Читать книгу A School Horse Legacy, Volume 1: ...As Tails Go By - Anne Wade-Hornsby - Страница 6

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HASHISH

A Great Beginning

I met my first husband when he was riding Hashy at a huge picnic during “Scots on the Rocks” week in 1970 at the University of California, Riverside soccer field. I was riding Merlin, a Cremello part-Quarter horse. I boarded him at a nearby stable right next to UCR. When we married, Hashy and Merlin were our family. Nearly every day, after school, the four of us would take long rides through the hills of Highgrove, where we were living, or Grand Terrace, or Reche Canyon, in Southern California’s foothills. I was in my third year of teaching, my husband was in school. My income supported the horses, we had food on the table, and a house with a backyard big enough to have a horse pen, in a semi-rural section of Highgrove, California.

Later, however, we moved across the street from my husband’s parents’ estate in Riverside. Rent increased (we had not yet bought a house), we had a car payment, wanted a horse trailer, and became more mainstream consumers. My husband wanted to work for himself. My income was adequate, but a visit to my credit union presented an interesting consideration; we had no tax deductions. My husband was out of school, we didn’t have a mortgage. We did have plans to travel, needed new furniture, would have liked fancier accommodations for the horses, would have liked to go out to dinner more…the usual wish-list for those first years of marriage.

Anyway, one fateful day in 1972, I walked into my credit union, and Bob, the manager, was showing another man around. I had been a member since 1968, when I began teaching school, and Bob and I had discussed my financial goals on various occasions. I all but bumped into them, so Bob introduced me to his visitor, a gentleman interested in showing the credit union various ways to save its patrons’ money. I laughed and said he could start by showing me a way to save money on my taxes. On the spot, the visitor made an appointment to come to our home and do just that. Out of this came the riding school.

Our advisor said that if we started a riding school, we could deduct the horses and all related expenses from our taxes. Further, we would not even have to pay for a DBA ( a “doing business as” announcement) if we used our own name. We did have to file a business license. Done. “Gunther’s Equestrian Schooling” started, and Hashy became our first school horse. I had had to sell Merlin. I wanted a competition horse to jump, and Merlin, wonderful trail horse that he was, simply didn’t enjoy jumping, or getting on the bit, or other people riding him. I then found Benefactor (I name my horses with positive ideas in mind when I can…relates to next story), a huge 17.3 hand Quarter-draft cross. Thus started the riding school, and the tax deductions associated with it!

Hashy was perfect. Anyone could ride her as she adapted to her rider. She was slow and mellow for apprehensive children, fast and powerful if your seat was secure. She was a husky 16 hand half-Morgan, half-Quarter line back dun: yellow ochre with black points: black socks, ear tips, zebra striped legs. Her broad back was like a sofa, and she was smooth enough that any novice could ride her bareback. I used her for vaulting, and I have a picture of her in a 3-Day Event at Pebble Beach. Versatile really is an understatement.

Hashy was probably about ten years old in 1971. In all these years that have passed, no horse I’ve worked with was more suitable. Lucky for me! I had some three-line liability release for students and parents to sign, like “I do not hold Gunther’s Equestrian responsible for accidents” tacked onto the bottom of the sign-up form my students filled out. A far cry from the triplicate forms, insurance premiums, and notarized leases that came later.

Of course, the riding school didn’t just suddenly have students. I advertised in the local paper: “Highly qualified instructor (I really had been riding/taking lessons/competing since that epiphany when I was 7, and I WAS a certificated teacher…). Great school horses (well, one was… Bene was for more, um, advanced riders!). Local, Reasonable, and my phone number. Local meant that my neighbor was allowing me to use the vacant field next to our house. Reasonable was $5.00 per lesson, private or group. I didn’t actually have a group at first, but the school pretty much did advance at a slow, steady pace.

My first student! Hashy walked, trotted, cantered. The dressage arena consisted of rails on the ground. The nearby house of a friend of ours had recently burned down, and they were rebuilding. Their redwood rail fence did not go with the new house plans, so they had stacked it up for removal. Not a moment too soon, I asked if I could have the rails for my riding school. These were horse people. They said “Sure”. About 90 van trips later--we didn’t have a truck yet--I got all those rails to the field. They were sufficient to make a dotted line outline for my dressage arena. There were spares enough to make five or six cavaletti composed of rails and cinder blocks to vary the ringwork and introduce the idea of jumps. Hashy didn’t falter. She flexed into her corners. Her 10 and 20 meter circles were pretty good. Small children stayed perfectly balanced trotting cavaletti and looked darling.

Hashy was my dependable matron for years. When one of my new students showed me pictures of her previous vaulting competitions, a light went on. I really needed an activity that would engage more than the five-at-a-time students I allowed per class. Summer was coming, I needed an income to supplement summer school and I wanted to broaden my horizons. So, I checked out a book on vaulting from the library, photocopied the exercises, bought a used vaulting rig, then had one made, as well.

