Especially
when I was younger, I never understood why it was hard for my non horsey
friends to comprehend the situation- so what if I didn’t want to go to your swimming
party? I was too busy riding my pony to care. I thought this would end once I
got older but in fact, it got worse and sometimes nastier. When I was 15, I
overheard a group of girls making comments about how “my only friends are
horses which don’t even have personalities” and that I “had no life, only a
boring hobby”. Obviously I was hurt but at the same time, it made me kind of
happy that they couldn’t and would never understand. In my head, I told them
that mindlessly drinking and bitching didn’t count as an exciting hobby and that
Casper had more character in his hoof than any of them before strutting away
with sass and dignity. In reality, I slunk away and avoided them for the rest
of time around them.
On
many occasions, I have been asked by teachers to ‘give up horse riding for a
while’ so I could concentrate on my studies before getting a bollocking for
snorting at their absurd suggestion. I realized that for your everyday man on
the street or teacher in the classroom, horses were like golf clubs; you could
just drop them in the cupboard whenever you got bored. Understanding the
dedication and commitment needed for any successful sporting career is
difficult but now and again, I wish people would work harder at accepting that this
‘boring hobby’ comes first and that’s that.
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