Horse Blood

If you're one of us, you know that the horses have always been inside of you.

Maybe you were born with the "gene," a spark that's been bouncing around in your heart for as long as you can remember. Like memories of the room you grew up in, or the smell of your grandmother. Love of the horse has always been a definitive yes, a line in your fingerprint, or a twine in the braid of your DNA. 

Maybe you grew up in the sport and took it for granted. Horses were just a part of it all. Your family's work. Your life punctuated by the clicking of hooves on pavement and vet trucks crunching on gravel and clients showing up unannounced. Maybe you didn't care much growing up because horses were a part of everything like bills and school and dishes. 

Maybe you never left the barn.

Maybe you stayed away for decades.

Maybe you didn't get the chance to ride like you wanted to. 

Maybe you rode like crazy and jumped the highest jumps and won the biggest awards but life swept you away from the arena with its crazy current of adult responsibilities. 

But then one day you woke up on the side of the road in the horsey part of town tickling your fingers on the prickly chin hairs of someone's pasture pet. Asking strangers walking by, "Are there are any riding instructors around here?"

Or you said yes to that trail ride for your bestie's 30th birthday and something clicked. Something changed inside of you while you flopped around awkwardly on the back of a very hungry paint more interested in the grass on the trail than on your terrible riding skills. 

Maybe, suddenly, on a random spring day,  all the puzzle pieces found their place and somewhere in the picture new time and extra money revealed themselves so that finally you could come back to where you've always belonged. 

The story of how you got started, or when you came back, or even why you left for a bit are their own special kind of horsey magic. 

You're one of us, if you're here. How you got here really doesn't matter, what matters most is this: we feel it too. We too know the undeniable magnet that always draws us back to the smell of salty saddle leather, the thrill of a perfect ride, and the quiet satisfaction of watching our equine friends eat their dinner. And in a world of uncertainty, isn't it nice to know this much is true? That the answer to the question, "should we go see the horses?" Is always oh yes. 

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Looking for "getting back into riding" essentials? Find the classic hunter breech here!