One Thing Leads to Another: Pt. 1 - Taking the (First) Leap

Horses have been my main interest, my passion -- some would say my obsession -- from the time I was a young girl. From the time I was 7 (when I started riding lessons) until I was 17 years old (and left Chicago to attend college in New York) they were also a huge part of my life. Though I did not have a horse of my own, I spent every spare minute at the livery-cum-boarding stable where my riding instructor taught. I mucked stalls, groomed horses, cleaned tack, exercised absentee boarders' horses, took groups out on trail rides -- whatever it took to get some extra riding time, some extra time with the horses.

That ended when I went away to school. Except for the occasional birthday treat of an hour-long trail ride in Central Park, my life was horse-less for about 20 years. In those years I finished college, built a career, married, divorced, married again, bought and renovated a small old row house in Brooklyn.... and spiraled ever deeper into despair. My life, full as it may have seemed from the outside, felt hollow at the core.

It took me a long time to realize the reason for the great emptiness I felt, but once I did, my husband and I sold the the city house and moved to a “horse-y” part of New Jersey that was still in commuting distance of our jobs in the city. The idea was that I would “get back into horses.”

Three years passed after our move to New Jersey and I still was not back into horses. My job was demanding, requiring a lot of travel and client meetings -- all very time consuming. But the bigger, albeit unconscious, reason for my inaction was that I “knew” at some level that having horses in my life again was going to be a Major Change. Many things would be different, including how I spent my spare time, the people who would be in life...

Part of me was unconsciously resisting this change. I had not made much of an effort to find a way to ride regularly. My biggest step in the direction of “getting horses in my life again” was to occasionally read the “horses for sale” ads in our local paper, though I wasn’t even thinking about getting a horse of my own. It was my husband (known as Nippy to his friends) who gave me a metaphorical nudge as I was standing at the edge of this emotional precipice, and urged me to “jump.” He did this by announcing out of the blue one day that he was going to buy me a horse for my birthday.... but that I would have to pick him out myself because he (Nippy) didn’t know anything about horses.

!!!!!

A horse of my own....

Wow...

That was a childhood dream of mine -- a dream I had not forgotten, but had given up on as “impossible.” Yet here it was, apparently about to come true.

The horse of my childhood dreams was an Arabian.

There were no bridles or saddles in my dreams, no ropes, or spurs... The Dreamhorse was with me because he wanted to be.

He and I wandered the countryside together. Sometimes he carried me on his back ... mostly we walked and ran together, each carrying ourselves, enjoying each other’s company, exploring our world.

As I set out to find my birthday present from my husband, it came to me with great clarity that I was looking for an Arabian gelding between 5 and 7 years old. I called the local Arabian Horse Association and worked my way down the long list of breeders they recommended. Oddly, no one had a gelding for sale. Then, one Sunday, I picked up our local paper (the Asbury Park Press) again and turned to the classifieds. There, under “Horses for Sale” was an ad for a 7-year old Arabian gelding (bay). I *knew* this was my horse.

Within a matter of days I had met Khemo (I knew who he was before we were introduced. I picked him out as we were coming up the driveway of the barn where he lived -- there were several bay horses in the paddocks-- and I said to Nippy “I hope that’s him”), had a vet check done (everyone said I should), paid the purchase price, found a wonderful boarding farm just 5 minutes drive from our house, and made arrangements to have him trailered there. On Labor Day week-end, 1991, Khemo arrived at Whipporwill Valley Farm, the place that would be his home for the next ten years. Both our lives were about to be radically transformed.

The moral of this part of my story: Remember your childhood dreams in the most vivid detail you can manage; don’t give up on them. They’re important. Oh, and be sure to tell them to at least one person who loves you....