Connie
About six years ago I was reading the HORSES column in the classifieds in the local paper. I do read the classifieds, and it’s getting worse.* I think it started with horses, but having started I can’t stop. I still read horses. I started reading DOGS the year between the death of the last of the previous generation and the arrival of the hellhounds, but I’m still reading dogs. When we decided to sell the old house I started reading real estate ads because I had to–I was not going to let Peter’s infamous shopping style** anywhere near the search for a new house.*** I’m still reading real estate.† Hey, I’m still reading pianos.††
So, six years ago I was reading the horses column. I was only about six months off the sofa from the eighteen I’d spent there with the previous canine generation and the ME, and a horse was out of the question.††† There never are plausible horses advertised for part share–there are rarely plausible horses advertised for sale, but it does happen‡–but for part share, never. And then there was one. So I went round.
She was at a [stable] yard about halfway between our old village and our new town. It’s a friendly, funky sort of place: everything is bits and bobs but they work. I think Jenny’s horse box is probably eligible for classic-car status. But she has an indoor school and is in the middle of a lot of gorgeous, highly rideable-on countryside. What more could you want?
And the mare was a sweetie. Six years old, and as placid as a six year old horse ever is, not a mean bone in her anywhere, dark bay, Irish draught cross. Not quite sixteen hands but a very large not quite, and not much wither either. Her owner was going off to college and wanted to keep her, so was trying to patch together a way to get her livery covered. I had a lesson once a week and rode her on my own recognisance two other days. As I recall it was a requirement to the deal that us sharers take lessons from Jenny so that she could keep an eye on the mare in the owner’s absence, but that was fine with me: I’d rather be taking lessons. I was a little put off when I found out Jenny’s a show jumper but I liked her at once despite this disability: she’s so straightforward and practical and no weirdness. Weirdness is endemic to the human critter of course but the horse world is especially prone to it. Plus as I said the other day, it turns out Jenny’s the sort of show jumper who understands that it all begins with good flatwork. She had plenty to teach me, especially about bringing on a young, slow-maturing horse. Okay, bragging alert: for whatever reason, I could both hang on to the front end and encourage the rear end to engage and do some work; Jenny said that the mare’s other rider found her heavy going. Well, she was heavy going, but that was just the way she was built. She was fun, she meant well, I enjoyed her. She did not love flatwork however and Jenny suggested jumping as a way to get her interested. So I started jumping again. ‘Seeing a stride’: ugh. But that was fun too, and the mare enjoyed it.
I had to give her up after about a year for a variety of reasons, including never-quite-gone-away ME, the SUNSHINE tour, going to homeopathy college, and selling the old house. The reason I’m not giving her a name is because her story has a sad ending: she died of colic only about a year later.
Meanwhile life had taken me over the way life does, and I have kept thinking about Jenny and her yard, but I hesitated about going round and chatting her up because people with horses must get awfully tired of people without horses chatting them up with an ulterior motive: if there’d been another part share at her yard, I’d've read it in the paper. I thought about her particularly when Hannah was coming over this spring, and asked me if there was anywhere Ruby could ride. But Jenny doesn’t do school horses, just liveries [boarding] and teaching.
Fast-forward to a few weeks ago. Jenny’s yard is also in the middle of prime hellhound-walking territory, and we go past it a lot. I always crane my neck like anything for interesting horses, and inhale sharply, because I love all the horse smells. On this one particular day the hellhounds and I turned down a track that at the bottom would turn into the road past Jenny’s barn. And we saw a horse and rider coming up toward us–and it was Jenny. Jenny herself says she almost never goes for hacks; hasn’t the time for it. But she was getting her latest brought-on-for-sale horse out. If I were in the market, I’d buy him like a shot: dark bay Irish TB [thoroughbred] gelding, and, as TBs go, Jenny says, very laid back. I adore TBs; unfortunately our personalities are too much alike–TBs and I are both very prone to seeing tigers in all available shrubbery–but I keep trying. So we had several minutes’ conversation while she caught me up with who was still at her yard and who wasn’t. Finally I asked, you don’t have any school horses now, I don’t suppose? And she said, no, she didn’t, but she had this nice Connemara mare, and I’d like her, if I wanted to come round some time and try her. . . .
