Some Background - the beginning

Falconer has been in my life for 22 years this Summer. He was 11 when I met him and I wasn't looking for a new horse. I had my childhood pony, Jay, and a kind of psycho Anglo Arab who liked to pitch bucking fits on ledges in the woods. My friend Lyndsey was working on the Morgan farm where Fal had been bred and her employer had sold him with a buy-back option. They went to see him, but he was too small for Jeanne. Lyndsey loved him and told me I had to meet him. I knew several of his relatives who were still on the farm and my sister was writing a book about a girl who was horse-hunting and needed some background info, so it seemed like a fun jaunt to go pretend to be interested in him.

Fal was the weekend driving horse for the husband of a Woodstock Vermont Dressage Queen. Gorgeous even in his obesity, ridden in a double twisted wire snaffle which he HATED. I had a fantastic, if somewhat "forward" ride with him in the lovely, immaculately groomed, dressage ring. But what made me completely fall for him was when he got even more forward with Jessie, jumping in and out over the railing while poor Jessie could not see a thing due to her over sized helmet. Ahh... the power of sibling rivalry! I was in love. You can read about this from her point of view in "A Horse Like Barney", by Jessie Haas. The book did happen, and it had a dedication to Fal.

Unbelievably, these people who did not know me at all let me buy him over the course of the year. I took him to Austin Farm (where he was born and lived until he was 4) for a week's trial first, but the decision was made the first afternoon when I went to visit with him in his stall and he came over to me, hooked his head over my shoulder, and pulled me into his chest in a "hug". I now know him to not be a physically affectionate horse and this moment seems even more powerful in retrospect than it did at the time. He was mine, or I was his.

I called the woman who I was leasing the Anglo Arab from and told her that I felt like I really didn't have time for him (which was true cause he scared the shit out of me), and found out that she had really been wanting "Jim" back. Fal came home and the very first night ran through the fence and vanished to gallop up and down the road, much to my dismay and hysteria, but he came home. I soon found myself riding twice a day and training him to run away with me at a gallop instead of a driving horse road trot.

That's when my wings first started to sprout. I had grown up with this crazy and beautiful little Welsh Pony, and had had a couple of horses as an adult but often found myself nervous. On Falconer I knew no fear, even in the beginning. It was just right.

More to follow. There's more background than I thought.

Blast from the past

I was asked to feed horses at my old barn this weekend. The first wave of sadness hit me last night. A realization of how much time I spent in that barn and how many horses passed through my life while I was there. Even the familiar issue of the doors being frozen shut was nostalgic.

This morning it was magnified a hundredfold for some reason. It's driving up that road that I flew over countless times on Fal. Made worse by being a passenger, so I could totally lose myself in the memory of negotiating turns and holding him back to watch for traffic coming down the hill. That most awesome feeling ever of letting loose all that power and riding the surge. Dropping the reins on his neck as we galloped the long straight stretch, arms out wide and yelling at the top of my lungs

I do not think I will ever trust a horse again to that extent and I miss the wildness and craziness and freedom and just pure kickass fun. My goal for this year is to bring some of that back into my life.