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Lauren's Blog post # 1
I Think I Missed the Course Walk...
It took me a while to brew up the right ingredients for my first blog entry. Should I compose a sweet icebreaker - get to know you - “hello my name is Lauren and I love horses” sort of piece, delve straight into the matter of my day-to-day trials and tribulations with the equine species, or touch on a bit of it all? Perhaps I should set the stage so that my stories have something concrete to land upon as I express in literary fashion the goings-on of my life with horses, knowledge gathered from the past, and all of the experiences that will come henceforth.
My life is colorful with a tasteful coating of dust which I must remind myself to polish off every now and again much in the same way I need reminders to take a shower before heading out into public, because, as I have learned, not everyone appreciates that I just cleaned ten stalls musk. My story is youthful, however not void of experience. At the ripe young age of 25 I have been married and divorced in a strange twist of fate leaving me at awe of the power of the universe and perplexed at the seemingly arbitrary acts of chance that drag us, sometimes with our hands clasped over our eyes and hearts clinging on to dear life, towards our destiny
To make a long story short, I married my dream man; a wonderfully skilled and experienced farrier with a business 400 hooves strong, horseman, and southern gentleman with a captivating story of Wild West adventures leading him to the California coast where we met… the rest was history. Ill be honest when I say I was capitalizing on crossing shoeing bills out of my month-to-month budget, but he was wonderful, and much supported my horse habit and small business leasing and operating a full service hunter-jumper barn, mainly composed of horse crazy kiddos and their ponies.
I had worked hard to create a name for myself and build a clientele base in the industry, and was proud to take my team of riders to shows even at the local level. I grew up riding in San Diego under a classical dressage trainer and later moved on to various hunter jumper barns. At the age of nineteen I headed north 200 miles to Santa Barbara to assist for accomplished hunter-jumper trainer Alanna Snowden and attend the University of California, Santa Barbara. From there I was offered the opportunity to branch off on my own and thus was formed “Sea Breeze Hunter Jumpers.”
For as much as I can appreciate the class and elegance of the hunter ring, I always found myself to be a thrill junkie - adrenaline addiction is in my DNA, and naturally I drifted towards the Jumper arena. In more recent years under the wing, lest we mention peer pressure and liquid courage, of one of my dear best friends, Jess Hargrave, I made a debut in the three-day world atop my wild jumper mare, Diva. I remember the thought saturating my brain “I think I can hang out with these people” at my first cross country clinic with Lucinda Green, as we all galloped downhill towards a series of 3’6” bounces, which entirely BLEW MY MIND as, in hunter land, bounces happen from ankle to knee height, and I was ok keeping them in that box of comfort.
Lucinda was not. And the great thing about it was that I was so preoccupied with the grade of the slope and massive logs so quickly approaching that I didn’t realize I had peed myself a little bit until after we patted the ground and made it through alive. Fortunately the next stop was the water complex where I could easily pass off my piddle as a result of an unfortunately placed splash, whoops. We then proceeded to jump an upright barrel both into and out of the water. Lucinda gladly referred to the obstacle, which was easily twice as tall as it was wide, as a “bloody narrow fence.”
In hunter land we refer to that as a barrel, not a thing to be aimed at. The only circumstance in which I can fathom one might ever attempt to narrow in on and clear such an atrocity of a fence is if it was entirely accidentally, and only on the way out of the show ring because it was, in fact, a trash receptacle placed by the in-gate, and the horse actually dumped you after the third element where he spooked at someone’s barking lap dog (how inconsiderate), and jumped it on his own, in every respect, as he bucked and farted his way back to the barn. I digress.
Needless to say I still marvel at the scar left in the ground where the borders of my comfort zone were mercilessly ripped out by dear Lucinda and re-established somewhere over the horizon. In no such way am I to dismiss the experience and lessons learned in the hunter and equitation ring, as I so much appreciate the sport for its grace and immaculate turnout, but it goes without saying that running cross country spoke to the core of my person, and I was eating it up and absorbing knowledge like never before. If ever I receive compliments on my leg position, equitation, and soft hands, I have my hunter jumper trainers to thank. When it comes to my gut, well, that’s another story.
