When you have a good idea, don’t share it.

The evening sun sets over lush Tennessee hills.  A band of horses crowd around a hay bale. The farmer drives by on a four wheeler.  The horses look up but they don’t bother to see what he’s doing. He fills the feed trough with grain and drives off.  Sugar, a 38 year old buckskin appendix mare wanders over to the trough. She looks back. Her best friend and shadow, Maria, a 35 year old chestnut quarter horse has not followed her.  She whinnies, anxious.  

Maria looks up and makes her way over to the trough.  Sugar, relieved, begins to eat. Soon the entire band, all mares, head that way.  They jostle around the trough, all vying for their portion of grain. In every horse society there is a chain of command, a totem pole if you will, and Sugar is not at the top.  Pretty soon Martha, a big bay thoroughbred pushes in next to Sugar and pins her ears. Sugar holds her ground, flashes a quick bite in Martha’s direction and continues to eat, but a sharp kick puts her in her place and she backs away.  She stands to the side, nosing at the short grass while the bigger, younger horses enjoy their dinner.

Even when you don’t think you can, can’t isn’t an option.

I’m fifteen.  I’m riding a horse whose name I don’t now remember.  He’s big and strong and young. A thoroughbred, just three months off the track.  My trainer is going to turn him into a jumper. He’s handsome; long sturdy legs, hooves as wide as my hand with my fingers spread, a nice round back, and what people in the business call a “jumper bump”, which is really just a nice way to say he’s got a fat butt.  But not just fat, muscular. This horse has a wonderfully round, rock hard rear end. But right now, I’m wishing he didn’t. At the moment that wonderfully round, rock hard rear end is pushing forward the rest of his body at 35 miles an hour. Horsepower is measured in foot-pounds per second and one horsepower is roughly 550 foot-pounds per second.  This horse probably has about 3 horsepower.  

I don’t know what got him started but one minute we’re cantering around with the rest of the lesson enjoying the wind brushing the July heat off our faces.  Maybe I kicked him. Maybe it felt good. Maybe the horse in front of us dared him to do it. But the next minute we were galloping. I mean full speed Kentucky Derby gallop.  All four hooves off the ground every three steps gallop.  

“Stop!” yelled my trainer.  We kept going. The other riders pulled their horses over to the rail to get out of our way.  He was feeling good, he didn’t want to stop and hang out with his friends. Around and around we went like a carousel on crack.  I was slipping. I let go of the reins and grabbed his mane. As we past my trainer he yelled, “pull back! Make him stop!” I couldn’t.  My feet slipped out of the stirrups and I slouched forward, wrapping my arms around his neck. I could see the ground beneath his feet.

This was it.  If I stayed on my heart was going to give out.  If I let go… well, I could feel how hard his hooves were hitting the ground.  They would pulverize me in an instant. “Sit up!” called my trainer. I knew, somewhere in the far recesses of my mind that he was right.  I just needed to sit up, put my full weight in the saddle and pull back on the reins. The horse would stop. But the ground was so close. Gravity was pulling me towards it like a black hole.  “I can’t!” I screamed before I even knew I was thinking the words.  

But if I couldn’t sit up, I had to do something.  I picked up the reins, still laying on his neck and steered him into the group of other horses. A dangerous move.  He didn’t care. He flew right through them. I was slipping again. I could feel the seat of the saddle against my thigh.  I was sideways on the horse, both arms around his neck, my leg clamped against his stomach. I took a chance. I pulled on the left rein and guided him to the rail.  It was only four feet tall or so, it didn’t even come up to his chest. He could jump it. But would he? I hoped not. I closed my eyes and prayed for the best.

The fence grew larger as we approached.  I held on tight to the left rein. He couldn’t turn and go past it.  He had a choice: jump it, or stop. He stopped. We skidded to a halt, his front legs pressed against the rails.  I relaxed. I realized that I really was on the side of the horse. From the other side all you could see was my leg on top of the saddle and one hand tangled in his black mane.  My body shook. The adrenaline coursing through my veins allowing me to hang on at mach 7 was gone and I didn’t even have the strength to slide to the ground. My quivering muscles pulled my body back into the correct position in the saddle and I slumped over his neck, triumphant but exhausted.