I still can’t get over this. How often does someone wander up to you and just offer you out of the blue use of a really lovely horse? This, by the way, is where the above bragging gets its excuse for being: Connie’s one fault, if you can even call it a fault, is that she needs holding together. She can carry herself perfectly well if you just want to dub around, but she can be pretty spectacular if you hold her together. And it’s true, when she takes hold, you know you’re being taken hold of. But I’ve rarely ridden the self-carriers; they’re out of my league. I’m used to a horse that takes hold, and wants some help from the rider. I don’t mind the weight in my hands: I ring bells. So I imagine my ability to keep the Irish draught mare more or less in one piece occurred to Jenny when I made wistful horse noises at her. It’s still the most astonishing compliment, and a stonking great piece of luck.
* * *
* Everything is getting worse. Like the list of things that I do with my time. And now I’m starting riding again?!
** Walk into first shop. Buy first thing nearest door, because it will do.
*** Or houses, as the case may be.
† Although there is perhaps more excuse for this habit as it necessarily became a trifle entrenched over the two years it took for the present happy state of three-house affairs to occur.
†† I stay away from eBay. Me and eBay? Shudder.
††† There’s also the little matter of what a horse costs. Bell ringing costs £7.50 a year subscription to the local chapter. I could just let the Japanese anemones take over the garden and never buy another plant. And I admit my darling piano set me back a bit but that’s a one off. She now costs two visits a year from the tuner in perpetuity. Tuning a piano costs (roughly) what a visit from the farrier does. The farrier^ comes once a month. And that isn’t even the beginning.
^ Note that Word recognises eBay but does not recognise farrier.
‡ It’s happening now. Jenny is advertising the horse she was riding the day I met her again–and if I can’t have him, he would be perfect for Ruby. I suggested to Hannah they consider emigrating. Hannah doesn’t seem to be taking me seriously.
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Have fun! :) And what a fun way to burn off those lardy-cake-calories !!
Wow! Pretty lucky that Jenny happened upon you that day. Good! I expect lots of horse stories now. :D
I expect lots of horse stories now.
********** Oh good. Let me know when you’re overcome by the urge to go find a riding school in YOUR area. :)
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I was a little put off when I found out Jenny’s a show jumper but I liked her at once despite this disability
Heh.
‘Seeing a stride’: ugh.
Yeah. Right there with you. My (former due to relocating) trainer banished from her barn any reference having to do with ‘seeing a distance’ because one’s eye is so unreliable and riders get so caught up trying to see something (or the Perfect Distance, which doesn’t exist anyway) that they forget to feel what the horse is doing.
Have fun with Connie!
riders get so caught up trying to see something (or the Perfect Distance, which doesn’t exist anyway) that they forget to feel what the horse is doing.
********* YES. Jenny does talk about seeing a stride, but she talks about it in terms of NOTICING what your HORSE IS DOING and adjusting accordingly.
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What fun to have walked in to this great situation with Jenny and Connie. It sounds ideal, long may it last. How do your hellcritters feel about horses? Or maybe more to the point, how do they feel when you come home smelling of horses? The woman I train with has horses and also gives riding lessons, and my guys always find her even more interesting than usual when she’s come to class from a barn.
Yes, my guys glue themselves to my britches when I come home. :) . . . Completely by the way, a friend of mine has found GEORGE BOOTH T SHIRTS. Do you want me to ask her where?
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Yes!!!! (please please please!!!)
. . . Um. Where are we?
Location, metaphorical or…?
Don’t ask in terms of mental state, cos that “went to the dogs” long since :)
(Maybe that, and a few too many beasts, is why I laugh too much – do you remember that song “They’re coming to take you away, haha”?)
To the funny farm, where life is beautiful all the time and I’ll be HAPPY to see those nice young men in their clean white coats and they’re coming to take me away–!
. . . Yes. I remember. :)
There is entirely not enough TIME in life…. *sigh*
My very best friend is a horse girl, and back in middle school, she taught me how to ride in exchange for helping clean, brush, general slave labor. I loved it. My mother started getting suspicious when I started spending every other week at her house, and when she found out what we were doing, she flipped. My mother has something against large animals… I’ve nerver managed to figure it out.
But horses and I haven’t really happened for a long time since then; I’ve been distracted. Music majors have to practice (on average) about 4 hours a day (this is the off season; once fall comes round it’s upwards of 35 hours a week), if one wants to stay in their studio and pass all their playing exams. On top of that, I have another major in Linguistics. AND an art minor, which has kept me elbow deep in clay and/or singeing my eyelashes off blowing glass, or casting bronze, or whatever it is I’m doing that week. Sometime in between that, I like to go camping and hiking and boating and all that outdoorsy stuff. And I go to the gym. And I have friends. *sigh* I had to give up my garden and my dog when I moved out of my parent’s house into college dorms. Maybe eventually, if I ever get to move into a real house somewhere (like when I have a stable JOB0), a garden and a dog and horses will come back.
