My first pony had rockers.  We have pictures of me as a three year old mounted on my steed - cowboy hat on head, gun and holsters, leather-fringed vest and shirt, boots, and a guitar, for I was a singing cowgirl.

I've hypothesized that love of horses is genetic but won't deny some environmental influences.  Crusader Rabbit was an early hero mounted on his horse warring against the State of Texas to save its jack rabbit population.  Fury, Flicka, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Sugar Foot, Wagon Trail and all the other western and horse stories flooded out television screen from infancy.  If reincarnation is true (and my personal theology doesn't support it), I think I am a direct descendant of Gheghis Khan, for I had intense emotional responses to riding across the steppe on rugged mongolian ponies and to sitting on a hill overlooking Khan's ancient captial of Kharahorum.

Whatever the reason, I loved horses from my earliest days.  Until I was 10 or 11, I would build Lincoln-log barns and corrals and have marble horse stampedes to the other end of my sloped bedroom floor.  Three times a year my father would take me to Hilltop Riding Academy in St. Paul, Minnesota, to ride.  My earliers photo on a horse was taken at age three in the Black Hills just before talking with Chief Not Afraid of Guns.  Our church camp had two spotted ponies, Nina and Beauty.  Punishment for inappropriate behavior was shoveling manure.  This, of course, increased by bad behavior exponentially.  Nothing at camp was as interesting as being at either end of a horse.

My father promised to buy me a pony when I reached age 10.  Well, 10 came and went without the appearance of a pony.  As we learned from the old Massey Tapes, 10 is a critical year: what we lack as a 10 year old is what we will crave the rest of our lives.  Hence, the horses and mule sitting in our pasture.  My husband blames my horse fixation on my father.  Dad finally came through when I used blackmail while in college to buy my first pony Eight Ball, named for the circle of black around his tail on an otherwise mostly white body.

I've learned a lot from each horse we have had.  From Eight Ball, whom I renamed Shenandoah, I learned it is never wise to trust too completely.  We were too poor for a saddle, so I rode my little round pony bare back.  He was always easy to catch because his philosophy was that he could always get rid of me when he was tired of me.  Again and again I would play my Charley brown to his Lucy, falling for his good behavior, trusting, relaxing, and immediately finding myself sitting on the ground.  A bad relationship?  No, just a challenging one, though when he was finally surrendered to dog food, I had a certain uncharitable sense of satisfaction.