My Eternal Quest : The Perfect Horse

My lifelong quest began the day I was born. I like to answer to those who call me horse-crazy, that from the moment I entered this world, I was looking to find my horse, my equine partner.

Unfortunately for me, I was born into a family that had absolutely no attraction to these wonderful creatures and so I had to wait patiently until I was old enough to pay for my own education. I was so driven in this quest in my youth that I would use anything and everything to pretend that it was my horse. Even to this day I have a tendency to cluck to my car when I need more speed. I was fortunate in not having been sent to a psychiatric ward because of my penchant for spending hours on end sitting on a «special» tree branch riding my «imaginary» horse .



We are at our purest when we are young.



And so began my real-life experience as a teenager riding the trails. Along the way, I acquired the rudiments of horsemanship, yet mostly stayed away from a more conventional equine education. I was never attracted to those group lessons and did not share their riders’ goals. I still don’t, to this day.

I can still remember like it was yesterday receiving the best birthday gift imaginable- my very own horse. I was nineteen at the time and the horse I bought had been drugged in order to hide the fact that he was litterally «barn crazy». I have owned many horses since then and today when I reflect on the variety of horses which have wandered in and out of my life, I am filled with a mixture of regret and thankfulness. Thankfulness in that every horse has taught me something important and regret that our journey together was too short. I rode trails for most of my adult life and mostly rode Arabian horses. I enjoyed the challenges that were part of our rides; the combination of riding highly reactive horses in an ever-changing environment certainly created some unforgettable moments!

I have always had more than my fair share of curiosity and this curiosity led me to soft-gaited horses. Another factor which came to bear was a concern for my own comfort over the long trail rides and for security purposes. One tends to recover more slowly from falls as one gets older and wiser! I experienced with pleasure these «Renaissance» horses to the point of trying to introduce them in the area where I resided. Even though in practice this attempt was not successful, it greatly deepened my understanding of horses.

But there was still something missing! Until that fateful day, when I attended for the first time the show «Cavalia»