Back to my marriage, which is pertinent to say the very least. Some time after our wedding my husband got offered a position as the live in manager of a 3500 acre cattle ranch not far from where we were living. A dream of his, I agreed to cut a lot of my own business and move towards an entirely different direction. Cattle, chickens, ropes, chaps, and little house on the prairie life was not entirely where I thought I was headed, but it was a fun new adventure and I took it on with an open mind and heart. My horses had a place in the barn in the back yard, and I had miles and miles of conditioning trails at my disposal, so I was keen on co-managing and learning more about the ins and outs of ranching.
Fast-forward one year, and in the midst of branding cattle on a brisk spring day the world stopped spinning on its axis. In a freak accident my husband was struck in the head with a 40 pound metal pipe about the width and length of a baseball bat which fulcrumed off a support post with the force of a kick from an ill tempered heifer. Everything that happened afterwards was a blur. Scrambling to the emergency room as he came in and out of consciousness, the mad ambulance ride to the Surgical ICU in Santa Barbara, the sleepless following days spent in the hospital; it was all a dream. There was slight bleeding on the brain and a serious skull fracture, but he was going to be ok, and for that I was thankful.
It wasn’t until about a month later when we he began to assimilate back into regular work and daily routine that we realized something was different. No longer did I see my husband in his eyes, no longer could I anticipate regular responses to the every-day-ness of life, and it seems everything that was held so tightly in place by means of marital vows was coming un-done at the seams. The man I loved was no longer in there, and fading fast, and at the apex of this emotional journey I was met with a phone call from him whilst on a work trip in Montana informing me that he was leaving the state, our marriage, and had secured a job as a traveling cowboy training and shoeing horses across the mid-west.
Blindsided, devastated, broken, and entirely gasping for air and a grabbing at floating pieces of anything as not to drown in this whirlpool of emotion, I stuck to my guns and understood that I had to cut the anchor that my husband had become. In the months to come, it was my horses that kept me moving ahead, because as much as I wanted to wallow in the pit of despair that had seemingly become my life, I had no other option but to get up every morning to throw hay, clean stalls, tack up, and ride.
Each and every day I poured myself onto my horses. I made the gutsy move as a newly single female to maintain the job managing the ranch, picked myself up from my bootstraps, rubbed a little dirt in the wound, and kept on at it. And wouldn’t you know it, the world around me began to spin again and the colors regained their vibrancy. I hit the realization relatively quickly that it all was going to be OK, and for that I thank the wonderful animal that we all know and love.
I spend hours a day atop my horses doing an assortment of things from checking fence line to pushing cattle, and get to enjoy conditioning rides up mountain ridges and jump schools in between appointments with brand inspectors and the like. The world is my oyster, the horse is my vessel, and I am surrounded by both beautiful scenery and people from which to learn.
Sometime I wonder at the wildness of it all, this was so not the line I was planning to ride at fence 10 A, B, or C… as if I entirely missed the course walk on life. As it turns out, it doesn’t exist. Perhaps my next post will be grounded in fundamental theory of correct lateral work, or follow the arduous physical and mental journey of halter breaking one of the three weanlings in my barn, though evidently this one gravitated towards a more personal tone much to the tune of “sometimes you’ve just got to grab mane, growl, kick on, and get out of the combination.” Cathartic? Absolutely. Revealing of character and direction? Perhaps. Setting the stage? I hope I have accomplished at least that.
I will wrap up with one of my favorite quotes, “The winds of heaven blow no where if not between the ears of the horse.” And amongst the mayhem that is the every day chaos of life, isn’t it so.
