(no subject)
I was six years old when I first wanted to start riding horses. I had been influenced by my baby sitter who used to tell me tales of her endeavors on horse back at riding camp. I had always had a love for animals, and I thought that horses were magnificent creatures. Sadly, my mother didn’t share the same views. “No, Aidan, you can’t take riding lessons,” she’d always say to me when I asked her. My mother had a fierce fear of horses and was not about to put her child upon one. Finally, I opened my eyes and went in the back door.
“Daddy,” I said inching up to the couch where my father was laying, reading a book.
“Yes, dear?” he asked me not looking up.
“Can I take riding lessons?”
He smiled. “That’s fine with me, go ask your mother.”
My heart sank. I had to ask mommy. I ran into the kitchen like I always did, making sure I slammed on the brakes before I hit my face off the counter again and looked up sadly at my mother who was scrubbing away at the dishes.
“Mommy,” I said putting on a pouty face. “Daddy said that I can take riding lessons if you’ll let me.”
“Your father said that?” she asked, frowning.
“Yes he did.”
“Fine, I’ll call a stable tomorrow.”
I figured that my mother would hope that I would forget that I wanted to take riding lessons and put off calling, so I made sure to ask her the next day if she had called.
“Yes, I did. We’re going to go to see the place tonight.”
My eyes lit up excitedly with the news and I went in search of my favorite outfit to wear. “I wonder if they’ll ask me to ride,” I mused to myself as I got dressed.
Later, when my mother, brother, and I all piled into the car, my mother said to me, “If we can’t find the place we’re turning around and coming home.”
Of course she got us lost on purpose. I was sure of it. I would not let her give up as we winded our way through south park, taking the most random roads she could think of. Finally my brother spotted it. “There it is!” he shouted. Our we pulled the little blue Honda into the drive way. I could feel butterflies in my stomach as the road stretched out in front of us. And then the large wooden barn began to rise before my eyes. I was bewildered at the sight of the facility.
My mother parked the car and I leapt out of the back seat anxiously waiting for my mother who was taking her good old time of getting out. She finally joined me and I bounced my way in the barn looking at all the horses that were trotting around on the rail. I wanted to join them so badly. That’s when I heard a voice that would be my guiding force for the rest of my years to come.
“Aidan, this is Mrs. Dasta, the woman that will be giving you lessons,” my mother introduced us.
“Call me Sharen,” she said in her gruff voice.
My mother frowned. She didn’t like me calling adults by their first names. I just smiled and looked around at all that I could be doing. My mother set up a lesson for me and then dragged me out of the barn. I was ready to begin.
****
When I was eight, I was still extremely addicted to horses. I was invited by my barn friends to go down and watch them at a local horse show because I did not have my own horse to ride. This was going to be one of the first horse shows I ever saw, except for the ones on TV, and I was the most excited kid in the world.
I jumped out of bed at seven when my alarm rang. I hadn’t slept all night due to my excitement of going to the show. I put on my favorite riding pants and a plain white shirt, one that my mother had designated as a “barn shirt,” and bounced my way down stairs.
“Ready to go yet mommy?” I asked putting on my boots.
“Did you have breakfast?”
I thought about it. No, I hadn’t had breakfast but I needed to get out of there. “Yes,” I said lying.
My mother new that I wasn’t telling the truth. “Don’t lie to me or you won’t go at all. Go get some breakfast.”
I grabbed a chair and propped it up against the side of the refrigerator. I climbed up on the wobbly wooden chair and grabbed the first cereal I could find with my little hand. I started eating the Raisin Bran right from the box in an attempt to leave earlier.
“What are you doing?! Use a bowl!” My mother exclaimed to me.
I sighed wearily and grabbed a bowl and some milk and sat down to breakfast. I wolfed it down and then grabbed my mother’s hand and pulled her down to the car. Of course my mother was never the fastest driver, and I waited impatiently as she pulled the little blue Honda out of the garage. I leapt into the car and told her to step on it, and she promptly went twenty miles per hour down every road.
