Horse People

I tell stories. One of them is about the horses my father collected during his lifetime, and the effect those horses had on my family and me. Our horses were, with a few remarkable exceptions, cast-offs. Defective animals. A grey mare with one lung. A horse with one leg shorter than the other three. An albino-eyed biter. A blind burro. You get the idea. Homeless horses. Eventually, we took responsibility for 40 of these off-kilter creatures. Rehabilitated them as best we could on our family’s farm in southern Indiana. Outfitted them with crazy variety of saddles and tack. Built a riding stable that was open to the public. Wild rides ensued. Especially our own.

You can count on horses as characters because they mirror humans. Reflect our behaviors. My father, whose nickname locally was Cowboy Bob, liked to call us horse people. I don’t think he distinguished between the four-leggeds and the two-leggeds amongst us. Horse people. People horses. It was all the same to him.

Cowboy Bob would say, “What you put into a horse is what you get from it. If you show them love, you’ll get love in return.”

That was his experience. Horses were his treatment for his shell shock from World War II. He had seen horrible things. Horses showed him love.

If you show them disrespect, they’ll make a fool out of you. This was my experience. Our horses and I were not friends. To me, they were work. I would rather’ve been hanging out with friends in town. I resented them. They resented me. It showed in embarrassing, publically humiliating ways.

If you fear them, they will haunt you. This was my mother’s experience. She was afraid of horses. Her love for my father was greater than her equinophobia, so she married him. She paid a price for this that was both financially stressful and tragically personal.

If you play with them, they will bring you happiness. This was my sister’s experience. They were her friends, her way of connecting with the world. She owns and rides horses to this day…

If you dream about them, they’ll separate you from reality. This was my brother’s experience. He dreamed of training thoroughbreds. It was just a dream. One day, a horse took him away from us, to a lake on our farm, where he passed into the spirit world.

If you rescue them, they’ll save you. This was my family’s experience. We hitched our fates to our horses, or maybe they hitched their fates to ours. Over the course of our lifetimes, it was all the same. When they were down, we lifted them up. When we were down, they did the same. When the trail ahead seemed hopeless, we gave each other reasons to ride on. And when death came knocking, we gave each other life.

When I tell stories about our horses, it is my way of saying thanks.