“Don’t. You. Ever. Say. That. Word. To. Me. Again.”  My trainer stomped over to me. His face was beet red.  He was mad only because I’d scared him. “Next time I tell you to do something you better damn well do it.”  He didn’t normally curse in front his students. He grabbed the horse’s bridle and told me to get down. I was so white he was afraid I’d pass out.  As I dropped to my feet his face softened. “Are you alright? You sure? Go sit down.” I climbed through the fence to go sit in the bleachers but he stopped me.

“Look at me,” he said. “There is no can’t.”

You don’t have to be part of the team to enjoy the game.

After our lesson one day my trainer asked if we’d like to go for a gallop.  There were six of us. Three college aged girls and three thoroughbred geldings.  Mine, Country Pride and one other, Professional actually used to be racehorses. The other, Dishy, was bred for it but never ran.  We rode out into the field. It only had one occupant, a cute little thoroughbred mare named PG; Pretty Girl, or Perfect Gal- it depended on who you asked.  She had gotten kicked pretty bad in the field with the other horses and was on her own to recuperate.  

She was ecstatic to have company after a week of solitary confinement.  She trotted around us as we walked to the pond. We swatted her away when she got too close, worried that she would get our horses excited, but she didn’t care and neither did the boys.  We reached the pond and turned around. Dishy spooked at the ducks, jumping sideways. “Hyah!” cried Heidi dramatically as she kicked Pro into gear. He shot off like a dart. I kicked Pride behind him but he wasn’t feeling it.  Dishy saw his friends leaving him alone with the ducks and galloped off. I guess Pride understood what was going on when Dishy passed him because he found a gear I never imagined he had and we were off.  

The other two were far ahead of us but there was a mighty thundering coming from behind me.  I looked back and saw PG flying. The gap between us was closing fast. Her head was up, her ears perked.  She was so light on her feet you could barely see her hooves hit the ground. Pride’s ears perked up. He was loving this. I have to admit, I was loving it too.  I’ve never run with wild horses but I imagine it would feel something like this. As she leveled up beside us I got a view that not many people get to see. Galloping at full speed down a hill I was able to look to the side and watch a naked horse, wild and free, running of her own accord right alongside me.  I got a horse’s eye view of a gallop. 

PG didn’t have a rider, no one pushing her forward.  She was running because she could. Because it felt good.  Because she is a herd animal and everyone else was running and her instincts told her to join in.  She didn’t need to be a part of the race to run along with us. There was no winner that day. Heidi and Pro made it to the gate first and turned and were halfway back up the hill by the time we passed them.  Dishy and Anna and Pride and I ran past the gate before we turned back to try it again. And PG was just along for the ride, enjoying the company.

Winning isn’t always blue.

When I was fourteen I rode a gorgeous little dapple grey arabian pony.  His name was Octavian after the Roman general although for some reason everyone called him Manfrey.  His previous owner was called “The Colonel”. He was a big old war veteran who rode with General Patton when he rescued the prized Lipizzaner stallions from German-occupied Austria in 1945.  When he died he left Manfrey to my trainer in his will.  

I called him “My Man” and we were utterly in love.  It was a bright Saturday in early June and we were competing at the 4-H Williamson County Horse Show.  We’d done well all morning in the Flat classes and were taking a breather before the Over Fences classes began.  I was sitting at my parents’ tent eating a sandwich with Man grazing next to me when I heard my name

“Would Ali McQueen please report to the gate,” said the voice over the loudspeaker.  I jumped up. I wasn’t in this class. I didn’t even know what this class was. “Ali! Ali!” called my trainer, running over. “Where are you?  Get on the horse!” I climbed onto Manfrey and trotted him over to the gate.

“I’m not in this class” I told my trainer.  “I signed you up. It’s Hunter Hack.” My face went blank.  Hunter Hack? We walked through the gate. “Go in,” said my trainer. “ Do a courtesy circle. Canter over the two fences.  Hand gallop across the back side. Stop at the lightpost. Back three steps. Then trot out.” If that sounds like gibberish to you, believe me, it didn’t make much sense to me either.  

I picked up a trot and began my circle.  “What’s a hand gallop?” I yelled as I trotted around past the gate.  My coach put his hand to his forehead. “Just get out of the saddle like you’re going to jump and kick really hard.”  A hand gallop is when the rider gets up into what’s called a two-point where they have two points of contact with the horse; their hands and their calves.  They are raised a few inches out of the saddle and their back is stretched forward, a straight line from the rider to the horse’s mouth. In a hand gallop the horse does not do a true gallop where all four hooves leave the ground on the third beat but canters about 5 mph faster than normal.  I had never done one of these before and wasn’t sure I understood the directions.