We finally found our way down to the horse show ring at South Park. It was a bright, sunny day in the middle of April and my stomach jumped excitedly when I caught sight of all the horses being schooled in the big ring. I watched every person as they trotted and canted around figuring that each one was so much superior to me. They were my gods. I wanted nothing more to be like them.
My friend Alanna, the owner of the stable’s granddaughter, was to ride a little brown school pony named Lady. I was jealous because I took lessons on Lady, but I knew that since Alanna’s grandfather owned the farm she was always going to get to show her.
I sat down at the show with my friends Robin and Alanna and watched as the older girls at the barn went into Pleasure classes and Equitation. An older girl named Natalie, who rode an evil pony named Peanut, took me around the show grounds telling me about horse shows. I looked around and caught sight of a pretty green ribbon hanging off the side of someone’s mirror on their car.
“That’s a pretty ribbon,” I said.
“You don’t want that, that’s sixth. If anything, you want a blue one, that’s first.”
Natalie walked back to the arena in just enough time to see Alanna going into her first class. I was eager to see what the kids were going to have to do. Alanna walked and trotted very well, but there was something about Alanna’s demeanor that didn’t look right. Then the judge asked for a canter. Lady took off, almost losing Alanna, and tore around the ring.
“Everyone, HALT! HALT!” the announcer blared over the loudspeaker. Everyone in the arena stopped, except for Alanna who just kept running around the arena.
“Pull her into a circle!” Sharen yelled, but Alanna could barely move. She just kept squeezing the pony that just kept running.
Finally, the pony got tired and just stopped, and Alanna was excused from the class. She came out of the ring crying and jumped off as soon as she could.
“I don’t want to show anymore,” she sobbed, and her mother hugged her. I stood back, holding little, old Lady, just watching the entire scene.
Then Sharen looked at me. “You want to take Lady in a class?”
I looked around. Was she talking to me?
“Aidan, do you want to take Lady in a class?” she asked again.
“I-I would love to!” I exclaimed.
Then the race was on to get me dressed before the Walk-Trot Equitation class, which they put me in, instead of the Canter class that Lady was already entered. I needed a riding jacket, boots, because mine weren’t the right kind, and a Velvet Helmet.
I wore Robin’s boots, which were two sizes too small, Alanna’s jacket that fit rather well, and Natalie’s helmet that was just a little too big. I was as ready as I was going to be.
They tied Alanna’s number around my waist and led me up to the in-gate. “Just go in and have fun,” Sharen said to me, and I beamed proudly that I was about to join the gods of the show ring.
My mother, on the other hand, was hyperventilating in the car as she watched my through the windshield. She was still terrified of horses and basically had a heart attack every time I got on the back of one.
I sat on top of Lady proudly as she carried me around the sand arena. I looked around at all the people that surrounded the fence, watching me, waiting for me to do something great. “You are now being judged at the walk,” the announcer said. He waited a few seconds. “Trot please, all trot.”
I kicked Lady and she bounced into her short, choppy trot. I posted along happily, I couldn’t believe that I was actually in the show ring.
After a few minutes and reversing direction we were called to line up in the middle of the ring. There had been eight kids in my class, some western, and some English. I figured that I wasn’t going to get a ribbon. They called first place. It was a pretty little blonde girl, perched high in her western saddle on a beautiful Palomino. The the announcer called out second. “Shady Lady and…Adrian…Moshawa.”
That was me! Barely audible and butchered, but it was me! I beamed proudly and walked out of the line up to get my ribbon. It was a beautiful crimson with a button in the middle that had a horse head on it. Near the bottom it said, “Second Place.” I was so happy I almost cried.
My mother should have cried that day too, because after that first horse show I was bitten by the show bug. Horse shows are like potato chips, once you do one, you can’t stop.
