My Journey To Finding “Bear”.
I have thought about what my first horse would be like ever since I was a conscious minded child. The personality, would it be a mare or a gelding, tall or petite, what color, what breed? As I got older and read through all the books I had about horses from cover to cover, I discovered the Arabian horse would time and time again, be the one breed I kept turning the pages back to.
Sure, I found most breeds to be beautiful with intelligent soft eyes, but the Arabian kept me captivated. I love the way they were compact and agile like a sports car, the slight dish to their face I found unique. Hearing and reading time and time again just how intelligent they are. Being how petite I am, the fact that they are as well was another draw.
I was always told growing up by my friends who rode and showed quarter horses that I was insane for my selection of breed to want to get into. My one friend, who at the time had an OTTB gelding she H/J with, even advised me against it rather strongly. Yes we were just kids at the time, 15-17 years old, I also lived in NYC at the time, so I knew whenever I did get a horse, I’d be much older. Despite all their protest I still felt they were condemning an entire breed and all its strains based on a few mishandled horses that they personally dealt with.
I was 22 when I finally moved out of NYC where I was born and raised, with my parents. We moved down to TN to the same town they lived in before I was born, where my sister was born. It’s a small rural town, where property was abundant but finding a job that paid well to afford it was a grim endeavor.
I had spent some time working retail and not making nearly enough money to help support myself, let alone affording consistent lessons (all the lessons I’ve had over the years were spread apart). Out of curiosity I had started looking on Google for Arabian horse farms in the area. I had found a few, but one in particular that was half an hour away. It was a training and breeding facility that offered lessons. They had a couple of horses for sale, but of course this was just me dreaming at this point. I showed their website to a friend of mine, and he surprised me later that week with a lesson on an Arabian horse with the trainer at that farm! Those lessons were quite pricey, but oh how worth it they were!
The horse she had me ride was an 11 year old, tall bay Egyptian Arabian Stallion. Yes, stallion. He was so gentle and quiet that she trusted her at the time 4 year old daughter on him. He also was the one that I was gawking at on her sale page. He was a retired show horse that had sustained an illness from an improperly cleaned stall at a show that landed him in the hospital on death’s door. After that she retired him from showing, but he was still a perfectly sound riding horse.
I took an hour-long lesson on that horse and within the first minute my original gut instinctual draw to these horses was confirmed that I was on the right path and wasn’t crazy. He was the most comfortable and smooth horse I had ever ridden! Yes, his high level of training did make the riding experience that much better, but it was also the physical fit. Even though he was for sale and would be gelded before the sale, I knew this wasn’t the right time for me, both financially and experience-wise.
I’ve always been one of those people who made my own way and school really wasn’t my forte. I didn’t rely on college to teach me art and design, and I felt it wasn’t a smart move for me to go in debt to get a degree where half the time I’d be learning things I have already taught myself. I had started building websites and digitally drawing on the computer for years prior and learned along the way. So after a few semesters I dropped out and started working at a real estate office as a personal errand girl. It paid the bills!
Once I moved, I started doing more freelance work and was able to make my way working remotely for a couple of established companies. Funny enough the first pieces of art I was selling were custom portraits of people’s horses.
I wont go into the fact that I was a typical horse crazy little girl that never got her lessons or time around horses growing up and the entire idea depressed her, but I think that goes without saying.
Jumping forward to August 2015. I had been taking lessons with a local instructor at a farm not too far from where I live. I wasn’t specializing in any one discipline; I wanted to learn how to handle a horse safely on a trail and in unpredictable situations (which really could be ANY situation). I had remembered how to maintain a proper seat, posting a trot, etc. with the previous English lessons I had taken beforehand, and prefer to ride English but use western tack currently.
Finally being in the position to enter the search I’ve waited for my entire life, all the while sharing my findings with the guy I’ve been dating. Coincidently his mother is a retired Arabian breeder. When he began sharing my prospects with her, she told him she had one horse in particular she felt I’d be a good match with, that she in the recent years had given away. The plus side would be more than likely she would be able to get back because he was going unused at that point. So they told me to just put a temporary hold on my search.
My biggest concern when buying a horse was soundness, health, and potentially dangerous issues for a first time buyer, like a horse with a lot of buck. I was told this potential horse had a good life with her at her previous farm since the day he was born, and never had any health issues, and wasn’t crazy under saddle. The red flag that flew in this situation was he didn’t have any “formal” training. He was started, broken, and trained what he knows by his mother who has done this for years, but she never called herself a trainer. Her reason for giving him and her remaining horse up was that she was dealing with some health issues at the time, so he hadn’t been worked with much in recent years.