I *like* hearing that other people live complicated lives. :) If it’s any comfort, I ENVY you the *necessity* of all those hours practising your music.
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I always find it comforting to know that pple have lives that are just as crazy as mine. =) Yes, my life is pretty crazy, but I am one of those people who *hate* downtime for too long. A day of sleeping in is fine and dandy, but after that, I’m ready for my 32 hour days again. Consequently, this summer and I aren’t getting along too well. =P
I love the time I spend practicing. I love practicing in general, though usually, by the end either my hands and arms (for percussion) or my face and arms (for trumpet) are about ready to fall off in protest. No, it’s not the fact that I have to practice for all those hours, it’s looking up at the clock and seeing that 4 hours have gone by and you wish you could stay more but there are about 80 gadjillion other things to do and the sun is already going down. And then the marathon continues.
it’s looking up at the clock and seeing that 4 hours have gone by and you wish you could stay more but there are about 80 gadjillion other things to do and the sun is already going down. And then the marathon continues.
** Sigh. I’m there. I’m EXACTLY there. And don’t you hate stoppng something when you’re really rolling? I had to do that today, composing. Grrrrr.
Sounds wonderful. I’m so glad to hear that you’re taking lessons again, and enjoying it so much. Have a wonderful time!
(And in the interest of following Peter’s instructions: Get lots of sleep! Have lovely romps with the hellhounds! Eat well! May you have success in the international phone calls. I send my sympathy; normally I never even bothered when just staying in hotels [both because of the cost and because of the frustration factor you pointed out so well], but I’ve made international phone calls from a variety of other locations, and it is a pain. Your blog community is behind you.)
Your blog community is behind you.)
Thank you! :)
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******** I still can’t get over this. How often does someone wander up to you and just offer you out of the blue use of a really lovely horse?
I love stories of coincidence upon coincidence with a happy outcome :) Just goes to show, there IS magic abroad, maybe we just don’t notice it quietly working around us…
Now let’s hope fate is in mind to let me KEEP it.
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Will keep fingers crossed and candles lit :) Connie sounds perfect (From a connemara/ID fan)
Are there photos of the current incarnation? By the way, how do you manage to keep a HORSE in BIRMINGHAM? (If it’s Birmingham. But I thought you were in a CITY.)
I live in Birmingham, she lives in greenbelt. Big dream to be able to look out of my kitchen window and see horse grazing, but I’m so lucky to be able to have horses in my life (so not many complaints :)
I’m getting hordes of photos lined up for when I move back from Dino computer to 21century one (this week with luck, altho the day I handed it in for repair, one of the 2 and a half tech guys went AWOL – what can I say..!)
When I got current pony, it was in last year of first pony’s life (she was 25). The week I lost my first pony (who I had 21 years) we had a fun christmas dressage competition, so I carried on altho sore in spirit. Caroline (pony 2) was just 4, 6 months backed and we were the Irish branch of the Spanish Riding school. I tied 3 or 4 baloons to her head, put advertising on a giant rug over her back and off we went…Lol. Somewhere it’s on tape, so when I can I’ll put it up.
Plus the day we went out to raise funds for comic relief, with pony wearing car-sized red nose me and 2 poodles wearing small red noses – I have a photo of that somewhere…
That was a heck of a PATIENT PONY.
I have this fantasy that when I’m too old to ride I’ll have a big field of retirees that are too old to be ridden and we’ll just all hang out together and go for gentle, limping walks around our vast estate. :)
I’ve been lurking for a while in Minnesota thoroughly enjoying your posts but had to comment on this one. I’ve been horse mad ever since my Mom put me on a pony’s back at age three. I’ve always had fantasies of galloping across big green fields and roaming with my horse. I’ve been able to do that with my Arabian and when I retired him this year, due to leg problems, I found the place you described above, about 250 acres with large fields and all sorts of retired and young horses. My boy thinks he has already died and gone to heaven.
And me, well running across those fields was incredible but with two young kids I’m finding that walking him around and running my hands though his mane in the late afternoon is just as much my kind of heaven as well.
Welcome back to the addiction that horses present!
Thank you! I’m having a LOVELY time! :)
Sounds idyllic. Can I bring a couple of old bullies who can gamble round with any hounds, before pottering after us as we wander along with equines…?
WHAT sounds idyllic? Please remember that back here in admin you can’t go directly to the source of a comment, you have to wade through the whole thread. And I don’t.
Anyway, probably, yes. :) Well-socialised, dog-friendly bullies, please.