I had been showing for about four years when I went to my first big horse show. The Hartwood Show Jumping Festival was always something that I went to watch. Everyone always wanted to see the Grand Prix, but I could care less, I wanted to watch the Hunters. Competing in hunters and Jumpers was really different. Hunters are judged on their way of going, soundness, and manners. In jumpers, the horses were judged on how fast they were and if they knocked over any rails. Jumpers always looked to crazy to me. I was more interested in the simple grace of having a horse lope around the arena and take large obstacles as though it was nothing.
I was quite psyched when I found out that Sharen wanted to take us to Hartwood. It was one of the biggest shows in the country and people came from all over the country. Of course, I figured that I would be crushed beneath the competition in my division Short Stirrup. I was going to take D.J., Sharen’s trusty old gray gelding who I had been leasin for the past two years. We had minor success in the show ring together, at small rated shows, and local schooling shows, but nothing ever of this magnitude.
I went out to the barn every day and practiced for the show. One of these days I was asked to ride R.C. a jumpy young thoroughbred off the race track. I had ridden him on other occasions and we usually got along rather well.
I put him in the cross ties and began to put on his medicine boots to protect his legs. After I did so, I promptly placed my saddle on his back and went to put on the girth. As soon as the girth touched his belly, R.C. backed up quickly, and I remained by his side, used to his fidgeting in the cross ties. Before I could buckle the girth on the next notch, R.C. reared up, throwing me into the air like a rag doll, and I hit my head against the wall. The last thing that I remembered was seeing his two hooves hovering above me.
When I woke up, I was lying in a spread eagle position in the middle of the aisle. I raised my head and saw R.C. laying on his side at the bottom of the cross ties. He had broken the two chains that had held him in the upper aisle and they were laying around him.
I shakily got to my feet and R.C. began to get up also. People that had heard the commotion finally came running into the barn to see if I was ok.
“Aidan!” Sharen yelled. “What happened?”
“He flipped out,” I said quietly, and then a pang of pain ran through my body. I looked at my wrist and it was already a bright purple.
“Go upstairs and get cleaned up,” she told me, and went down to join the children that were holding R.C.
When I got upstairs into the bathroom, I started to cry. Not out of pain or fear, but because I was concered about whether or not I was going to be able to show at Hartwood. “If my wrist is broken,” I sniveled, “I can’t show.”
I wiped my nose and went back downstairs to find that R.C. had a large gash on his front leg and was going to need stitches. That’s when I showed them my wrist.
“Go get a bucket of cold water,” Sharen told Lauren and April, my two best friends. “Then call her mother.”
I was placed on the bench and was told to keep my wrist in the bucket of cold water until my mother came. Lauren and April called my mother and said, “Mary, Aidan had an encounter with the wall… but she’s ok. We put her in a bucket.”
My mother came out to get me and then took me to the hospital to get X-Rays. Luckily nothing was broken.
That weekend, Jena and I trailered the horses up to Hartwood. This was the first time that I was ever going to ride a horse with braids. It was required at A rated shows to braid your horse out of respect of the judges. I just thought that it looked nice.
There were thirty-two riders to go in Short Stirrup, so I knew that I had no chance. I went in for the equitation over fences with nothing in mind and had fun with D.J. We had a good course, but it wasn’t like a miracle had occurred.
We sat through thirty other trips and then waited for the results. They called out the first place number, and they were supposed to jog their horse into the ring and receive their ribbon. Then they called the second place. Screaming came from every direction. They had called my number. I was so shocked and surprised I didn’t know what to do. Sharen pushed me and I led D.J. into the ring. I was so happy that I was crying when the ribbon lady handed me my beautiful red ribbon.
I got back on D.J. and went into the Short Stirrup equitation on the flat class. That meant that we didn’t have to jump any fences. I was so proud that I had justed placed over fences that I puffed out my chest, pushed my shoulders back and just beamed as I went around the ring. I guess that I did something right because I got a third in that class. Again, I cried.
I got a seventh in the regular division. That wasn’t bad considering how many kids were in the class, and I must say that I was one of the happiest kids in the world that day. I was just floating on air.