Until next time,
Lauren Spence
It took me a while to brew up the right ingredients for my first blog entry. Should I compose a sweet icebreaker - get to know you - “hello my name is Lauren and I love horses” sort of piece, delve straight into the matter of my day-to-day trials and tribulations with the equine species, or touch on a bit of it all? Perhaps I should set the stage so that my stories have something concrete to land upon as I express in literary fashion the goings-on of my life with horses, knowledge gathered from the past, and all of the experiences that will come henceforth.
My life is colorful with a tasteful coating of dust which I must remind myself to polish off every now and again much in the same way I need reminders to take a shower before heading out into public, because, as I have learned, not everyone appreciates that I just cleaned ten stalls musk. My story is youthful, however not void of experience. At the ripe young age of 25 I have been married and divorced in a strange twist of fate leaving me at awe of the power of the universe and perplexed at the seemingly arbitrary acts of chance that drag us, sometimes with our hands clasped over our eyes and hearts clinging on to dear life, towards our destiny
To make a long story short, I married my dream man; a wonderfully skilled and experienced farrier with a business 400 hooves strong, horseman, and southern gentleman with a captivating story of Wild West adventures leading him to the California coast where we met… the rest was history. Ill be honest when I say I was capitalizing on crossing shoeing bills out of my month-to-month budget, but he was wonderful, and much supported my horse habit and small business leasing and operating a full service hunter-jumper barn, mainly composed of horse crazy kiddos and their ponies.
I had worked hard to create a name for myself and build a clientele base in the industry, and was proud to take my team of riders to shows even at the local level. I grew up riding in San Diego under a classical dressage trainer and later moved on to various hunter jumper barns. At the age of nineteen I headed north 200 miles to Santa Barbara to assist for accomplished hunter-jumper trainer Alanna Snowden and attend the University of California, Santa Barbara. From there I was offered the opportunity to branch off on my own and thus was formed “Sea Breeze Hunter Jumpers.”
For as much as I can appreciate the class and elegance of the hunter ring, I always found myself to be a thrill junkie - adrenaline addiction is in my DNA, and naturally I drifted towards the Jumper arena. In more recent years under the wing, lest we mention peer pressure and liquid courage, of one of my dear best friends, Jess Hargrave, I made a debut in the three-day world atop my wild jumper mare, Diva. I remember the thought saturating my brain “I think I can hang out with these people” at my first cross country clinic with Lucinda Green, as we all galloped downhill towards a series of 3’6” bounces, which entirely BLEW MY MIND as, in hunter land, bounces happen from ankle to knee height, and I was ok keeping them in that box of comfort.
Lucinda was not. And the great thing about it was that I was so preoccupied with the grade of the slope and massive logs so quickly approaching that I didn’t realize I had peed myself a little bit until after we patted the ground and made it through alive. Fortunately the next stop was the water complex where I could easily pass off my piddle as a result of an unfortunately placed splash, whoops. We then proceeded to jump an upright barrel both into and out of the water. Lucinda gladly referred to the obstacle, which was easily twice as tall as it was wide, as a “bloody narrow fence.”
In hunter land we refer to that as a barrel, not a thing to be aimed at. The only circumstance in which I can fathom one might ever attempt to narrow in on and clear such an atrocity of a fence is if it was entirely accidentally, and only on the way out of the show ring because it was, in fact, a trash receptacle placed by the in-gate, and the horse actually dumped you after the third element where he spooked at someone’s barking lap dog (how inconsiderate), and jumped it on his own, in every respect, as he bucked and farted his way back to the barn. I digress.
Needless to say I still marvel at the scar left in the ground where the borders of my comfort zone were mercilessly ripped out by dear Lucinda and re-established somewhere over the horizon. In no such way am I to dismiss the experience and lessons learned in the hunter and equitation ring, as I so much appreciate the sport for its grace and immaculate turnout, but it goes without saying that running cross country spoke to the core of my person, and I was eating it up and absorbing knowledge like never before. If ever I receive compliments on my leg position, equitation, and soft hands, I have my hunter jumper trainers to thank. When it comes to my gut, well, that’s another story.
