The Story that Never Was: Part One

After reading the blog "Dressage Mom" (http://dressagemom.blogspot.com/), I have been inspired to tell some of my own personal experiences in the horse world. I've read nearly all of the stories posted on the aforementioned blog, and I must say that it's an eye-opening experience to see the horse world a different point of view. There was also something comforting about those tales- the realization that no matter how different we are, we horse people everywhere are alike. There is a core emotion in us all that drives us toward the horse.

And so I begin my first story, The Story That Never Was. It is a detailed example of the fatal attraction between girl and horse, a tale of loss and love and growth, and a lesson to us all about the power of greed and the inevitability of fate...
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I heard a neigh. Oh, such a brisk and melodious neigh as that was! My very heart leaped with delight at the sound. (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

If Hurricane Katrina was a dart sailing perfectly toward its target, then Carousel Farms was part of the bulls-eye. Seven feet of water wrapped around the large farm like an anaconda, crushing its victim and then moving on. I won't get in to the details of that awful storm, but I will tell you that the Big K was comparatively merciful on Carousel Farms. Walking through the deserted, rain-rotted stalls was an out-of-body experience. The mud sucked at my feet like quicksand, and the smell of saturated cedar and mold stung my nose. The paddock fences had been stripped of their paint, and in the rush to evacuate the horses, there hadn't been enough time to move the jumps inside; standards and poles had been demolished, reduced to mere wood chips scattered across the floor of the outdoor ring. I remember thinking, 'It looks as if someone took one giant, stuffed trash bag and dumped it out across the ground.' The whole farm was covered in debris and litter. Still, Carousel Farms had fared well. The buildings' foundations had held, and a mixture of time and hard work was all that was needed to set things right.

In the beginning, I was one of the few riders who returned home, and so I became one of the few riders who actually worked on the barn. The "trainers" and the barn owner, in theory, supervised us, but the lack of true leadership at Carousel Farms is a story I will save for another day. It is also the reason that I chose to change the actual name of that establishment, and most people connected to it, for this blog. I don't want to ruffle any feathers.

However, all in all, it was myself and two of my friends that found ourselves indentured to Donna, the stable owner, and Shannon, her head trainer. I'm not going to say I didn't enjoy it. Regardless of setting or circumstance, spending all day around horses is always something I'm up for. At first, there were only Donna's horses there: a big bay gelding and a chestnut miniature who were kept in one of the paddocks; but as the stalls were repaired, the riding school horses, and eventually some boarders, were brought in.

There was still no place to ride (none of the rings were fully repaired), and the conditions of the barn weren't exactly first class. There were only about half a dozen boarders in a barn built for two hundred, and the owners of those six were never there. In retrospect, this looks bad; but I don't blame any of them for the fact that I showed up every morning to help paint their barn and muck out their stalls and water their horses. It was such a disorienting time for everyone. They had no other option for their horses, and they had much more pressing things to worry about. My own house was fine, and my school wouldn't reopen for another few weeks; I was happy to help.

But the amount of work was overwhelming. I was exhausted by lunch, and I would still have five or so more hours to go. All day long, it was irritated horses and painting fences and picking up other people's trash. Sometimes, neither Donna nor Shannon would show up, and even when they both did, they weren't much help. Shannon was on the phone all day, trying to convince former boarders who had evacuated to come back, and Donna's eyes were full of the glorious vision she painted for herself. "Oh, we're going to come back bigger and better. We'll get a little coffee shop over there that will look out at the ring and we'll have a tack shop over there...' Meanwhile, there were horses who couldn't be exercised because we had no ring and not enough turnout space.

It was frustrating and monotonous. But one evening, as my friends and I loaded a shipment of hay into an empty stall, I heard a soft, melodious nicker that broke that monotony. I looked up to see the bright red face of a horse peering at me through the bars of the adjacent stall. His ears were perfectly pricked triangles above his head, and his nostrils quivered as I met his gaze. His brown eyes were intelligent and warm with a kind of light that I'd never seen before. I didn't know who he was or even what he was; I couldn't see past his face. But there was something about him that struck me.

Maybe you're here for a reason, he seemed to say.

And I agreed with him. In that moment I knew: I had to have this horse; I had to make him mine.


[To be continued]

Part Two