By: Nancy Pugliese

I am the mother of a daughter with special needs. About 6 years ago my older daughter had been taking riding lessons for more than a year and we decided it was time to start looking to purchase a horse of her own. Her sister Toni-Anne was non-verbal at this time and petrified of the barn and the horses. She would spend the entire hour or her sisters lesson screaming. She would prefer the discomfort of bathroom accidents to entering the barn to use the facilities.

By: MONICA RIVERA

let me tell you about something that happened to me a couple of years back. I was probably about nine or ten years old. It was summer vacation, and I had decided to spend it with some relatives in a part of Mexico where everything is still done the old-fashioned way. I woke up early one morning to drive out to my uncles` pasture, to help milk the cows.

By: Harolyn Deason

I’d competed in Team Roping, ridden in “The Sweet Assortment” equestrian drill team, done some gymkhana as a child and even run barrels. Dad raised Thoroughbred racehorses, but at 5’10” I was too tall to be a jockey and one of the few times I rode English the horse slipped and fell on me.

By: Cindy Woolston

Jacob was eleven years old when he found his horse lying down in the pasture in a puddle of blood. War Pony’s foot had gotten tangled in the barbed wire fence and a big chunk of his back hoof was missing. He was too weak to move. Jacob ran as fast as he could to the house. I immediately called our veterinarian who lived about 30 miles away.

By: Karen L. Waite

Horses are my life. I know that seems like an extreme, overused statement, but in my case, it’s really true. I remember every stage of my life with respect to what horse or horses were around at the time, and the lessons I learned from those horses.

By: Danielle Thibault

It all happened one day when i went to my riding lesson. I saw the most beautiful palomino mare in the stall. i asked my instructor if i could ride her and i could! Palominos have been my favorite horse ever since. Of course being young and wanting to know everything about horses i asked all the questions i could about her. her breed, age, height.

By: Eliza Dandridge

I acquired him like I acquired my other horse. I was going to work with him, but I fell in love. With Sierra, it was just lust. She was a big beautiful mare. She should have been a, then, thirteen year old girl’s perfect first horse, had it not been for her horrible attitude under saddle. I was bucked off of her more times than I had ever been bucked off of any horse in my ten years of riding. But with Bear, it was love. From the first time I saw him, to today when I went out to the stable and rode him and fed him. True love never comes easy though. You always have to give up something, in my case; it involved a lot of pain.

By: Charli Ann Stevens

Have you ever met a horse that was absolutely destined to be yours—not once, but twice and forever more? At a mere fifteen, I was on a search for my second horse. My abilities and show ring desires had outgrown my first horse. Being from an average middle-class family, we did not have a lot to spend on my future show horse. To top it off, I was looking for an Arabian who was at least 15 hands high and had the potential to be an English horse. While the task seemed undaunting to all of the adults I knew, I was not deterred. For two years, we searched for a horse—calling almost every classified in the local papers and seeing a good number of horses. All of the horses were in our price range, but none of them fit the bill.

By: Kelly Castano

I don’t think that I’ve ever cried so much over something. I’ve cried tears of pain, joy, frustration, and recently grief all over my horse Kidd. It had been 3 months of horse searching after I lost my draft x mare and I wanted another mare just like her. It had to be just like her. I even refused an adorable mare and foal. I first heard about Kidd as a horse who a lady was giving away to a good home. If I had only known why. Kidd was a 15 year old off the track TB gelding. Definitely not what I was looking for. I went to see him because my mom wanted me to.

By: Mary McCandless

Cassie scowled nervously. This horse show was one of the biggest shows she and her horse Babette had ever been in, and important people were watching her. This was part of the culmination of long years of struggle to be noticed by somebody - anybody - with enough money and influence to buy her a world class horse and sponsor her in her bid to make the Olympic team. She grasped the reins just below the bit and pushed Babette forward, walking up and down, up and down in the holding area outside the arena. One more rider to go.