When I started riding Taz, I was thirteen years old. Taz didn’t get his name because he was an angel. This horse was almost dangerous he was so screwy. His owner was very afraid of him and didn’t have enough time to ride him, so she began looking for a leaser. I was beginning to out grow D.J. so Sharen suggested that I should start riding Taz.
I agreed, very afraid of the animal, but willing to get a chance to ride a big thoroughbred on a consistant basis, rather than the small horses that I usually rode. Taz had been stabled at our sister barn, Hunter Cove , where I went out every week to ride Sharen’s other horse Willie, and a young thoroughbred named Ronnie. Taz was always interesting to watch because he had several different tricks to try and throw you off.
I began riding Taz instead of Willie and Sharen wanted nothing more than for me to start competing in the Children’s Division at horse shows. Those were three-foot fences for juniors that hadn’t reached their eighteenth birthday. I was very shaky about this because Taz didn’t jump like a normal horse where they rock back, then arch over the fence and then land. No. Taz would approach a fence, leap into the air like a deer, and then try to land with all four feet at the same time.
After working for three years, I finally began to get rid of this on Taz, but he never fully recovered. Every once in awhile when he gets a bad spot he may take the fence like that, but he’s much better than he ever was.
Since I had been doing so wonderfully on Taz, I wanted to go to the Western Pennsylvania Professional Horseman’s Horse Show in Harlansburg. All of the best horses from Ohio and Western Pennsylvania came to this show to try and get year end points for the Professional Horseman’s Association. I wanted to take Taz and do Children’s. The only catch about this show was the fact that we weren’t allowed to school the fences before our classes. This, as always, made me nervous.
I talked to Sharen about it and we decided that I should set up a couple three foot fences for my lesson so that Taz would get used to starting out at three foot. Now, I never explained my fear of three foot that I had at that time. Due to Taz’s pop-up, which is what we call his jumping like a deer, I had been tossed around and even once or twice thrown off over fences because of it. This gave me a great fear of jumping Taz higher fences, because he was much more unpredictable. Also, three foot may not look that high to people, but when you’re placed on the back of an unpredictable animal hurtling at a solid fence three feet high, you begin to respect those fences.
“Daddy,” I said inching up to the couch where my father was laying, reading a book.
“Yes, dear?” he asked me not looking up.
“Can I take riding lessons?”
He smiled. “That’s fine with me, go ask your mother.”
My heart sank. I had to ask mommy. I ran into the kitchen like I always did, making sure I slammed on the brakes before I hit my face off the counter again and looked up sadly at my mother who was scrubbing away at the dishes.
“Mommy,” I said putting on a pouty face. “Daddy said that I can take riding lessons if you’ll let me.”
“Your father said that?” she asked, frowning.
“Yes he did.”
“Fine, I’ll call a stable tomorrow.”
I figured that my mother would hope that I would forget that I wanted to take riding lessons and put off calling, so I made sure to ask her the next day if she had called.
“Yes, I did. We’re going to go to see the place tonight.”
My eyes lit up excitedly with the news and I went in search of my favorite outfit to wear. “I wonder if they’ll ask me to ride,” I mused to myself as I got dressed.
Later, when my mother, brother, and I all piled into the car, my mother said to me, “If we can’t find the place we’re turning around and coming home.”
Of course she got us lost on purpose. I was sure of it. I would not let her give up as we winded our way through south park, taking the most random roads she could think of. Finally my brother spotted it. “There it is!” he shouted. Our we pulled the little blue Honda into the drive way. I could feel butterflies in my stomach as the road stretched out in front of us. And then the large wooden barn began to rise before my eyes. I was bewildered at the sight of the facility.
My mother parked the car and I leapt out of the back seat anxiously waiting for my mother who was taking her good old time of getting out. She finally joined me and I bounced my way in the barn looking at all the horses that were trotting around on the rail. I wanted to join them so badly. That’s when I heard a voice that would be my guiding force for the rest of my years to come.
