Thanks, Dad!

Horses were a fact of life growing up. Family vacations were planned around the availability of someone who could feed & check in on them; family outings so that we'd be home in time for one old mare's evening meal. (She wasn't very interested in food, and it could take her two hours to pick her way through several quarts of grain. A bite here, stare into space & doze for a while. A mouthful there, snort at the cat. Waiting on Schelah to finish was an exercise in patience!)

If a vacation was planned in the winter, someone always stayed home because the horses needed to be fed & watered. There was no running water at the barn. For three seasons the horses watered out of a creek, but Upper Michigan winters come early and stay late, so once the creek froze too thick for chopping holes in or the path down iced up, water was hauled out from the house in 5 gallon buckets.

If there was snow we used the sled. If there wasn't, we used a little red wagon. Buckets had to be hauled a couple of times a day when the temperature bottomed out - the buckets would freeze into solid cylinders, and we'd haul them back in to thaw by the stove. (Why we didn't have a spigot at the barn is a whole 'nother story.... Remind me sometime, and I'll tell you all about growing up without electricity!)

I say we, but it was probably mostly my mother doing the hauling for many, many years. As children we were too small, then we were in school, sports, then college.... She hauled a LOT of water over the years.

We all did help put up hay - I learned to drive by steering the truck in the hay field because I was too small to pitch bales or stack. And man, it sucked to get big enough! Especially if I mis-stacked and any bales fell off.

We, and again, I use that term loosely, fenced. Mostly, that was my dad. I inherited the whole horse-affliction thing from my mom, so at least she only had herself, or maybe my grandfather, to blame for the on-going horse chores.

My dad was not a horse person. He's comfortable around them, and he certainly knows which end is which and what goes where, but horses are so not where his interests were. Nevertheless, he helped.

He did a lot of fencing. There was always lots of fencing, because although everything was and had been fenced for years, well... the fences had been up for years. Most of what ground wasn't covered in pasture or trees was sand or swamp. And with cold, snowy winters, muddy springs, and rainy falls, even cedar posts don't stand up indefinitely. So every spring fences needed to be walked, wires tightened, posts propped back up or replaced, downed trees removed... And did I mention there were deer flies to be contended with as soon as black fly and mosquito season ended?

When the fencing was done, at least temporarily, there was haying. We usually helped friends put up their hay, and they helped us with ours. And every year at some point their ancient tractor would stall out or the square baler would jam, and my dad and L would spend a while with their heads and hands stuck into whichever bits of mechanical guts that were malfunctioning. Square bales for both families' horses all had to be counted, hauled, and stacked into whichever barn we were filling with whatever hands were available.

One year in high school when the call came that the bales were ready but rain was on the way I headed out to the hay field direct from work to find the truck idling along driverless in low gear while my dad worked quickly alongside hoisting bales up onto the trailer, stacking as he went. Good thing the field was long enough that not much turning was required!

My mom was on the local horse council, and we girls did 4-H. That meant my dad got volunteered for things. Lucky for us he's quite handy. When they built the 4-H arena, guess who helped dig the post holes? And build the announcer's stand. He "volunteered" for announcing at shows, as well; at the Schoolcraft County Fair Horse Show for all the years we showed, and at the 4-H arena, too -- I think maybe he actually enjoyed announcing, at least!

When Shan the pony came to live with us and I got big enough to ride in the occasional 4th of July parade or 4-H event, we didn't have a horse trailer. Money was tight, and one small to middling pony wasn't worth the expense of a big horse trailer. (The mares never went.) So my dad built Shan a horse - no, a pony box. It took a ditch or a ramp to load from, but Shan rode in style in his box. It was just his size, bolted securely into the back of the pick-up, and my mom even made bumpers chest, sides & rear from thick foam and naugahyde so that Shan wouldn't bang himself.

Yep, we were lucky my dad is handy - although I'm not so sure he always thought so!

So for all those times he was there - and still is - with a pat on the back, an encouraging word, or a helpful suggestion; for the leadline lessons, the fencing, the haying and the 'we'll have to change the date again' vacations, (the binoculars that fit in my horn bag for trail rides!), I owe my father a huge thank you. It's belated, but heartfelt, believe me.

And isn't he ever glad I now live far enough away he no longer gets the "privilege" of spring fencing? lol!

