"You look so awkward," I projected my voice across the arena even though I knew she would be pissed. But truly I've been watching my sister ride her whole life and never had I seen her look so awkward. And then there it was --the sigh. And THE eye roll.
I came across this picture of TC, it is amazing how you find one picture and it can bring back such a flurry of memories?!
It all started when my sister asked if I would go with her to look at this standardbred in Sacramento and so her and I plus my two girls and my two dogs hopped into the expedition in the middle of summer to go on the road trip. We got their early and went to see my friend Anne who let us leave the dogs to play with her new adorable puppy! Then we went to the track, because he was a pacer, and that's where he lived. And she fell in love.
"I would love to see you try," she said in her bratty sisterly tone. Now I was on the spot. I had never, even as a tiny child riding a giant horse, felt as uncomfortable and awkward as I did riding TC. He was such a sweet and mellow horse. But he was a pacer and he really had no idea how to be ridden. My sister had been working with him for months lunging and riding him in circles to try to balance him out and while he was getting better. It still wasn't good.
"I think that's why people ride behind them in carts," and my sister laughed as I flopped around trying to sit his jolted trot as he tried his hardest to stay in the trot but kept switching back to pacing. Needless to say when the last owners called a year later to see how his progress to a saddle horse was going, which wasn't as well as had hoped, they offered to buy him back. Because he IS a pacer. And he belonged at the track.
xo-Amanda
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