The Horse Cookie - Wyoming Lifestyle Photographer and Blogger

The Horse Cookie – Wyoming Lifestyle Photographer and Blogger

Earlier this week, I reached into my coat pocket for my gloves and pulled out a horse treat. And just like that, I was 17 again.

Stray horse cookies, gloves with horsehair on them or shoes that smelled faintly of arena dirt when they got wet were the norm for me as a kid.

I became fascinated with horses when I was five and we took a family trail ride in Jackson over the summer. That was all it took. One ride on a sorrel gelding named Dirty Dan and I was a goner. I pestered my parents for the next five years about ponies, horses and riding lessons. I read every single Black Stallion book. My “Famous American” report was on Man O’ War. I got Barbies only to have someone to ride my toy horses.

When I was 10, my parents finally relented and found a place I could take riding lessons for two weeks. Two weeks turned into a month, which turned into the summer which turned into the rest of my life.

My daughter once asked me why I loved horses so much.

It’s a hard thing to put into words for me, even now. Sure, riding is fun. I loved competing and learning new skills and traveling and winning belt buckles and blue ribbons.

But it was more than that.

Riding and being around my mare and the other horses served as my center. My happy place.  That place in my world where I felt the most like my true self.

I could pick up a brush or swing a leg over the back of the dappled mare and silence that nasty internal critic in my head.

My mom likes to joke about all the secrets Peppermint knew about me.

But honestly, riding was my way to stop thinking about all my teenage drama. When I was working my horse, it was about her. I soon got lost in methodical footfalls of her hooves and the graceful curve in her body as we worked on reverse-arcs and counter-bends.

One of my favorite things was going into Peppermint’s stall at the end of the night. She would be lying there, dozing, ears drooping to the side. I’d sit down next to her, my back against her belly, feeling the heat from her big body. I’d just sit and be. Feel the cold from the ground seep into my pockets. Feel Peppermint’s warm breath down the back of my shirt. Hear the coyotes howl from the north pasture and see the stars blink on from the stall door.

It was about as a close a thing to complete contentment and peace and pure joy as I’ve ever known.

I closed my fingers around the horse cookie from my pocket, planning to throw it away. I’d intended to give it to my father-in-law’s horse, Cherokee, after my daughter finished brushing and we turned Cherokee loose in the pasture. Now we were 300 miles from the kind Paint with the blue eyes and I don’t have any horses at home to eat it.

Instead, I uncurled my fingers and let it fall back into the recesses of my pocket. A treasure, a memory, for finding and cherishing another day. A promise to myself that one day, I’ll be a horse person again.  I will sit in a stall with a horse’s head in my lap and thank God that the life I lead now is even more amazing and blessed than the life I dreamed about back then.

Teresa