We transitioned into a canter and just like always I went into my two-point too early and allowed Manfrey to pull out of the jump.  He was of the mindset that if he didn’t have to jump it there was no reason he should. One refusal does not make for a disqualification so I jerked him around and made him go over it.  We took the second jump just fine and I attempted, for the first time in my life, a hand gallop. I raised out of the saddle and kicked him and I guess we did it right. I don’t think I’d ever gone that fast on a horse- at least not on purpose and I was thrilled.  I saw the light pole coming up and wasn’t sure what to do. We were going so fast I didn’t see how we could stop on a dime like they wanted us to. But Manfrey was a saint and he stopped when I asked him and backed on command and we trotted out of the ring all smiles.

We didn’t win that class, although we did get second.  The blue ribbon went to a girl on a big thoroughbred who did the whole thing flawlessly and had probably practiced it a million times beforehand.  But we were the real winners. We went in blind, no clue what we were supposed to do and we did it. I’ve never been so proud of being second best.

No matter what anyone says, never give up on true love.

Sam loves Etta. He’s this handsome black quarter horse owned by my friend Kathleen.  He’s one of those fancy show ponies. He’s real big. He stands 15.3 Hands at the withers.  That means that the top of his back is 5 feet and 3 inches tall. That’s the same distance from the ground as the top of my head. He’s pretty too.  He’s got this sleek coat. He’s shinier with a layer of dust on him than my horse is just after a bath. He was trained as a hunter pony but Kathleen has ridden western all her life so now he, as they say, “goes both ways”.  

My horse is this skinny little rag doll of a thing.  She hasn’t quite grown into herself yet. Her head is too big for her body and her legs are so long and spindly I’m surprised they can hold her up.  Her line of horses don’t stop growing until they’re six. She just turned four. But her face has got to be one of the prettiest I’ve ever seen. She’s got these big expressive eyes that tell you exactly what she’s thinking. Her name is Art I Exquisite but we call her Etta.  My coach named her after her mother and one day when Etta (the horse) leaned around and bit her as she tightened the girth she laughed and said, “She’s a witch just like her namesake.”  

Etta is a witch.  All Sam wants out of life is for one minute of her attention.  We’ll be in the ring with Sam and Kathleen and when we pass them he’ll look at Etta, perk his ears forward and blow at her.  It’s a horse’s way of saying “hi, I like you”. And Etta just pins her ears. She’s saying “get too close and I’ll kick ya”. Because Kathleen and I are best friends our horses are forced to hang out a lot.  They get to stand next to each other when we tack up and untack, they take baths in adjoining wash stalls, they ride up the mountain together, and in the ring. We even make them joust with pvc pipe. And all the while Sam tries to get Etta’s attention.

We make them stand next to each other when we’re riding and just watch them.  As soon as Kathleen drops the reins Sam cranes his neck around to look at Etta.  She won’t even look at him. He’ll arch his neck and press his nose to his chest, anything to get her attention.  She doesn’t care. He perks his ears towards her and reaches out with his nose, trying to touch her face. She pins her ears and bites him.  He jerks back, offended, but he can’t stay away for long. He puts his mouth right next to her ear and pops his bit. It makes this loud teeth grinding on metal sound that hurts my ears and I swear he’s asking her, “am I annoying you? Am I?”  When this doesn’t work he decides to get mean. He leans in all sweet like with his ears perked. She looks at him. Her ears are kind of off to the side, she’s wary. Once they’re about to touch he snaps at her. She jerks away from his teeth and then cranes her head around to look at him, ears perked.  If a horse ever looked smug, it’d be Sam.  

One time when he did this she was so intrigued she let him kiss her.  And I really mean kiss her. It was one of the sweetest things I’ve ever seen.  He ran his lips all over her face, moving them back and forth like a kiss, and she just stood there with her eyes closed.  He kissed his way from her nose, over her eye, and up her ear before he licked her on the forehead. I don’t know what it meant in horse language but it couldn’t have been anything but affectionate.  She couldn’t take it for too long and finally snapped at him. He backed off and left her alone after that, totally content with his 30 seconds of love.  

If the dog won’t eat it, maybe you shouldn’t either.

