Horse ownership is quite the ride for youngsters

I don’t remember it, but they said that happened often. Mom wrote to her parents - April 11, l917 - that they plowed the garden and left Steamboat standing. Soon, "Sue was shaking the lines and hollering, ‘Whoa! Boat!’ " I was only 21 months old! Of course, Steamboat stood his ground, somehow knowing not to move a muscle.

One of those times, Mom grabbed her box camera and snapped a photo of the immobile team and their little driver. The horses had been standing quite a while because a dozen buff orphingtons and leghorns are in the picture, under and around the horses’ feet, picking out edibles from the accumulated manure. Check out that snapshot on Page 1 of my book, "My First 84 Years."

I do remember our mule team of Jack and Kate. Jack was a three-gaited mule, and I rode him around on the farm. I never went anywhere on him, and I never went fast. Jack was a willing playmate. Our front porch was a flat slab of concrete just above ground level near the driveway and about 3 feet high at the opposite end. It was just right for me to stand on the high end and get on Jack’s bare back.

Mule riding ended when I was 9 and had a brand new Sears and Roebuck bicycle, my first ever. I was liberated! So was Jack because no one else in the family liked riding a mule.

By the time I was a senior in journalism school at the University of Missouri and teaching swimming at Christian College - now Columbia College - I was introduced to a strange new activity: equitation. The college and their riding instructor, Caroline Drew, were nationally known for a fine horsemanship training program. Mrs. Drew owned some of the horses, the college owned some and a few of the students brought their own horses and boarded them on the college’s farm. It was located at the present intersection of Stadium Avenue and Old Highway 63. Attending the college horse shows was a fun family event for us.

Then came Snip! Our Nancy was a horse fancier. She and Walt saved most of the $65 it took to buy the Beasley boys’ small, beautiful white-and-brown Pinto. Snip liked to be chased whenever someone came out to ride. She would perk up her ears and run like a racehorse, looking back over her shoulder to be sure we were still coming with the bridle. After a good romp, she would let herself be "chased" to the corner of the field and stand quietly for bridling. Nancy and Snip won ribbons at the 4-H horse shows at the Boone County Fair each summer. Our beloved horse lived to be 39 years old!

Then we enjoyed Peacock and War Cry, bought cheaply when Christian College ended its horsemanship program. These gaited show horses were quite happy to trade a stall in a barn for the wide open spaces in our farm field. No one in our family ever had formal horsemanship training, but we enjoyed riding. Our horses were all an important part of our lives for many years.


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