At thirteen,
I thought dressage was about as exciting as a root canal. I was pony clubbing and
racking up 4-H ribbons with my Quarter Horse and all the top hat and tails
extravagance of dressage seemed part of an equine cult that I had no hopes of
ever breaking into. So, like every dumb kid, I turned my nose up at what I didn’t
understand. I have since lamented my stupidity, but that’s a different story.
Cosmo was
deemed – as expected – “unsalvageable”. His owner told me, in a conspiratorial
stage whisper, that she was glad. “I want him to be a real horse,” she said, “and
to have a little girl”. Enter said little girl. And thus I was given free rein
to ride and rehab him.
Saying I had
dressage lessons would be a lie. To begin with, I had rehab lessons. Kelly was
undaunted by his fitness level (or lack thereof) and I was too giddy about
being eighteen hands up in the air to be discouraged.
We made for
the most ridiculous horse and rider pair. I topped out just shy of five feet; a
soon-to-be-high school freshman with glasses and a retainer and…well…don’t
expect any close up pictures of me from those days. On top of a ribby,
patchy-haired bay moose who looked like he should have been hitched to a plow,
I was every inch the barn rat with my reject, rescue nag. He had a long, long
way to go before he was even sound, let alone fit for anything. And I’m sure
that when he hit the ground twelve years before, all long, newborn legs and big
head, no one had ever thought he’d be gimping along for a kid, a transition
between trot and walk an applause-worthy feat, but that’s what happened. All he
lacked in muscle he made up for twice over in heart, and a year later, he was
back in the show ring.
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