Saying I was “horse crazy” in the ’60s is like saying “War and Peace” is a good book or “Mona Lisa” is a good painting, it doesn’t begin to give an accurate description. Mom said I learned it naturally because her father loved horses. Add to that the television genre of that period was the western and it’s no wonder I grew up believing my life was incomplete until I got a horse. We lived in San Diego and not only did I not have a horse, there was none nearby and I didn’t know anyone who had one. Since I set out to save enough money to buy myself one, I managed to do it with a lot of creativity and imagination.

Barbie dolls took much longer than my “Buddy-L” horse carrier, complete with three plastic horses. A BB gun was another favorite Christmas gift…all the cowboys on TV had guns and rifles. I tied can lids to the back fence with a piece of string and would stand in the yard and shoot them, spinning them around. We hunt in the canyon behind our house. No sparrow was safe, but I found out the hard way that shooting a pigeon would break your heart.

I’m still amazed that my first horse never released me. It was a picnic bench placed upside down on the edge of our picnic table. It had a belt that went around the bench, another was the stirrup leather, and a third was the stirrup. And I actually put all my weight in the stirrup and mounted my horse like you’re supposed to, from the left. Once mounted, I kept my right leg bent over the picnic table. Two dog leashes attached to the “X” of the overturned bench were my reins. Whenever she could, she would open a book on horsemanship that she had gotten from the mobile library and practice riding, holding the reins, and proper foot placement while riding. Between my riding lessons and during the weeks I didn’t have the library book, my imagination took over. I would hang out all over the Shiloh Ranch with James Drury, “The Virginian” or show up at the Texas Rangers headquarters in “Laredo” as Captain Parmalee’s long lost daughter and get to hang out with Joe, Chad and Reese. Joe Riley, William Smith, was my personal favorite until he put on an eyepatch and surprised me by killing Nick Nolte at the end of “Rich Man, Poor Man.”

I had set my horse purchase goal at $300. I kept checking the classified ads in the San Diego newspaper to see how many were for sale and for how much. Trying to reach a goal of $300 when you were getting quarters a week was hard. He taught me the value of a penny. During one of my many investigations of the classifieds, I saw a boxed ad that said that if a certain car dealer couldn’t fit you in a new car, they’d give you $100. A hundred dollars would be a big step toward my horse-buying goal. . I called the dealer and told them I wanted to buy a car. When they asked my age, they told me they couldn’t do it. I tried to collect the $100, but they didn’t either. Another one of life’s lessons learned: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is, and nothing is easy.

Someone finally gave me a subscription to a horse magazine that I read like a bible. I was going to have a complete education when I became a horse owner and rider. Thanks to an article in that magazine and a Basset Hound patient, I can still create three different types of halters out of a piece of string and a lasso.

Yes, I finally got my horse. When I was 16, my father gave me the ultimatum, you can have a horse or a car, but not both. I sew the horse. The other problem is that I was financially responsible for all the costs of the horses: feed, vet, farrier, etc. Once again, nothing is easy.

But the horse craze doesn’t end when you get your first horse. Crazy About Horses is your mom catching you leaving the house to go to school with your spurs on, skipping class to check out western stores and horses for sale, and your best friend’s mom knowing she’ll never have bushes in front of her. porch because that’s where you tie your horse. Horse craze is riding too late at night and coming home along the state road with a flashlight so traffic can see you in the dark. The horse craze means that while all the other seniors in your high school are heading to Florida for spring break, you and your best friend are driving all the way to Colorado looking for cowboys. While the rest of the seniors head off to a lake for Senior Jumping Day, you ride all over town to meet up with a couple of other horse-crazy classmates for a full day on horseback. . When you finally get home that day and dismount, your legs are like rubber and you can’t even stand up. One hell of a Saturday night was throwing a couple of bottles of Boone’s Farm into a bag of ice and heading to the horse auction. You and two of your friends never stopped nudging each other and commenting that we should have signed up for a number, that was a good looking horse and it came cheap.

When you’re crazy about horses, instead of going to college, you head to Montana and work on a ranch for tourists. Once room and board are deducted from your salary, you have enough left over to put some gas in your car and buy some incidentals. He also discovers that there is nothing romantic about branding cattle. Crazy about horses means that you will clean the stables and groom the horses in exchange for riding lessons in English. Crazy about horses means you still have the saddle you had 40 years ago. The funny thing is that it has shrunk over the years and doesn’t fit your rear anymore. Now it’s a decorative item in your western-themed guest room. Finally, crazy about horses means that you know the satisfaction of standing in a warm stable and listening to horses eat and you will always look twice when you see someone riding. You can never get over being crazy about horses.