While this was going on, I was getting ready to start the next chapter in my life. I had been searching for my first piece of property to build my first home on. I started negotiations to purchase a near 6 acre, mostly level to gently rolling cleared pasture in a nice neighborhood that is horse friendly. Actually not at all far from where I currently am living with my parents. I’ve known about these parcels since I moved down here 6 years ago, and always kind of wanted them. I could only afford one of the 3, but it’s the corner lot and I already know how I’d like to have everything set up, since getting the perk test where I want the house to be situated in contrast to the barn and pastures. I knew I’d be boarding at the farm I have been taking lessons at, and this has given me the freedom to take my time in planning how I’d like everything in the long run as well as receiving continued guidance.
After closing on the land, I went up to Northern Kentucky to visit with the man I have been seeing, and to meet his mother. While I was there, she showed me her albums full of horses she owned, bred, showed, loved. Flipping through the pages of all these beautiful horses, I saw a spread of this handsome bay yearling. Over the past few months, I had been told that the horse he was telling me about was a chestnut, but when looking at the pictures in front of me, his mother told me that was “Berry”, the same horse her son had been telling me about. This was definitely a plus, because I always had a liking for the bay horses and was glad he had confused Berry with his half brother, a chestnut.
She said she didn’t want to make any promises, but the place she had donated this horse, along with another Arabian, a mare, wasn’t using him in their program anymore. She went on to say that a young girl had been riding him and showed him successfully back in the summer, was his person for a while, and when her birthday rolled around, her parents surprised her with a horse of her own leaving Berry in the dust.
The girl who had taken this young lady’s place, was very inexperienced, rough & heavy handed, teaching him a lot of bad habits, allowing him to get away with everything. Over time he became pushy and disrespectful and she grew tired of dealing with him. This would be, my guess where a lot of his vices come from and before he came to me, it had been a couple of months since his last ride.
Long story short, she spoke with the program director and he agreed to give the horse back despite him wanting to keep him around for his grandkids; who are apparently under the age of 3. Honestly I wouldn’t consider him a child safe horse, at least not right now. She wasn’t too pleased with his condition, and sadly the program she had donated him to be involved in, wasn’t what she originally thought it had been. The horse had been subjected to a lot of inexperienced people without proper instruction or guidance on site. He wasn’t abused, but he was handled mostly by beginner children and young adults who weren’t being supervised by a trainer or experienced horse person. They would go take care of the horses, ride, trail ride, etc. but without any proper riding lessons or horse handling classes. It was kind of like a community farm for a church in the area. They had some children who actually had lessons before and knew what they were doing, but the majority weren’t experienced at all. Almost like going to a dude ranch minus a guide.
So in a way I “adopted” him for the price of transport. He didn’t have a “person” anymore after having one his entire life leading up to that point. He wasn’t worked with properly and it had been a long time since he had, that he was regressing in what he did know. He came to me on the day before Thanksgiving. I had to wait 25 days for him to be delivered because the most reliable and safe transporter she knew wasn’t going to be coming this way before the 25th.
He tailored well, and I actually overslept when he was delivered, I had stayed up late the night before because I couldn’t sleep! Who could? When I got to the farm, there he was, my first horse. Similar to the Arabians I had always admired. He looked quite similar to the Huckleberry Bey Breyer I used to play with as a child; funny enough, that’s his grandsire. There he was, in the front pasture eating hay, then with a few pieces hanging from the corner of his mouth, trotting up and down the fence line where two mares were playing with him from the other side. It was a very nice first sight and memory of him.
I will say this, he has his vices that I still have to work out a lot of. For a first horse I wouldn’t have purchased him as he was when he first arrived and is still currently, but since he has been with me, we have come quite a long way. He has taught me more valuable lessons in our short time together thus far than I have learned in lessons over the years. Most of those lessons were riding lessons, not horsemanship and he definitely has been teaching me how to be a good horsewoman. I have learned to be firm but fair, soft but clear in my actions, and stern when needed. Most of all he has taught me patience, an area in which I lacked some in the past. I still have so much to learn, and it’s definitely been a rollercoaster of a ride, and I love every minute of it even on days when I feel defeated.
Here is our journey!