OK... so Satin was my one true horse. THE ONE. She knew the sound of my tires when I pulled up, she ran across the field to me… never hard to catch, easy keeper, nickered when I walked by. She taught me how to live and how to ride. She taught me what it is to have mutual love and trust between horse and rider. We took our first and only Grand Champion ribbon together… well, she did all the work!
Long story short, Satin was struck by lightening in a field
in Florida where I sent her to be bred and kept while I found a trustworthy
trainer and clean barn where they actually FED the horses here, at home in New
Jersey. I learned about her death in a
letter with a long full piece of her tail enclosed. It shook me to the core and that day goes
down as one of my very worst.
But this really isn’t about Satin. Hopefully those of you reading this are or
were fortunate enough to have that one horse… if so, and then I don’t need to
bore you with details of how great she was.
This is about finding Satin again and the journey it took to
get there.
I really don’t want
to do this again!
So, after Satin, I gave up. I went through unbelievable and
intractable heartache and I knew that I never would do this again. I would never find a horse like Satin, nor
would I ever be able to ride any other horse.
Years passed. Ritchie (my husband) secretly never gave up
his love of horses… or yet, he never gave up on ME riding and getting a horse
again. In fact, we argued frequently about our daughter riding…see, she was a
ballerina and they don’t look too good in Pointe shoes in a full leg cast!
The short of the story is, we ended up taking a hike in the
dead of winter to upstate NY...God’s country,, to look at some quarter horse he
found on the internet. Well, that didn’t
work out. Turns out, this 14.1 hand little horse/pony kept following him around
literally begging to be out of this horrific, frigid barn … and the saga began.
So, shipping costs, vet check and boarding at some run down
barn in Stillwater… here we go again.
Renaming our new baby “Saint” was easy, as it was just Satin’s name all
jumbled up! Well, he was anything but that… and, of course, our new barn was
just like all the rest. ..Money-hungry, backyard riders who open a barn and
call themselves trainers… run down stalls with a breeding ground of thrush and
of course, a rock hard outdoor arena that was made for spiral fractures.
Onward to find yet another barn and another person I could
entrust my horse to…. I did. It was
beautiful, clean and friendly. It was
there that I met my Barbed Wire Babes… and it was there my heart was opened to
actually loving having a horse again.
Saint was small, green and unpredictable. Of course, not the horse for me… although I
think I rode him once or twice…he was nice… but certainly not Satin…
So, we took another adventure to look at a horse with superb
western pleasure breeding and conformation to die for! I actually rode her and
fell in love instantly.
So, shipping costs, vet check and boarding at our new found
paradise …. Saint sold…and new saddles later, I began to ride. This horse, Sandy... a biter. HMMMM… took a chunk out of Ritchie and
anyone who dared to walk past her stall …hmmm... that’s new… hyped up on alfalfa, she became unrideable.
Not the horse for me… she was nice... but certainly not Satin.
During the course of this, I was diagnosed with Breast
Cancer which changed my life forever.
Begging my trainer to sell her and never looked back on my losses, I
packed up and went into hibernation for surgery, treatment and healing.
I was never going to
ride again… especially after surgery and especially because I knew I would
never find Satin again.
Or would I???
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