In my youth when I was the champion three day eventer
for my age, along with my two girlfriends Sarah and Susan.
We
ran the horseshows with the local chapter of the Pony Club and we won
everything, all the time, it was great fun! Lovely horses too, my
favourite during that time period was Apache. He was a sixteen three hand Pinto
– some kind of a Warm Blood I'm thinking in the here and now. I didn't really know or care about the
horses’ breeding back then. But he was big boned for a pinto,
certainly no Arab blood - more like oversized Quarter Horse with a bit of
workhorse mixed in there somewhere. What
a lovely guy, super friendly and accommodating. He'd let us ride two and
three on his back during hayrides and sleigh-rides.
He
also turned out to be a very good Three Day Event horse and actually the
practise of Dressage turned out to be one of his strong points. He looked
great executing the moves in the ring; le piaffe, le passage, etc. This
was back before the larger boned dressage horses were popular again and people
were in the practise of using skinny little thoroughbreds, never as magnificent
looking in a full “on top of the bit” crested pose as a thick - chested all
purpose hunting/war horse.
Surely
there is nothing so earthly magnificent as a fully mature male super-horse,
large and strong and healthy, rising up
in complete supplication to perform a
difficult but beautiful pose, in complete domination by the(usually) female
human atop the handsome beast.
The
lovely emotional playground for the horse and the girl, so filled with glee and
excitement and gratification - beauty,
grace…all in one so simple an image, so perfect a ancient form of Art.
And
riding it! I do remember the clinch of
metal teeth again towards bits, tackle, long leather straps, equipment of
discipline, regulated and controlled, carefully clocked against the domination
of the beast, punishment instruments finely tuned to stay just in the apex, on
the edge, surely dangerous with the big animal and his trusted love, his giant
metal hooves coated in steel just one push just one shove and you are
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