Dream: A horse story for horse lovers

Prologue

When I was 6 years old, my parents took me to an apple orchard. I jumped in hay piles and made my mom lift me high up to pick the biggest, juiciest looking apples. I squealed with excitement when I saw the pony. A small group of people had gathered around  a small fence in area. "Pony rides! Pony rides!" Shouted a man with a thick country accent. Which was only weird because I live in Michigan not anywhere near the south. I jumped up and down and yelled at my parents to get me on that pony! Before I knew it, I was being lifted onto the stubby black pony. That was the best moment of my life, the moment I found horses.

Fast forward 2 years, and I was about to turn 8. I begged my mom for horseback lessons. And when my birthday came around I got a pair of boots and chaps. I screamed in delight. I started going to a stable called White Meadows. I took lessons twice a week for a year, and the next year I took lessons three times a week. Sometime during that year, I learned to jump on the relatively small quarter horse I had been riding. It was soon determined, by my parents and my trainer, that I would need to lease a horse and start show jumping. So my parents leased for me a 15 hand paint gelding named Bandit. He was white with black spots and had a long mane that needed extra work to keep clean. He was the first horse I rode bareback with and he and I did many shows before I reached the age of 11. Then, Bandit's family moved to Rhode Island and took him with. I had a couple month long leases before my 12th birthday.

On my birthday, I organized a party at White Meadows with all my friends. I wanted to spend my birthday riding. We met there around noon and as I stepped out of the car and went directly to the stall of the palomino mare I was leasing. But I saw that in the place of the her was a majestic, beautiful horse. That horse was my dapple grey mare, Dream.