Tobiano
Well-Known Member
Oh my goodness.... this is making me well up!
Does anyone remember the little poem in the JIll books that went something like this...
'There are more important things in life than horses
There are more important things in life than food.
Yet somehow when I'm eating or i'm riding
There's nothing else in life feels half so good'
I think of that often!
I was pony mad from as early as I can remember, and yes, like Rollin, only got my own at the age of 43! I wasnt even allowed riding lessons until I was 11.
Until then - I would dress up in my much older sisters' jodhs (the kind with the sticky out bits round the hips) and hacking jacket, and canter round the garden over a course of show jumps made of bean poles on bricks.
I made myself riding crops out of those thin canes for gardening, and I'd carefully wrap some wool around them as a covering, then plait the little loop to go round your wrist.
When we got a dog, I am sorry to say that she was lunged and show jumped mercilessly (thinking back, that may be why my parents finally allowed me to ride!)
My dad, bless him, used to do building work on the house with a kind of DIY scaffolding called an 'easy stage'. I persuaded him to put some of it up in the garden so I had a horse. It had a plank to sit on, and I tied a milk crate to look like a head - attached some reins, and spent hours and hours sitting up there 'riding' my 'horse'. Unfortunately one day I slipped and came down astride a thin metal pole - couldnt walk for a week!
My biggest treat was my mum taking me to the saddlery shop, where I would buy brushes, lead ropes and hoof oil .... good job I didnt know it would be 30 years before I had a use for them!
When I was finally allowed near a real live horse I remember the utter thrill of being asked to lead 11hh Strawberry round the school with his young rider. Any moment spent touching a horse was total bliss.
And yes, after that weekends and holidays were spent at the stables mucking out, tack cleaning, feeding, leading round for lessons.... and just occasionally, riding bareback from the field .... nirvana.
there has never, ever, been a feeling to compare with sitting astride the horse I loved, Gulliver, and realising 'I am actually riding this horse'. He has been dead 35 years but we will meet again one day.
Does anyone remember the little poem in the JIll books that went something like this...
'There are more important things in life than horses
There are more important things in life than food.
Yet somehow when I'm eating or i'm riding
There's nothing else in life feels half so good'
I think of that often!
I was pony mad from as early as I can remember, and yes, like Rollin, only got my own at the age of 43! I wasnt even allowed riding lessons until I was 11.
Until then - I would dress up in my much older sisters' jodhs (the kind with the sticky out bits round the hips) and hacking jacket, and canter round the garden over a course of show jumps made of bean poles on bricks.
I made myself riding crops out of those thin canes for gardening, and I'd carefully wrap some wool around them as a covering, then plait the little loop to go round your wrist.
When we got a dog, I am sorry to say that she was lunged and show jumped mercilessly (thinking back, that may be why my parents finally allowed me to ride!)
My dad, bless him, used to do building work on the house with a kind of DIY scaffolding called an 'easy stage'. I persuaded him to put some of it up in the garden so I had a horse. It had a plank to sit on, and I tied a milk crate to look like a head - attached some reins, and spent hours and hours sitting up there 'riding' my 'horse'. Unfortunately one day I slipped and came down astride a thin metal pole - couldnt walk for a week!
My biggest treat was my mum taking me to the saddlery shop, where I would buy brushes, lead ropes and hoof oil .... good job I didnt know it would be 30 years before I had a use for them!
When I was finally allowed near a real live horse I remember the utter thrill of being asked to lead 11hh Strawberry round the school with his young rider. Any moment spent touching a horse was total bliss.
And yes, after that weekends and holidays were spent at the stables mucking out, tack cleaning, feeding, leading round for lessons.... and just occasionally, riding bareback from the field .... nirvana.
there has never, ever, been a feeling to compare with sitting astride the horse I loved, Gulliver, and realising 'I am actually riding this horse'. He has been dead 35 years but we will meet again one day.