EQUINE ADDICTION(Susan Joyner-Stumpf) EQUINE ADDICTION

I have a confession to make about an addiction I have. And since I’m in this tell all, tell it to the Mountains “confessing-mode,” I will admit that I have never sought medical treatment and I doubt seriously I ever will to recover from this life-long affliction that has altered my existence and made my life unmanageable without it.
For this particular addiction, there is no Anonymous Group that will save me from abstinence or painful withdrawals. Even if there was, I will never grace it doors, and you will never hear me utter the regretful words, “Hi, my name is Susan, and yes, I’m addicted to Horses.” That’s right. The habit I refer to is my unconditional love and passion for horses that began as a young child just learning to walk yet, but I sure could ride like the wind.

I blame my initial infatuation on one particular pony at a local Amusement Park when I turned the age of three. Think you can’t remember anything clearly at this age? I beg to differ. Not only do I remember this incident like it happened yesterday, I will never forget it as long as I live because it has effected me, left its mark on my Soul, for the remainder of my life. If only that little white pony knew the effect that he had on this one three year old. I would like to believe that he did know, and that I affected him right back in a very special way. Perhaps I started, where HE was concerned, “a people addiction.” He was “ground zero” for what would turn into a life-long obsession for anything horses. Here’s my story:


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I’m three years old. It’s my Birthday and we’re celebrating it in City Park in my hometown of New Orleans, in the Amusement Park area where there were all types of fun rides, clowns and Cotton Candy Shakes. There are a few little neighborhood friends, my parents and brother there to help bring in the new year of being a whopping three years old. Three whole candles peeped out a Red Velvet Cake sitting in the middle of the picnic bench, with tons of unwrapped presents all waiting for me to rip the pretty packaging and ribbons to shreds to get to the good part inside: the toys. But all I could see from my Birthday Hat and mounds of confetti was an area across from us called “Pony Rides.” I begged and pleaded with my parents until they were sick of hearing me. Okay, okay, they promised, and, to literally shut me up, they brought me over to where they have the pony rides for kids five years and younger. The ponies are all hooked up to what they call an electric walker, so, the ponies are not free to just take off anywhere at the whim of their little toddler-riders. That would be a financial risk no Park Superintendent would want to face in a Court of Law. Or, would he?

I couldn’t understand why my friends or brother had no desire to join me on the pony rides. But that didn’t dampen my wishes one iota. If anything, it only peaked my interest to do something everyone else seemed to be “afraid” to do. I remember it started off as a real “dare to myself” to attempt a feat every one else I knew was literally too chicken to even give a try. That’s how it started. However, that was far from how it would ever end.

My father pushed me through the line and finally we were at the front and I was the next up to mount.

“It’s her birthday,” my father told the black man responsible for placing each little ecstatic tyke on top of the back of a Shetland Pony.

I remember he smiled a big, toothless grin, from ear to ear. “And which fine pony would the little birthday girl like to ride today?” he sounded like the Circus Ring Master introducing the lions’ cage, his voice fluctuating at different areas of the sentence, giving vowels extra pizzazz against the contrast of their normal pronunciation!

I looked around. I felt like the world was mine, in a giant candy store, with all types of goodies to choose from. Anything I wanted. I remembered feeling very special at that moment. There weren’t too many moments in life I felt that way, but I always had that one moment to compare to others.

My blue eyes darted from the rainbow array of pretty painted ponies in a row, all awaiting my very important decision: there was a dappled-grey pony; a black and white pony; a brown pony; a palomino, a jet black pony, and the last one, a snow-white pony with crystal blue eyes, sporting a black leather saddle adorned with silver studs and Conchos. Yes, yes, my heart lurched from my beating chest. “The white pony,” I screeched, breaking someone’s sound barrier, and I didn’t even wait for the black man to walk with me over to the animal. I slipped past him and my father with athletic ease and approached the pony by myself, eager to ride my first horse. I mean, my first “pony.” There’s a difference, for those of you who don’t know. And ponies are not baby horses. Ponies will never be bigger than ponies. A pony is a pony, and a horse is a horse, of course. Now that we have that straight . . .

There I was, face to face with “Ole Blue Eyes.” I felt like I was melting inside with an over abundance of pure love and excitement. Blue Eyes looked at me and picked up on the vibes and became excited himself. He became more alert, his ears picked up, unlike the other ponies that appeared to be falling asleep out of boredom where they stood. I kissed his pink nose, and hugged his strong, thick neck. The black man rushed over with a very concerned father not far behind the swoosh of worn boots, but both stopped in their tracks as they watched Blue Eyes bury his head into my hands, closing his eyes softly, in content of my stroking his long, silvery forelocks.

“Well, I’ll be dang!” the black man exclaimed.

“Helen, grab the camera,” my father yelled to my mother.

Click, click, click went the instant Kodak camera, but all I heard was gentle grunts and snorts coming out of this pretty white pony. Without any help or former know-how, I naturally positioned my foot into the stirrup and swung myself up high in the air, fearless, landing pleasantly down on the safe back of Blue Eyes. I heard my friends clap in wonder and my brother mumble something jealously under his angry breath. He was two years older than me, but didn’t want to get on any pony until I had gotten on one first. He figured if it threw me, it would save him from hitting the ground. But once he saw me sitting quietly high in the saddle, well, he had to do this too, if for no other reason than to save face amongst these kids that were my age and younger.

