NaBloPoMo 2017 Day 1: When and Why Did I Start Riding?

I don't remember the "why" specifically. I think I have always been horse crazy. My mom and my grandmother started riding shortly after I was born. Something they had always wanted to do. Then, from about age 2 to maybe 4 or 5, we lived on a little bit of property in Georgetown, MA and had a few horses in the backyard. 

My mom on Amber

Some of my first horse memories are from this stage of life -- I remember Red, the big chestnut OTTB stallion that was so sweet and so totally un-stud-like, that my mom and her roommate completely trusted him if I wanted to hand graze him outside of the paddock. And I did, regularly. He'd munch on grass, being careful to keep his big body away from me, while our gigantic double-pawed cat would knead his back and then flop down for a nap. 

We also had Amber, a bay mare that my mom had bought with her yearling colt. The mare was a bit cuckoo, but Spirit, her colt, was curious and friendly. He would follow my mom around and untie her shoelaces or steal carrots from her back pocket. 

Me, on my mom's gelding Sandy, when I was 7 or 8. Helmet was only off for the photo!

This is also about the time I first started riding. When I was 2, my mom started riding double with me and taking me on trail rides. This surely didn't help the horse crazy kid, and by the time I was 6, I was enrolled in weekly riding lessons.

I'd been taking lessons for a couple of years when my mom got Sandy. He was a pretty fancy (for her budget!) Quarab gelding. She did a partial lease to the barn we were riding at to help pay for board, which meant they got to use him in their lesson program. I loved him and would beg to ride him in my lessons, but very rarely got to, because he would always run me up the shavings pile kept in the corner of the arena in the winter. She eventually had to sell him because he developed heaves so badly he couldn't be used. We found out later that they had been treating the arena with motor oil (a pretty common practice back then) and that was likely the cause of it. It always broke my mom's heart that she had to get rid of him, and I've spent quite a bit of time over the years trying to find him, to no avail.