Sugar, Patches, Silver, Queenie, Jo-Jo, Lady, Jack, Derek, Niko and J.B. are the names of the horses in my life. I cannot imagine my memories without them. All of them have passed on, but in a moment, they are fully alive in my mind and heart and I am nestled down on their backs with the wind rushing past me as we gallop into secret places. When we ride a horse, we are borrowing unhindered freedom.

I was always a hobby horse owner. I never liked the idea of showmanship…it took away from the fun-time. I just loved having what some would call, an “over-sized dog” relationship with my horses. I loved their smell on my clothes and the smell of the hay and oats. Mucking the stall was no more to me than mopping a kitchen floor and the tack barn was kept just as organized as the family album.

I believe that children should be introduced to the horse at a young age. Be it a summer camp, a riding stable or vacation trail ride. Horses love children and introduced properly, a love of and respect for this animal will be lifelong.

Loving the horse hasn’t been without a bump or two along the way. Sugar ran me under an oak tree limb that lifted me up by my chin and flipped me over backward onto the ground…Silver made a quick left turn, leaving me to fly off the saddle to the right into a waiting spider web with a huge spider…Derek reared on his hind legs in the shallows of the lake to dispose of me into the mud, running the mile back to the barn while I walked…and JoJo threw me head first over her head, landing me in a bed of sandspurs. I believe that each of those horses had a good “horse laugh” over me. It’s just part of that human-animal interconnection. And besides, I lived to tell the tale. It was Roy Rogers that said: When you’re young and you fall off a horse, you may break something. When you’re my age, you splatter. That pretty much sums it up!

In sacred scripture, the horse plays a descriptive pivotal role in God’s Apocalypse. God most assuredly loves the horse as it is given a place of honor to deliver the messengers of God!

When all is said and done, the cry of the horse echoes into the human soul and stirs within it a wonder and awe that is akin to tapping into a spiritual mystery. Winston Churchill said it best: There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.

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