#7 How I Met... Flora
#7 How I met … Flora
The truth is, animals (cats, dogs and horses especially), occupy most of my thoughts on most days. As a teacher, I probably shouldn’t admit this, but it’s true. Actually, I have some real mental battles at times with the things I’ve seen. Social media is a wonderful thing, but my oh my, has it shown me an ugly, dark side of humanity. For every ‘funny kitten’ video that I’ve seen, I’ve witnessed another that has shown people being unbearably cruel to animals. Adult men in China. Grown women in Tennessee. Teenagers in our own north-east of England.
It used to be that I would force myself to watch videos like this. Sign the petitions. Tell myself that ignoring animal cruelty wasn’t solving it and was disrespectful to the poor creatures that had endured it. But now, I literally can’t cope with it. ‘Hide Post’ has become one of my go-to Facebook functions, and I’ve realised that it’s ok to support the charities that can actually deal with these issues, without forcing myself to suffer some fairly horrendous mental angst.
It was while I was social media-scrolling one Saturday morning in November 2016, that I came across a horse-for-loan advertisement. My husband of 3 months, an avid runner and footballer, was immediately supportive of me rekindling a sporting interest of my own. This shocked me – in the past, my own interests – or at least the ones that were bound to take up a lot of my time - had not always been met with such enthusiasm. And honestly, if it hadn’t have been for his encouragement, I’d have looked, thought about it, and scrolled on.
At this point in my riding career, with the exception of a few rides as favours for people, I’d barely been on board in 11 years. 11, long, years. If I let myself think about this fact for too long now, it causes me some real strife. Leaving uni, living abroad and having to turn into a grown-up had really hindered my riding progression. After my beloved riding school closed its doors, I continued to ride there, helping out with the horses that had yet to be sold… but one by one, every single one of my friends went their own ways with their own horses. To this day, I think I’m still the ONLY one who didn’t take the plunge. I blame my job for this, mainly. In fact, I blame my job for a lot of things.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I went to see this lovely horse for loan, and unfortunately, as is often the case in the horsey world, I was let down.
So Christmas came that year, and when I was visiting a completely non-horsey friend, a very VERY horsey friend dropped by with presents and cards. More importantly than Christmas cards though, she gave me something much more valuable that December: an introduction to the most wonderful little mare I’ve ever ever met.
“A friend of mine has two horses,” she said. “She could do with someone to help out with one of them, if you’d be interested?”
“Oh wow, really?” I said. “What does she have?”
“She’s a Thoroughbred mare,” she said. “Bay. Not sure how old, maybe about 9. And gorgeous – about 15.3, no trouble.”
Now then, if you’ve read any of my previous posts, you’ll remember my fantasy-fresh-air-Thoroughbred from years gone by. I love all horses and ponies, but I’m a true sucker for a Thoroughbred, and this description was music to my ears.
“Oh my God,” I said. “Yes please. Please tell her I’m really interested – pass on my number and we can chat after Christmas if she likes?”
And that’s how it happened. Amongst the red wine and Christmas lights of December 2015, my Second Age of Riding...
A Facebook inbox message came through on January 4th, 2016, and my introduction to ‘Flora’ began.
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