Nobody wakes up one day thinking You know what? I want a hobby where everything costs an arm and a leg, my life could be threatened at any moment and the entire thing hinges on convincing a twelve-hundred pound animal that it has to do whatever I tell it to.
Henry Adams once said ‘Friends are born, not made.’ It’s pretty much the same with horse folk. Even those of us who don’t get into things until later in life, were still born and not made. Like people walking around with some sort of unknown recessive gene–or hidden aneurysm–the late bloomers don’t realize what sort of mental bomb they’re harboring until the moment they first meet a horse.
If you think you might be a horseman/woman.nut, there’s an easy way to prove or disprove the theory. Reference google, find a nearby barn, and arrange for a visit.
If flies fly into your car the moment you open the door, that’s a good sign you’re onto something. If you don’t take your wardrobe into consideration before heading out to visit the barn, that’s one more point toward a ‘yes’. If it takes you ten minutes to cover the thirty-five feet from your car to the door of the barn because you keep stopping to say ‘hello’ to the barn cats and pet the random herd of dogs, that’s another sign that you’re coming home, rather than just visiting a place.
Once inside, indicators that your self-diagnosis is correct might include: burying your face in the nearest bale of hay or sack of feed and inhaling repeatedly, instinctively snagging a pitchfork to just nab that one, lonely pile of poop in the empty stall on your left, and/or the sudden onset of of partial spine paralysis which prevents you from standing straight up, but instead forces you to lean forward with your elbows propped on the top rail of the nearest fence while watching whatever’s going on beyond it.
Once inside, indicators that your self-diagnosis is correct might include: burying your face in the nearest bale of hay or sack of feed and inhaling repeatedly, instinctively snagging a pitchfork to just nab that one, lonely pile of poop in the empty stall on your left, and/or the sudden onset of of partial spine paralysis which prevents you from standing straight up, but instead forces you to lean forward with your elbows propped on the top rail of the nearest fence while watching whatever’s going on beyond it.
After the patient has be properly diagnosed with Infinito Amore Equorum, the only steps that can be taken are in regard to palliative care. It is a terminal condition. There is no known cure.Symptoms may be relieved by engaging in a range of activities involving horses.
Sometimes obtaining the ideal horse for your favorite discipline, but not actually riding the animal. is all that one needs to do to assuage their equum amore. These animals–though some of them might have cost their purchasers tens of thousands of dollars–are commonly referred to as Lawn Ornaments.
In other cases, buying one horse might not be enough to fix anything, especially if the sufferer is unsure of what discipline they’re suited for deep down in their heart. Therefor it might be necessary to buy several horses, one for each area of interest at the very minimum. You never know what might ‘call’ to you. Sure you’re in prime hunt country, but you might decide you like competition reining better. Or maybe even combined driving! The world is your oyster. You’d better make sure you’ve got the horse for the job. A Jack of All Trades, that’s what you are.
In other cases, buying one horse might not be enough to fix anything, especially if the sufferer is unsure of what discipline they’re suited for deep down in their heart. Therefor it might be necessary to buy several horses, one for each area of interest at the very minimum. You never know what might ‘call’ to you. Sure you’re in prime hunt country, but you might decide you like competition reining better. Or maybe even combined driving! The world is your oyster. You’d better make sure you’ve got the horse for the job. A Jack of All Trades, that’s what you are.
On the other hand, if you know exactly what discipline you want to focus on, you might want to consider getting a starter horse, and a fully trained, proven one. That way you can have an established pro-level horse to move on to after you’ve learned the basics on a dead broke one. Maybe you’ll even get super lucky, and that Grand Prix rider in your area will have one they’re willing to give away just to get it gone. Sure, they say it’s a nightmare animal that deserves to be bludgeoned with a backhoe instead of just buried by one, but you suspect that they haven’t put in enough time to learn his quirks. You can figure him out easily enough, and by the time you’ve learned how to count strides on your packer, you’ll have the new guy sorted out too, and then won’t that Grand Prix rider feel stupid for having given up so easily? And once you’ve succeeded with that ‘throw away champ, you can fix everyone else’s problem horses for them, too. It’ll be a side job. They can just drop their horses off at your farm and leave them for you to work on. So what if you end up with more than you planned on? They’ve all got potential in the long run! Welcome to the Competitive Collectors category.
