A Horse Named Cassie

She asked for a horse instead of a car. Best money I never spent on a Honda.

Some context, because at this point the horse in these photos earned it.

When Morgan turned sixteen, she didn't want a car. She wanted a horse. I thought she was kidding a first, but noticed that I laughed at the idea but my teenage daughter did not. Morgan was serious.

So instead of test-driving sensible four-doors, we spent a stretch of that summer touring farms together, watching her sit a handful of prospects to see which one she clicked with. The one that sealed it was a stocky little chestnut quarter horse who threw what I was told was a flying blind change — the kind of unscheduled mid-air rearrangement that launches most teenagers into the dirt and a lifetime of soccer. Morgan just laughed and stayed on. The horse looked back at her like, huh, you're still here. Deal done. That's Cassie.

That was sixteen years ago.

Cassie is twenty-nine now. Neither she nor Morgan has ridden in nearly three years — life got busy, the homestead and family life took over, and the horses enjoyed the life of leisure in the pasture.

Yesterday, we're standing around in the field waiting on the farrier, the way you do, and Morgan, on a whim— who is whimmy in the truest sense of the word, the kind of person who does the thing the second the thing occurs to her — just hops up on Cassie bareback. No saddle. No plan. Twenty-nine-year-old horse, three years off, halter and lead and a rider going purely on muscle memory.

Cassie's ears went up. Surprised is the word. But she didn't argue. She gave Morgan a few clean circles like the whole thing was Tuesday, and Morgan slid off grinning and declared — on behalf of both of them — that they "still got it."

They do. Sixteen years of trust doesn't expire just because nobody's been keeping the appointment.

— While we're here — There's a thing people don't say enough about old horses: a sound, well-kept twenty-nine-year-old is not a fragile thing. With good farrier care, dental work, and feed managed for an aging gut, a quarter horse can stay comfortable and willing well into her late twenties and beyond. The waiting-on-the-farrier part of this story isn't incidental — regular hoof care is a huge piece of why Cassie's still standing square and game enough to take a bareback victory lap on a whim.

Until next time!

— Nana