Passion

In response to "Orchid Fever" we were asked to write about a passion we have. My Dad has always told me that I am lucky I have a passion and that I should cherish it and try as hard as I can to follow it. My biggest passions are my horses. I started my life playing tennis which my parents had hoped was my passion but when I was eleven I made a bet with my dad that if I could actually beat him in a tennis match that he would buy me a horse. I kept playing and when I was thirteen I finally was good enough to beat him in a match, he took me to my first horseback riding lesson and I loved every minute of it. I took a group lesson every saturday but it was never enough and I always wanted more, sometimes my dad would even let me take a second lesson on the weekend. Once I got my first horse a year later and I started showing him I knew I never wanted to stop. About five years ago I went to an Olympic level horse event in Kentucky called Rolex 3-Day Event, it is the triathalon of horse events where you compete in three different tests over three days. The first day is a long pattern called a test that is ridden in an arena and each movement in the test is judged. The second day you ride a 2-3 mile cross country course where the horse jumps natural obsticles like logs and stone walls that do not fall down. The third day is stadium jumping where you ride over about fourteen breakable jumps under a time limit and try not to knock a pole down. The first time I saw this even I was hooked and I knew this was what I wanted to do with horses. I knew I also would need a better horse so I looked for over a year until I found a horse good enough to train and compete on. I hope that next year I can become a working student for a barn in Kentucky and further my horse education. I know it will be a lot of hard work and I am already making sacrifices by not going to a big college full time or having a lot of money to spend on what ever I want to I know I have to take the opportunity. My life would not be complete without a horse in it and I don't want to be eighty years old and look back and know I had my parents complete support and I didn't take the chance to follow my dream. We only live once and I don't want to have the normal boring life. After that first lesson seven years ago, three horses, two trucks and a trailer I think my passion is still going strong.