Reading this takes me back to the days when every available wall surface (and a few non-wall surfaces) of my bedroom was covered in horse photographs, and when I read every available horse book in the library, and kept trying to convince my poor parents that a horse in our suburban backyard would simply mean less mowing. They didn’t buy it, and we never had any kind of money for lessons, so my experiences were severely limited to the sadly rare visits to my aunt’s home in East Texas, before she decided (when I was about 12) that keeping horses was too expensive. A very horse-mad little girl, with absolutely no horse skills, still lives in a dusty back cupboard of my soul. Hmmm…
…the hmmm comes because I’m realizing now (in that “thunk” upside the head kind of realization) that one of my voice student’s dad’s owns a barn and riding school. Hmmm…perhaps lesson trading would be an option?
Thanks for the trip to the dusty cupboard! Perhaps it’s time I dusted a bit more thoroughly in there!
Smiles,
JM
The kind of connection with a critter that a good riding school will give you is *terrific* for the soul. Please investigate! :)
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Yes, do it! I, too was a very horse-mad little girl with no access to horses. Then, year before last, I started getting riding lessons for my kids. Then last year I thought, why should they have all the fun while I hang around? Why not learn to ride at 47? So I did. It’s like a dream come true (sometimes, other times it is sweaty and fruistrating and grim perseverance, but horse are so inherently nice – huge, gentle, friendly,amiable…) a bad morning riding beats almost any other use of the time. besides, it does WONDERS for ones figure if one has a desk job. My legs are HOT, and that was never so in my life before. Yay. Incoherent ramblings of delight.
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Yay. Incoherent ramblings of delight
************ Yes. Well done you! :) (whoever you are?)
I don’t know why I came out as anonymous, unless it’s the erasing all cookies and temporary files I got bullied into as part of spring cleaning. Anyway, this was Sarah rambling incoherently.
For some reason the way WordPress/this blog works, I get far more anonymouses than I did back on lj. I’m still *trying* to keep names attached, but I realise it’s frequently a computer glitch.
Ohhh… I don’t want to be an enabler/bad influence on your diminishing time… but… go for it. Connie sounds lovely.
Congratulations! Wish I had a place to ride…and time to ride IN…and a horse. Alas.
Note that Word recognises eBay but does not recognise farrier.
WHAT??? That’s completely bizarre. And wrong. Humph.
I even know computer programmers who ride. Blogmom, for example.
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Oh dear – the words horse, show jumping and colic have made me think of – Milton; and now I feel sad.
But I’m so glad that you’re enjoying your riding. I used rode once (ponies) – a year, I think it was – and I have wonderful memories of it. The closest I came to jumping was with the pole on the ground – and it still rattled the teeth in my head! Luckily Fabian (the pony) was kind and good-natured enough to do all the work – I think it was him I had to thank for getting my “ridborgarmärke” (I have not the foggiest what it might be called in English) too.
I can understand that you can become slightly concerned at your full schedule – but I admire you so much for not letting (the thrice-accursed) ME stop you from doing so much!
Well, I was just interrupted by a paw, looked round into two soulful green eyes, so I’d better see to Sassi (she’s now on the desk…) She’s depressed since my husband’s away – canooing! (Well, he needed the break poor man). Sorry for the too-long post:)9888+0å´p0 That last you can see as a greeting from Sassi – she just passed by the keybord and she’s purring away
Yes, Peter gets home TOMORROW. He rang me at midnight from Chicago, having got the times mixed up–so, wasn’t he glad that I’m a bad girl and always up late! :)
The thing about my schedule and the ME is that it necessarily makes me even more of a dilettante, because I keep having to take time out.
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Yes, of course – you must take care of yourself. Ignoring an illness doesn’t make it go away, unfortunately. (I think I can say I tried that and needless to say it didn’t work!) But you haven’t let it break your spirit and it truly is as you say – you are not your illness.
But needing to take time out – that is what is worrying me about this tour your publishers want you to go on – you’re not giving in, are you? Please don’t – surely your health comes first!
My husband is back, too. He was in the north of Sweden and has had all kinds of weather: hail, snow, “snow-mixed rain” (a direct translation of the Swedish “snöblandat regn”) and “normal” rain. He says though that the scenery was beautiful – but probably because of the weather he didn’t see many animals. He was rather hoping to catch a glimpse of a bear, but no luck. (Just a glimpse! He’s not one of those people who would go up to a bear and try to pet it – he’s not stupid:)!)
Your husband may be braver than I am, but my experience of seeing bears is that the IDEA is more enjoyable than the REALITY. They’re . . . large, you know?
The putative tour is at least delayed till PEGASUS, which is (I hope) about two years. I can worry about it *then*.