“Aidan, this is Mrs. Dasta, the woman that will be giving you lessons,” my mother introduced us.
“Call me Sharen,” she said in her gruff voice.
My mother frowned. She didn’t like me calling adults by their first names. I just smiled and looked around at all that I could be doing. My mother set up a lesson for me and then dragged me out of the barn. I was ready to begin.
****
When I was eight, I was still extremely addicted to horses. I was invited by my barn friends to go down and watch them at a local horse show because I did not have my own horse to ride. This was going to be one of the first horse shows I ever saw, except for the ones on TV, and I was the most excited kid in the world.
I jumped out of bed at seven when my alarm rang. I hadn’t slept all night due to my excitement of going to the show. I put on my favorite riding pants and a plain white shirt, one that my mother had designated as a “barn shirt,” and bounced my way down stairs.
“Ready to go yet mommy?” I asked putting on my boots.
“Did you have breakfast?”
I thought about it. No, I hadn’t had breakfast but I needed to get out of there. “Yes,” I said lying.
My mother new that I wasn’t telling the truth. “Don’t lie to me or you won’t go at all. Go get some breakfast.”
I grabbed a chair and propped it up against the side of the refrigerator. I climbed up on the wobbly wooden chair and grabbed the first cereal I could find with my little hand. I started eating the Raisin Bran right from the box in an attempt to leave earlier.
“What are you doing?! Use a bowl!” My mother exclaimed to me.
I sighed wearily and grabbed a bowl and some milk and sat down to breakfast. I wolfed it down and then grabbed my mother’s hand and pulled her down to the car. Of course my mother was never the fastest driver, and I waited impatiently as she pulled the little blue Honda out of the garage. I leapt into the car and told her to step on it, and she promptly went twenty miles per hour down every road.
We finally found our way down to the horse show ring at South Park. It was a bright, sunny day in the middle of April and my stomach jumped excitedly when I caught sight of all the horses being schooled in the big ring. I watched every person as they trotted and canted around figuring that each one was so much superior to me. They were my gods. I wanted nothing more to be like them.
My friend Alanna, the owner of the stable’s granddaughter, was to ride a little brown school pony named Lady. I was jealous because I took lessons on Lady, but I knew that since Alanna’s grandfather owned the farm she was always going to get to show her.
I sat down at the show with my friends Robin and Alanna and watched as the older girls at the barn went into Pleasure classes and Equitation. An older girl named Natalie, who rode an evil pony named Peanut, took me around the show grounds telling me about horse shows. I looked around and caught sight of a pretty green ribbon hanging off the side of someone’s mirror on their car.
“That’s a pretty ribbon,” I said.
“You don’t want that, that’s sixth. If anything, you want a blue one, that’s first.”
Natalie walked back to the arena in just enough time to see Alanna going into her first class. I was eager to see what the kids were going to have to do. Alanna walked and trotted very well, but there was something about Alanna’s demeanor that didn’t look right. Then the judge asked for a canter. Lady took off, almost losing Alanna, and tore around the ring.
“Everyone, HALT! HALT!” the announcer blared over the loudspeaker. Everyone in the arena stopped, except for Alanna who just kept running around the arena.
“Pull her into a circle!” Sharen yelled, but Alanna could barely move. She just kept squeezing the pony that just kept running.
Finally, the pony got tired and just stopped, and Alanna was excused from the class. She came out of the ring crying and jumped off as soon as she could.
“I don’t want to show anymore,” she sobbed, and her mother hugged her. I stood back, holding little, old Lady, just watching the entire scene.
Then Sharen looked at me. “You want to take Lady in a class?”
I looked around. Was she talking to me?
“Aidan, do you want to take Lady in a class?” she asked again.
“I-I would love to!” I exclaimed.
Then the race was on to get me dressed before the Walk-Trot Equitation class, which they put me in, instead of the Canter class that Lady was already entered. I needed a riding jacket, boots, because mine weren’t the right kind, and a Velvet Helmet.