My mother's list

As I recall it, when I was four, my grandparents thought I was old enough to have a pony. Sounds like a lovely idea, doesn't it? (Note: my family wasn't horse-clueless. They had space and a place for a pony, money to feed one, and the knowledge to care it. My grandparents at one point ran a stable, so they weren't just out of the blue thinking, "Gee, let's buy little Suzie a pony for her birthday and won't she be cute" without a thought for the consequences to child and pony.)

I certainly wasn't an accomplished rider at four. At the time, my folks - well, my mom - had two horses, an OTTB gelding and a older mare who was probably a QH. (I remember Cricket as a large, gentle bay, very round and extremely tolerant of children hanging on her.) When the pony buying process started I was ecstatic.

My very own pony!!!

But my mother was determined that this wouldn't just be any old backyard kid's pony. This pony had to have qualities. Not qualifications, you understand, but qualities. Now for all of you out there who immediately thought "oh-oh, show parent alert" - stop. At the top of her checklist were the following: soundness, steadiness, patience, ease of handling/manners, and familiarity with children. Size was a factor (not too small, not too large), and so was age - not too young. The perfect pony would ride, load, be of a size to be - eventually, after all, I was four - tacked up by a child, and have good feet. That was just the top of her list... it was a long list.

She (we) commenced looking for and at ponies. I don't remember exactly how many ponies we looked at, but at the time it seemed to be many. I do remember a beautiful palamino pony that was advertised as absolutely kid-broke (kids could crawl underneath him). So "broke" was he that he balked at leading; just planted his feet and wouldn't leave the yard. There were ponies that were too small, ponies that had no training, ponies that were highly trained and priced accordingly. Ponies that tried to bite, and/or had founder issues, and ponies that couldn't be caught, but sure were pretty. Lots and lots of ponies. I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that there were no ponies in existence that my mother couldn't find some sort of fault with! (Thank you, Mother!)

Finally we found Shan. Shandar was a shetland/welsh cross, a small bay with a white star and copious amounts of mane, tail, and hair in general. He had good feet, a happy outlook on life, and a hearty appetite. He liked kids. He bridled and saddled without problem. He was willing to leave the yard. His owner said he was trained to drive (we never tried), and she loved him; she hated to see him going to waste out in the field while she rode her big horses, but was selling because he no longer had a job and needed one. Shan passed the list test, and he came home with us.

In the winter Shan was solid, plushy hair, and you could barely find his ears. Not too tall, he was a bit small for a real horse saddle, and as I quickly got too big for a pony saddle, our adventures were mostly bareback. He could be challenging to catch, and he didn't much like to load, but he was willing to be decorated with flowers and ribbons, braided, blanketed (the OTTB's blanket, which you can imagine was a tad large), and fussed over. With a tiny tot aboard he would stick his nose to the closest adult's pocket and remain glued there, calmly starting and stopping, carrying his tiny charge with absolute care.

With a more experienced rider, he could be a bit hot-headed and difficult, but his resistance always seemed age and ability-appropriate. His patience was endless. When I fell off he would stop and wait for me - most of the time. He taught me many, many things without a single formal lesson. When we lost him to a freak accident at 16 - a pasture mate kicked out connecting with his jaw shattering it beyond repair - I was devastated. I'd grown too big to ride Shan by that point, but he was still mine, even if my sister was the one riding him.

I didn't really realize how important my mother's list was until I grew up. Just talk to anyone whose first experience with horses was awful because of an impulsive "cute" pony purchase. Look at the white faces in show rings; kids who are afraid because they've been over-mounted, and adults scared to ride after being traumatized by a pushy, ill-mannered, under-trained horse - we've all heard the stories and seen the results.

Shan is my foundation - when I think about why I love horses and riding, he's my warm, fuzzy, comfortable memory: the feeling I strive to get back when I ride now. (Again, thanks, Mother!)

My mother turned her pony-hunting list into an article - with pictures, yikes! - which ran in one of the horse magazines (Practical Horseman or Horse & Rider, I think) sometime in the mid-70s. It's probably hard to find now, but there are lots of good sources of information on horse-buying out there. Do yourself a favor: read at least one before you buy a horse/pony for your child. They'll thank you for it eventually!