About Me

THE BEGINNING

 

      I am, and have been for the most part, an impulsive person.  Sometimes it has worked out okay, but then there have been times that it hasn’t!  I want to write about a time where being impulsive actually had positive results!  Back in 2006 I impulsively put our house up for sale.  My husband and I had just reconciled, and I thought a new place would help our relationship..I also was just “done” with living there. So many problems and issues with neighbors, a reoccurring
problem with the house itself.  The house was on the market on a Wednesday, and by Friday we had an offer!
We moved here.  Left a yard that was only hundreds of feet large to a small house with 11.85 acres!  Not all of it is really usable.  It would require much money to make it so.  When we bought the house, I didn’t really think that I would have a horse again!  I would have preferred  nice flat pasture land…but getting that would have raised the price range of  what we were able to pay.  Then again, we didn’t have much time to look for the perfect property.  We moved here, went to work, saw our youngest daughter graduate high school and life went on.
One evening at work I mentioned to a coworker (who I knew had horses) about how living where I now do is starting to make me think about my one and only horse I had growing up.  My dad and sister bought me a 11month old appaloosa filly! (I was maybe 14 years old). I didn’t know about horses, but wanted one so badly.  My dad bought me a pony a few years before that and I read what I could find about horses. Learned the  (sometimes) hard way about riding!  But then I got so I outgrew the pony.  My desire was for a horse!  I cannot believe that I let Faith, the pony, be sold.  My loyalty wasn’t matured then, I guess.
Amoreena, the filly, had my heart from the beginning.  It was a deep love.  I trained her to ride when she was older, and learned it all from reading!
Then I met my future husband.  We had a child.  Lived in a small city where there could be no horse. We were dirt poor too and couldn’t afford it!  My mom and sister that was still at home took care of Amoreena. I would visit when I could.  It would break my heart to see the horse, but I had a small child who needed me and I needed to be with her. Then I got pregnant again!  My mother’s health wasn’t so good, and she was getting older also.  I knew that it wasn’t fair to ask her to take care of Amoreena.  I knew someone that I thought I could trust and made a deal with her.  She could have Amoreena for free, but if it didn’t work out, or she found herself in a spot where she couldn’t keep her any longer; the horse comes back to me.  That was our deal.  She did not keep it.  I found out a few years later that the horse was sold and I never saw the girl again.
Back to the conversation with the coworker. I was telling her how I really wondered if I could have a horse again!  I wanted to, I knew that. I knew that it was possible…there was some flat land for pasture and a pole barn.  I had been away from horses for about 23 years!  I had forgotten so much!  This is when the coworker says to me, ” my niece has a horse she is trying to find a good home for. ”  Okay, that did it!  I made arrangements to see this horse called Rory.
In the meantime, I got selected from my job to be 1 of 6 that were being sent to practical nursing school!  I was going to study to become  a licensed practical nurse at 48 years of age!  Wow!  I was so scared and also anxious to have a change from my job.
I still went to see Rory.  Found out that he was a Crabbet Arabian.  I had never heard of them!  I did look it up and found that it was indeed a bona fide breed!Rory was beautiful!  It was so exciting to be up close to a real horse: to smell and touch it!  I noticed that his right front leg was splayed.  The woman explained to me that was why he was gelded and given to her cousin (my coworker’s niece).  It didn’t bother me and I wanted him!  However, I knew I was going to start nursing school.  It was going to take every part of my brain to get through it!  It had been a long time since I was in school.

I made the mature decision to say, ‘No. It wasn’t the right time for me to have a horse now.  Maybe after I graduate.”

And so I went and became a student of nursing.  It was a 10 month program.  I was almost done and feeling quite relieved and almost free(having been bound by classroom, books, homework).  On my way home from clinicals one day in the spring, I noticed an appaloosa in the field.  I had seen it before, but being preoccupied as I was, I never thought much about it.  Now I did.  That horse looked like the first horse I had!  I impulsively stopped at the house.  The man said that it didn’t belong to him, but to a woman who didn’t live there anymore.  He was taking care of it for now.  I told him to tell her that I was curious about the horse and wanted to know where she had gotten it.  I left my phone number.  And a few days later I got a phone call.  It was the owner.  We chitchatted about the mare and then she told me she needed to find a place for her.  I (impulsively) volunteered my place!  Why not, I thought, I was almost done with school.  I would have time.  I mentioned that I would need some fence put up. She would have to help with that.

And the horse came.  She had a bad case of heaves and was a little thin as I saw her up close.  But boy oh boy, did she look like my Amoreena!  That wasn’t her name, but that is what I called her when the owner wasn’t around.

I had Amoreena for a few months.  She put on weight and I got to sit on her and walk around my field.  The owner gave her to me, not being able to pay anymore for her upkeep.  I had a vet come and we set up where I would inject her with steroids on a set schedule (to help with the heaves).  And now I was totally smitten with the whole horse thing!  In some way, I actually believed she was the Amoreena of my youth!  I compared pictures of the original to the current one.  My husband is the one who noticed that the old horse, the present one, had a white foot where the Amoreena of my youth didn’t.  But it didn’t matter…I had wanted to believe!  Believe that the horse of my youth would be here with me in the end years of her life.  Full circle thing or something like that.

Now I wanted to ride!  Ride like I did when I was younger.  I asked my coworker if Rory was still available. He was!  He was given to a relative and was there for a few months when he was then returned.  Guess they didn’t get along.  My chance to have a horse again!

I went to see Rory again. And to tell Christy I’ll take him.  It felt like Christmas!  They would deliver him soon.  My coworker told me (she was the breeder) that Rory had an impressive pedigree; he was “royalty”.  Then I knew that I would call him Brego.  I had just watched the extended version of the Two Towers (Lord of the Ring trilogy).  The horse that saves Lord Aragon  (by the water ), was called Brego.  In the extended version you get to see a little more of the horse and his story.  Lord Aragon finds out that the horse is named Brego, and he says it means kingly.  So there you have it, that is how he got his name!  And that is how I started  to become a horse owner.