By this time, the riding school had become both a great tax write-off and a source of extra money for tack and riding school improvements. I practiced vaulting with Hashy myself. Someone held the longe line, and I practiced the five or six rudimentary school exercises. Vaulting instructors may read this with skepticism, but remember, I wasn’t going to competitions, and Hashy’s collected canter in a round pen or on the longe line was 100% consistent, slow, and balanced. I was aiming to improve student confidence. What better way than to have students run alongside a cantering horse, jump and haul themselves up, balance on a beautiful broad back, do a gymnastic figure or two, then jump or slide off the rear, with grace and success? I had both boys and girls: boys were desirable because their greater strength allowed for harder exercises, and they could balance the girls for multiple combinations. Hashy was the only horse I ever had that worked for this. We had a blast with “vaulting breaks” each summer for years.

Time passed. Hashy was the horse of choice not just for the school; my husband still used her for pack trips, mountain trail rides, and the occasional local hunter/jumper show. She competed with him in the 3-Day Event at Pebble Beach. Height wasn’t her forte, and her heavy musculature was at odds with the light horses and ponies in the hunter classes. 3-Day Eventing was my passion at that time, not hers, but she always got around with students, and she would place when another entry had a stop, or a rail down. She was not one to win on her dressage score!

As the years passed, we noticed a certain stiffness in her movements. X-rays revealed ringbone, not a death sentence, to be sure, but a condition to be treated with bute (basically aspirin for horses), yucca, and TLC. I became an authority on arthritic conditions and I realized that I was going to need another dependable school horse. I wanted another Hashy.

We tried to breed her. There was a gorgeous Palomino quarter horse stud called Peter Palleo in the area. No go. Hashy was getting old at this point, and wanted nothing to do with him. She became a pet. She saw the school go from a stable of one to a going concern of, probably, twenty school horses. The number wasn’t stable, because many of our boarders liked me to use their horses as school horses, so the number of horses available to me fluctuated from time to time; I did not own all the horses I used in the school. As we made improvements, added stalls, built the barn, Hashy always had the premier location, and there was never a doubt as to who was the Grande Dame. All these years later, I am fully aware of the influence this mare had on my life. She literally gave me the options that would guide the directions I went with the riding school. She taught me that horses have limits, too.

Hashy didn’t like cows. Period. One day, at a local roping arena, I wanted to take a shortcut past the roping chute. A student was riding Hashy; I was on someone else. I looked around, and saw her falling behind, so I went to take the reins to help horse and rider by. Hashy looked at me, looked at the cows in the chute, and sat down. Calmly. Well, she lost her balance, and began falling sideways. Her rider screamed, once. Hashy, again calmly, thrust her back feet out to get her balance, rose back up, and stood there. She shot the clear thought to me that she was going absolutely no further. She wasn’t spooking, she had stayed under the kid, and I had better deal with it. I calmed my student, who had not become unbalanced in the least, turned around, and took the long way. Lesson learned. No horse is really perfect. Some things don’t need to be done your way if there are other just as good ways to do them. I have had that discussion soooo many times over the years, with animals and humans. I learned to value and consider the merits of my horses’ opinions early on. It was one of my first and most important lessons.

Hashy was fully aware of her Number One status in the barn. Feeding time was something she enjoyed. As she aged, got stiffer, and was ridden less, I think she looked forward to the interaction we always gave her when we fed her -the pets, rubs, and treats. Upon hearing the feed wagon, her tail would come up, her neck would arch, and no one would guess she was way north of 25. She would snake that thick neck and kick up her heels, then trot over to the bucket, and wait for her due. Her last night was no different. It was nippy weather, and she was full of it. She kicked up her heels, then gave a playful rear, which is when her hip gave out. It was instantly obvious that something was wrong: she couldn’t get up, and we heard the pop. We called the vet immediately: our compassionate friend told us to get Hashy to his hospital as quickly as we could.

My husband and I both knew this was it. Getting her up and into the trailer was a credit only to her will and desire to please us. This was the first trip of its kind of the many I have had to take over the years. I don’t know how my husband stayed on the road; the tears just flowed. At the vet, we were tearful and silent. The unloading was silent, and to this day, I do not know how vets handle these events with the grace they do.

The drive home was beyond tears. I am tearing up as I write this. I was, and am, thankful at so many levels, that I was graced with the companionship of this horse. I used to joke that her name, Hashish, was oh so appropriate. Her color was that of the finest. Riding with her, working with her, was a much better high, however. When I tried to get “HASHISH” as the license plate of our first car (a 1960 VW bug), of course, that didn’t happen. So, we settled for “HASHY”, and I still have it. How fortunate I am that my first school horse turned out to be the best possible. Hashy just naturally met high expectations, and they will always take you further than just going with the flow. This was the second of her lessons. Every act associated with my riding school assumes the best outcome because I had the best to start with and never knew any differently.