I think a while back I may have mentioned I was watching Full Metal Jousting on the the History Channel (interesting show if you like seeing men knocking the crap out each other with long thin sticks… and I do … OHMY!). I’ve even gotten the two youngest of the young’ens to watch with me. Inevitably, we get around to talking about the horses. There are some massive beasts on that show. They’d have to be to charge at another with a 200+ lb. man wearing 40 some-odd lbs. of armor on their back. The horses all have different personalities too and it’s fun to watch my boys comment on this horse did this and that horse did that. It got me to thinking that the teenager had only been on/near a horse once—when his 4th grade class went to camp for a week. And the 10yo, has seen a horse close up once—thru a fence (his class is doing the camp this year,too, but only for a day thanks to all the dern school budget cuts, but I digress…)

I grew up around horses (sort of). My granddad bought one for me when I was two-weeks-old. It was a little while before I got to actually ride her. She was in west Texas and I was in Alaska (not to mention I was only two-weeks-old). Her name was Theresa and she was a small, multi-colored paint horse. By the time I was one, we’d moved home (Texas will always be my home) and I was riding here with mom or dad, then eventually, by myself.

(← 1979—yeah that’s me wearing the pink shorty shorts, my bro, granddad and Theresa—full grown; probably in her teens)

My Granddad also got a Mule (who I named after an aunt—from the other side of the family, can’t remember why, I was 3). And he had a little bitty black horse—aptly named Blackbird—to keep Theresa company. Until I was seven, we lived close enough that I was probably on a horse as often as my boys were on their bikes/skateboards at that age. I never thought anything of it. It just was. Theresa lived well into her 20s I want to say—she was old/double-digits when my granddad got her, and she was the best present he’d ever given me!

By the time I got married and had a couple of kids, there was another horse who was old by that point, but my two oldest boys got to ride on her when they were little. By the next couple of kids, though, the visits were sparse. My granddad had passed and the family sold off his stock. The two younger boys don’t really know of horses. They aren’t that familiar with the soft, warm nose that will root in your hand for a treat or the dark, dark eyes that look so deep into you you just want to hug on them. My youngest, though, has an affinity for anything furry. We ran across a ranch next to a park one day, and I swear if that horse didn’t just walk right up to him/the fence and let the boy pet her…

I would so get a horse now, if I had the time to take care of it properly. I would have to rent stable space—our backyard barely holds our two 50lb. dogs. Still, I would love to have my very own horse again. You know, I used to have a cabana boy on my “dream list”. I might consider changing it to a horse. Ooh better yet, a cabana boy on a horse. Now that is going straight to the top of my dream list!