Right behind the Competitive Collectors, we have the Trader-Iners. You manage to get a nice pony right from the off. Cute small Welsh-cross with some serious daisy-cutting action. Sails over fences with the perfect crescent curve others envy. But just a few years into your riding experience, you can feel that she’s reaching for those strides in the 2’6 courses. Really reaching. It’s a hand gallop to hit them solid and without chipping in. But money is tight. Your friend’s kid has a cousin, though, who’s just getting started and needs a good pony. So you sell your little Welch-cross and buy yourself an off-the-track Thoroughbred. Nice, 16 hands, leggy and easy going, despite his racing history. He’s all you could ever ask for. But after several years you realize that he’s never going to make it to Maclay. Local As, sure, but he just doesn’t have the balance or look for better than local. Too much back, not enough barre, and he likes to flick that tail when he thinks no one’s watching. Your instructor has a working student who’s been looking for a project horse, and her aunt happens to be friends with a local Warmblood breeder who pops out Premium foals and Stallion Prospects like a smoker popping Tic-Tacs. Out with the old, and in with the new, and up in the ratings!
And sometimes, competing isn’t for you at all. You love to ride, love the thrill of training horses, but life is just too short for you to care all that much about what someone dressed in entirely too much tweed thought about your horse’s knees and tail carriage. You can’t stand to watch the Trader-Iners going through horses like sticks of gum, swapping mounts like flavors of the week. When you get an animal, it’s for life. It’s a partnership, and you could never abandon one of your ‘fur-kids’! Even if it means not moving ahead in the show ring. No sir, everyone has a home for all of their lives on your place! Oh, you’re smart about it, you don’t over burden yourself like some of those tragic stories in the papers about people with what too many horses, and all of them starting, but you don’t ‘trade up and out’ either. And you can still ride a few of the retired guys. Or you could last year. You’re youngest just hit twenty-three, so he might not be up for riding anymore. But you can get a younger guy this years. There’s bound to be a single-digit horse that’ll need a home come spring. Unless your neighbor runs out of hay this winter, then you’ll probably end up with her set of retired Morgans. They’re way beyond their carriage days, and she tries to keep them comfortable. They even have blankets, but she leaves them out all the time. No stall rest at all. You’ve got three stalls left in your own barn, and they really ought to be brought in at night, even if they’ve got a run-in shed. You can give them a better retirement. And you’ve already got eleven over the age of twenty, all of them on various drugs and supplements. What’s two more? Yep, you’re definitely a Saver.
And sometimes, competing isn’t for you at all. You love to ride, love the thrill of training horses, but life is just too short for you to care all that much about what someone dressed in entirely too much tweed thought about your horse’s knees and tail carriage. You can’t stand to watch the Trader-Iners going through horses like sticks of gum, swapping mounts like flavors of the week. When you get an animal, it’s for life. It’s a partnership, and you could never abandon one of your ‘fur-kids’! Even if it means not moving ahead in the show ring. No sir, everyone has a home for all of their lives on your place! Oh, you’re smart about it, you don’t over burden yourself like some of those tragic stories in the papers about people with what too many horses, and all of them starting, but you don’t ‘trade up and out’ either. And you can still ride a few of the retired guys. Or you could last year. You’re youngest just hit twenty-three, so he might not be up for riding anymore. But you can get a younger guy this years. There’s bound to be a single-digit horse that’ll need a home come spring. Unless your neighbor runs out of hay this winter, then you’ll probably end up with her set of retired Morgans. They’re way beyond their carriage days, and she tries to keep them comfortable. They even have blankets, but she leaves them out all the time. No stall rest at all. You’ve got three stalls left in your own barn, and they really ought to be brought in at night, even if they’ve got a run-in shed. You can give them a better retirement. And you’ve already got eleven over the age of twenty, all of them on various drugs and supplements. What’s two more? Yep, you’re definitely a Saver.
Then we’ve got the Weekenders, who just hop on for twenty or thirty minutes every Sunday. The Ride Hard On The Trail But Only Once A Monthers, who like to trailer their horses out to pack trails and then wonder why the horses tie-up on Monday morning. The There Can Be Only Oners, whose love is so divine and insurmountable that no horse in the history of the world can ever compare to them, even when they buck you off repeatedly. The Over The Hillers who have always admired horses, but never had time to learn anything until not that they’re retired. The Teachers Who Teach, and are perpetually surrounded by a gaggle of girls (never boys, men riders spring fully formed into existence in their late teens or earache twenties) but never ride themselves.
I could go on forever and ever. Literally. No pun at all. There are as many different types of horsenut as there are grains of sand in the ocean. But we all share on thing in common. We were born, not made.