"That's NOT happening for me"

    It's easy to see that there are two very different stories involved with die hard equestrians. There are the "expense is no object,  get me THE horse" players, against the  "that's NOT happening for me" crew. In the   second group, that's where you will find my rider. Her name appears amongst the lopsided,  struggle harder,  hundred-to-one contenders. This penniless posse has no choice, but to rely on passion...best be some impenetrably powerful passion, no less!

     It's a pity for her and the many other poor eventing horseback riders, slaving as working students, jumping over hoops trying to make "the horsey life" happen. Her newly transformed country life is extremely challenging, which holds true for the other four stable girls as well. Most sweat painstakingly over riding. Routine running gets added, in order to look good wearing their sexy full seat riding pants. They forsake party's, abandon boyfriends/girlfriends, forfeit computers, cell phones and television. They put off school, stop eating Twinkies, toss out their high heels just to ride horses. Many of them, beat up the "crack of dawn" daily in order to hold on tight to their "someday" Olympic dreams. Oh yeah, also my childs' five ring stardom vision gallops even farther: to be "an eventer" on the cover of the Sports Illustrated magazine. By this point, in her young 20 years of living, she is well~aware that life is not fair. Her path is going to demand focused determination and a bucket full of blistering hard work. That reminds me, she needs some more band-aids.

     These are GIGANTIC goals for a lady with no equestrian bloodline, never a large enough back yard and no helpful ancestral horsey people trotting about. Frankly, I have no idea where her equine desire came from, surely not me. I was a paranoid petrified human avoiding horses. All six of us kids believed those trotters were dangerous! If opportunity allowed, those horses would chew off our fingers! We were told never to feed them. Besides, if there was any extra cash, it surly wouldn't go to a horse, since the dragster living in our laundry room, was the money pit. The only way my rider was able to obtain her five year old "off the track thoroughbred" was because her older sister started to mimic a tramp. My taller girl was constantly wearing trashy clothes, skipping school and toilet papering houses. The Cops would call.  That daughters' bad actor behavior totally unnerved us. "For the love of God....and yourself~ girl, cover up!" I remember us pleading. We were responsible parents.
     The carrot had to be dangled. You know, give the second daughter a horse, with the hope that she would never follow out the window, in her older sisters footsteps. In all fairness: this older offspring straighten out when I dragged her ass out of Utah,  relocated to Florida. The sunshine state is a better spot for the rider anyway. We all know there are gobs of good top quality riders in Ocala, so it's bound to be at the very least, a great launching pad.