Personal Stories
My First Pony
By Kayleigh Sauyet
http://drive.google.com/file/d/1_6qpHsyEAoA6OsG6_EPYH4eawLXGamQM/view
I have been riding horses since before I could walk. I have been sweeping isles and ferrying water since shortly there-after. Growing up in a horse barn hasn’t always been easy, no one wants to go out into the pouring rain to take care of the horses, but it has taught me a lot. It has taught me both how to follow orders and how to take charge. It has taught me that hard work never ends. It has taught me how to let go and love with your whole heart.
My mom, the trainer, has a simple rule for parents who are considering buying their child a horse. She tells them that their child is ready for a horse when they are just as happy scrubbing water buckets as they are riding the horse. Well, when she saw little four-year-old me happily sweeping and feeding, she realized that if she followed her own advice, I was ready for a horse.
She kept her eye out until she found a pony that she thought would work. She contacted his owners and maybe a month later, they were ready to sell. She brought that pony home and I immediately fell in love. The two of us just clicked.
Now, Little-me had a big decision in front of her – what to call this new pony. My poor mother was trying to spare the pony a name like my rabbit who was named Rose Happy Rainbow. Since he was short, orange, and round (and it was October), I named him Pumpkin.
This little pony taught me a lot throughout the years. He taught me how to get back on when I fell off. He taught me to face my fears. He taught me there’s always room to improve.
One day I was riding him at a canter (one of the fastest gaits). Now our riding ring has a large apple tree uphill from it. In fall, the apples would fall off the tree and roll down into our riding ring. I was cantering happily along when Pumpkin stopped dead and dropped his head to grab an apple. I somersaulted right down his neck, landing on my butt in the dirt. I hopped to my feet and turned around, hand-on-hips and growled in my tiny voice, “Pumpkin!” He was happily munching on his apple, little shame in his eyes. The rest of that fall, I wouldn’t ride out in that ring unless the older girls had gone around and thrown all the apples out of the ring.
Unfortunately, the nature of little girls is that they grow up and get bigger. I had a rule for anyone who wanted to ride Pumpkin: you can’t ride Pumpkin if your legs are longer than his. And eventually, mine were as well.
Outgrowing him was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I was too big, too heavy and I had to move on to other horses. I resisted for as long as I could, but eventually I moved on. Small ponies like Pumpkin often change hands every couple of years as children outgrow them, but my mom promised Pumpkin when he came to us that we would be his last home.
We kept that promise.
Years after I had moved off of him (I had gone through two more horses at that point, learning much along the way), Pumpkin got sick. He started having seizures every couple of months.
Sometimes they were small seizures, he just stood and twitched. Sometimes they were grand-mal seizures, he would fall on the ground shaking. We retired him so that he was no longer being ridden, and changed his routine so he no longer had them so often.
One week he got very uncomfortable. He stopped eating, and stopped drinking. We got him on fluids but his kidneys were failing.
On day four, we finally decided we had to say goodbye.
One of the hardest things about this sport is saying goodbye to your partner. They don’t live as long as we do. Pumpkin taught me how to deal with loss. He taught me how to stay in the game even when your partner doesn’t. 