Young

The cover of the USPC News Spring 2011 shows two girls jumping over a horse fence?on foot, not horseback. I checked the Pony Club website (www.ponyclub.org) to see if the cover was posted yet, but it isn?t. But, anyway, each girl is wearing a pinny and dressed in beige breeches and what looks like muck boots?going over at least a two-rail jump?and they’re having a ball! We used to do that as kids, too. I wasn?t good at it, but some of my friends could get over some pretty high rails (they told me I was a working hunter, but they were jumpers). The consequences were pretty horrible if you missed (probably why I preferred hunters). You usually tripped over the rail, because weren?t big enough to knock one down easily. Sometimes we (ouch) landed on the rail itself. But all we ever suffered were some skinned knees. I often wondered if kids still did this sort of thing or had horse shows on foot (you know, where you do a skip-type canter . . . make sure you’re on the right lead!).? We did that a lot, too, with a bunch of us parading around the one designated as judge. We set up small courses using brooms and shovels. We also had long-jump contests, although I’m not sure where we got that particular idea from. They were held in the barn. On the concrete aisle! I shudder to think about what might have gone wrong, but it never did. (Hmmm . . . I wonder if that’s where this bum hip of mind came from’) I miss those days.? Wouldn?t it be fun to go back, just for a while, and again be a horse-crazy kid, playing with your friends and feeding your passion anyway possible while actual horses were resting or unavailable’ ?Think back to those days: A day to do little more than just play horses, no pressures, no deadlines . . .