Behind Infinity

I never, ever thought that buying a horse would be this involved.

It all started in March, when things here in Farmland started to thaw out. Deprived of my beloved skating pond, I took to wandering around the neighborhood, discovering all manner of darling little thickets and ponds and spacious fields and wide skies. And all the time, I thought, “This would be twice as fun if I was doing it on horseback.”

Actually, that’s a lie. It all started on my 9th birthday, when my then-best-friend Karen gave me a book about a girl and her horse, titled creatively, “The Race”. It was part of a series. After I read all 10 books in the series, I was totally hooked on the whole pony thing, and for the next few years I borrowed every single book (literally. And some more than once.), fiction and nonfiction, that the Kentwood Branch library had to offer about horses, horse care, horse breeds, horse feeding & vetting, and horse showing. I drew countless pictures of horses. I collected plastic horses. I plastered every square inch of my bedroom walls with horse posters. I painted a horse mural on my closet doors. I was forever trying to convince my dad that really, the shed in the backyard was big enough to house a horse, and truly, neither the neighbors nor the city of Grand Rapids wouldn’t care if we violated zoning laws and kept one back there. He didn’t buy it. So, at about age 15, I gave up.

Until March. In March we moved out to Farmland where there are horses everywhere, even next door, where I can see them from practically any window in the house, and wouldn’t it be lovely to have my own horse for cantering across the fields and down the dirt roads…not to mention the fact that several of my friends are or have been involved in equine activities, and frequently talk about them fondly. The pressure was too much. I snapped. “I’m getting one, if it’s the last thing I do,” I resolved.

So yeah, that was back in March. Do I own a horse yet?
Nope.

After digging up my beloved collection of horse books, and doing some preliminary research and review, and scoping out the classified ads on the internet, I realized that there are a lot of horses out there, and finding the right one takes a little more effort, skill, and know-how than choosing tropical fish at the pet store. So I called several stables in the greater GR area, visited a couple, and signed up for lessons at the one with the nicest people.

That was three months ago. Now I can ride a little bit. However, I’ve had to make some changes to my lifestyle as well. In the interest of supporting my new habit, I have foregone buying any new clothing. (Stop rolling your eyes. Just because you hate shopping doesn’t mean I do!) I haven’t shopped in a department store since February, and I haven’t even been to a consignment shop since Exam Week (when I went almost every day, in an effort to relieve stress by pretending that I didn’t have a paper to write, I was perfectly justified in leisurely strolling up and down the aisles, scrutinizing the merchandise!). An even more dramatic development is that I, “she who swore she would never ever ever run again”, have taken up running, in an effort to build up and maintain buff legs for riding and endurance during prolonged cardiovascular activity. According to the hatch marks on my wall, I’ve been out a total of 18 times in the past month, putting a mind-boggling 36 miles on my running shoes, and accomplishing impressive speeds of up to 7.5 minutes per mile. Be proud of me. What’s more is that all of this running as had a profound impact on my diet. At the beginning, I would come in after a run and wonder out loud, “Why in the world did I have such a crappy run today?” Then I’d surmise that it was probably because I hadn’t been home for dinner, and so my food consumtion for that day had consisted entirely of Lucky Charms, Yoplait, Cheese Puffs, and M&M’s. Apparently Lucky Charms, even despite being fortified with eleventy-seven essential vitamins and minerals, are not a good source of running energy. So I have learned to eat better, too.

All because I decided to get a horse.

After all that, you may be wondering how the search is going. So far I’ve looked at hundreds of online classifieds, e-mailed eleventy-eight owners about photos of their proffered animal, and test-rode 3 animals–two of which are offered for sale at Byron, the other one elsewhere. I wasn’t terribly impressed with the ones at Byron–one was ok, the other was really lazy. And then there’s the elsewhere one…that was definitely an experience. He was good-looking and advertised as being an old, quiet, dead-broke, well-mannered gentleman of a horse with “loads of personality”. (Since then I’ve learned that “loads of personality” can often be code for “this horse is a genuine pain in the rear”.) Well, he was kind of quiet, but he sure wasn’t dead broke. He started out by tossing his owner, so she longed him for about a half an hour to work his kinks out before she let me get on him. It didn’t really matter. He tossed me too…twice.

Furthermore, in the midst of all of this, my conception of my “ideal” horse has morphed drastically, too. First it was, “just a quiet grade horse to hack around Farmland with”, then it became, “hm, maybe some random shows once in a while would be fun” and now it’s looking like, “I want a purebred that will be good for equitation and english pleasure and probably some dressage, too. And preferably a mare, so she can throw nice babies if I have to take some time off from riding.”

Yeah. So I’m still looking. Aaron has a mare down in Arkansas that might do well. I think she’s gorgeous, but she’s kind of green and I’m by no means a trainer…yet And getting her here could be interesting. So we’ll see.