Just Buy the Damn Horse
It’s likely you have no idea that the very first love of my life was a horse. Her name was Mighty Girlish (I didn’t name her). She was a dark bay quarter horse beauty, trained on barrels and inexplicably landed as my lesson horse when I was in 6th grade – right around the time I was starting to learn how to ride in an English saddle and do some small jumping patterns. I fell in love with her and the day my parents signed papers to make her a permanent part of the family – she threw me hard into a metal fence – telling me firmly she would NOT ride under an English saddle. Still have a scar on my back from that moment in time. She did more than smash my helmet and scar my skin – she broke my heart, she shattered my nerves, she shook my trust. But she never shook the magical hold horses have always had over me since my earliest memories. It took many shaky, nausea-riddled (as in – I used to puke) riding sessions to finally feel confident enough to get back up onto a horse. Even then I think I understood the spiritual and emotional significance of literally getting back in the saddle. I refused to be afraid, even though I was terrified. I refused to give up on this deep current of love for horses that has just sort of, always, been there. Mom used to drive me to lessons, hold my hair when I puked, reminded me we could just go home, then stood outside the round pen biting her nails as I crawled back on and eventually, finally, actually started riding, jumping, competing.
But I never forgot about Mighty. She was The One That Got Away. I think I tried to ride her two times after she threw me. It always felt like a failure, rejection, defeat. And I realize how ludicrous this all sounds, pointless, stupid even. But for a young girl who always felt she could talk to animals, this was the ultimate, unresolved betrayal.
I rode a little through high school. Tried to carve out time for lessons during college but then it all just sort of slipped away like so many of the dreams we stop nurturing when life, bills, traffic, grocery shopping and laundry get in the way. Yes, we finally moved to a farm where my unacknowledged horse dreams could potentially be realized, but I tried to ignore them. BECAUSE WHO REALLY NEEDS A HORSE?! I was an adult now – for goddssake. I was starting a business, had two babies and too many demands of my time and energy to somehow divide and conquer, spreading myself thin as cellophane.
But then I met two women, childhood friends who used to ride together, both who grew up to have dairies (one commercially). We casually reminisced about horses. And finally Rachael, the friend who owns the incredible Lost Peacock Creamery in Olympia, WA – went out and brought home some horses. Just like that. She just…she just did it. Why? How? We were both mothers of young children, scraping together the energy and resources to operate goat dairies. It was LUDICROUS! I said “why are you doing this, don’t you have enough on your plate?!” But she was experiencing the loss of her father, she was in the midst of the raw turmoil of watching life slow and end.
“Jenna,” she said then, as I raised questions and concerns – probably more from jealousy than actual concern, “Life is short. So I’m buying the damn horse.” She earned the perspective to be speaking the truth.
It’s been about a year now, I think, since that time and since then I’ve seen how it’s transformed her ability to cope with much of what ails us, has provided an outlet into which she can plug her frustrations and anxieties. All the buried romance that used to surround my childhood obsessions have slowly resurfaced. I finally decided to let them.
When we first moved to the land we met and became good friends with a neighbor named Dwayne (pronounced “Dee-you-waayyyne”) who was a cowboy without cows, often on horseback, cigarette precariously balanced off the edge of his bottom lip. He was (is) an incredible person who seemed larger than life, more caricature than character, who embodied the old fashioned friendliness that the phrase “Texas southern hospitality” might conjure. He let us ride his horses, Chocolate and Robin, until moving away, and Jer and I joked then that someday we’d get horses “har har.” He was kidding. I laughed back, wondering if he caught the tremble of hope in my voice.
Now we’ve got the twins. We’ve got the dairy. We’ve got no time. But I’ve told him these stories of Rachael and her horses, and he’s watched my patience and calm wither and fade these past three years. Twin children and a goat dairy have the effect of sandpaper on your soul. I am in a perpetual state of panic and anxiety. I do not, I never, I can’t remember how – to relax. So over the past year, he has dropped hints about maybe actually thinking about horses. And over the past few months we finally spoke seriously, the reality being that they are difficult to justify unless we can find two that are safe enough for us to ride with our children WITH THE GOATS IN TOW to take on our very important goat walks and to check fences. To experience this stupendously beautiful land the way the gods intended (from horseback).
So I said well, if we do it this year, it has to be during my off season so I can focus on them, get them settled. And inexplicably, he said “Ok.”
I spent the past few weeks on a furious search, hoping to locate two that might be a good fit so they would be in place and ready to bring home in early Dec, just as our season ends. For the first time IN THREE YEARS (THREE. YEARS) the simple process of searching, and asking questions, and researching something not related to the dairy has made me feel light – feel joy. It has been that long. Which is to say, all the folks who comment on how I’m “living the dream” – thank you! Thank you. But the fancied up, filtered version, with the edges smudged clean, that you see on social media, is not the reality of small business ownership on a farm. There, I said it.
This is all a very long lead-up to the news that, if all goes as planned, we will welcome two horses in early December – an 8 year old appendix gelding and a 12 year old quarter horse mare. Both used for children’s riding in ranch settings with livestock and dogs. Both available on a trial period, transparent medical histories, from owners who I already feel have taken me under their wings. I cannot justify these adoptions beyond the light they have already brought to me these past many days. But isn’t that enough? It is to Rachael and our friend Kayla (the other friend with a background in horses and dairy) who I have shared every single horse prospect, obsessing over details, asking millions of questions until Rachael finally said to me, as she’d said to herself, “Life is short. Buy the damn horse.”
So I did.
It’s a little thing in the grand scheme, but maybe it isn’t? What I do know for sure, what I physically felt after leaving the farm where I left a signed contract and deposit for the gorgeous gelding, was the 10 year old girl who still walks around inside my boots smile through tears she can’t stop, whispering thank you.