My coach, Michele has a little jack russell named Bud.  He’s our mascot. He goes everywhere with us and always wears his little UT bandana.  He’s the most spoiled dog I’ve ever met. If it’s too hot or too cold he’ll stand by the car and stare at my coach until she lets him in.  She calls him “the precious” and really, that’s exactly how he’s treated. Every morning he rides shotgun in the golf cart down to the barn where he promptly trots up and down each aisle of the barn and noses around every corner of the tack room looking for mice.  If he finds any, he kills them. If not he moves on to check the pastures. He can tell if there’s something wrong with one of the horses. He’s the boss man at Hartbrook. His two henchmen Bo and Wheezy are made to do all of the manual labor of running the barn throughout the day.  After his morning routine Bud just follows Michele around or naps in the car. He only gets up to check out the new arrivals. He knows that cars are filled with people and are comfortable places to sleep so he trusts that they won’t hurt him. He runs down the driveway and stands right in your car’s blind spot until you give up trying to drive around him, stop and let him in.

He goes everywhere with Michele.  He can’t stand to be out of her presence for more than 30 minutes. And fortunately for him, he rarely has to be.  On one of my first trips with the team we were all sitting around the riding facilities at Sewanee University of the South eating lunch.  Bud was going back and forth between us getting a bite from each person in turn. We all had various fast food and he was loving it. One girl who kept feeding him McDonald’s fries offered him a piece of chicken on his third time around.  He’d gobbled down the Chick Fil-A, Burger King and Sonic chicken but when she offered him the McDonald’s chicken he turned up his nose and moved on to the next girl in line.  

Just then Michele walked by.  “Oh yeah,” she said when she saw Bud’s upturned nose. “He doesn’t eat McDonald’s chicken.”  We all laughed. “What a weird little dog” we all thought. But no matter how hard we tried, how we disguised it, that little dog wouldn’t touch the McDonald’s chicken.  You put a piece of Sonic chicken and McDonald’s chicken together between your fingers and offer it to him- he’ll take the Sonic bite but leave the McDonald’s every time. I don’t know what’s different about fast food chicken but I haven’t eaten McDonald’s since.

Never follow directions blindly.

One day in high school I was riding this big young thoroughbred.  His name was Professional, but everyone called him Pro. This was after my first incidence with a racehorse taking off with me and I’d learned a lot from that experience.  But not enough, apparently. It was raining that day so we were riding in the big indoor arena and the same thing happened again. The big, young thoroughbred took off, galloping around the ring.  This time I didn’t need my trainer to tell me to sit up. I sat up and pulled back but it didn’t do much. You see, racehorses are used to jockeys keeping a tight rein so it’s not enough just to pull on their mouths, you have to “half halt” and pull back for a second, let go and pull back again, repeating the process until they stop.  My trainer, who was probably having flashbacks to his near heart attack from the last time, yelled “Pull him in a circle”.

This was actually good advice.  Horses can’t run as fast in a small circle so this makes them slow down themselves to a more controllable speed.  But there’s a technique it to. You can’t just yank them around, you have to ease into it. I had never learned to canter a small circle before and did not know how to properly do it.  I heard “pull him in a circle” and that is precisely what I did. I pulled him to the right so hard that his face bent around so far that I could see his eye. This was a big horse, he couldn’t balance at such a small circle, certainly not at that speed.  And then, we slipped. His back hoof landed in a wet pile of fresh manure and slid out from underneath him.  

We crashed to the ground.  The scene from the movie Second Chances where the little girl is out riding in the rain and the horse slips and almost breaks her leg sped through my brain.  I saw us fall as if from the outside. His huge body tipped to the side, his head flew back and the ground rushed towards me.  Just before contact I threw my leg out from under him and managed not to get squished. As I lay on the ground, trying to catch my breath the ground began to shake.  Hoofbeats thundered behind my head and I rolled over to see a wild mass of hooves galloping towards me. Nicky, the horse in question, an ancient barrel racer, was being ridden by my friend Erin and was probably running faster than he’d ever gone in his life.

“Ali,” she cried as they ran up and skidded to a halt right in front of me.  I was lucky he was such a sensitive horse, a lesser horse would’ve trampled me.  Pro clambered to his feet and my coach gave us both a once over. We were fine, but Pro was bleeding from his shoulder. It was just a little scrape but I was traumatized.  I had never made a horse bleed before then, and I’ve only done it once since. “Next time,” said my coach in a shaky voice, “try to make a bigger circle”.

When bad things happen you can’t just tune out and give up.

