could make my life's only sure dream of horse ownership come true. He gave me a check & said, "Go find what makes you happy."  Hell, if you ever want to make a girl love you forever, that'll do it!

I revised my search with renewed hope of finding a horse that didn't limp & didn't have a death wish for humans.

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The Real Beginning

All girls dream of ponies.  For at least a brief time in their lives.  Some girls never stop dreaming.

That's me.

When I was growing up, every Christmas morning I would lie still in my bed, eyes scrunched tight shut, holding my breath, firmly believing that if I was just still enough & wished hard enough, the sheer power of my longing would make a horse wearing a big red bow appear in my window when I looked out.

Alas, it appears I was unable to keep my eyes closed long enough, for the horse never apppeared.

As a result, I begged & borrowed rides where I could.  My mother did half-lease me a pony when I was 7 (that's Sassy below, circa mid-80's, half Welsh Mountain Pony & what you see is the grand total sum of tack that we had) & she bought me riding lessons from age 8-15.  After that, I cleaned stalls, exercised what I could, schooled a backyard prospect or two.

And every day I dreamed of when I would be able to write my OWN horse's name on a bucket of brushes.

There were many gentle teachers & loving hearts along the way.

There was the headstrong paint dressage gelding who ran away with me & knocked me out but taught me triumph when I could finally control him.

There was the quiet chestnut who gave my my first real canter & jumped a faithful straight line while my arms were outstretched & eyes closed.

There was the leggy thoroughbred who won me my first blue ribbon, when I was in college riding hunter equitation.

The black quarter horse who met my truck at the gate every day & despite his age & (unbeknownst to me then) intestinal cancer, always made me smile with his joie de vivre & finely tuned cues.

But none of them were mine & each I had to give up as owners changed their minds & life moved inexorably on.  There were years when I couldn't even touch a horse; then I would pull my truck into random horse barn parking lots & sit there absorbing that special barn atmosphere with tears in my eyes because I missed it so much.

I was 26 years old & I finally couldn't take it anymore; that horse-shaped hole in my heart had sat empty for too long. I didn't have any money -- I worked (and still do) as a state biologist & rented a house in a "transitional neighbourhood."  But dammit, sometimes, it's just TIME.  I wasn't going to get any younger, no CHANCE of getting richer, & I wasn't going to miss out on it any more.

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Why Not Start At The Beginning?

I'm going to tell the story of us. Of me and Solo. Because I think it might help me to clarify not only where we need to go next in our training, but also because it might help me understand where we are right now by reexamining where we have been.

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A Week Of Mourning

In a horrific and unexpected moment, I lost a dear friend and family member last week and was just unable to bend my will to writing for you.

I want to take a moment (well, frankly, because it's my blog and because I can) and tell you about a very special guy who touched my life so deeply.

He was a dirty little 5-month-old kitten with a respiratory infection when I first saw him at the Bay Area SPCA outside of Houston, TX in 2002. He'd been in that cage for two months after his previous owner dumped him. Then he reached his little paws through his cage bars and stole my heart right. That night, he crawled under the sheets in my bed and curled up next to my chest and did the same thing every night for the next seven years. His name was Nemo -- short for Geronimo, NOT the little orange fish, thankyouverymuch.

He waited behind the door every day for me to come home from work. His greatest pleasure was curling up in my lap and dozing. Each night, he nuzzled up next to my pillow and sang me to sleep with a robust purring motor. And I can't finish this post without tears because I wasn't ready to let him go.

I'll never know for certain what happened. He had a heart murmur from about one year of age on, so I believe he suffered from cardiomyopathy. The best I can tell is that his heart threw a blood clot that burst in his brain. All I can be glad for is that it was over very, very quickly. He is buried beneath the birdfeeder he loved to watch and I just planted a group of caladium bulbs over his head. I miss him terribly every day and always will; I have never known a cat quite like him, I swear he was part dog. He came when you called, fetched toys, and loved pretty much everyone.

In his honor, I decided the best thing that I could do was to help another cat, thereby giving it a happy home AND opening up a space at a good rescue for another cat, a 2-for-1 deal! I had not intended to act on this for a while, but last week, in a somewhat creepy twist of fate, a little 2 year old female who is the SPITTING image of Nemo introduced herself to me. She is so like him that I don't know whether to laugh or cry (I confess to the latter when she too, burrowed under my sheets last night). I'll never get my best boy back, but I am trying to do right by his memory and help other cats who are as needy as he once was.

Please take a second and go donate your "click" here: The Animal Rescue Site. I have blogged about them before here and hope that you can give the purple button a hit to help shelter animals everywhere. Do it for Nemo, a heart so full of love that it wore itself out. Be kind to a kitty today, it takes so little to make their lives better.

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