Very large – and very dangerous, but still…:)
Your serendipity amazes me! And I will wish hard for fate to continue facilitating the goodness, or it’s not much use, is it?
A few months back I started volunteering again for a therapeutic riding facility (which I haven’t done since I was 14!) and I was so excited! I would get to play with horses, grooming and mucking and getting free riding in exchange for my help.
I got there precisely once. Then there was a blizzard. Then another snowstorm. Followed by a trip out of town. And then gas prices shot up and suddenly there was no way on earth I could afford to take the hour trip even once a week, much less the two or three times I had been planning on. *sigh* Alas, I am horseless again. Serendipity was willing, but fate was a lazy jerk.
Oh, ratbags, I’m so sorry. And the facility is probably hurting too, because all their volunteers are sweating the gas prices. I thought about similarly volunteering during my horseless years, but never got around to it. I was a bit of a coward about the likely hierarchy: I’m not always at my best taking orders.
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I did see a possible conflict between my uncontrollable desire to groom each horse in my charge until it shines like a horsey sun and the facility’s expectation of just three quick swipes with the comb and a brisk onceover with a brush, then tack up and go. :) Plus I prefer to spend the majority of my time with the horses, not the people.
But I’ve been in horse drought for a good many years now, so I was willing to give a little in order to get that warm, earthy equine smell back in my nostrils, you know? Especially for a place that needs help so badly.
Plus I prefer to spend the majority of my time with the horses, not the people.
********* This is always a problem. Generally speaking the only people you want to know are the ones who share this attitude, so you don’t see them . . .
Not sure if this will post, but . . .
I attended the conference at which Peter was honored. He signed a couple of books for me. What a lovely man!
PS–The little hotel refrigerators DID work, but I don’t know if his wsa open or closed. :)
Not sure if this will post, but . . .
******* Well yes! It came through THREE TIMES!!
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*****I still can’t get over this. How often does someone wander up to you and just offer you out of the blue use of a really lovely horse? This, by the way, is where the above bragging gets its excuse for being: Connie’s one fault, if you can even call it a fault, is that she needs holding together. She can carry herself perfectly well if you just want to dub around, but she can be pretty spectacular if you hold her together. And it’s true, when she takes hold, you know you’re being taken hold of. But I’ve rarely ridden the self-carriers; they’re out of my league. I’m used to a horse that takes hold, and wants some help from the rider. I don’t mind the weight in my hands: I ring bells.*****
I do wish you lived close by. There’s no way I can ride my horse very often. I have to pay someone to ride him often enough to keep him fit and healthy given his old injuries. And you’d find him very different from anything you’ve apparently ridden before, because he has to be ridden with practically a slack rein — self-carriage in spades, having been trained in French/Portuguese style dressage. Yes, he’s bigger than what you like, but still….
Judith
Yes, your twenty hand wonder, right? I’d be curious what something that huge is *like*. I *have* ridden the self carriers, I just sit there wondering what I’m *for*. And they are out of my league–I *like* a horse I feel I can **contribute** to. Connie is essentially already ‘made’ but because of her need to be held together, I can do *that*–and encourage her to learn to be lighter. I’m not the world’s most competent rider, but I am *tactful*. I’ve successfully ridden tricky horses that go less well for better riders, just because I give them more benefit of more doubts.
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*****Yes, your twenty hand wonder, right?*****
Nah, only 17.1. :-)
*****I *have* ridden the self carriers, I just sit there wondering what I’m *for*. And they are out of my league–I *like* a horse I feel I can **contribute** to.*****
Oh, there’s plenty to contribute with my boy. He was started to be held together, and had to have it trained out of him. He needs lots of encouragement to self-carry, and has to be ridden with great precision or he subtly falls back into bad habits and tries to get you to carry him with your hands, and a 1500 pound horse is HEAVY. In some ways he’s a schoolmaster because if you don’t do everything just right he won’t do his part, but if you DO do your part right, he can float along like a dream. But his history of injuries also means that he has to be ridden in certain ways to encourage certain muscle developments and discourage certain bad habits as well, so it’s not like he doesn’t have very strong and definite needs. In fact, he’s something of a special needs guy. He is (actually, has become, as a result of superb training by my trainer) extremely light on the aids, something not all that common for the warmbloods; he was trained the way Spanish horses are commonly trained.
Judith
I apologize for the repeats. My computer has been balky the past couple of days, and when I didn’t see a splashscreen saying something like “Your comment has been sent,” I assumed that the damned thing had eaten it as it has been doing to my email.
Mea culpa.
Ah yes, **computers.** Well, we all have ‘em. :)
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