First Ride

I was a horse-crazy kid.  I did summer horse camps for several years in a row in my teens and faithfully devoured the hobby magazines.  When I was nearly done with my marketing degree, I discovered that Michigan State had a two year equine submersion program.  It called to me.  I graduated with my bachelor's in business then re-enrolled at State for the horse management program.  It was awesome.  It opened the door for me to be a horse owner myself.  I owed Muddy, an off-track thoroughbred for almost 10 years before he passed away when Bug was a year old.  It also lead me to where I am today - working at a prestigious horse farm on the East Coast.

That said, I promised myself I wouldn't push the "horse thing" onto my kids.  If they showed an interest, I would go from there, but I wasn't going to make my thing their thing.  Last weekend, Bug was helping me a work event and even though he's been coming to work with me since he was 6 weeks old, it seemed to strike him all of sudden that he was interested in the horses.  He asked if we could get one.  And a fence.  And a trailer.  He said he would feed it and brush it and ride and "mom could scoop the poop."  Then he talked about horses more over the next few days.  I jumped on it.  He was signed up for his first riding lesson by Thursday.  I was pumped!

We got to the riding stable and met Goldie the pony.  He took to it like a little natural.  Wasn't the least bit afraid.  It was awesome.  When he finished his lesson, he asked when we're going back.  When we got home, he said now that he knows how to brush and ride a horse, we can get one of our own.  Tucking him into bed tonight, he said "I had a good day with the horses today!"

We will be back.