Back to my marriage, which is pertinent to say the very least. Some time after our wedding my husband got offered a position as the live in manager of a 3500 acre cattle ranch not far from where we were living. A dream of his, I agreed to cut a lot of my own business and move towards an entirely different direction. Cattle, chickens, ropes, chaps, and little house on the prairie life was not entirely where I thought I was headed, but it was a fun new adventure and I took it on with an open mind and heart. My horses had a place in the barn in the back yard, and I had miles and miles of conditioning trails at my disposal, so I was keen on co-managing and learning more about the ins and outs of ranching.
Fast-forward one year, and in the midst of branding cattle on a brisk spring day the world stopped spinning on its axis. In a freak accident my husband was struck in the head with a 40 pound metal pipe about the width and length of a baseball bat which fulcrumed off a support post with the force of a kick from an ill tempered heifer. Everything that happened afterwards was a blur. Scrambling to the emergency room as he came in and out of consciousness, the mad ambulance ride to the Surgical ICU in Santa Barbara, the sleepless following days spent in the hospital; it was all a dream. There was slight bleeding on the brain and a serious skull fracture, but he was going to be ok, and for that I was thankful.
It wasn’t until about a month later when we he began to assimilate back into regular work and daily routine that we realized something was different. No longer did I see my husband in his eyes, no longer could I anticipate regular responses to the every-day-ness of life, and it seems everything that was held so tightly in place by means of marital vows was coming un-done at the seams. The man I loved was no longer in there, and fading fast, and at the apex of this emotional journey I was met with a phone call from him whilst on a work trip in Montana informing me that he was leaving the state, our marriage, and had secured a job as a traveling cowboy training and shoeing horses across the mid-west.
Blindsided, devastated, broken, and entirely gasping for air and a grabbing at floating pieces of anything as not to drown in this whirlpool of emotion, I stuck to my guns and understood that I had to cut the anchor that my husband had become. In the months to come, it was my horses that kept me moving ahead, because as much as I wanted to wallow in the pit of despair that had seemingly become my life, I had no other option but to get up every morning to throw hay, clean stalls, tack up, and ride.
Each and every day I poured myself onto my horses. I made the gutsy move as a newly single female to maintain the job managing the ranch, picked myself up from my bootstraps, rubbed a little dirt in the wound, and kept on at it. And wouldn’t you know it, the world around me began to spin again and the colors regained their vibrancy. I hit the realization relatively quickly that it all was going to be OK, and for that I thank the wonderful animal that we all know and love.
I spend hours a day atop my horses doing an assortment of things from checking fence line to pushing cattle, and get to enjoy conditioning rides up mountain ridges and jump schools in between appointments with brand inspectors and the like. The world is my oyster, the horse is my vessel, and I am surrounded by both beautiful scenery and people from which to learn.
Sometime I wonder at the wildness of it all, this was so not the line I was planning to ride at fence 10 A, B, or C… as if I entirely missed the course walk on life. As it turns out, it doesn’t exist. Perhaps my next post will be grounded in fundamental theory of correct lateral work, or follow the arduous physical and mental journey of halter breaking one of the three weanlings in my barn, though evidently this one gravitated towards a more personal tone much to the tune of “sometimes you’ve just got to grab mane, growl, kick on, and get out of the combination.” Cathartic? Absolutely. Revealing of character and direction? Perhaps. Setting the stage? I hope I have accomplished at least that.
I will wrap up with one of my favorite quotes, “The winds of heaven blow no where if not between the ears of the horse.” And amongst the mayhem that is the every day chaos of life, isn’t it so.
Until next time,
Lauren Spence
Riding Far, LLC
Equivont
Stackhouse Saddles
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