It is a lovely and very rainy Saturday evening. Chili is on the stove and the children are watching a movie (well the baby is unloading the dishwasher but its keeping him busy so....). As I was making this chili my husband was playing some Southern Gospel music. I had also taken my five year old out today to The Mill Store and bought her sparkly pink cow girl boots. She has a hat and jeans and bandanna and for whatever reason she has wanted boots for a very long time (at least in her eyes). She got a pair for Christmas from her Nana but they wont really fit her for a couple years. She carries them around in a bag. I went to The Mill Store a couple days ago to buy rabbit food. I always feel like such a fraud going in there because it is filled with so many treasures for farmers and ranchers and then I am there buying bunny food! Usually they only have boots for adults that are a couple hundred dollars a pair. I want some so bad!!!! However, a couple days ago I saw they had some pairs her size. They had a couple different options of colors and I knew it wouldn't be long until I was there with her. She was pretty cute today picking out a pair. She really wanted to bring two pairs home because deciding between blue sparkly and pink sparkly with leopard print was apparently agonizing. However she made her choice and she wore them home!
SO in saying all this is what I am getting to ~ the music my husband was playing and buying the boots for my girl ~ reminded me of my cow girl days. We moved to a farm when I was almost seven and from before we moved there I had really wanted a horse. My parents had gotten me a bunny to tide me over but I had not forgotten the black stallion I prayed for every night. My very practical parents told me that if I wanted a horse ~ since we were on a farm with a barn and all ~ that I could get one IF I saved up for it and then payed for everything it needed. So at the age of ten I had saved up one thousand dollars and I went out and bought my black stallion. However black and stallion and horse translated into a brown and white pinto mare pony!!!!!! It was the first 'horse' I looked at and even though she was injured at the time and I needed to soak her leg every day in cool water and change bandages I guess I fell in love. I remember when they brought her to my house and she hopped out of the back of a moving van. I had no NO idea WHAT I was in for. I sort of hopped on her and went for a celebratory ride around some of the property and then there I was! A horse owner!
We had neighbors on both sides of us that took me under their wing somewhat. I had a lot of learning to do. I had to clean her stall, do a lot of work for my parents to pay for her hay and grain and saw dust, and of course ride her and get a farrier for her feet; it just went on and on. We did have some fenced areas for her but I remember making a gate out of bailing twine and using sticks and twine to make random enclosures. I had some tack (the things I needed to ride her) and it was all mish mashed. I had an English saddle from the neighbor down the road and a western bridle from an auction. I had a purple western shirt from another neighbor across the road and cow girl boots from another neighbor on the other side of the road. Now that I look back I realize how amazing this experience was. A couple of the neighbors took me out riding with them to show me good places to ride. I was so young! They also gave me a good book to read about everything I needed to know. Everyone took me under their wing! My parents had no idea about horses and just let me do what I wanted. So all these neighbors were angels.
Here's the thing. I bought a fifteen year old PONY. I was ten. She hated my guts. I am not kidding. If she could bite me ~ she did. If she could buck me off ~ she did. If she could kick me ~ she did. She ran away FAR down the road MULTIPLE times ~ any chance she could get she was GONE. Neighbors who lived a couple kilometers down the road learned who I was pretty quickly, especially if they had horses. Now that I look back I realize she was so lonely and needed another horse friend. Also I assume she was very mistreated by other children who had previously owned her and so she had a genuine right to despise them. I was just so innocent and clueless. As time went on I got used to jumping on my bike to go after her...praying she would not get hit by a car...or limping home after she had bucked me off and high tailed it somewhere. My parents (especially my dad) wanted me to sell her as they felt like I could find a safer sweeter tempered horse at an auction or something. I was just as stubborn as her I guess, and I told them I wanted to keep her.
Time passed I started to grow up a little, and her feelings towards me started to change. I spent hours riding her all over our farm, in the fields, and through forest trails around our neighborhood. Sometimes I would wear a full skirt and ride side saddle and pretend I was from long ago. I wore all sorts of interesting things when riding my horse.When my friends would come over we would brush her and braid her mane and tail in all sorts of ways and saddle her up. We would ride double all around or take turns racing her around the fields or jumping her. She provided hours and hours of the best most incredible entertainment. I liked to pretend I was a rodeo star because she had apparently been a former pony barrel racer which was pretty great. A boy who lived on our property also got a horse. She was a Clydesdale (so a very large horse). There I was on my pony (a tiny horse) and he on his Clydesdale. We were a pretty cute looking pair I bet. He would always challenge me to race and I would tell him I wasn't stupid!!! My little pony and I didn't have a chance!
By the end of our three years together I could ride my horse bare back (so no saddle) with just a halter and lead rope and she would go anywhere I told her to.I could trot, canter and gallop just holding on with my legs. I trusted and loved her so much. Often I went on long rides alone to beautiful fields where I would lie in the grass as she munched on it beside me and I would tell her all the hard things I was going through. Her ears would be pricked forward and I knew she was listening. We would see many quiet memorable things on our rides as we clip clopped our way down the roads edged in creek and forest and wild flowers.
I remember the day I had to say good bye to her so vividly. I knew she would hate where she was going because a family with three little boys had bought her. I was moving far away to a town and I thought I would never see her again. I rode her to their house as they lived a couple kilometers away. I told her how sorry I was and how much I loved her and how much she had given to me. It was a hard goodbye. The walk home was one of the hardest moments of my life up until that moment and I had had more than my fair share. She had been such a challenge to break through to ~ and our love for each other was forged from the fire of many hard experiences ~ it was the strongest kind.
I heard through the grapevine that the family didn't last long with her because she hated the boys. She was sold at an auction and I heard a kindly elderly man had bought her. She was to be retired out to pasture and he would sometimes ride her to check fences. I was so relieved and happy to hear that and felt more at peace with having to let her go.I thought that would be the last I heard of her. However the story was not quite finished.
Some years later I was driving down the island highway with some friends (so at least three years later) and I happened to glance into a field as we were speeding by; and there she was! I immediately burst into tears and everyone in the car started freaking out not having a clue what was going on. We stopped the vehicle, I managed to hysterically sob that I had seen my horse. The boy who was driving the car looked at me like I was crazy, but calmly turned the vehicle around and we all went back to the field. She was in an apple orchard with other ponies. She seemed to immediately remember me and came over to nuzzle my hand. I couldn't stop crying and stroking her. I was so so so glad she was there and she was still alive and she looked so happy! She had her friends, her orchard and no horrible children kicking her sides and bugging her. It was such a GIFT to see her that one last time. I will never forget how special it was. It healed hurts I had from having to say goodbye in the way that I had to.
I have never been a cow girl since. It seems almost a dream to me that I had a horse that I single handedly had to care for at the tender age of ten, but I did. I hope one day I will again have a horse that I can ride bare back through open fields. It is a feeling like no other. The feeling of the strength, the movement, the softness of them, the way their ears flick back and forth as you talk to them, their nickers and the way their hooves sound. It is a truly majestic and freeing experience. Her name was Shango ~ I never had the heart to change her name. She made me a cow girl (although I don't think we ever actually rounded up any cows)!
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