Thursday, May 26, 2011

Gabe in the ring

Okay...this is Gabe. No, that's not me aboard......but it will be soon :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbj-7yGQS1M&NR=1
Here is Gabe...you will have to wait for the details.... Sorry!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbj-7yGQS1M

And then there was Gabe - a very long post for background that doesn't actually get to Gabe!

My friend Katie has gotten me back into horses..... Katie...can you see me kissing your feet?? Thank you!!!! God is so good! He put me next to you on the platform at church for many reasons.... but I have to think that horses are one of them... Church Street music for worship is another, of course, because it's an integral part of me and you.... For those of you who don't know Church Street here is a link to our Christmas Eve service music.... http://www.youtube.com/user/otherlissamae?blend=4&ob=5 That's me, the second from the right, and Katie to my right. We are very versatile and worship every Sunday is a musical treat. We are awesome, I have to say!!

Back to the reason for this blog. I've always been absolutely horse crazy. I was put on the back of a horse when I was 2 by my mother who regretted it from the start because...I was instantly in love. Not as in "like".....not as if I admired them from afar...not as if I understood that my parents couldn't really afford it and neither would I later on...... No, I was HORSE CRAZY from the first moment. Mom lamented her choice that fateful day but to no avail. The deal was sealed! I was hooked!

Like any good, upstanding, horse crazy little girl I pestered my parents unmercifully. They did what they could (okay...not much...) and I rode now and then as an elementary school student. I had a friend at church, Carol Malone, whose parents were much more wealthy than mine. She had a horse and sometimes we could borrow another from the stable where they kept him.

I also kept little china horses all over my room as I dreamed of having my own horse. I made little tiny blankets for those china horses....the horses were small and so were the blankets....maybe 2" x 4" including the fringe I created by unraveling the two short edges. I was taught embroidery about the same time so I put my horses names on the blankets. My favorite was Socks - a chestnut china horse with 4 white socks and a white blaze down his face.

I had Barbies like most girls of the 60s and 70s. Unlike most of those girls I created a horse ranch under my bed. I had a French provincial canopy bed...the kind that is white with gold trim. It caused me all kinds of grief with allergies but I loved it because it was high off the ground and provided the real estate for my 'ranch'. The cases that came with the Barbies I turned on their sides and the part that normally held Barbie as she awaited her next modeling assignment became a bunk bed.... I created fences from anything I could find to fashion paddocks for my china horses.

I had a alternate universe under that bed....no Barbies - they were often beheaded by my little brother and ended up in a pile...but good bunkhouses and paddocks!! I imagined horse shows, rodeos, you name it happening there. At the time I spent every spare moment in the library reading horse magazines and books. I might not have a horse but I was determined to know everything I could about them. I think I got pretty good at it.

We moved to Arizona and my life changed radically when my parents divorced. No horses in that sad part of my life. Then my mom remarried and it was off to the middle of the Pacific. No horses their either and I was much too old for the china type.

I went back to Arizona for some of college and made a pact with myself once I got a job. I set aside enough money to ride, even if I was eating tuna and pot pies. I rode at a particular stable regularly and after a few rides was assigned to an Appy stallion. He was said to be a former television horse used in the old TV series 'Have Gun, Will Travel'. Whether or not that was true I loved him and rode him every week. He was called Applesauce - is that a silly name for a stud or what?? He was a love though. You had to ride with a quirt in your hand to get him to behave but you never had to use it. If you dropped it for some reason you'd better stop and retrieve it..... He knew that you did or didn't have it and that was the recipe for success with him. I was sad to stop riding him when I left Arizona to return to Hawaii.

In Hawaii I didn't ride for a very long time. Then one day, when I lived in Sunset Beach and worked at Waimea Falls Park, there came an article in the paper. It described a herd of 'horses' that had come from the island of Molokai to Oahu due to a drought. It seemed that the plan was to sell them to the zoo for lion food. A rescue group intervened and they were sent to the North Shore in search of homes.

The rest is history...sort of. I attended the sale with my friend Barbara Callahan. The tallest of the mares was obviously very much in foal. Barbara loaned me the $200 to buy her and I paid it back in dribs and drabs over the next few months. I named the mare Keahu which means morning mist. I'll post more about Keahu and our love affair...and of course about my precious Dawnie (Dawn's Early Light, so named for the time I first laid eyes on her).