A few years ago, Contessa helped organize a surprise party for a friend of ours, a party to be held at a stable and that featured horseback riding for all those able and interested. (It also involved a mechanical bull. Woman can organize a party, let me tell you.) Sadly, I was out of town for a conference and wasn’t able to attend. But when I got back, I ran into a couple of chums who had gone, and who immediately began berating me, unprovked, “When are y’all going to get a horse? Contessa needs a horse! Have you seen what she looks like on a horse?”
It wasn’t that Contessa had spent the whole party griping about her crippling equine deficiency, but just that these friends had seen the delight and determination that animates Contessa whenever she’s around a horse. And it’s no wide-eyed My Little Pony naivete, either: she’s been riding since she could walk, and probably before, actually. She’s owned a few horses in her day, she’s totally fearless on and around them, and you can tell that they like her, to boot. But the 8 years of our marriage have included 7 years of one or both of us being in graduate school, so having the money and time to take care of a horse wasn’t an option until now. (And I bear the scars—psychological only, thank you very much—of a four-hours-plus excursion with Contessa on a bird dog field trial, an excursion for which I had not, shall we say, properly girded my loins. Oh, the jostling.)
So, here he is: Cruz, a three-year old palomino Quarter Horse cross. He arrived at the stable—so close to our house! run by the city! and very near the Mississippi River levee, where apparently you can ride!—last Friday. Contessa’s been out to see him every morning and every evening, and really, you should see her—she’s just effervescing, just fizzing with horsey joy. I’m looking forward to getting to know him better, and to getting to ride him, too.
Here Cruz is looking back at Contessa, wondering why he’s been tied up and thinking that he’d really prefer a green halter.
Although it kind of looks that way, we are in fact not trying to load the horse into the back of our CR-V. I mean, get serious. It’s only an LX.
As a child i had horses. I was ALSO very into playing ‘super hero’ as a young child. I had this Pony named ‘silver’ that i loved to ride (we also had a pinto named SATAN which i did NOT love to ride, and that is another story).
anyway, the thing about Silver, is that I never actually rode it. See, that horse is named “Silver” and ANYBODY knows that Silver is the Lone Ranger’s horse, not some kid named JP!. so, the only way i’d ride this pony was to be in a FULL Lone Ranger outfit (hat, 2 guns, boots, pants, shirt, bandana, etc.) so that i could be a perfect 5 year old replica of Clayton Moore (by god, the best cowboy of them all!)
ONLY then could i ride that pony, and once i donned that mask, I was no longer lil’ jp! I was the Lone Ranger and would only answer to “Lone Ranger” or just “Ranger”. I also pretended not to know any of my family (we lived out in the middle of nowhere in the Delta). I’d ride up to my mom hanging out laundry:
“Hello Ma’am”—Hello Ranger!
“You had any trouble ‘round these parts?”—No Ranger, but I believe your Grandmoth—I Mean, Ms. Nanny down the road might need some help.
“Much oblidged!”
Much to my disappointment, my missions usually centered around relaying messages than stopping russlers, from which we were strangely free in the MS Delta.
Sadly, I probably knew more about riding horses and motorcycles before the 6th grade than i do now at 31.
Wow!! Cruz is bee-yoo-teeful, even if I am scared of “brown dragons.” And, “crippling equine deficiency” is ridiculously funny.
ha, i was living at the rv park adjacent to the stables for two weeks…quite literally in a van down by the river…pretty place, it is, especially with the morning mist still lingering…it is quite likely my doag barked at your horse…he got mighty bold with them with a ditch and a fence separating them…
Sorry we missed you, dave! Contessa did have an encounter with some of your fellow campers—a family down from I think Ohio, who had inherited some land but they didn’t know where it was. The patriarch kept saying he thought he could “train that horse to be a saddlebred,” which is a little like saying you can train a labrador to be a basset hound.
Those people at the RV park were the most delightful freaks I have met lately. They were tent camping next to their late 70s model black limousine(!). When Cruz and I walked by they stopped me to give him a carrot and chat. They said they liked my horse and I said I liked their car.
Pretty horse. My dad raised Quarter Horses for years. Don’t know much about Palominos, though.
Aww, Cruz!
Welcome, Cruz! Ace says hi.
[...] ol legs back under me again. In the meantime, here are some short takes… I. First, Cruz is still doing fine–doing great, in fact. Our equinologically like-minded friend Joanna wanted to send C [...]
[...] me, she’s just being modest; there’s her intense love of all creatures great (horses) and small (goats, cats, dogs), a love so great that it may in fact be an affront to God; her astounding cap [...]