I wore Robin’s boots, which were two sizes too small, Alanna’s jacket that fit rather well, and Natalie’s helmet that was just a little too big. I was as ready as I was going to be.
They tied Alanna’s number around my waist and led me up to the in-gate. “Just go in and have fun,” Sharen said to me, and I beamed proudly that I was about to join the gods of the show ring.
My mother, on the other hand, was hyperventilating in the car as she watched my through the windshield. She was still terrified of horses and basically had a heart attack every time I got on the back of one.
I sat on top of Lady proudly as she carried me around the sand arena. I looked around at all the people that surrounded the fence, watching me, waiting for me to do something great. “You are now being judged at the walk,” the announcer said. He waited a few seconds. “Trot please, all trot.”
I kicked Lady and she bounced into her short, choppy trot. I posted along happily, I couldn’t believe that I was actually in the show ring.
After a few minutes and reversing direction we were called to line up in the middle of the ring. There had been eight kids in my class, some western, and some English. I figured that I wasn’t going to get a ribbon. They called first place. It was a pretty little blonde girl, perched high in her western saddle on a beautiful Palomino. The the announcer called out second. “Shady Lady and…Adrian…Moshawa.”
That was me! Barely audible and butchered, but it was me! I beamed proudly and walked out of the line up to get my ribbon. It was a beautiful crimson with a button in the middle that had a horse head on it. Near the bottom it said, “Second Place.” I was so happy I almost cried.
My mother should have cried that day too, because after that first horse show I was bitten by the show bug. Horse shows are like potato chips, once you do one, you can’t stop.
I had been showing for about four years when I went to my first big horse show. The Hartwood Show Jumping Festival was always something that I went to watch. Everyone always wanted to see the Grand Prix, but I could care less, I wanted to watch the Hunters. Competing in hunters and Jumpers was really different. Hunters are judged on their way of going, soundness, and manners. In jumpers, the horses were judged on how fast they were and if they knocked over any rails. Jumpers always looked to crazy to me. I was more interested in the simple grace of having a horse lope around the arena and take large obstacles as though it was nothing.
I was quite psyched when I found out that Sharen wanted to take us to Hartwood. It was one of the biggest shows in the country and people came from all over the country. Of course, I figured that I would be crushed beneath the competition in my division Short Stirrup. I was going to take D.J., Sharen’s trusty old gray gelding who I had been leasin for the past two years. We had minor success in the show ring together, at small rated shows, and local schooling shows, but nothing ever of this magnitude.
I went out to the barn every day and practiced for the show. One of these days I was asked to ride R.C. a jumpy young thoroughbred off the race track. I had ridden him on other occasions and we usually got along rather well.
I put him in the cross ties and began to put on his medicine boots to protect his legs. After I did so, I promptly placed my saddle on his back and went to put on the girth. As soon as the girth touched his belly, R.C. backed up quickly, and I remained by his side, used to his fidgeting in the cross ties. Before I could buckle the girth on the next notch, R.C. reared up, throwing me into the air like a rag doll, and I hit my head against the wall. The last thing that I remembered was seeing his two hooves hovering above me.
When I woke up, I was lying in a spread eagle position in the middle of the aisle. I raised my head and saw R.C. laying on his side at the bottom of the cross ties. He had broken the two chains that had held him in the upper aisle and they were laying around him.
I shakily got to my feet and R.C. began to get up also. People that had heard the commotion finally came running into the barn to see if I was ok.
“Aidan!” Sharen yelled. “What happened?”
“He flipped out,” I said quietly, and then a pang of pain ran through my body. I looked at my wrist and it was already a bright purple.
“Go upstairs and get cleaned up,” she told me, and went down to join the children that were holding R.C.
When I got upstairs into the bathroom, I started to cry. Not out of pain or fear, but because I was concered about whether or not I was going to be able to show at Hartwood. “If my wrist is broken,” I sniveled, “I can’t show.”
