My Sweetie, Feb. 7, 1987 - Feb. 7, 2012

Yes, 25 years exactly, and I was blessed to be with her for 22 of those years.

It all started the summer after I graduated from high school. I was spending my summer shoveling manure and riding horses at a local barn. For a few months, the barn owner, Julie, had been talking about bringing home this "three year old bay filly." She was off the track, and had been "letting down" in a pasture up in Maryland. I actually rode with Julie in her truck to go pick up the filly. I had no idea it was all beginning there.

Back at the farm, the we put the filly in the "Q" paddock (quarantine) for her first few weeks, which had a small sand arena between it and the main field where all the horses were turned out. I remember leaning my chin on my arms along the top rail of the fence just watching her trot around the field - she was so beautiful. I took a few brushes with me and would go out in the field to brush her and just be with her. I called her "Sweetie" and "Sweetheart" as she was yet unnamed.

Sweetie has always been a "herd" animal - and could never stand to be away from her herdmates for long. Within her first few days in the Q field, she had jumped over the 3'6" fence in to the arena, and jumped the fence on the other side of the arena into the field to be with the herd. I guess you'd call that "jumping potential" if you were trying to sell a horse. :)

It was my job to start riding her and training her to be ridden english. Of course, she had been ridden at the track, but I can remember Julie giving me a leg up and Sweetie walking a little anxiously as soon as I was in the saddle the first time. Julie led us around the ring once or twice as we made sure the basic signals were in place - you know, important ones like "whoa." I'm sure we at least trotted together that first ride, if not cantered as well. And of course, I knew right away that she was the horse I had been looking for, and hoped we would be able to buy her. A friend of mine at the time teased me for being "fickle" as I had trouble making decisions sometimes - but even he said Sweetie was the first thing he had ever seen me be so sure of. I had always wanted to train my own horse.

I had been talking to my parents already about having a horse with me at college. I was pretty shy and naive still, and couldn't imagine being away at a new place without having a horse - a constant companion -there with me. From my age of 10-17, horses were my life - I was out at the barn as much as I could be, taking lessons, riding young horses, I couldn't imagine going away from home and losing such a big part of my life. I wonder to this day how I managed to convince my parents to buy me a horse - already tied down with the expense of college tuition, and adding another cost. But I promised to get a job to help pay for board (it was only $200/mo, that couldn't be hard to come up with :)) and my grandparents gracefully offered to pay board for the first year.

It wasn't long before we had come up with her "show" name. It had to have something to do with "Sweetie." Over one Sunday Dinner with my grandparents, my parents and I deemed her "Sweet Persuasion" as that described the situation perfectly. :)

I had a friend who was a trainer come see Sweetie to "evaluate" her and we trotted her over some poles to see what she would do. Sweetie was great, but the trainer actually advised me not to buy Sweetie. She has an "ewe" neck she said (which was actually just a young lack of muscle/topline) and she said her knees weren't perfectly straight. But the trainer couldn't sway me, and I didn't look to her for advice ever again. 5 years later, that same trainer happened to be at a horse show where Sweetie and I were Champion Pleasure Hunter & Champion Adult Amateur Hunter. I was young enough to want so badly just to stick my tongue out at her and say, "this is the filly you said not to buy," but I never did. Although I certainly was proud that day.

We had a prepurchase exam done by the vet, who saw nothing wrong with her - she was a little ouchy in her front feet from pacing back and forth in the Q field on gravel and getting stone bruises, but that should be easily remedied. Julie put fancy aluminum shoes on her with pads I think that solved that problem immediately and Julie wrote in the bill of sale that if the lameness didn't go away, we could return her. That was also when they did her first coggins test - the Vet draws blood from the horse's jugular vein that is later tested for a disease, and as I watched the blood fill the tube I suddenly felt dizzy and weak had to go sit down before I passed out.

Somehow, I had magically convinced my parents to buy me a horse. What is weirder is that we bought the horse trailer first - and boy, we got a good deal on that one. We went to pick up the trailer at a very fancy barn with white board fences - I guess the owner just wanted to get rid of it, but it was a relatively new trailer for a great price. We parked the trailer at the barn for my last week before I went off to college. I vividly remember the moment Sweetie was "mine." I knew it was going to happen, but refused to believe it until I watched my dad hand Julie a check for her - that moment of the check where it passed from my father's hand into Julie's hand is burned into my brain. It meant that she was really mine. Forever.

10 minutes later we loaded Sweetie up onto our new trailer and headed out to take me (and my horse) to college. I spent my first year at Penn State. I was not allowed to have a car my first semester, so I had to take a bus or ride my bike the 5 miles to the barn. I did a little of both.


This is the day after we bought Sweetie and drove to PSU.


And here is my Dad, thinking to himself, "What have I done?!" :)

I am sure we brought Sweetie home for winter break - I couldn't stand the thought of being 4 hours away from my horse for a whole month. And in January, back to school we went. (Looking back, I am still amazed at how flexible Julie was always welcoming me & Sweetie back for just a month or three during college breaks).


Sweetie's first winter coat came in just a few months so gorgeous!

Early in my second semester, I was riding Sweetie in the arena and "training" her to go over jumps. I set up a little "in and out" (two 18" jumps one stride apart) and as we headed to the jumps, Sweetie thought it meant "over and out" and at the last second jumped sideways to avoid going over the fence, and I didn't get the message and was on the ground. I had torn a ligament in my ankle and couldn't walk on it, and was soon whisked to the hospital. I spent the next few months on crutches and sadly missing my horse. When I finally convinced a college friend (actually - it was a couple of friends from high school who attended there) to drive me out to see her (still on crutches), I insisted on trying to ride her (bareback no less - oh, what was I thinking?) Sweetie thought I was a little crazy, too, as I hopped around on my good foot trying to mount her from a stone wall about 3' high from the wrong side without a saddle, but I did, and just sitting on her back for the few moments I was able to brought peace to my soul. I managed to slide off after my brief respite and land on my good foot, no harm done. This was a three year old thoroughbred, I remind you...

Being on crutches on a huge campus didn't work out well, and Sweetie and I came back home for a year to regroup. I spent the summer of 1991 helping Julie rebuild a barn at her new property and getting it ready to move 35 horses to her new place. I took lessons all summer, too, and Sweetie and I were getting much better at going over the jumps - together! I think it was that summer that we went to our first show. We didn't bring home many ribbons, but it was our first time out, and I managed to stay on and get over all the jumps. Although it seemed almost in slow motion - Sweetie's way of dealing with new jumps at a new place was to go up to them (at a canter) and then slow down and eek over the jump just barely. It wasn't pretty, but it was a great learning experience. I'm pretty sure I took Krissy and Beau with us that time (also remembering a few years later when we took our horses to Culpeper for a winter show - spent the night in a hotel, snuck in our dogs (Kelsey at least), and showed the next day) Crazy kids!


At the end of the day after one of our first shows. :)

At some point in her 4yo year, we moved Sweetie to Bay Ridge Stables, where I had taken lessons for so many years. I think part of that decision was to have access to a covered arena (it must have been a rainy year), but it was also so good to be back with so many of my show team friends. That summer Sweetie's coat bleached out to look yellow from being outside all day, (and I would get in trouble for leaving Sweetie in her stall during the day when I was there) and it wasn't long before I was back at Julie's.


Caught giving her a hug. Man, I miss her.

Well, I've got to take a break - I've only covered 1-2 years of my time with Sweetie so far - 20 more to go. :) Thanks for reading!