Happy Gotcha Day

On December 7, 2007, I bought a five year old horse.

She was very pretty, and quite skittish, and she clunked around on some of the worst feet I've ever seen IRL, but something in her eyes said she just wouldn't ever give up.  She looked me in the eye and very clearly said "You.  Get me out of here."  I already had three other horses, but I didn't even haggle.

I could catch her, and I could even climb on board if I had two people to hold her head, but that was about it.  She had no brakes, and her steering was pretty iffy, and she had only one speed: rack as fast as possible.  I don't even have pictures of how bad her feet were, because she'd fall down if you asked her to hold them up.  But I'd been reading about endurance, and I decided that a horse that only ever wanted to go and didn't want to stop would be perfect - hey, at least she's not lazy!

My life went to shit in various ways over the next couple of years, but I held on to Dixie.  I put my old mare down, and I sold my Percheron.  I had to live three states away from my husband for a year, and I spent most of a winter in a house with no heat.  We moved to Ohio, which was mediocre at best until my good gelding Champ died there.  I could still barely ride Dixie, but at that point, she was all I had left.

Then we moved again, to Reno Nevada, and I finally started to get my shit together.  I met Crysta, who was like "horse has four legs?  you can do endurance, let's go!" and dragged us out on the trails with her.  And she kept dragging me along, patiently answering all my ridiculous questions, reassuring me, and hauling us out to local rides.

(Yall, I really don't mind answering all your stupid questions and reassuring you. I love it, actually! I'm paying forward the gifts I got from Crysta, and I'm helping to drag new people into the best horse sport on the planet.)

Dixie and I slowly started to work out our individual and conjoined issues and get our shit together.  I still had a nightmarish time mounting up, and she would spook and spin any time a rock or sagebrush looked at her funny, and she'd still bolt sometimes, but at least she doesn't buck and there was enough room to ride it out.  I learned to sit down and relax - fake it til you make it!

I got her feet from "disastrous" to "decent pasture trim" before we left Memphis.  In Ohio, I let the barn farrier trim her, but I wasn't very happy with how her feet looked.  I found a really good trimmer in Reno, but I gradually moved back to doing more and more of my own hoofcare.  I started slowly upgrading all my leather tack to biothane.  I gave up on modesty in favor of comfort and learned to ride in yoga pants and sneakers instead of jeans and cowboy boots.

We rode in the blazing high-altitude summer sun and I turned the color of a lobster, numerous times. We rode in the wind - Nevada wind is not fucking around.  We rode in the snow - I've been snowed on in every month except July and August at this point.  We've ridden past the usual trail shit - dead cars and mattresses - and weird shit, like that boat tied to the mailbox in Silver Springs.  And the radio-controlled model airplane airport in Hungry Valley.  Hunters weren't any scarier than dead TVs, so we rode past them too.  I've ridden that horse over bridges, under interstates, and beside freight trains.

Every little victory was usually preceded and followed by disastrous little setbacks, so it was hard for me to tell we were making any progress.  Take the Trailer Saga for instance:

We got a trailer!  It was a dream come true!  But then I had to win the battle of wills to get her to load in the damn thing - she really, really didn't want to load.  Or unload.  We went off and did some trail trials, then we got ready to go to Washoe Valley, and she tried to kill herself.  I never asked her to step foot in that trailer again, and it took a year before I could upgrade to Adventure The Trailer.  One step forward, seventeen steps back.

But it's been the journey of a lifetime, learning how to communicate with that horse and forcing us to both become better individuals in the process.  I still cuss her a lot, and I'm quite sure she cusses me in horse language, but we are a team.

It takes a whole community to do endurance - almost everyone I've interacted with has helped me in some major way at some point - but Dixie's the one individual without whom I couldn't have done this. Thank you for choosing me, pretty girl.

2013 Tahoe Rim Ride 50

 2013 Virginia City 100

(And last but most importantly - thank you to my husband.  You make it all possible.  I love you more than Dixie.)