I wiped my nose and went back downstairs to find that R.C. had a large gash on his front leg and was going to need stitches. That’s when I showed them my wrist.
“Go get a bucket of cold water,” Sharen told Lauren and April, my two best friends. “Then call her mother.”
I was placed on the bench and was told to keep my wrist in the bucket of cold water until my mother came. Lauren and April called my mother and said, “Mary, Aidan had an encounter with the wall… but she’s ok. We put her in a bucket.”
My mother came out to get me and then took me to the hospital to get X-Rays. Luckily nothing was broken.
That weekend, Jena and I trailered the horses up to Hartwood. This was the first time that I was ever going to ride a horse with braids. It was required at A rated shows to braid your horse out of respect of the judges. I just thought that it looked nice.
There were thirty-two riders to go in Short Stirrup, so I knew that I had no chance. I went in for the equitation over fences with nothing in mind and had fun with D.J. We had a good course, but it wasn’t like a miracle had occurred.
We sat through thirty other trips and then waited for the results. They called out the first place number, and they were supposed to jog their horse into the ring and receive their ribbon. Then they called the second place. Screaming came from every direction. They had called my number. I was so shocked and surprised I didn’t know what to do. Sharen pushed me and I led D.J. into the ring. I was so happy that I was crying when the ribbon lady handed me my beautiful red ribbon.
I got back on D.J. and went into the Short Stirrup equitation on the flat class. That meant that we didn’t have to jump any fences. I was so proud that I had justed placed over fences that I puffed out my chest, pushed my shoulders back and just beamed as I went around the ring. I guess that I did something right because I got a third in that class. Again, I cried.
I got a seventh in the regular division. That wasn’t bad considering how many kids were in the class, and I must say that I was one of the happiest kids in the world that day. I was just floating on air.
When I started riding Taz, I was thirteen years old. Taz didn’t get his name because he was an angel. This horse was almost dangerous he was so screwy. His owner was very afraid of him and didn’t have enough time to ride him, so she began looking for a leaser. I was beginning to out grow D.J. so Sharen suggested that I should start riding Taz.
I agreed, very afraid of the animal, but willing to get a chance to ride a big thoroughbred on a consistant basis, rather than the small horses that I usually rode. Taz had been stabled at our sister barn, Hunter Cove , where I went out every week to ride Sharen’s other horse Willie, and a young thoroughbred named Ronnie. Taz was always interesting to watch because he had several different tricks to try and throw you off.
I began riding Taz instead of Willie and Sharen wanted nothing more than for me to start competing in the Children’s Division at horse shows. Those were three-foot fences for juniors that hadn’t reached their eighteenth birthday. I was very shaky about this because Taz didn’t jump like a normal horse where they rock back, then arch over the fence and then land. No. Taz would approach a fence, leap into the air like a deer, and then try to land with all four feet at the same time.
After working for three years, I finally began to get rid of this on Taz, but he never fully recovered. Every once in awhile when he gets a bad spot he may take the fence like that, but he’s much better than he ever was.
Since I had been doing so wonderfully on Taz, I wanted to go to the Western Pennsylvania Professional Horseman’s Horse Show in Harlansburg. All of the best horses from Ohio and Western Pennsylvania came to this show to try and get year end points for the Professional Horseman’s Association. I wanted to take Taz and do Children’s. The only catch about this show was the fact that we weren’t allowed to school the fences before our classes. This, as always, made me nervous.
I talked to Sharen about it and we decided that I should set up a couple three foot fences for my lesson so that Taz would get used to starting out at three foot. Now, I never explained my fear of three foot that I had at that time. Due to Taz’s pop-up, which is what we call his jumping like a deer, I had been tossed around and even once or twice thrown off over fences because of it. This gave me a great fear of jumping Taz higher fences, because he was much more unpredictable. Also, three foot may not look that high to people, but when you’re placed on the back of an unpredictable animal hurtling at a solid fence three feet high, you begin to respect those fences.