“I want the black one, the all black one,” my brother Bobby demanded, not asked. The black pony was directly in front of my white pony. After being helped onto his mount, his face looked back and gave me his typical snarl, like, I’ll show you, sister! But I was too much in Heaven for anyone to bring me down, including my cruel brother. I dismissed him and the rest of the world. It was just Ole Blue Eyes and Me and no one, or nothing else, even mattered.

After the saddles of the other ponies were filled up, the electric walker began to start, and the ponies, used to this, were pulled along, like electronic robots attached to a Mother Ship. The odds of any of them acting up was rare, as, there was no place they could go. Their headstalls were connected to a chain that made the walker go round and round, with not much lee-way or slack in the reins. The kids could only really pretend they were directing their mounts when, in reality, they were being led by a machine greater than ourselves. But our imaginations could take off, that was never leashed, and mine was soaring high above the Park, over the Mississippi River, into the blue yonder. When at last, after about five or ten minutes of going into a controlled circle, the electric walker came to a halt and the black man went around and took everyone off their mounts and walked them back to their parents. I was the last he came to.

“Okay, sweetie-pie, that’s it. Did you enjoy your ride?”

I looked at him as though he told me he was going to take one of my dolls and throw in the River to drown. I gave him a look that, if looks could kill, well, he might not have died, but he would have walked around crippled, at least, for the remainder of that day.

“No.” A plain and simple, but ever-firm, three-year old No.

He laughed, looking back at my father, like, come and get your demon-child, she’s not my responsibility, she’s yours.

“Now c’mon Susie,” my father cooed in my direction, “ you had a nice ride. It’s time to go open your presents. You got all kinds of gifts to open yet, and cake to eat . . .”

“Not until you unleash him,” I said, flat-out.

The poor man looked at me, back at my dad, back at me. “We, we, we,” he stuttered, “we, we can’t do that, miss, not, not allowed …”

“I can ride him, let go,” I said, cool as a cucumber. I wasn’t budging.

The man turned to my father. “Sir, we really can’t do this. If something was to happen . . .”

“Can’t you see my daughter is a natural?” my father implied. He brought the man to the side. Only later on, when I was old enough to understand how money talks, my father told me he slipped the guy a $5 bill to do us this favor: allow me to ride the pony, unhitched to the Mother Ship. Not a lot of money by today’s standards, but back in the early 1950’s, a five dollar bill went a heck of a lot further.

The next thing I knew, the man came towards me, unclipped the reins from the walker, and Blue Eyes was a free man, I mean, free pony. And I was a free rider. We rode around the circular fence line and I rode like I had done it for a long time, but it was my first time upon an equine. We went from a walk, to a slow trot and then graduated to a gentle lope, and I felt like I was flying, almost touching the sky. I will never forget that moment, suspended, that feeling of ultimate “freedom;” nothing else matched this euphoria. And nothing else down the road of life did either, except, perhaps, falling in love. Which, if you think about it, was exactly what I was doing: falling in love for the first time, with a pony, in the horse family.

From then on, much to my parents chagrin, it was always about horses. Stuffed animals, Breyer Horse Models, posters on my bedroom wall, jewelry, horse movies like Black Beauty and Misty, and the Black Stallion; westerns on TV; formal riding lessons. I was in my first horse show at the age of seven, riding someone else’s Arabian gelding, winning ribbons that would never grace my walls, but somebody else’s. I went on to become quite the little equestrian, perfecting skills that would someday come in handy when, at the age of seventeen and graduating from high school, my parents bought me my first very own horse as a graduation gift. The rest is history, and I’ve never lived without horses somehow interjected in my lifestyle. This addiction follows me to this present day, as I am a breeder and owner of Registered Tennessee Walking Horses and have an array of colorful mares and stallions that anyone would be proud to call “their herd.”

What is it about a girl and her horse that is stronger and twice as inseparable than that between man and his dog? No one can define it; poems, books and lab experiments across the centuries have been written on the subject of killer wild stallions being gentled by the mere whisper of a woman’s soft, musical demeanor and angelic voice. Perhaps it is our soothing nature that these beasts are instinctively drawn to, like a moth to light, where they are forever altered, as we are to them, finding an innate kinship of instant trust and fathomless curiosity, simple infatuation and utmost respect for each other that no one, not even the scientific field, can deny.

I know horses have personally changed me, whispered to me, taught me things beyond what a human could have taught me in the same amount of time, and they had endless more patience, too. Their power is my strength; their fight is my flight syndrome. Their race against the wind is the freedom in my own wild spirit. I have become “one” with these magnificent creatures and there is no place on earth besides my husband’s arms where I find the most comfort and joy but in the saddle, on a trail ride, bonding with my horse and feeling the wonder of closeness and nature all around us. That is a gift given, received, and shared all at once, between rider and horse that, to this day, writers of all genre have found inexplicable, but it’s a known fact that this entity of linkage between a girl and her horse is as unbreakable as any love that has gone before it, or after.

And it all started, long ago, with a white pony . . .


© Susan Joyner-Stumpf

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