This is my story, and I'm sticking to it. I was put on a horse at the age of three years old by my father, who was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army during the Big One, WWII. He was in the Army Cavalry, breaking and training horses. Oh my, what stories he used to tell about those times around the kitchen table. I don't know if this is where his love of horses began, but it certainly stayed with him throughout my early years. We used to take vacations to Dude Ranches in Texas in the summers when we weren't traveling elsewhere with him for his job…sort of a working type vacation. It affforded me many opportunities of traveling as a child and seeing the rest of Texas and beyond. We generally took to the wide-open Texas highways in two cars so that my mother could tool around the sites and antique shops during the day, hauling us along for the ride. I loved it except for the time we got lost in Colorado…..well, that's another story altogether. 

To get back to the beginning, my first foray into the horse world at the age of three (almost four years old), was on the back of a horse that I rode with my father, which horse took off running with me hanging on to the horn of the saddle for dear life. My father had taught me to do this. He favored  highly spirited horses, and this gelding  was brimming with it. My father was warned by the stable hands not to get off this horse, but that if he had to, to hold onto the reins and not let go, or the horse might run away. As a matter of fact, they tried to discourage him from taking the horse out at all. Yep, that's what happened, the horse took off running with me on him. What prompted my father to get off the horse, still holding onto the reins, was a "pretty please" plea from my older, middle sister…."Daddy, come fix my stirrups."  Naturally, he had to get off the horse in order to do so.  I remember this like it was yesterday. The look of terror and horror on my father's face while the reins ripped flesh from his hands crying my name, and me looking back at him screaming "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy" at the top of my lungs as the horse began to race at an extremely high rate of speed. That was the last I remembered of that day.

Many think that all of Texas is one hot, flat prarie, but it is much more. It is full of mountains, deserts, flat plains and prairies bounded by an ocean on one side and Mexico on the other separated only by a now lesser impression of a once formidable river named the "Rio Grande," and with every kind of weather pattern imaginable from snowed-in winters to dry. hot, 110-plus degree desert heat. I mention this because the path the runaway  horse took me on that day was  a rocky, hilly one, not a soft flat grassy prairie one. Fortunately, I was found in what  probably seemed an eternity for my parents on a lone, soft, isolated green patch of  grass  near the bank of the river. I believe that is where I got the first of a few calcium deposits on my nose, which gives one character you know. Since that time, my guardian angels have worked overtime to maintain the security of the somewhat comfortable residence my soul enjoys within this body. The next day after that incident, I got on another horse, and ever after thereafter. Thus began my love of the horse. The Paso Fino came later, much later.