I was not as lucky as a lot of the other ladies in RHPC.  I never had horses of my own when I was young.  My grandparents and one of my uncles had horses as did an old farmer down the road.  Whenever I could, I would hop on the back of any horse I could find and take off.  I loved going to uncle Bill's for family gatherings because he always had horses saddled and ready. I would ride all day.  The farmer down the road had a horse he would bring down from time to time but my sister and I always ended up on him bareback together with my big sister in the front.  Take my word for it: my sister is no horse woman.  I usually ended up on the ground.  Maybe that is how I got so good at it. 

Then, when I was 21, I moved to Phoenix, Arizona.  In Phoenix I met a friend that worked part time cleaning stables for a local "robot" stable.  She would let us come over early in the morning and ride the horses before the stable opened.  Since she was around the horses a lot she knew which ones had a little spunk and we would take them out on the trails.  Unfortunately, she got married and moved away and I moved to the other side of town. 

It didn't take me long to meet up with another horsewoman, (maybe we can smell each other).  She didn't have any horses at the time but we would go ride at a nearby stable whenever we could.  Soon we started going other places to ride.  With her, I have ridden the rim of the Grand Canyon and in the Red Rock of Sedona. 

In 1995 I moved back to Indiana.  After moving back to the cold (which I hate) I decided that if I had to live here I was going to make myself happy and buy a horse.  The problem is, that I lived in town and didn't have a place to keep one.  My father-in-law fixed that problem.  He lived outside of Franklin and had several acres.  First he bought my daughter a little black pony named Pepper -- meanest little pony I ever saw!  About 6 months later he called me up after one of his trips to Kentucky, where he had family, and asked me to come over he wanted to show me something.  When I got there he started showing me pictures of the latest baby horse that was just born on his nephew's horse farm.  She was a beautiful black and white spotted Tennessee Walker.  I went on and on about how beautiful she was.  Then he informed me that she was mine!  Mine?  He said he bought her the minute her feet hit the ground.  He just knew that I had to have her.  I brought her home when she was 4 months old.  She was my baby.  She was beautiful!  She was perfect!  She was my Macy!  Unfortunately, the perfection did not last.  When she was about 18 months old she started having problems walking and would trip a lot.  Her front legs were not working correctly.  My vet said that she had some type of genetic problem and that the tendons in her forelegs were retracting.  I took her to Purdue and had surgery done to try to correct the problem.  I will know if the surgery would have been successful because the poor thing had a reaction to one of the medications they gave her and her kidneys shout down.  They started IV fluids and did what they could.  She seemed to come out of it.  We brought her home but, a few days later, I went out to the barn to find her lying down.  Her feet were swollen and hot. I called the vet.  He came right out only to tell me that all the trauma she had been through had probably caused laminitis.  He did not know if she would pull through.  I lived at that barn!  I slept there and ate there.  I just could not leave. I soaked her feet in ice water and rubbed medicine on them.  I gave her physical therapy to keep the circulation going.  All to no avail. Her hooves started separating and we ended up putting her down 3 weeks after her second birthday.  I was devastated.  A friend of mine felt sorry for me and brought me a very pretty little red roan filly about six months old.  She was pretty but she never captured my heart the way the Walker did.  When she was about twenty months old she got into a fight with a hay ring and the hay ring won.  It broke her front leg almost completely off and she had almost bled to death by the time help arrived.  Number 2 down.

After the loss of the red roan, I was just done. I thought that maybe God was trying to tell me something.  Then a friend came by and asked if we would trade that mean little pony for a nice little quarter horse.  My daughter was the owner and the pony had knocked her down a few times so she agreed.  In came the quarter horse and out went the pony.  We took the quarter horse off to the trainer for him to break.  The trainer called a couple of weeks later and said she was ready.  Since she was small, only about 14.2, my husband was too big to ride her and my daughter did not have the experience for a green broke horse.  So up I went.  She was easy in the mouth and rode well.  So home we went.  That little horse is the best horse I have.  She tries my patience sometimes but I wouldn't trade her for the world.  That little horse is my Dollar the one I ride now.  I named her Dollar because she is worth 4 quarters.  I guess God just had another plan to bring two friends together.

That is my story and I would like to thank my mom (Dolly Stephens -- also a RHPC member) for passing on the "horse gene" to me.  I love horses and I am really happy that I found a great group of ladies that are as horse crazy as I am.