“Ms. Marie, Ms. Marie,” we cried as my brother and I ran through the barn aisle.  Ms. Marie, my trainer’s wife, stopped and turned. “Who are we riding?” we wanted to know.  She told my brother to go get Texas but as he ran off she stopped him. “Wait,” she said, “I think you should be here for your sister”.  I was confused but too preoccupied to care. “Can I ride Manfrey today?” I asked. I knew the answer was yes but manners told me to ask anyways.  Ms. Marie paused. She reached out and took my hand and said, “Honey, Manfrey passed away on Tuesday.” 

A few months before, right after my fourteenth birthday I went out to the barn for my lesson.  It was a normal day and I wouldn’t have remembered it at all if Ms. Marie hadn’t sent me down to the other end of the barn to ask my trainer, Mr. Don who he wanted me to ride.  I ran down the aisle and saw the most beautiful, green, horse I had ever seen. He was green because he’d been rolling in the new spring grass and he was inside because my trainer was giving him a bath.

“And what do you want?” asked Mr. Don.  I jumped. “Who do you want me to ride today?” I asked, my eyes never leaving the horse.  “You can ride anyone you want,” he said. He was expecting me to choose Nicky, the old barrel racer, but I rarely did what Mr. Don expected me to do.  “That one,” I said, my voice breathy. “That one?” asked Mr. Don, “You want to ride that one?” I nodded. “Well, alright. But have one of the older girls lunge him for you first.  He hasn’t been ridden in six months.” 

Once I got him cleaned up, Manfrey was a gorgeous flea bitten grey.  A little arabian. About 14.3 hands or so. Too small to even be considered a horse, this little pony and I fell in love with each other at first sight.  I tacked him up and handed him off to the girl who was going to lunge him. Lungeing is where you have the horse on a long lead and make them run in a circle around you.  It helps to get them into the “working mindset” as well as get rid of any extra energy that may present itself as bucking while you’re riding them.

Manfrey was a little wild on the lunge line so Mr. Don had the girl ride him for me too.  Arabians are known for being “one master” horses. They pick a person or a type of person that they like and they’re just awful for anyone else.  Manfrey didn’t like her style of riding. He took off and bucked her all around the ring. My mother stood by the fence and asked my coach, “are you really going to let her ride him?”  When it was my turn to get on, I’ll admit, I was a little nervous. But Manfrey was a perfect little angel. I had the touch he liked. If I wasn’t in love with him before, I was then. I don’t think I rode another horse after that.

“Ali?” Ms. Marie asked as she hugged me.  She rocked me back and forth as I sobbed into her chest and sent my brother to go get my mom.  She told me he colicked. His stomach had gotten all twisted up Tuesday morning. There was a surgery they could do but it was expensive and he was eighteen so the survival rate was low.  They gave him pain medicine that was supposed to last for an hour but it was wearing off in ten minutes. He started colicking around 10:00am and they had put him down by 1:30pm.

I didn’t want to ride that day but they wouldn’t allow me to sit out the lesson.  They told me to ride a young thoroughbred named PG but she was being ridden in the lesson before mine so in the meantime I was to sit on the bench outside the ring and wait.  I cried so hard on the bench that my coach couldn’t stand it. He knew I needed something to do so he told me to go tack up a bratty little mare named Jess. Normally, Jess was reserved for more advanced riders than me but he knew that I wouldn’t stop crying until I had something else to think about.

And boy, did Jess do the trick.  I’d probably hate that little mare except for the good she did me that day.  I swear she could tell when my attention drifted. I’d get to thinking about Manfrey and start sniffling again and she’d kick at her stomach to get rid of a fly.  Her whole body would shake and I’d almost come out of the saddle. She was such a pain. To this day, she’s the only horse I’ve ever met that can buck with her head straight up in the air.  She didn’t let me think about Manfrey throughout that whole lesson.

Mr. Don put me on that horse because he knew that she was the only one that could give me what I really needed.  I wish I could say that Jess and I hit it off and I fell in love with her. But I mourned Manfrey for a while longer before Mr. Don gave me Sugar, a little old mare who had decided she was done jumping.  I still think about Manfrey often and it still hurts that I never got to say goodbye but Jess gave me something I have valued ever since. Whenever anything bad happens I ride. Because when you’re on a horse you have to be present.  Your mind can’t wander. They won’t all try to buck you off like Jess would but if your mind gets to wandering something bad will happen. In the light of Manfrey’s death, Jess taught me how to stay in the moment.